To kick things off, I have a rap from my Birmingham fam. Now, you're thinking I didn't come for a poetry slam, but I'm here with my man, Nathan and Graham, dropping his rhyme using this time to expand your mind. Because the news sounds threatening, all this talk is deafening, inflation's in recession, they're like yin and yang. Wu Tang said protect your neck. I say protect your profit so you can stay on top of it and not have a drop in bank deposits. That'll make you hit pause and quit because business is not a video game.  So I'm here with the Konami Code to keep your profits in beast mode. I'm getting ready to load. So up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B.A. Let's start this. All right, so we're talking finance and finance could be a boring subject. So we have to start off with something really fun. And that's me making a fool of myself rapping. So, all right, the name of the talk is inflation's recession in business, oh my, and it's by me, that's why my name's on the slide. But in the last week, there was a lot of information that came out and I'm thinking should I change some things up a little bit or should I not? And I had a conversation with, after I did a talk one time and it was really fact-based talk and it went really well. And I think it was for W.P. Karamorka, I can't remember, but Beth Livingston came up to me and she texted me and she's like, hey, never, she's like, you know, I love your talks, but it wasn't like, there wasn't anything that made me feel really positive about going forward, anything reassuring and you're always so reassuring. So I explained some things to her, she's like, oh, that's great. And so a lot of positive news came out this week and I was like, man, it would be great to share this with people. So I had this question to remix this whole talk or not to and I did. So not exactly what you were expecting, and I apologize, you could hate me later. So we had a whole Wizard of Oz theme going on, really professional design slides, looked really, really nice. And then, and I am not a designer by any stretch of the imagination.  Jesse just said that, oh, so branded nicely. Well, yeah, some of them will be like this. So we scrapped the Wizard of Oz theme and we went with like, because the title was based off of that whole Zoo Commercial Lions, Tigers and Bears, I said, I could rock with this, I could do something with this. So that's what we did. And so let's talk about inflation. And like I said, some of these slides are gonna be really rough looking. And what we'll talk about inflation is like a lion. And we all know that we've seen inflation for the last year. It's kind of been, what kind of bite it could take out of our business, out of our profits, out of our personal life. So we wanna talk a little bit about inflation. But we're not gonna talk as much as we were because here's some great news. Inflation seems to have died off. And so that's definitely great. It doesn't seem to be that I'm not gonna be as big of a concern this year as it was last year. Stay on presentation. And so this is a very poorly formatted chart as I threw this in a slide yesterday. But what it's telling us is like right here is where we are. And we see inflation by December coming down to 3.1%. And it's been around eight. When we've all had our businesses for the last, like decade or so, it's been around two and a half. So we're going back to a world, hopefully that we're used to living it, all right?   And we don't want that to happen. For this presentation, I had a lot of fun with Dolly too to create like pictures. And so I said a lion dying over his last breath swiping his paw and this is what I got. So even though the lion is on the floor dying, it could still hurt you. So we want to talk a little bit about inflation and how to be careful with that. But first I want to play a game, I like games and it'll give us some perspective on this whole matter. All right, so I want you to tell me what year this is and I'm going to give you some clues, okay? So just shout it out. Mario Brothers first came out. I'm not going to say if you're right or not until I get to the end, but keep on shouting. So MTV first came out, okay, okay? Princes die, no, Princes die and Prince Charles got married. Rages of the Lost Ark was the big, big movie at the theater. The ubiquitous post-it note was invented and then Dallas was the hit TV show. It was 1981, you had it, a couple of people had it. I know she had it. And the reason why I want to bring up 1981 is because that's really the last time we've had inflation. So it's a new concept for us to run a business in an inflationary environment. So, because I don't think anybody here has been running a business for WordPress business for 40 years. So, and maybe some of you weren't even born. So, and here when I came across this, I love interesting facts when I came across this, a cost of a gigabyte of data storage then was $300,000. Now, make that gross it up for today's dollars, that would be like over a million dollars. It wasn't so much the price that kind of shocked me in that. It's like that back in like 1981, they actually had a gigabyte of storage. I didn't think about that. I mean, it floppy days that had like kilobytes on them and they actually had a gigabyte. That's shocking to me. Anyways, and then Oklahoma, Michigan, Georgia and Alabama were the top football teams. So I guess some things never change. All right, so 2008. So what happened in 2008? Well, let's see, WordPress was five. And maybe a couple of you had businesses that weren't WordPress back in 2008, but only a lot of people were. You know, Facebook was four and it just kind of, I think in the last year opened up to the public, you know, because it started as like a college thing. The iPhone was brand new. The whole idea to have a computer in your pocket was brand, brand, brand new. So if you can imagine a world without an iPhone, I know your kids can't. These businesses right here that we use like almost in our daily life, Slack, Uber, Pinterest, Square, Instagram, they weren't even around. So now that's except for the baby recessions, little two month recession we had in, you're scaring me, that we had in 2020. It was the last time we had a recession. So we really don't haven't run a business through recession, we've been very lucky. So now the purpose of my talk then is to make sure that when you look at your financial statements, when you look at your profit at the end of the year, I hope you look at your profit at the end of the year, when you do, you're not gonna look like this when you see it. We avoid this face. We want you to be happy. We want you to be like, well, that was a good year.  So now when I came here, when I left my house, all right? And I have to go to the airport to fly here. And I've gotten to my house to the airport in 25 minutes. Done it maybe once or twice, all right? But I know that it's taking me 45 minutes to get to the airport, okay? It's gonna be, there's gonna be traffic. I'm gonna, and so if I don't give 45 minutes, if I don't plan for that, if I don't account for that, I'm gonna have a lot of problems making flights. So, and that's like how we should look at recessions and inflation, these kind of things, you'll see, they're gonna happen. You're not gonna be able to stop them from happening. But if we prepare for them, they're just like traffic going to the airport. I've never missed a flight because I always leave with like 45 minutes to an hour to get to the airport. So I never, and I'm never screwed by the traffic. And that's what we could do with inflations if we prepare. Now, I did have a friend that, believe it or not, I had friends that prepared for a marathon. She got really, really serious about preparing for this marathon. She prepared for like seven months for this marathon. And then when she was supposed to run the marathon, she had some family issues and she couldn't do it. So, and then you say, oh man, that's terrible. She trained every day for seven months to do this marathon and she could do the marathon. Well, what happened though was her blood pressure came down. Her cholesterol came down. She had more energy to play with her kids. She was able to stop taking the medicine for those stuff. So her life was, she was much, much stronger in life even though the event she was prepared for didn't happen. Why do I tell you this story? Because all this stuff I'm telling you, if we don't have a recession for a while, if inflation goes away tomorrow, all the stuff I'm telling you if you do, we'll make your business stronger no matter what happens. So it's a win-win. You either glide through the recession or you're super strong going into business as is. All right, so let's, let's go nuts. So, fun times. All my fun slides. All right, so where are we at? Where we are here. And so, so remember the days that we used to have commercials on TV and we used to fast forward through stuff. And so you had three minutes of commercials and you had three speeds on your remote. You had two times, four times and eight times speed. You know, you hit it once and you get through the commercials for 90 seconds. That was too slow for everybody. So you hit it twice and you get through those commercials in 45 seconds, okay? But then you got policy and you're thinking, you know what, I really wanna get through these commercials. So you hit it twice and you went eight times speed and what happens? You got through the commercials in 11 seconds. All right, so what really happened is you were well into your show before you realized you had to hit the play button. So, and that is like what happens with your business and with inflation and your costs. So the speed of business, it just went ham on the fast forward button, okay? So what that means is we can't put our profits on autopilot in the years past. If it made money two years ago, it made money today. It's not that case if you're dealing with inflation or environment because costs are going up, okay? And if your costs are going up like really fast, then those projects, those profits, those projects and services that you deliver that used to be profitable, they might not be profitable anymore or they might just be breaking money. There might be wasting your time, okay? So here's a quick way to, and this is as Matthew is wherever we're gonna get, this is here's a quick way to keep an eye on that.  And you're like, great, what does that number mean? Well, nothing, just as a number. But you track that number over a couple months and you see if it's 40% and then it drops to 38 and 36 and 35 and 31 and 23, then you see that costs are probably eating away at your profit, your costs are probably going way, way up. So you should adjust that price or like what vendors, whatever you're using. So this is a good way to keep an eye on profits so that they don't start eating in your profit so you don't get sad at the end of the year. All right, so I'm in, this is, those are nicely designed slides, here's my slides where I'm just writing in text. So what happens to get inflation under control though, it's a weakened inflation, normally weakens the economy. Now I'm gonna tell you a story here like a quick 15 second story here. So take a glass, a glass bowl and you're gonna put water in this bowl, okay? And you have a stove top, okay? And you have to keep this water at like a certain temperature. You wanna heat it up a little bit. But that glass bowl says do not put on a stove top.  So you put the water in the glass bowl and you know if it gets too hot, the glass is gonna shatter and go all over the place. So you put it on, it starts getting too hot and you're like, oh, I gotta cool this down. You put it in ice or you put it in cold water, what happened? It shatters, you can't bring glass really hot to really cold. So then the key is to be able to just cool that glass enough so that it doesn't get too hot and it doesn't get too cold all of a sudden. That's a PhD in monetary theory in 15 seconds. So that's what they're trying to do. And they fail miserably at it all the time. So what happens is, you know, to weaken inflation, they're weakening the economy. Okay, because the economy gets too hot, that's what causes inflation. So, and then when the economy weakens, this guy comes in the picture. So again, Dolly, I had a lot of fun with it. Recessions, so we're gonna call a tiger the recession. Okay, so, and you know, and he's thinking to himself, oh, wow, we're weakening the economy. This is where I come in. We're gonna ride on this economy. We're gonna tear it all the way down.  I would say that, but I really don't have enough base in my voice to really give it the emphasis that they had in the video. But anyway, that's what he, so, so we got our, we got our tiger here and he's calling all his friends, but all his friends end up being a whole bunch of paper taggers. And this is, so, and then that's what's, that's what's kind of happening. That's what they're predicting to happen with the recession that they foresee it to happen this year. It's gonna be a lot louder than they were originally expected.  And you're like, okay. And so, I'm gonna show you a chart here next on how we get around that. So this is you, right here. This is the recession. And you need to get to the other side. So, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You know how I did these slides is I just, you know, with Dolly, Google image and OneNote where I just would write it out, then screenshot it, then crop it and put it in the PowerPoint. Anyways, so we want to get to the other side. We want to get through the recession because, you know, it's a lot easier to get through one tiger than it is a whole bunch, all right? But, you know, even though they're predicting a mild recession, you know, they could be wrong. And we could end up with Rambo Tiger.  So it doesn't mean the recession, that's what they're speculating that the recession is gonna be weaker but there's all sorts of things that could happen, you know, that can make it a stronger recession. But, you know, I think we could be, you know, rest a little bit easier that it's not gonna get as bad as some people thought last year. All right, so, but here's why we're scared.  Now that's actually not a terrible thing per se because what was happening was tech was taking all the jobs. Everybody is going to work in tech. So, you know, now that these, now that there's a lot of layoffs and tech isn't hiring, you know, a lot of other companies that actually need people can start hiring. So, and this is what happened. This just came out yesterday, just, you know, on my flight I was reading this. The jobs report came out and there was 517,000 people hired in January.  You know, we, you know, there was 517,000 hired in one month. So that's, you know, the economy is still chugging along pretty good. So we're getting inflation in check. So it's, it's, it's, it's, we might be able to like not crack that pot. So, but how worried should we be?   But, you know, and that's fine.  I'm just saying, let's make smarter business decisions. All right? So let's think about this. I'm just gonna go through this real quickly. But this is the key to this is you have a line that goes up. This is what was about $15. This is about 5,000. That's 1950 to 2020. And that's gone up. But let's look at some things that happened. In 1970, like in the 70s, there was like an oil embargo where remember people were standing in line like they had to only, if you only get gas on certain days, you were standing in line and stuff like that. That was pretty, and oil runs the world right now. Back then it really ran the world. And this is what happened. It's almost negligible in that straight line, okay? This is the 9-11 tax followed by the tech bubble bursting. Two major, major events back to back. Look how minor of an event that was in the long term of things. So global financial crisis, we were almost trading sheep on the corner for like food, because, and look how minor that was. This was COVID that dropped right there. So we could see that these events that just seem so, so, so big to us right now in the moment, we bounced back from them, not a problem. So it's just like, the news kind of ever hypes a lot of this stuff. So what is the recession?  And then, but somebody says, do you want one more drink? And that's the question. Do you want one more drink? And you say to yourself sometimes you're like, yeah, I'll have another drink. And then another drink leaves the three more drinks and you wake up in the morning hung over as hell, because you just drank too much. You pushed it too far. You should have gone home. And that's what happens. That's what causes the recession. The economy is going really, really well. And then it should level off. Okay, it should go home. It should be like, okay, we're happy right here. But like it gets super excited and everything like that. And you could tell that when, and hindsight you could tell like when, all you had to do is go to a venture capital company and say artificial intelligence or crypto, and they would give you about $10 million. So that's when economy gets too excited. And then to correct that excess, it's like we have to have a recession. So we have to go up and we have to come back. So I'm gonna skip the slide just to be sure. But there's two different environments that we're working in. One is, one environment is where we've been in, where everything kind of goes right. It's easy to be in business. It's not easy to be in business, but people are buying, the economy is doing well. People have money, they're expanding, they're doing stuff. And you operate a business in a certain way in that. You know, it's hard to really make a really, really tragic mistake. But if things switch and you get into a different business environment, so where you're like, if we get into a recession, where things are tighter, people are spending less and all that kind of stuff, you wanna realize that you're in a different business environment. I tell a story about you're playing, you're going to the carnival and you're playing the game where you just pick a duck out of the water and everybody wins. So it's hard to lose at that game versus the milk bottle game, which is really rigged against you.  So let's talk about how long this kind of stuff last then. So the average expansion, when things are really good, it lasts 69 months and there is 24%, 24.6% growth. You know, that's pretty good, right? The average recession only lasts 10 months and we only have about 2.5% loss in growth. So that right there, and if you see these green, this is growth and this is time. So you see all these red marks are really minor compared to all these great big bluish green like triangles. So we could see that, you know, even when we're having recessions, even when we're in it, it's not that bad. And when things are good, they're much, much better. Like this is seven times longer. But here's the thing. So why do we make such a big deal about recessions and economy and everything like that? It's because psychologically we feel a loss three times more than we feel again. So it's always gonna be, it's always, the bad times are always gonna feel worse than they actually were. And we're gonna like discount, always discount the good times. It's like if you find $20 versus losing $20, they've done these psychological studies, you will feel three times worse, losing $20 than you will finding $20. So, and, but if we understand these numbers and be like, hey, you know what, I know things aren't great right now, but they're only gonna be short for, they're only gonna be not great for a short period of time and then they're gonna be really good for a long period of time. All right, so, and I wanna talk to you about this too. Why the stock market is misleading? So in that slide for 70 years, I showed the stock market. And over a long, long period of time, we can use the stock market to tell us something. In the short period of time, it's worthless. It's not telling you anything. It's misleading you, it's crazy. And I could pull any six months in history and show you these kind of things. So this, and so, and you hear the stock market on the news year, all the time people talk about it and they confuse the stock market with the economy. Stock market with the economy, they're different. Main Street versus Wall Street, they're different. Look at this for example. And you tell me, if anybody in here could tell me that they felt this way, I will give you 10 bucks. So 20%, so take this, take from about September and the end of August to the end of September, so we'll say September, imagine September 2022. Think about that. Think about if at the beginning of September to the end of September, do you feel your business was worth 20% less? Did you, did September 1st, were you like, okay, this is what my business was? September 31st, you're like, damn, I'm worth 20% less than my business. No, no, no one ever thought that, okay? But the market will tell you that it went down 20%. So, and then again, think of two weeks ago, all right? Think of your business now versus two weeks ago. Do you think your business is worth 10% more than it was two weeks ago? No, you don't. So this is why when people get all worried about the stock market and everything like that versus their business, it's just these moves, they're not related.  Your client is not greeting lighting a project because in the last two weeks, his business went up 10%, it didn't happen. So this is why when people talk about the stock market, you gotta remove that from your business, from your view of business. But this is what always gets us right here. So it's, I call it the cycle of emotions. And it's the funny thing is when business is great, we're really excited, we're really happy and that maximum point of our most excitement and when things are going at the absolute best, it's the time when there is the most risk because that's when things are gonna be the best and they're gonna come down from there. Okay, but that's when we're most excited to start something, do something, invest, do something crazy, okay? And that's when there is the most risk. When there is the most opportunity is when we're so scared and depressed and that we don't wanna do anything but that is when there is the most opportunity. So this is really key to understand how emotions really could screw us because if we're thinking that, oh, I just, you know, I need to go back in a hole and you know, just, but there's the most opportunity right there, like Warren Buffett.   So all this really fertile soil was getting all this sunlight so you have all this great growth and that's what happens with recessions, it's tragic, yes, you know, but there is so much opportunity that's created during a recession and all those companies that I mentioned before in 2008 slide, Uber, Square, Instagram, Pinterest, Slack, they were all created during the 2008 recession, the biggest recession we had in, except for the Great Depression in 150 years, all those companies came from them and they're like, no, okay, but nothing started during the Great Depression. How about Disney? The ultimate consumer where you have extra money to spend and only spend money on Disney when you have extra money to spend was started during the Great Depression. So there's opportunity, so a recession will create opportunity. I did an article, I wrote an article in Business Insider, about what I call the business stress test and it's pretty simple that you take your any month recurring revenue you have, you subtract your expenses and that's how much money you have to make, like somebody asked in the last talk about what do you do if you didn't make any sales like for three months? Well, you wanna know what that gap is if you're not making any sales, how much of your expenses do you have to make up?  And then you have, and then you figure out what your runway is.   The goal is to get that number to over six.  So now you don't wanna advance at all, do you? Now you wanna go backwards. We're gonna get this to work. So come on, Tiger. There we go. So Tiger Woods, so you know, any athlete, golfer or anything like that, when he goes up to hit a shot, he's not thinking of that shot, he's not thinking of how to hit that shot, you know? When he's, because he's practiced that shot a thousand times, he's thought of that shot a thousand times, he doesn't have to think, how am I gonna do this, okay?  So what I want you to think about then, and this is gonna sound crazy, but it's a good drill, I wanna think about what you would need to do to run your business with 10% less revenue coming in, 10% sales, you lose 10% sales right off the bat, how would you run your business with 10% sales? And then, you know, figure out why I don't have to get rid of this, maybe cut back this, you know, maybe go on and make sales and more sales here, you know, and then think about 20%. And like I said, when you start, you're like, there's no way I could do this. But the thing about our brain is, once we start putting a problem in our brain and we start thinking through it and thinking through it, thinking through it, when that, if that problem happens, then we've already done all the heavy lifting of eliminating ideas that are absolutely impossible and we're like, you know what, I did have that one idea, maybe I can make that work. So now when it happens, we know we have a really good idea of what to do, or at least we started a long way on that thinking.  So, how much should I have? So, maybe touch on a couple of these. I will say, if I have, I set this up because when I added all these slides and did this, I thought I was gonna run over. The website, nevharris.com slash wp-yall, no, pardon me, nevharris.com, wp-yall. I'm gonna do a video, like, which would talk, was going over all this stuff and a couple more things, and I will send it to you. So it would be an addendum to the talk where I cover all this kind of stuff. We just did the business stress test. I kept that in there, reserve account is six months. There's a whole thing on cash flow I could show you. You can always negotiate, renegotiate with like rent and stuff like that. Yeah. So what we know, we know recessions are gonna happen. Sooner or later, we know that they're gonna happen, okay? And we also know, and that we're gonna be prepared for them because of the stuff that in that last slide that I didn't show you yet. But that if you, yeah, so if, oh, Ellen, we go to that website, the code's y'all, no apostrophe y'all. And all that does is tag something active campaign so that when I finish it, I can go back and send it to you. It doesn't put you on the email list. So we know a recession's gonna happen. We know we're gonna be prepared, you know? And so that allows us to focus externally, and I didn't really talk about this, but when you focus, when we're worried, when we're scared, when we're upset about things, you know, like recessions, business, and everything like that, we're so focused on our business, we're looking down here, and we're like grabbing the pennies from the floor, but we're not looking up and ahead and thinking forward where we're saying, oh, there's a pile of like hundred dollar bills over here because we're focused so internally on our problems. We're not looking externally for all the things that could be out, like I said, you know, recessions have a bright side. All those big companies started recessions. So, and here's the thing, I love this quote.  When the pain of doing nothing is greater than the pain of doing something, that's the only time somebody will move. Like the pain of doing nothing has to be greater than the pain of doing something because if not, apathy takes over. And apathy is one of the main reasons people don't move forward with projects, all right? So let's talk about, okay, let's not talk about it. Okay, so here's some things. So when COVID happened, you know, there was all sorts of opportunity that was created. People, like there was people that got worried, you know, business, like when the hell, you know, people aren't really worried, but then there were people like, hmm, there's opportunity out there. And what was the opportunity? E-commerce was huge. I had a friend that was in E-commerce, and she just could not, she was so busy. Delivery, you know, everybody adopted delivery. I mean, the delivery with like Instacart and those kinds of services, Walmart, third one, I mean, that was advanced five years because of COVID. Telemedicine, those big health systems were completely against telemedicine. There was laws against it. All that stuff changed. There was such opportunity created in telemedicine. Work from home, work from home, but the problem never happened with major corporations. If it wasn't for all that negative stuff that happened with COVID. So out of all that, out of that, with the recession that happened with COVID, with all that quarantine stuff, with how businesses got hurt, all these opportunities came about for it. So I want, so we need to be on the lookout focusing externally on what opportunities the next recession are going to create for the future. So then I'm going to close with a story here.  And the villager, and he used the horse to do everything, take the grain to market, do everything. The horse was instrumental in his business, it ran away. And the villagers came and said, oh man, that's terrible. Man, I feel so bad that your horse ran away. You know, how are you gonna keep on? And his response was, it might be good, it might be bad. And then the next day, the horse comes back, and the horse brings two other horses. And now he has three horses. And so the villagers come, oh man, you're so lucky. You know, he's got all these horses and everything like that. It's fantastic. And he says, it might be good, it might be bad. So the son is out there training the horses, you know, trying to get them. And the one horse kicks them, breaks both his legs, and runs away. So, and he finds them out there, and he brings them, and he can't walk.  And the villagers come and bring food and everything, like, oh, that's so terrible that your son and everything like that has heard everything. And he says, it might be good, it might be bad. And then, you know, and he's like, how could that be good? How, you always say this, how could this even be good? Your son is like, well, we can't walk anymore. And the next day, this province they lived in was governed by an evil warlord. And he sent his people wherever, and he wanted his next war that he wanted to fight. He was getting all the kids from the neighborhood, and he was gonna use them as cannon fodder to just be slaughtered. And he came and said, we're here to get your son for the war, and his son can't walk.   So if we look at things that that way, I'll leave with this. We're going to have a recession, either this year, next year, or five or so, we have to, every time there's an expansion, we have a recession, it could be small.  And, but here's the thing, in the end, whether it was good or it was bad, is up to you. I've told you, like, I showed you that, you know, we can do it. If you grab the video, I'll show you exactly how to get through it, you know, things to do to get through it, and then there'll definitely be opportunity to create it for it.  All right, that's my talk. Any questions? How does this apply to a startup where you don't really have a steady supply of income yet, but you're trying to come on the market? What does a recession do to you in that situation?  So, if I was a startup, I would just have, you know, be sure, know that I wouldn't overly spend, I would be much more cost-conscious. If I was starting a business in a recession, I'd be much, much more cost-conscious, you know, the money I was spending, instead of going, instead of going out and hiring a lot and buying the best and the brightest in technology and everything like that, I would start out really slow. I'd be much more careful of my costs, you know, and just slow, slow rolling out. And if you're starting in a recession, I mean, I would look, like I said, I would be laser focused on finding those opportunities that it's going to create, and I'd focus my business on that. Anybody else? Can you give us the link again to where we can get the way to survive those notes? Yes, yes, yes, yes. NevHarris.com slash WP dash y'all, W-A-L-L. Y-Y-Y-A-L-L, and then the code is y'all, W-A-L-L. And then I would love feedback on this if you thought this was like really crazy. Cause like I just wrote this in the last two days, I kind of scrapped the original talk because I thought, well, this is some really positive kind of information that people could use. So if you thought this was too like over the head or something like that, please let me know. There's another question, if your slides will be there or on Twitter and if maybe that other link might be on Twitter as well. Ah, yeah, sure. I can tweet that out. Okay. Yeah, why not? In the last years, United States used a lot of people overseas to do the job. What do you think it will happen after recession? Do we have more people here or we will do also overseas people to do our jobs? People to do our jobs. So, I love the question. To answer that question, well, I think in the tech industry, jobs are gonna, we're gonna use people in other countries like India and the Philippines and everything like that, which is, so I think it's more to that. I think if you like put our jobs, I think AI and outsourcing, you can't AI and you can't outsource problem solving. So if you're solving problems, then you're just hiring the people to implement the problems you're solving. So if you wanna talk about in manufacturing, I think a lot of supply chains, I think we've realized, we've hit the limits of globalization where we have these long supply chains spread out to maximize to the penny. I think those are gonna shrink massively and not massive. I think they're gonna shrink a lot like apples and trying to move a lot of their production out of China because they realized the risk of having such centralized production in China and they're looking at Vietnam and somewhere else too, to build more factories, because yeah, so yeah, I think more of the supply chains are gonna be less spread out. But in the tech industry, it's gonna continue to, so. All right, do we have one more question? Are we good? Oh, here we go. Hey Nav, thank you for that.  I apologize, that's okay. The one thing that just occurs to me while you're talking about this is that we all have set costs, like just when I walk into my office in the morning, I've got the monthly Adobe subscription, I've got, I don't know, plugins, quick books online, all these things. I've never taken the time to actually add it up. I mean, do you recommend, almost like when people do a budget for your home, like your living expenses, do you recommend doing something like that? I mean, in looking at, I don't know, there's some things that you just have to have to open the doors, just open your business. I don't know, your thoughts? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a whole course on budgeting.  Well, thank you, Nav, I appreciated the message of resilience and keeping our head up. Let's give him a hand.


The next side of business is consideration of business motion 1-3603, in the name of Dolfos Patrick, on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau setting out a revision to the business programme for this week. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press a request speak button now, and I call on Dolfos Patrick to move motion number 1-3603. No member has asked to speak against the motion, therefore I now put the question to the chamber, the question is that motion number 1-3603, in the name of Dolfos Patrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next side of business is consideration of business motion 1-3601, in the name of Dolfos Patrick, on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau setting out a timetable for the stage 3 consideration of the prisoner's control for release. Scotland Bill, any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press a request speak button now, and I call on Dolfos Patrick to move motion number 1-3601. No member has asked to speak against the motion, therefore I now put the question to the chamber, the question is that motion number 1-3601, in the name of Dolfos Patrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next side of business is topical questions. Question 1, Alison McInnes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, to ask the Scottish Government whether the new women's prison will comply with the recommendations of the Commission on Women Offenders. Cabinet Secretary, Michael Matheson. Plans for the future custodial estate for women, which I announced yesterday, will deliver a bold, new approach to how women in custody are looked after in Scotland, and that they are consistent with the recommendations of the Commission on Women Offenders. The Commission on Women Offenders recommended that content veil should be replaced by a small specialist prison, that there should be a holistic approach to the management of women in custody to help address their underlying needs, that most women should be held in local prisons as close to their communities as possible, and that women should be encouraged to take responsibility for themselves and learn basic life skills to equip themselves for life beyond custody. We will build a new small national prison and five community-based custodial units, which will provide an estate where the level of security is proportionate to the level of risk posed by a woman, and that will allow women in custody to be located as close as possible to their communities. All of the custodial facilities will be managed by the Scottish Prison Service in partnership with multidisciplinary teams to create a trauma-informed and recovery-focused ethos that responds to the specific needs of women and encourages them to take responsibility for rebuilding their lives. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response, can I say? I really very much welcome his thoughtful intervention on this matter. There is no doubt that yesterday's announcement is a real improvement on what had been planned previously. The cabinet secretary will remember that one of the recommendations of the commission on women offenders was that there should be a separate unit for young women. Can you confirm if there will be a specialist youth unit? Can you also comment on what the Scottish Government plans to do in tandem with the new institutions to help those young women caught in the criminal justice system? The cabinet secretary has raised an interesting point, because in considering all of the matter, we established an independent advisory group who were there to assist us in considering what those different options should be in moving towards a new model of how we deliver custodial facilities for women in Scotland. Alongside that, we drew upon expertise both from Scotland and internationally on how we should approach the matter. One of the things that came through very strongly is that the young women should not be separated into an individual unit. Instead, they should be part of the adult custodial facilities in general. That was a strong view that was put across to the Scottish Government on the matter. There was clear divergence of view with what was in the commission's report and that of the experts and the advisory group, which involved a range of different stakeholders on the approach that we should take. As a result, we are taking an approach that is based on the advisory group and the wider stakeholders in Scotland, and experts have put to us on the approach that we should take. That is not to say that the ethos and the way in which those younger women will be dealt with in those establishments will not be different from that of those adult prisoners. However, we have listened to the views on the matter and there was a divergence of view on it. Given the strength of feeling from those both internationally and domestically who have considered the issue, we have taken an approach that would see the younger women being part of the integrated approach for dealing with women offenders in Scotland. The commission highlighted the importance of family support to female offenders, particularly when they are mothers. Can you confirm whether there will be a separate mother and baby unit and if there will be family friendly visitor centres with outdoor play facilities? It would be fair to say that the Scottish Prison Service has made significant progress in recent years in providing family visiting provision, particularly for those women who have young children in the international group who are here, helping to support the work that we are looking at in the prison estate when they visited Compton Vale and made particular reference to that facility that we now have at Compton Vale. What will happen with the new model that we are taking forward is that when a woman is actually placed into the custodial estate, it will undergo a multidisciplinary assessment to identify what is the best place for them to be placed in order to meet their needs. For example, if there are specific childcare issues and family issues that would lead that multidisciplinary assessment to determine that they are better placed in a community-based facility closer to their home environment, then that decision will be made at that particular point. We want to take a much more holistic approach to how we deal with women when they present to our custodial estate in order to make sure that they are placed in an environment that is most appropriate to meet their needs, including their family needs. The community-based units will be units that will be around for 20 women at a given time, and part of that will be about helping to maintain and support those family links, including where they have children in order to help to sustain them. The other thing is that it is important to recognise community facilities. Those will be community facilities where it will be for the women to continue to do things such as the domestic responsibilities, cooking for themselves and cleaning for themselves, rather than being taken over for them once they come into the custodial estate. The reason for that will be part of the ethos in those establishments, alongside maintaining community links and being involved in different community programmes. However, the reason that we are taking that approach is because it evidence shows that that is the most effective way in which to re-establish women back into the community when they leave the custodial estate and to equip them with the skills that they can sustain in preventing them from committing offences in the future. We are taking a holistic approach to that, and it will be one that looks very much at how we can make sure that we are meeting the needs not only of the women but of their family, where there is an important need to make sure that they are maintained and supported. Christina McKelvie Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I join the 218 Centre for Surruptiments International, the Howard League, Sacro, Tornham Point, families outside many, many women's groups and, of course, the redoubtable Dr Marshall Scott from Women for Indie in welcoming this very, very welcome measure indeed. The cabinet secretary mentioned about dealing with underlying needs in a multidisciplinary approach. I am sure that he will understand that a lot of the women in the prison estate have suffered from mental health issues and addictions. Will the cabinet secretary give us some specific examples of the type of support that would be on offer to allow those women to change their behaviours so that they can break away from their offending cycle? The cabinet secretary has mentioned, Presiding Officer, that we listened to a lot of different views before we came to a final decision on the future shape of our female custodial estate, a number of the organisations that the member made reference to have fed into that process and been engaged in advising the Government on that matter. If I can maybe just give an illustration to the member on how we would envisage the community custodial units operating and we are developing that model with the Scottish Prison Service and also third sector organisations in working that up, it will be a multidisciplinary team that will be based within these particular units. Although they will come under the strategic management of the SPS, they will have a range of different organisations in their working and partnership with the SPS in order to meet the needs of those women who are within those establishments. For example, that might be a case where a turning point can provide particular support and assistance to women within those establishments. It might be a mental health organisation, but what we will also have there is our community mental health delivery programmes in working and partnership with those community units. What we want to achieve is a link between the custodial units and the community so that when an individual woman moves back into the community, it is not a case of rewriting the services and re-establishing the services, it is a continuation of those who are engaged in working with the women while they are in the custodial estate and when they move back into the community. If that is about dealing with mental health issues, addiction issues, those individuals who are going to be working within the community are the same individuals and support groups that should be working with them within the custodial estate as well. I have heard time and time again too often that the whole debate about dealing with issues around justice was polarised on the basis of whether you are either being soft on crime or you are being tough on crime. What I think that we need to do is to be smart on this issue, and that is about making sure that we do not fall into the false dichotomy of being soft or tough, but where the evidence shows us is the best way in which to move forward in this area. The evidence shows that if you want to tackle female offending effectively, you need to deal with the underlying causes that drive that offending behaviour. The new model that I set out yesterday will assist us to take that forward in a much more comprehensive and a much more effective way. In that way, I believe that we can take a much more progressive approach to how we deal with female offenders in Scotland. Annabel Goldie. In the light of the cabinet secretary's announcement, what reassurance can he give to both members of this Parliament and to the public that there will be sufficient capacity to housewomen offenders for whom a custodial sentence is necessary and justified? What I outlined yesterday was, and much of the focus was on, is the issue about the future shape of the female custodial estate. What I also outlined is our determination to make sure that we take forward a range of different measures that can help to act as diversions and community disposals that are much more effective in dealing with offending behaviour. What will now be put in place as we move towards 2020 is a decommissioning plan, which will be about looking at, as we develop the new estate, how we then decommission the existing estate that we have for female offenders. However, as Eilish Angeline's report correctly highlighted, we need to take that forward in such a way that we are careful to make sure that we have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of any women who are referred to the custodial estate. We believe that the right balance between the custodial estate that we will eventually shape through what I have announced yesterday alongside those alternatives and those diversionary programmes will help to reduce the demand for custodial places within Scotland. As we take that forward, we will then look at the decommissioning of the existing facilities that we have. We need to make sure that we do that in a balanced way and we do it in a proportionate way. We will be doing that over the coming years. I am confident that we can get that balance right because it is very clear given that we have got the second highest female prison population of any northern European country that we have not got that balance right now. We need to take forward bold measures that will assist us in getting that balance right. What I outlined yesterday, I believe, will assist us in getting to that point. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with Scottish Water regarding the pollution issues reported across North Lanarkshire. Scottish Water and Scottish Government were in regular contact throughout the incident with our drinking water quality team, resilience team and the water industry team all involved. Communication continues as we seek to establish the root cause of the incident and the drinking water quality regulator will be undertaking a full investigation, as with all water quality incidents. Minister for his response, as a minister is aware, 6,000 properties across Newark Hill, New Stevenson, the L Park, Chapelhall and Curfin were affected last Thursday, with Chapelhall not getting the all-clear until Friday. Could the minister outline when we expect the report on how the incident was caused and give us an indication of how detailed that report will be? I have a time scale to hand for Mr Wilson, but I am happy to establish when that report will be concluded and convey that back to the member and any other member that is interested. The drinking water quality regulator will investigate and conclude that report. Of course, there will be an expectation that any necessary action recommendations will be undertaken, but I assure the member that work continues to be intensive in trying to establish the cause of the contamination and all necessary action. There are also all relevant powers ready to be used should they be required. I assure the member that quick action was taken and a full report will be produced. I will return in terms of the time scale for that report, but it is very important that we establish the cause so that we can act on the lessons learned. Mr Wilson. I would like to put in record my appreciation for the reaction by staff and others getting water supplies to the communities concerned. Given the level of disruption and inconvenience that is caused to the local population, especially those who are particularly vulnerable and with young children, what provisions are Scottish water taking to ensure that such an incident does not happen again and how do they build confidence within the population of this area to ensure that they get that full confidence back in terms of the water supplies? Water quality is, of course, of the highest importance and, as soon as there was any concern that all the relevant actions were taken, I can inform the chamber that I was in Scottish waters national control centre just this morning and, of course, I asked questions about this particular incident. Were there any evidence of contamination or a breach, then it is acted upon very quickly and it was in this case. Of course, we can take further actions once we know and we have learned what caused the contamination and that is why an intensive investigation is under way to establish the cause and, from that, we will be informed of what further actions are necessary and, of course, we will take any action that is required. However, there was a quick response to the local communities by Scottish water, including raising information, raising awareness and communicating with people, and I have a very specific approach to the more vulnerable in our community as well. However, the key issue now is to identify the cause to minimise the risk that it happens again. Thank you. The next item of business is a statement by Fergus Ewing on the future of onshore wind as part of Scotland's balanced energy mix.