Good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter our guest today is Greg Shepherd, and this is smart business winners We have not been here all together in a while. I'm excited. Hey Great. How are you? I'm doing great, you know, I'm excited for today's show profit and building value It's so important and you know, frankly, that's where a lot of owners mess up It's not watching the profit margins I think that's Okay, I'm gonna sum up the entire show What I'm gonna say in one sentence. All right guys ready? Yeah. Yeah, okay You must compete on quality don't compete on price that was two sentences, but anyway you got it and It's so important to make sure your price right I think that's the biggest Mistake I see most owners make is they think they have to have more pricing To get business and that's not true. That is absolutely not true you know, I've talked to you guys before about buying other businesses and that was always that was the most Common reason for a business to selling they didn't price their product rights their service rights and they weren't Making any profits and I guess it's sort of you know, people can be very Nervous raising your pricing, you know, you're thinking that you raise your pricing your customers won't be happy but That is so not true and in fact if you raise your pricing Above the competition, you'll find that You'll be able to have Not only bigger profits, but you'll have the money in order to provide that quality service You'll have the money to be able to find and keep quality people you'll have the money to market properly and It's amazing But a little bit of increase in your prices. How much profit that can bring into your business That was me look at the focus they is compete on quality not a price And do that you get a price or services perfectly You know, I'm thinking that's probably more important now than ever with what's happening with prices in general and inflation if you aren't Like that now is not the time to be competing on price because whatever it is that you're charging You know, if you're charging what you used to charge you aren't charging enough Yeah, you're you're absolutely right time and you know I'm assuming that if you're listening to this podcast you have a house thing service That means that you've survived the pandemic I'm sure you guys probably experience the the lose the flood of business that came in once the pandemic had Subsided and my only guess I mean there's pent up the man But there's more demand than what would account for that my guess is that maybe not every main service made it through So yeah right now Just because the man's high you need to adjust your pricing. It's basic supply and demand Because I think right now the markets There's not enough supply to meet the man, which is you have may servers right now This is a golden opportunity. It's amazing When you refer to supply are you talking about companies are you talking about companies who can't find enough cleaning professionals? I'm just talking about made services. I mean, that's that's the only thing I can think of that why we've grown So much, you know, I'm sure you have the same problem was it last year in March March April where We were caught off guard. We didn't have enough people to match the man and that was frustrating, but it was an opportunity for us to Actually streamline our interview process and to get Find the talent quickly and get them higher quickly. So it made the business stronger Well, did I go to great? Yeah, I have a question for you. Did I just hear you say that you are no longer having the problem that you Have too much demand and not enough employees. Did I just hear you say that? Yes, actually One thing that is okay. There's few things we had we had a very selective hiring process I found out quickly that we need to get people in here quickly. Well quickly So I pretty much streamlined our interview process Didn't work a lot of the flood that we didn't really need basically to get people Go through the quantity go through hundreds of applicants to find that quality and get them hired as quickly as possible And making sure that the ones that we hire will stay around and that they lose quality work So I wanted him and hired for accident hire, but I actually moved who might be aids to hiring to be a recruiter and so his job was to post that job everywhere and get it many outings that he could calling hundreds and hundreds of athletes and so he devoted his full time to this and He took on hundreds of calls and was able to find the very few quality applicants that we could actually have for in-office interview and a quick audition audition is basically sending them out with One of our top teams so they can actually see them. You see how they work before we hire them we came for the day as I see but Seeing how they work Then we knew what we're going to get and we knew whether we should hire them or not and so that was great We'll find a lot of the people during that time Okay, I heard three things one You streamlined your process you simplified it shortened the time frame between application and hire and then I also heard that you Brought on or that you went you hired somebody to just run through Massive quantities one person to do the whole process and they just run through applicants and then third thing is that you Are putting them out in the field day one with an experienced team To get a feel for and I think I heard you say that you hire them on for that day as an IC independent contractor Yes, and just for that one day. Was that right? Just that one day and my team They were first back and we know whether they're gonna be it, you know a star five-star cleaner or not and that's one of the you know, if you have make service to that because one The ones that you hire will be with you for a long time and you know that they're good You've seen them in action to your training period Ard went from you know two weeks down to a few days and three lower lower turnover rates, you know that this person's most likely gonna work out and You know having a high turnover rate. That's Expensive People keep them Especially we're talking about profit. It's not good for the profit No, no, no so we get that five-star cleaner and They're you know, they're they're given our customers five-star cleanings and that keeps our quality up And that keeps our customers coming back and that's how you keep competing quality Rather than the price. Yes, our pricing It's a little bit higher than average Frankly We should raise it we've raised it a couple of times since the pandemic and we should raise it again because Well The man's not slowing you and by the way, anybody if you're afraid about raising your pricing Just do it for a week. You would happen You'll be able to measure how many customers you get then and compared to what you had last week and you'll see most likely Well likely you'll see that you haven't this hasn't dropped off And if your prices are super low, you might actually see your pricing rise Not pricing rise, but your number of customers rise Yeah, that reminds me about a study back at college at university and it was a marketing course and There was a company We're getting big help basically there was a company that had superior products Or cheaper than competition, right? Superior than the competition, but yet cheaper than competition. You think that'd be a winner? It's a fail They found by raising their pricing to match the competition actually a little bit higher than the competition The product took off. Yeah, people associate price with quality Perception absolutely. Yeah, like it or not and even if you think you you don't you do They do and you know Like I said, if your price is higher than average, then you have the money to afford and keep good people. I Wrote that down when you said it and I wrote a check mark and then I wrote a check mark because you've now said it three times And I love that you said if you raise your prices, you'll have the money to do the things you need to do You you said you'll have the money you'll have the money And I love that idea. You will have the money because so much of the time we hear people say I can't afford to do that. I can't afford to do that. I can't afford to do that raise your prices I want to say real quick. I want to say hi. We've got Whitney over here. We've got Sophia from Jamaica West Indies and we've got Judith So y'all good to see you here back on smart business moves. We were away for well, actually We were never away. Did you do it last night? Yeah, we were here with Diana and her daughter we Yeah, and I was on the week before so you guys didn't experience it but we did we I feel like I missed you guys I was gone for one week. I'm like, oh, look everybody's here. So good to see you all. I'm curious With the three of you Whitney, Sophia and Judith. Have you guys raised your prices recently? You hear Greg saying that how important it is to raise your prices And I'm sure you also heard him say he's raised his prices a couple of times Since the pandemic and he's looking at potentially raising them again So how about you guys? Have you raised your prices and yes? Good job, Judith And one was last time you raised them. Have you raised them recently? Are you going to raise them again raise mine a couple of times? Hey Pam? Yes, I'm good. I'm glad everybody's raising their prices. How about you Whitney, Sophia? 10% across the board nice. You said you've done it a couple times November nice All right, so looks like everybody is on board with getting your prices up where they belong and Starting to make some more money that will have money In you know the timing for that not because we were talking about the inflation part of it But there's another part of it as well that goes along with that that people are kind of programmed at the moment thinking that everything should be costing more and Just kind of a nerdy Economic term called elasticity of demand and in a normal world with the price goes up the demand goes down But demand is relatively inelastic at the moment people are charging more in some cases a lot more and They're still people still buying it at the same rate So the odds of like losing business or not getting new business because you're raising your rates it's a lot lower now than what it is under normal times and You know there's some thought that maybe we'll see the economy slowing down You know sometime next year maybe because of some of these same economic factors And it won't be nearly as easy to raise your rate. So for all of those reasons we want to do it now Well, I love that all the smart business moves Watchers all have raised their prices in the last few months and it looks like Linda is the The last to raise her prices in September and she's doing it again this month. So that's Only six months out. I remember when we would talk to people about raising their prices once a year And we would get so much pushback Yeah, right There's no rule saying that you you can only do it once a year And this is for like existing customers. You can just go back and say hang I know that we did a rate increase six months ago. I really hate to do this But gases, you know, there's how much a gallon and this and that and you know I have to do this so I can responsibly provide you with the quality of service that you're used to back to Greg's point I can't give you quality service. I'm not charging enough to do it Yep Love the message. I love to get rid of the test that you may not want You have some So you have some trouble from the customers you're gonna raise your price a little bit more than the rest and hope that they might That's the best opportunity right when demand is high That's our number one opportunity to be able to call From the bottom get rid of the people let them go get cleaned by somebody who's charging less money. Yay And your quality will improve if another main service owner told me a few years ago. She called in two percenters You heard of 8020 rule. Well, this is the two percent ninety eight percent rule two percent of your customers We'll call it ninety eight percent of your problems Get rid of them and your staff. Well, not only will their morale rise, but they'll actually have More time to think dedicate and allocate to customers that deserve your service because the two percent tend to be the ones that take up most of your time with complaints Demands and such so overall it improves your service. So if you can fire those bad customers And doing a price increase is a nice way to fire them with Yeah, minimal, uh, I guess push that yeah You can find a nice way to let people go and now that's even easier than it ever was before too I love what judas has to say here So even if you get pushed back great exercise If if you lose 20 which is a big number It's rare to lose that that much even if you lost 20 though You're going to make it up in the 80 with the increases absolutely and you get rid of the customers who aren't Aren't promoters absolutely. I love that too. Those are not the people who love you The people who are going to drop you over your price increase. They don't love you They don't spread your name around saying how amazing you are good. Let them go work with someone else. I love that Thank you But yeah, you would I don't want to say you would never lose 20 but that is You know normally normally two three percent, you know, maybe and Every once in a while you got a customer that's grossly underpriced and something happened along the way that You know, that almost doesn't count. You know, if you double their rate, then you you know kind of like Greg's point, you know, it's the The where they call it the pita tax that you charge somebody, you know a lot more than than what you would normally And then they'll quit in half the time. They'll find out that the other service is is like Doesn't not nearly as good as you were and they'll want to crawl back. Yeah, that's a whole nother discussion Actually, it's to this discussion as well Because that is another way that you can add value Another thing you can do is when they leave you can always send them out the grasses Is the grass still greener? Email right Yeah, you can send that out three months in six months in and give them an easy way to come back Because for some people they can't come back after they've left that's a pride thing or they're embarrassed So giving them a nice easy way. That's another way to be able to Provide some value there If some of them will it's like, well, I really didn't feel comfortable calling but since you like reached out to me.  So I think this is what everybody is having Happen right now. She raised 61 customers lost none. That's what we're saying. That's what everyone is seeing Back in the day. I know people were really nervous about raising prices So they've raised them like 10 at a time. I'll raise 10 this week. I'll raise 10 next week I'll raise 10 the week after that because in case I lose them all Nobody ever lost all their customers. Anyway, that was never a thing but people are afraid And so they thought that this was a safer method. But right now The percentages that people are losing are so tiny That well, and I don't know why I'm preaching to you guys. Looks like I'm preaching to the choir over here Y'all have been raising your prices really regularly. So I'm gonna stop now. Looks like y'all got that Our job here is done. Yeah. Yeah All right, but talk to us more Greg about how we can add more value so we're going to raise our prices great looks like everybody's on board with this plan and then What do we do to increase the value? This is one of the things that a lot of people struggle with is this idea of How can everybody does the same thing? How can I find like my unique selling proposition or my thing that I do better than the other people in my area? How do we do that? Um, look raise pricing one you can afford the best people and keep them Uh, as we talked about give her to your bad customers Your staff will have more time to allocate to the customers that deserve your service um Here's something um that I've found to be really useful at at Dallas maids and Emily's maids is For example, right now we're looking to hire office manager in the office and We part of our interviewing process for The office staff is we have them take a This assessment and we use the steering group. They've been fantastic and What this does next I have one right here um You go through your applicants you find three to your top applicants. They seem perfect. You have to take the this assessment and Joe over there. Yeah, that's oh you got it. You got it You got it. And so You talk to joe joe's the guy who's with the steering group and he'll walk you through um why this applicants perfect for this job And it's great after a while, you know, you learn what to look for in people And you find the best uh candidates the right people rather you find the right people for the right job Who's going to give your customers the best service that will they'll take care of your staff because frankly Management makes all the difference in the business You've got to have the right management taking care of your people and taking care of the customers And that right there is probably one of the biggest things that you do To add value to your service So not only are these great for finding the right people But if there's a you need to have a delicate conversation with one of your people um I always reference reference this So I know how to best communicate with them In a very effective manner. So these are yep invaluable. So i'm glad you have that list. That's awesome So I actually also Sell those disc assessments through cleaning profit builders And I I do those assessments with people So I am a huge advocate of of doing the disc assessment um, I It's a little pricey for cleaning professionals, but like you said it's for your office. So I I love that you're saying that I think it's Spot on there Greg spot on I also love the motivator section, right? There's a the whole second half of the behavioral assessment is the motivator section and So many times we try to motivate our people to do good work by By doing things that are not actually motivating to the people that work for us We are not like the people that work for us people that that run their businesses go out of their way not to have jobs Are not motivated by the same thing that people who want jobs and have jobs are motivated by So I love that section as well. I think super useful Oh, I thought I wasn't reading quickly enough Judith So I thought you were going to say that you had fallen in love with Greg when I read that you had the same tree I was going to say that you wouldn't be the first person a lot of people fall in love with him So ours is customer service get back to everyone within 24 hours. So there is an idea Uh, have y'all read? Oh, what's the name of the book? Uh What's the name of the book with the qbr? Anybody Tom q q b r Or I just read it. I just had it in book talk last month. You'd think I'd be able to remember It's uh, Mike mcallywood's book clockwork All right, so if you haven't read the clockwork, you might consider reading clockwork They talk about the qbr, which is the queen b role It is the role in your company That you want to protect. Yes, linda. Thank you that you want to protect at all costs This is the role that In your company makes or breaks you And I love this idea of the qbr I think it sounds like that's what judith is talking about too that customer service your customer service Is that qbr for you? If if you can't make that happen if you can make that happen Consistently and persistently you will be successful. I love that I love that. Yeah, find the right people for for customer service So importantly, um You want to find somebody that is Warm friendly able to connect with people you want someone that's likeable Because if you have somebody on the phone for the customers that is ultra likeable Your customers are not only more apt to buy your service But they're actually more apt to forgive you when you mess up Good. Yeah, it's actually it's one thing that's hardwired into our brains each and every one of us So if you want to make people Buy your service and you want to make them to be more understanding forgiving of you Um, then you want a really friendly person on those phone customers So we're talking about your little high eye over there, right greg. Yes. We want some high eyes. Yes. Yes. Yes, and This is And here here's a here's a study. I can't remember where I read it, but it's fascinating And I bet you can probably google it. So There was a study on malpractice for doctors What doctors got the most malpractice lawsuits? And what they found was that there was not a correlation between how skilled the doctor was The correlation about whether he's gonna get a lawsuit or not Was how friendly he was how likeable he was He was likeable less lawsuits I'm believe it's like crazy.  I'm ready Just drop of a hat right not that I would do that, but On other things that's that's the case. Who am I gonna yell at right? I'm not gonna yell at the super family super nice person. I'm going to yell at the person that is Already so I completely believe that So there you go find the right people to man the phones find the right people to mention people And that and critical value And make sure I'm sorry. Please go ahead. Oh, just make sure your prices are high enough with the board and keep the best quality talent One more check mark next to that You know, we we've Are like halfway into this discussion and we really haven't touched upon something that I think is is is unique to greg and the way he approaches creating value that I think would be worth bringing up as well is You have two separate cleaning companies two separate brands with two separate approaches to service delivery in the same market in Dallas And as a side note, they both like rank incredibly high from an seo standpoint, but you know, you roll all that together, you know How does that fit into creating value? Hold on before before greg answers Greg you were like a dog at the races. You just jumped right in. We didn't even have a chance to introduce you So Right, I mean he was like we're on let's go I know I'm like, wow All right, tom you want to tell us what you Um, give us a a rundown about greg just because you already started with that well greg, you know owns and and You know operates two different cleaning businesses and a very competitive market, dallas, texas um The actual brands one of them is dallas maids and the other one is called What's the name of your endless maids? And I'm going to do a screen share here And Well, maybe Oh, I love it. Are you going to show them one and two? I'm there. Yeah, well, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna see what happens here and Here you go So greg how long have you been in the cleaning business? Well, tom's pulling this up Sure. Well, dallas maids are founded in 2004. So that's been 18 18 years. Yep. Um, oh here we go. So we have dallas maids. Emily's maids Modern maids. Um, yep, uh, they they've actually, uh Put a little fire under my butt and I've been working my sco to present them, but um, it's a matter of time till I uh, you know, operate them But you're ranking both on the front page and two the three slots on the map Yeah, modern maids kind of came out of nowhere. Hold on, you know, we're Everybody give them a bad root. I'm kidding. No No, no, no, um, but You guys Yeah, there's out of nowhere, right for greg. He can't hear us very well Yeah, I can hear you now. So I'm glad you brought that up tom. Um, my two made services, you know, uh so emily's maids I started that um with the idea of Sending customers that thought dallas maids was too high in price Uh to the second lower cost maids service. So I did everything I could to um Make it just a lean Green cleaning machine.  So now dallas maids is, you know, uh You know, it's a you know Higher than average, but I think emily's is probably more around average now But if someone calls dallas maids and think our pricing is still too high, my office staff still says, hey, you gotta check out emily's maids um, but yeah, they it's uh They've both been good and not only is you know, that was the the original purpose was to funnel those customers that cost conscious customers to a second maids service But actually having two maids services. The other benefit was just the synergy between them, you know, if uh If we didn't have enough, um, you know Cleaners one day we could just hire the other maids service and cover for each other. Um, so it's the synergy between them actually improve both services, which is quite nice Yeah, I've always thought that it was amazing Um, I started to try and do something like this at one point in time a couple years back And it was so much harder than I thought it was going to be started going out started going okay in the beginning But we quick quickly decided. Yeah, this is not for us. It is difficult it is and You know, we did this a long time ago with an acquisition and we branded it a a a different, uh Company and we ran them separately and the the other company was a lower price point to castle keepers and After a couple of years basically we just kind of took quick customers We had in the lower price service and rolled them back into castle keepers and kept going so You've uh, you've really been successful at doing something here, Greg.  You certainly have Yeah, it's just um, you know companies actually do this all the time. Um, for example, you go to the cereal aisle and you have Raisin brand and then you have the generic version, right? um The generic version of course is cheaper, but you know They're usually the same product uh, because Those who produce raisin brand they they want the ones that will pay just for the brand name That's it. And then they want the other ones that want, you know, are more cost-conscious same product just differently But I do have to say Greg for a lot of people that one with the brand name it does taste better ask them. They'll tell you Right There's a higher level of trust they Grew up with that and they Trust Tony the tiger who knows what's in the generic stuff Yeah, um, this is Even if I haven't tasted it. I know it's not as good as the name So I've got a one bed one bath every other week service for 101 21 I go to Dallas maids Similar motif for 102 85. So It's a dollar 50 cheaper over here So you're not giving away a whole lot with your economy service Yeah, the uh try try one of the uh try a bigger house um, okay And definitely try the detail queen um The detail point you'll see definitely difference, but go to your houses Three bedroom two bath is usually the most common here, but yeah go five four See what happened So 266 262 so Oh, well, hey, not much different Well, that's what you said Greg. You said that you started raising their prices And there was no Dallas maids pricing again Emily's is catching you you got to go Yeah That's awesome. Um, do it do a deep clean. He said that on the detail clean Look at did you see him go over there and write a note? I saw that I saw you lean over and write a note raise prices at Dallas maids. I saw that exactly what I wrote You're welcome Greg. We're We're glad to help How do I change the scope of work to uh detail clean How do I change it to detail clean? Would that be a one time? Oh, okay. Sorry. I didn't hear you for a second. Um, just click on a schedule an appointment And then under extras pick the deep clean Oh, okay You don't want me to you don't want me to do all of this No, just pick the deep clean and you'll see You don't want me to put a credit card in here. I know I think he probably does Tom No No, all right I love that I love that you have the best house cleaning service in Dallas by cbs. That's awesome too Social proof you got to use it. If you have any recognition like that Make sure your uh people see it. It's the social proof is one of those other things which um People think they have a choice, but they don't they're actually programmed to buy from you if They see that other people have already chosen you whether you drive past a restaurant Let's say you drive by two restaurants one's empty the other one had the long line Which one are you gonna go to you know the one's the long line has good food so people and this is um again one of the things that are programmed on our mind is um We will uh go with the company that has already been approved by a third party So, uh, yeah, if you have some uh party legitimate, uh, not parties, but uh wards Make sure that They're somewhere where you're uh where people can see them Yeah, that that's a different type of value than we normally talk about right when when people are talking about Increasing the value in your company so that you can have more profit Usually what they say is You know, what kind of free services can you add on what kind of extra things can you do? But really social proof that's more valuable That's she'll that's the trust factor so This is cbs tv. This is interesting. So this isn't necessarily an award. This was Something that cbs tv said so i'm assuming this was like a local affiliate with cbs tv and Yes, um Were they interviewing you greg and you were quoted as saying best house cleaning service in dallas on cbs tv No, no, no, I had no idea I found it and I was a really pleasant surprise when I found it They um had a place on the website tv station website with uh what they said, you know, they thought these are the best, you know Uh, I think there's three or four mazes in the vfw area and who there's Emily's maize I don't know how they found us, but I'll take it and uh, you'll be able to find a link to the article on my website there Um, but you know, I'm gonna put that right on the very top where we can see that Yes, absolutely. I love that Yeah, that social proof really makes a huge difference. Well, it really is the exact same thing is why? Uh, a lot of people buy raisin bran instead of the fake version, right the generic version Actually, even right there.  It's just yeah, it's real Okay, check out what I just did here best house cleaning service in dallas I just googled best house cleaning service in dallas I'm going to scroll down here on the first page and cbslocal.com Oh, there you go. There it is right there Saying that's nice Somewhere in here Say there's somewhere or at least it was uh, Certainly you know what if you were reading that you wouldn't even need to go find the the article Seeing it clicking on it not being able to find it.   You see, uh award winning service and then you'll see uh You know the cbs tv photos that's house cleaning. Anyway, I clicked there. I clicked the link to the article um But they must take the article down. Um, because it's no longer there. So that's something I need to correct Um, wait a minute. Is this it? Yeah, but you scroll down a little bit and you will see you know the source. Oh, and you click there Yeah And they removed it, but it takes it takes one. Thank you for bringing that up because I need to fix that But what I'm going to do after I get off this, uh call is I'm going to um, uh line There's the way back machine the internet archive And so you're able to go on there. It's the old pages And you bet I'm going to take a little screenshot of that and put it right there so nobody can see it awesome Boy, we have really helped you out today. Haven't we great? We're so glad we're going as a guest You're lucky that we we asked you to help us out You know, this normally charges people for this Um, you're you're getting a deal Ah, that's good. I'm glad everybody's getting a little bit out of this day So I really like that When you're when you're thinking about value, Greg, you're thinking about it in a completely different way than what we normally hear from people instead of Trying to add on things you're just Making what you already have the best So making sure that you have the best people they'll provide the best service making sure that you have the best Social proof that then people will see you as the best automatically. I like this Freight I feel like it's a fresher approach than what we normally hear Yeah They can see they can see you as the best and that's great to give them a door but you've got to be the best to keep them and My focus is I want to make sure the customer's happy. Um, you know Study after study. I'm sure you probably already know this Hiring a maid service is one of those things that can actually make you happier when you come home to a clean house It takes away the stress and it makes you happy. So we're not in the cleaning business Liz We're in the happiness visit. So we make you happy. I'm making my customers happy. Uh, I want them Um, yeah making happy and don't make you happy I like that angle better Than um, trying to give you your time back. I feel like trying to give you your time back Has been around for so long that it's um too much of a catchphrase now that it doesn't have meaning anymore Everybody has been saying it for so long But I like the happiness factor. I like that that little piece there Rochelle is saying that you're so generous with your time and knowledge Hey, Rochelle. Good to see you. I haven't seen you in a while. Thanks Rochelle So are you Rochelle? That's why you appreciate that. She's also very very generous with her time of knowledge um Yeah, so um One of the things that you mentioned earlier, Greg was that if you hire the best Then they will automatically start doing better service and and Providing higher quality work for your employees I mean for your customers so But you also had Emily's maids that was charging less so Like tell us about that that difference there What like did you hire a lower quality a lower caliber person at Emily's maids? Was that part of the strategy? No, well, you can't You couldn't do that When I started Emily's uh, it was actually Emily's personnel service. It was um, not technically a maid service. It was uh We batched we actually matched housekeepers with homeowners was was our um Motto anyway, it was uh Uh What do you um, I forgot it's the um more of a like a replacement service. Yes exactly and that um, that allowed us to have independent contractors And that was one way to keep the price low to um, I hired the office staff was virtual We leveraged Overseas talent um The living standards in countries differ throughout so you got uh Our office staff was uh virtual and other things too, uh Being an independent contractor your or um having them you were able to avoid a lot of costs like uh insurance and benefits and stuff like that but but um even though Legally, we were on the right side of uh, I see Texas came in and said hey No, you got to have employees um, so We had a switch over to employees And that raised the price a little more and then you want other things such as uh insurance and benefits So that raised the price a little bit more. Yeah, um, but It was interesting live and tom you're raising the pricing and there was no drop often demand So what's as you can see? What to stop you from raising a little bit more um So that those are ways that in beginning our price was much lower but Frankly, like I said from from the very beginning you wanted to hit on quality not a price and for me that was uh a real-life case study just that Yeah, well, I think that The you have the proof right there on the website We can see right there on google Google is your proof look here Especially I know that you want to raise Dallas maids prices right now But what we're seeing is your prices are pretty much the same And so you have been able to raise after the show But but to your point you've been able to raise your rates even on your low company Up up up to the point of one of the higher Higher price companies in the area. So I love that Well, does anybody have any questions for greg? I know that Tom we said we wanted to try and ask if anybody had questions more often because Well, I was going to say we But we want to ask our questions first So we just never get around to that So We'll work we'll work harder on that All right, so it's anybody have any questions for greg Um, go ahead and if you do put them in the comments. Otherwise, we're just going to keep talking because We I always have more questions part of my I think it's part of my genetic makeup that I never really ran out of questions How about you tom? Do you have anything? I just think it's really cool the way that you structure your businesses and they complement each other and um Do you see that? Having that structure is that like morbid advantage now that you know prices are going up and you've got pricing power and the demand is higher that synergy, I mean you're You've always you've been successful without model pre-covid, but now that we are in this the special time Do you see like is it like powerball? Is it just like an extra boost? You're getting out of that business model Extra boost as in Extra, I mean you're able to generate more revenue Through the synergy than what two separate companies could buy themselves and the pricing power And everything, you know the excess of the economy Gotcha, you know a two company a two company model. Does that have any particular advantages when the economy is really hot like it is now? Gotcha No, yeah, like I said, and by the way, I'm sorry you were breaking up there. That's why I couldn't hear you But absolutely that both companies like I said earlier are better because they work with each other Um, and you know, you don't even have to have another company. Um, you know, even before Emily's maids I had worked closely with other The maidservices and we really helped each other out um so, yeah, just Working with whether it's your other maidservice or whether With another owner of another maidservice It only lifts you up and you know, that's actually one things that That was my view from the very beginning when I started Dallas maids I didn't really see the competition as competition There was plenty of business out there. I saw the moors as partners and that really helps out a lot You know when I started out, I had a lot of Owners that really helped me improve my business starting out and You know now it's great and you know, rachel that's why I love helping other people because it's now my chance to give back just a little bit of what Other owners have given me. Um, I guess I got a little bit of a tangent there, but yeah, having two maidservices synergy between them um Even passing employees from one to the other For example, I had a big key that worked with dallas maids for years and um She had a personality problem with someone else But big he's one of the best maids uh house finishers I've ever had So she left dallas maids, but I was able to bring her into Emily's Exactly. Um, so a little things like that which has really lifted up both both things Well, rachel has a question here that goes to this as well If if this is one of the ways that you can Use use the two companies she wants to know if you have one office That fields all the phone calls for both services and dispatches both Or do you have each office running itself separately? Nope Well, I have one office and you go to dallas maids and under about us and take a view and I love my office. Um We have one office and You know before I had at Emily's maids. I had a virtual office manager But actually now I have an office manager. That's in the office. So it's the same office um Still separate companies separate separate staff separate cleaners um But haven't I found having someone here locally grandly's maids that virtually I found it really even adds more to synergy because you know Someone's here in the office things yell over the next room and say, hey, you know, you got room I'm you know I'm packed this day And also it's it's great because you got more people. They're able to cover each other so Both cleaning companies are in the same office. The only I guess Emily's maids official office is not this address, but rather another address Our rental property I have and so that way I have two addresses Which you need separate addresses for a group of my business That's really behind that Okay, that makes that makes good sense to me All right I like kind of like what you said about having Having them in the same office building but in separate offices So they kind of yell back and forth and get a little synergy that way as well Well, the thing I wanted to ask about was um I the profit margin so um You have a you have your your profit with Dallas maids. Obviously. What are you looking at here p&l? Well, I had a feeling that you uh, yep um Okay, let me tell you something this I'm I'm excited. I I I didn't really know I should I should I should really keep up with my profit margin I don't um, but so anyway, this is from 2021 Okay and 3.97 34 What I know Here you want to get a screenshot? Oh my gosh, that's amazing. It's too small to see but that's that's amazing That is that for um, both companies are Dallas maids. I don't know emily's. I didn't get uh, Didn't feel for that but Emily's maids is probably 33.92 not The dollar 50 difference on a job would make a difference I guess wow That's amazing. I like seeing that You know what that is a really great way to um end this show listen if you don't think that now is the time to be raising prices So that you can have the money that you need to hire the best people So that you can continue to raise prices have better people provide better service and to um to compete on quality Then I don't think there's better proof than that 33.97 profit and one and three I think in the in the map pack That's pretty compelling argument for for your point there craig That is about as good as it gets Yes, yeah, yeah I'm usually that those kind of numbers we're seeing closer to um independent contractors, right? Crazy oh so um If if that actually actually if that Yeah, but definitely closer not with employees. You don't see that very often at all so I work with a lot of Cooking businesses and we talk about net profit all the time with in our strategic success circles And yeah, I think that's probably the best profit margin that I had seen and and quite a while so It's pretty impressive. I like it. I'm jealous, but I like it Well, this is uh, this is a good good uh place to end, you know, I mean We've kind of set the bar high We're uh, we're going to be covering this topic. I guess for the balance of April We're uh, going to be back, you know next wednesday five o'clock eastern Greg as always thank you for for sharing and and and being part of smart business moves today I mean you're an awesome operator and you're an awesome person too. We appreciate that Thank you for having me on it's always a pleasure. Um Had fun. Appreciate it Thank you, Greg All right, y'all see you next week Bye. Bye y'all


I'm sorry that's not what I had to say but I think we better get started. I'm sorry that's not what I had to say but I think we better get started. This is a welcome party for Bob. So Jelly Bean is the thing it is. I'm just going to say, yeah, he did. He's shooting with his wrestling. He's too old to have a son. We're glad to have you. I'd like to say I'm most grateful about the bipartisan approach that's been taken on the international affairs in recent days on the Hill. And I can tell you that I haven't had a great report of this. At least the son of the one that's been given from my friends overseas. Our country stands a little taller. They've taken cognizance. Now that the MX comes to the floor, I hope that this can continue. And if we can, the Waters Edge show the rest of the world the flavor of disagreements we have here and locally in our internal affairs. That's the normal mantra that when it comes to the Waters Edge, I run on silent. I feel that the most important thing, as I've been saying to some of you and to many others, down here visiting recently, is that it not only provides a deterrent that is absolutely needed at the time, but most of all, it gives us a great chance in those negotiations, a reduction in the number of misses. And I'd like to just say another word also then about our other international affair, which is Central America, Latin America. And let me if I could, I've never had a chance to say it and give you what my overall dream is, and my vision is with regard to our neighbors down here. I had this dream for some time. When I made that trip down there, I said to the leaders that I met with, that I know in the past with all the best intentions our country has grown a number of times to our neighbors with programs or plans for better relationship. But maybe we've been insensitive, maybe we've been insensitive to our size and to that feeling again that still we are the big goliath of the North. And so we have come, said to them here is our plan, our idea. And then I said, I'd like to come down and find out what your ideas are. And I pointed out what I see as the relationship and the very uniqueness of this hemisphere. We all came from the same origins. All with the European background, all came to this whole hemisphere that was virtually waiting to be developed. We had that in common. There's no other place in the world for the North Pole and the South Pole. We worship the same God. And I can't describe to you the reaction when I would say to them, even though we are a number of nations in North and South and Central America, we have something that again is unique. And that is that when we cross a border into someone else's country, we're still surrounded by Americans because we're all Americans. And I was amazed at their reception of that, as if they didn't know that we ever felt it, because it is true that we probably more than anyone else used the term America as the name of our country and describing ourselves. But they were most pleased to hear it. And that's why I think that what's going on down there and the needs for us to proceed, to continue, to try and alter what we all know is a social structure there that has made subversive laws, made dictatorships possible, and is now responsible for what's going on in these countries. And that is a social order in which there is only one division. There is an upper crust, and then there is a great mass of tessentry that lives in what we would consider as a substandard way. And this is why I repeat again three-fourths of our eight is, and we'll continue to keep economic, the interest we have to have with resorting to a military situation down here is that how can they proceed for the things they're trying to do? Land reform, for example.  And as long as they are under fire, there is a limit to how much they can do in proceeding with the human rights and the improvements economically. When power failures put industries out of work or closed down, and thus the employees are out of work, then they're right back where they were hungry and dependent on someone to provide subsistence. So there is an importance in resolving that military issue. And this is why I hope we can have the same by-fives and approach. I am delighted that the funding is going to continue for what we're trying to do, and the all we've asked of Nicaragua and continue to ask repeatedly is, mind your own business. Stop trying to overthrow a duly elected government that is at least now trying to make the effort to come around to the kind of society that they should have. Stop supporting as they are radical bands in Costa Rica and Honduras, Guatemala, where democracy has taken root. And you'll continue to try to talk to them. But again, as I say, I just hope that we can continue on a bipartisan path. I can tell you this from my meetings also. The concern about American forces becoming involved, the best of friends still with that memory of gunboat diplomacy of years ago, they will say, no, no, help us, but don't. Don't send troops. Don't send forces down here. So believe me, when there's more than just a lack of desire on my part to get us involved in that kind of a conflict, at the same time I recognize we probably lose every friend we've got at the first time in which I do something of that kind. So I hope that we can continue on the path that we've been on. And now I'd like to ask Don Regan to discuss our subject which has to do with IMF. Thank you.


Welcome to the Crimson Engine. Today we are looking at lights. If you asked me which one light has had the most effect on the film industry in the last, say, 20 months, I would have to say the Quasar tube. Quasar science, based here in LA, makes these amazing lights that have the same form factor as a fluorescent tube, but it's actually a tube of LEDs. So they fit into traditional fluorescent housings, fluorescent mounts, like your old KinoFlo 4x4 banks, but they are bright, they are dimmable, they are quiet, and they are very affordable. Almost every single film set I've been on in the last 12 months has these in some way, shape or form, on set. The reason is that they're super versatile. They're easy to rig. You can, like, gaffer tape them to the ceiling and still get a really nice backlight or hairlight or even an eye light. I got my hands on some about a year ago and I've used them really often. The most common way I use them is the entry level one, which is called the T8. I use as an eye light on a little light stand just below my camera level here, and it just does a lot to lift the levels of my shot. So like that's without, and that's at like, you know, 1 eighth power. You can dim them with these little lamp dimmers and go up all the way and like blow it out, but usually I kind of keep it around there, so there's still a little bit of shape. It's a really great way to use underfill. They're just really versatile and they're light, so you can put them on a C-stand, you can put them on a lighting stand. This one is just on like a little clapper grip. I'll put all these links in the description. Now these are the T8s. They're only 75 bucks. They're daylight only, and you have to add an extra dimmer to them. The next thing up from this is the bicolor tubes, the crossfades. I have one here. I have it rigged to a C-stand arm so that I can clamp it straight in, and I also have it attached to this. It's a drill speed controller. I have that on the end of the C-stand arm, so I keep it attached with the light. These guys are also dimmable, but the reason they call crossfades is they have a little dial in the lamp itself that takes it from tungsten to daylight, which is super useful. They're a lot brighter. They're a little bit thicker, probably because they have two rows of different colored LEDs in them. These bigger guys, brighter guys, actually do more of the job of a key rather than a backlight, a hairlight, or an highlight. So Quasar listened to all the feedback from the earlier models and added a lot more improvements for their next light. It's called the Q-Rainbow. A couple of important design changes. This one has a locking twist mechanism for the power. All these lights are internally ballasted, which means they plug straight, there's just a cable, and they plug straight into the wall. There's no added extra sort of like power pack that you need to hang off a C-stand, and that's what I love about them, that they're really simple. It's one unit and a cable. But these guys, the new Q-Rainbows have a locking plug mechanism that has their own internal power switch. On the other end of the light, they have a little digital LED.  So you can dim on the light itself. You can change the color temperature all the way down at 2000 Kelvin all the way up to 6000 Kelvin. Then you can also change the hue, and it comes with different presets. It comes with blue, cyan, green, red. So you can click through the presets, or you can create your own. It also comes with effects, short circuit, which is cool if you want to plug this into an existing fluoro tube and get a horror effect. It has paparazzi, fire effects, police light, which every LED maker is putting in these now. Really impressive upgrade to the quasar. They are not as cheap as the T8s. 250 for the Crossfade and 80 or 75 depending on where you get it from for the T8s. And for that, you get a 50 watt. Really, it's just a way to make something that's already a really cool versatile, affordable light, much more powerful. You can run these through DMX, you can you can sync them to one another. So if you want to put them in a big bank like some people do, you can have them all following a certain pattern or you can lock them all to the same mode. So when you change the settings on one of the quasars or the quasars change, and really just they they're like I said, they're a really great way to get a lot of light in a tight place and with a lot of control. So that's my look at the range of four foot quasar tubes from quasar science. Quasar was good enough to lend me a couple of these for my shoot last weekend. And I used them in a whole bunch of photography projects that I've been doing. So thanks to them. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments, check out the description for links where you can get your hands on these or find out more about them. And I will see you next time.


In just the last two years since we launched our jobs plan and the LNG strategy that's an integral part of that, we've gone from a plan on paper to over $8 billion of investment from major international companies. All of this activity on the ground means to us that British Columbia is very much the place to be if you are interested in LNG. And I'd like today to extend my personal invitation to all of you on May 21st to come to Vancouver for our second international LNG conference. It will bring together experts, industry leaders and investors from around the world to talk about LNG, the environment, the important role of First Nations and communities. I was just in Kyoto yesterday. And as I toured the temples and the Zen gardens. I reflected on a phrase that the priest there talked to me about. And it explains a lot about the Japanese people and about the way you do business. Ichigo Ichie, one chance, one encounter, one opportunity to get it right. And when it comes to the natural gas opportunity, that is exactly what we are striving to do in Japan. We want to get it right the first time.


And this is where we're going to start to talk about equilibrium. So equilibrium sensations, they're provided by what's called the vestibular complex, which can be broken down into the saccule and utricle in the vestibule, which they're responsible for like linear acceleration and the impact of gravity has on our body, then the semicircular canals, which respond to rotation or angular rotation. So in this video, we're going to focus on the semicircular canals. The next video will cover the saccule and the utricle. Let's go ahead and dive in. So the semicircular ducts that are in these canals here, they have hair cells, which respond to mechanical distortion by the fluid that's inside of them. So there are three semicircular canals in each inner ear. We have the superior, which I usually call the anterior canal, the posterior canal and the horizontal canal. So that superior or anterior canal responds to a nodding of the head, so moving forward and back. The posterior canal responds to tilting the head side to side, so bringing your ear towards your shoulder, then the horizontal canal responds to rotation. So when you swivel your head from side to side. So information about all three types of those movements, obviously I can move my head in any direction I want, and it'll stimulate more than one of these ducts. That's going to tell the brain where my head is in space and how it's moving, and the reason that's important is because then I can change the contraction of my postural muscles or I can move other parts of my body to make sure they don't fall over and I can see where I'm going, et cetera. All right, so how does this actually work? So when your head moves, the liquid inside these canals sloshes around. So if I turn my head, that's going to cause a sloshing around of this liquid inside these canals, and it's actually going to cause the receptors, the hair cells, which are there at that, the cupula, and then we have what are called stereocilia and one long kinocilium. They're going to bend, but in the opposite direction. So as I move, the liquid's going to slosh in the opposite direction, and it's going to cause them to be stimulated.  That information is actually going to be sent through the vestibular ganglia to the vestibular branch of the vestibulococular nerve, which is cranial nerve 8, and then it's going to synapse with vestibular nuclei in the brain. So this is going to be how your brain receives information about rotation of the head in any possible direction. So how can we fool though? I'll give you a couple of examples. So if you spin around really fast and then stop, this liquid is still sloshing around, so your brain's going to think you're still moving for a while longer. This is why I would never get on a ride like this, but this is why you'd feel dizzy after a carnival ride, a amusement park ride, these types of things, or just spinning around in a chair, right? Just doing those types of things. I remember an incident I had with the teacup when I was a kid, so I don't do these spinning rides anymore. But that's why, the liquid is going to slosh around after your body's already stopped moving. Another example that students often bring up to me is when they get the spins, if they consume too much alcohol. So alcohol thins the blood and it actually changes the density of the fluids that reach the cupula compared to the blood. So this can actually distort these hair cells even when you're not moving.  It's actually an issue of the fluid density, triggering these hair cells without movement. All right, so that's these semicircular canals and how they respond to rotational movements and help maintain equilibrium. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day, be blessed.


We just made these giant door tags using our Cricut and our Glowforge. We even made a bow. And we'll show you how we did it right now. What is up? Welcome back. Do you like to do a builder to make it? We do too. And we have a new video each week. This week we're starting our fall decor. We've had a lot of questions and requests for fall decor already. Even Christmas decor, but we're not quite there yet. So we're going to start with a fall decor. I'm ready to switch gears and start thinking about that stuff. And we think we're going to start with some door decor. Some giant door tags. If you've been on Pinterest, like I always peruse. And you'll have seen these, I guess they look like just tags, right? Like old fashioned tags blown up. Those old fashioned card tags. So they are tags like you would see on a gift or a price or something, but large enough for your door. And they say different things. So we have two versions for you today. I'm going to use a stencil and create my version.  Yes, he's going to Mod Podge the paper on his and make his decorative looking. I haven't even picked up my paper yet. It's fun. Winging it. It's so fun to wing it. It's fun to wing it. We'll be winging it. Step one, we're going to gather all of our materials. We just needed some MDF. That's how we're making our tags. And then we needed some ribbon, some paint, some vinyl for Kim's stencil. Some paper. Which isn't here yet because we don't know what it is yet. It's a surprise. I haven't even looked yet. I haven't even looked for my paper. There's something good out there. Yes, I don't know if you guys know, but I'm a former scrapbooker. And I wouldn't even say former. I just don't have a chance to do it anymore. And I have so much scrapbook paper. I'm just going to go pick a box and dig through it and I'll find something. A box of boxes. Yeah, lots of boxes. Step two, we're going to make all of our cuts. I'm going to take the MDF over and cut some tags out on the Glowforge. You can easily cut these out yourself using any board or MDF or even cards. The dimensions are basically one by two. So if your tag is nine inches wide, it should be 18 inches tall. If it's six inches wide, it should be 12 inches tall.  And you can even drill a little hole so you can hang it. And you can use your circular saw and your Kreg track or you can use a table saw or you can even use, if you have a nice, steady hand, the jigsaw. You've got to have a steady hand. We're going to have these in our store. You can purchase them from our store. That's the easiest way. Step three. Step three. Now we're going to paint and paper.  I'm going to throw some Mod Podge down on mine and put some paint on it. And put some paper on it. Not paint. Well, and then we had some challenges where you still have paint challenges. We talked about in our household anyway. We talked about what kind of paint, what colors we wanted for our fall. And of course, orange was the color. But all we have is this tiny little bit of orange right here.  It's not that well, it's probably half full. So a couple of ounces of paint maybe. So we've decided we're going to use a different color scheme and add some ribbon to make the fall accents. And then Garrett's going to use paper. But we will not have a paint shortage for very long. We have a solution to that problem. Our stuff comes tomorrow and I'm looking forward to sharing with you guys a new partnership we have coming up. Yeah, and we'll feature it next week. You guys will get a glimpse next week. I'm going to get my paper. I'm going to start my painting while you go figure that out. So these, I'm going to keep mine relatively neutral. And I'm going to use this anti-slown chalk paint and French linen. Hey, are you there? First one. Orange. Yeah, well you need at least two because they're only 12 inches wide and your board is 18 inches tall. I can work something better. Do, do, do, do. Hey, look at those. That'd be opposite. Oh, the other side. Oh, those are cool. I'll set that aside. There you go. That's what I'm thinking. Didn't even have to dig too far. Let's see what else we've got there. And the great thing about chalk paint here is that you don't have to prime it or anything. I could just put a coat of paint right on these boards. Put this one on. Or that one. How are you going to join these like this? It's your choice. I love the distressed look. I'm just going to make sure I've got a nice coat of mahogany over my India. Just going to try to get it nice and flat everywhere. I'm just going to skip the mahogany a little bit. Step four. We're going to add our designs to the tags. A little word and a design. Our quotes. Our quotes, sayings. I'm going to pop over to the glow forge and cut mine out of some eighth inch MDF. And I'm going to head over to the Cricut and cut mine out of some stencil vinyl or a mask 813. Here we are in design space. We're going to upload our image. We're going to browse for our SVG that we found online. Garrett modified it for me so it will fit on two boards. We're going to import it in and then we're going to resize it so that we can see the whole thing. Here we decided that we need to zoom out a little bit so that we could see the full image. We're going to ungroup everything and then only group the items that are going to go on a single mat. And then we're going to weld them together so everything cuts as one piece. We're going to rotate and then put them vertically one on top of the other. Here control a selects everything. We're going to resize them to eight and a half to fit our boards. It automatically changes the width. We're going to center them on our mats so they're easier to put onto the boards. Select vinyl and load the mat and hit the flashing go button. I'm going to slide into the Glowforge web app import the SVG the design is supposed to be eight and a half wide by 11 tall so I need to rotate it. Then I'm going to set the size decide where to place it on my board I'm going to use a nice meaty spot select the material set the focus this is going to measure the material make sure I have the right settings on the layers and click print and then hit that magic button. Got my words. I just realized I have to paint my words. I thought I was getting away with no painting. Well, what color are you going to paint them? What do you think? Well, I'll tell you, here's what I was going to say.  I hope so What if I just leave them raw like that? They look kind of rustic You could just do it all in black just do it all in black and put your pumpkin in orange and green or something Actually, I'm going to distress mine just a little bit I don't have anything underneath so I'm not trying to distress down to the next layer of paint but I just thought I see some paint strokes so I think I'm just going to rough it up a little bit I do have to paint this orange though So I have something new I'm going to try We mentioned it on our live and one of our viewers actually one of our patrons sent us this in the mail it's the Mod Podge spray on so I'm super excited to try it I'm super impatient going to get a little heat gun just a little because it still can't handle it Looks pretty good Next step to have some paint on Paint that in First board Looks great And little words seem about dry I'm going to glue them down with some gorilla wood glue I forgot to put my a tag top on I'm going to take it over the glue for it to see if I cut out the top of the elk Perfect Oh my gosh you're so clever Step 5 Now we have the accents I think it's just the bows right Yep we're going to make some bows I'm going to have Garrett make some bows I mean look at mine Mine's pretty botanical The whole thing is up and show how awesome they are They look so good Do they even need a bow They actually go this way I think they go this way Hey y'all Hello pumpkin I love them They look so great And mine look good Mine's going to be more of a neutral classy And I'm going to make a pop with our bow Okay so we're going to use our Bow Dabra or something similar This off ray brand Got to give them credit right So The first thing you're going to do is put your little Yeah You're going to put your string in like this And then you're just going to make loops back and forth And then Push it in like that How big I think you twist it like this I don't know But you don't really have to twist it Show me one more This one you don't really have to twist because It's One more I think I got it How many of these do we have to do Like five or six I'll probably get it after like four or five You do that And I'm going to use this Neutral kind of tan And orange polka dots Do I use a lot Of five or six So is that supposed to count these I just use all three of them That's fine I just have a really big thumb Now just tie this I lost count a lot Yes just tie it Yeah great Oh Oh boo It's a pretty flat bow I guess my bow is going to be a little bit of a surprise Because it can't quite tell My bow is a surprise Surprise It's surprisingly ugly The bow didn't come out right Well did you tie it But you didn't finish tying it That's fine put your finger in there No you're going to fluff it now So now you just Probably just have enough loops It's a bow Well His bow is not that cute I'm going to have to get more ribbon For his bow My bow looks like it was run over By a truck Alright I'm not sure Mine's going to be all that much better Let's see Typically What are you doing You kind of come in and cut a wedge Alright go for it Let me cut it You're okay I'm only using the back Wait let me show them I don't show them if I don't do it It's my new bow Let's see what we got here It's really all on the knot My bow looks like it had Some kind of like Mishap With the bow dabra That doesn't even need a bow Mine speaks for itself Like I said We'll get you some better Fish tail You want to get it Fish tail And this one So my bow turned out a little better Than his but we'll get him straight We'll get him a good bow I'm saying I don't even need a bow Alright let's go find you some Horse rope for whatever you say Let's go get some horse rope And I'm going to throw some polyacrylic on these And we'll be good to go What do you think about the paper I love it It's a lot easier than painting Except they have to paint all these things Spray paint Easy easy Cheater So we're going to offer these tags The tag pieces In our store And cut them yourself if you want And probably some of these words So that you can make your own version Of this I think if we spray this What we'll need to do because it is paper And it will sit on a front door We'll spray it with a heavy coat of polyacrylic Just to seal that paper in nice and tight We'll do the same with this Obviously because it has a chalk paint on it But because his has paper I think it's more important Gotta keep it water tight Looks like we're bad out of time Yep Out of time So we'll see you next week Where we'll do it building and make it again There's nothing really to do with the balance right


Welcome to the Network Engineering video blog. I am your host Michael Crane. Today's video we're going to be looking at how to add this label right here to our router nodes. You would think that would be you know fairly simple and straightforward but not really in WPF. It took me a little bit of time and some head scratching to get this to work so I thought I would make this its own little standalone video because I'm sure there's other people out there that had to scratch their heads on this one as well. So yeah so what the goal is today is we want to be able to add a router and it needs to have its own unique label on it so you can differentiate between the different routers especially when you go to add a link right because if you want to if these didn't have labels on them you wouldn't know what router 0 1 and 2 would be right. So if you watched the previous video the video you know about adding the links you're probably going well how do you know which one is which and that's why we need the labels right. So let's get started. I'm going to just jump right in and try to I'm gonna try to make this a fairly short video so if there's any questions if I gloss over something just post them in the comments under the video and I'll try to answer them okay. So I'm gonna start in the main window xml.vb class basically a main window class here and if you remember this this is not new code this is old code this has already been checked in but I wanted to show this router.name. This is what we want on the router as our label right and we'd already updated this property and and this name property right here is actually part of the user control class so so I didn't have to actually create the name property it was already inherited from it looks like framework element right. So yeah so what we do is when we add a router from our main window right when we add a router we instantiate a new router node class call it router we get the index the canvas index oh here so we get the canvas index from the canvas so we know this is a unique idea on the canvas we just marry the two router underscore whatever its index is to make its name and this is the this is a unique name basically any object on the canvas but specifically just for our routers right because we when we go through our nodes we want to search by what type it is and its name right we want to use that as our label on our GUI right so yeah this is I'm doing a diff right now between router node Cisco router node dot xaml this is the original which is already checked in you've already seen this and this is the new one there's a couple things that has changed I took this height and width out of here that really has nothing to do with working on today but I did that so it automatically inherit its height and width from the main window because that's who instantiates it right and so I just kind of cleaning cleaning it up a little bit the rectangle codes pretty much the same until we get to the rectangle fill all this grayed-out lines are what got deleted and all the green lines on the right over here what got added all right okay so here's where the label comes in and and yeah that that's that looks a bit convoluted but believe me it could be worse so I would like to say that I I read all the ends all the documentation on on user controls and you know rectangles or the shape class and fill properties and and visual brushes and all that stuff but I didn't I kind of stumble across this paint with a visual visual brush and this is in the WPF brush as an overview you can just Google visual brush you'll find this and this is how you do it using the code behind but we want to stick with our MVC model so I want to visual objects and XML okay and remember I was saying it could get worse well this is worse I didn't read all the I read some of this stuff right you have to right to kind of figure out what the hell all this stuff means but I basically just took this example here and and hacked away till I got it to do exactly what I wanted it to do right yeah so what they are doing if you read the example is they basically just put hello world on top of this whatever that drawing is right and that's what most of this junk is right here is drawing that that weird shape so once you kind of weed out and all the drawing junk that they added in here which is super confusing they should have never done that but anyway they did so once you weed out all this junk you basically just get you know here's your rectangle and you can say visually have to say visual brush visual I didn't use this and then you have to use a stack panel because you want to you want to put something in the background and then you want to draw on top of it which is gonna be our text so basically you're gonna stack them on top of each other and that's kind of what they did here they drew all this junk in the background and then just added hello world on top of it and that's what this text block is right here so if you look at it see these the stack panel right here and the stack panel background right here that's everything in between this is just that drawing right and then they just add text block on top of it and so that's what I did I just basically took that hacked away out a bit and close this real quick this is a little easier to look at yeah so here's the here's the rectangle visual brush right don't even know what that means I guess it's visual visual but brush not visual see this is where reading the the documentation would probably be helpful but like I said I was just hacking away at that example yeah so we got the stack panel background I just put the router image in the background basically and that was it and then on my text block I just um this margin right here is to center the text right the foreground is white which is basically the text color and this is the text name and if you ignore this binding stuff for a minute you can just put whatever block whatever text you want in between these two quotes and that's it and that's that's how you get text on top of this this rectangle it'd be nice if they actually had a label property for rectangle but and if they do I wish someone would let me know because uh yeah this was kind of a pain yeah so so now we get our text on top of our our router picture right that was just part of it we wanted to be able to add the note name the router's name to each individual uh instantiation of the router of the Cisco router class right and that's where this binding comes in and this right here was a real booger to find um it's it looks very simple once you look at it and I'll explain it here real quick okay so we're binding name which is the um the name of the of the class geez I hope this makes sense uh which is the name of the class um with the element name router all right yeah uh yeah it's it's kind of a scratch right it kind of makes sense I guess but um so I'm I made some changes to the code to see if it would make it a little easier to explain uh what's going on here with this binding because I I think it's important and if you understand it it's it's pretty easy to to implement so up here I in in the user control um name I I put its name as xaml name right and in the class you know I I went ahead to initialize the class name and I said me dot name which is my name is is going to be class name and then I write it out okay you know my class name so it'll pop up down here in the debug window and we go to run this and then then after the main window instantiates the Cisco router node and assigns this to the name right here you'll see that the class name will have to I I added a a print statement right here our debug statement under the edit node which we haven't implemented yet and it just says my class name is me dot name again so it's the exact same debug statement is right here except this is after it's been instantiated and and the name has been the class name has been updated so our xml is binding this is the class name name and and it's binding it to the element name xaml name which is this guy right here let's go ahead and run it and just take a look at it real quick I'm okay so we added it and here's our router it says router underscore zero add another one okay so everything's still working just fine now if we click on um edit that's where I add the debug oh so if we look down here at the debug so here's where I I added the first router add router zero his class name was class name which is what's initially initialized as I added the second router router one and I clicked on edit node and um and as you can see it dumped the debug statement router zero right so um yeah so this is this is the the variable in the class that it's binding to and it's using our control as part of the Cisco router node class so it it knows um what class to get this binding name from okay and okay well if you have any questions I'll I'll try to answer them the best I can but uh yeah it is a little bit confusing and and like I said I kind of went through their quote unquote simple example right here and and yeah I was having problems with this data you know this uh I this is like some kind of two-way binding and this path and all this other junk they got set up right here and after some poking around I I came across you know okay I just want to bind to you know uh something in in the class you know it's shouldn't be rocket science all right let's just stop this and um I believe that says let's see um Cisco router node okay so we went through this uh probably a little too much these these other lines here I was just cleaning up the code a little bit removing and adding um you know spaces make it easier to read uh as far as the code behind goes um oh well here's the junk I added oh maybe I'll leave it in this time and then later I'll I'll take it out all right now for some reason it it said that I made changes to this link dot xaml but for the life of me I don't see it I don't see it doesn't have any red or green so I don't know but anyway I'll I'll check it in I I kind of went to our I went to the github site and I kind of looked at it and said well it looks pretty much the same to me so yeah I I don't know why um visual studio thought something had changed but anyway don't forget you can support the network engineering video blog by uh donation using a credit card and or PayPal or by purchasing products at the muxall store details and links are in the description under this video well that's it for this video I hope it was helpful if you like the video give it a big thumbs up that helps and hit the subscribe button that really helps if you have any questions or comments post them in the comments under this video I'll try to answer them the best I can thanks for watching and I'll see you next time


Going on everyone Sam here late in sports cards rip in 23 tops Cosmic Chrome baseball hobby six box half case break number 52 Pick your teams style read off a list of our names and our teams got Andreas a with the Reds Andrew M Padres Angela G at White Sox Guardians and Brewers Antonio B with the Giants Bradley C Diamondbacks Colby s has the Cardinals Cory s with the Red Sox Dan F. Yanks Joe s twins Mariners and Nationals John W with the Tigers Keith J Marlins Mets Kevin P with the Blue J's Kyle H Dodgers Matt P Athletic Pirates Nathan J with the Cubs Patrick C Orioles Astros Royals and Phillies Rob W. Braves Robert P Rangers Tom J with the Rays Wayne P Rockies and Willie H with the Angels All right, so good luck here everybody. Let's do it again Just three remaining on flawless last breaks of the morning. Come on Facebook again cowboys Packers and Saints all available really good teams there Cowboys a billion vets in that Mean you've got Dak. You've got Romo. You've got Emmett Smith Michael Irvin signed. You've got Drew Pearson Pretty much anybody you could think of as a cowboy that is in there And then you've got a bunch of guys with the Packers Rogers far Watson Dobbs Dobbs who's looking absolutely insane this year Couple other guys as well and then Saints obviously got a lot of a gem stuff You got Breeze. You've got a lot of eye patches as well. Oh, Tony Walker be there again. We'll have one dice roll up to do here As we always do in and there we go. Perfect. Do it right away Star clusters one two left three four middle five six right if it is numbered it's gold or lower Do a separate random at the end for that one card. So good luck everybody It's gonna be a five. I'm gonna go to the right with Riley green on this one and the rest of those star clusters will go Right stars the night Kodai Senga. You're not Alvarez Machado refractor and base Green space dust the Dolos Garcia for the Rangers to 75 fell off when James came in Now got the Sun Adley Roachman nice planetary pursuit congrats to Patrick picking up a bunch of spots at the right before it came Up to time to break. So congrats buddy. There you go Patrick. Very good Adley's all over this case man This is a full case BYC. Oh We've been going nuts with Just with Adley's that is a launch an orbit Kyle Schwabba got two half cases of mosaic after this Ryan Nelson Two half cases of mosaic and then we'll finish off with a case of flawless Thank you all again appreciate that Jordan Walker only one Or only break with spots is gonna be that flawless and there's only three teams remaining That's it. They're all on sale all marked down all pretty solid too And it's a gold entrees him and a step 50 on the auto. Congrats guardians. Nice one there Cleveland Miguel Amaya and thank you to all for picking up spots in the break. That is awesome Making my life very easy always appreciate it Miguel Cabrera refractor Arias and base Gunner Henderson rushman and gunner and base. That is a Walker Bueller Aqua equinox the one 99 Trisha Mackenzie Don't cease and a launch the orbit Ladi junior Nucleus Chris Bryant and Michael Harris Francisco Alvarez ET talent Wander Franco ET talent you leave over to Guero Refractor auto jazz chisel nice one there for the Marlins. Congrats Miami Rowdy Thales Rushman Whit Green Adley base rookie that is a Ronald Cunha Peter Downs Nucleus of Corbin Burns Luis Arias refractor when he passes, you know trout and vado Refractor Sean Murphy Ivan Herrera O'Neill Cruz extra-stress real talent any prop bets today. Nah, not yet. I'll probably do a draft Kings lineup That is a Corey seager orange ray wave to 25. Congrats Rangers. He's doing pretty decent so far Grats on that Jordan Walker to 199 Probably not what needs it On eBay listening needs one We can we can't So That happens Yeah, that there's usually only get one per case So we usually just give it to one of the gems whatever it's on top of so that it doesn't necessarily need one of those I don't think it's one of the base gems the base gems, right? Yeah, that's Raffi Devers, so I Get it though. Yeah, yeah, it should be okay in show. Hey, I know my draft Kings lineup stonk last night Of course, I was gonna put Devontae Adams is my captain, but I'm with Josh Jacobs instead I guess I need I have a huge ramp fan said love watching the angles lose dude. God. It's awesome Plus, well, then we went and blew it against the freakin Colts, so Ronald Acuna the 199 for the Braves.  How'd you let Chris down Jake?  There's one soda on the stars of the night that is Francisco Alvarez Think I mean to my knowledge he is I haven't heard it Yeah They've no backup right now, I think yeah It's Christian Yelich refractor of George Kirby will do you will do anything to just Have some sort of advantage crab legs for everyone. No again guys. We've got three to go in Flawless three tog O Riley green at the rushman rookie is that is dying last night? There's Michael Harris. Oh Stella Nova is Boba chef. Nice one there. Congrats blue jays on the short print very nice very nice Congrats to you at Toronto refractor for nanopathies Junior Three debt bears Joey Vanessa C. Jake knows Said that he did Sam that he did and I said she's had a thigh and last night Oh, thank God, there's Bryce Harper About a bit of radar stream Orange launch an orbit Peter Lonzo to 25. Nice. These look so clean with color dude. I love that Congrats on that Mets very nice That's chiseled. That is your don launch an orbit Yeah, that was nice dude that Alonzo is pretty sick actually Kyle Tucker to 199 we can ox for the Astros and yeah Launch an orbit autos look really good, so you got ink on those and Louisa rise nucleus lube up Planetary pursuit is a mercury of masataka Yoshida. There we go. Corey Hell yeah, buddy. Congrats on that the mercury that's awesome Yoshida very nice sure right into the astronomy PC Kodai Senga Jordan Walker and will be the show legend Kodai Senga And catfish on sir go Cabrera launch an orbit. There's a bot until we won with him. They're like, oh, you know not to do Diamond bro 95 overall diamond Miguel my dough There's a Christian Walker for the d-backs to at 199 a Fractually over beguero hunter green Corbin Carroll rookie with Pena J rod and Gabriel Moreno That is drunk all of Stan Hunter Brown Rafi devils Dirt man Guy straight up went outside and just took a handful of mulch and just started chomping on it What is wrong with you? Sorry I think that's not healthy. That's Corbin Carroll extra-trestral talent.  What are you in tonight and where? Yeah, we'll see nucleus Fletcher I'm uh, I mean how much Yeah Flawless again, hopefully Jason hopefully man Gabriel Moreno to 50 for the d-backs nice one there on the rookie Libertor fracker rookie launch an orbit Rafi devils Cedric Mullins That was an Adley on the back there as well Yeah, just three to go on flawless everybody Michael Harris extra-trestral talent rookie for braids Trace to go on flawless all markdown three to go Cowboys Packers Saints. That's it on flawless Cowboys, I'm kind of surprised still around. They're like Just vets all over the place man same with the Packers Packers are very vet heavy as well For do go nice one there to 199 Equinox for the red sauce that is a Corbin Carroll stars of the night rookie Launch an orbit show hey That's not great Refractor Willie Adamus and Ivan Herrera We've got Stella Nova Boba Shet to 199 for do go Christian Walker Kyle Tucker Ronald Acuna Jordan Walker Walker Bueller to 99 Jeremy Pena to $75 Garcia to 50 Gabriel Moreno to 25 Corey seager Pete Alonzo Andres Jimenez To 50 judge Chisholm had planetary pursuit Mazataka Yoshida and a planetary pursuit the son of Adley Break everybody. Thanks again for the bill up next is mosaic


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing 2020-2021 Panini Select basketball four box one third case hobby break pick a team number 10 where all cards ship and this is the first four box break from a fresh case which will continue through pick a teams 11 and 12 which are in the store now and in low single digits so go get your spots here is our list of customers and respective teams from Matt P in the Hawks down to Jay Durmer and the Wizards last spot mojo shana leary nuggets and the pelicans thank you guys all for getting in on this and let's get going so first thing we gotta do is figure out which four boxes of this case we're gonna do for this pick your team so we're gonna pop open this case or a green gary i i've got options we haven't topped out yet we got green and black so i'm okay with both and i'm sure you with the hornets are okay with that too i'm telling you gary i'm feeling the green tonight so why not so i've got them broken down into boxes groups of four left middle and right dice roll one two for the left boxes three four for the middle and five six for the right good luck it's a six so we're going with the boxes on the right these boxes here will be for 11 and 12 you had the san antonia the one that joe the one that joe did i agree jens we do need another one of one i agree listen i'll stay here and open up until we hit another one of one but you guys got to buy into the breaks and keep me here there's the uh there's the first four boxes that we're gonna do pick your team's 11 and 12 gary also says lebron gold why not it's doing both i'm okay with that i like gold gary there you go and like i said pick your team 11 is at five teams left last i checked pick your team 12 is at nine teams left so both of those will go tonight i'm sure of it um if we sell out another one that pick a team 11 um i will post the next full case as well just 13 14 and 15 which we could possibly also do tonight so you're probably all you guys but select has been unbelievable so far no reason to not do them all and like i said i was feeling a green tonight so i'm hoping to find a green out of five i didn't pull one of those yesterday pulled everything else man if we would have pulled that that last night i don't think i ever would have gone home today probably would have been doing select breaks until i got here today i would have to go offline chicago you know the national there you go david see david knows how to boost it you want to sell out more stuff get more people in there it actually does push it in the algorithm for them to suggest it to more people which in turn brings more people in breaks feel faster you don't have to wait but that's all up to you guys and last box good luck everybody pick your team 10 selects is definitely not disappointed so far this year let's see what we've got here is our final list good luck thanks to everybody for getting in again more in the store drew holiday die cut blue to 249 for the bucks uh that is mike rizinski john marant for the grizzlies and jens mccleese julius randall silver for the nicks and eric ainge rj hampton for the magic brandon morocco and dale ellis for the supersonics which goes to the thunder to 249 jimmy stratton in the thunder deandre eighton tricolor for the suns antoniosis narrows eric bledso silver for the pelicans shon o'leary and john wall white for the rockets and anthony lou that's to 149 rj hampton seven out of 199 jersey notto for the magic brandon morocco alexi pokazhevsky silver sculpt for the thunder jimmy stratton joel mb tricolor for the 76ers josh pruce stef curry for the warriors alfonso mendosa sedique bay for the pistons michael pacifico and col anthony phenom silver magic brandon morocco luke canard silver for the clippers adam richards and isaia stewart for the pistons michael pacifico luke donchich for the mavericks and eric jock john wall silver for the rockets anthony lou thierry saliburton for the kings ray revera obi toppen for the nicks eric ainge and desmond bane tricolor for the grizzlies jens mccleese erin naismith rookie silvers celtics mark basett patin pritchard celtics mark basett onyeka kong woo rookie relic for the hawks matt p and andrew wiggins blue for the warriors alfonso mendosa to 299 box two onyeka kong woo silver for the hawks and matt p kira louis jr tricolor for the pelicans sean oliri last bob mojo james harden silver for the nets benet page patin pritchard for the celtics mark basett lamar odum gold auto two out of ten lakers gary mooglock i know you asked for gold lebron but derrick rose tricolor for the nicks eric ainge denny abdija silver for the wizards j derma blake griffin silver for the nets looks like lamar is doing better for himself i think he was a uh soft pictures of him at the uh a show uh card show in um in atlanta the culture clash culture collision staff curry warriors alfonso mendosa and dairies garland seven out of 99 relic cavaliers shane thorton bogdan bogdanovitch white for the hawks and matt p to 149 for a little while there with him danilo galanari red to 199 for the hawks and matt p colanthony for the magic brandy baraco and luca donchich for the mavericks eric jock jimmy butler tricolor for the heat julian schiltz and malakai flinn rookie jersey and auto to 199 for the raptors mark castonzo tyrese haliburton silverscope nice one for the kings ray revera ant man anthony edwards timberwolf shana leary desmond bane phenom for the grizzlies jens mccleese and verden carry jr silver for the hornets and gary mcglark yannis for the bucks mike rizinski and tyrese haliburton kings ray revera yannis again for the bucks mike rizinski and eric pascal die cut blue to 249 for the warriors alfanzo mendoza box three lamella rookie relic for the hornets gary mcglark pj washington junior die cut also for the hornets to 175 gary mcglark isaia steward tricolor for the pistons michael pacifico anthony edwards timberwolf shana leary and sabin lee to 299 for the pistons michael pacifico james hardin silver for the nets benet page rj hampton for the magic brandon morocco tyrese haliburton for the kings ray revera and tim hardway jr for the mavericks blue die cut to 249 eric jock payton pritchard for the celtics mark basette lonzo ball silverscope for the pelicans shana leary yannis silver for the bucks mike rizinski isaia steward for the pistons michael pacifico jama rant for the grizzlies jens mccleese this is number 10 joyang this is picatin 10 i uploaded it it uh picatin nine it i don't think it's been uploaded uh all the fully processed yet russell westbrook for the wizards j derma silver rj hampton for the magic and brandon morocco zack levine silverscope for the bowls and shan thong kin on and by the way hi how are you jerry culver timber wolf silver shana leary and shekelo neal dual relic magic and the lakers magic is brandon morocco lakers is gary mcglack demian lillard tricolor for the blazers slavic desnick stef curry for the wizards sorry warriors alafonzo mendoza lucadanchich for the mavericks and eric jock precious silver rookie heat julian schiltz that's box three so that dual relic for shack will be randomized between those two teams at the end of the break isaia steward for the pistons michael pacifico and tyrese maxi 76ers josh pruce relic marcus smart orange to 65 for the celtics mark beset isaacoro for the cavaliers shane thorton lamello for the hornets gary mcglack john collins tricolor for the hawks and matt p jane mcdaniels for the timber wolves shana leary and clay thompson die cut blue for the warriors alafonzo mendoza that's to 249 anthony edwards timber wolves shana leary sedate bay for the pistons and michael pacifico auto porter junior to 249 that is jersey and auto that is magic and brandon morocco devin vossel silver scope for the spurs jens mccleese james weissman for the warriors alafonzo mendoza drew holiday silver for the bucks mike rizinski luka for the mavericks eric jock and denny avdija silver for the wizards j denner half of box four left guys to wrap up pick your team number 10 let's get something big to close it out with desmond bain for the grizzlies jens mccleese and jaylon smith green for the suns and tonio cisneros that is 21 out of 75 patin pritchard for the celtics mark basett bam adabio silver for the heat julian schiltz and another dual relic this one is lebron lakers and calves edition so uh the lakers and gary you're going to be in on both randomizers the one for the shack and for the one for the lebron calves on this is shane thorton kemba walker tricolor for the celtics mark basett tyrese maxi tricolor for the 76ers josh pruce patrick williams for the bowls shun thung bogdan bug donovitch silver for the hawks and matt p yannis courtside for the bucks mike grizzinski obi toppen for the nicks eric ainge verning carry jr silver for the hornets gary mcglack and precious courtside rookie for the heat to close it off and julian schiltz so two randomizers to do let me just clean this stuff up real quick we'll get going on those uh the shack dual relic which is magic lakers and the lebron dual relic which is calves and lakers so gary you're up on both of these there's the lebron here's the shack to pop over here real quick dice this will be the first one magic lakers and cavaliers lakers there you go same dice roll for both randomizers one and a one snake eyes two times guys good luck one two shack goes to the lakers gary mcglack and one and two two goes to the lakers and gary mcglack so there you go larry or gary you got both lebron and the shack relics two times on the shack or the lebron randomizer two times on the shack randomizer so nice lebron to close it out for you there's your lebron and there you guys that is the break that uh wraps up 2020 2021 panini select basketball four box one third case hobby break pick your team number 10 from jaspyscasebreaks.com i'm sean jaspyscasebreaks.com thanks for hanging out and we'll see you next time