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What role should LinkedIn play in your overall paid advertising strategy, and how can use it to drive highly qualified leads for your business? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Modern Media Advertising Director Anthony Blatner shares his LinkedIn advertising strategies. From how LinkedIn should be used in combination with other channels as part of a holistic paid advertising strategy, to what ad formats perform best and how to work with your sales team to ensure any leads you get are being followed up with, Anthony covers everything he does to help Modern Media's clients get killer results from LinkedIn. Highlights from my conversation with Anthony include: LinkedIn is great for targeting niche audiences at scale. The cost per click on LinkedIn is higher than it is on other platforms, so it's important that you have a strategy for following up on any leads you get from LinkedIn. In Anthony's experience, LinkedIn ads work well for company's with a customer lifetime value of $10,000 or more. Whereas the cost per click on Facebook is generally around $2, on LinkedIn, it starts at $4.50 and goes up from there. LinkedIn is best for top of the funnel advertising, where you can attract a new audience and then retarget and nurture that audience on other, less expensive platforms. Anthony has found that LinkedIn lead forms work well for his clients. They tend to have a higher conversion rate because prospects don't have to leave LinkedIn to convert, but when you use a lead form, you sacrifice the ability to cookie a contact.  If you are concerned about GDPR compliance, there are a number of ways to use lead forms to secure explicit consent and stay GDPR compliant. Another LinkedIn ad format that works well are newsfeed ads. Whereas on Facebook, video works well for this format, Anthony recommends using images on LinkedIn because you are being charged by the click and not the impression (which is how Facebook works). There is a new LinkedIn ad format that uses chatbot-like functionality called conversation ads that is also worth checking out. Anthony says sponsored InMail can be an effective way to get more conversions for ads that are already tested and proving successful in the newsfeed. With many marketers cutting their ad spend due to budget restrictions relating to COVID, Anthony says the cost per click on LinkedIn is down 30 to 40 percent. He recommends setting a maximum cost per click when advertising on LinkedIn, and then playing around with lowering that number to see how little you can spend and still see results. If you are doing LinkedIn ads and not seeing great results, it is most likely due to your targeting. Anthony recommends that you go back and revisit your targeting strategy to see if that helps.  The minimum number of emails you can target on LinkedIn is 300. Resources from this episode: Visit the Modern Media website Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn Contact Anthony by email at anthony@modernmedia.io  Listen to the podcast to learn how the top LinkedIn ads experts are using the platform to drive leads, and how can, too. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Anthony Blatner who is the advertising director at Modern Media. Welcome Anthony. Anthony Blatner (Guest): Hey Kathleen. Thanks for having me on the show. Anthony and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting into it with you today, talking about some LinkedIn ads. But before we start, can you please tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and about modern media and about really just how you wound up doing what you're doing today? About Anthony Blatner and Modern Media Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. So modern media, we are a LinkedIn ads focused agency. We do a lot of B2B lead generation and all of our focuses on LinkedIn ads. The way that I got to being here is I actually come at it from the tech and software development world. I originally started my career working at IBM, working on their consulting teams, working on big eCommerce stores. Really enjoyed that, got to travel around a lot. I live in Austin, Texas and I also got involved with the startup community while I was here and ended up falling in love with that. So after a few years at IBM, I spun off to start my own mobile app development consulting company who would build mobile apps for for a variety of other companies, a lot of startups, some other like larger tech companies that we would partner with. And when I was doing that, I saw that we were building all these apps and like some of these companies would actually have startups with build an app and launch and like do very well. And we had a number of clients that went on to get acquired or like Stallard technology. And then we also work with some bigger partners who may have already had a customer network and they launched their app and it goes up to that customer network and does very well out of the gates. Then you would have other companies who would spend all this time and money developing app their software and then they would launch it and without a good marketing plan in place, it would just sit on the app store. No one would download it. And you'd see how much time and effort these teams are putting into this. And without, you know, without that marketing plan afterwards, then it was just, you know, it was dead in the water. So I saw it, I saw the need for it and then we naturally got pulled into doing it, helping out with a lot of those. So from doing marketing for my own agency and for a lot of clients I ended up just really loving the marketing that I was doing, so a few years ago, transitioned to focusing solely on marketing. So now Modern Media focuses on marketing. B2B lead-generation solely using LinkedIn ads. Kathleen: I love how focused you guys are because I mean, I come from an agency background. I owned an agency for 11 years and you know, I think that's the big conversation in the agency community, right? Like it's easy to try to be all things to all people, especially when you're chasing dollars. But there's really something to be said for niching down and becoming, you know, the best expert in the world on the thing that you want to do, you know, and focus on. So I think that's great. Anthony: No, it wasn't easy to get here. You know, it's a lot of trial and error along the way to where getting into the marketing. A lot of the apps that we started by marketing, no, sometimes we did start with like Facebook ads and Google ads. So like I've, I've done a lot of all of that kind of advertising over the years. And just with my background and with the type of clientele we had, LinkedIn was just repeatedly becoming the best platform to market them on. So we had done a lot of Facebook, done a lot of Google. I'll tell you a story of probably the first one that really stuck out for me. They were, they were, this was a company that we were taking on to do marketing. They were at big data, but they are the big data platform. They sell their tools made for enterprise companies. It's like thousands of dollars a year. They were doing the traditional Facebook and Google marketing. But as we audited their account and looked at their lead list, a lot of the leads that were coming in from Google were like people looking for jobs, searching for jobs or students looking for research. And they were, you know, they were following best practices for keywords and negatives and all that stuff, but you still get a lot of leads coming in. And then on Facebook it'd be a lot of people who are maybe clicking on the ad cause it had like a pretty picture in it or something that was attention grabbing. But a lot of those leads that were signing up were just not good fits. Their sales team was complaining that they were wasting a lot of time calling out these people and they just weren't qualified to buy. They didn't have the budgets to buy the software. So we took him over to LinkedIn and you know, targeted like CTOs, data scientists at specific types of companies who would be had the, their platform was made for a few different industries. So chose those industries, chose companies I think like a hundred people and above and just right out the gates. Those leads that were signing up were like the perfect fit for them and they're just like, this is night and day. Like the clear differentiator there. And since then it's just been like, I'm just an advocate of LinkedIn now for, for B2B for these industries that that's our focus now. Who is LinkedIn advertising right for? Kathleen: That's great. Now I feel like when people think about online advertising, they have a lot of choices these days. You mentioned a number of platforms just, and you know, in the last few minutes I guess my first question for you is really who is LinkedIn advertising right for and where does it fit within that big mix of different options? Anthony: That is a good question. That is a very important question to ask. So it's not, it isn't a good fit for everybody. I'll tell you a few things about it is LinkedIn is great for targeting niche decision makers at scale. It is a more expensive ads platform to use than a lot of the other ones out there. So it's good for companies that have the resources to go work those leads that they acquire. It's going to be more expensive to acquire those leads than like most other channels. So, you know, they're higher value leads need to work them when people are signing up. It is more expensive to acquire them. So you, your offer, your LTV for your customers should be high enough to make sense. What we'd like to see is an LTV of about 10k for that ROI to make sense. You know, if your sales and marketing engine is very honed in, you can be less than that and still make an ROI. But that's a good rule of thumb. If you're on Facebook ads, you can get CPCs under a buck, you know, they might be a dollar to $2 on average. On LinkedIn the minimum is about $4.50 in the US so right out of the gate, that's their floor and you're just going up from there. And if you're targeting CEO's only, you know, that's gonna be even higher than that. So just be prepared for higher acquisition costs. And that leads to how it fits in with the ecosystem. LinkedIn is great for starting the conversation and for acquiring very high quality traffic. Once you acquire it, you know, you want to then nurture it on other cheaper channels or more cost efficient channels. So once somebody signs up to be a lead, you know, follow up over email, outbound calling oftentimes we retarget with Facebook and Google ads. So we acquired traffic on LinkedIn and then well, retarget on Facebook and Google because it's a lot cheaper. And you know, retarget those ads, retarget those leads to, we're doing lead generation on LinkedIn, and then retargeting them to maybe book a call on Facebook or Google. Kathleen: Got it. So it sounds like from what you're saying, focused lists you know, not kind of throwing a bunch of darts at the wall and hoping one sticks. It's like if you know exactly who you want to target and you have some good targeting parameters around whether that's job title, what have you, and then the budget to be able to support a larger, potentially larger per lead ad spend the team in place to follow up on those leads. And then really from an expectation standpoint, using it at the top of the funnel. Understanding LinkedIn ad formats Kathleen: So then knowing that if somebody is listening and they're thinking, okay, check, check, check, you know, all of these things I have, can you talk a little bit about LinkedIn ad formats and what you find performs really well? So like, what do you need to have in order to advertise effectively on LinkedIn? Anthony: Yeah, so a few things. So approaching the LinkedIn campaign is a few things and I'll kind of tell you about our most common campaign we'll do for people is a lead generation campaign on LinkedIn using lead magnets. So a lead magnet is some asset of value that your target market would be interested in. So a guide, a PDF, a checklist or something like that. Linkedin, like I said, this is starting a conversation with somebody, your target market. So offering people guides and easy downloadables is the best way to start the conversation to get them interested. Most, you know, unless you're a major brand, most people have not heard about your company. So leading with like buy now or contact us isn't gonna do as well. We're gonna have a much higher cost per lead. So on LinkedIn use lead magnets to start. As far as ad formats, we do often use the LinkedIn lead forms. They will auto-populate with the person's information. So the lead form is a little form when you click on the ad that'll open up right inside of LinkedIn, just like a Facebook lead form. They work very similarly. But on LinkedIn you can auto fill that with information from the user's profile and it comes with information from your profile. While you know on Facebook it's usually personal email addresses. In LinkedIn you do get number of personal email addresses, but you also get like work email addresses as well. I find that data quality is very high coming off of LinkedIn. And we also often use like job title and company name so we know who are these leads that are signing up. Or using the LinkedIn profile. You are also going to look up those leads afterwards and you know that that gives you a lot, a lot more richer information about your lead. So you can see, okay, who is this person, where do they work? And understand, you know, understand where your leads are coming from. Usually, you're setting those targeting criteria up front. So you know, people coming into your campaign are going to be part of that audience. But our average campaign or our most helpful one is, is using the LinkedIn lead forms, your lead generation offering a lead magnets to, to your audience. Kathleen: So this is an interesting topic to me because I've heard this, that lead forms are more effective than trying to get somebody to like go to your website and convert. But I guess my question is really if you're using a lead form, What are you sacrificing? I use HubSpot and so I can't, if I use a lead form, I can't cookie somebody. If I can't cookie them, then I am giving up the ability to see all that rich data about their behavior on my site, et cetera and things like that. But then you had mentioned also using LinkedIn leads or ads rather to then retarget those people on other platforms. Can you do that if you're using a lead form? Because at that point, you're not having a tracking pixel firing on your website. Anthony: Right. At that point we retarget based on the email. Kathleen: Okay. So if, but if there... Anthony: You lose some data you know, that is, it is different than going to the landing page and opting in. So we do often use both, but most common is using the lead forms. The conversion rate is just much higher. Typically using the lead forms the quantity you're going to get is going to make sense. You will see a lower conversion rate for pushing people to your landing page. But I do say, you know, there are times where maybe you don't have the sales team available to call all those leads. So it is more important for you to get fewer, more higher intent leads. And then at that point maybe a landing page is a better one for you to use. Because we do have accounts where like, you know, if they have a large budget they can be driving a lot of leads through there. And if you don't have the sales team to contact all those leads, like, Hey, I'd rather have higher intent leads. So landing page opt ins would then be better with them. LinkedIn ads and GDPR compliance Kathleen: Yeah. Now the other question I have about lead forms is, it relates to GDPR. So if you're driving somebody to your site, you have a lot of control. If you're trying to be GDPR compliant, you have a lot of control over how you structure, you know, your opt-ins and your GDPR language, et cetera. I don't have a lot of experience with LinkedIn lead forms. So can you talk a little bit about, if somebody is trying to adhere to GDPR, can they use LinkedIn lead forms and if so, what kind of control do you have over being able to document that opt-in? Anthony: Yeah good question. So we haven't seen too many issues with that on LinkedIn. Two things with lead form that you can include is number one, you were actually required to include a link to the company's privacy policy. So usually you use the privacy policy which will cover, you know, all those terms. You can also include a little blurb at the bottom of the lead form. Anything else that you want to make clear to the user as they're signing up. So those two inputs as far as that we usually get involved, you know, we're, we'll use the privacy policy from the company. And any other information on the lead form that needs to be, Kathleen: So am I correct that there's no explicit checkbox built in that would say, for example, I agree to receive other communications from company X, Anthony: You can add a custom checkbox to do that. Kathleen: You can, okay. Okay. So that would presumably then solve that issue if somebody was really being strict about how they complied with GDPR? Yeah. Great. When should you use a LinkedIn lead form? Kathleen: So yes, there's this trade off then with lead ads and it sounds like it's important to understand your goals. What I'm hearing, or at least what I'm taking away from what you said, is that if your intent is to really have a laser focus on your certain market or your leads that you want to attract and, and your goal if they do convert is to really follow up with a phone call from your sales team, then it doesn't really matter if you're driving them to your website and having them fill out a form because the goal is to get the sales team call them and or, and, or reach out by email. And so, you know, having a lead form would make sense there. But then it sounds like if your goal is to either put them into, you know, a full funnel nurturing sequence where you're retargeting on Facebook or something or where you're going to do mass emails then maybe it might make sense to not use a lead form and instead to direct them to a form on your site. Is that accurate, would you say? Anthony: Yeah, we've got the best results that we see are when we, when we use lead forms to drive the higher volume of leads and then the client usually has a sales team who's on top of those leads right away calling them, you know, it's like they say like the five minute after submission rules, like the best practice, you know, contact them soon afterwards. But five minutes is very fast. But if it, Hey, if you're on top of your leads, call them right away. Like, that's where we should have the best results. The sales team do work those leads. If someone signed up, they've indicated interest and if you position your lead magnet the right way, then they should be very open to like a sales conversation or at least that introductory like discovery. Hey, how can we help you in conversation Kathleen: Do you give your clients any coaching as far as how to follow up on those leads? Because I think the one thing I've noticed is that there can, there's the potential for a big mismatch. Like somebody fills out a form on LinkedIn to get a white paper there. They might not be expecting to get a phone call. So how do you advise your clients to follow up? Anthony: Yes, good question. So LinkedIn is great for starting the conversation. It is top of funnel. Be aware that these leads, this is probably the first time that they're seeing your company, they probably opted in to get your lead magnet. So yeah, I kind of joke about the five minute rule thing. I would say that it's very fast to contact them at the point where they have just for the first time seeing your logo and heard about your company. They probably haven't even come to it, had time to read that lead magnet yet. So I, you know, I don't say within five minutes, contact them soon. But you know, some of it is like you want that lead magnet to help do some of the education and warming up with them. It might take a little bit of time for somebody to receive that email, to click through to read it or to receive that email and then go read it. And then yeah, follow up with them, have them on an email sequence, follow up with them shortly after that and then have the retargeting funnel in place. So that's you know, if they sign up via email, if they click through and pixel them, then you can retarget them with ads afterwards. So we do recommend like a multi-channel approach afterwards as many touch points as you can, you know, shortly afterwards, while while it is still top of mind for them. And then there's a lot that goes into the lead magnet strategy as far as, you know, how do I pick the best asset? How do I create the best asset that's going to work here? For companies and brands and topics, services, that's they are, that are, it's like the levels of awareness thing pyramid. If they are not very aware of what your solution is and you work that you want to focus on their pain points and make the topic about them. If they are more aware, maybe if you are a well known brand and maybe you can make the topic about yourself if there's something that they're interested in. So for lower levels of awareness, keep in mind that this is the part of the first time the senior company. So that call, the way I coach people about that call is that needs to be very introductory, very discovery. How can we help you get focused? Other LinkedIn ad formats Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. Now we talked a lot about lead ads. Can you talk through what are some of the other ad format options on LinkedIn and for each of them, you know, when would you use it and, and how does it generally perform? Anthony: Sure. so the next, so as far as specific ad units in the newsfeed, so that's a sponsored content and you have image ads and you have a video ad there, you also carousel ads. And they work just like Facebook carousel ads essentially. We actually start with image ads most of the time. So I know, you know, on Facebook everyone's about video and like video performance better on LinkedIn to start, we often, we always start with, we almost always start with image ads in the beginning because we find on LinkedIn you're usually paying per click. Whereas on Facebook, usually paying costs, CPM by impression. So on LinkedIn you want to reduce the chance of any irrelevant clicks to your ads. So that in one way that is don't be misleading. You know, on Facebook people tend to be very curiosity invoking of like drawing the click in. That could be flashy videos, that could be vague copy that's just curiosity invoking. On LinkedIn you want to be very direct about what's what it is you're offering, who you are, who you're targeting because you don't want people to just curiosity click, okay, Kathleen: You're paying for that. Yeah, that's an expensive click. Especially when five bucks is your minimum. You could have bought yourself a latte at Starbucks. Anthony: So, we're usually starting with image ads because you can instantly, somebody can consume images rather than watching a video. We usually find, to start, videos tend to be flashy and like eye catching and they draw the click more often. So in the beginning we see images perform better. And then once you prove your audience, which audience you should be split testing a number of audiences, once you prove which audience is the best, which ad angle, which imagery is the best, then we can then go turn that into a video or create a video similar to that. And then, at that point we do see often video can outperform images. So in in the newsfeed you have images, video next format that we most commonly use is probably sponsored InMail. Sponsored InMail can be great. It can be expensive as well. So it's mostly InMail charges you per send. I think the minimum 5 cents per send. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot when you add it up over the size of an audience. Sponsored InMail is great because we do see very high open rates of those messages. Keep in mind a lot of people that are opening those are probably just clearing out the notification. So the offers that work best in sponsored InMail are the ones that are like the, if you have a very appealing offer. So usually we'll start by testing in the newsfeed and if an ad does very well there, then we will take that and go turn into a sponsored InMail ad. Because if it's performing really well in the newsfeed then that means the offer's proven and that we can go take and put in as much with InMail. Sponsored InMail, you know, it's a one, it seems like a one on one conversation and if it's like, if it feels like a personal offer that you're making to somebody usually, you know, sometimes offer a free consultation there or like free gifts there are, do, do better. But it's, it's a good ad format to try out. Next, Linkedin just released conversation ads, which are kind of the next evolution of sponsored email ads. This gets more to be more chat bot like so we do see LinkedIn does follow. It's tends to follow Facebook and a lot of different ways. And you know, we've seen how Facebook has evolved with the last few years. We've seen Facebook Lives, we've seen chat bots and stuff like that. Linkedin is kind of following along the same steps. Kathleen: So can you actually explain how that would work? Cause I haven't seen that at all. I'm super curious about it. The chatbots. Anthony: So it's not, it's not a chatbot, but I think LinkedIn's on their way to getting more towards this. But conversation ads, you will create a chat flow. So instead of just a sponsored InMail message that you send to somebody, it is similar to that. You send the message, but then they have a few options that they can choose from and you can create a, a tree from there. So that if somebody clicks on option a, you know, essentially you can offer them multiple different things in the app. So the reason why we've seen performance improve from it, because you can offer people, you can make multiple offers, Kathleen: Right? It's like a choose your own adventure kind of a thing. Now, does that appear as a direct message in their inbox or how does that appear? Anthony: Yes. Kathleen: Interesting. I haven't seen that. I'm going to have to now search for it, find it in the wild. So, so many different options. Who is finding success with LinkedIn ads? Kathleen: I know you work with a lot of clients. Can you share any examples of, you know, campaigns or companies that you've worked with who are using LinkedIn ads really successfully? Anthony: Sure. so right now, well, just in general the HR space always does very well on LinkedIn. So I'd say for any space, any campaigns that I would highlight, like it's probably gonna be an HR campaign. The biggest categories on LinkedIn are like, I think IT is number one. And I think HR is number two, and then it's like the rest of the tech software world and then like financial services. So if you're in one of those categories, those are the biggest audiences. So those are probably gonna be great campaigns for LinkedIn. I'm always surprised when somebody gives me a very niche audience to target how many people I'm able to find on LinkedIn. So, and pretty much any niche decision maker, any niche B2B targeting, go scope out what the audience sizes. And I'm always surprised how many people I can find in the different niches. But to highlight any campaigns, HR, I'd say just in the last, especially in the last couple months since we've all been quarantined and at home, the HR category has been very active on LinkedIn. So not only have ad prices gone way down the last few weeks, they're down about like 30 to 40% in a lot of cases. Kathleen: Now, I've heard that. I've heard that also for Facebook. And is that on LinkedIn? Is that because basically so many companies have cut their marketing spend and so the demand side if you will, has gone down Anthony: Exactly. LinkedIn is an auction, just like Facebook. Kathleen: Yup. Okay. Anthony: So less, well, it's a combination of less advertisers and then also more eyeballs. Supply and demand there where we're all stuck at home. So everyone's spending a lot more time online. Kathleen: Yeah, I've heard, I've heard a ton of people say they're spending way more time on LinkedIn these days. How to structure your bidding strategy for LinkedIn ads Anthony: A random tip is I always recommend bidding max CPC. Do not use auto-bid on LinkedIn because you just, you say go spend wherever you want it and LinkedIn will go whatever it wants. Set max CPCs for most of your campaigns. We've noticed that we can drop that max CPC all the way down, nearly all the way down to the floor. Each audience in each geography has its own floor so go test in the tool and see what yours is, but we dropped it nearly down to the floor for a lot of campaigns and I'm seeing cost per lead improve a lot. Kathleen: Wow. That's awesome. Okay, so sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about examples and you talked about HR. Any particular campaigns that you can think of that have done really well lately? Examples of successful LinkedIn ad campaigns Anthony: Yeah, so there's two very specific HR ones I'm thinking about right now that, especially in the last few weeks, that they've done very well. I mentioned how like lead magnet strategy is very important. They both release lead magnets that speak to kind of what's going on right now, how to hire in tough times and how to support your people during tough times. And, you know, COVID messaging might be getting stale now, but especially over the last couple of months, it's been performing super well. So where they were traditionally between a 40 to $60 cost per lead, they're down below $30 per lead. And then the other campaign, they were a little bit more cause they were targeting a higher level of HR people. And they're down below 50 bucks per lead. So yeah, we've seen lead costs like almost cut in half in a lot of cases. And just like HR activities, you know, through the roof. So those ones have done really well. Attracting high quality leads on LinkedIn Kathleen: And then would you say the quality of the leads - I know you mentioned doing almost the opposite approach from Facebook where you're trying not to be click baity cause you're paying by the click. And I'm interested specifically, because you talked about one example that was targeting very senior level people. That's an audience that's usually really hard to get in front of. So can you talk a little bit about what your experience has been if somebody is going after like a C level audience, what are some good tips for being successful with that on LinkedIn? Anthony: Absolutely. That's why you use LinkedIn. Cause a lot of these upper level people, there's just no other place or way to target them without, without buying an email list. Yeah, there's no other place. Linkedin is the best place with that kind of data at scale. And LinkedIn's always the first place that people update their profile when they get a new job or get a promotion. So it's very high quality data and that's the only place, a lot of times, you'll see these people. As far as targeting goes, the LinkedIn audience approach is the opposite of Facebook, I guess. Again, with Facebook you give it, you know, you tend to give it a big audience and you let the AI algorithm go find the best people for you and that audience. On LinkedIn you want to do the opposite because, because you are paying cost per click, you want to exclude any irrelevant ones. So you want to be very niche, very laser focused on who you want to target. As far as lead quality goes, you know, you're setting up your targeting in the beginning. What are the job titles I want, what are the functions with the seniorities? So if you're not getting those leads, the right leads coming through your funnel, go back to your targeting and tweak that up. You don't usually have a problem with lead quality. The quality is always clients. It's always funny, like a client that has run Facebook ads in the past and like, we'll have like our lead tracker set up and they'll see the job titles and company names coming in and they're just like, perfect, perfect, perfect. And sometimes we'll get feedback of like, Oh, this title was a little bit off maybe because you said this, so let's go add this exclusion and then we'll go work that back in. But, well, yeah you know, if your leads that come through on LinkedIn aren't a great fit, then just tweak your targeting a little bit. But you can set the specific job titles in specific industries and company size you want. So lead quality is usually awesome. What is the minimum audience size for a LinkedIn ad? Kathleen: Yeah. now one of the things I've always been interested in and I feel like it's changed, what is the minimum audience size that you can target on LinkedIn because there are some crazy opportunities with LinkedIn ads. I love the idea of you're submitting a proposal to do something for a company and how few people can you target in that company with your ad? Anthony: 300 is the minimum. It Is a little bit bigger of a minimum than Facebook. I want to say Facebook is a hundred for a minimum. So in two cases is yes, it is hard to be that laser targeted in some cases. It's also a challenge when you want to retarget cause if you are building a lead list, you're gonna have to wait until you have at least 300 leads to go retarget them using the email method. So maybe a simple alternative that is go connect with those people on LinkedIn and send them a message via your chat. Anthony's tips for anyone getting started with LinkedIn ads Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, what tips do you have if somebody is listening and they're thinking they want to get started with LinkedIn ads? Is there anything you wish you knew that would have helped you avoid some mistakes? Anthony: Hmm. Anything that I wish I knew. So I have a number of tips that I usually talk about, so I'll give some of those. Well I'd say the biggest thing I wish, like even if I would have told myself this a year ago I probably wouldn't have listened, is don't ask for too much information from your lead in the beginning. You know, you're starting the conversation. They don't have any reason to trust you yet. Keep it as minimal as possible. And that's going to maximize your conversion rate. You know, I go check out a lot of their ads just because I'm always interested to see, what are they advertising? What are they asking for? What does the lead form look like? I opened some of these companies' lead forms. I'm just like, you have seven imports.Is anybody submitting this form? Questions and stuff like that. I'm like, I should reach out to you and be like, Hey, I know your cost per lead is terrible. Do you want some help? That's the biggest thing is these people don't know you. They don't have any reason to trust you yet. Only ask for the information you need, which is usually like email address to send them the guide and then continue the conversation from there. Various other tips. I'd say the image thing is a big one. We get a lot of people who wanted to just have a folder of videos and like let's use these. Let's start with images first and then get those converting and then move to video afterwards. Some other tips are I mentioned the don't auto-bid. Start with max CPC and bid low and then crank it up slowly until you find the sweet spot. Short and direct copy usually works the best. So now on Facebook, a lot of people write these long copy and a lot of emojis and stuff like that. Short copy tends to do best. Keep it shorter than about 150 characters and won't trigger the "see more" button. Most people don't click the "see more" button. I'm kind of, I advocate in both cases where you want your CTA, you want it to be standalone above the "see more". If somebody doesn't click the "see more" it should still be just as appealing. But for the people that do click the "see more", here's a tip that clicking the "see more" button does not charge you. So there's no harm in having more copy than the rest of your ad for the people that do click that "see more" button. So split test both short and long. I do say, I will say we do see shorter, usually performs better. But there is usually no downside to having more copy there. Kathleen: And then with images, I know Facebook has a limitation of how much copy can you have on your image? Are there any limitations like that in LinkedIn? Anthony: Nope. Actually we use a lot more copy and images. Kathleen: Okay. And then the other thing I've heard with Facebook is that you should have a very active page where you're posting often to sort of like warm up your audience, which I think is interesting cause I feel like nobody ever sees any Facebook page posts, but that's a different conversation for another time. So do you ever, what kind of advice do you give people regarding their LinkedIn company page? Not their ads, but the page itself as far as how that should be used to support a good LinkedIn ad strategy? Anthony: Yeah, good question. So you want to have the basics covered. LinkedIn company pages people tend to have more, more connections and more followers on their personal page. So I'd say put most of your focus there, but you know, if you are running a company page, you should have that company page fully filled out. It should look nice and professional and polished and it should have some activity on there. If you were gonna go hire a social media person to manage your profile, I'd say have them manage your personal profile because you'll have more activity there. Because you have more connections in your personal than typically a company page. But have all the information filled out, have good imagery there, have all your links filled out. And then, to bring back the lead magnets again, a lot of times in the headline or in the about section of the body copy, I recommend putting that called to action there. Download our guide. And while that link won't be explicitly clickable, we do see a lot of people will copy and paste it. Make it a simple URL. Mydomain.com/guide and then they'll go there and get it. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: That makes sense. Great. Well, shifting gears I have two questions. I always ask my guests and I'd love to hear what you have to say. First one is, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound marketing? Anthony: So the company that has been advertising to me the most is outreach.io. So they're a pretty well known company out there, but they just, they must spend a lot on their ads because every time I log into LinkedIn I see them there and I'm always like, that's a good ad. I like that ad. So I'd say that they do a very good job. I think I've probably signed up for a few of their lead magnets because I always scope out what other people are doing. Their content's good and their ads are good quality. And if I was to give people any tip, it's you can go see the ads run by any LinkedIn page out there just like you can on Facebook by going to that company page. On the left hand side, on desktop, there's a little navigation bar on the bottom it says ads and it'll show you those, the ads being run by that company page. So for whatever your industry is, go scope out what your competitors are doing and maybe similar offerings are new. Kathleen: That's a great suggestion. Second question, marketers tend to have a common pain point, which is that so much is changing so quickly. LinkedIn is a great example. I feel like just when you feel like, you know how it works, something big changes and it's, you know, you almost have to start over. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated about Anthony: In the world of digital marketing? For LinkedIn specifically? I'd say I see there's not much content out there about LinkedIn ads. So the surprising thing, like as I've learned this over the years there's so much out there about, about Facebook and Google ads, like the huge communities and stuff like that, of courses, everything. There's not much about LinkedIn ads. So I've gotten the most by joining a number of different groups and like asking questions to people there and like, and like, just like working one on one with other people who are active advertisers. Kathleen: Any particular groups that come to mind? Anthony: LinkedIn Official Advertisers, a group on LinkedIn. That's a group on LinkedIn. Yeah. I have a small one that I started recently. It's called, this is on Facebook, LinkedIn advertising strategies. Kathleen: And you said that is or is not on Facebook? Anthony: That is on Facebook. Yeah. Okay. Got it. LinkedIn groups overall are still, Kathleen: Yeah, they've kind of like died on the vine a little bit. Anthony: I hope that they put more effort or like, you know, improve them because I think there's a lot of potential. Like we've seen how Facebook has put so much focus on groups and how they've been, like a number of groups that I'm in are super active and super valuable. I hope that it does the same there. Kathleen: So yeah, I was going to ask you about that. It's funny, I'm glad you brought it up cause it is, it used to be so great and then it just, was it just, Ugh. I mean I don't spend any time in LinkedIn groups these days, but I used to spend a ton. How to connect with Anthony Kathleen: So okay, well we're coming to the top of our time. So if somebody is interested in learning more or they want to reach out to you and ask a question, what is the best way for them to connect with you? Anthony: So the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Anthony Blatner on there. So go look me up. Connect with me and send me a little message in the add now and the add connection requests because we all get tons of them. You can find me at my email is anthony@modernmedia.io and then our website's modernmedia.io. If you're looking to learn more about LinkedIn ads or understand strategy, I have tried to put out a lot of content as I've learned over the past few years, knowing that there's not much out there. I've tried to put out more content to share with others. So we have a number of blog posts about funnel strategy, lead generation strategy and then specifically LinkedIn ads, tips and best practices. We got one about lead magnets and then we have one about all the tips around copy and creative. What works the best. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. Well, I'll put those links in the show notes so that people can go check that out. And if you're listening and you have learned something new today, which I certainly have, head to Apple Podcasts and please consider leaving the podcast a five star review. That's how other folks find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much, Anthony. This was great. Anthony: Thanks for having me.

So there's a cold going around where I live and so I got pretty sick yesterday. As A result I'm doing this podcast a day late. And what better topic to come back with than being sick. As all I have to do at that point is draw from my immediate experiences. Overall I think this is a pretty decent average episode Which is pretty good. Well I'd certainly prefer this kind of episode to a bad one. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thomas--hunnemeder/support

Ceri Wheeldon of Fab after Fifty interviews Jacynth Bassett , founder of online pro-age premium online boutiquethe Bias-Cut.comIn this episode we chat about ageism in the fashion industryWhy retailers and designers fail to cater for women over 50.Why some retailers are now recognising the spending power of women over 50Why 'rules' of what to wear over 50 are outdatedWhat items are the best investment pieces for women over 50Where we can find style inspiration over 50How to best shop online for clothes ----more----Full transcript:[00:00:04] I'm Ceri Wheeldon. Welcome to the Fab after Fifty podcast. Leading the pro age conversation talking about all things life after 50. [00:00:16] I have with me today my special guest Jacynth Bassett . Jacynth is the founder of the first pro age online premium fashion boutique the bias-cut.com. And she's also fighting ageism.  She's an ageism fighting trailblazer. Hello and welcome to Fab after 50. [00:00:35] Hi Ceri. It's a pleasure to be talking to you. [00:00:38] Now I know we've had lots of conversations haven't we  away from this podcast about how the fashion industry hasn't really caught up with reality how women over 50 actually see ourselves and how we like to dress today. [00:00:50] Yes. Yeah well I mean I think we're seeing it slowly changing I think largely because the fashion industry is cottoning on to the fact that midlife women have disposable income but it's still very gradual and it's all quite tokenistic and I think even when we see older women featured in campaigns because we are seeing that a bit more now, we are, [00:01:19] There are more than when I first started. [00:01:20] Yes. And same with me. And so it is getting there. But if we notice they often the models beautiful as they are often look the same. They are often quite tall slim Caucasian with silver hair and a lot of women over 50 are not like that. And additionally as I often say to brand that's the thing that the issue is not just about featuring that woman in a campaign it's got to be authentic and understanding that customer has to be in every aspect of the business. So often you might for example go online and I've seen an older woman the campaign put their whole website is still using younger models. And you've also got the fact that a lot of there's also the lack of understanding of the customer in terms of her body shape her lifestyle. So you can say you're catering to women all you want by putting in an older model in it but doesn't mean actually that the average older woman over 50 wants to want to wear these clothes and that it will really understand her figure. So it is really a deeper issue than the way the fashion industry is treating it right now. [00:02:26] Yes and actually interestingly enough I received a press release today from somebody that these dresses that we know are great for older women as well. [00:02:33] Well I'd wear them as tops together but I think it's so short I might wear a tunic top that is no way I feel out in that particular sort of style. [00:02:41] I mean would be. Exactly. And it's completely misunderstanding really the fact that women want to dress stylishly. They want to feel confident feel contemporary. But it doesn't mean they're going to suddenly wear everything that 20 year olds wear or in the same way that she would wear. And as you say I mean there's often I find it with designers they almost look at me with sort of shock when I say but this isn't going to work. Maybe it's the neckline or you know something to do with it's unflattering around the middle and they just don't understand it. And it's unfortunate it comes down to the fact that there's still I think a lot of it is rooted in education. But even designers at fashion school a lot of them are still only really designing for younger women so they don't understand that there is a different customer out there and that they need to be catered to in a slightly different way. [00:03:33] Oh absolutely. I mean on the same side as I was when I was younger I'm very fortunate in that. [00:03:38] But my body shape has changed. So you have to look at things so  you known simply say sleeve length,  better sleeve patterns cut for the upper arms . And also things like where the darts are placed. [00:03:49] Exactly. I mean I think is often a problem. Yes. I mean I think that you know busts often with gaping and also sleeves. I mean we talked about that though about the difficulty to find sleeves. And it's just understanding  their lifestyle as much as anything else as well. Now you want to be going dressed up nicely maybe to go to dinner or to theatre or something. Now you might go to the club but it's you know fewer women over 50 I think go to a nightclub. So again it's a completely different lifestyle and it's different priorities and values that need to be understood. [00:04:29] And also if you think they should absolutely appreciate the spending power that our generation have now perhaps because the kids have flown the nest et cetera as opposed to younger women who are sort of investing in growing their careers and also bringing up families. [00:04:44] Yeah I think that's one thing that's driving force behind why we're seeing more inclusivity and that is to do with spending power. You know I know quite a few brands who when I first approached so I first first came up the idea of the bias cu in 1212 so really back then we were seeing very little when I started developing the business after university in 2014 it was still an issue and even bigger than it is right now and a lot of designers were very dismissive of me and the concept if you even when I muttered the word over 40 they were horrified and kept saying you about our clothes are pretty cool. They can know a lot of our customers are younger and that's fine. I'm not saying that they're not but why can't you be cool over 40. And interestingly quite a few of them have now completely changed their tune and say that they're very inclusive. They feature older women their campaigns and I think. I think it obviously I don't know personally but I think sadly whether it's a good or bad thing I mean it's happening but it is likely it's because of the spending power. I think you know more younger millennials the young professionals I don't know many people who can spend a lot of money at my age you know particularly with the housing you know they won't get on the property ladder more than anything so they don't have the income that maybe 20 30 years ago even someone younger did have and and also there's the fact that I do think that we have people who their kids have left. And again they want to dress differently to how but in their 50s to how  their parents did. So it's all the more to do with I think though spending power. [00:06:38] Yeah I have to say that I mean a few years ago I was I was at a trade show for the fashion industry. Yeah and I was on one particular brand and there was some sort of dress at that I thought was  ideal for a feature  which I was doing a for a wedding guest special occasional wear. Yeah. And they're really happy to give you me photograph. Until I gave them my card. Right. They said no way. They did not want these clothes as being suitable for the 50s.  They said we are targeting that you know the 20s and 30s market. We don't want those women to think that somebody over 50 is wearing the same dress. I think they were against it. [00:07:15] I think as you said it's changing but it's slow to change. [00:07:20] It's an interesting thing because you know with the bias cut the whole thing is that the pieces that we sell can work on any age but our curation is focused on championing the 50 plus woman, So there is a way. Yes there is a way. Yeah but what's interesting is that I still have people who who are younger. We do have customers who are younger but there are customers who are younger who are gonna go oh I could really wear this stuff. In shock and I have friends who have dismissed even looking at the website and then when I'll turn up to a party wearing something that you know we sell they'll be really surprised that it's from the web site. And so there is this divide and this idea that is off putting for younger women to see old women in the same clothes and we need to get to a point where it really shouldn't matter the age of the person wearing the clothes at all. If you just if they're nice clothes and they've stylish that's what you appreciate. And I think we are slowly getting that with other people such as Iris Apfel  and Helen Mirren  and a lot of fantastic actresses over 50 who are very stylish. And so it is having an impact on the younger generation seeing older women can dress beautifully and get older. But as you say there's still this concern in particular amongst designers from a branding perspective that as soon as they are identified with an older customer that younger customer won't be interested. And I know of designers who have turned down A-list celebrities for wearing pieces at huge award ceremonies because they didn't want it associated with an old customer because they thought it would damage their reputation of being cool . And for some reason and I actually think that the more millennials are coming up to the fact that that's not the case much. [00:09:18] I think it's actually the fashion industry. And often their PR and the branding the marketing advisers who are slightly behind. [00:09:26] I think there's an education process in some ways. [00:09:30] Yeah absolutely. I think at all ages. I mean why one of the things that I get oftentimes is why do you care about ageism you're only 26. And my answer is why shouldn't I care about something. It might not directly impact me right now but it's the same as saying a march in Cairo about women's rights just because he's not a woman. And also ageism is the only ism that actually will affect every single person. So we need to be educating everybody it shouldn't just be a topic of conversation for people over 50 it needs be a conversation for all ages. [00:10:05] Totally agree. So I mean in terms of buying clothes. Why do you think we need to pick sites such as yourself. Easier for us to buy. Why can't we just go into top shop or go to  top shop online and buy our clothes. [00:10:22] Well as I said it's a lot to do with understanding body shape more than anything else and lifestyle. I think obviously there are pieces that are out there in other shops but it can be a very long somewhat demoralising experience trawling through them and not finding the pieces that work. And it makes the midlife women feel secondary and that's not right. They should feel just as important and just as empowered as somebody younger. So that's why I think we need websites but I don't want I don't think they should be exclusive in terms of saying you know women who are younger can't wear these pieces. That's my view and similar with other brands and makeup. I don't think they should be exclusive but I think what they need to be doing is championing that woman treating her as the primary customer so that she feels wanted and she feels valued and at the moment because we don't have that in the shops and a lot online. That's why we need to have websites that do do the opposite and actually pioneer change. [00:11:29] And when we look at and talk about that change and the kinds of clothes we want to wear I know that when I go back even 10 years everybody kept calling me about rules things like women over 50 shouldn't wear jeans, women over 50 shouldn't wear skirts above the knee. women over 50 shouldn't wear high heels, women over 50 definitely shouldn't wear bikinis though. Personally I don't know think you should any rules and wear what you feel comfortable with that. Great. Are you finding that when you go to talk to designers etc. they still think there are rules. [00:12:03] I think to be perfectly honest not as much because they are often still  not even considering that customer enough. If I'm honest I think if I was presented with designers who say these are the rules I'd at least find that somewhat encouraging that they are even considering that customer. But they do. [00:12:24] there are assumptions made that women won't wear certain things or won't wear prints or a cut. And I do know designers who would point or might cater to ladies but will usher the slightly older customer towards certainly the more boring, frumpier garments I think generally I mean it's like I'm with you. [00:12:52] I don't believe in any of these rules as I think what I find sad is that actually I have a lot of women customers who recite them because they I often hear people saying Oh I know this rule and I shouldn't wear that. And that's what I find quite sad is that they have been led to believe that they have to follow these rules. They don't have the confidence to be able to wear whatever they like and feel good in it and that's I think that's the biggest danger of these articles out there trying to dictate what women shouldn't shouldn't ways actually impacts the customer more than the designers. [00:13:30] But hopefullly though as you said we've got more more celebrities who wore the A-list now who have leading roles like I'm thinking of like Jennifer Aniston you have Sandra Bullock. Yes. But we they're not going to be invisible. they will break the rules I like to be wearing jeans, wearing hair long the the other thing women over 50 shouldn't have hair below their chins. [00:13:54] I've written about that. People think about the hair off as soon as they get older. [00:13:59] Exactly. I mean I think you're very very brave person to actually suggest that to me. [00:14:01]  It's just amazing isn't it that these perceptions still exist but as you say hopefully with more more celebrities who are more I guess more mainstream will help again to address that sort of difference in perception. [00:14:21] Absolutely. I think you know these are very bankable people who are going to be still in the limelight for many years to come. Most likely they looked up to by people who were much younger as well. And I think they will completely change perception of what somebody over 50 looks like. I mean even looking at someone like Celine Dion she's had a whole style revolution and I really liked the fact that her stylist or Roach he was his second client and his first client was the Nickelodeon star who I think isabout 20 and then the second line is Celine Dion and she's in her 50s and she's had a complete revolution with dressing in fabulous clothes and that's also really encouraging that a stylist is even wanting to work with people like that. But yeah I think also the other slight issue is that there are lots of people who are starting to speak out against ageism but there are still certain somewhat ideologies as to how to age. And I do know brands influencers who are seemingly champions of aging but they're still promoting a very narrow vision of what ageing looks like. [00:15:42] For example going grey and I think it's great that more and more women feel comfortable going grey if they want to. But again if they want to but there is still nothing wrong with dying your hair. [00:15:53] If you don't want to go grey and not all of us go grey. I was asked by somebody if I would dye my hair color back to  grey to showcase their products and their conditioner and then they would get my hair back to whatever I wanted to afterwards.  I only have a few highlights in my hair and I said to my hairdresser I wasn't sure I'd want to subject my hair to that sort of very harsh treatment. Yeah that's a lot of chemicals. A lot of chemicals and he said actually Ceri You haven't got  enough grey hair. He said that I  have to really look for your grey hair. [00:16:28] My hair's got darker as I've got older but it hasn't yet gone grey . [00:16:33] Exactly I mean my mom's similar she she didn't go. She's gotten sort of she had the white bits on the outside of her head that she didn't go way wighty greyy. Well she still isn't really completely. And she's now in her 60s. And as you say I think that it does concern me that I know women have been shamed for not going grey. So it's actually go into the other extreme it's still ageism because ageism is about choice and choice to age. However you want without any external pressure or judgement. And so if we're shaming people for not going grey and seemingly in their view embracing their age it's just as bad. And that's why I think the danger is still with both brands and with communities it's understanding that that should not be the message we're promoting. [00:17:24] No. I mean this is a big issue. I mean we've been where you're not really part of the sisterhood not because you're not very grey. It's not only me. I'm not naturally grey neither with my grandmother my mother went grey quite young but my grandmother didn't you know in fact she didn't go where she she still wasn't very gray when she died. So it's just I guess it's in your genes isn't it. Yes absolutely. But I can't pretend it's been authentic and I don't have the grey hair. I want to go to have my hair dyed Grey in order to be seen to be part of this new movement where it's all about we're all  different. Yeah. We have people who go grey in the early 20s. Exactly. I've got friends who have grey hair. I think the consistency of my hair has changed but the colour of my hair, I'm a bit darker hasn't really. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. I think again that's almost created a new rule. If you're over 50 you should be grey. [00:18:24] Yeah exactly. And it's the same as saying you know I'm I'm a believer that there's nothing wrong with having Botox,  plastic surgery if you want to. It's a personal choice. Again I think is sad is when I know often actresses talk about the fact they feel they've had to do it in order to remain looking beautiful and that's what's sad. And it's again people get attacked for using Botox and it actually is their decision how they want to live and it's that same with clothing and I had somebody say to me that they didn't approve of us than what we're doing because they don't believe that women as they get older should care about being stylish. It's about their was like yes. And being timeless and classic clothes and going gray and that's just as bad as rejecting this customer because you're still saying that there's only one way a woman who's older can fit in. And so there's a conflict of views but this person an influencer had thousands of followers. And it really concerned me that her followers were going to listen to her views and consider them to be right. [00:19:36] Because everybody has their own opinion isn't it. And it's just something whether or not you're strong enough as an individual to actually have your own opinion as well and say well that's alright. That's your opinion. But you know I think slightly differently. [00:19:48] I mean I think the thing is is that confidence is a key problem particularly as women get older in terms of their image. Like a lot of women say to me that they've lost that confidence. Maybe they had other priorities children work whatnot. And they kind of want to find himself again. And I think the reason that the rules we mean obviously the ideal is that we can respect people's opinion and we can decide for ourselves for them or not. But because women are being made to feel so irrelevant by the fashion industry. The beauty industry as they get older it obviously damages confidence. You know we see that three to five thousand adverts a day. And if the majority of them promote this idea that youth equals beauty then it's no wonder that as women get older they feel less and less good about themselves. [00:20:40] So I think they some women turn to these rules for guidelines on how to do it how to dress when they view what's right because they're being told this is wrong this is wrong it's wrong and they're afraid of dressing in a way that maybe they just want to do they want to get it right. So I think that's where this confidence issue that we need to turn to once we can eradicate this feeling that women are more visible more relevant  then hopefully they can feel more empowered to make their own decision on how they want to dress and look. [00:21:13] And I think also when the right thing I believe can give me more confidence because we all know what it's like if you have a bout of flu whatever you feel really awful. But as soon as you feel a bit better and you sort of look in the mirror you shall put your make on wear a brighter colour you kind of feel better as well. [00:21:30] And to exactly I mean it's like the whole adage of the lucky pants that you put on your lucky underwear and you say properly I'm very unlucky person. Well you see the thing is is that they're obviously not imbued with actual luck. But the fact is you put them on and you probably behave like differently. And I'm a big believer in the strong emotive connection between style and between your mind and your style and how it makes you feel. I think you know fashion is often derided and criticised being superficial and frivolous but in terms of style I think it's actually really important. After all we all wear clothes you put on clothes. It's not you know we make a decision to put on certain clothes in the morning. So there is more of a purpose behind what we wear and a more of a connection. And I really think that it shouldn't be dismissed so readily because even people who say they don't like fashion. Well you do dress in a way that conveys that message. [00:22:36] And so everything we wear conveys the message. And I think it's very important for us to recognise that and not criticise or ridicule people who do like style and fashion. [00:22:47] I think also with more and more women over 50 setting up their own businesses there's also still been very much engaged in the workplace. Yes it's all about personal branding as well. People are very making impressions based on the first few seconds that they see you upset what you wear reflects their opinion of you before you even say anything. So as a woman in  business you have to look as though you are a woman in business and what you wear has to really reflect the business that you're in you cant ignore the fact that clothing does play a part in that. [00:23:20] Absolutely. I mean I met a gentleman who said that the reason for gender inequality in the workplace is because women didn't know how to dress properly. And when I obviously challenged him about that he was of the view that women need to be dressing more to blend in when actually lots of women are now want to stand out in  business and they need to be wearing that bright jacket that gets remembered. And so obviously I gave him a whole lecture on how sexist his own views were but as you say it's whether we like it or not we are superficial we do judge people by their cover. [00:23:59] And so we do want to present ourselves to convey who we are or that message whether it's you know I mean business or whether you're feeling sexy or whatever it is. We dress in that way. [00:24:13] And one of the things I know when it comes to business and or outside of  business is that through the website a lot of people commented on the fact that one of the things they do like to do is wear dresses with sleeves. Now I think I've noticed a lot more dresses with  leeves generally out there. But why is it that it is so difficult for people to find these in a variety of dresses the sleeves on the high street. [00:24:38] Yeah I mean I think again it comes back a lot to do with this education. And designers, the problem is is a lot of designers are creative. [00:24:50] They're not really thinking as much about the commercial side of business they're more about wanting to execute their creative vision. And so a lot of the time they might feel that a sleeve will ruin the overall look of the garment without actually considering the fact that somebody is going to want to wear it eventually. So it's to do with a lot to do with the lines that. [00:25:11] And then there's also the fact that they often don't understand again about getting them the right width. I know there are pieces that have sleeves but they could be really tight on the arms and uncomfortable. So again its often to  understand the  education of designers and how they can incorporate sleeves into garments that will look good and cater to the customer. I think as you said we are seeing more sleeve. I think it's partly a trend thing. Actually at the moment at the moment it's quite trendy to have like a long dress with sleeves and a lot of younger women wearing them as well. So whether we will continue to see sleeves. I don't know. [00:25:54] But I think again it all just comes down to educating designers and brands on how to consider that customer and and not compromise the design but still be able to give her what she wants. [00:26:09] So I mean in terms of what we do want are there key investment pieces that you see your customers wanting to buy that you would recommend to them that they should actually go out and buy to make sure their wardrobes  work for them. And also they do look current. [00:26:24] Yeah I mean I think it is with us becoming more aware of the damage caused by fast disposable fashion. I think it's increasingly hard to justify going to buy cheap fashion that you probably gonna throw away next season. So a lot of people suggest only investing in core classic pieces whereas I actually believe that time to invest in starting more trendy pieces as long as they feel authentic to your personal style because then they will still look great nest season. So I think my first thing I always say to people is think about reflects you and that's the pieces to invest in. It's better to shop to buy fewer things but things that will last. But when it but in terms of staples that would be great in anyone's wardrobe a great pair of jeans, dark slim fitting jeans I always recommend I always recommend a good blazer because it's just so easy just to throw on. I think a lot of women struggle with this idea of what does smart casual often mean and we all see that in dress codes and I think it gives a little headache thinking oh god what'dd that  going to be and I always remember when dress down Friday started [00:27:34] What do I wear on a Friday and not look as though I'm doing the housework. Exactly. And I always say that the best way to do it is a nice pair of jeans maybe a t shirt and a blazer and you're done. And it's such an easy formula for me so that. And then a few nice t shirts and then obviously I think there's nothing wrong with buying a few pieces that are really beautiful statement garment again if you really love them they will last for years and there will still make you feel good every time you put them on and people there's a lot of women who feel guilty about spending on themselves. Whenever we do pop up shops. Interesting. It;s often husbands who are encouraging their wives to spend and treat themselves when so many of them feel they shouldn't do it. And you know they can see the fact that this makes them feel good and their partner loves that. [00:28:26] So whenever there isn't anything wrong with saying right this is actually quite an out there piece but actually I'm going to I'm going to invest in it because if it makes you happy that's what's important. [00:28:35] I couldn't agree more. I got pieces in my wardrobe that I've had for over 20 years that were expensive with individual items but I bought them in fact I have a  whole feature written on my pink leather jacket and I get stopped in the street askong where I got it. [00:28:49] I've had it in 20 years. [00:28:50] And after all trends come around anyway all the time so things are gonna be back in trend anyway so you know I think what animal print at the moment is so popular but let's be honest I mean I've always loved animal print. So I'm there's nothing I don't have any issue with buying into animal print. I know I'm going to want to wear it in the future. [00:29:14] I mean I've got loads of animal prints my wardrobe with this is basically am I a secret Bet Lynch. But I've always got animal prints. [00:29:22] And I think I think also this is this is also a way to shop more consciously and it stops this debate with fast disposable fashion. So I do say yes picking I say less is more in a lot of ways and pieces that just make you feel great. [00:29:44] I love that she is really interesting is I've noticed that more women are going for those special pieces and they may be buying less but they are actually going for unusual designs rather than your staples because they want to actually wear something that can be  fun. [00:30:02] Interesting. And where can women find inspiration if you're not everybody is on Instagram are they. I mean it's the perception I think by a lot of PR people that women over  if you only want to see the influences on Instagram. But I know a lot of my ladies aren't on Instagram. [00:30:17] No. Yeah I agree I often have this conversation as well. Well I mean I think obviously there is social media Facebook and whatnot. I mean I always encourage going on Pinterest as well. You can. It's a great source of different looks and inspiration. And actually once it fails to give people is if they're worried about making an impact investing in a purchase thinking will this actually go with what got you can even create your own little private boards upload some pictures of your own pieces and work out how it might fit in  your wardrobe. So it really is just Pinterest. It's always got so much content on there. I also do encourage looking at blogs and we have a very active blog with ideas and great ideas and inspiration and. I know that a lot of people think print is dead but I actually don't think it is. I still prefer to read magazines and just even looking at pictures of women even on catwalks. It can just give you this little styling idea because often that's what it really comes down to is styling and it could even just be a little tweak with your makeup or a little different way of wearing some jewellery. And I really think that we can use those pictures and imagery and yes we might want to see older women models but that doesn't mean we can't be inspired also by pictures of younger women. So I think there's a lot of inspiration out there. It's just just going and bringing the energy to find it really. [00:31:58] And in terms of deciding what you want to wear and use online dont you and you have the occasional pop up shop. But I guess we've grown up going into the shop maybe have a day out with a friend and shopping and lunch and maybe a little bit more reluctant to actually buy online especially if you don't know the brand . What would you say to  women like me and like other people out there that aren't used to buying online. [00:32:25] Sure. Well yeah. A lot of people do obviously ask me about that. The fact that we started online and I'm very much of the view that shopping online can be just as enjoyable as shopping in person. It's just a different experience. You know there's almost the excitement of the item turning up like a little gift on your doorstep. One of the biggest concerns is often do with quality and fit. And  there are apps and there's technology being developed that are going to try and show you virtual wardrobe how things are going to work on your body. But I think that's still not really going to perfectly work. I think what it's more about is being open minded to all the pieces. And the thing is shipping and delivery and return so is often free. So actually the money you might spend paying for parking tickets goes to your local shopping center will actually be more expensive than just ordering something online and having free or very cheap shipping. And I think you know there are a lot of websites now that are offering really good advice. Basically we with every garment we offer by sizes measurements and also we fit the garments on different shapes of women. So we are able to say you know this is you might want to take a size up if maybe you're larger on the bust for example. [00:33:45] So you can use the guidelines ,  quality obviously is a difficult one. Photography can hide a multitude of sins so often that is to do more with understanding the brand you're buying from. But you know if they've got a reputation for quality then you can trust that you can purchase and you'll be happy with garments. Another big concern also is security. I thought that I would always suggest buying for a website that starts with H T T PS which means it's a secure website. Also if they have paypal it's a good indicator of the fact that they've been verified by PayPal. Yes go through company checks with that. I do don't suggest that some people think only PayPal is fine. I actually think you should also look for websites that take card because they have to go through other checks as well, security check. So if you know they take both card and PayPal that you know that they've been really verified. [00:34:49] And you know often you can if you're really concerned do company checks PayPal at least also offers buyer protection so get a refund if the item is not turned up. But I think now that online is so common it's quite easy to spot where there's a Web site that's going to be legitimate or one that isn't. [00:35:17] And I think also as I say in terms of the shopping experience obviously this you can't replace the idea of going into a store browsing picking things out but instead you can shop online in a different way. Know you can easily see the pieces again by having the pieces on models that can give you some styling advice as well. You know our stylist works with celebrities like Pru Leith so she styles the pieces and the people who buy the whole look because they can see that it will actually work. They might not have thought they could put these pieces together so it's just a different experience. And as I say and then you receive the item and it can it's like almost getting a little gift in the mail. So I think with the High Street  struggling. I think women are limiting themselves if they don't also look online because there is a vast mall online even with the shops that are in the high street. They sell usually more online. So. And you know there's Click and Collect and things like that too. Which makes it very easy to pick up the garments. So I do think people need to be willing to engage with online shopping but it's it's take some gradual steps maybe even you ask some friends who who they currently shop with online who they rate and that can give you some more confidence and trust. [00:36:40] Right. Well thank you for all of that and thank you so much for joining us today. I think that you know that I think that's so informative and hopefully will inspire women to have more confidence about what they choose to wear and different approaches to where they can buy it. [00:36:55] Absolutely. You know ultimately things can only hopefully get better as more and more businesses become more aware of this customer. And I think that there's a lot more to come. So it's just having an open mind and people like ourselves are championing older women and I think things they say can only really get better. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. And just once again your website is the-bias-cut.com. And they could find you there. OK. Thank you. Thank you. [00:37:37] Thank you for joining us today. Please do subscribe and also send the link to friends and be part of the pro- age  conversation. Life really is meant to be fabulous at every age but especially after 50.  

In this episode we look at the case of a gofundme which reach $400,000 and had life altering consequences. Did everything go smoothly? Well I'd guess that wouldn't make a great episode then. But wait and me. Also I do an impression of Rick Flair

What's it actually like to be a lucid dreamer? To be able to control your dreams every now and then, and direct the dream to be what you want? Well I'd like to share my experiences in this article. To actually be a lucid dreamer is pretty special. Lucid dreaming can feel amazing when you do it every few days, and when you actually HAVE the experiences, you feel like a superhuman. It's like you're in control, and for that short time in the dream, it's YOUR world. You decide what happens and how it feels. What's it like to be a lucid dreamer? Firstly, it's not what you expect. The chances are that through the power of social media or imagination you've got this image of lucid dreaming in your head (if you've not yet experienced it) and the chances are it's going to feel DIFFERENT to that image. We almost never get it right when imagining what lucid dreaming feels like. The blog post about this is here: http://howtolucid.com/lucid-dreaming-life/

RUNNING EAGLES Middle school is one of the most silliest concepts I have ever experienced. You take a group of young people that are beginning to go through puberty and put them in a place where they are herded by age. Then you don't have the grades they receive go on their transcripts and academic records so they are essentially in academic limbo? Not a good move. What does the combination of all these factors make? Well I'd say chaos! At least that was my biased experience. You might think Middle School was wonderful but this is my blog (smile). AI INVASION (ARTIFICIAL INFLUENCE) The hottest brands on the planet of apparel in our world were emblazoned their logos on starter sports jackets parka style. University of Las Vegas Nevada (UNLV), Los Angeles Raiders and Georgetown Hoya's were very popular because they must have had brilliant marketing teams. Why am I telling you this? Well...I didn't like red as a color. No particular reason I just thought it was too loud. My dad and I were avid Philadelphia Eagles fans. We were locked into their football games rain snow or shine, when a game was on we found a way to get it even if we walked into a Tavern (seemed things were much laxed as far as kids being able to watch games where alcohol was served). We were diehards as fans. So what did my dad decide to gift me with? An original Eagles parka jacket! Holy Grail or Holy Fail? When that thing arrived... Wow! Talk about role reversal. The insignificant invisible kid became super visible. Kids stopping me in the hall asking me about where I got it from (he ordered it from out of state and it took weeks to secure it (came from far) no internet. All of a sudden I had influence. Kids were walking with me in the hallway and surrounding me. The little crush I had that had previously ignored me was begging to wear the jacket. This my friends is a sample of what I call false influence. In school and translating to the adult world the currency is popularity. Yet with all the clamoring and noise that happened in my life, what remained was shallow material obsession that would fade as soon as the newer shiny object would appear. Have you ever felt influential? When was a time you felt and realized your influence? Today's podcast covers "True Influence" and our responsibility to steward our influence. Go ahead! Take a listen, share it and give us feedback.

I ride or die for mine!!! Well I'd rather ride than die. Hear me discuss what an empath is and how I learned I was one of them. Shoot you may be one too...

Jane Ferguson:                 Hello, welcome to Getting Personal: Omics of the Heart. This is podcast Episode 15 from April 2018. I'm Jane Ferguson, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and this podcast is brought to you by Circulation Genomic and Precision Medicine and the AHA Council on Genomic and Precision Medicine.                                                 As usual, we have a great lineup of papers in Circ Genomic and Precision Medicine this month. The first is actually the subject of our interview this month. Sony Tuteja talked to Craig Lee from the University of North Carolina about his manuscript entitled, "Clinical Outcomes and Sustainability of Using CYP2C19 Genotype Guided Antiplatelet Therapy After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention." This manuscript investigated the use of pharmacogenomics to improve treatment after PCI, and you can hear a lot more about it directly from the first author later in the podcast.                                                 Our next manuscript also used pharmacogenomics approaches to look for snips associated with plasma renin activity and to assess the effect of top snips with blood pressure response to atenolol and hydrochlorothiazide. The first and last authors are Caitrin McDonough and Julie Johnson from the University of Florida. And their manuscript is entitled, "Genetic Variants Influencing Plasma Renin Activity in Hypertensive Patients from the Pharmacogenomic Evaluation of Antihypertensive Response," or PEAR study. They find that snips in the SNNTXNDC11 gene region associate with higher baseline plasma renin activity in their sample of over 700 subjects and with a smaller systolic blood pressure reduction to hydrochlorothiazide. Variation in the region may act through modulation of TXNDC11 gene expression. They also identified several other candidate genes of interest. These new candidates may allow for precision medicine approach to selection of hypertensive treatment and further study the mechanisms may reveal novel biology on blood pressure response to pharmacological treatment.                                                 Next up is a manuscript by Deirdre Tobias and colleagues entitled, "Circulating Branch Chain Amino Acids and Incident Cardiovascular Disease in a Prospective Cohort of U.S. Women." I actually had the chance to talk to Deirdre about her research last month. So check out the March podcast, Episode 14, to hear more from Dr. Tobias about this study.                                                 A study of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy from Hannah [inaudible 00:02:36] and Michelle Michels and colleagues from the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands assessed the effects of genetic screening in family members of patients with a known hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutation. In their manuscript entitled, "Outcomes of Contemporary Family Screening and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy," they described their study which assessed cascade screening in 777 relatives of 209 probans between 1985 and 2016. Genetic and clinical screening resulted in a diagnosis of HCM in 30% of family members at the time of testing. An additional 16% of family members developed HCM over seven years of follow up. Of the 43% of family members who were genotype positive, 37% were ultimately diagnosed with HCM. There was no difference in survival between genotype positive and genotype negative family members or with relatives who did not undergo genetic testing.                                                 There are genetic considerations that are unique to the ancestral composition of the Netherlands with a high proportion of individuals with a founder mutation, so the proportion of probans with identified mutations is higher than in other reported studies. This paper demonstrates the potential benefit of genetic screening in family members, which can identify individuals who should undergo intensive screening, and at the same time reduce concerns for family members who are genotype negative. However, the classification of the pathogenicity of variants and understanding variable penetrance remains a challenge.                                                 A manuscript entitled, "Exome Sequencing in Children with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Demonstrates Differences Compared to Adults." From Na Zhu, Claudia Gonzaga-Jauregui, Carrie Welch, Wendy Chung, and colleagues from Columbia University, ask the question whether there were differences in the genetic mutations responsible for early onset pulmonary arterial hypertension, or PAH, in a pediatric sample compared with adult onset disease. While some mutations, particularly in BMPR2 appear to be similar in the pediatric and adult samples there were significantly more mutations in TBX4 in the children compared with adults.                                                 Further, children were more likely to have de novo mutations identified through exam sequencing that were predicted missense variants. Given the additional complications associated with pediatric onset of PAH, understanding the genetic differences in this population is an important step towards identifying novel genes and mechanisms which could guide future therapeutic development.                                                 Our next manuscript authored by Iisan Kadhen, Carolyn Macdonald, Mark Lindsay, and colleagues from Harvard Medical School is entitled, "Prospective Cardiovascular Genetics Evaluation in Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection," or SCAD. They genotyped individuals with SCAD to find out the genetic contribution to the disease. Of the patients for whom genetic testing was performed, six of them were 8.2%. Identifiable mutations in genes known to be involved in vascular disease, including COL3A1, LMX1B, PKD1, and SMAD3. These individuals were significantly younger at the time of their first SCAD event compared to patients with no identifiable mutation. Given the relatively higher rate of mutations identified in this sample, there may be a rationale to conduct genetic testing in all individuals presenting with SCAD, particularly in younger individuals.                                                 Shiu Lun Au Yeung, Maria-Carolina Borges, and Debbie Lawlor, from the University of Hong Kong and the University of Bristol, set out to find out if reduced lung function is causal in coronary artery disease. As reported in their manuscript, entitled "The Association of Genetic Instrumental Variables for Lung Function on Coronary Artery Disease Risk, A 2-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study," they used a Mendelian Randomization approach to assess causal relationships between two measures of lung function. Forced expiratory volume in one second, and forced vital capacity on CAD. Genetic predictors of increased forced expiratory volume were associated with lower risk of CAD. While there was a similar association with forced vital capacity, this was attenuated in sensitivity analyses. Overall, the data suggests that higher forced expiratory volume may independently protect against CAD. However, the mechanisms remain unclear.                                                 Finally, the April issue also contains a white paper from Kiran Musunuru, Xiao-zhong Luo, and colleagues entitled, "Functional Assays to Screen and Dissect Genomic Hits, Doubling Down on the National Investment in Genomic Research." This paper lays out strategies to followup on findings from high-throughput genomic analyses, including the use of novel technologies, assays, and model systems that can help to effectively translate big data findings and capitalize on previous investment in genomic discovery.                                                 To see the latest issue of Circulation Genomic and Precision Medicine, and to access all the papers we talked about and to browse previous issues, go to "circgenetics.ahajournals.org." Sony Tuteja:                       Hello, my name is Sony Tuteja, I'm an assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, I'm also an early career member of the American Heart Association Council on Genomic and Precision Medicine. Today I'm joined by Dr. Craig Lee, an associate Professor of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina School of Pharmacy. Dr. Lee is a first author of an article published in April 2018 issue of Circulation Genomic and Precision Medicine entitled, "Clinical Outcomes and Sustainability of Using CYP2C19 Genotype Guided Anti-Platelet Therapy After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention." Welcome Dr. Lee, and thank you for joining me today. Craig Lee:                            Thanks for having me. Sony Tuteja:                       First let me just say congratulations on spearheading such impactful work on the implementation of CYP2C19 pharmacogenetic testing. Craig Lee:                            Thanks, this has been a very complicated project, but a lot of fun. Sony Tuteja:                       Great. So I think some of our listeners may have not had time to read your paper yet so I was wondering if you could provide a brief overview of the paper and what the study was about. Craig Lee:                            Sure. Although it's been widely described that loss of function polymorphisms in the drug metabolizing enzyme, CYP2C19, which is responsible for the bio-activation of the antiplatelet drug clopidogrel, impairs its effectiveness, there remains considerable debate and uncertainties surrounding whether CYP2C19 genetic testing should be used clinically for guiding antiplatelet therapy in percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI patients. As the evidence base is expanded, an increasing number of institutions are seeking to implement CYP2C19 genetic testing despite limited data on the use and impact of using this genetic testing to guide antiplatelet therapy selection following PCI in real world clinical settings.                                                 UNC was an early adopter for CYP2C19 genotype-guided antiplatelet therapy in high-risk PCI patients. Our algorithm recommends that patients carrying one or two loss of function alleles in CYP2C19 be prescribed an alternative antiplatelet therapy such as prasugrel or ticagrelor. Our algorithm was implemented back in the summer of 2012, under our then-director of the Catheterization Laboratory, and now Chief of Cardiology, Dr. Rick Stouffer. We conducted the study to better understand the feasibility, sustainability, and clinical impact of using CYP2C19 genetic testing to optimize antiplatelet therapy selection in PCI patients in real-world clinical practice.                                                 Basically what we did was following the implementation of our algorithm in the summer of 2012, we've been retrospectively collecting data from all patients that come through our Cath lab that undergo a PCI. We collect information on their clinical characteristics, whether or not they underwent CYP2C19 genetic testing, what antiplatelet therapy they were prescribed when they were in the hospital at discharge and over the course of followup, and more recently we've been assessing clinical outcomes, both ischemic outcomes and bleeding outcomes. The data presented in our paper described the algorithm's use at our institution over the first two years following its implementation from 2012 to 2014 with one year of followup data. Since we do about 600 PCI procedures per year on our Cath lab, the study population is just under 1200 patients.                                                 Our main findings were that CYP2C19 genotypes were frequently ordered, efficiently returned, and routinely used to guide antiplatelet therapy selection after PCI over this two year period. However, we also observed that the frequency of genotype testing and frequency of using alternative therapy such as prasugrel or ticagrelor in the patients that carried CYP2C19 loss of function alleles fluctuated over time. We also observed that use of clopidogrel in patients that were tested, but carried either one or two copies of a CYP2C19 loss of function allele was associated with a significantly higher risk of experiencing a major ischemic cardiovascular event compared to use of alternative therapy. These risks were particularly evident in the highest risk patients, and largely driven by patients who carry only one copy of the loss of function allele, the so-called intermediate metabolizers.                                                 Our primary takeaway from this analysis is that implementing a genotype-guided antiplatelet therapy algorithm is feasible, sustainable, and associated with better clinical outcomes in a real-world clinical settling, but challenging to maintain at a consistently high level over time. Sony Tuteja:                       Great. I know it's always challenging to implement new work flow and new testing into the clinical setting. Can you describe how the algorithm was incorporated in the cardiologist workflow to minimize disruption? Craig Lee:                            Absolutely. This algorithm was spearheaded by our interventional cardiologists with the support of our clinical pharmacy specialists and pathology laboratory. They key element to our success is that we have the capacity to do the genotype testing in our molecular pathology lab on site. Dr. Karen Weck is the director of that laboratory and is a coauthor on our paper. Since the prescribing decision for antiplatelet occurs in a highly specialized clinical setting, we have all the pieces in place to do this in-house at UNC, which seems to make things very efficient.                                                 There really wasn't very much disruption in the workflow given that the testing is done on-site and the test seems to be treated like another laboratory test that's done, which is really the ultimate goal of pharmacogenomics. We don't currently actually have clinical decision support built into our electronic health record, so the reason we could actually get this off the ground was because of the substantial collaboration between our physicians, pharmacists, and pathology lab.                                                 But one of the things we learned through this experience, which is described in the paper, is that there are fluctuations in the use of the genetic testing to guide prescribing over time that we believe could be remedied by developing more automated clinical decision support, to help make things a little bit more efficient for the clinicians. But at the start of it, it was really just a will to do it, which was really exciting to observe. Sony Tuteja:                       Absolutely. That's exciting that everybody was on board with this project. What do you think were the most challenging aspects of the implementation? Craig Lee:                            That's a great question, and one that often comes up. I think that the education on the front end is really, really important. It needs to recur as the implementation spans over a period of time. For example, there's turnover in the interventional cardiology fellows every summer as well as occasional turnover of attending physicians and clinical pharmacy specialists. As individuals come and go into the clinical environment, it is important that they understand how the algorithm works, and how it can be applied in practice. And this is accomplished by recurring education and communication.                                                 The other thing that's been a challenge is turnaround time. Even though our molecular pathology lab typically turns tests around within one day of a PCI procedure, if the test result isn't available or the antiplatelet therapy isn't changed in response to the genetic test before the patient is discharged from the hospital, we found that it can be challenging to followup on the result before the next encounter. Typically, if a change in medication needs to occur after discharge and prior to the first followup clinic visit, the communication piece has proven to be very important. It's not an insurmountable barrier, but one we observe that created one additional challenge. Other institutions around the country that are doing this have expressed similar things. Sony Tuteja:                       You showed in your study that during the middle of the implementation there was a decline in testing. What do you think were the major reasons that led to decrease in testing? Craig Lee:                            Yeah, that's a great question. We're not sure. We didn't collect information prospectively, and more specifically, we did not survey the physicians in terms of why they ordered the test. But we believe, just based on anecdotal experience and talking about this with everyone, there was this big surge of momentum, with the initial implementation, and as the practice evolved there was just sort-of a settling of individuals in terms of, I think, the practice patterns.                                                 Overall, the test was ordered and over 70% of PCI patients, an alternative therapy was prescribed and approximately 70% a loss of function allele carriers. These numbers exceeded 80% early on which was higher than we expected. They dropped down to about 60%, which is still a pretty high utilization rate when you compare to other institutions that have implemented. After some educational efforts, the testing rates and use of alternative therapy and loss of function allele carriers began to increase again over the last six months. Sony Tuteja:                       Yeah I was just gonna ask, since the study is completed, have you taken any further steps to maintain the frequency of the testing at the high level that you initially started with? Craig Lee:                            Yeah, so again recurring education has been really important particularly with interventional cardiology fellows, since they're the ones that really execute this in terms of ordering the tests and working with the clinical pharmacy specialists. And as I mentioned, we're in the process of developing clinical decision support to help make this a little bit easier on the prescribers. When a test result is available, we believe this will make it a little easier for the result to be more readily available for the clinical decision. Sony Tuteja:                       Yeah I think the CDS tools will be key to have more compliance with the results in adherence to the test results. I'm just curious, who pays for the genotype tests at your center and are you billing for these tests? Craig Lee:                            Yes. We're billing for these tests as part of routine clinical care. Sony Tuteja:                       Great, and you've had good success with reimbursement? Craig Lee:                            As far as we can tell, yes. Sony Tuteja:                       That's great to hear. I think that will really incentivize other centers to pursue similar lines of testing. So what do you think are the broader implications for implementing genetically guided care for other drugs? Craig Lee:                            Yeah, I think that it's interdisciplinary collaboration. Communication is really important among physicians, clinical pathologists, and clinical pharmacists. We found that this has been essential to success of the program here at UNC with this one gene drug pair. And again, this is fueled by a spirit of collaboration and will for our clinicians to work together to optimize patient care. And really, I think clinical pharmacists are uniquely positioned to help make this happen. Clinical pharmacists are uniquely positioned to interpret pharmacogenomic test results, provide medication recommendations, as well as counsel patients on how to interpret the tests and why the prescribing decision is being made. Our clinical pharmacists at UNC are fantastic and have really embraced this. They've shown that pharmacogenomics can be an important part of medication therapy management.                                                 Although implementation of pharmacogenomics testing is clearly a challenge, it is now part of the routine in our Cath lab and in our cardiology services. And again, that's been really exciting to observe. I also think this experience provides a foundation in an example for other pharmacogenomic implementations to occur at our institution. Sony Tuteja:                       That's great, it's so nice to hear about the team working together to get this accomplished. What has been the patient response to the testing? How have they responded to receiving genetic test results? Craig Lee:                            We think it has been overall positive. And again, it's now part of the workup in terms of providing the best possible care for the patient given the evidence that we have. And so again, since it's part of the clinical work flow, there's not a separate research consent that's done. The testing is part of the consent to the procedure. Sony Tuteja:                       Well great, that's all the questions I have for you today. Do you have any final thoughts you wanna share with our listeners? Craig Lee:                            No, other than just a thank you again for having me in for talking about our paper. And I guess, I would just urge those that are out there that are either planning to do this or doing this, to collect data. It's really important to evaluate the practice, evaluate the frequency of testing, the frequency of prescribing decisions being altered by the testing, and trying to understand what the barriers are. And if possible, evaluate clinical outcomes.                                                 You know, we started this study under the umbrella of continuous quality improvement and it really has taught us a lot. I think it has helped optimize how the algorithm is used, and as other centers around the country have been doing this, it provided a basis to collaborate and really evaluate the impact on clinical outcomes, which is really the question that is on everybody's minds. And as the evidence base expands, I think there will be a lot more comfort with doing these things, but we should always strive to generate the evidence we need to assure that we're making the right decisions in practice. Sony Tuteja:                       Absolutely, I think that outcomes piece will be critical to getting this in the mainstream. Well I'd like to thank you for your time today, it was a pleasure speaking to you and once again, congratulations. Craig Lee:                            Thanks. Jane Ferguson:                 That's all for this month. As a reminder you can follow us on Twitter, @Circ_Gen or connect with us on Facebook. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to bringing you more on genomics and precision medicine of the heart next month.  

[00:00:01] You were listening to the apex hour on KSUU Thunder ninety one point one. In this show you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over. Learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentations onstage. We will also give you some new music tools into and hope to turn you on to new genres. You can find us here every Thursday at 3pm on the web at suu.edu/apex or email us at suuapex@icloud.com. But for now welcome to this week's show here Thunder ninety one point one. OK. Well we have one more best of show for you this week. This week I'm traveling one last time for the semester I'm all up in Salt Lake recording some videos for some music educational shows but I promise we'll be back live next week but in the meantime we have a great best of show for you this week. We're going to start with part of our talk with Dr. Elisabeth Churchill when she was visiting campus earlier in the semester. She had some amazing things to say about psychology about teamwork and just about her work with Google in California. So listen in. Best of Show last of the semester. Enjoy. [00:01:27] The human condition and human interaction has just been it's kind of a part of your DNA it seems you're just always observing it and aware of it and very interested in have in cohabiting with it. Can you talk a little bit more about how psychology maybe influences your current work and that might be a great sort of introduction to what human computer interaction is for you today. [00:01:51] So psychology's a vast area. So back in the day we used to talk about it as sort of the biological and perceptual which is what does the body do. How do you see how do you hear that psychology. But then there's developmental. How do you develop from a child. But how do you develop in learning. And there's more social. So you know how do you interact with others and how do others affect you and how you part of groups. So in the work that I currently do with material design for Google you know everything from what does an interface look like. So think about your phone. You know what can you see. What are the colors do what stands out for you. That's perception. You know if you swipe and move something how do you perceive that how does the voice sound to you. That's psycho acoustics the sound of a voice and how it makes you feel. And then we go to things like problem solving and reasoning you know is the information presented in a way that you can read it and you can understand it to know what you're trying to do is the task clear. Have you ever picked up your phone and you got an app and you open it and then you're like I do not know what to do next. Right. Psychology will tell you a little bit about what information you need to know in order to do the next thing. So there's perception and invitation and problem solving. And then of course we go to the social so you know if this app doesn't work and you don't get to talk to the person you want to think about social media how is that changing the way you interact with people. Do you do you speak to them more frequently less frequently. How do you feel about yourself and your identity. Do you think that your social media presence puts pressure on you or gives you joy. So we go all the way up to really thinking about the deep psychological emotional states which is what most people think of when they say psychology but actually psychology is all about from seeing to hearing to listening to meaning to problem solving and how all of that affects your emotional space as well. [00:04:02] It's just amazing. I mean I've you know I use my phone all the time I think about my phone all the time I think about social media all the time but really I mean you are just looking at all of it from so many different angles and all of them are psychological. It's it's fascinating to think of it from that.It must be so exciting on a day to day for you I'm sure. [00:04:23] Oh absolutely absolutely is and you know people who kind of go to bed with their phones and it's like their pet and their best friend. And if you've ever lost a phone there's losing the phone because the information on it but so many people feel like they've lost a friend and it's that deep crisis. Amazing. [00:04:41] I'd like to turn to some of the positions that you've held and so our listeners can kind of get a little more of a trajectory of some of the companies that you work for of course we know you currently work for Google as one of the directors of user experience. And can you maybe talk a little bit more about the specifics of that position. I know we just kind of went over the concepts but what does a Director of User Experience do and how has that position evolved. I know it's evolved quite a bit. [00:05:09] Yes so what we do what I do most of the time is I have a fantastic group that works for me with many different skill sets from software engineering to design to experimental to anthropology and ethnography because we want to deeply understand this experience of using apps and phones and other devices. But my job is really to come in make sure everybody is clear about what they need to do to partner with it manages to work with my V.P. to see where we're going to work with the director of the material design system to see where the strategy is so we build that together and to think about the long term future and then to help the people in my team understand what they need to do next get the resources for them to help my boss understand why I need additional resources maybe more people to do certain things and to basically prioritize it was a huge amount of my work is just listening watching understanding where we are with regard to goals looking at goals and seeing whether they're realistic or not at all or in certain timeframes. I mean readjusting is needed if the resources are available or not available but also just real people development. So for me a big part of my job is making sure every single person on my team understands what they're doing why they're doing it that it's important that it's part of their career trajectory as well as part of the product success and Google's success so that part of a bigger thing in the corporation even if what they feel they're doing is small and it's really critical but also part of we are part of their career and their life going forward. So it has to be mutually beneficial and growth on both sides. And my best people my best people are going to grow and they're going to go on. And that is sad but it's also exactly what needs to happen right. It's a little bit of that. I know you've had some path in academia. It's a little better that academia and that mentor ship creeping back and it sounds like I really believe in I believe it's. It's a manager's role to amplify the people that work for them and to learn from the people that work for them. It just that's what you should do and have to do and at a place like Google you are resourced to do. Google is very very very supportive of managers and manage developing management developing people. The Director of User Experience position is relatively new and has expanded. If I have heard correctly. Can you tell us a little bit about that. Yes so we had a lot of really great user experience professionals but the director level there's only been a couple there were a couple of people appointed to director level which is the highest level you can get and user experience. A couple of years ago when I came in as the first person from the outside to get that position and now I think we're up to 5 now maybe even more because we're just you know we had a round of promotions. But Google is investing enormously in this user angle in the human centered angle and recognizing that what we need is to bring leadership in from other companies and grow our own leadership. So it might be more than five now. Last time I looked it was 5 but it's really exciting for me to see that Google is promoting people and hiring people into this role at very senior levels. [00:08:45] That's fantastic. Well it's time for a musical break but when we come back I'd like to continue the conversation about team building teams managing teams. I've been I've been eating this information up because I'm really interested in management and leadership and teamwork. So stay tuned to continue for that. Again you're listening to thunder ninety one point one. This is Lynn Vartan and I've got a few songs to play for you today. The first one is called Me Voy. And it's this amazing group called Ibeyi that I'm really turned on and passionate about. And so this is Me Voy by Ibeyi. And this is the apex hour here on Thunder ninety one point one. [00:12:28] All right well welcome back. This is the apex hour. I'm Lynn Martin. This is Thunderer ninety one point one and we are joined in the studio by the amazing Dr. Elisabeth Churchill. Welcome back. And one of the things I'd like to talk about was one of the topics we touched on before which was teamwork a lot of what you do is building teams managing teams supporting teams and then working of course with teams to make amazing things happen. Can you talk a little bit about your style of leadership and I know you've been saying it may be a little different than the average Joe but it sounds amazing to me. And so the kinds of things you think about in terms of your leadership and your team and how that all works. [00:13:15] Yeah sure. I tend to bring people into my team who are very curious and who are self starters in some way that they're desperate to learn and they want to learn. I also really emphasize collaboration. So I want you to be really good at what you do and I'm going to support you to develop. We have a job to do for Google but I also want you to give you an assist to your teammates. So I strongly foster collaboration and my sort of way of thinking about things is that you know you have a portfolio of work that you do and say 60 percent of the work is very immediate product focused. And we don't really have impact we're going to get something done 20 percent should be things that are a little bit further out for you and 20 percent should really be about you know you're developing skills and the sensibility and the perspective that will be the future for you and for us potentially. So always about growing and I try to have the team be as diverse as possible and bring their ideas in. I love to talk and I can be a bit loud so I always tell my folks you know you get to tell me to simmer down. I like to encourage independence but collaboration and encourage the idea that you work on my team and you develop and you develop but if you get to the point where you feel you've grown beyond your interests have changed. Then we're all going to work together to get you into the next space. The next thing you want to do. So I really believe in the team but I try to keep a focus on the individual and the team so that they feel they belong and they can grow and they are strongly contributing. I love the duality that you foster with confidence and curiosity. I just think that as a teacher I really connect with that I really love that as a message for leadership. I know the communication component is also a big aspect of things for you. Can you talk about how that manifests itself in your team and how you helped to lead that. So a lot of people come in and they're very good at what they do and they think that their job is to do what they do and they then get surprised that actually they need to spend you a big chunk of that job actually communicating. So you know you might come in You're a great designer and you know your preference might be to design all day and you know you want to not talk to other people because that's who you are. And I respect that but I'm going to try and push you to start talking to others about your craft and sharing your rationale for what you do. Sharing your rationale will allow you to be reflective but sharing it will also give you confidence when you see others appreciate it. It will develop your rhetorical skills when you see what lens and what doesn't. And it will help the whole team to get more reach if you like. Now you could be the kind of person who comes in and you're like hey I only want to do the design work 40 percent time and that is great. I will help you figure out where you want to communicate and how and where you can bring your skills to the communication design as well. So people are different but the biggest challenge with you know young folk coming in is often they think they've got the job to do the thing they're trained in and they have. But they've also got the job to communicate what they're trained in and help level others up and to share the products of their labor and to get those out. And that's the way your team will have big reach. You know I can't be the only spokesperson for my work and for the team's work the team you know the junior people are going to be having lunch with others. They're going to be you know having opportunities to spread the work in other cohorts in other social situations they can go to you know happy hour mixes and spreading the word and knowing that they're an ambassador for their work but also for the team's work amplifies our presence and effectiveness. So helping them build confidence that that is their role. [00:17:28] Them have the skills to do the communication and the rhetorical skills to make sure that their great ideas land is beneficial to all. That's fantastic. I love it. I'd like to revisit the end of our we had a luncheon today and we were doing a little bit of talk back and you had this great I asked you a question about qualities or traits that you look for in team members or things that you think that undergraduates were mostly an undergraduate institution here but things that you think that undergraduates or even graduate school grad students could be developing. And I loved and I know some of it's an overlap from the previous question but I loved these four words that you hope for you remember I can remind you but these four qualities I thought were really special if you could share them with our audience. Sure. So it's curiosity and confidence yeah vanity and voyeurism. Love it. And so the curiosity is you know always keep curious. Often you know when you've had great teachers and you really respect them you know you can think that what they say is the answer and that can dull your natural curiosity because you think the answers are laid out for you. You have to bring your curiosity your you know alternative perspective feed that curiosity always ask questions. Don't think you have to know you know. Be curious. Confidence is related to that because I find a lot of young people come in and they're very very good but they don't have the confidence to own that curiosity and the skill and to be able to say to me a much more senior person that is interesting. Why do you think that. Can you help me understand that or here's a thought that I had. What do you think of that. So you know every encounter needs to be another opportunity for you to learn so you're curious you get to learn your respectful you're thoughtful and you're not treating the other person no matter how senior as if they have all the answers that you have to run away and execute on. You know I want you to be able to bring challenge in the best sense of the word to things. And the vanity and voyeurism is you know people we have to care about ourselves. We have to have some self nurturing. We have to celebrate our achievements. Yes. And you know it's called sort of vanity I mean back in the day in Britain it was like if you talked about yourself you were vain by vanity. I mean take pride in yourself and care. Don't be prideful but you know be be proud of your achievements and let others be proud with you. Yes. And you take away a little bit of a hey high five me you know really kind of lovely humble and bracing way and voyeurism is all human beings are curious about others so watch others see who you want to emulate and who you admire. You know watch how they do what they do try and emulate try and learn from them. You know nobody in the world is the first person to do pretty much anything. You don't have to be the lone rugged individual. You can learn from others celebrate their achievements and take on some kind of doppelganger ness of them and build yourself and learn and then carve your own path from what you've learned from them. And so I think vanity is sort of nurturing self voyeurism is observing and nurturing others and learning from others. Yeah I love those four. I just love those traits like this. I'm definitely going to steal them and use those words in my teaching because of course it's crossed up discipline. I mean that can just as easily apply to music instruction which is what I do. And as it as it can to what you do in your discipline as well. [00:21:26] So thank you so much for those concepts. Absolutely. I like to now talk a little bit. I know. I understand that you have had a fantastic experience with eBay and you think very fondly of your time at eBay. Tell me a little bit about that time and about what made it so special for you. [00:21:44] Well it was about people really so closely you know the team I worked with was there were amazing but also you know eBay was the first social platform. It was the first place it was the first marketplace it was the first social platform right. And eBay was putting people in touch with each other around goods you know the circulation of goods things that you don't want anymore. But I do. So it's about value and it's about honoring things it's about valuing materiality and a really good way. So all of the sort of sustainability stuff all of the values stuff you passed something on that had value to you. Now it has value to someone else. EBay is also you know it's allowed a lot of people who otherwise would not have been able to have businesses create businesses. There are a lot of wonderful stories of you know single moms who sold stuff on eBay and made a little bit of money and kept themselves going as a real mom and pop stores who basically you know they were maybe in some way very rural but they got to have outreach and a customer base way beyond. So you know eBay has seen its ups and downs but as a value system as a company that really is trying to circulate goods that exist and have meaning for people and put people in touch with people. I just found it really exciting to be part of that. Yeah. Do you have a favorite memory from your time there or a favorite story. I'm sure there are many. So I have a favorite story which was about somebody hit create something great game of thrones is a big thing. I personally don't watch it. It is a big thing. And so somebody had created a chain Almah guinea pig where hamsters guinea pigs hamsters suit the day for the actual animal for the animal. And they put it on eBay and somebody picked this up and it became a meme that just went around because it was so well made and so silly and so fun that somebody picked it up and it went in for charity. And so it started to snowball and snowball and I think they made like 20000 dollars for this guinea pig chain mail outfit which went to charity Fantasma and there were things like that happening on ebay every day all day quirky things fun things and stories about you know I found a plate that you know my mom would have had. And now I have the plate. And it reminds me of my mum. And you know I'd never thought I'd see a plate like that again. So it's really deeply emotional as well as super practical. And it's those stories that really warms my heart. [00:24:29] That's just beautiful and you have just such wonderful memories from there it sounds like your. I think it was your first major position was at Fuji Xerox. Can you tell us a little bit about how how that was and the transition from being a student into that position or into your first sort of full time thing. [00:24:52] Well I started well my studentship went on to be a postdoc. So did my Ph.D. then I did my postdoc and then I really wanted to go into academia. But Fuji Xerox as a company had a research lab called effect's pal affects ph L in Silicon Valley and I knew people who sort of were affiliated to it. And so I was all set to go into academia. But I'd been working on virtual environments and remote communication and eFax Powell had a role they wanted to try and build communication between researchers in California and researchers in Japan just outside Tokyo. And so I was one of the few people at that time who had been thinking about these virtual environments and chat spaces and so forth for communication and collaboration. And so they asked me to come over and I came over and built a research team and worked with the most senior researchers to build communication tools to allow collaboration between researchers in California and in Japan. That was how that all started. My intention had always been to go back into academia. But I've was very supportive and they allowed me to keep publishing and doing work with students and I continued to do classes here and there and supervised students. So I kind of got the best both worlds. [00:26:13] That was Elizabeth Churchill here on the apex hour. This is the best of show. I'm out of town this week. But you're listening to the apex hour on KSUU Thunder ninety one point one and I'm your host Lynn Vartan. We have another clip from our Best of the spring and that is when we have the wonderful conversation here in the studio with several members of our allies on campus community are LGBTQ plus community. Just talking about all the different resources that were available. It came from a wonderful live event where Claudia Bradshaw who is one of the founders of the flag chapter here in Utah came and talked about her experience with her son and her family's story. And we just open that conversation up later on in the outer talk about all the different things that are facing our LGBTQ plus friends on campus and in our community. Listen in. Again this is the best of show. Lynn Vartan here talking to you for the Apex hour KSUU thunder ninety one point one. [00:27:14] I've kind of like to continue that as as we go on into this next segment and that conversation is today we've been really celebrating all of the resources and the projects and the programs that are available. But that's not the whole story. I mean there's still a long way to go and there are still a lot of difficulties facing the LGBT community here in Cedar City at SUU and in Southern Utah in general. What concerns you guys or what are the things that you feel were is the growth needed. What are the concerns. What are the things you have on your mind with regards to where we need more growth. [00:28:00] I think the largest I see looking at increasing racial diversity with the pride and equality club here on campus and then looking at you know LGBTQ plus communities of color in Utah looking at that double isolation of living in a state where the predominant population is white and it is also culturally not accepting of LGBTQ plus identities. Right. So I think those who do live at those intersections I think uplifting those voices are also really important in providing them with services that will validate those two identities not just that that transgender identity or the gay identity. They're not monoliths that when you also add this cultural background that adds a different layer to that experience. And I know that there's been a lot of work with immigrant advocate groups up in Salt Lake. Like many of us Utah they do a lot of work to also ensure that when they're doing undocumented outreach they're also looking at if you have LGBTQ I.A. plus identify partner. The process might look different a little different for sponsorship or things like that. So ensuring that those people who live in those different intersections are also being uplifted and we're not overgeneralizing populations right. Great isolation. John I know you feel pretty strongly about that part of the top part. That piece of the puzzle as well. Yeah and you know a tragic consequence a lot of the isolation is the extremely high suicide rate among the LGBT population especially trans people and gay men in particular. And one of the things we're trying to do in a larger sense beyond issue you just with a Southern Utah developing a larger southern Utah community is trying to break down that isolation where we aren't quite as isolated as it might seem. I mean we are culturally isolated we're geographically isolated but there are more people here than you might realize and we're trying to get the word out that there are more people here. There is a larger community that maybe people don't realize. And so we're trying to establish a larger community in that sense. We have a Facebook page. Discover pride Southern Utah. We're working on another Web site. There's always a Pride event every year. But establishing more community events throughout the year not just a once a year pride festival. I mean it's obviously great but we're trying to do more throughout the year. And these are all things being developed right now kind of with that Claudia Bradshaw just walked in. [00:30:30] I know we have more to add to the conversation. Our guests from earlier today has joined us in the studio. Welcome Claudia. Thank you. And we're so glad that you were here. Thank you so much for your time today. I've loved doing everything. It's been wonderful. We say and maybe this is what we've been talking about lots of resources. Maybe you could give our listeners I know you talked a little bit about it this morning but also give our listeners the opportunity to understand a little bit about what flag offers and the St. George chapter. OK. [00:31:07] Pflag was started years and years ago. But the main three main purpose is to educate and to support and to advocate for equal treatment. That's great. And how is how is that chapter doing today. How are things going. Who. It's been a little bit hard for me lately because my husband passed away and so I haven't been having meetings like I should so I still want to I'm glad to see we have someone up here. They're going to do that to have some meetings and I'll be glad to come up for those. Absolutely. We've been breaking all kinds of news today right we broke the news about the programming for Pride Week and about the showing of The Believer film and earlier today we also sort of broke the news. It's brand new that the flag chapter and again this is parent more of a parent support group but really can be anyone. Come on come all. And that that flag chapter is in the works to be started started here in Cedar City. And my understanding is that their first official meeting is going to be two weeks or a week from next Monday. So that would be like March 4th somewhere around there if anybody has and I believe it's March 7th the first Wednesday first Wednesday. [00:32:30] Wednesday will be in the library from 8 till 9 that evening. Okay perfect. And that's going to be at the Cedar City Library the SU library. OK. Oh wait. No I'm not sure. [00:32:40] Cedar City [00:32:42] Oh I'm not sure. Let me double check yeah. And so again I get everything we've talked about today is going to be on on the Allies website on this center for diversity inclusion. But that's another opportunity that's coming up. And that group is going to be meeting at either the library or the Cedar City library might be Cedar City Wednesday March 7th at 8:00 7:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m.. OK great. So that's a brand new thing that started. So we've got that momentum going in Cedar City for the Pflag chapter which is awesome. That is awesome. I would like to have some time. One of these times when there's a meeting to discuss coming out and maybe a procedure that would help some. I noticed there's some who are still not out to their families. Yes. And hopefully that what I could do it in a way that could help them so that the family can stay together. That's one of my main goals anyway. Personally I hate to see families be torn apart and that's really been one of your main platforms in your work and that's one of the things that's been so amazing is really keeping that love that the love in the family is strong. [00:34:00] Do you have any advice for anybody listening who may not be able to get to these events or any resources that you'd like to share or even just thoughts and ideas about how to start that conversation. [00:34:15] They're welcome to call me I'm going to give I give them my telephone number is 4 3 5 3 1 3 3 3 6 6 and I would be glad to have a conversation with them and maybe recommend books. There's a book that's called coming out an act of love. That means if your child comes out to you he loves you enough he wants to make sure that he's part of the family. That's pretty big. Yeah that's that's an amazing part of it. Well your story has been so powerful and it was so powerful again today. Do you want to share any particular bits that you've been thinking about or that you want our listeners to know. Because this is part of the podcast series which will be available on the Web site after the event and I'd love to give you the opportunity to just say more. I would also like to say to to the families to decide if they if their child comes out to them give it gives them a chance to to learn and to get educated. I have books available and some that I could recommend for the parents so that they can read read them and not and they don't want to destroy their relationship with their child. Vice versa so good education on how to do it. My son was so well-prepared when he came out to me it helped me. I'm not sad I didn't make some stupid comments that I did. But he was patient and I think Brian is here to talk to us. He has something to say. [00:36:06] So I'm from Chicago and we arrived here on campus. There is a lot of competing events. Mitt Romney being one of them. And I was staggered at a completely full conference room yeah diverse with both allies faculty students racial gender. It was all there. Yeah. So impressive. And all of these people care and are engaged and wanted to talk about this even if they weren't part of the LGBTQ. Well they are part of the community. Yeah but it's just very impressive that you know there is a strong community here. And I think it's pretty galvanized it seems or at least has a lot more potential but very very impressive and people shouldn't feel alone. And I think that's kind of been one of the themes today that we were just sort of getting into before you arrived. And that is that that fighting that the hardest part which is that isolation and and you you came on campus today as you said from Chicago and you came away with hey you're not alone. We have. There is a vibrant community so anybody listening we just want to you know make sure that that you know that that you're not alone and there is a community here and there's events and there's all kinds of things going on. And if you if you want to get involved or you want to check it out. You know we we everybody wants you there and you're not alone and there's plenty of love and plenty of compassion awesomeness going on and everything and as I said just to reiterate the places you can find information. The Center for diversity and inclusion. [00:38:01] The Allies web page and they all have social media associated with it. So just googling Suu allies or center for diversity and inclusion. And we're going to take one last musical break. I've got one more song to play for you. And this song is called Tiger and the artist is John moon. And the album is called Moonshine corner. Check it out and you are listening to the APX hour right here on Thunder ninety one point one screen round how many fans cameo cameo for much that sense is close enough that go dancing around the shots all right well welcome back everyone. We are super excited to have you back here for our last break. We were just chatting over the break about how much things have changed and how awesome that is that things have changed so much Claudie. You were just sharing that story about that was graduation. Here you were just talking about and how different it's been and how. Now you know you're really enjoying what you're seeing. I hope on campus. Awesome yeah handsome to see the change. Well I wish we had hours and hours and hours spent. But in our last little bit of time here we're going to do our our what's turning you on this week. Everybody's favorite segment and everybody's kind of giggling here. And this is the time where we talk about what's making you excited and just to kind of share things and it can be anything it could be a movie or a TV show a podcast a book or something else. So who would like to start. Chris do you have yours. [00:43:59] I'm going to give a very literal answer to the question that you pose so I'm going to say Gus Kenworthy are gay Olympian Sochi medalists and now Pyeongchang competitor. That's my answer. That's perfect. And what's this event again. Does it matter. He's extreme skiing. Oh yes stream winter sports. I love it. Ok cool. Great. [00:44:23] And how are you John what's making you what's turning you on this week. [00:44:27] Well now the Chris took mine I'm going to go with a more academic response and thanks to Johnny McClain for the recommendation. But there's a book called Whistling Vivaldi that is just amazing. It's a great but it's really incredible. It's about it's stereotype threat and just the background of how it works when you are a marginalized or minority group. How the stereotypes that follow your group affect your performance in the real world and it's really just a fascinating book that's been actually getting quite a bit of press and the title again is whistling Vivaldi and I can't remember the author's name. Do you remember. Steele I think that sounds about right but whistling Vivaldi is really a great book. And it's been on a lot of the list and I know it's been talked about on NPR and all these kinds of things so definitely check that out. Great Braden How about you. [00:45:25] My mom. Ah filthy. But it's true she's a rock solid rock star so it makes me really happy to see her get that credit because I know what she's the work she's done how much it matters and then also just being here. I see you today I mean staggering what's going on and there are so many resources and good stuff happening. Wonderful to see you. I love it. Yeah I see the diversity is sexy. I love that much new bumper stickers sounds are new center motto city I love it. Hashtag diversity. [00:46:08] Claudia how about you. What's making you excited this week. This today was so wonderful because we had so many people who did come to to listen and to speak and share. And it was all about love. And so that always is a turn on for me. Love is eternal. [00:46:26] That's wonderful. Well I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you Claudia and Braden and John and Chris for spending the hour with me today on the apex hour. As you all know where we are subscribe lable on iTunes the podcast you can just google suu apex or do the search on the podcast and subscribe. Leave us a review. We'd love to hear it. We'd love to see the podcast go into the ratings and get some traction. Also we just want to recap a few of the resources. The Center for Diversity and Inclusion is right here on campus in the Sharwan center room 101 and also on their website you can find everything calendars social media pages and everything like that. Also on the Allies page which is Su dot edu slash allies. We want to remember that there's that. Ask us anything button. So get on there it's completely anonymous if you have questions or you're looking for resources or anything like that. And then early in the show Claudia gave you her phone number which you know if you really are looking for some support she is a loving mother to us all. So thank you guys so much for taking the time and spending the hour with me today. It was really great. Thank you. [00:47:46] Well that does it for our last best of show the semester and next week we will be back in the studio live. And this is the apex our every Thursday 3 p.m. KSUU ninety one point one. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the apex hour here on Thunder ninety one point one can find us again next Thursday at 3:00 p.m. for more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University and new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime we would love to see you at our events on campus. Find out more. Check out suu.edu/apex Or email us at suuapex@icliud.com. Until next week. This is Lynn Vartan saying goodbye from the apex hour thunder Ninety one point one.

Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Mary D. She's right here in the Nashville area so she was here in the studio. She has quite a journey through Catholicism, alcoholism, various protestant and evangelical churches and strangely (and unique to any other guest on this podcast) hypnosis. Even though Mary has been involved in many churches over the years, she was never compelled to worship a god, so in some ways she's not our typical guest who had a traumatic departure from faith, but rather has a very generous regard for people who need religion. Sometimes we ex-Christians need a break from the veracious animosity we feel towards religion and maybe even those that adhere to it and give our fellow humans some slack as they fight their own battles and navigate their own storms. I had an epiphany this week and it's a little embarrassing to admit it, 'cause it's going to sound like common sense to most of you. It has to do with something that happened to me when I left the faith. God's grace toward me was appealing to me because I had come to dislike myself and the message of someone forgiving me and giving me a clean slate and empower me to change was extremely appealing. I think this is why the Gospel appeals so strongly to people in alcohol and drug addiction or convicts in prison. But on a smaller scale, I had acted out in elementary school and middle school in ways that were inappropriate and shameful and by high school, I was a prime candidate for God's antidote to self-hatred. After all, in His holiness, he had all the right to hate me (and in fact without Christ's sacrifice he would) and here He is offering his unconditional love to me and eternal, blissful life with a new body and a perfect nature. Sign me up!   Paul, in the scriptures (also a self-loather) prescribes emptying myself, becoming less so He could become more, casting off the old nature and fleshly desires for a new nature and a renewed mind. Throw in a powerful plan for my life that he would guide me through and WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE? Well, as we now know, that was all bullshit and we ended up giving our agency and personal accountability over to an imaginary, non-existent deity. SO, as a result, we often swing wide, like a pendulum to an opposite pathology. You may have heard me say many times on this podcast, "I will never apologize again for being human!" or "...being Cass Midgley," and I set out to embrace myself and love myself so thoroughly. And as usual, the healthy place is somewhere in the middle, where I acknowledge I'm imperfect and in fact capable of some pretty damaging behavior--damaging to myself and to my relationships. And unchecked, can truly fuck things up. So what is the truth here? Well, stay with me for a sec. We all have personalities and these are the deeply ingrained patterns of behavior and the lens through which we perceive, relate to, and think about ourselves and their world in which we find ourselves. All personalities are flawed. Mental health professionals have defined 10 personality disorders as listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM. They are paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, avoidant, dependent and obsessive-compulsive. I invite you to investigate your own personality and these disorders to see where your imperfect personality errs on the side of one or more of these. Keep in mind that a full-blown diagnosis from a professional is far, far different and more extreme than simply recognizing that you find that you are mildly influenced by some of these, and of course you are. No one is immune to their influence because no one is perfect. And we all would benefit from some self-awareness of our own cryptonites. If we'er aware that we have this or that tendency, then we would benefit, especially those near and dear to us, if we could clue in to what they already know and that is we're all a little bit crazy. Being sensitive to your potential pathology could save a lot of pain and heartache, because you can reign it in when you start to feel it creeping up in you. For example, my therapist told me this week that I'm not so much narcissistic as I am histrionic. Well I'd never heard the word "histrionic." The word itself means: an actor, overly theatrical or melodramatic in character or style, exaggerated dramatic behavior designed to attract attention. For a diagnosis of histrionic personality disorder to be given, five or more of the following symptoms must be present: 1 Self-centeredness, uncomfortable when not the center of attention. Me. 2 Constantly seeking reassurance or approval. Not constant so I'll give it a half point. 3 Inappropriately seductive appearance or behavior. not me 4 Rapidly shifting emotional states that appear shallow to others. yeah, pretty much me. So that's 2.5 5 Overly concerned with physical appearance, and using physical appearance to draw attention to self. that's opposite of me, so I'm deducting a point. 6 Opinions are easily influenced by other people, but difficult to back up with details. not so much. I could be wrong, but I'm sticking with not me. 7 Excessive dramatics with exaggerated displays of emotion. OUch, pretty much me. back up to 2.5. 8 Tendency to believe that relationships are more intimate than they actually are. totally me. 3.5. 9 Is highly suggestible (easily influenced by others). Nope. So 3.5 at worst 4.5 so I'm not at the level of "disorder" but close enough to arouse some self-awareness and some presence of mind to reign it in when I feel it arising, huh? Keep in mind, for these symptoms to be considered a disorder, they must cause significant impairment or distress in the individual. Now, something that is not on that list of pathologies is lying. I've known some pathological liars in my years. Maybe you have too. They seem to get a rush from wowing people with their life stories and embellishing a little to get their listeners to that over-the-top place of gasps and awe. Today's guest, Mary D's story is like that at times. It's so brutal at times that I couldn't help but think, "is she embellishing?" But I only met her the day of this taping so I don't know, but I know this: we're all a little crazy, we're all needy, we're all insecure, and if we're aware of our own shadow side, we're much more likely to sense when we're tempted to resort to these lower demons of our nature, which will only end up hurting those we love and ourselves, and unlike our past religious lives where we'd either try to cast out the demon or try to get closer to God to dispell the darkness, or pray harder, we now know that it's up to us to be good, to do the right thing, to take the high ground, to say yes to our yin/yang nature and thus be empowered to say no to that which disconnects us from our fellow, flawed human neighbors. We taped this conversation on February 11th, 2018. We interview people you don’t know, about a subject no one wants to talk about. We hope to encourage people in the process of deconstructing their faith and help curb the loneliness that accompanies it. We think the world is a better place when more people live by sight, not by faith. Please subscribe to our podcast, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, we offer these podcasts freely. And your support truly makes a difference. You can support us monetarily in two easy ways: you can pledge a monthly donation through Patreon. that’s www.patreon.com/eapodcast,  or leave a lump-sum donation through PayPal at our website, www.everyonesagnostic.com. Credits:"Towering Mountain of Ignorance" intro by Hank Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3v3S82TuxU Intro bumper "Never Know" by Jack JohnsonThe segue music on this episode was created Hans Zimmer from the movie Interstellar Thanks for listening! And be a yes-sayer to what is.   

There comes a point in life when you know too much to ever go back to the person you once were, or to the cult that you once called home. Unfortunately there are no easy ways to leave a cult. This is my journey out and I detail the price that was paid for my freedom. Direct Download Here [expand title="Click Here To Show Transcript"] [00:01:52] If you notice the title of this week's episode and you were never one of Jehovah's Witnesses you may be wondering what it's all about. Get out of her my people. It all comes crumbling down. Is a shout out to the scripture in Revelation 18 that Jehovah's Witnesses like to point at all the other religions of the world and Revelation 18 verse 2. We see that the subject of all these proclamations is Babylon the Great Jove's. This is believed to be the world empire of false religion as Babylon in ancient times was a hub of false religion. So they end these verses at false religion today. Jehovah's Witnesses have again the truth. They believe that it applies to everyone else. For those of us that learn the truth about the truth we can just as easily point this back at them. The Scriptures read Revelation 18 for through a and I heard another voice out of heaven say get out of her my people. If you do not want to share with her in her sins and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues for her sins of mass together clear up to heaven and God has called her acts of injustice to mind repay her in the way she treated others yes pay her back double for the things she has done in the cup she has mixed for a double portion for her to the extent that she has glorified herself. I live in Shameless luxury. [00:03:16] To that extent give her torments and mourning for SECU saying in her heart I sit as queen and I am not a widow and I will never see MORNING. [00:03:25] That is why and one day her plagues will come death and mourning and famine as she will be completely burned with fire because Jehovah God who judged her is strong so I took these verses and pointed them right back at Jehovah's Witnesses and this is my account of how it all came crumbling down for me and for my wife as well. [00:03:48] Jehovah's Witnesses like to project a lot they love to point out that straw in the eyes of others while ignoring the rafter in their own. [00:03:55] Another call back to scripture. [00:03:58] So by now you have a working understanding of how Jehovah's Witnesses think and feel about the world around them. [00:04:06] You've seen how they use their teachings to control and manipulate those that are subjected to them. You've seen how they brought me to my knees. [00:04:14] And you've also seen the information that helps to start wake me up now it's time to show you how things progressed as I was learning all this new information. You'll see how we got out of that debt that we had amassed how my relationship with my dad changed and how everything really started changing for the better. But eventually came there was a hefty price to pay for that. So let's go back a bit to where I left off with my story. I was depressed I was suicidal ideations and my life was a wreck. I started to become enlightened and I was getting deep into the realm of self-help and psychology and was realizing that this organization that I was taught to look to for everything didn't have everything that I or others needed. This was my awakening process during this process. I got healthier and decided that I wanted to be the one to right some wrongs even if I wasn't the one that started them. I wanted to help others and to have better relationships. For starters I wanted to give my youngest brother and my sister that is 20 years younger than me. A better life. So I would take them out and buy them clothes. My wife and I would help decorate my sister's room. [00:05:24] We gave them things like on our Nintendo we we bought them skateboards and things we tried to give them things that maybe I would have gotten like when my grandfather was alive he would bias things. [00:05:39] Not that you know buying something for someone is the end all be all to a relationship or that someone was trying to buy my love. [00:05:48] But he had the ability to make some things happen for us that you know growing up kind of poor we we really didn't have those opportunities. So I wanted to you know grandfather my grandpa wasn't around anymore so I wanted to help out where I could. It's tough when you grow up without the money to do fun things or you just don't have much. So my wife and I use some of our money to try to give them things that maybe I didn't have when I was a kid or or that others had given me like my grandfather. Aside from that I wanted to make sure that I did things with my younger siblings. We took them places and had a good time. So a it came about when I found out something about how things were going at my family's home with my dad and my youngest brother. [00:06:32] My mom would tell me things I had and I wasn't going to just let it happen and continue on like it was it was it was you know nobody likes to see somebody get bullied. [00:06:46] And at this point in my life I didn't I didn't live at home I didn't have to put up with this anymore. So I told my mom that I was coming to get my dad and we were going to go for a drive. Something we had never done before. My wife and I went over on a Saturday and while she and my mom took bets on who would come back alive. I invited my dad to go for a ride. I took him to a nearby park parked the car and we got out. It was honestly one of the harder things I had to do up to that point because my dad was very authoritarian. He generally refused to be questioned in any way to be challenged his answer was No to everything. He didn't want to hear what you had to say. And that was that it was his way or the highway only in this case I held all the cards he was in my car and I took him out and I didn't live under his roof anymore. So the power balance has shifted. Well basically I told him everything from how I felt as a child to how my brothers felt. I told him what a jerk he was to be quite honest and that it needed a change and this is his wakeup call. It was I guess a jerk intervention of sorts. I didn't really mince words. [00:07:54] In fact that's something that I kind of started to put into an earlier episode here and left out because I didn't really feel safe being that vulnerable at that point when I was doing that episode but I'm going to go ahead and throw it out here. Now this is something I had to tell my dad when I was a kid I would leave these notes to my dad at times I'm sure my mom probably threw them away and I'm sure he probably never saw them. I don't know. Nothing was ever said to me about it. But admittedly his emotional abuse was getting to me. [00:08:25] I would cry myself to sleep at night. [00:08:27] A lot of times when I was a little kid there was just not really not really a lot of love in my family. Now people typically have one or two responses to a given challenge. We have the fight or flight response. [00:08:43] I'm not really one to flee. I'm just not wired that way. And it wasn't like I had anywhere to go to as a kid anyway. [00:08:51] So fight it was in one particularly disturbed moment as a kid. I actually got up in the middle of the night with tears in my eyes after a particularly bad day with my dad and went into the kitchen and had plans on or at least impulsive thoughts on putting an end to his abuse. [00:09:14] I went into bed or went to bed. What is the kitchen. I grab the knife and I obviously couldn't go through with it which is for his benefit and from hide as well. [00:09:27] As a kid but I just ended up going back to bed but I told my dad this and this moment if that doesn't wake a person up to the realities of their impact on other people then I don't know what in the world could well my dad said all the right things. [00:09:49] He apologized for things he told me a bit about his own upbringing. And I have to say that his own upbringing was pretty messed up from what he told me and facts. [00:10:02] You know I think one of the things any parent wants to do is be a better parent than their parents. And to be honest though were it doesn't sound like we're setting a very high bar here. [00:10:15] I think he may have done that from some of the things that he told me. But anyway when it came to us he just thought we were moody teenagers so we were staying away. [00:10:26] He didn't know that we truly despised him so much that we actually went to a doctor and I and if you know my dad next shall be telling you a little bit more about him later. My dad did not volunteer volunteer to go to doctors. You'll understand more about that later. But he actually went of his own volition and got medication for depression. [00:10:49] Now from what I was told by my mom he changed for the better. But it wasn't long before he went off the meds and decided that he didn't need them anymore and that everything was fine before. [00:10:59] So whatever good was done there. I don't I don't know what the impact was kind of it was always kind of a tough thing with my dad to tell where he really stood on things. [00:11:14] But my relationship with my dad did start to change because I mean I realized he was never going to make it better on his own. So if I wanted something better it was up to me. I reached out to him invite and invited him to do things. I'd take him fishing to baseball games. We went out and ate. At times we had fun. I even took him to his first ever University of Kentucky basketball game. [00:11:38] Despite my love for the rival school and my loathing for all things blue or cats I told them that I would make a deal. [00:11:48] I wouldn't clap for them but at least refrain from booing actually. You know I tease. But it was the one time that I ever really rooted for them. I wanted them to win for my dad. In fact I picked the game. I mean you know props to Kentucky they have a great basketball team. They do pretty much year in and year out. But I wanted to make sure that we went to the game that they were going to win. There weren't a lot of opportunities for this. So I hope there's no Gamecocks fans listening but I pick the South Carolina game because their basketball team at least back then. Right last year. So props to them again. But back then they were terrible. So I picked this game. We went to Kentucky blew them out. My dad had a great time. I had a good time. And you know that's what it was about it was about trying to have fun. In fact I kind of started to get to know him better. Like I mentioned before I found out a few things about his upbringing. But I started learning some about his past how he grew up. You know what he did things he was interested in because he had never spoken a word about any of that in my entire life. And although he wasn't extremely open about things he was pretty reserved. [00:13:11] He did you know begin to open up even works for me at a point as I mentioned before he and my wife and I would get to be pretty good friends or so we thought we'd go out and eat lunch together at work if we were at the same property as he was that day we went. [00:13:31] My wife went fishing with us when we would go to baseball games together. You see though the problem as I mentioned earlier you never really knew where you stood with my dad. I do remember that one time he told me he was proud of me when he was working for me. And that was cool. I mean it was very strange and off the cuff was a response to something that was going on and he was. He said he was proud that I created the business that I had back then. And that's that's pretty much the only time I can remember my dad ever saying anything positive to me. [00:14:07] However he you know he and I would have these great conversations and he would say all the right things. But then later my mom would tell me that he got home and trashed what we had talked about it was really messed up and hard to figure out what was real with him he was he was just a really hard person to ever pin down and a great actor. Now as I mentioned before I don't drink because I was told that alcoholism runs in my family and my dad never drank. [00:14:34] However my dad did have a problem with sugar and I'm not talking about eating one too many brownies and putting on a few pounds. [00:14:42] He had a real problem apparently when he was 20 years old. He was drafted into the military and he was turned away because he had crazy blood sugar and high blood pressure. [00:14:54] And in fact they told him they weren't going to take him or that he should go take care of himself. He never did at 50 years old. His body was wasting away and in an elder at the Kingdom Hall cornered him and invited him to take his blood sugar with them. It was something I don't know it was an astronomical figure like 400 or 500 or something. [00:15:16] And my dad went to the hospital the doctors basically told him that his kidneys should shut down years ago with his medical history and that he was very lucky. They gave him a new diet. They gave him some pills to help manage his blood sugar well. [00:15:34] Denial was my dad's middle name. He lived a life full of it. In this case he didn't really change his diet. [00:15:41] He was fairly non-compliant on the meds as well. Just like he was with the depression meds and like he was honestly with everything in his late 50s he was wasting away again. My mom caught him throwing up in the bathroom she had noticed that he wasn't eating much but apparently it had gotten to the point where he couldn't even hold down water. She asked how long it had been. You know that he had had this issue with vomiting and he said a month. [00:16:06] He refused to go to the doctor. So I was called to be the adult to be the dad to come in and make him go to the doctor. So I did I told him that basically he's going to go one of three ways he could either go on his own. I could pick his weak self up and take him or he would go when he fell out and an ambulance was called. [00:16:27] It was his choice and he went voluntarily Well what had happened is his kidneys finally shut down. He was in end stage renal failure and they said that he would have died within 48 hours had he not come in right then he was put on dialysis and his life completely changed this time. [00:16:46] You see he had the change because when you do dialysis you can't hide what you are doing. You go in and get hooked up to a machine three times a week Monday Wednesday and Friday for him and they know all of your levels. They knew what he was eating. They knew what he was doing. There was there was no hiding anymore. And you know his life was also changed. He felt so stupid and and he knew that he had done it to himself. He said so. He was a sugar addict. And you know if you think about it what does alcohol if not sugar ought to be honest I struggle with sugar myself. It's not just like sweets sweets literally calm me down. The opposite of the effect it has on many. You know I could go drink a mountain dew and go to bed. Sugar is a stimulant and the meds that they give to people with ADHD are stimulants and they have the opposite impact on our brain chemistry as they do on the average person. Of course you know I don't I don't know exactly 100 percent what is it from my dad. We had some talks and it seemed like he kind of had some of the same issues but again he would tell me that and then go deny it to somebody else. Who knows. [00:18:05] But my dad ended up having to quit his job and go on disability his life for the next six years or so would consist of going to dialysis in the morning sleeping the rest of the day away as it was very tough on his body resting the next day. And then the following morning getting up and doing it all over again. Sad to say the only day that he ever even felt decent was Sunday because that was the farthest he ever got from a dialysis treatment. So you know he would go. Friday morning he would recuperate. That day Saturday he would he would rest but he at least you know be up and around some. And then he had that extra day of Sunday where he would finally start feeling decent again. And then of course Monday morning he started over again. But you know regardless it didn't matter. None of this slowed his Jehovah's Witness activities down. I mean I guess it did a little bit but you know he still gave public talks from the stage. He still would go visit other corrugations and give talks he still went out door to door. [00:19:09] Nothing could stop that oh I guess I forgot to mention that apparently my dad was also blind in one eye. We went out to eat with him one night and he always drove and after eating he got in the car and forgot to defrost the windshield. I asked if he was going to do so or not as he started to leave because I could barely see out of it and I was sitting up front with them and he played it off. It turns out that that's how everything looked to him. You've heard the term. You know he's blind in one eye and can't see out the other. My dad was literally blind in one eye I had never told anyone and he literally could not see out of the other one because he had a cataract on it. That did I mention something about denial earlier. [00:20:01] He also had neuropathy in his legs where his nerves and everything were dying from poor circulation. He would stumble around a lot because he couldn't feel his lower extremities very well. Yes. There he was though going up steps going from door to door knocking you know out in the field ministry. He fell off a porch at least once. I think a few times I know he was bruised up a few times. He had issues while he was giving public talks to other Keenum halls where he had to stop and talk. [00:20:31] I think he almost passed out one time there were there were issues but it didn't matter. No matter what that man's compulsion to do anything that Jehovah's Witness has asked him came first. Remember he told me when I was young if they asked you to do something just say yes. And that was my dad. Anything they asked him to do. He said yes. It didn't matter what his physical capabilities were. In fact want to hear something ironic. And every summer convention My dad was assigned to be the head of a department. So there are these various departments at these regional or district conventions. You know they have 10 departments they have departments for information or media relations you know cleaning things like that one. Guess what department. My dad was the head of hope not cleaning. Even though he cleaned for us not the attendance to help people find where they're going to the convention center. My dad was the head of the freaking First Aid Department's just let that soak in. [00:21:42] Year after year they made that man the head of health care while he was killing himself and doing nothing about it and they knew about it. He was falling out while giving talks a total trainwreck physically. [00:21:57] Do you know how that made us feel to see him set up as the head of first aid rushing to go take care of people or handing out meds while he destroyed himself for that awful cold. I mean not to mention that if you were not going to the doctor at my house unless something was super super wrong I believe I've had it. I can only do this in retrospect at least two lives Frank injuries. [00:22:29] In retrospect that's what I think they were. That's essentially the ligament in your arch pulling off from the bone. My foot turned to black twice when I was a kid. Well once in each foot and my dad had actually had similar injuries playing basketball when he was young. There were pictures of him with casse but me when I got hurt there was no going to a doctor. We didn't go to the doctor for that stuff. And here's my dad handing out meds like candy to people and being like compassionate with people. Again another exact opposite of who he was at home. [00:23:14] So you know that happened as well. [00:23:18] And you know despite it all I have to hand it to my dad that man just kept plugging away. He got his cataract removed and he drove everywhere one eye with his glasses. I mean really that Manser bullet after bullet and just kept on going of course. Ultimately nobody was truly bulletproof and things had caught up in dialysis patients don't last forever. [00:23:46] There was a very poignant moment where my dad had complications while he was on dialysis now and he was in denial. [00:23:54] I have been called in to help in some way I can't remember but his poor that he would get dialysis in and his arm something had gone wrong with it so dialysis wasn't really doing its thing and the toxins were building up in his bloodstream and he was he was becoming delirious. We were cleaning a house and I was thinking about things and kind of upset. I was just thinking about how my dad never really lived. He never really seemed to want to live so I was thinking about how I mean is morbid as it sounds I really should just let them die the last time. Because ultimately that's what it seemed like he always wanted. I mean he really kind of did everything he could to manifest that in his life who was I to push him to stay alive when he clearly didn't really want to. It wasn't fair to expect him to live for me or my mom or anyone else. He had always been depressed anyway. [00:24:54] My sister texted me and told me that my dad was delirious and singing something that I mean he never did. I don't think he had ever done in his life. I'll spare you my city voice. But the song was the gambler by Kenny Rogers. I guess he was an old school country. So let's look at the lyrics that my dad was singing while I was sitting there thinking about this and this is literally what my sister tightens in that text you've got to know when to hold them know when to fold them know when to walk away and know when to run. [00:25:30] Now that's all I even knew of the song but let's play it out and read the rest of that part of the song as if it wasn't poignant enough just given the thoughts I was having and what I just told you the lyrics were you never count your money when you're sitting at the table. There'll be plenty and there'll be time enough for counting when that deal ends. [00:25:50] Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving has no on what to throw away and know what to keep cause every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser and the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep. [00:26:05] I kind of broke down when I when I heard what he was singing. I never even knew that last part until just just now when I was researching this. I knew the first part and that was enough to hit me hard. [00:26:18] Seeing the rest of that was even more poignant. It was exactly what I was thinking back then and it was exactly what he seemed to want my dad did get better for a while and I'll come back to how the saga saga ended. [00:26:35] Eventually I guess there's no good segue but anyway other areas of my life were changing too. My marriage is becoming better and better as we both became more healthy and learned the lessons mentioned in last week's episodes. A relationship can only be as good as the weakest link and we both had a lot of weaknesses. [00:26:56] So it just got better and better the more we learned and the stronger we became. [00:27:02] And as we became more of who each of us was individually I heard a quote once that I like that said If two people are in a relationship are the same. [00:27:12] The one of you is unnecessary I don't want my wife to be a carbon copy of me but she has been so sheltered that she had no idea who she was either her family or the cult had dictated that and and now it was me doing it and I didn't know what to do. I was fighting doing so she was starting to become herself starting to figure out who she was because she really just didn't know at all and that was helping me to have confidence that if I backed off she could contribute to the relationship. Looking back we weren't ready to get married when we did. Not at all. That's probably an obvious statement for people that grow up in the normal world but we didn't. If you weren't married by your early twenties the chances of finding someone got slimmer and slimmer in the cold. Nobody is really ready then your brain isn't even fully developed until you're like 25 years old. [00:28:07] We had no clue who we were individually so we couldn't have been a very good couple somewhere around 2008 where I'd gotten to my lowest point. We stopped going out the door to door ministry work as Jehovah's Witnesses. [00:28:20] We were both pretty unhappy and we just couldn't go invite people to become witnesses and you know learn the truth in a more I could never saw anything that I didn't believe in and this wouldn't feel in the courts anymore. It wasn't making me happy. So how could I justify inviting other people to it now. I still thought it was the truth. But as I've been told you know there must have been something wrong with me and I was trying very hard clearly to work on that side of things. Me That was a happy mistake we also started missing meetings more. It just didn't seem as important anymore. I wanted to opt out of lives and the media is just it make me feel better about things. In fact I would get terrible anxiety about going to meetings just just you know even being present. There was something that didn't feel good. [00:29:14] It's like my body knew something that I hadn't consciously caught up to yet that those meetings were not good for me at all. [00:29:22] I would literally get up on a Sunday morning get dressed up in my suit and get all my materials together. I get in the car with my wife drive all the way to the Kingdom Hall in another town turn into the parking lot do a 180 and drive back home because I could not make myself go into that place. [00:29:45] The sense of relief when I would leave that parking lot and head home was magical. My wife felt it too. [00:29:53] Maybe not on the same level maybe it wasn't her you know objecting to going in. Like like I was but she felt the same. She felt relief when we would leave. [00:30:07] I would be so anxious walking into that place somewhere deep inside I just must have known that it was messed up and not healthy. I just couldn't bring myself to consciously accept that yet. Now I've been telling you that cleaning ultimately ended up saving me and that one day we got a bill for $50000 in the mail that we owed in back taxes. I've been telling you in the intro that you know that we paid it off and I also told you that it wasn't even the biggest thing that come of that Tom. Now I'm going to break that down for you now. Now you're going finally going to understand what that means. As I mentioned in the last episode that $50000 bill hit me hard. I guess that's kind of Mr. obvious moment there. I buried my head in the sand for a long time and my wife just never cared about money whatsoever. Well this bill came during our awakening process and I was seeing progress in my relationships with my dad with my siblings with my wife. Things were getting better. So like I mentioned before I told my wife that although there were no such things as debtors prisons we were going to be in for some hard time. Dave Ramsey said most people only get out of debt by focusing solely on it. Like a gazelle running from a cheetah that is trying to run it down. [00:31:33] I knew that the way I worked was kind of in an all or nothing manner. They're not real great. The space in between. And I knew that the debt was so large that this was it. [00:31:44] We had to go all in or else there was you know it would eventually just consume us. [00:31:52] So I told my mom that we were going to go all in and like the crabs in a bucket example given last week she told me that I'd fail and that eventually even if I did succeed it would be short lived and something would satisfy well that fueled me even more naturally the type of person that if you told me I can't do something and I don't mean like you know I can't do something like try to jump out of a moving car. [00:32:19] But if you tell me I'm not capable of doing something that you know seems seems like it's within reach not only will I do it but I will do it faster and better than ever imagine again when it comes down to fight or flight. [00:32:33] I'm a fighter. I will take on challenges and don't often back down. I've watched people back down my whole life. Live in denial. And I've seen the fruits of that. [00:32:44] And it's just not something that I stomach. Well so my wife and I prayed and told God that we basically leave it in his hands. [00:32:54] All right. God you bring the work. We'll do whatever it takes. That was the deal again. Watch what you ask for life. The word came from everywhere. Of course you know we made ourselves available for literally whatever came our way. And I used every opportunity to tell people what we did. Cross-promote at our cleaning services with our auto detailing business so that we could get more clients on either side. [00:33:19] And over the next 18 months just a year and a half we worked like crazy people at one point we weren't 34 straight days often 12 to 14 hour days. We cleaned houses and detail cars and we also house set for clients where we'd actually live in their house while they were maybe out of town and watched their pets. [00:33:42] And that happened quite a bit. We were amazed at how many opportunities arose out of making ourselves available for that but that was tough to do. [00:33:51] You know living and operating our business out of someone else's house while watching their dogs or cats we'd have to pack our van with supplies and clothes for everything. [00:34:00] It was very tough as if it wasn't tough enough spending most weeks working six days out of seven again long days I guess with the House sitting it sounds we were pretty much working 24 hours a day. We also did some pressure washing. We painted rooms for people. We washed windows. We even sealed a bunch of concrete a driveway and several large patios for a client. First time we'd ever done anything like that. We really felt you know God was helping us. That's how we felt. Things would happen like a client would have to go off the schedule for some reason. And of course that would you know make my scarcity response act up you know because we were so focused on trying to pay this off and didn't really need to lose clients. In fact in one summer we lost something like 10 families. They all just moved away. You know they didn't even move within the area we live. They literally moved away. It was crazy. And you would think that it would be hard to maintain momentum while losing those clients. [00:35:06] I guess it was a good real estate market that summer Well anyway the way things went. [00:35:12] Anytime somebody would cancel some would call out of the blue what to get on the schedule. We never missed a beat. In fact sometimes even simple things like a client having to you know cancel one cleaning because of some reason someone would call out of the blue. You know we had never talked to you before and one at a one time cleaning on that same day. It was uncanny. I remember one day we were just absolutely exhausted. We still had one more house to clean and honestly I was so tired I wanted to throw up we decided to stop at a store and get some Gatorade to see if that would give us a boost. And while we were at that store late at the last house of the day called my wife to say that our air conditioning had gone out and it has to reschedule. It felt like a miracle at the time and we got to go home. [00:36:07] We also had this van at the time that we bought that was recommended to us by a friend and the van turned out to be a horrific buy. Up until this time it had not gone a month straight without something going wrong. We even had to put a transmission in it. I think it was like the fourth transmission that VAM was on. It was just a joke well for the entire 18 month stretch that van never broke down. We had a flat tire once while house sitting for a client. But the neighbor helped us with an air pump and they got it the tire place had it plugged and went about our day never skipped a beat. Over those 18 months of working nonstop We also were spending very little. [00:36:51] It's kind of hard to spend money when you do nothing but work and sleep. [00:36:56] We got our fifty thousand dollars saved to pay off the debt and then found out that we owed $55000 because time it passed an interest and fees that accrued and it really was depressing. [00:37:10] So you know you think you're right there at the finish line and then the finish line gets moved. So I went out and got a pair of neon green and neon orange shoelaces I had each write the word finish on each of them and we each wore one green one and one orange lace on our shoes during the final push that way when we were tired and if we started to hang our heads we could look down at our shoes and feel a little inspired. [00:37:37] In fact during what we thought was our last week of paying off the debt we came home. [00:37:43] Her water heater had started to bust so we had to drop like a grand you know a thousand dollars or so to replace that which set us back yet another little bit in the end though it was 18 months. We made it through. We had thousand dollars in the bank that we could throw at the IRS. [00:38:04] When I called the IRS they could not believe that I was paying off the debt. [00:38:10] In fact we were so far behind that the IRS has a 10 year threshold basically for which they can collect and our debt was so old at this point that some of it could have started to fall off our record but ultimately you know we owed the money. We wanted to make it right. You know we were getting healthier and it was just it was just time to get to right that wrong. It just didn't feel right to use their rules against them which I know will make some people upset because the IRS and everybody hates them. Now average person or a lot of people would use anything against them. But you know just given our our sense of ethics or I guess our integrity is just didn't do it for them I did it for me. [00:39:06] But remember in order to pay that $55000 off we couldn't just make $55000 because we still had to pay taxes on the 55000 that we made. Right. So all in all we had to make basically over that 18 months we made about an extra $80000 so that we could clear that 55 grand. Give that to the IRS and then have the rest of the money left over to pay the current taxes on the money that we earned to pay back taxes. [00:39:41] That is a lot of cleaning and I'll be honest that was awesome. However like I mentioned that was not looking back even close to the best thing that comes from this time really sped up our awakening process. You see we started to realize why had you attend so many meetings and constantly read their books and participate in their activities. It's essentially a form of brainwashing yourself. [00:40:14] It's like for the first time ever we had time away from the meetings to think about the things that we have been taught and our brain started processing what we had learned our entire lives. [00:40:26] We had a lot of deep conversations during that 18 month period about things that just didn't add up to us. You know I'd look at my wife and say you know what about this. [00:40:37] Or she'd say You know people kind of do this and that's weird. Now we still believe it was the truth but we were starting to have doubts about some things. And in fact one such doubt came from the very fact that things went as well as they did in paying off the debts. My mom told me that we would fail people at the Keenum all were appalled at what we were doing. We were always taught to believe that Jehovah couldn't bless us if we weren't going to all the meetings and spending the required time and field service and yet here it appeared that we were being blessed immensely by God. In fact it was the first time ever in my life that I really thought we were being blessed and we were doing the opposite of. Everything I had been taught. My entire life to do it didn't add up. Not only that but during this time we got to see the lives of those that we clean for. Remember we were starting to get more emotionally healthy and we started waking up to the fact that we cleaned for a lot of great people and great families. They were far more functional than the families that we grew up with including our own. How could that be. I mean after all we claim there's Jehovah's witnesses that have the happiest families on earth. We had the truth and lived what we called quote the real life. Another piece of double speak to real life but here these quote worldly people were happy and so much healthier than we were. [00:42:16] We also realized that we had no real friends. You see during the 18 months away nobody ever even called to see if we were alive. The elders the supposed shepherds of the flock never bother with us. There were no shepherding calls to encourage us. Nobody cared. We had families that we worked for that would invite us to do things with them and we'd have to turn them down you know because we weren't supposed to do things with them. We were praying for friends and turning down those that were friendly to us because the cult taught us that they were the wrong kind of friends. In fact there is a time that Jehovah's Witnesses actually use for each other and other doublespeak the friends you see when discussing the group of people at their Keenum all those say the friends did this or the friends did that or are let's go see the friends. It's just more cult speak that was starting to wake us up though to the realities of what we were in and that are you know the friends you know weren't really such good friends. So you can see why that was even bigger that the awakening from being away from meetings was far better for our life than the money that we paid off. Now let's not discount the freedom that being debt free brings. That was our only debt. Aside from the house. But the more important thing here was the time spent away from the undocks indoctrination sessions. [00:43:46] In fact since we've been out we have come across many stories of people in fact some you know kind of it's kind of funny some incarcerations in English speaking congregations will actually leave the English speaking to go to let's say a Spanish speaking congregation or a Russian speaking creation where maybe they need brothers to help out. [00:44:09] And so they'll try to learn Spanish or Russian or whatever and go to that Curry station. And in doing so they're now sitting at meetings where those indoctrination sessions aren't really hitting them quite as hard because they can't understand it on the same level that they could when they were going to the English you know their native tongue. [00:44:32] And so that time spent in a foreign language actually helps wake people up sometimes because the indoctrination sessions are given them to let up and they are given time to process things to really think about what they've learned. [00:44:53] So you know that's why the call encourages members to go to meetings. You know even even if you're on vacation in some other place you got to you know haul your suits and dresses and dress shoes so that you could book bags and books and just everything so that you know you don't want to miss a spiritual meal while you're you know you're out on a vacation having a good time. That would be horrible. They want you to know. No they don't want you to know. They know the organization knows the cult knows that their hold on you is tenuous. It's just like an abusive spouse that you know doesn't want their husband or wife to have friends outside of the relationship. [00:45:39] They have to keep you close so that they can keep you under their spell. They would give me they would give examples of people that you know that missed meetings and left thus losing their hope of eternal life being tricked by Satan's wicked world outside the cult. Of course they did of course those are the examples they would give after getting out of debt. [00:46:02] I set my sights on dropping the weight that I accumulated. I decided that I would go sugarfree. Well sweets free a human body does kind of require some measure of sugar. I'm not sugar free today. And just like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic whether they drink or not. I'm always going to be a sugar addict though I'm sure. No no no no. I'm way better than I ever was. I'm much more moderate for a time though I avoided all of the treats and sweets. In fact I started using the at my fitness pal on my phone and used my fitness pal. You can just put in whatever food you see and tally up the calories. And you know kind of log what you eat. It was it was really eye opening to see how many calories were in things. There's this one restaurant that I really really love and I'd go eat there and they bring bread out before you even get your meal in. And I realized that the rolls alone that I was eating you know when I would go to this restaurant those were about my calories for the entire day. And I had no clue. So it was really a matter of learning how to eat like I've had to learn so many other things. Knowledge is power and by being honest with myself I saw why I had gotten so 250 pounds I would eventually get down to £199 which was so cool. I was excited to see that one as the first number. [00:47:32] I'm now more like 210 you know several years later seem to have her around there. But you know whatever I'm 40 to 50 pounds lighter than I was. And now I work out my body composition has changed as well. So you know things things got better on that front and I'm a lot healthier. [00:47:49] Physically you know in addition to mentally and emotionally I had noticed that we kind of had the year and a half of focus on that and it worked. [00:48:01] And then I had a year where I kind of focused on my way. You know not eating sugar so much and it worked. So I realized that having a singular focus while maintaining the rest of life seemed to kind of be the way to go for me this ADHD guy finally found a way to sustain some sort of focus in some way. [00:48:19] So my wife and I started adopting an official theme for each year starting in 2015. In fact I started a little journal on my phone that I kept track of what I did and little did I know I was chronicling the end of our lives as Jehovah's Witnesses. This was in the beginning of an entirely new life. So you know I was able to go back in and go through some of this in 2014 a few things happened of note that I don't have them journal that was before us started. We had come off the years of getting out of debt and losing weight and were trying to work on our quote you know our spirituality as Jehovah's Witnesses. In fact maybe that was the theme for that you don't remember but we started going back to meeting some was started making a push to get back out in field service after being in an active for some time. [00:49:11] After all we were getting unhealthier in other ways so you know let's get healthy spiritually as well as we saw it. However there was there was something that was brewing under the surface. Like I said we went back to meetings. But again it was a struggle sometimes I didn't make it. We turn around and go home. I would start having outburst after meetings on the way home with my wife in the car about things that were said at the meetings. This was this was dangerous. You see people sometimes wonder how this topic got brought up. My wife Anna and really bought me attacking what was said like that at the meetings. Honestly my wife could have and should have turned me into the elders making your doubts known as dangerous even to your spouse. People turn their husband or wife in or their kids. My Dad I believe was behind what happened to my brother. People turned their family in all the time. If it's found out that you have doubts and the elders meet with you and you insist on your new way of thinking it all they can disfellowship you for apostasy. I mean it's like it's like literal thoughtcrime. They want to know that your allegiance is to the organization. And if it's compromised they may cut you off before you impact anyone else. A lot of times when this happens in a marriage it ends up in divorce. [00:50:40] Now I was very lucky my wife knew that I had a good heart and that she could trust me. She knew that I wouldn't bring something up as there wasn't a good reason for it. Admittedly I should have been more strategic with the way I brought things up. But I would just get so upset about the lack of love shown in the congregation especially as I was learning what real love was. And you know healthy love would get so upset about the comments they would make about other people on the outside. It was it was eating me up inside. It was evil. And I just couldn't hold it in. [00:51:15] It was a fire inside of me that I had to let out well one day while we were driving we were crossing some railroad tracks. And according to my wife this is when I finally got through to her. [00:51:29] I told her that you know in the end look we all have doubts. And if you admit your doubts it doesn't change anything because they already exist. It just puts it out in the open. And if you don't like it you can pack your doubts up and put them back where they were. She said that you know she didn't really like me talking about my doubts and that it bothered her but she figured that she could participate this one time. Give it a try and if she didn't like it she could go back and tell me hey look you know me she told me she was ready to tell me keep your doubts to yourself keep my doubts to myself and let's just carry on. [00:52:11] But instead she let out a few of her own doubts and things went well. We would then have. Many conversations over time. There was one time when the circuit overseer was visiting and we were sitting in the front row of the Keenum hall because we didn't get there early enough to show off like most people. He was standing in front of us just a few steps away and he was talking about a recent tornado that we had had in Henryville Indiana nearby. [00:52:38] You know probably like 10 or 20 miles away he was talking about how the brothers went up there from the congregation to help and how awesome Jehovah's organization was for doing it. He then went on to talk about how all the worldly people went out there just to be seen or you know some went to even steal or pilfer from the wreckage. [00:52:59] But how blessed we were in Jehovah's organization to have such loving brothers Well we cleaned in a neighborhood not far from there for years. [00:53:11] We personally knew people that watched the tornadoes go over their house in the sky and then it ended up landing in Henryville we knew these people that were among the first that were up there helping that donated even like you know extra trucks you know extra vehicles their money their time their effort that went up there and this guy the circuit overseer was talking about them like they were human garbage. I also knew that yeah you know Jehovah's Witnesses did go up there but they were even later than usual to do so. And they only go up there to help their own. I mean they don't even offer to help anyone else. I was livid. [00:53:56] It was all I could do NOT to stand up in front of the congregation and shout his ignorance down. But I didn't. I was literally sick over his description of others and that that us versus them ugliness that he was bringing you know to the congregation. [00:54:12] So the time came when I stepped up my awakening game and asked my wife for permission for something huge in this process. I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page. And I was I was trying not to do anything that would hurt her. She was trying not to do anything that would hurt me. We were allowing each other to go each other's pace but checking in with the other to make sure no one got too far ahead. You know we were we were really trying to do this together as much as we could. We each had to individually process so much. [00:54:48] You see there are Web sites on the Internet that are Jehovah's Witnesses. Now we were always warned against going there. You know as if it would put us at a seat at the table with Satan himself as they would say I couldn't resist any more I had to see what they had to say. I wanted to know what these Jehovah's Witnesses say. So I asked my wife it was if it was OK with her that I went down that path. [00:55:20] I knew I couldn't unring that bell. Once you opened Pandora's box so to speak it's kind of hard to go back. [00:55:27] Well we had always been told that people on those sites those apostates as they were called were mentally diseased. Well if that's the case then I was sick too because a large part of what I saw was exactly the same things that I had noticed every time I got to see the man behind the curtain in the cold they saw many of the same things that I did now. [00:55:49] Now some were super angry or hateful Some were pushy with how they saw things and aggressive and the Middle East some of that you know some people's personal personal feelings on it I guess turned me off I wasn't ready for that yet. However I could see that they were actually telling the truth about the truth. Something I learned was an actual term in the SJW community. T T T T. The truth about the truth Mizer opening even more though I still saw them organizationally as having a lot of problems I still believe the basic doctrine at that time was sure on May 21st of 2013. I took my first big step toward a new life. I had actually reached out to my disfellowship brother on Facebook. I found him on there. I just sent him a private message. It was a shot in the dark but I apologize sincerely for how I had treated him. I would have understood it if he never wanted to talk to me again. But I had to at least do my part and put an apology out there for shunning him and you know for other feelings that we had over the years. He was forgiving as you know he was raised in the cold and he knew the game. He knew what the deal was and we reconnected. I can't tell you what that meant to me and now here we were just chatting here and there on messenger email. But you know it was something to at least be able to speak to my brother. [00:57:27] Then in January of 2014 you know just what seven months later a friend from my past that had disassociated from the cult finally reached out to me on Facebook and sent me a friend request. Now a good fully indoctrinated Jehovah's Witness would just dismiss it without a thought. [00:57:46] But remember my humanity was waking up underneath the cult indoctrination. So I want to send him a nice message though I told him that I couldn't be Facebook friends with them. It would have been trouble for me in the cold if I had friends who were you know knowingly disassociated. I still got all the messages on messenger and it's interesting to see now how I thought by then I was clearly doubting things because you know I challenged how unfair it was to see kids making this decision to the colt you know to get baptized. [00:58:21] You know this. You know infinite long contract with the organization. I knew that was wrong. [00:58:28] It's interesting though to look back and see that even then I told him to keep messaging me and I told him that maybe we could even eventually meet up and grab a bite to eat some time. Now this is two years before officially leaving the cold. But clearly I was waking up and willing to be a good person not just a good Jaida now you know I do have to say that my friend from back in the day did push me too fast. He pretty much immediately offered to have me over for pizza which was super awesome and nice but way too much too quick. I shouldn't have even been talking to him. So we couldn't be friends like that. [00:59:06] I know that's where he was but he had the benefit of being out for years and I did it. You know he caught me off guard. Still it was the start of something that I needed that summer. In July we had a big deal for Jehovah's Witnesses happening. It was something called an international convention. It was essentially the district convention that we always had. But instead of it just being our district there were a lot more people so like there were several districts that came and it was a larger facility. There were delegates there that were missionaries from foreign lands. And you know this was a big deal that was held in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. It was to take place on July 11th 12th and 13th. We had reservations you know at a hotel for it. [00:59:54] And in fact for the month or so we really you know right before that we really doubled down on things and you know we saw this as a chance to get right spiritually. You know as well so we tried to make the meetings we commented at them. We participated in everything we started. You know we were out in service again. We saw that you know and this convention is our opportunity to get right. After all we kind of felt that Jehovah had done so much for us as our eyes were being opened. You know you know God it really helped us and blessed us on as this better path that we were on. We even got a hotel on Thursday night so that we could be sure to have no problems of Friday morning getting to that convention. We were pawns. We were really excited about it. And you know we didn't want to drive up that morning. We could have it would have been doable it would have saved us some money on that hotel Thursday night but we were excited and we wanted everything to go right. [01:00:52] Well we got up Friday morning hours early and we took off for our car to the convention. You know we were in a car. [01:01:01] We should have arrived around 8:30 according to any reasonable standard doesn't usually start till like 9:30 9:45. So I mean we would have plenty of time. [01:01:13] We didn't even get there. And so after 10 o'clock there was a funeral procession for a fallen police officer. And there is something else going on and we literally sat on the Express expressway for hours. Then when we finally got to the convention there was another issue. You see the cold has to have their hand in everything. So you can't just stay where you want to stay when you go to these conventions. They arrange supposed deals with hotels and tell you where you can and can't stay they get kickbacks from doing so on. You know these supposed group rates that they extend to us and they get rooms for their people. So as long as we follow direction and stay in their hotels the organization itself gets a benefit. Well the same applies to parking. They arrange deals parking lots for the convention. Here we were sitting in mind boggling traffic. And then when we finally got there to the stadium we had to pass empty parking lot after empty parking lot right by the stadium so that we could prove to be obedient and stay in the approved lots This lot was probably a mile from the stadium and Gravell great for my wife walking in heels and me and my dress shoes. [01:02:26] Once we got inside the stadium. That place is cavernous. We walked it seemed like for ever trying to just find a place to sit down. This convention was different. They had these huge video boards up and they would pump in videos for us to watch for the first time ever. They also had members of the governing body giving talks at locations and pump in those talks that was supposed to be so encouraging. [01:02:56] You know Oasis spiritual refreshments as they would call it. And you know hearing a talk from the actual governing body members was a pretty big deal back then. They were they were just starting to come out from behind the curtain and become superstars Well it wasn't nearly as refreshing and entertaining or you know as Oasis as they would you know refer to it at times. For us we sat there listening to things watching these emotional videos that they now were making this propaganda. We could see how manipulative they were for the first time. [01:03:32] So I'm really glad that it corresponded with us waking up and we could see it. We sat through the morning session we ate lunch and my wife was having some issues. As lonely as it is to be the only person around it's even lonelier to be in a place with tens of thousands of people and realize that nobody really cares about you nobody cares if you're there. My wife was really struck by this and she felt so alone and was struggling with it. We were sitting by ourselves with strangers and nobody was really being friendly to us. None of our family or anyone contacted us. None of our friends in the congregation. We drove up. You know we were all there by ourselves and this you know see if humanity now on the other hand I was having a different issue during the convention that I can't remember if it was the morning or afternoon program now what are the governing body members gave a talk about simplifying our lives so that we could do more in Jehovah's service in it. This man gave an example of a brother that had a six figure job but that simplified his life to work part time in retail or something so he could pioneer in fact that brother found that he had been paying so much in taxes on that six figure income that he was actually making more money now that he was working part time at a low wage job. [01:04:54] Now I just got done getting out of a tax mess and I knew that what they were saying was patently false. It's math. It's not feelings it's math. Unless that brother with a six figure income was in the 80 to 90 percent tax bracket which doesn't exist what that member of that governing body was doing was lying he was lying and he was manipulating to get people to do more for their cult. And it disgusted me. About three quarters of the way through the first day my wife was literally in tears and I was super pissed off and dejected at what I just heard come out of a governing body member's mouth. My wife wanted to leave. So you know in fact she kind of sweeten the deal by saying hey you know if we leave now we could beat the traffic. All right. That's all I needed to hear. I was in so we packed up our stuff and walked out. [01:05:51] Yes it was a long walk back to our car. Yes it was super hot in mid-July wearing a suit. Yes. The gravel made the wall tougher yes. We had paid for our hotel and booked in advance might lose the money on two more nights of hotel stay that we had already booked but we didn't care that drive back to the hotel. I think we were in a little bit of shock but after we told the hotel we were leaving and they didn't charge us for the future nights. We packed up our things put them in the car. That two hour drive home felt so light and free. It was way better than ever leaving a meeting at the Kingdom Hall or you know driving around doing a 180 in the parking lot. We had never left a convention like that before. I mean that's a pretty big deal. [01:06:45] You know the conventions everybody's at the convention Well not only if we leave the convention it was during that ride home that my wife and I decided we were done July 11th 2014. We decided we were never going to get anything from that cold again. [01:07:10] Now just to reiterate we still believed it was the truth doctrinally but he noticed a pattern here yet but we knew something was off. We just we just couldn't handle it anymore. We were done. [01:07:29] In October of 2014 another big thing happened. My brother and his wife were coming into town for a wedding. [01:07:36] They wanted to get together. I couldn't believe it. [01:07:39] It was so cool that you know my brother was actually coming down from New York. We had seen each other and gosh I don't know. It was over a decade. [01:07:50] We set things up. They actually came over to our house. As an aside we actually had a house for them to come over to at this point. You remember that you know when I last left you on this subject our house was a a disaster full of flea market items from the business I tried to start to get us out of debt. The floors were a wreck after pulling up the carpet to find them to be damaged. [01:08:12] We have essentially fled to the basement to live in the basement. We had a leak. [01:08:19] I would often get wet and smelled like cat urine because Lady that live for us had cats that peed in various places. And then when the water would come then it would activate you know the urine that had soaked in the whatever and it was just an awful place. [01:08:34] However after we paid off the taxes we rented a dumpster we threw away lots of things we put flooring down but new furniture we moved back upstairs. And [01:08:44] you know it was just another healthy change in our life. So my brother and his wife you know had this place to come over to and it was so awesome to see him again and to meet his wife. We had a good time. We just talked and went out and did a few things. I [01:09:00] don't know if we were the best hope host. We we've never done anything like that before we had no clue what to expect. Honestly we were just amazed at the prospect of even meeting them. [01:09:14] So after we met after my brother and his wife you know went back to New York I posted some pictures of us all together on Facebook. I wasn't going to hide this as if I was somehow ashamed of my brother or ashamed of what we had done. I was proud of the people that my brother and his wife were and who we were becoming. And all of us you know just being together felt good. But this this moves it changed things. In fact after this we never seem to get together with my family anymore for a reason that in retrospect I wonder if you know I had been told was it was true. You see my dad had gone into the hospital back to him you know getting home and seeing you in the chorus from the gambler that I mentioned when he was delirious Well I'd email my mom and we were set to come over one Saturday and she gave me a call that told me that we couldn't because he brought home bedbugs from the hospital and yeah maybe he did. I don't know. But those bedbugs never seemed to quite go away and we seem to not be able to come over again. This was in late 2014 and it kind of felt like we were being ghosted by our family. [01:10:25] Well by my family after this we were heading into 2015 and we decided that my wife and I we were going to call it 2015. It was going to be our year of adventure. We were going to make 20:15 bond. After all you know why not try to enjoy life. We knew it was all on us to do because you know things were getting weird otherwise in life and boy was the year of adventure some foreshadowing of an adventure that we had no clue we were about to say. [01:10:58] The goal was to have fun and try new things. We went to our first ever concert together and saw Linkin Park and rise against in Indianapolis big not just because it was our first show but we even you know pushed ourselves to go to an unfamiliar city for our first show. [01:11:15] We went to the circus went to the local auto show. We went hiking in New places. I gave up soft drinks for good. We had new restaurants. We went to our first ever worldly wedding. We traveled to other cities and found fun things to do with some more concerts. We watched Lord of the Rings. Something we weren't really technically supposed to do as Joe was witnesses. Again you know the evil demons would get you. We went to our first ever away football game. We had so much fun. However along with all that fun we had something very serious going on. [01:11:51] I'll take you step by step because I actually have this journal. 2015 was the biggest year of our life. [01:11:59] February the 7th of twenty's 15 is the day that my family officially died. You see we were making plans to go see my brother in New York in May. I told my mom that I'd like to get some of our brother's childhood pictures momentos that take out to him when we went. I knew it was a tough ask. I knew it was a risky ask but my sister in law never seen pictures of my brother as a little kid. [01:12:25] My brother didn't have anything either. It was like his life before her was completely erased. I thought it would be an awesome gift. Well my mom took it upon herself to contact my sister in law. [01:12:38] Out of nowhere and tried to work it out with her on Facebook to be friends and get her pictures or you know worked out with her well I was kind of irritated because it was my idea. [01:12:49] My mom was tried to undercut me. Whatever ultimately as long as my brother got the pictures and he and his wife enjoyed them that's all I wanted. You know whatever. However my sister in law had a. Great perspective on this. She actually told my mom I'm not going to speak to someone that won't talk to my husband. You see Jehovah's love to separate people like that are so freaking tone deaf to the basic humanity that they can't even see it. They do this stuff all the time. There might be a mom that is disfellowshipped b

Discussed Kevin’s startup, New Avenue Homes, which builds small buildings in urban backyards that can serve as affordable housing alternatives in neighborhoods where there are limited optionsTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. [inaudible] okay. Speaker 2:[inaudible] Speaker 3:[inaudible] everyone knows that real estate is a huge problem in this country today. It's unaffordable, it's inefficient, and there just [00:00:30] isn't enough for to go around the places people really want to live. If you have any downs, just check out the price of a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco on craigslist. You'll see real quick that there's a big problem. Here's the president talking about Speaker 1:another one of these problems. Energy efficiency earlier this summer, Speaker 4:homes built in the first half of the last century can use about 50% more energy than homes that are built today, and because most of our homes and offices aren't energy efficient, much of that energy just goes to waste [00:01:00] while costing our families and businesses money, they can't afford to throw away the simple act of retrofitting these buildings to make them more energy efficient. Installing new windows and doors, insulation, roofing ceiling leaks, modernizing heating and cooling equipment is one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest things we can do to put Americans back to work while saving money and reducing harmful emissions. [00:01:30] Insulation is second Speaker 5:free stuff. Speaker 4:Here's why. Here's what's sexy about saving money. Think about it this way. If you haven't upgraded your home yet, it's not just heat or cool air that's escaping. It's energy and money that you are wasting. If you saw $20 bills just sort of floating through the window up into the atmosphere, you try to figure out how you were going to keep that, but [00:02:00] that's exactly what's happening because of the lack of efficiency in our buildings. Speaker 1:Well, wouldn't it be great if we could get around this problem of having to retrofit all these houses by building new houses that were energy efficient from scratch? Well, that would be great, but in places like the inner bay area, Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, that ship has already sailed. All the houses have been built, or at least we think they've been built because there's no more room to build any more new houses. But a new company out of Berkeley called New Avenue [00:02:30] homes is challenging this notion by building energy efficient, how's this in the backyards of other houses? Thereby solving multiple problems at once, creating new inventory for people to rent, as well as creating energy efficient houses that leave very little footprint in the environment today. On method to the madness. We interview Kevin Casey, founder of new avenue homes about his innovative model for housing stay with us. Speaker 1:So the problem, we're addressing a [00:03:00] the housing affordable housing crisis, some people have said, um, but it really relates to people being able to afford a high quality, um, lifestyle, a nice quality home, um, living in areas that are growing in particular, like we address housing and growing economies like growing areas, growing economies, the bay area being classic example. Um, but basically the entire west coast and the entire southwest is got a lot of population growth. [00:03:30] And um, at the heart of the matter, I like to use the bay area example. Um, we basically can't sprawl any further to build affordable housing and we can build nice suburban houses out in Stockton, but people can't drive that far. It's like physically impossible. So the affordability, sustainability, and sort of the quality of life deteriorates. So we try to address that by creating smaller, nicer homes where people work and where people want to live. Speaker 1:Okay. And is there what other kinds of solutions are out there for the type of problem you're addressing? Well, solutions [00:04:00] would be sources of housing. I mean, you've got mid-rise type developments that are really expensive. They're probably four times the cost per unit than we charge. You know, we can build a house for 100,000 roughly. Um, and for that you say a two bedroom house, a studio, or like a two bedroom apartment, um, or even a studio apartment in a typical four-story five-story mid rise apartment in a place like Berkeley would be three hundred thousand five hundred thousand give or take per unit. Per Unit. Yeah. So, you [00:04:30] know, there they're four times what we are. Um, but so there's infill like that, you know, apartment buildings and then there's suburban sprawl really. I mean, housing out. Like, if you want to buy a nice house right now, you can go to Tracy and get a great house for 150 or 250,000, but you're gonna be driving two hours to get to work. Speaker 1:Um, so, and that's really, I mean, if you look at housing, I mean that's it. There's, while we're at sort of an innovative new model and then there's urban and fill apartment buildings and then there's sprawl [00:05:00] and that's it. We're on alternative yet. Okay, great. So tell me a little bit about your background and how you Kinda came to this. Um, well, my backgrounds, uh, more or less, it's Kinda funny. I, I think I turned, uh, I was in business school, I was 32 years old or so, and a reading a design magazine with lots of really nice houses. And I said, you know, why don't they make smaller? And it just kinda clicked and just kinda hit me. And I'd lived in New York City for 10 years with my wife where we lived in small places. Then we moved out here where it's [00:05:30] still expensive. Speaker 1:Places are a little bit nicer, a little bit bigger, but still expensive. I was like, why can't they just make small, nice two bedroom homes for people like us? Uh, it turns out people like us, there's a bunch of us, you know, say younger folks that can't afford houses, there's a lot more people that are baby boomers and seniors that want to age in place, that have big old houses, that's too much house for what they need. So they oftentimes downsize. So my initial sort of personal need, um, drove the well spark the idea, [00:06:00] but then research sort of drove us another direction towards a whole different crowd. Um, but on a personal note, how'd I get here? I realized, kind of realized, I turned into my father when I was in my thirties because my father's nerving planner, my uncle's a general contractor builder. So I grew up when I was teenager, you know, moving piles of bricks around yards. Speaker 1:Uh, so I kind of had the academic and then the actual exposure to the real work side. Um, and then studied economics. Had An interesting stint in Bali where I studied community development in international [00:06:30] development and they actually, they have alternative ways of living. They have a lot of mixed families and mixed generation households. So I got exposed to sort of alternatives to the American norm, um, and then went to Berkeley to get my MBA. And while I was studying there, I was reading that design magazines that, you know, we might be able to make a go with this. You know, something you said is really interesting where you said about you had the idea hits you when you're reading the design magazine, but then during research your, you found your target market to be something different. And that's very much, this shows very [00:07:00] much about kind of the creative process of creating new interesting and innovative ideas. Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about that process of the research phase of this idea. Um, yeah. Well I'd say I was probably influenced by one of the best, uh, professors I had at Haas, Steve Blank, who I'm sure is popular, you know, in whole startup circles. Um, and I think his, he's got a lot of lessons in his course, but the one that comes up 10 times per class is get out of the building and talk to people. So I sort of saw some pretty pictures, [00:07:30] had a decent idea, figured out, do, do a little research. Our research was, we went door to door in different communities around the bay area in particular. We went near Bart stations cause we said, well, if you're going to build small houses in existing communities, you might as well do it where there's transit. Uh, and then we just found out that in some neighborhoods, a lot of people who are dealing this other neighborhoods, no one's doing this. Speaker 1:And then we asked people, you know, who did it, what was your motivation? You know, what's your over here? And it sorta slowly pulled us, um, you know, in that direction that we're going now. Um, and then also once we got a little bit of press and people started [00:08:00] calling us, you realize there are certain trends among people that are calling you. Um, so yeah, but we probably, the original idea was modular housing, which gets a lot of PR and sort of gets trumped up in the press. Uh, and we said, well, if we can get modular housing and we can make small homes and we can weave them into communities where people want to live, it's a no brainer, a modular housing we dropped within like three months cause that we just realized like you can't fit. It's like, you know, what's the phrase? Speaker 1:A Square peg, round hole kind [00:08:30] of thing. It's just like you can't fit, um, big boxes down most of the streets that we would build on and you can't fit them between properties. You know, if you have an old community in Oakland for example, houses might be 12 feet apart on average or less. You know, you can't fit a 14 foot wide house down at 12 foot wide driveway. It just, or there's power lines in between and it's just impossible. So, so I try, jeweler house has something that just comes already built in a big box and you just drop it in and it comes from it's manufactured somewhere else. Yeah, it's built as a, there's lots, there's [00:09:00] different ways people try to build modular or or prefab. Um, at the end of the day, custom construction, uh, done by no well experienced well-experienced crews is more affordable. You get a higher quality product, you get custom design, you get a lot of stuff that people want. Speaker 1:You just get a really, really nice home or you can get exactly what you want for a very marginal increase in costs or sometimes you'll save some money depending on the logistics of having a big box driven built in a factory [00:09:30] driven down the highway craned into place and all that. So, but yeah, to the point of innovation and all that, our original, one of our original ideas was dropped within a couple of months and we'll still do modular homes on occasion, but it's just not a core strategy or core product or anything. You are listening to k a l ex Berkeley 90.7 FM. Should be on the worldwide web@kalxdotberkeley.edu this is method to the madness, a 30 minute show, but the innovative spirit of the bay area. [00:10:00] And I'm your host Tallinn Huizar. Today's guest is Kevin Casey, founder of new avenue homes. Well, so you had your kind of moment of inspiration, excuse me, while I'm reading the design book. Speaker 1:Um, and so let's talk about like how you translate that you did the research and take us to the timeline of actually launching this, which is, can be for many entrepreneurs, can be a very, um, daunting thing is to take the leap. You've got a great idea. [00:10:30] I have lots of friends who have millions of ideas, but they don't really take action on it. How did you break out through and take action on your first house? Well, so the first, well, first spark was, uh, August of 2008, so we're a good solid three years now. Um, that was between my first and second year of business school. And you know, at w I studied was getting my MBA at Berkeley. And, uh, the, well, one of the lucky things about business schools, you're, you know, you're not, you're [00:11:00] in school, you're not working, so you've gotta you've got time. Speaker 1:So we did the research over the course of the year. I roamed around campus and found anyone and everyone I could find from engineering schools to the planning school to, you know, the business school, you know, Undergrad, you name it. Uh, the Berkeley labs had a, you know, a bunch of scientists that contributed great thoughts and sort of inspiration. Um, we ended up finding a client through one of these teams that I'd recruited and that's, well, another great help that we got was we picked up a grant from the Clinton Global Initiative, [00:11:30] uh, and we also got a grant from UC Berkeley. So we had an small sum of money that sort of gave us a little spark and kind of give us a little credibility that helped us recruit some teams. Um, and then through these teams and more or less talking to everyone, I could talk to you all day, every day for half a year. Speaker 1:We ended up finding someone who became a client and that was enough to really, it's still nerve wracking. I mean, you know, coming out of a business school and walking away from on campus recruiting and pretty secure jobs. Um, but we [00:12:00] had a client, we had a tested idea and we had dozens of people that had contributed insights and sort of helped in the testing and the research. So, you know, we had seemed to have a pretty good shot at it. What was the process of getting the grant from the Clinton Global Initiative? Like, um, well cause at that point you just had a [inaudible] he didn't really have any. Yeah. Well it's funny. So it's one specific grant is really easy. It's a two page essay and you get it. But the reality is we applied to like [00:12:30] probably 50, maybe a hundred different grants. So it was a lot of time. Speaker 1:Um, it's been great though. The Clinton global initiative that were still involved, they invited us out to CGI America a month ago. Um, and there's different events that we can sort of brought into. But uh, yeah, it was, I mean, at the end of the day we had, we had a couple of pages of a research paper. Um, it's like a mini white paper basically. Yeah. That we said we drafted and we edited that submitted and ended up getting picked for a grant. [00:13:00] Okay. And um, to the, does the CGI have, um, like a, a green building, like a cohort or something like that where you can, you know, mix ideas without the people who are doing the same thing, types of things? Yeah, I think we were in, um, a, well, they actually gave us, it was like a green home project is what they, they titled it, but it was within a energy and environmental tract that they have because yeah, they've CGI Clinton Global Initiative or Clinton Foundation as a whole. Speaker 1:I mean, [00:13:30] most people know that goes everywhere. Like human rights too. While energy would be one of, they must have 10 different buckets. So they dropped people into, but yeah, we're on the environmental energy and environmental side. So we were put into that. We did, we've connected with a ton of students. Uh, it's really a fascinating organization, but uh, yeah, so we are in the energy and environmental group. Okay. That was it. So the early spark came from a couple of grants that you got and you got the first [00:14:00] client. Yep. So that first client was in Berkeley? Yes. Okay. And what were you going to build there? Um, so it was a single mother, lives in west Berkeley, works as a professor at cal and uh, had some family obligations and also had been interested in some income and also had an interest in just overall model. Speaker 1:Um, so we, uh, we built a small studio with a loft, so you could argue, really stretch it a little bit to say it's a [00:14:30] one bedroom, but it's by, no, it's definitely a studio. It's a living room and upstairs loft, a kitchen and a bathroom. It's in the back corner of a house over in west Berkeley. So it's uh, I mean she wanted like a cute little cow cabinetry looking home and that's what we built, designed and built. And actually people, the response was overwhelming. We had an open house. Well the funny thing was she signed on September of 2009 designed because it was our first client. So basically it took a year to design it and build [00:15:00] it and get it permanent and get it done. And then we took a few months and then had an open house and that was like, by the time that timeline passed, it was January of this year. Speaker 1:Um, we had an open house and I was expecting, well, I was hoping to get like 50 people or so, so I could get a picture and kind of put it up on the website and make it look like we had something exciting. We ended up having the mayor of Berkeley, mayor of Oakland came by the day prior. It was busy the day of, but well, former mayor of Oakland, but we had mayor of Berkeley, mayor of El Surrito, heads of a couple of nonprofits and then 500 [00:15:30] people stroll through. So that's when, that's when you really know you're kind of going the right direction. Um, so that was, yeah, that was good. I wouldn't call it a launch event. It was going to be a small open house, but that led to some press and some traffic and it was pretty good. And um, so the model is for peop for homeowners who have extra land in the back to create a income generating structure back there. Speaker 1:Is that the general idea of it? Um, that's the general [00:16:00] idea. That's another will speaking of sort of figuring out what your clients, who your clients are. Um, our clients are smart and savvy and they view it as an investment, but that's not their motivation, you know, so they do the numbers, they say, okay. And they'll compare it. They'll take literally take money out of their IRA or their 401k. I just talked to someone, two people today who are doing that. Um, so they'll think it through, but that's not their motivation. Most people do it because they've got a family member or a friend or just a general sort of interest [00:16:30] in having someone around. So there's a, motivations aren't always number driven, you know, or, or return driven. So yeah, that's, that's it. But the model is really a people that have extra space. Speaker 1:Well, a lot of our clients, there's different ways that segments, but there's remodels, there's additions and then there's new backyard cottages. So we'll do all three. Our focus is exclusively on something that has a kitchen and a bathroom. And as a real home, it doesn't have to be a distinct, separate [00:17:00] home in the back corner. Um, but most people that own a house can put something like this in. There's a California law that encourages it. So that gives people the right to do it. So, um, and we have designers that will help work with people depending on budget and goals and a sort of property features. We'll figure out whether in addition, a renovation or a distinct cottage makes the most sense. And what, why limit yourself to just kitchens and you know, you separate units. Why not just become a full [00:17:30] fledge, general contractor who does all sorts of stuff? Speaker 1:Well, we are, well technically we are general contractor, although we usually use third party builders that are our partners and we partner with people that are in the towns where we're operating. Um, and, and those are generally licensed general contractors. Um, the reality is, well part of our model is, is that we're trying to help people create income producing properties that we can insecure the income, the, that will come off of that. [00:18:00] Which, what I mean by that is, uh, similar to, well, what I mean by that is we'll put, we'll put up the money and then when the client doesn't have to pay us, instead they can let their tenant repay us via the rent. Um, so what that means is people that have equity in their home but don't want to or can't get a mortgage or home equity or whatever, but they still want to either share their house with somebody who can afford to pay a nominal sort of a, at least a minimal rent or they want to make a couple of extra bucks. Speaker 1:Um, there's an interesting crowd, [00:18:30] which is a huge number of people that, especially while in California in particular, and this crowd is people that own houses that maybe they're half a million dollar house. Maybe it's $1 million house. And you know, some people are living in $2 million houses, but a lot of these, like you go to nice communities. It doesn't matter if it's like Moran or Palo Alto or Berkeley, you've got all these, let's just say million dollar homes or half million dollar homes. Um, you've got a decent percentage of the, of the average block would be owned by people that bought the houses recently and paid big some. But then there's a significant percentage, [00:19:00] and I can't tell you exactly what it is, but in a lot of communities we do figure out it's 30 to 40% and these are people that have bought their homes, let's just say 40 years ago, and they paid off the mortgage and they're just living in it. Speaker 1:And they might be surrounded by millionaires, but they're actually living off $20,000 a year, $30,000 a year. And the last thing they want to do is get a mortgage, get locked in a corner or possibly lose their house because they took out a loan that they can't pay. So for that scenario, we'll actually finance the second unit, we'll pay for it and we'll say, you don't have to pay us back and let the tenant pay us back. Um, and that's really our [00:19:30] model that we're pushing forward. And in order for that model to work, you have to have a kitchen and a bathroom and actually be able to rent it out. Um, OK. So that, that means that you guys have to line up the capital. Yup. All right. Yup. And so is that for, for your fundraising efforts as and mostly around for that purposes or I'm sure you need working capital for, yeah, we've raised a little, little bit of money. Speaker 1:We're actually raising round like classic Angel Investment Financing from impact investors and people [00:20:00] that are sort of socially or environmentally motivated, but also some people that just think it's good business and think we're going to go public and make a bunch of money. But, uh, generally a mix of the two. But, uh, the, the real needs in this company are yet is institutional capital debt, uh, more traditional capital, larger scale so that we can just finance the cost to construction. Yeah. Because you're kind of going along the lines that the solar companies power purchase agreements where they, it's a very capital intensive business, uh, but then they have [00:20:30] all these contracts that are paying them, you know, fixed amounts for a long period of time. Although you have some, a little bit more risk than that, I would think. Because those homes have to stay occupied, there has to be a renter there to pay the money. Speaker 1:Right. Um, yeah, there's certainly, um, renters are less reliable than electricity usage you might say. Um, but yeah, there's some, there's some additional risks. There's some higher return cause people pay more for rent than they pay for their electric bills. There's the execution [00:21:00] is the big challenge for us. I mean you've got to design a home that somebody that the primary homeowner wants. It's a lot different from throwing a solar panel on your roof. Um, so we've built up in house design staff. Um, that's really got a huge focus on entitlements, which is the building permits and the zoning permits. Um, and then structural engineering and then construction. So it's like for us, it's not just a rectangular panel that you plug in on the roof and you sign a contract and you finance it. It's, you know, creative design. Then there's dealing with building and planning department [00:21:30] personalities. Speaker 1:Then there's construction and there's some different parties involved. You know, there's the primary homeowner, there's the tenant and there's personalities of people involved in the permitting process. You're listening to k a l ex Berkeley, 90.7 FM streaming on the world wide web. At kalx.berkeley.edu this is method to the madness, a 30 minute show about the innovative spirit of the bay area. And I'm your host Tallinn Huizar. Today's guest is Kevin Casey, founder of [00:22:00] new avenue homes. So let's talk about the design because there's a very much a green element to this, right? Sustainable Element. Talk about that kind of part of your business. Um, well the biggest win is I always kind of joke there's like two sides of green. There's the stuff that people pick cause they're green products, bamboo floors, recycle glass counters, you know, you name it. Like we have fire clay tile in one of our homes. Speaker 1:It's recycled glass and it's a recycled [00:22:30] porcelain, you know, old sinks and stuff. And those are the products that are like sort of the fun sustainable products. And those are great. There's, I mean I love them, but what makes our product sustainable? Like our first home was net zero energy. And especially in the bay area, if you build a new house and you insulate it well and use decent windows, you're going to have an, and it's a small home. And it's near transit. And like we've run numbers where our houses are 90% less would use 90% less energy on average than like your average home in the same neighborhood, same community. [00:23:00] It's just because they're smaller, they're newer, they're well-insulated and that's the big win right there. So yeah, installation kind of takes the, the, um, excitement out of sustainability. It's like you put a lot of that in your, you pretty much want, especially if you're, you know, giving people the option to drop a car, take the bart to work and all that. Speaker 1:I mean, it's just, that's the win right there. Okay. So, so I'm from a materials perspective, you've got the wind, but also from the fact that you're designing from ground up [00:23:30] to be net zero. Yeah. And well, yeah. And then I guess one point is it's behavioral change. It's like instead of having a house that's got five extra rooms, you've got a house with one extra room, and then, um, instead of driving all the, and driving to work and doing whatever else you're, you're walking, riding your bike or taking a train. So those behavioral changes that the shrinking size and then changing the way you, your lifestyle really basically changing the way you live is the, is the one of the big upsides. [00:24:00] So your first house was in Berkeley. Uh, how many have you done since? We've got 12 underway now and for that we've finished. Speaker 1:Um, so 16 total. Okay. And where are they scattered? Around the bay area. Anywhere from San Jose to a lot in Berkeley. Still Oakland, San Jose in between some on the peninsula. Um, San Antonio. If you had to compare the entitlement processes of different cities [00:24:30] with Berkeley is kind of famously, you know, bureaucratic. Is it the toughest or you don't have to answer that question? No, I'll tell Ya. Yeah. Um, Berkeley prides itself on being the toughest, but unfortunately it's actually not that bad. Berkeley's pretty fair. Um, it's still confusing. I wouldn't recommend trying to figure it out on your own. It's not worth the brain damage. Um, but it's just the planning process is tough everywhere. I was just, uh, San Jose is tough. Contra Costa County is tough. [00:25:00] The real problem actually if you want to get to the heart of the matter is um, cities tend to be decent. Speaker 1:Counties tend to be really tough. So, and there's, there's a disk, they don't connect to each other necessarily. So you might be able to breeze through a city and get a permit in a month and it'll cost you three grand and you get surprised by $40,000 in fees from county traffic and sidewalk and park fees and all sorts of stuff. So Berkeley doesn't have that. So Berkeley's pretty good. Oakland's great inner East Bay is really good. [00:25:30] Peninsula gets a little tricky. I would think that the peninsula would be a great place for you in terms of people who would want this. Oh, it's, yeah, without a doubt. Um, future the companies, probably the peninsula, that's where the jobs are. Silicon Valley, one of my favorite examples of a sort of why people need these types of homes is I'm the Association of Bay area governments puts together sort of a job map for what's the sort of epicenter of the economy, which is Cupertino. Speaker 1:Uh, in Cupertino, your average house is over 1 million bucks. [00:26:00] Um, but also in the bay area, your average income household income is 90,000, so it's 11 times your income to buy a house. If you're an average person with an average job at the center of our economy, you're not buying a house, you know, in order for you to buy a house that's affordable, you've got to go either two hours south pass Gilroy or two hours east out towards Livermore and all that. Um, which is just, you know, pretty tough. So, yeah, the peninsula, I mean, that's where it's where the jobs are. So it's where the people are. Um, next stop would be southern [00:26:30] California after that. So, so you're as a, an entrepreneur, you're getting to the classic stage of scale where you're, you know, you did one and it worked. Now you're getting press and things are happening and it becomes a whole new ballgame of how do you manage 14 concurrent construction projects. Speaker 1:So how are you guys handling that challenge now? Well, fortunately we've got some good partners. Well, so we've got four people in the company [00:27:00] and we kind of do, well, we meet with the clients early on. We get through that design process, which is really architectural design and structural engineering. Um, and then we do the permitting as well. But we partner and we've been fortunate to get some really great contractors that we can work with in the different cities where we're operating. So the scale thing is, I mean, it's certainly, we've had over a thousand percent growth or in the past six months, you know, we went from one house to 10, um, and while the first couple of months [00:27:30] of this year. So that's certainly a big step up. Uh, at the end of the day though, it's, I mean, the way we're handling it is we've got, well division of Labor, right? Speaker 1:I mean, I guess that's classic way to do it, but we work with people who can handle, I mean, we've got in house capability to handle the paperwork for hundreds of homes and then we've got partners that can each do 50 homes. So it's, uh, the, the builder partners, I should say. So it's really, uh, you know, we're not going to sign up for 500 homes next year and try to do that. [00:28:00] It looks, certainly there would be tensions, but it's not that hard to go from one to 10, nor is it that hard to go from 10 to 50. Uh, at some point I'm sure we're going to hit some sort of pain point. Um, but for now it's going pretty well. So with that model, you would think that it would be conceivable in the next few years to go national with something like this? It would be good. Speaker 1:It's a good idea. That division. That's usually the last question I asked is what's your vision five years from now with new avenue homes look like? Yeah, we'd certainly [00:28:30] like to be doing a thousand homes a year. Probably doing, it'd be great to do 10,000 homes a year. That'd be $1 billion a year company. Maybe not five years, but 10 years from now we'll get to a billion. Um, yeah, we'd like to make it so that anyone who wants one of these, we provide everything they need. The design, the construction, the financing. So it's just a matter of we provide all the resources. Homeowners need to be able to take their single family house and converted it into two homes. Um, so they can share it with a senior, a young couple, a family member, a friend. [00:29:00] So the vision would be to say, anyone in California or any of the other growing cities in the west or the southwest, um, who wants this type of home, who wants to convert their typical suburban home and, uh, to, you know, we'll be able to help them. Well, that's a powerful vision from a smart entrepreneur. We'd like to thank Kevin for joining us today on method to the madness. You can learn more about Kevin Casey's business. Speaker 3:Do you have any homes that have to do half the homes.com you've been listening to mantra to the madness on Katie. Alex, [00:29:30] virtually went seven, 8:00 PM. You can learn more about us@methodtothemadness.org have a great labor day. Everybody get back [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.