me spots that's the momentum we need so we need people to be buying 24 hours a day so when we stream eight hours a day we can really take advantage of the momentum so help me out help yourself out help each other out by buying spots on jspcasebreaks.com and then join me and hang out with me tomorrow three o'clock Pacific six o'clock Eastern I'm sure they'll be what Tuesday night maybe TNT basketball we'll watch some NBA tomorrow we'll talk more baseball tomorrow we'll talk NFL tomorrow some talk more World Cup we'll hang out we'll talk about the the blizzard that Rex is gonna be buried under this weekend and all that other stuff so everyone have a great night Rex Husky Dolphin anyone else who's up and awake listening thank you very much thanks for hanging out see you tomorrow three o'clock Pacific six o'clock Eastern


Okay. I guess I'll go ahead and call to order the meeting of what day is it today April 27, 2020. This is the board of directors meeting of Community Television of Santa Cruz County. Would the secretary please call the roll. Yes, Chair Magers. Here. Director Hall. Here. Director Rand. Director Mannheim. President and somewhat accounted for. Director O'Driscoll. Here. Director Launay. Here. Director Shaw. Here. Director Guzzier. Here. All right. Do we know if my tray is planned? I mean, if Mattel is planning on joining us. He didn't say that she wasn't. Can I delegate contacting her? Keith, do you mind? Okay. Do you mind? Contacting her is somehow to see if she will join us. Okay. Thank you. All right. So that's item number one down. We can move on to item number two, which is oral communications. My mouse isn't working. I'll have to use the trackpad. Is there anybody from the public here who wants to comment? Hearing none. We'll move on to the consent agenda. Any additions or deletions? Is there anything that staff or. Or members want to. Modify, add or delete. Okay. Hearing none. Hearing the ons and crickets. We will move on to our consent agenda, which is items four, five and six approve the minutes. Item number four is proof of the minutes of our March 23rd meeting. Item five is to prove the minutes of our special meeting of April 21st. And item six is to approve the finance committee recommendations to accept the March 2020 financial reports. Would finance committee chair. Joe hall like to comment on the financial reports. Actually, we're going to be doing that later in the agenda. And that will be handled under. Number nine. Right. Okay. Okay. In that case, we can. Well, I guess I can entertain a motion or are there any questions? Any items for discussion? Any. Clarification. Anybody wants any corrections to the minutes? Anybody wants to make. Or if not, I'll entertain a motion. For consent agenda. I'll move. All right. Moving both of them. Can I move them both together? All three of them. Okay. So we have a motion from director Mannheim and a second from director O'Driscoll. Is that correct? Okay. All right. Can we call the roll for the vote, please? Secretarial rent. Yes. Director hall. Yes. Director O'Driscoll. Yes. Director Launayette. Yes. Director Mannheim. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Director Mannheim. Yep. Director Shaw. Yes. Director Guedger. Yes. Director Lorenz. Yes. Chair Mays. Yes. Yes. All right. That was easy enough. Moving right along to our regular agenda. Item number seven is a report from the ad hoc facilities committee. I don't know if we have such a thing prepared. Does anybody want to comment on that? I don't know. I don't know. So we just table that for the time being. Well, I have a question about that. And this has to do with our app toss. Project, I guess you'd call it. Yeah. Sure. I mean, given our, given our situation, are we, what's our, are we committed to this? I'm wondering about the whole notion of co-working in this. I mean, I mean, I think it's important for our downtown and our app toss and. And what folks think about that. You know, is that still going to be a thing? Do we convert to offices? How do we, you have to kind of think that through. Exactly. There was some discussion in our finance committee meeting. I don't know if. Becca or finance committee members care to.   Becca has some ideas about the safety aspect that you were talking about. And the times we're in. My point of view was on it, not to get in that we should explore it a little more on the Rio, the MR site simply because it's a good site. They may not have a lot of interest, but we need to see if the numbers work. Yeah. I think that's really a good question. I think that's a good question. I think it's a good question. But, but it wasn't really feasible for us. So I'll let Becca talk about some of her ideas on the safety aspect because it deals exactly with what you said to down the existing one and anything in the future. So. Keith or Tom, do you want to chime in next? Well, the one thing that I would say is, in answer to your question, G. There isn't a commitment at this point. It's just something we're exploring. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's the same question at the finance committee. Does it make sense right now? I think it does make sense for us to continue exploring it. Before we actually. You know, Made a decision to move forward. We want to have a more thorough look at both where we are financially at that point. What, what it looks like in terms of what's going on. Okay. Well, that makes sense. I guess I just wasn't sure how far down it was going to be. I think it's a good thing. You know, I think as the future unfolds. You know, the whole notion of work is, and where people work is changing. And it may be that. These kinds of places are. Needed or necessary. Rather than just people being in their homes, like we are right now, I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I just didn't know how. How far we were committed. So I agree that we should keep looking at it. Keith, do you want to say anything? And then I'd like Becca to talk about some of the safety points. Cause I think that was important when I heard that. I said, well, this is something that everybody should hear about. I agree. I think where we left it was asking Becca if she could. Talk to either Barbara or the real estate agents to see. And I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. Obviously, some of those restaurants who said they were going to go into the center are probably not going through at this point. If maybe they would be more flexible in terms of cutting us a better deal on the rep. So Becca. Yeah. Well, one of the things I think is, I think that, um, I'm in touch with a lot of different co-working centers. Cause you know, we have groups. We have a group of co-workers. We have a group of co-workers. We have a group of co-workers. We have a group of co-workers. We have a group of co-workers. And nobody's thinking that co-working is over. And in fact, some people, like right now, you can imagine there are families at home with parents who both work who are working at home and have kids. And so some of them probably want a place to go. Like to take a shift off from home and go somewhere quiet and work. And we do have people coming to the. Co-working center. I was there yesterday. When I was there. So, uh, people are definitely using their offices, but there were people in the co-working area too, just one or two. Um, you might like to know, you probably don't know. And I should probably show you and probably Janice too. Um, we have a dashboard for the co-working center where people can log on at home and see who's there and how many people are there. So they can know when no one's there and they can go in. If there's just one or two people there, they might choose to go. And we have a couple of phone booths that people have been setting up inside also, which they're not supposed to do, but we're not blocking them from doing that. So people are being careful. And what we're going to do is increase our cleaning so that we now have. Cleaning if, if we were going to, when, when does, when everything is lifted and we can actually entertain the idea of having more people in there. I'm looking into partitions now between the desks and, um, I, I ordered, I tried to order one today. I hopefully I'll get that order through tomorrow. So Ian and I are going to test some things. And also we'll probably increase our cleaning schedule so that they clean every day instead of, um, they do twice. They had been doing twice a week up until this driver. So we'll increase that to, so that it's every day. And Ian always cleans every day, but, but we'll get some professional cleaners to do that and, and take out some of the desks and move them further apart. But we're looking also at some kind of cubicles and some kind of clear partitions so that people are protected, but they, they aren't walled in. They can still see. So, um, we're going to, next time we meet, you'll see some, I hope to have some so that I can show you what they're like. We'll, um, we'll take pictures for you. We have a couple coming so we can just experiment with them and just experiment and see how they work and how they feel. We're surveying, we're trying to survey our group there. So we can see how they feel. Would they feel comfortable in a cubicle? Do they want to have a clear space? Would they want more offices? That sort of thing to get an idea of what they want. There's a problem with the, um, satellite email system right now. So we're not able to email them so easily, but we will, we'll get that fixed. They're working on it. I think that if we can do this thing in Rio Del Mar, we have an opportunity maybe to get an excellent space for a really. Unusually low price. So I think I'm, I'm still excited about looking into it. I don't think co-working is going to go away and, and I learned recently that there are 9,000s, um, independent businesses out there, like people who work from home. So I'm thinking those people could use a break. So I think it, and this is the time, if we can, if they, if they lighten up the restrictions on construction, which I think is in the, in the hopper, it's something that's being looked at. We might be able to build it during this time when we can't do anything else anyway. And maybe not. Maybe that's my little pipe dream, but that's what, that's where I am at the moment. Okay. Good. Thank you. Yes. Thanks, Becca. Um, do any other board members have any. Any feedback on this item? Okay. Hearing none. Um, I guess we don't need to take any action on that. Um, uh, I guess I'll ask, is the ad hoc facilities committee, do they have, uh, is there a scheduled meeting? Um, or is this all in your court right now? Well, we don't have a scheduled meeting because I'm waiting for, I'm, but I was thinking if I got, I, if I get to, I got a call into Barbara who's kind of the co-working person. And she's leading us on the least thing. So if we can get information from her, then I think it makes sense to me, but right now there's nothing to talk about. So as soon as I hear that, I don't know, am I in charge of that committee? I don't think so. I think he does. Yeah. Yeah. So that's. Whoops. Keith might be trying to talk to Matilda. Oh no, there he is. Oh, she's here too. Oh. Welcome Matilda.  I've been here for five minutes. I'm so quiet.  Okay. So, um, if there's no further comment on item number seven, we can move on to item number eight, which is an action item. Um, this is a resolution of the board of directors of community TV. To authorize our executive director to accept on its behalf a cares act economic injury disaster loan, EIDL from the U S small business administration and take all other administrative actions necessary to execute this loan. Um, would staff or. I prepared the resolution. Um, we haven't actually been able to apply for the E. There was a little thing I sent to you again. You may, this may pop up in your memory. Uh, just one step backwards. We've already applied for the first one and received it. Um, Becca can talk about when that's going to actually come up. Um, we don't know yet. So that was called the page paycheck protection program. And that's what on Monday, uh, 10 30. For today. Uh, the, uh, Small business administration opened it up. And this is the loan pro or the program that turns into a grant. And, uh, Becca applied and we were one of the few small businesses that actually got it. Um, because we got in early before all the big companies came in and gobbled up all the money, so to speak. What we're talking about now is something a little different. This is a loan. We don't have to in the end use it, but it's another kind of a financial tool will have going forward in terms of financing in the next few years. If we want to take it right now where we're at. As Becca started applying for this loan right after she finished the work on the paycheck protection act and they froze the loan. And, uh, Congress has subsequently last week, uh, put more money into it. And so it may open up, but I'll let you, Becca go through and talk about, uh, where she is on that. And also just to briefly, update, even though it isn't quite the same on the paycheck protection program. So why don't we finish up with EDIL. And then go to the paycheck protection program. Becca. Okay. Sorry. It's like a bug bill. So, um, uh, this is, uh, the, the EDIL is the, uh, and, what is it's the, um, uh, does that, it's, uh, Existing Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program. Yeah. So it, it is a loans and it is, uh, nonprofits can get it. The repayment, if you pay it back over like 30 years and the, the interest rate is 2.75. So it would be something that would be easy for us to do. And they spread the payments out over a long period of time. Cause the idea is to help small businesses. So last time a lot of big businesses got it and snapped it right up. So I was actually on the website applying when it went away. So I didn't get the application in, but I have all the documents. So I was there at seven 30 this morning. Hitting refresh. But, um, they are what the, the, finally a message came up and it said that there were some people in the queue, like right now, I'm not sure if it's going to be, but they're processing them first. And they said information would be made available to small businesses. So I don't know how they're going to make it available, but I've been checking all afternoon, all every hour I go and check and see if they've opened it up yet. And they haven't. So I imagine we'll be hearing something soon. I'll just keep checking and we're ready as soon as they open it up. We have all the documents. That need to be uploaded. We're all set to go. So that's what, um, it's, it's a, it's an application that you do online. And as you go, you, you finish a section and upload the document and finish a section and upload the document. And so, um, you have to have all your documents ready before. And so we're ready. So on the PPP, that's the paycheck protection program. We got, we got that through county bank, which is an S&P, which is an S&P, which is an S&P, which is an S&P, which is an S&P, uh, which is an S&P, which, uh, we got, we got that through county bank, which is an SBA, uh, lender and our bank. They, um, today was the most exciting day so far. They have been, um, they, they reserved the funds for us. And then they started asking us for a lot of information, which we provided. And you guys, um, It just said pending for review for a really long time till this morning when it suddenly said incomplete. And what it was was they wanted more information. So Mel had the information ready because she's been working with Kulwumba and she knew what they would need. So she had it. And when they asked, we send it right over to them and now our status is complete. So that's a good sign. And we got that, that happened within a few hours. So they're really speeding up now. So I think that probably tomorrow we'll hear something about when it will be dispersed. And what this specific item is, is so we don't have to have a special meeting. If somehow Becca can get through and we get an application in and they say you're approved and you need a resolution from your board allowing you to do this, or except alone, we've already done it. So there's no rushing around. And I just thought, I have no idea what they want. I tried to look at some of the documents and they're rather big. So, and this one, it's different. It goes directly to SBA. So there could be all sorts of problems filing again because I don't know if they put extra servers on if there's gonna crashes. Who knows what'll happen. But this is just a step to be prepared. I did hear on the news today that they were having problems with the server. So. I heard they did crash. How much are we applying for? I'm sorry if I missed that. Well, you don't know until you get in it. I think they offer you a number based on what it is. Like the PPP, they told us we could qualify for 2.5 times our payroll for our monthly payroll. So they have a formula for figuring out what you qualify for, I think basically. And just to share with you some information I talked about in the finance committee. I said in about two webinars, actually three now. And two of them were SBA representatives and they all said apply for both of them. And you can mix and match how you wanna use them. And anyhow, they're all, I don't know if they were drumming up business but I think they make it more business and they know what to do it. But they said to apply for both. You don't have to accept it in the end but get your paperwork in and then you can figure out where you are by the time we get done. And does this act as more like a line of credit or if we, when it's approved, we take a loan but if we don't, I know. I know someone who got it early on and what they did was they were offered that's a lot of money. And he said, do I have to take it all? And they said you should take it all just in case because you don't know what you're gonna need. We don't know how long this is gonna last. And then if you don't need it you can just give it back. So they decided what amount he should have and they haven't disbursed it yet but it's supposed to go into their bank account. So it's not like a line of credit, it's like a chunk of money. But this is money, this is a loan that we will be paying interest on. All right, and my question on that was- The first year is no interest. And is there a early repayment penalty of any sort? No. So if we gave the money back during the first year then we wouldn't pay any interest at all. Yep. That's good to know. And if we needed to use it we could use what we need to use and we could pay that back over 10 years. And the rest we could just hand back right away. Okay, sounds good. Are there any further comments or questions on this item? All right, hearing none, I will entertain a motion. Well, since I wrote the resolution I'm not gonna read the whole thing I'll just move that the resolution to the board of directors of community television authorizing executive director except an EIDL loan. You know, I won't read the rest, but I'll move the item. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second. All right, so that's a motion from Director Hall, a second from Director Lanier. Would any further discussion or I will ask our secretary to call the vote. Okay, Director Hall. Aye. Director O'Driscoll. Aye. Director Lanier. Aye. Director Mannheim. Aye. Director Shaw. Aye. Director Gudger. Yes. Director Rand. Director Rand, you're muted. You're muted, Michelle. I told you I was so shy. Yes. Chair made yours. Approves unanimously. All right, we have a resolution. We are resolved, we are resolute. Okay, so moving on to item number nine. Pardon me, the update on fiscal year 2019, 2020 budget and impacts of COVID-19. Joe, would you like to present on this? I'll start that out and I'll ask Keith, Becca and Tom to add their thoughts. But first I wanna thank Keith and Mel and Becca who spent quite a bit of time on this and the purpose of our having three finance committee meetings in a row was to try to kind of see where we were financially in terms of the impact. You know, the center's closed now, some of our income has changed and we've had some, you know, pretty severe economic impacts in all sorts of businesses and we wanted to determine what it was in our particular business. So since we started this, we had the good news of the Paycheck Protection Program. And then in our first meeting, Becca went through and talked about some of the changes she made. Then Keith did a special spreadsheet and I'll let him walk you through that to determine what the number is that will be short at the end of this fiscal year. And then Tom can add any closing thoughts. There's no action required but we did this for our own information and for your information and for the information of the CTV community. And I guess the buzzword is transparent and proactive. You know, there's all that talk but mostly to see what the numbers were. So Becca, do you wanna talk about some of the changes you've made financially since the center closed and some of the adjustments, some of the increases, some of the few pieces you talked about that started moving once they stay in place or hit? Well, we have been really lucky so far in that we have, well in my report later, I'll get to the details of our webinar service that is new. And we were able to change the way we work in order to, so a lot of you, let me step back a second because a lot of you don't have a clear picture of what we do. So we do the co-working center and you know about that but we also have a team that records and telecasts all of the government meetings. And the city meetings and the city of Santa Cruz and the county board of supervisors meet in their chambers and they're all set up with cameras. A lot of other places don't have cameras. We send people out with cameras to shoot those meetings and we couldn't do that because of social distancing and they couldn't meet together. So we started doing this webinar service where we have the kind of the high-end webinar platform from Zoom and we taught them all how to use it for government meetings in a Brown Act compliant way. We talked to them right away. I sent letters out to them to see if they would wanna try this. And we've worked with several of them. We've created all kinds of documents so people don't get lost and how to go to a closed session from a regular meeting and it's been just a lot of detail work but the upshot is we've kept most of our clients that we're still doing their meetings. We're just doing them in a different way and as a value added, they're on TV right away instead of a week later. So that's been really great. We've done that and that's been good. We've been able to keep our technicians busy and we have maintained most of the income from there. There are a couple of places that decided to do different things and so we've lost a couple meetings. But as soon as the shelter in place goes away, they'll be back because of the Brown Act thing will expire then as well, the Brown Act exception or waiver. So that worked out pretty well and we have been our co-working coordinator has been getting every, we have a mail service that a lot of people have. They may not have an office with us or they might but they have a mailbox there and they get their mail there and so he's been continuing with the mail service picking up the mail at all the different post offices, the big post office in Scotts Valley and then picking up UPS and at Federal Express and bringing those in. So he's in a couple of times a week but he's done the webinar part. The technicians put the webinars on TV or government texts but he does the webinar part. So we've been keeping him very busy doing that. So that's been a good thing. Those are things that we've changed. What we did with the co-working center is we, if you have a membership you can go in because people are paying their rent. So they're allowed to go in. We don't staff it, we do have it clean and we've just put away most everything. So it's sort of a pretty sterile environment. We left the music on for them because they asked for that. But mostly we're continuing on in our regular way and of course we don't make as much money in the co-working center as we did before because we don't have the cafe, people are not, most of them are not there and we can't bring in a new business. We have been running some equipment but that's sort of that part of the business is kind of early shrunken but we managed to maintain one of the big parts of our business which is the government meetings. So those are the things we sort of moved around. Was that what you were looking for Joe? Yes and I thought we could jump to Keith and in your package there's this item here and it says FY 2019-20, Keith created that and if you go to that page, he can kind of walk you through and you'll see what the bottom line is in terms of what we believe and these are projections, they're not final but we're trying to see where we'll be at the end of the fiscal year. So Keith, do you wanna spend a few minutes on that? Sure, on the page, the very first page, we're looking at our revenue and after the titles of the accounts, you see the first column is the annual budget that we approved in February and so this is for the whole year and this is for half of that year having back a full time not as a contract person. The next column was how much of those numbers is left for us to meet. I'm sorry, now the next column is actually where we are at the end of March. So Mel worked with me and gave me the numbers for where we are at the end of March and I would like to at this point before we go to the rest of the columns, go down to the very bottom of that column and you will see that our annual budget amended to 24 showed that we would end the year 11,620 in the whole and that was gonna come from reserves, that was expected, that was part of our plan. Can I just interrupt for a second Jeep? That's on the second page if you're trying to follow it on. So when he says the bottom, not the first page but all the way to the second page. Correct, where it says net income or loss. Yeah, I always jumped to the bottom line. You will see there in the second numbers of column of numbers that Becca has managed our expenses and income to the point where we were almost $32,000 in profit at the end of March. So that includes March's numbers which means the drop off and co-working we saw in March is in there and even with that, instead of being at the end of the year 11,620 negative, we were running almost 32,000 positive at the end of March. So let's go back to where I started at the top. The third column of numbers, that's what I jumped on. That's where I took the budget expectation and subtracted the actuals through the end of March to give us what we needed left to meet that budget. And then the next column is what Becca is projecting we can do in that quarter. So here we have the remaining column, what we need to make to meet the budget we decided on in the beginning of the year and Becca's projection of what we're going to do for this quarter coming up. And for instance, in the County Board of Supervisors meetings we only had $4,000 left billable hours that we needed to make to make our budget. But it looks like for Becca's projection that we're gonna get $9,400 worth of billings in this quarter. And so that's why you see a negative number over there. What I was trying to do is I highlight it with a positive number, the losses in revenue. Well, in this case, we had an increase in revenue. And if you go down, all those meetings are increased except for the RTC and the water district. So negative is good. Negative is good. So that's why you see at the very top of notes less income is a positive number. So less income is bad. And we've gone back and forth on which side in this column to have. This is where we were when I made the sheet. So anyway, you get down to the bottom of operating revenue, total 4,300 operating revenue. And you see that because of a drop in miscellaneous income and I'm sorry, that was an increase in miscellaneous income, wasn't it? Yeah. I'm sorry, because of a drop in a couple of things. Facility and use. Facility equipment uses the big one, right? You see that we're gonna come in with revenue in the quarter, $7,800, $7,900 less than the budget project that we should have had by the end of the year. So that's the impact of the shelter in place on the fourth quarter is that it would reduce our revenue that we had expected back in January for the whole year by almost $7,900. Then let's go through the operating expenses. And their positive numbers are good things, that's savings. As Becca has mentioned in several previous meetings, she intends to spend more on advertising to bring in this video conferencing business, try and get some equipment rental business, that kind of thing. But pretty much everything else, you can see that she's projecting that she's gonna economize in Q4 over what was left in the budget to spend. And let's see. And you'll see that the big number that makes it this expense column high on total 6,000 operating expenses is telephone telecommunications, which was already there July to March. There's no plan to spend any more in the coming quarter. So that's something that already happened and we were still quite a bit ahead. But if you get down to contracted services, you can see that Becca's projection for the fourth quarter is almost over $26,000 ahead of the expenses she was thinking she might spend in the fourth quarter or leftover from the thing. So that's where we're way ahead is in those economizing numbers there. And the same is true of staff development and fundraising. You see almost $3,000 expected to be ahead and you get down to the total operating salaries and benefits at almost $1,900 ahead. So you can see that we're ahead of where we thought we would be by about $28,639 of expenses were doing better than the January budget adjustment projected. And so even though we're $7,800 off in terms of revenue, we're still doing so much better. The numbers are not actually on this sheet but the current projection shows that instead of losing $11,620 for the whole year that we will probably end up $9,000 ahead for the whole year. I would not stop there. Could I ask a quick question? Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. You mentioned that Becca, that you're gonna move the cleaning service to a daily service. Do we know what the financial impact of that is? Well, that'll be in the capital budget. So it will mean we'll buy a little less equipment but it will not impact our operating budget. Thanks. And one thing I wanted to have Tom, do you wanna just mention a little bit? Tom does a tracking sheet that we start all our finance committee meetings with and it looks at the revenue from our co-working space. I don't know, do you wanna comment on that at all? And then we can kind of wrap this up. Immuted Tom. There you go. I'm gonna go down to space again, I'm not, there you go, yep. I think it just doesn't work. I didn't realize I went to a different screen. It probably doesn't work when I go to the space or space button doesn't work. So we have budget ed. Let me look here. The amount we expected to be bringing in was $14,542 per month. That is the amended budget with Becca going full-time. And in February, we brought in $15,229. In March, that dropped to $11,601. I don't know, Becca, if you have a number yet for April, how we're doing. Yeah, it's $75,400. Okay, so it's continuing to drop pretty significantly. Becca tracks that against our break-even, and I know she's gonna talk about that in her report. I track it against what we budgeted. And cumulatively for the year at this point, we are about 13% below where we should be if we were making all the revenues that we have projected. We're about 15,000 behind. And we'll continue tracking that through to the end of the year. Becca, do you wanna just mention now how that plays out against the break-even? Yeah, well, let's see. That number is in my, can you mean for March? So, well, keep in mind that we project what we'll make, but we manage the budget as we go along. So if we see we're not making that, we just spend less. So it sounds like a big gap, and it is a gap, but it's not, we're aware, so we adjust. But yeah, in March, we earned, I have in March that we earned 12,000 in, and then- Let me just mention, so this may be confusing to folks. What Becca looks at is sort of the actual numbers that reflect, Becca, you may need to explain this. Yeah, I can explain this too. Yeah, two sets of numbers. One is what gets reported in the finance report, which is a different point in time than what Becca's talking about. Yeah, it sounds like we're cooking the books, but what happens is- That's what makes our meetings interesting. It's a cliffhanger. What we do is I look at the numbers, I have a dashboard into deskworks that counts all the money, and I can see what the co-working center makes every minute of the day. I know at the end of the day what it's made every single day, and that's based on someone handing us money. Mel's numbers are the ones Tom uses, and Mel doesn't record the money until it actually posts in the bank. So if people give us money on a Friday, I count it, but Mel doesn't until Monday or Tuesday. So depending on when the day falls that I look at it, and I always have to look at it early. So, because the board meeting, you need those numbers. I have to put the numbers in the agenda 72 hours before Matreya sends it out. So they're always a little bit different, but that's why I started looking at the munch previous. So my numbers are higher because the money is in the building, but not in the bank. So for me, for March, I have 12,437. That's all about 800 more than what Mark can show in the finance report. And on a happy note, it's $1,000 more than we made March last year. So. But anyhow. I think we should mark this moment in time because we need to be that way next month. But do you want to have that last word, Tom, and then we'll move on? No, I've got nothing more to say. Okay. I think that we stretched everybody's mind a little bit, but I just wanted to give Kudos to Tom, Becca, Mel, and Keith, because we spent a lot of time going over the numbers. And with the paycheck protection program, I think we're cushioned for a little while and we'll see what happens. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Joe. So go ahead, Tom. I'm sorry, I will have one more thing. Keith's spreadsheet, I think is great. I had suggested changes in the labels for the column, which he changed and then when I looked at him later, I thought, man, those were really bad suggestion. So if you go back and look at it the way I think of it, is you've got what we budgeted and how we amended it in February is the first column. The second one is what we actually spent in the first three quarters. The third one is what we would have left, the budget we would be working towards in Q4 had none of this happen. And the fourth one is sort of the Q4 projections based on what's going on with COVID. So if you do go back and look at it, that may be a little bit helpful in terms of understanding it. Awesome, thank you all for the report. I guess the only question that I still have, and I sat through the meetings, but so initially we were talking about doing a budget amendment, but we decided to make this informational item because we haven't actually gotten the PPP loan yet. Is that right? And that's correct, thanks. For the other one, we could also get the other loan. We don't have it yet either, and we don't know anything about it yet. Okay, so there's probably going to be a budget adjustment eventually, but or did we decide that we might not need one because we may be in a position where we don't need one? Why don't we talk about that at our committee meeting? Okay, sure. Because it's such a moving target. We can say something now and tomorrow could be a whole other different thing. Absolutely, okay. So just to let the board, other members know there may be a budget adjustment coming forward, but for now we just wanted to keep you all in loop as to what the current state of affairs was. All right, so if there's no other comments or questions from board members, did anybody who didn't present have any questions on what was presented? Okay, hearing none, we can move on to the next item, which is the oral report of our executive director to fill in some of the details that we glossed over earlier. Becca, please take it away. All right, so exciting. Oh, wait a minute, I still got the agenda up here. Let me get there is my report. Okay, so while I just gave you a sneak peek there in Joe's report, so I'll start starting with financial. I'm sure you've had enough of that by now, so I'll be brief. As Tom said, we have the $10,000 break-in, break-even number, and in March we were at 12,000, so that was nice, not where we wanted to be, but it was better than break-even. And on paid services, we did 13 government meetings in March, and we started a new webinar service, which I sort of described to you, and so that's a whole new business that we kind of developed this month. So that has worked out really well for us. Not only are we doing our clients, our regular government meeting clients, but we're also doing webinars twice a month for the, they have an interesting name for it. It's the Office of Economic Development Office, that's what they call it, and we're doing two a month with them. We did a few, they're really happy, and they wanna continue, so we're continuing to do those, and those are nice, those we also stream on Facebook with Maitreya's help, and on our web, on our YouTube channel too, so they go out live on TV and over the internet. And we also, in March, the RSVP has been used several times, the city used it to do some PSAs, and other people are using it, and some people are using our podcasting booth as well. Can I ask a question about the webinars? Yeah. Is that something where we actually have somebody staffing in the meeting as the moderator, is that what we're doing? Sometimes we do the moderation, and sometimes they do, we can make them a co-host and they can run parts of it, and we run parts of it, and we run there, sometimes for a couple of them, we actually do their PowerPoint, and we let people speak or keep them muted. So in the webinar, it's different, we have a meeting, so we're all in here together, but for a meeting like that, we use a real webinar platform, so there are panelists, people who are part of the organization, and then the public, and they're in two separate columns, and so we control them, and they can raise their hand and ask questions, and all kinds of things, so it's- But what I was wondering about behind that is, there is a sort of a labor cost that's directly related to the length of the meeting. That's just us kind of turning them on and letting them go. No, no, we have to be there. We have to help them. Okay, so let's see. I moved past my spot. The webinar is RSVP, communications, so we have a line in our, we have a line in the report that doesn't appear very often, it's called mission programming, and usually that's when Keith and I do an elected spotlight, but this time we've done a whole bunch of things. We've done a lot of coronavirus reporting. I've been able to interview the health officer again since we did it once before, before while we were still open, and then I've done a couple other reports like that that have been out, so we've had, I think five, no, four reports, and they've been, we posted them on social media as well as they've been on television, and then we put them on social media as well, and we're getting a lot of engagement from them, and so we've had like 6,000 new people visit our website, which is great, so they're going to, and we haven't had that in the past for a long time, so that's good. It's a little bit of the difference is it's really local information and that, and so people are finding it to be, there's a lot of national information and California information, but what we have to offer is information that pertains to our county, and no one else is covering our county, so this is helpful. Do you know are any of the government agencies linking to our site for those videos? I give them the links, so I'm not, but I'm not sure if they're following through with that. I've given the health officer the links and also shared them with the PIO. I'm not sure how they use them, or if they use them, but we're sharing them around. We have applied, as you know, for the Paycheck Protection Program Loan, and we're also applying for the Economic Disaster Loan, which is those two things, they're both sort of in process, we're very close to receiving the Paycheck Protection Loan and the Economic Disaster Impact Loan is just sort of a, it's we're just in the, we're just going along, we're doing what we can do when they allow us to do things. So that is my kind of short report, it's been a wild month, but I think we've talked about most of what happened already, so there you have it. Great, thank you so much, Becca. Do any board members have any comments, questions on that report? Okay, hearing none. Just want to say a great big thank you, Becca, for everything. Oh, thank you, you're welcome, you're welcome. Thank you. Yes, here, here. Great, so we can move on to Oral Report, Item 11, Oral Report of the VAC Committee Chair. Keith, has there been any activity of the VAC if you had any Zoom meetings? No, nothing to report. All right, okay, then we can move right along to Item 12, Oral Report of the Board Chair. I would like to say my greatest accomplishment this month has been bathing almost every single day. Though I'm so far shaving has looted me, so yeah, I will echo Joe, oh, I did want to give back to Kudos that she gave me credit for helping with the Facebook streaming for the county, but I'm happy to report that I put myself out of a job last Friday, the meeting went without, I actually kind of forgot about it and checked on it like four o'clock and it was already over and had been streamed successfully with the proper disclaimer text. So yeah, so I was not actually involved the day of the meeting, which was nice. And everything seemed to go well and the, you know, economic development folks are very happy with that. So yeah, I will echo what Joe said earlier. I just want to thank, it's been really impressive to see the staff jump into action. Becca, of course, leading them all and Victor and Ian and Lynn and the rest of the crew, and really I'm impressed to see our Finance Committee members turning the numbers and of course, Mel, keeping on top of everything under these trying circumstances. So just want to give my thanks. And of course, all the board members for staying available and meeting for our special meeting to get that PPP resolution adopted. So that's it for me. Let's see, I will have to start. Item 13, are there any requests for items, specific items to appear on the next meeting agenda? So in the last minutes, oh, sorry. Greg, either. In the minutes for the last full board meeting in March, Matilda had requested that in this meeting we review the temporary check policy and that didn't make it to this agenda. So I'm wondering if maybe we should put that on the next agenda, try and do it that time. Absolutely, sorry about that. I should make a note right now for myself. While you're making that note, the other thing that I just wanted to mention, normally this meeting would have been the meeting that we would have brought next year's budget to the board. We discussed that in finance and we expect to bring it in May next month, but we wanted to just have a record for the minutes as well as for the recording, if anybody watches it, that just due to the COVID, we felt like it did not make any sense at all to try to be putting a budget together this month, given what's going on. So you can expect to see that next month. Thank you, Tom, I was supposed to mention that, but I got so excited about everything else. Tom, remember, Becca, and we'll see how much time there is next time, but when we have the next meeting, one item is if you could just, maybe it's in your report, share information you've heard from other co-working spaces as to what they're doing to adjust and just kind of a, it doesn't even have to be written, but just what you've heard kind of information-wise. Yeah, I can do that. And by then I will have also spoken to Barbara. I'm sure I'll get her on the phone. Okay, well, just in that context, because I know we works as it all sorts of trouble and I'm very proud of our little group. Yeah, yeah. Well, we're smaller, so. Yeah. Yeah, Mark's smaller. Yeah, we don't have any foreign investment. Excellent. Okay, so what I have on my list to add to next time is to review our temporary check policy. Were we talking about making it permanent or? Maybe Matilda could speak to that since she was the requester. Yes, Matilda. I just wanted to, you mean that you were talking about the check signing? That's correct. Yeah, I mean, I think I just want to have clarity, you know, and that we'd write it down. I'm not sure we want to do it permanently, Becca, did you want to have it permanently doing it? You know? Well, it is documented, it's actually an official policy written down, but it is a temporary one, but doing it permanently would be, that's how we did that at CMAP. We sent out the invoice with an approval stamp on it and I would do my approval in real life and then because Paul was all the way over in Hollister, he would do his through docuSign and then we would write the check. We would get two approvals on the invoice. So we're doing it a little differently here. We're sending out the check stub and the backup. It works great. And docuSign is, you know, a lot of governments use it and it is reputable and it's impossible. I kept trying, when we were trying to get our internet, I kept trying to send this document that I had the landlord sign through docuSign to Comcast and it kept coming up there blank because you can't just forward them. You actually, they have a lot of security on them. They have to be, it has to be done the right way. So I feel, since I pressed the system and it didn't work that it's safe. And I think it saves a lot of time since so many people that sign are not in the building all the time. It makes it easier to get a signature. Yeah, if I had my druthers, I would like to make it a permanent thing. Maybe that's something that finance committee could also discuss next month and then come back with a recommendation for discussion at the board level. Sounds good to me. All right, pardon my omission. I'll give you a text of the document of the policy. Absolutely. Okay, so if there are no other items requested by staff or board members for the next agenda, we can move on to item 14 announcements. We already announced the date. I think that's probably sufficient. So item, actually I do any board members having any announcements they wish to make about interesting or relevant happenings? All right. Let's get it over with. I could make one more. Let's get it over with, with the COVID. That's not an announcement. Well, the radio's still happening, right Matilda?  Oh yeah, I had a really good radio program this afternoon and I just came back from it. And we had a pretty successful pledge fight, believe it or not. I mean, we, we aimed, you know, for a spring plus ride for eight days, 25,000. We were probably by the end of the day, we have 20,000, which is truly amazing to me. Yeah. And about 26% of the people who donated are new to us. Probably listeners who never paid. That's great. That's fantastic. We have a captive audience now, so. Excellent. Keith, you had something to add? I just wanted to quickly mention this. I was working with the libraries and Becca on this animation package for next year. And the library staff has contacted me. They don't want to wait, but they need something that works in a Chromebook. Whereas what we were planning was high powered computers to run a really high powered animation program. So I'm currently working with a library and I know I had spoken to Elizabeth about this and other board members. They want to try and find a way for students to tell their COVID-19 stories through animation. So I'll keep you updated. I'm evaluating some software now and working with the library and hopefully something will come up. Excellent. Thank you. A wonderful endeavor. Wish you all the best with that and looking forward to hearing about what you managed to come up with. I'm so glad they don't want to wait. That's awesome. All right. So, yeah, I saw a meme today about, it was a teacher waiting to assign their students the 300 word essay on what they did during COVID and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. So they can tell it with animation, a picture worth a thousand words, of course, and 30 pictures a second or 24 a second. That's a lot of words. All right. Well, we can move on to adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn our meeting? I'm not ashamed of the adjournment. We have a motion from Vice Chair Rand. Is there a second? I will second. Second from Director Shah. I guess we have to call roll. Secretary Dramal. Aye. Director Driscoll. Yes. Director Lanyan. Aye. Director Mannheim. Yes, please. Director Rand. Yes. Director Gudger. Yes. Director Shaw. Yes. Director Lorenz. Yes. Chair Mezziars. Who's muted? Yes, thank you. So get outside and safely get some exercise if you can. Garden, drink a glass of wine or something and thank you all so much. See you next time. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Mrs. Reagan, His Excellency, the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt and Mrs. Mubarak, the Arab Republic of Egypt and the United States of America. Mr. President, Mrs. Mubarak, welcome, good friends to Washington and to the White House. One of my more pleasant responsibilities as President. I'm especially pleased today to greet once again President Mubarak, a personal friend and a friend of the United States. President Mubarak is the proud leader of a proud land, Egypt, a country with a special fascination for Americans. Egypt a venerable society rich in culture, a country not unaccustomed to making history. Americans learn from their earliest school days about Egypt's extraordinary place in the history of civilization. And recent history records that our two countries were partners in one of the monumental events of our era, the securing of peace between Egypt and Israel. The first step toward ending the cycle of violence in the Middle East was as arduous, painstaking and wrought with danger as any that a country ever made. It was a tremendous accomplishment and a tribute to the vision, courage and sincere desire for peace on both sides. And President Mubarak, we are heartened by the progress that continues under your dynamic and responsible leadership. In the past few months, Arab countries that broke relations with Egypt years ago have resumed diplomatic relations with your country. It's a victory for the cause of peace and a tribute to your steadfastness, as well as a recognition that Egypt is again exerting the leadership role it has traditionally played in Arab councils. We applaud you at this moment when time and events have proven you right. United States and Egypt continue to work together to broaden the peace that started with that first step ten years ago. The recent explosion of violence in the West Bank and Gaza and the sad toll it has taken in lives and injuries vividly remind us that much remains to be done. The danger of allowing the Palestinian problem to fester is evident and reinforces the urgency of moving toward negotiations. Hard work, creativity and a willingness to take practical, not merely rhetorical steps are needed. Mr. President, if peace is to be achieved, if another giant step is to be made, much depends on Egypt and the United States. We are partners in this endeavor, and Egypt's own experience provides it with special insights. I'm looking forward to discussing with you your ideas as well as our own thoughts on how to ensure that hope displaces despair and real progress is made toward peace. Both of our countries also look with distress on the seemingly endless conflict between Iraq and Iran. The latter's aggressive measures to intimidate and destabilize other countries in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East are reprehensible and reasoned for alarm. Both the United States and Egypt strongly support UN Security Council efforts to end the war, and we share a firm commitment to freedom of navigation in the region and the security of friendly Gulf Arab states. President Mubarak, as your recent trip to the Gulf clearly demonstrates, Egypt has a vital role to play in the pursuit of these goals, and I'm pleased to have this opportunity to discuss how we can work together to achieve them. The scope of our cooperation, of course, goes far beyond the formulation of foreign and diplomatic policy. Egypt and the United States have also made common cause in advancing Egypt's economy and bettering the living standard of her people. America's contributions to agriculture, industry, power generation, and private sector development stand as visible symbols of our broader partnership for progress. A partnership that we expect to benefit both our peoples for many years to come. Mr. President, all Americans are especially delighted that your visit will take you beyond Washington. I hope that in the limited time you have, you will capture a glimpse of America's heart and soul. You will find it in cities and towns across the country, in businesses, in universities, and in our churches. And there you will find a love of freedom and a genuine goodwill to you and the people of Egypt. Your visit, I know, will strengthen the bonds and expand the potential of American and Egyptian friendship. In closing, I'd like to share with you a bit of history. Some may not realize that the U.S.-Egyptian collaboration on security issues goes back over a hundred years. Shortly after the American Civil War, General Charles Pomeroy Stone and General William Wing Loring, together with some 50 other officers from the Union and Confederate armies, went to Egypt to work with the Egyptian armed forces. They worked on military training, helped strengthen coastal defenses, and shared their ideas and their experience. General Stone left Egypt in 1878, and his last job after his return to the United States provides a fitting symbol of our enduring relationship. Stone was asked to design and construct the base for a huge statue designed and constructed by a Frenchman presented to the United States by the schoolchildren of France. Stone went to work with his usual energy. He gave lectures on Egypt to help finance the project and enlisted two of his former colleagues from his days in Egypt to help with drafting the plans and directing the structure. So, Mr. President, when you look at the Statue of Liberty, you can be proud that those who built its solid base spent nearly a decade in the service of Egypt building a base as well for our relationship. Today, we offer you our warm welcome and celebrate the solid friendship between our countries. President Mubarak, welcome. President Reagan, Mrs. Reagan, dear friends, once again, we meet in your glorious capital in order to strengthen the bonds of friendship and understanding between our peoples. The Egyptian people are sending you and each and every American warm greetings and hardest wishes for success and fulfillment. They value the United States as a friend and a partner in the search for peace and progress. This friendship is a lasting one for this base to move to a respect and a profound conviction that all nations, regards of origin and degree, share a common interest in the preservation of peace and maintenance of security. Over the years, Arab-American friendship has served as a force of stability and progress. Today, it remains a source of hope and promise. We are determined to deepen this friendship and intensify our cooperation for our common good. President Reagan has made a great contribution to the process of strengthening these ties and deepening their roots. He's a man of wisdom and conviction. During the past few years, he has taken many steps for the purpose of enhancing world peace and security. We commend him on his recent achievement and congratulate the American people on the courageous steps that is certain to reduce tension and pave the way for a better future for mankind. People of good will should build upon it in the years ahead to maintain insecurity, to eliminate insecurity, and stop violence and suffering throughout the world. Sincere and concreten-concerned efforts are urgently needed for solving regional conflicts. In this respect, the Middle East is a region that requires special attention and top priority. It is confronted with great challenges and rising dangers. The United States can do much to help all nations of the Middle East to cope with these problems. A few days ago, I met with most of the area's leaders and it was their consensus that certain steps must be taken urgently and effectively in order to check the continuous deterioration of the situation in different parts of the Middle East. This is needed not only to safeguard the interests of the region's people and save the lives of millions of innocent individuals, but also to protect vital American interests. The future war, the futile war, which is raging in the Gulf threatens the safety and the security of all parties. It endangers the freedom of navigation and blocks the law of strategic materials that are essential in international trade, as well as the prosperity of many nations. It's an illusion to speak restricting the theater of operations. Even if it happens, the fallout from the war would certainly spread through our region. Therefore, the only real solution is to end the war immediately and bring the dispute to the negotiating table. The tragic situation in the West Bank and Gaza is another source of alarm and concern. It is evident that the continuation of occupation and oppression would bring loss, too, and inflict damage on all the parts without exception. It would badly hurt American interests in the Middle East. It deals a devastating blow to our peace efforts at a time when we are looking for a breakthrough. In the course of our discussion today, we shall focus on these issues in full awareness of their importance and ramifications. We shall exchange views candidly and sincerely and examine certain ideas designed to generate a new momentum and initiate movement. We realize that many governments are preoccupied this year with domestic matters and the national events, but history does not stop and is an absolute must that we continue to move forward to attain our objectives. This is the crux of public responsibility. In the past few weeks, we noticed with satisfaction that the United States under the leadership of President Reagan has taken courageous steps in the right direction. This active role must continue for our mutual benefit. The risks involved here cannot be compared with the damage that is certain to result from inaction and stagnation. African problems need greater attention, too. The debt problem is crippling growth and development in most parts of our continent. An equitable solution must be reached if we want to save the lives of millions who face the danger of starvation and fatal disease. On the other hand, we cannot accept the continuation of the worsening situation that exists in southern Africa today. The fundamental rights of our fellow Africans are being violated and their security is being endangered every day. The fight for human rights and the dignity of man indivisible and we must maintain our firm commitment to work for a better future for coming generations. I'm looking forward to estimulating and fruitful discussion with President Reagan and his able associates and we shall continue to objective exchange of views during the months ahead. We shall always be guided by the spirit of genuine friendship and sincerity, which has dominated our relations consistently. Together, we shall endeavor to serve the cause of peace and revive hope in the midst of despair and frustration. Together, we shall overcome. Thank you, Mr. President.


Number two, and this is for you, Nick, I would say your assignment is never again, for the next six months, ask a why question, because why is gonna create more analysis paralysis? Why is my favorite question? I know, and how's that working for you? It's not. It's not, so change your why's to what's. Instead of why am I thinking this, it's what are five choices available to me right now? And of those five, what can I say yes to?


All right, thank you. I'm Mark Diehl, and this is going to be content explosion through podcast interviews. I had my little trigger warning up there, because I was advised maybe I would not throw in a atomic explosion right up front. Make sure which, all right. I've got my buttons. Excellent. Oh, and I can hear myself. That's even better. So first, I really don't like when speakers go on and on about their bona fides. Obviously, if they're up there talking, then the people that look at the speaker submissions have done their bit in vetting. So let's just say, I know podcast interviews. I've been podcasting about five years. I run Podcast Atlanta. It's a local organization of over 700 podcasters and the founder of Podcast Guest Academy. I've been talking with people for a while. You can find me on Twitter at Mark Diehl pod. But that's not why you're here. Let's dive right into it. All the information I'm going to give you today could be used for yourself or your client.  If you're designing a website for somebody and what's stopping their growth is them putting their own content out there. I'm sure you've never hit a client that had writer's block because they can't blog. Well, this information can help them craft their own content. So first, why? Why do you want to do podcast interviews? Well, for one, social media is actually down. The latest report from Edison Research, their infinite dial that came out last month, for the first time in over a decade, social media usage is down. They're saying we've hit social media saturation. And this is driven a lot by Facebook and Twitter. They've taken a real nosedive, although some other platforms are coming up, Instagram and things like that. But overall, the social media is down. Podcast consumption is up. So there we are. In 2008, 26% of Americans have listened to a podcast in the last month. That's one out of four. And who's listening to podcast interviews? Well, you've got the pie chart right there, but a lot of educated people. And educated people typically means affluent and having some money to spend. So that's a good platform to be on. One out of four are listening. And of those people, they're educated people. So that's something to keep in mind with podcast interviews. Also, companies recognize this, although you saw that stat where listenership has basically gone from 12 to 20, about 2x. Podcasts advertising in that same five-year period has gone up three and a half times. They're projecting $256 million, almost a quarter of a billion in podcast advertising in the United States. And there's probably a few advertising things that aren't on that radar there. But that's a lot. So companies have recognized the value in podcasting and putting ads on these podcasts. But also, there are interviews where you or your client could go onto a podcast and position yourself as an expert. There's three reasons why you'd want to be a guest. The first of which, it's one of the reasons why you're here. It's content. A lot of people, by show of hands, is it easier to talk than it is to write? Anybody? Nobody? Three people? Come on. All right. Let's wake up. I realize, come on. So the last session of the day, let's wake up. All right. So, and I'll warn you, we've got a microphone we're going to be throwing at people later on. So we'll make sure you're awake. So if it's easier to talk than it is to write, a podcast interview is a great way to kickstart that content. Because, basically, it's a conversation with you and somebody else. And then later on, you can listen to that and write about it and blog it on your own website or your content or your clients on the website that you have built for them. Of course, there's marketing of it. You get to expose yourself to the reach of that podcast host and their audience. Yeah, it's kind of a no-brainer, but I'd want to throw it up there. There's a third reason that I have found that podcasting, especially as a guest on other people's shows, is very important, and that is authority. You develop yourself and showcase yourself as an authority, not just an expert, but really an authority by being interviewed from other people on those shows. And again, you can showcase these on your own website and your own email list and those sorts of things. So there's three reasons why you'd want to be a podcast guest. Now, of course, to be on a podcast, you have to reach out to a podcaster. So we're going to talk about these outreach strategies. Why do, well, how easy is it to get on a podcast? Well, I want to point out that interview format podcasts, they need you. They really do. They need experts to come on their show and share what they know to their audience. So podcast hosts do need you.  You could hop on Apple Podcast or Google Play, whatever, start typing in key search terms relevant to your market and find shows that pop up and identify those shows. Like, maybe that's a good show to be on. Let's see if it's an interview format. And then you want to listen to that show. Does it sound like something you're interested in? Do you think your market would be interested in it? Would it be fun to be on that show? Also, is it an interview show? Because if it's a solo based show, they may not have you on for an interview. And I will admit, since I am a podcaster, I would like you to review the show on Apple Podcast. And that's not to say that a review equals you being on the guest. That's just your way of giving back to that free content. So identify, listen, and review. Once you've done that for a particular show, you've found the show, you've listened to it, you have reviewed that show, now you can begin to reach out to the host. You can seek a referral introduction, a lot of times through social media. Hey, does anybody within my network know such and such the host of this podcast? Social media connection, you can connect with them on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, whatever social media platform and connect their social media engagement. If they're active on social media, a particular channel, you find them on that channel and reach out to them and interact with them. Then at that point, that's when you want to reach out and do a social media direct message or private message and say, hey, I really like your show. We'll go in a bit on the way you'd reach out in some scripts. Of course, there is the website contact. If they have a contact form on the website. And then cold email in this order. Some of these, you'll hit multiple ones in the order, but I wouldn't go straight to just a website contact or a cold email. You want to warm up these hosts. If you've taken the time to identify, listen, and review the show, you might as well take the time to go through these steps, advice, a straight, cold email. Now, I'm going to go through an outreach script. It's going to be a lot of text. I'm not going to read it out to you, but I'm going to tell you what's behind the psychology behind the text that I'm going to show you. Now, if you want the script, all you'll have to do is text the word, interview to 33444 on your phone. And I'll show you how you can get the script just emailed to you, then you can copy and paste it. Vice feverishly writing down these notes. Because I'm going to go through it pretty quick. It feels like a love letter, honestly. These scripts, I've done a lot of research on what works and what doesn't work. And as I was composing an ideal formula and submitting it to my fellow podcast host, we were coming up with a love letter to ourselves. And really, that's how it starts. Oh, again, if you want these scripts, text interview to 33444. All right, outreach script. Now, this is an email. You could say something like, hey, howdy, greetings, host name, right? I like to stick to just first name, vice long, formal name. But you want to open up the email. Or should I say, inside joke, right? If you listen to the podcast and there's some inside jokes or some vernacular they use, go ahead and throw that in there. That's going to immediately identify that you know this host, you know their show, and you know their audience. Now, if you're continuing from social media, you could say something like, hey, email is so much easier than doing these DM, PMs, whatever on social media, right? I like to identify that because honestly, I like to communicate through email based on these various social networks on a one-to-one level. Now, just continuing, I like to say first, allow me to gush about your show, some fan mail. And that's when you want to say something you like and something else you like or something you also like. One to three things that you like about the show, right? You're saying, hey, I know your audience and I really like your show because of these few things. And also, you'll want to point out that's why you felt compelled to leave a review on, say, Apple Podcasts.  You could say something, add on to it, say, I consider leaving a great review as the price of the free content. So thank you, we're equitable right now. Depends on your own language. Continuing on, now that I have exercised my inner fanboy or girl, allow me to get straight to the point. I know you want to deliver whatever the host message is to whatever their ideal listener is. And again, sometimes they use their own vernacular for those shows. And I have experience in this and I also have an expertise in blank, right? So you're starting to transition from the show to yourself. Or you could say something along the lines, I'm launching a book, product service on blank and I think it aligns well with your message and their ideal listener. Then you say something like, and just to openly acknowledge that, sure, you probably get a lot of requests because people want access to your audience, but I respect your audience. I respect your listeners because I am one and I promise if I'm on your show, I'm gonna treat it as if the listener is sitting across the interview table from the two of us. Thank you again for your consideration. I'll happily send a one sheet. We'll cover what that is. And also you value their time by filling out any forms that they may have. Some podcasts hosts like myself have scheduling tools to where you can automatically get booked on their calendar. It'll automatically send you out, interview links and things like that. But sometimes we need a little bit more information. Would you be interested in interviewing me for podcast name? And again, you wanna drop the podcast name in there. You wanna talk about themselves and their podcast often. I know it sounds like a cheesy pickup book from the 70s on how to pick up people, whatever gender, I'm okay with that. But you do wanna use their name, their podcast name as much as possible. I look forward to hearing from you, signed your name. Now what is important in cold emails is no links, no attachments. So if this is your first conversation from social media into email, you don't wanna have, here's a PDF of my one sheet. And here's links to my website, don't do that. Not until they've gotten back to you because of spam filters and things like that. Here's an example of a one sheet. It's what it sounds like. It's just a one sheet. Typically you'll do these in PDF, but there's three main sections. There's a hello section, which has a picture of yourself, your name, your contact info, some expertise keywords, the big bullet stuff up there. And then you've got what I like to call the interesting portion of it. That's where you start talking about your expertise and your experience. I like to give about three full sentences of your expertise, like an expertise statement and do the same with experience statements. I'm an expert in this. And I have also done, had this experience in the past, based off of my, which has built up to my expertise and experience. And then at the end, I like to have what I call the yes statements. Your studio setup, like look, I'm not new to podcast interviews. I've got this microphone, I know how to do this. I've got high bandwidth internet, whatever. I list some of the shows that you've been on. Yeah, I've talked to people who've been on over 150 podcast interviews on different shows. Obviously you don't want to list out everything. Maybe just hit some of the highlights. As well as your show promotion, how are you going to promote the show? That's gonna benefit both the host and yourself. So equipment, the screen, I know it hurts the eyes. It's red, it's ugly, but it can also hurt the ears. So do not use a laptop microphone, because it's gonna sound as echo-y as I sound right now on the stage, and my voice coming out in these speakers and bouncing off the walls. Laptop microphones are meant to pick up everything in the room, and unfortunately they pick up everything in the room. Don't use a webcam microphone. It's a little bit more directional, but we can do better than that. An inline microphone, like with an iPhone or something like that, I personally don't like those because there's a lot of rubbing noise. So if I were to hold that, doesn't that hurt your ears? Yeah, imagine thousands of people listening to an interview where you're holding that inline microphone. It's gonna hurt their ears. Or a Bluetooth headset. Hey, I love technology, but I promise, like anything that's wireless is gonna break at the moment that I don't want it to, like a podcast interview. I love wireless, but I enjoy wires when there is a interview. All right, commit yourself to great audio quality. Does anyone know what scene this is from? An old movie, 2000? High fidelity, thank you, thank you. You know, I was thinking high fidelity, you know, audio, and this movie came to mind. All right, money. This is gonna cost some money. There's professional level, you can spend $500 or a lot more than $500, but I'm gonna show you the equipment where you can get almost as good audio quality for less than $100 and with a solid directional microphone and, you know, some headphones. So you don't need to spend $500 or 1,000 or more. You can honestly get by and have great audio for less than $100. So required equipment? There's really only two things you need. A microphone, right? Directional microphone, like one that you see here that you hold on to. Also got a box right here. This is the ATR 2100 and a pair of headphones. If you wanna use the earbud headphones, I'm okay with that. If you're comfortable with it, as long as you can hear the person interviewing you and they can't hear themselves through your microphone. That's why these are the two required pieces of equipment that you need to have for an interview. And again, if you want links to these resources, if you're texting interview to 33444, I'm gonna give you that email script plus links to these microphones and headphones plus some other basic level stuff that I like and a couple more things I'll talk about later. So now that you're on the interview, you need to be able to talk about yourself and your market and to be able to tell stories. People remember stories. Sure, I could say, hey, if you did X, Y, Z and that will result in three times, four times the amount of conversions or your website is gonna run faster if you do this. That's helpful information, but if I can tell you a story about a person that did that and the challenge that they have, you're gonna remember it a little bit better. So we'll talk about story elements, but a lot of times people have problems talking about themselves and their market. So let's cover a little bit of that. Got this explosion again and this Adam, these electrons rolling around. These are some things about yourself, your demographics, your traits, your expertise and your market is like that nucleus. There's what you do and why you do it and who you do it for. So there's things that are kind of inherent about you and things that you have developed about yourself and your business and you want these to be in balance and kind of touch and rotate into each other. I know it sounds a little weird with this Adam diagram, so let's play a game. So interview cards. This is something I kind of came up with as I was working on the project. I'll share, I shared it earlier actually, Podcast Gas Academy. I was like, how can someone talk about themselves and their market? How do these things tie together? So you have your cards. There are your demographics. A little bit about you. Are you on the older side like I am or not? Traits about yourself. I like science fiction. I actually like Star Trek more than Star Wars. I'm sure I might have a couple of friends in here, probably a lot of people in here that hate me for it, but that's a trait about myself. Your expertise, what is it that you or your client is an expert at, as well as the experiences that they've had in their life that build onto those expertise and then what you do or what your client does. So these are your cards and now you need to think about your market cards and that is your market's demographics. Are you serving men or are you serving women? Older people, younger people? What are their traits? What do they like to do? Are they active people or are they non-active people? What problems do they have? What are some of the results that they would like to get? And also why you do this, why you do the work that you do in your market. And as you see, these tie to each other, your demographics to their demographics. If I came on and said, hey, I'm a mom-preneur, that's a new word now, right? My demographics may not match that market so much and if I were to say, hey, I like Star Trek but I like to work with Harry Potter people, maybe that doesn't always tie as well. So you wanna be able to tie your expertise to their problems and your experience with past results as well as what you do to why you do it. These are the interview cards. The ability to talk about yourself and your market, what you do and why you do it. So who has heard about the hero's journey before? I'm sure this is gonna be a recap for a lot of people, three, four. Okay, all right, good. This is new information for a lot of people. I came up with it. No, I didn't, I didn't. It's very, very old, very old. It's incredibly old but it works and it continues to work. In fact, the latest Marvel blockbuster, Black Panther follows the hero's journey much like the very first Star Wars movie does and when you see these elements, you can pick out these elements out of good stories. So a hero's journey starts with the hero, obviously, it's a person. I will say that the hero is not you. It is not, if your client has given the interview, it's not them. The hero is about the person that is listening, the people that you serve. And this person has a challenge, right? And you really need to be able to talk about this challenge a bit. And this person that has a challenge meets a guide. That's where you or if your client wants to get booked on podcast interviews, that is where they come in. They are the guide, not the hero. So to use the Star Wars analogy, you are the Yoda. You're not the Luke Skywalker. And they introduce to the hero a plan. Here is a plan. And this plan is going to help you avoid risk and failure and to reach your goal and resolution. And again, you went a little squiggly there to avoid risk and failure. That's it. So to walk through an example of the hero's journey using the Star Wars analogy that I'm sure some of you have heard before, Luke Skywalker had this challenge of the evil empire. They destroyed, blew up his family on some desert. Again, I'm a Star Trek guy, but I'm using the Star Wars analogy for most people here. And he meets Obi-Wan Kenobi, which tells him about the force and gives him a plan so he can avoid risk and failure and that is the empire taking over everything. And the goal here was to destroy the empire. Website. All right. Now I'm talking about content explosion through podcast interviews and I can't get out of here without talking about website elements because that's what word can't people want, right? What do I put on my website or what do I need to put on a client's website so they can effectively leverage podcast interviews, especially to grow their content, have a broader reach through marketing and be able to develop that authority. So here's some website elements that I like to see and you see this often on podcast websites but they could also be on the website of the guest. So you could guest, or not guest blog, but you could write a blog on your own website about your own appearance. I like to see an album art image of the podcast you're on. You got that graphical element. And of course, a website player away for them to click the play button and it played that episode that you happen to be on. You can do this through various theme options if you're using a WordPress theme that has more enhanced media players, advice just pasting in an MP3 and you get that black bar. I'm sure some of you are familiar with if you paste it into your WordPress editor. You can use an embedded player. A lot of podcasts host will offer like an iFrame embedded player which can be embedded on both the podcast host website as well as your own website. And you can do this through plugins and I'll share a few plugins that will help you do this. We'll talk about that later on. And then of course, blog about your impressions from the interview and follow the typical SEO practices for content. But I will say to include a podcast name. I got a friend of mine. He just hit six million downloads for his podcast which is a pretty big number for a podcast. He's been doing it for a couple of years. If you Google his podcast name he's the second ranked result because somebody who was on his show blogged about their experience on his show and they show up top of Google. He's 16 million downloads. Great, sure. He's top of iTunes and Apple podcasts and Google Play but when you type it into a web browser and Google somebody else's website comes up. So use the interview, listen to it again and then just blog about your impressions of the show. Have that image there. Have the player. Follow typical SEO practices but make sure you include the name of the podcast show that you were on. So some WordPress plugins to be able to do this. If you can't do it through theme options or you can't do it through some custom coding or you're not using an embeddable player like an iframe player into the website. For podcast art gallery I personally like a plugin called as heard on. It's essentially trust badges for podcasts and it's got a lot of options in it. You can embed this onto a page. You can put it into a sidebar widget. The developer of this app actually works for automatic so he's very in tune with the WordPress community. And as far as media players there's a couple of options here. Both of these are paid premium options so expect to pay some money if you wanna use these but there is the smart podcast player and simple podcast press. Two different options that will allow you to create a more dynamic player an audio player for your website. Of course you might be able to Google and search and find some more. It's more about the trust badge. I'll go ahead and skip that cause I really wanna get to some Q and A. Oh, that's it. Thank you. I should say questions but I just wanna thank everybody for giving me the opportunity to talk. We've got time for some questions.


You get stuck.  I've been in such a scarcity mindset and staying where I'm at. I'm like, I'm very comfortable here. I can pay my bills. Then there's the flip side of that where you're not growing anymore. You're just stuck. That's a very scary place to be. I remember I told my wife this was like, this could be my coffin. I made like a huge commitment to sell my house, move like all this stuff. Ooh, let's go. I love that. I know and it's just like, if you think about it, it's true that I was like. What did she say? She was like, we are getting this house. I love that.