Have you ever heard of journey mapping? it's a way to Evolve your personal and professional life in a way that's fun and intuitive yet effective and skillful and I have invited the founder of journey mapping to an interview today And she's actually going to give us a little bit of an experience Now before I bring her on let me read you her bio. So you have some Context for for her background. Her name is Nariah Stein She's a creative journey mapping. She has 30 years of experience as a life coach and professional facilitator She is a strategic planner a massage and Hakomi therapist and A Kripalu yoga teacher and she specializes in working with women Nariah, thank you so much for doing this interview George, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so I understand that you have Some slides to kind of walk us through journey mapping. So I'll let you take over and I may come in with a question here or there Yeah, I would love that. Please at any point feel free I'm gonna go right into a screen share great so I want to tell you a little about journey mapping and this truly For me is bringing together different parts of my life and my experience Having lived at a spiritual community yoga community for 10 years I have a very strong foundation in yoga practice and yogic lifestyle But also a really strong appreciation for We'll talk about like this the strategic planning part So this is a woman's approach to visioning and strategic planning It's about skillfully yet organically creatively spiritually evolving your personal and professional life I did Collage this picture together for myself because to me the path is so symbolic of the path of life the path of our career or life direction our spiritual path and the That colorful kind of aura is really about listening to the invisible parts that help to guide us So it relates to our energy our heart our body You know even nature and what's around us, but it's listening not just through our minds But through all these different signals that guide our lives so directly Just going further on this I think this is very much a woman's approach because I think And it's not just women, but it's the feminine side of men So I think that I have Worked with male clients. I think the more a guy is developed in his intuitive Feeling Perceptual sides that are not just his intellect the more he will resonate with journey mapping I have when I've done courses I've sometimes had it up to a third of the men there and I think that the men are craving this too So journey mapping very much draws upon your spiritual and emotional Intelligence and your longings So I really encourage people to bring to the plate those deeper Feelings even the emotions even if they're sloppy or intense or coming out because there are what I call gold nuggets underneath that and so there's so There's deep inner knowing underneath all of that But I'm also a huge fan of bringing that masculine part to the plate Which is strategy and the intellectual knowledge best practices In fact, I'm one of these people who can get a little triggered if somebody is just following their heart or wanting to Just do things based from the inside because I feel like there's a balance of working with our inner flow we more Emotional realm with also connecting to the world around us and all the wisdom that has been here that people have found from trotting the path, so we work with both and I As a yogi, I've had a practice for over 30 years and to me yoga is a lifestyle It's not just my yoga practice But if I were to narrow that down in some ways, it's about Kind of what lifts the energy? How do we build energy in our lives and What drains it and journey mapping and this is as a coach I'm very much tracking the things that shut you down the things that open you up Because our lives are complex. They're full. There's just there's a lot of levels to it, but When we do the bigger journey mapping assessment, we're wanting to look at what are those things that might be Draining you in their life in your life. It might be Relationships it might be belief systems. It might be what you're doing or Relationships at work, but those are a significant factor that zap your energy Because if we just focus on Uplifting things you can't replace the energy that's going down the drain So that's something we look at and journey mapping also works with which I love which are these more mindfulness practices. So presence Synchronicities Intuition these are the things that happen in the moment But if you're not present to the moment if you just on your strategy or you're just in your practice or caught up in an emotional Thing you're not going to be present to what crosses your path or those inspirations that bubble up and They're very important part of the process I sometimes call journey mapping a synthesis work because it I'm going to show you the next slide It's bringing together these different aspects and we use it both for creating an assessment as well as the path forward, but I also feel it's synthesis because Literally as women as human beings We are a body-mind spirit. How do we use all of our perceptual faculties? in our everyday lives as we show up in the world and Related to that is it's not uncommon that some of the clients I've worked with have been on Some kind of path for a number of years. So I find that people are pretty ripe and fresh to bring together to make a connection between these Aspects of how we function. So it's not all that we can fluidly flow between the emotional intelligence the Intellectual knowledge that those kind of synapses start to connect And I'll just go through this really quickly before I give you an experience So her name a journey mapping is partly I call a holistic approach to strategic planning and Strategic planning might sound very technical or dry to you, but it's actually having worked in organizations It's a beautiful beautiful process that steps back and looks at the big picture of any situation So as you're you know, I'm also a client of Georgia's many of us are evolving our businesses online We have to step back and look at the big picture. What are the elements? What are the pieces we need to work on what makes sense to work on first? so there's different levels of it and with journey mapping um With clients I'll work on anything from strictly Say supporting somebody with a lifestyle holistic lifestyle pieces But more common than not there is a real bridging of work for instance, I'm working with somebody right now who Has her own private practice is wanting to do more teaching But she gets really nervous and so we're starting to work with that in a bigger perspective Because that's an element that holds her back from giving her gifts as a teacher So we'll say more but this of who I work with but This can apply to work to personal to spiritual and all together So starting with strategy and actions which really is our more masculine aspect and as solopreneurs, we really need to engage both our intuitive our you know Relational feminine side with our masculine side that's willing to show up that's willing to cut through that's willing to deal with online systems So strategy and actions is about having clear vision and mission clear to do is direction showing up following through It's it's the showing up in the world Then it's a beautiful beautiful thing and at this stage in my life for me My spiritual path is very connected to showing up in the world the right of this wellness side of Your the holistic strategic plan is speaking more to the feminine aspects body mind spirit Emotions our relationships our self-care sometimes I've even called this not just wealth wellness, but Kind of about your light how bright you shine or Is what your energy how high your energy field is Because when your energy is up, that's when you're a magnet for things. That's when sparks start to happen So if we push ourselves a lot with the to-do's in life, but our wellness is not balanced It's really hard to pull on our other perceptual gifts that honestly are what especially as holistic practitioners give us the edge on the market, but also in Truly sharing and channeling the gifts were here to do so we have to walk our talk Truly as holistic practitioners to live it and to be the channels that we're about and Presence is as I said before mindfulness synchronicity Intuition I speak a lot about this life's guiding signals. I truly feel life is constantly here to guide us I don't think it gives us one signal I think life tells us again and again and again if we're alert to listen so you won't miss it But they're somatic body level signals emotional signals, you know friends and peoples in our world There's all kind of signals coming to us if we're able to stay present and use and digest those So this kind of gives you a sense of the levels we work always when I You know homework and after a session with somebody they'll be clear strategies and actions a wellness of vibrate you know lifting the vibration piece and and presence aspects and What I can say this is something you might want to digest a little or pause But is when these three aspects come together it creates what I call So it invites clear direction, which is a necessity. I honestly having been someone who's just followed my heart I couldn't invite you enough to Actually do this to having that clear strategy that involves in terms of things like Doing some market assessment learning about your ideal clients like starting to look at those concrete things rather than just Trusting your internal intuition. I won't go off on a rift now, but it's really important so clear strategy, but then we have a recipe for quantum shift which is through a combination of the wellness and presence and What I mean by that is when our vibration is high when feeling good that's when You the presence piece kind of taps in and we say, you know what? I think I need to stop at the store today Like this happened to me the other day and I was after work I was tired I was an ugly clothes and I bumped into somebody who it was a very important Synchronicity that we're gonna link up so where it's when we're connected to That high vibration that we listen to our intuition that we jump in that we take risks So and those are the things that lead our path off of a direct Step-by-step strategy because then something comes in That's kind of a little out of the box and then we're able to go over here because somebody invites us to do a talk or somebody says I know somebody else you should connect with and that person inspires me or gives me a little more of how I should present myself so it's So I love that kind of layering So any comments George before I jump into our experiential exercise? No, this is great. I really I really like it I like that you are integrating both the because a masculine maybe or the Or the left brain and you're integrating the right brain and maybe the more feminine And then you're also integrating the the grounding of it all right the the sort of the spiritual Grounding so I like this this integration here. Thank you Thank you and to me it's what speaks to me like when I relate to my purpose as a Human being is when I'm start using all these things and living all these things Then it becomes alive in my work and my daily life And I don't think my feel like my spirituality is something compartmentalized to my practice in the morning so next we're going to go to a mapping exercise and Just to say I have an assessment process that I call orientation mapping it's orienting to where getting a big picture sense of where you are in your life and The idea is to make it really fun and once again to draw upon Different aspects of your knowing so it's not all coming from your mind But when I do coaching and we do assessment mapping might be part of it, but we do so many other levels so mapping is just one aspect, but it's an incredible tool and I am going to invite you all the listeners into an experiential Exercise that's really simple. It's going to be a four-minute exercise I really want to invite you to not have to get it perfect So when I do journey maps, we actually Overlap we have a number of maps to tease out the information through different lenses And we're looking for overlaps, but the idea is to just what's the first thing that comes to mind and to trust that So if you don't have a piece of paper get a piece of paper you might want to get some crayons or just a pen and We're just going to do two segments of a two-minute exercise So the first thing you're going to do is draw a big Heart that's going to fill up your paper kind of like you see on this slide and The next step is it's an intuitive process of how full is your heart and I want you you know how we go the glasses half full half empty That's what this is about. So I want you to just draw in a line and this isn't just based on today Like today might be a bummer of a day or it might be a good day But kind of in general in the last month or two in your life How full is your heart feeling? So you're just gonna Make that line don't judge it at all. This is teasing out information and Then the next step is that you're going to start with the things that are That give you energy in your life So here are some of the things for me my yoga and meditation practice friends and family The mountains here in Santa Fe where I live Nice, I have a really sweet home. I like to hike and dance I'm having some new spiritual teachings in my life and going through a huge growth spurt and I'm doing art So these are all things that really give me energy in my life and I'm going to give you two minutes to fill in what those things are for you I'm going to give you a 30-second notice when it's time to finish up again. Don't worry about making it perfect So you can begin and take another 30 seconds and You can time Tie up that part and now we're going to go to the top half of the map which is to Feel into the pathways that your heart is feeling empty right now and again without Judgment just let just let it flow or human. We're always changing You know something that worked before might feel a little lonely now or empty So just be honest and really this is just like a journaling exercise So some of the things for me. Well, I wouldn't be working with George if I didn't want more coaching clients or I want a life partner. That's a biggie for me more time off to adventure I go through I'm not enough feelings and it's I really invite you if there are some key kind of gremlin voices in the head that are Themes in your life that is something to put there because it gets in the way. It's like a rose or not so fun colored lens that we look through life through and For me. I'm wanting more collaboration with in my coaching business. I I Have so much more fun when I'm bouncing off of people and when I'm more isolated I find it not as interesting So take two minutes to write whatever it is. That's feeling Gives your heart some feelings of emptiness whether it's work or personal and take another 30 seconds and We're gonna stop here and There's one more thing to do and you're gonna do this quickly and intuitively Which is in the top half of the chart. You're gonna circle what jumps out at you on Just intuitively this is not logically what could use some attention for you And this is what came out for me is that there's something about this So I'm wanting you to tune into your body not your mind What jumps out and this is the other one that jumped out for me like life is short and I there's a way I push and I work hard, but this one is jumping out summer's coming So I want you one to three items in the top of the chart. Just circle them great So I'm gonna invite you on your own to go back to those three items Because that in coaching we'd start to work with that and to literally just be with each of those items and Feel because again, it's not which one's the best one to work with but they're different Some will hit different centers of your body You know that I'm not enough for me hits a very different place than I want to adventure place But it's starting to feel into the shockers the emotional intelligence the You know where feelings come up to start to say well, which one of these wants my attention in my life and It's sometimes very non-linear on what moves us forward So that's just an example of a journey mapping exercise Wonderful, thank you so much Nariah for sharing that with us And I hope those who are watching this you've that you've done the exercise yourself and Yeah, maybe it's got some insider or maybe in the breakthrough about What what you're wanting to work on in your life? So Nariah, maybe you could share with us how people can work with you It's if someone watching this is like well gosh I want to I want some facilitation in doing this work And I know this is just we've only touched the surface on journey mapping. There's a lot more you've given us a very small Experience, but yeah, how how did folks work with you? Thank you George. So there my website is journey mapping net Just so you know I've been working on getting content online So I'm starting to vlog and blog so you can check there. I have some Recent new input some of it really Targeted towards women, but not all some like holistic decision-making some working with emotions So you can find content there I also offer free consultations and if you get the hit that we might be a good match Please feel free to sign up. I have a little bit of an inquiry form But sign up and let's explore if we might be a good match And the other thing is is if you like the mapping work, I do have this Mapping process that looks at every part from work relationships lifestyle And that's one more thing I'm working with my coaching on trying to get my business online because I've done live workshops with this And I did one online mapping course but if you're interested in that let me know because that might encourage me to Make that a priority to get the mapping course online Wonderful and one more time tell us the website again. It's journey mapping net journey mapping net. Yes All right. Well, thank you so much and arrive for Sharing this with us. I look forward to seeing if any what any of you thought about this You know, feel free to comment below if you want to add a public comment or a question for Nariah or you can contact her of course through Her website. Okay. Thank you Nariah for your work. Thank you George. Thank you everyone for tuning in


And when you hear, our God is greater. That is a declaration of spiritual warfare from a demon against Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Did I promise too much?  This is so unbelievable. Out of the sudden, Jesus Christ becomes the God of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, etc., etc. Yes, of course. In the New Testament, it was Jesus all along. If it was Jesus, why did he then reveal the mosaic law to Moses, just to then later abolish it himself? Of course. First he comes up with the idea, hey guys, eating pork is wrong. Hey guys, you should get circumcised, matter of fact, I'm going to get circumcised myself. But then in the end, hmm, I was wrong all along. It is about the circumcision of the heart.


My fellow Americans, last week news from the Philippines reminded us all of both the friendship with the Filipino people and their struggles. The gesture of friendship came when Philippine President Corazon Aquino paid a visit to Clark Air Base outside of Manila to attend a memorial service for American airmen slain by terrorists. I have told President Aquino how much all Americans appreciate her thoughtfulness. These murders bring home to all of us the troubles and threats that the new Philippine democracy faces. Twenty months ago, we applauded as President Corazon Aquino's peaceful revolution began moving the Philippines back toward popular rule. Since then, President Aquino has been more successful than many believed was possible. Within this last year and a half, she has led a successful campaign to ratify a new, more democratic constitution, and she has overseen the first free congressional elections in 15 years, elections in which an overwhelming majority of the people participated. Now she's working with the newly elected Congress to solve that nation's serious economic problems. President Aquino believes, as I do, that free enterprise is the most powerful engine of economic progress known to humanity. She has inaugurated an ambitious reform program that has ended a sharp recession and boosted annual economic growth to 5 percent. She has begun to reform the tax system, dismantle monopolies, privatize or eliminate inefficient government-owned industries, and reduce barriers to international trade and investment. These are all reasons for optimism, but there are reasons for concern as well. The single most serious threat to the survival of democratic government in the Philippines remains the communist insurgency. As a result of the restoration of democracy, that insurgency has lost political momentum. Still, it continues, becoming more violent as it becomes more desperate. But even as she confronts the threat of communist guerrillas, President Aquino must also rebuild the Philippine armed forces. She has had to reassert the principle of civilian supremacy over the military, while at the same time resolve honest differences over how best to defeat the communist insurgency. Not everyone in the military has been happy about the new civilian role. President Aquino has faced five attempted coups since taking office. I've made it clear to all concerned that Filipino democracy and President Aquino have America's full support. We hope all elements in the Philippine government, both civilian and military, will work together to find common ground. Division between government and its armed forces can only help the communist insurgents who are bent on destruction of freedom and democracy in the Philippines. Few countries are as strategically important to the United States as the Philippines, and we have a moral obligation to help all democracies succeed. That's why I have recently underscored to American business leaders that the United States is committed to Philippine economic recovery. I told them that we believe there are great opportunities for American investors in the Philippines, and I reminded them that while building the economy, our men and women of enterprise will also be helping to build a stable and democratic future for that nation. I've also asked Congress to help. I've requested substantial economic and military assistance for the Philippines. Though we'd like to do more, budgetary constraints may limit what we can do, but this is one area where we can't afford to cut corners. The people of the Philippines are counting on us. One way Congress could do a lot is to reform our sugar program, as I proposed earlier this year. We will work with President Aquino to build a safer home for democracy in the Philippines. Most of the responsibility belongs to the people of the Philippines, but we can and will lend a hand. Now let me turn for a moment to another area of the world where brave men and women are working for democracy. I mean Central America. This week the Guatemala Peace Accord went into effect. The world is waiting to see if the Sandinistas in Nicaragua keep the promises they made to the other Central American governments when they signed that agreement. Will they fulfill both the letter and spirit of the agreement? In particular, will they institute the steps necessary for the democratization of Nicaragua? Will they allow freedom to prosper as the agreements demand? Will they begin the process of national reconciliation? And will they take full steps, not partial steps? The United States will be watching to see if the Sandinistas were sincere when they signed the Guatemala Accord, or if their signature was just one more propaganda ploy. Until next week, thanks for listening and God bless you.


Okay, let's go. I assume if you're here for a subject hacking ufology 30 years in the Hall of Mirrors, it's because you're either interested in hacking or ufology, or you have the perverse sense of humor that would like to see me fail at trying to connect the two things in a meaningful way. I'm hopeful that I'm going to make some sense and address both subjects hacking in relationship to what it takes to enter into, try to understand, try to compensate for the distortions in any complex system in order to see what is really happening. I'm going to use some quotes. I'm going to approach a variety of dimensions or aspects of the subject to ufology, including black budget operations and gross media distortion of facts and events, just in order to suggest what it will take in order to do justice to this subject given what has been done to it over the last 60 years. If your primary sources of information on ufology have come from cable television or the internet or both, then all I can ask is that you please try to set aside everything you know in order to listen to a presentation of some of the benchmarks for doing a historical analysis of the data, which will enable us to make sense of the facts and how the subject has been handled so effectively for so many years and come to your own conclusions as to why. Now this is in a way related to encouraging people to be hackers. Years ago, this is my astonishing to me 12th time at DEF CON. I know, you didn't think I was that old, did you? And in the early days, 11 years ago, I got this email from rogue agent, probably using a different handle. He was at an organization then that's long gone called The Loft. And he said, you want to create hackers? Don't tell them how to do this or that. Show them how to discover it for themselves. Those who have the innate drive will get the point and find tutorials written by experts or better yet simply dive in and learn by trial and error. Those who don't will fall by the wayside. I never learned half as much being taught by others as when I taught myself. True, it's painfully slow at first, but you're building a skill set for how to find out what you want to know at the same time and that's more than worth the extra time and effort. I think that's just about one of the best definitions of hacking I have ever come across because it is empowering others to learn to build the skill set that enables them to find out what's real and to cobble together things that were designed for one purpose in order to see how they can be made to work for another. That's what I'm encouraging you to do. On the notes that I provided for the CD for this talk, there's something I've never done before. There's 30 or 40 pages of notes which are meant to suggest points of departure for continuing to explore if you find some of the data suggestive of something that's important.  We want to know if there are highly advanced technological civilizations superior to our own who have had the technology to come here and for whatever motivation have had the desire to do so as well. We're talking about extraterrestrial presence on the planet earth and there has been so much in the media about that that it is impossible to hear the very subject raised without images, ideas and preconceived notions coming forth into the foreground of our thought because they have been put there. People I know who do Psyops, remind me, don't forget they say, the purpose of Psyops is for people to do things for reasons that they believe are their very own but which in fact have been engineered to be done for very other reasons. By do he also meant think, to think things that they believe they are thinking on behalf of their own rational processes because social science itself, if you take a look at the subject, has itself been so compartmentalized since World War II through black budget research that much of what has been done is dual use and therefore social science like science is no longer done in the way in which it used to be done in an open domain in which information is widely and completely shared with one another for purposes of continuing research. So, I'm going to quote Timothy Leary, some of you may remember him, dead now. Thank you. You know, he said, you can never find out what's happening from the company Bulletin or the adult press. You know that.  The evolutionary message, what is really happening always comes from outcasts, always comes from outcasts. I've used that as a prelude to saying that the truth arrives at the edge and moves slowly toward the center where it builds a consensus and by the time more and more people have believed it, so it is a consensus, it is already a lie because the new truths are already emerging at the edge and beginning to move inward. Or as Nietzsche said, those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by people who could not hear the music. When you talk about much of what is talked about here at a sophisticated level of granularity, it sounds insane to many people or it sounds like nonsense, that is certainly true of ufology. If you bring up the subject in any serious environment in the academic world where it is taboo, or suggest that research into the subject be done, you will get laughter and ridicule, reminding me of a good friend of mine who practices deception on behalf of one of the agencies who has said to me, do not forget, illusion, misdirection and ridicule. These three are the hallmarks of operations of deception, but the greatest of these is ridicule. And therefore when something is in the public domain and has been widely observed and often documented and photographed and written about and reported by newspapers, then when people talk about it as if it is real, what can you do? What can you do? For those of you who are interested, you can pick up a copy of this, I have a few. This is not the National Enquirer. This is not some arcane, ridiculous journalistic outpost. This is the Washington Post on July 28, 1952. The headline reads, Saucer Outran Jet, Pilot Reveals. Now, I want to use this as just an elementary benchmark to think about the subject. All I'm encouraging you to do, and obviously I have gotten to a point in my life in which I am no longer worried about income primarily, or I could not dare to speak about this in public. Why? I was recently nominated for the board of an intelligence ethics organization, and a counterintelligence army officer said, well, let's go to the website and see what he's written. There are hundreds and hundreds of things I've written at the website. One is about UFOs, and it's the most conservative, hesitant, tiptoe kind of article you can imagine, just suggesting that it ought to be examined. And he came back to the board and said, if you take this guy on, I'm resigning.  Now, that's a simple statement of fact about what it is that has been done to the subject and how people respond. And therefore, I have been careful because I have tried to make a living in serious environments, saying serious and intelligent things, not to mention too much about it. It's because I had said last year I probably wouldn't come back to DEF CON, and then three days left to the deadline this year. I got in touch with Jeff and I said, I can't stand it. I've got to come back. I can't stand it. I want to see people. I want to see my friends. I can't stay away. I'm weak, as Kathleen Turner said in Body Heat. I'm weak. You remember that scene, some of you. And Jeff, bless his heart, said, well, of course you can come back and speak. You want to talk about UFOs? Sure, why not? So where else but DEF CON could one talk about it? Saucer Outran Jet Pilot Reveals. What kind of benchmark is this? From 1947, when Kenneth Arnold first reported that he had seen nine vehicles flying near the Cascades in Washington, I believe it was, and he said that they skipped through the air like saucers skimmed across the water. And a reporter turned that into flying saucers. For the next five years, there were all sorts of documents, all sorts of news stories printed about flying saucers, printed in the newspapers as if they were news. Here's another example.  Here's an article from it. You see the map of the United States. It's called, whatever it is, the Air Force must hunt for the flying saucer. And the Air Force was hunting for the flying saucer, and there are little circles all over the map to show that there was a huge preponderance of sightings at Air Force and other military bases. This is a news magazine. It was treated as if it was news. Just one or two more like that. Here's an article, a little one, of the sort that appeared by the hundreds of thousands in small newspapers and magazines all over the country. But this was in the New York Times. Four Florida pilots, three of them World War II veterans, told today of seeing a flying saucer hovering over the Hanford atomic plant at Richlands, Washington. Captain John Baldwin of Coral Gables said the object was a, quote, perfectly round disc, white in color, and almost transparent with small vapor trails coming off it kind of like the tentacles of an octopus. Now, I'm not going to read any more. You can go to the library. You know, those of you who are older remember libraries. They're what we had before the internet. But what you find is, again, it's an archaic technology. This came off what they called microfilm when I was a kid. And it was photographs made of newspapers because that would be the permanent storage device. And it's pretty bad, and it's hard to get good hard copies off it. But what you will find if you do the research, that's all I'm encouraging people to do. Hackers start with what's real. They stay up all night reading about what obsesses them. No one accomplishes anything who is not an obsessive compulsive in my book. At least that's my story. And you will find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles just like that in which witnesses are named. They are credible military commercial pilots and people from other walks of life that are credible and serious. They are quoted as if they are saying what they saw because they are saying what they saw. So I asked Jennifer Granick, our resident legal eagle, how many credible eyewitnesses it takes in order to have a jury believe that something has happened, that it's real. And she said if you have like three or four credible eyewitnesses saying the same thing, reporting the same details, independently verifying the same event, a jury will find that to be the strongest evidence of all. And that's why when people say these stories are great, they are only anecdotal, but where's the evidence? You can repeat back to them that in a court of law, in a trial situation, eyewitness testimony, widely corroborated over space and time, is considered to be the very best evidence that there is. Despite the many fallacies that eyewitnesses can make about this and that, when, as a friend of mine at NSA says, who conducted his own investigations for many years, when a phenomena is repeatedly reported in the same way over 50 or 60 years, and the phenomena is reported in a way so that the small details agree with one another over 50 or 60 years, and it comes in from all over the world. It is not an American phenomena or an East Coast phenomena. The reports come in from all over the world, then you know you are dealing with something real. Well, you may ask why didn't newspapers cover this sort of thing more than they did later? Well, they came to cover it in a different way. You've seen men in black, right? You've seen when he threw the tabloids down on the table and said, you want the real story, this is where you're going to get it. I think I might have mentioned before how the National Inquirer came to be. The National Inquirer is very similar to a newspaper, a periodical that John Kenneth Galbraith found operating in India when he was ambassador to India, being a serious scholarly man from Harvard. He was upset and demanded to know who was running this rag. They investigated and found out that it was 100% a CIA operation. It was just classic and typical disinformation, promulgated by the creation of a whole publishing enterprise. In this case, a sleazy one and a disreputable one, so that if they wanted to diss stories in India, they could do so simply by publishing them in a newspaper or periodical, which had come to have no credibility. Now, let's turn back for the moment to the National Inquirer. It was started by Genoso Pope, Gene Pope in 1952. For about eight years until around 1960, it did not make money. It was never successful until it got a boost in the 60s. But money continued to be funneled into it from another source that kept it viable until 1960. Frank Castello is the source through which money was moved to the National Inquirer. Frank Castello was the mafia chieftain in New York at that time, linked to Santo Traficante, Johnny Razzelli, the other guys who simultaneously were 1960, had to go back to the historical era, working with the CIA in order to carry out assassinations of, among others, Fidel Castro. So money was coming to the National Inquirer that kept it viable. When a friend of mine in the NSA and I were talking about what kind of organization would have to exist in the government for management of it to take place, he suggested I do an experiment to see if I could find out something else. He said, you know, the different agencies and police bureaus of our national apparatus all have favored campuses where they go to recruit. I'm going to give you, as an experiment or a test, you discover what those campuses are. And he listed a number of criteria, the size of the campus, the kind of curriculum that was there. It was not just technical, it was many other things. A place where you could be observed for four years in a wraparound environment socially as well as academically. A place that might have had financial difficulty in the 60s or 70s and where an infusion of cash came from an orthodox sources that were not always easy to identify. And whose seniors, before they graduated, from whom much promise was expected, somehow gravitated into companies, industries, or forms of work, which meant that you never heard from them again. I was on a train telling that story to someone, brief, between the airport and the rental car. And she happened to say that she worked for a particular Midwest college campus. Probably shouldn't say it because she didn't think she was feeding a talk like this. And I told her that story and she said, whoa, do you know there are lots of our graduates that I can't call unless I use certain coded language so that they know exactly who I am and why I'm calling to raise money for our small northern Ohio well regarded academic institution. I don't want to name it. So using their criteria, including the infusion of money from an orthodox sources, this is always important, follow the money and follow the people who talk to the people who talk to the people. So there are ways you can do the research if you are serious about it that enable you to identify what Edgar Mitchell told me was a reality. Edgar Mitchell was Apollo 14. He walked on the moon. He had a mystical experience coming back to the earth and it changed his perspective forever which he has tried to articulate ever after in physical terms, the terms of modern physics. In other words, the unity of all things. And he went to people he knew who were doing intelligence with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he said, I just want to know if there is an organizational structure that still manages the phenomena on behalf of the government. It would have been likely in the 40s to have come together Vannevar Bush type people out of corporate, government, military and academic institutions to be deep black and not to be identified publicly in any way. His contact at general went away and he came back to him two weeks later and he said, all I'm going to tell you is the answer is yes. That's all I'm going to tell you. Don't ask me another thing. Yes, there is an organizational structure that manages it. But what happens to all these news stories, all these items of truth, all these facts, if you will, as they gravitate into the public mind, into the space of our popular culture. Well, here's one from the National Enquirer. Space aliens drain my blood. Then filled my veins with a mysterious yellow liquid, says shaken steel worker. The National Enquirer monitored what kinds of issues made money and they were very, very seldom UFO issues. They were celebrity issues, scandal issues and the like. They knew which ones had a wider circulation and yet they published more UFO issues than just about anything else. The question can simply be asked, why did they do that? A friend of mine, Terry Hanson, in Montana in the 1970s, got a call from a friend who said, can you believe what's happening here? He said, what's happening here? He said, the sightings, the impact of the events over the ICBM missile sites here in Montana. And Terry said, I haven't heard anything about it. He said, it's all over the news. Well, Terry wrote a book called Missing Times in which he subsequently detailed that there were many, many small local sightings, small local newspapers and television news stations over several days reporting the events that were happening, which was the buzzing of ICBM silos by unidentified flying objects. But it never made the national news. And as he traced it, four years later it finally surfaced because the stories just would not go away and Freedom of Information Act documents confirm that the stories did not go away and were documented by the Air Force, but where it finally wound up was, you guessed it, the National Inquirer. What I'm suggesting is that we have to, as a society, if we have the courage to want to know what's real, instead of allowing the media and its masters who distract us so effectively with nonsense, if you really want to know what's real, you have to create what my friend Sandra Brahman, a scholar in Milwaukee, calls tactical memory, which is the collaborative reconstruction of history as opposed to the creation of a pseudo-environment or a designer history. The higher purposes for which hacking exists is the creation of tools for building tactical memory and the purpose of tactical memory is to empower those with the courage to take the red pill. Everyone I know who takes this subject seriously began to take it seriously when someone they knew well, either they had their own experience and they knew they weren't misunderstanding what they were seeing, or someone they knew well made a compelling case for the reality of the phenomena. In my case it was 1978 and I was a new Episcopal priest one year into the ministry at a small, what we call a starter parish, outside Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah. I was sitting in the church basement with a senior warden who was the lay officer of the congregation. He was a major then, he retired from the Air Force as a full bird colonel. We had just heard about close encounters of the third kind coming out. I had read books like Alan Heineck's The Scientific Inquiry, still the best textbook for the subject which is what Alan designed it to be. And I was sitting in the basement with my friend, a fighter pilot, heavily decorated, the right stuff kind of guy, cocky. Usually he had a smirk on his face, cocky smirk. And I said, you know, Bob, all I know is what I read about these things and I read that you guys chase these things in your fighters and can't catch them. And he didn't look cocky for a minute, he didn't look smirky, he looked perplexed, and he turned kind of a scant and he said, well, you know, you're right. We chase the goddamn things and we can't catch them. Now, for me, and this is really kind of a plea, I'm trying to say that this was 1978 near a 30 years ago and I wasn't crazy and he wasn't crazy. And he was a fighter pilot and I knew him well as his priest and he was telling me that they had chased them and they couldn't catch them. Now, what did he mean by them? He didn't mean meteorological phenomena, he didn't mean Venus, he didn't mean radar echoes that were distorted by the propagation of the signal. He meant, in that case, a 30 foot disk, like burnished or polished aluminum, that paced a plane in which they were flying and that when it was done with whatever it was that it was doing which we do not know what it was not out here, took off at an extraordinary speed. The phenomena confronts us with possibilities we could not ignore. That's why I am urging people to go back and as a benchmark look at what was happening in the 40s and 50s because that's when the phenomena was initially reported straight up before the distortion began to happen. Why did the distortion happen? Probably for very good reasons. That headline in 1952 climaxed an appearance of objects over Washington D.C. with such frequency and such obviousness. They were mapped on radar, chased on radar and jets were scrambled to pursue them always unsuccessfully. They occurred over the White House, over the Capitol and in other airspace over Washington. So many people during that wave of sightings called the Pentagon to find out what was happening that the Pentagon switchboard was jammed and functionally shut down. The meetings that they had subsequently for which we have complete documentation discussed the threat that made to the nation in terms of national security, not because the objects themselves were that threatening but because the Soviets, 1952, the Cold War was ramping up, the H-bomb, the Korean War. Europe was not yet reconstructed. You have to imaginatively put yourself back in the era and understand how it seemed. Meteorological phenomena aside, these aerodynamic vehicles were demonstrating something that caught the imagination of the public. And as they were seen all over the country, people wanted to know what was going on and that prevented the Air Force and the government and other arms of the military to remain focused on what was important, which was combating the Soviets because they could be used as a mask for an attack on this country by the Soviets. And so for the first time that we know of, an official group was put together called the Robertson Panel in 1953. And again, we have the documented minutes of the panel, which was we must debunk the subject and render the public unenthusiastic and skeptical about it so that these calls will stop and so that this phenomena cannot be used to create an event which can then be used to cover an actual invasion or attack by the Soviets. It was not the reality of the phenomena that was questioned. It was the use of the phenomena by a real enemy to invade or injure us. And from that point on, these kinds of newspaper articles were discouraged. Now, our newspaper is going to follow along. Why would newspapers follow along? Well, let's go back to what was happening in 1952 again. The CIA was really just ramping up. We were about to do a CIA covert operation in Guatemala, Iran, one was called Operation Success, I think. It was successfully done. Regime change took place. A duly established elected government in both cases was overthrown and replaced with a right-wing government, much more favorable to ourselves. It was the beginning of a Cold War strategy that you may not agree with, but which was very, very real. And the people who were forming the CIA, all a matter of historical record, were close to friends with the people who were also the media establishment. So by the time Carl Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein wrote his famous article in 1978 for Rolling Stone, documenting the use of the media by the CIA, by that time he could say that he knew of at least more than 400 reporters who were directly in the employ or contracted to the CIA. And then, because individual reporters were not enough, there were the people who owned and controlled the media. Sulzberger, who owned the New York Times, who was the publisher, was contracted with the CIA and signed an oath of secrecy. So was CBS. So was Time Magazine. So were the other media models of the day who again simply saw that it was their patriotic duty to cooperate with the CIA and do what it requested. That theoretically ended in the 1970s when the church and pike committee hearings in Congress exposed the unfortunate activity. But what we know, too, is that, for example, under the terms of the guidelines adopted by the church commission report, the CIA director retained the right to approve such recruitment if he judged it necessary. Deutsch explained this and he got public support for his interpretation from Stanfield Turner, who when he was CIA chief in the Carter administration, conducted several operations in which he admitted using journalists. So it is no surprise that with the inauguration, now there's a big history, a lot that went on subsequently, but with the inauguration of a policy of debunking, it began to feel like you couldn't say anything about what you saw or else, as the major said, they will think we are all loonies. And yet these events continued to come in. When I mentioned that loony comment to a friend of mine at NSA, his spontaneous common-sense reply was, look, it's just a matter of record by now. And he mentioned the 1967 USS Mueller incident over Cuba when a tractor beam of light pulled up a vehicle and a message was sent to addresses that included the Intel community. Again, he says if you want to know what's going on, follow the communications. Who is it addressed to? He was an intelligence analyst who knew that you could get sometimes more information than was in the message from knowing the headers of the message and who it was sent to. So the event in 1976 in Tehran in which a fighter plane encountered a UFO and when it locked its weapons on the vehicle, found all of its weapon systems shut down, that documentation went to the DIA and it was checked credibility highest, strangeness highest. Because there is a strangeness often associated with the event which baffles people who have the experience. I don't know if I'll have time to talk about that or not, probably not. But it challenges our physics and it challenges our understanding of what's real. Or there is the case in the case of Alaska, JAL, Japanese Airlines pilot reported over a long period of time a huge, huge, huge walnut shaped what we only could call a mothership but that's our term, a huge vehicle nearby radar returns and several other pilots simultaneously vectored on the same object, reported the same phenomena to be real. The pilot was relieved of his responsibilities when he landed but my friend Richard Haynes who was a psychologist for NASA and it is documented in a database commercial airline encounters with UFOs on the question of safety because it should raise questions of safety because it has historically in the past. He talked to the people in Japan about the event because it was so well documented and very quietly without any more to do the pilot was reinstated and given his command back. Publicly it doesn't exist publicly it's ludicrous privately, privately the phenomena exists. How do you hack the phenomena then? I spent the weekend incidentally not by design but incidentally with some of the people who have been investigating this for the last 50 or 60 years under the auspices of KUFOs the Center for UFO Studies started by Alan Heineck. What these people seem to believe is that the reports that we have are almost as good as many of the reports that must be held collected and responded to inside. We know that project sign which I mentioned as the Robertson panel created an event of debunking was followed by project Grudge and project Grudge was followed by project Blue Book and Alan Heineck came to realize as the astronomer and scientist associated with Blue Book that he wasn't seeing any of the real cases that he was seeing cases that even though there were still many unknowns he wasn't seeing the best cases because as someone said to him later they would make you flip your wig if you saw what we really have in the files. But still when people report them and we database them and document them all I am saying is that where hackers start is with reality not with the distortion of reality what the masters of perception call perturbed information where information is stored in a distorted form in a database and an algorithm determines what can be recollected with accuracy. And so a hacker begins by saying what is the data? What is the data? Let me tell you what the mind of a hacker from my point of view really sounds like. This is a CIA profiler who did some incredible work for some of it she was highly decorated and she said about profiling and about her work with information security which I think is a methodology or a model that works for a number of domains she said to know who is the enemy you must first know yourself in her case Zen meditation helps her distinguish between her own mind and the system of complexity which it is encountering so that the leakage between mind and encounter system does not perturb its clarity. You know the Zen Buddhist speak of a reflection of a moon in a still pond which is the way phenomena should be reflected in the mind if it is trying to observe correctly. When we looked for warnings and indicators she said look with a beginner's mind look with no preconceived notions the data will tell me what I need to know whether it's hackers crackers serial killers the data will tell you what you need to know stay with the data any stereotype any preconceived notion like a young male hacker must be disregarded there is no template in most cases but nevertheless people bring preconceptions to the cases and the mind can't help but impose patterns automatically and prematurely and I guess what she was begging me to do and I am begging you to do is impose no preconception or assumption upon data if you have not seen the data and allowed the pattern of the compelling data to begin to reveal itself for infosec the customary approach then she said is sophomoric only the data will tell you what they're doing what they left behind focus on the evidence that was left behind same for ufology what were they after track the data be meticulous covering tracks completely is very rare every person entering a system whether it's a network or a house has a method of operation unconscious or conscious and that pattern next to their identity will reveal itself over time and that's why the work to be a true hacker or forensic analyst or ufologist requires intense concentration and constant self-monitoring there are a thousand puzzle pieces and no box with a picture the degree of clarity required is great if I had a stereotype in mind she said to me I always blew it I learned never to form a pattern too quickly notice yourself she said jumping to a conclusion thought or word and once you see it or say it stop wait interrupt yourself and back up and ask is it really true or does it really merely seem true or feel true or do I only believe it's true because I've been constructed in such a way to believe it is true ask yourself how do you feel about thinking that way stop yourself from completing the loop too quickly look at yourself and ask who am I to know that who am I to even think that without sufficient data in pursuit of insiders look for the one who does not fit the pattern this MO is appropriate to the study of ufology to forensics and to hacking it requires that we back up from how over the past decades I mean it if only cable TV and the nonsense promulgated by it and the half truth lies in distortions promulgated through it and in movies and in misinformation and in disinformation is the only source of the images and ideas you have about this subject which invites such ridicule and for someone like myself serious thoughtful who has listened to people in depth and in detail if you can't back up and ask what is the data then you are owned you are owned and they cannot control the data or perturb it to the nth degree we priests talk to each other we did then I'm not a priest anymore and I have to say I was an Episcopal priest I was robustly heterosexual I I mean right still am I do not take blood pressure medication therefore I do not need any chemical assist not like the brethren of another I'm just trying to make the case that I left quietly and by intention because I was suffocating to death wanting to talk about what was real and I was being offered the jobs I thought I wanted and they would have killed me if I had taken them because they would have put on such blinders but we priests did talk to each other and it happened that Edgar Mitchell who I mentioned was an Episcopal Episcopay and I talked confidentially to his priest and he said I'll never forget being in a hotel room with Edgar Mitchell and Alan Heineck because out here in public where we have to be so careful we must say things like well perhaps if you look at the data perhaps you have to be so careful because the ridicule is so effective the debunking in academia there is no one I was told over the weekend no one with less courage than the typical academic to stand up to the paradigm which must be imposed or they will be ridiculed and what Mitchell said what the priests said Mitchell and Heineck talked about in that hotel room when they were alone and not on the public stage where Alan was so cautious and tentative they didn't question the data they didn't question the reality of the phenomena they didn't question that they were vehicles by that point in the conversation there had been so many humanoid cases from all over the world that ultimately consistently coherently described by credible witnesses in association with landed vehicles which left physical traces or did physical damage to the environment or to the person observing them as for example a microwave radiation which cooked them a little bit they didn't question that that was real they knew that was real the conversation was 100% about how do they get here and where do they come from and is our physics an understanding of multiple dimensions sufficiently adequate or do they use black holes to pop out in white holes or how do you account for what has been often reported as a sudden manifestation as if out of a mist as if a light blinks on and a light blinks off it wasn't like it went it wasn't like it was a propulsion system it was like it was there consistently again documented and reported their questions focused on how can we bend our poor terrestrial minds around our poor terrestrial science in order to begin to understand what is well documented in order to stretch ourselves to see what the universe is really like well, if you believe you are the top of the food chain and if you believe you are the only apple of God's eye this is not good news the mere existence of extraterrestrials is no longer a problem for the American public as long as it's out there and as long as something like SETI continues its fruitless efforts to try to reach something using a primitive technology like radio and refuses to even question this kind of data I talked to Jill Tartar Jill Tartar was the model for the contact Jody Foster person a heroine in the movie Contact and she said well you know I had my own UFO experience we were flying home one night and I saw this light following and I said well I'll be god damn there's a light and then the clouds parted and it was the moon and I said you're a scientist you know that the fact that this was a negative has nothing to do with the bona fide cases that suggest that there might also be positives that are not the moon when Dick Slayton reported what he saw in orbit and took photographs of it he came back to earth and subsequently reported that the photographs shown to him were not the photographs he took nor was the object in them purported to be what he observed what he had in fact observed and when he had the balls to say that at a public press conference the spokesman for NASA said well you know Dick he's just one of our bleary eyed astronauts if any of you know what it is when you love flying that will stop you flying it is being bleary eyed commercial pilots by the dozens on the record I've talked to them they tell me what they saw and they tell me that they talk to each other about it but once you hear the superior officer in the military or in the commercial airlines or any other domain say he must be drinking and you know what that threatens to your career or your trajectory or your livelihood in public again people say to me well if it were real wouldn't it leak out well gee whiz it has that's what we're talking about there's lots of data in the public domain but it's also true that there is a lot of secrecy with our current administration for them against them they are obsessed with secrecy and you know what has happened information state in which the government knows more and more and more by virtue of the technological transformation of politics about individuals and individuals know less and less and less about the machinations of the government because it is increasingly not transparent and therefore not accountable this is just a phenomena about the technology so secrets can be kept when during World War II we were shooting out of the water every ship practically that we tried to ship across the Atlantic do you know there was an oil slick when they sank a convoy of tankers that was the largest oil slick still in the history of the world that went up the Gulf Stream and all the way across the Atlantic it covered hundreds of square miles from all the tankers that the U-Boats took down and that bodies and oil and debris washed up on the Atlantic coast for a long time and then they make out and destroy the U-Boats but no one knew about it in this country because there was an agreement that it must not be known and once the newspapers and the media agree that it will not be known and the people believe it is their patriotic duty not to say anything then it was not known the same was true of flying balloon bombs from Japan which were said to cause no damage or destruction and which never went east of Idaho except that they did go to Virginia but in the same way you can very, very effectively keep secrets we do keep secrets through compartmentalization many of you know many of you sitting here just see what time it is the usual I'm off to page 11 I got 30 pages and I have 3 minutes many of you sitting here know that what I'm saying is who you are I find you from time to time the fellow sitting next to me at Black Hat for 5 minutes we chat I found out where he is M-O-D Royal Air Force I asked simply did you know Nick Pope oh I knew Nick yes Nick did the UFO desk for the Ministry of Defense in England Nick says it's real what do you think you know it's real don't you it certainly looks that way doesn't it and I mentioned that a person I talked to in Australia where I've spoken a number of times in the last 2 years Head of Intelligence for one of the branches of the armed services when I told him I was going to have the balls to just mention the fact of extraterrestrial surveillance and observation as one of the in the future most impactful powerful events that we needed to be conscious about said to me go for it he said I would tell them because as you know it's warm right now it gets warmer and colder not according to what we do but according to what's happening to us and I mentioned that to the Brit and the Brit said well then he knew what he was talking about too didn't he now I can't string together the hundreds of conversations I've had like that detailed interviews because I don't have time that I've conducted with normal ordinary people who were up hunting in northern Wisconsin and walked into a clearing and were scared out of their minds by what they saw our person I interviewed in depth who was fishing on a lake in Wisconsin at dawn and saw a vehicle enter the water and watched the light under the water for a long long time and he said well I'll never ever forget and it had the correct affect on the meaning of truth when it emerged from the water it wasn't at a 45 degree angle it was at about a 30 degree angle and I'm an engineer and I would have expected more of a 45 and what was striking was the way it was going because there's ionization plasma around the vehicle and the water cascaded off the sides as if it wasn't touching the material itself and once it was free of the water it accelerated so fast that it would start in a matter of seconds lots and lots of stories are they just good stories well according to Herb Strentz professor of journalism at Drake he said if you look at the documented newspaper stories of the sort I've just barely introduced here he said you will find that there were hundreds of thousands hundreds of thousands there is a great deal of data from people not the flakes not the fools not the disinformation artists not the crazies serious scholars have researched and are documenting that ought to suggest that we hold back our preconceptions and ask what is happening we cannot unearth from the bowels of the government whatever they do or don't know because the real question that you see is not is it real they have created that question it is so real and they say no it's not you're not so we say yes it is and that is the victory because it creates a domain of yes it is no it isn't and prevents us from asking the meaningful and serious questions which is who are they where do they come from, what do they want and what does it mean for human civilization why did the Brookings Institute get a commission to do a report on the impact of a higher technology civilization on earth peoples and cultures in the 1950s that I had hoped to say to document what was happening in the 50s and in the 60s so you can see that there is a historical data that compels a historical analysis and that is the evidence the witness of thousands of people is the evidence from all over the world it is not a fool's venture to ask where do we belong in the universe who are we and where are we going and why Jeff thought it was appropriate in a hacker convention to allow me at least to talk about these last 30 years of exploration because as a priest I listened to people's confessions and so did my friend at NSA when people came to him from all over the country and he could ask them in private what about this event what about that and then when we compared notes we found out we were on the same page you can multiply that experience many times if you're serious about hacking if you're serious about where it leads if you're serious about the social and cultural and psychological implications of the transformation of all of our systems through the technologies that you build and create then all I can do is encourage you to hold your preconception if I sound like an idiot too much to you at this point and say at least I'm going to look at the data check it out for myself begin exploring if you care most people don't but a few do and that's the hacker world the few, the proud the beautiful by you anyway now now I have to make this pitch my publisher Singris was taken over by Reed Elsevier they don't even put my book in their catalog anymore because it's a huge company and they're technologically focused I happen to have 10 of these available so cheap I mean so cheap there aren't many left of my collection Islands of the Clickstream there's 10 of them and if you want one make an offer we'll talk about it otherwise all I can do is say thank you very much for your kind attention you have once again given me the privilege of being taken seriously and there is no greater gift in the world


Welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. We're really excited to have you here. We have one of my personal favorites in the nonprofit sector, Katie Warnick, CEO and really the founder of Staffing Boutique. Staffing Boutique is a really interesting staffing company that just serves the nonprofit and educational sector. And so this is the woman to go to. Katie, I've got to tell this quick story. When Jared and I first started, you know, chatting daily and we called it the Corona Chronicles because I thought it would just be, you know, a couple of weeks. You called me on the phone and said, Hey, my name's Katie Warnick.  Because at the time, Katie, it was just Jared and I talking. We weren't, we didn't have guests because and then we got you on and we were like, Holy moly. This, this is like an amazing thing. So I've been doing all the talking. Let me get through my housekeeping and then we're going to like completely drill down with Katie about staffing. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd is not going to be with us today, but she'll be back here tomorrow. We want to thank all of our presenting sponsors and Katie was our very first presenting sponsor. So I'm going to give a shout out to staffing boutique first. And I want to thank Blumerang, American nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University. Be generous, your part time controller, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit thought leader. You know, if you have missed any of our more than 700 episodes, you can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo. And queue us up on your pot, your favorite podcast outlet. We are on so many platforms. And as of this last year, we started migrating all of these episodes onto podcast format. So you can take the nonprofit show with you wherever you may go, which is pretty exciting. Katie Warren, CEO and founder of staffing boutique, staffing boutique.org is where you can find her. She and her team are amazing. Sometimes we have one of her compatriots, Dana Skurlock on. And so that's also another great voice. Katie, thank you for joining us. Oh, you bet. Thanks for having me. Dana is my ride or die. We've been working together for a very long time. I trust her 100% with the business. And she's just such a performer that I love when she's on. Yeah, she's really cool. She's really been fun. She's given us some different perspectives. And again, this, I think the staffing issue is the centerpiece of our nonprofit sector. And I got to say, I think it's even more important than fundraising at this point. I don't know if I mean, I think to me it's, I don't want to use the word burden, but it's such a piece of it. And we are not able to get people to work with us. So let's drill down because I have a lot of questions and first and foremost, and this is a big topic, but what is the current market for staffing in 2022? Like, what does it look like? Wow. This year has been amazing.  We've actually been busier than ever as a staffing firm. I think this is our strongest year. I mean, we came on to a strong third and fourth quarter in 2021 with everything with the reopening, but 2022. I mean, I don't know the numbers on a national level for staffing firms, but I know all of my friends that are in the staffing industry that do recruiting for other sectors are having their busiest year ever. Again, it's our busiest year. We only service the nonprofit sector and charter schools, which obviously operated nonprofits. So we're killing it. It was, I would say for a second and even into third quarter, it was almost too much. You know, we were saying no to business. We were really being struck with who we were working with. We were only working with organizations that were only using us as a staffing firm, not any other recruiters in the area. It's been a really busy year and I think it's just the challenge of finding and retaining good talent is so high coming off of COVID and everything that's kind of just been going on with the economy and the world. The need for recruiters has been more important than ever.  I'm a nonprofit. I can't afford a staffing firm. We're kind of knocking at our doors.  And then they go with me anyway. So it's just, it's a time saver. What are we doing here? But to answer your question, we're busy. It's been a strong 2022. Is that he said 2022 and we're looking forward to the next year, right around the corner. So let me drill down a little bit because what I hear you saying it sounds like you have nonprofits that were like, no, we don't use staffing companies. We do it all ourselves. And it sounds to me like you've had not like you had new people enter the marketplace who maybe have never used staffing companies. Is that fair to say that's, that's accurate.  So, right. I worked at places that did recruiting for large corporations and you know it's very easy to make a sales call on the first call when you're new to recruiting and get a company that wants to work with you because they really don't care about every single dollar in their budget they have an amount for a lot of nonprofits especially smaller ones don't ever sort of budget in temp workers number one and they're very strict with their dollars obviously and rightfully so. So a sales call for me blinds is never really going to turn into a sale and I know that it typically doesn't turn into a sale, you know, for for six to nine months quite frankly because it's been working on a fiscal year right. So, with that being said, yes, new organizations that have said, you know, hard nose to me in the past, have reached out and it's always funny because you know I keep a pretty strong database of just who I've touched base with spoken to people I have notes on from when I first started my company back in 11, you know, are now calling me, you know, directors of finance or HR that are still the same organization, we've never had a challenge recruiting, but this year has been been challenging for us, especially the larger more prestigious organizations in New York City, they have a pretty strong volunteer base, as well as job applicant base that they can tap into pretty easily that they wouldn't have to ever use me. And those resources have dried up, and they're coming into the dark side. So what are they looking for like what what are nonprofits saying, you know, we need help in this I mean, are there certain segments of the labor market that people are looking for, or is it just like, we need a warm body to do a lot of different things like what does that look like. Yeah, it's not really warm bodies. We, we find that's pretty challenging just always with nonprofits, small offices, hard, you know just warm bodies don't really fit into that sort of work environment. So what we've seen a trend with in terms of hiring is people that want to be in the office office managers. So organizations that, you know, a lot of organizations are remote or hybrid or some of them completely closed and just kept like, you know, we work space or something like that. But there are organizations that actually have a physical space that there needs to be a present presence there so people that can do a solid schedule that want to be there unfortunately those jobs tend to pay the least. So that's, that's a big position so you know, again, operations managers, office managers, anyone that's vaccinated that will commit to you know in nine to five schedule Monday through Friday or eight to four or whatever. So that's the first, I'd say position that's high in demand. We've seen a huge uptick in events jobs. We've always done events, you know, staffing so from anything from an events assistant to a director, you know, soup to not events, whatever, but I would say the past third and fourth quarter, we've had a tremendous amount of events jobs.  So they need to hire back attempt to run the logistics of it, maybe the director of development is handling sort of the bigger picture stuff the solicitations the table sales, the logistics and now they need someone to come in and run it and maybe they haven't budgeted in that position yet. So, while they set up to do that they're hiring temps. That is fascinating. This is why I love talking to you, because I feel like within our sector, you're on the leading edge, you're seeing like what's going to come down, you know, the path for us. And before a lot of other people do and I am fascinated by that because that really isn't is a shift in not just saying okay yeah development, you also do events take it over. Yeah, yeah, and it's funny because I was actually having a conversation with a client last night, specifically about an events position that we're recruiting on. It's actually his organization specifically needs a temp and then a permanent person and again we've had a number of events jobs come in on both ends of the spectrum so temp our time and then full time firm. So we've been heavily in the events recruiting I'd say the past six to nine months, and we're struggling to find the talent within the compensation that is budgeted for that position, specifically. So, let's just use some numbers here, if we were to recruit for a permanent events manager and the organization has budgeted, let's say 65,000, which probably was a good salary, someone that is working full time in the same area, making pretty the same money isn't incentivized to then move. And so we're in like a situation of the new organization that we're recruiting for is paying maybe, you know, $2,000 more a year than what they're currently making, is it worth it for that person. No, right. And I don't know, remember, I don't know which episode I was on with you, it probably was earlier in the year we were talking about leveraging, maybe I think a job offer. And, you know, I think it was the beginning of 2022. That's what we're in now. Yeah, we were talking about what's the at when you're asking for your own set salary and negotiating and industry standard was a 25% increase of where you're at. So if we look at the, and again, we deal with the nonprofit sector so let's just be flexible, let's just say 18%, and someone's offering $2,000 more, it's just not worth it, you know, to go to a new organization that you don't know, you know, you really need to be able to negotiate that and be competitive and that's been an issue. So we're seeing that on the smaller scale smaller organizations and then the very large hospital foundations and performing arts organizations, they're just not budgeting what they want to attract. So we're at a place with our clients where you know it's content communication and dialogue, but should you lower your expectations and take an events assistant and train up, because that seems to be the best bet here. And I mean I can say that across the board with all of the positions that were you're having trouble filling because of salary, but you really need to let go of the expectations of what you want in someone at the budget that you're at like those days are gone. Okay. Okay, so I just want to reframe that because what I hear you saying is that we are not going to get the caliber you use something fascinating use that that phrase train up just to like give it over and say I'm going to have to come in at a lower level, have the resources to train somebody and help navigate them so that they can do a higher level job. I think that that's what we have to do, especially talking about hiring, you know, more on the di side of things right I think we need to be looking bigger spectrum talent, how can we grow our organization up from the ground up and I think we just look at, you don't need to look at training up just in general. One other thing I did want to touch, touch on is, again, we do events staffing all the time. And typically when we do post events jobs we get a strong number of events nonprofit people. What we've seen with our job postings on indeed a monster on idealist is we're getting a ton of people from more like corporate events marketing events catering events, and this would be a different sort of lifestyle for that more of a steadier schedule. Those people are very strong with logistics but they don't have that fundraising piece. So I think, and this is the first time I'm seeing this because you know two years ago for years ago I would have never entertained a resume like this. You know, that person's never worked in the nonprofit sector before. Maybe they've done a fundraising event at a restaurant for a nonprofit but that's a totally different, you know, human right. Now I'm at the point where I'm just like it might make sense to bring this, this person in, or trial them, at least. So that's something that I'm exploring with one of my my organizations now, because they can't budget what they want you know they don't have the budget for what they want. I'm fascinated by this because what an incredible arc of change and results from when we first started talking with you. You know, I remember Katie it was like, keep your job, don't let it go because you'll never find another one that you know the marketplace is shriveled up and we're seeing layoffs. And now it's just been such a dramatic shift to where we're looking at and we're questioning even something, dare I say, integrity or work, you know, ideas. Talk to us about what we should be expecting in terms of change because I feel, and I'm just speaking for myself, being back out in the community from for profit to the nonprofit. There is a different tenor in how people are doing their jobs and how they're being responsible for their place in the work environment. What kind of changes are you seeing? I've said this before and it's, you know, it's nothing new I think that we really have to adjust to the work ethic gap, if you will, that's going on. And again, it's not just the nonprofit sector it's across the board I see it all the time I see it at the gym I see it with friends in different worlds you know no one wants to work and I say this and I sound abrupt but it's true the work ethic the priority of work is just on a different level. So I don't want to say you need to lower your expectations with your staff, but you certainly need to be more empathetic to what their lifestyle demands now, and where do you meet them. Right, whether that's PTO days working from home, benefits, you know just sort of some sort of flexibility, or I don't know I can't you know I don't even know how to articulate it. I don't know, I want to say Larry expectations and what you think you're going to get in the next five years because we're at a really weird place. You know, so this is like a follow up question to this.  Do you think there's a higher value for things like personal time off or, you know, gym membership or free lunch or are there things that are more intrinsic to that sense of why somebody wants to work in your nonprofit that maybe goes beyond dollars. Yeah, huge always that's always it and and I think that you know we really need to look at retention always I think that that's the first priority. So when you're thinking about what you need to change in your organization, look at retention. Your end is coming this is a great time if you have some sort of HR department in place to do maybe a survey monkey, what your current staff is looking for, because people are going to go and remember we're in a time where communication is lost. So even if you have, you know, a grant writer database person that you think is super duper happy and you have a great report with them and you think your communication via email is great. If they get approached by another organization to make 18% more, they're out the door. So, but that you know they don't want to be and, and again, no one wants to speak up and ask for more money and leverage that and of course you want to have that open dialogue. I say it to my staff and my staff has grown quite a bit over the past 16 months. And that's the first conversation I have when I check in with them. And that's the first conversation I have with them when I hire them.  I mean that they're asking for more money. Maybe it's just responsibilities. Maybe there's a task that they have to do that's so administrative that they don't feel like they should be doing it okay. I can have one of our attempts to that you know like I can very easily fix anything. I'm the owner of this company, but I need to know, and I'm not going to know unless they don't tell me. Are you having open dialogue with your staff constantly monthly quarterly whatever it is it's so important, and that's just why retention plan is way more important than a recruitment plan any day. That's fascinating. I mean, that that's a fascinating thing because in my lifetime. This has never been a conversation. It's always been you're lucky to have a job. And so you're privileged to be a part of our team. So that leads me kind of to the next question, you know, is having a job and working in the nonprofit sector, still sexy and still something that people want to do. Or because I think that covered a lot of multitude of sense. I think people would be like, yeah, I'm not getting the right salary or my benefits are crappy, but I'm working, you know, for mission or working with purpose. Are you seeing that change or is that getting stronger what do you what are your senses of that. I think that it's lost appeal. Okay, by any means, but I yeah, I think that there's still those people that want to work in the sector, and they know that and and they're of the same people that know that they want to be, you know, a healer or a nurse or a teacher kind of have in your gut, what you want to do and what you definitely don't want to do. So I think that there's always going to be people that want to work in the sector. I do think it needs to be extremely competitive with with how they keep the people in the sector, right. That's so to answer your question yeah I do think that the sector is still strong. Yeah, I think that's really interesting thing. So you know we have 1.8 million nonprofits registered in this country. We forget there's a lot of competition within our own sector. Right. I mean, yeah, so you're going to get picked off by yet another nonprofit if you're not right looking at that retention which I loved that you brought that up because we don't talk about that enough. We don't talk about retention plan always. We really don't talk about that enough. It's so interesting. Okay, now I was chatting with you in the green room, and I was like so proud of myself because I found a girl holding a crystal ball with red hair. For those of you listening to the podcast, Katie has glorious red hair and I actually found an image holding a crystal ball. So this is where I put you on the hot seat. What's your crystal ball forecast. Yeah, so I think that the sector and hiring is still going to remain strong it we're definitely living in a weird time you know I listen to all these financial podcasts and we're technically in a recession and you know tech is laying off but you know, we're still strong the industry is still strong. We're still seeing hiring trends on employment rate is still very low. So, I think that the sector will definitely remain strong into the first and second quarter of 2023. If there is any sort of slow down or hindrance on nonprofits, it probably won't happen until the next fiscal year, you know we are typically late right so many organizations are their new new budget on July one but I think that first and second quarter hiring is going to be strong. There's competition, you know there's like you said there's so many nonprofits you have to think about all the nonprofits that are competing to get the same talent. And how are you going to step up your game, because that's what this is about at this point. You know it's really interesting to about how many it's it's it's a big question in our sector how many people are actually looking at retention. Are they thinking about this. I mean, I bet it we tend to be so reactionary in the nonprofit sector anyway to our own detriment. How many of us are actually stepping back and saying okay, who do we have what do we have and what's the work situation and I appreciate you bringing that up because that has not been a trajectory that American business for profit or nonprofit has really taken. Yeah, right. Yeah, you know, we've we've been used to saying, don't worry there's a line of people that we can bring to the door to take these these jobs. Yeah, and you know it even the larger organizations do have you know the the exit interview, but what happens at an exit interview what where is that data going, you know, is it even looked at or is it just a piece of paper in the file. So you really need to look at that and then you know the other thing I still think that this, this world is just kind of on edge, I think everybody is that like an 11 on a one to 10 scale you know nerves are heightened, you know, where it's just constant confrontation and it's constant confrontation via text message or email. It's never confrontation anymore via phone. And you know, knowing that, how can you communicate how can you pick up the phone and call someone and have a difficult conversation is just something that we really need to preach and look at you know how many times are you sending an email where it should have been a phone call. I think that that's huge. I just think that's so huge and it's so forgotten where so many keyboard warriors out here and you know, I mean I think two weeks ago I said three times to someone is, is this a professional thing to send to me via email when you can call me you call me. Three people apologize to me 48 hours later. You know, I love that you said that and I know I needed to take that into my heart to because I think that I have been pissy lately. And yeah, you send emails and texts with a different tenor than if you have to look at somebody in the eye. And so I appreciate that you said that that's really interesting. Wow, Katie Warnock, you are just such a, well first of all, I truly believe this if I if I need to know what the trajectory is, you're the first call to make because you Thanks. Yeah, you see these things coming about that then impact everything and in labor again, I really do believe this Katie is the central issue of our time right now in the nonprofit sector, more so than virtually anything else because you know we can talk about technology we can talk about fundraising we can talk about management, but if we don't have the talent, we can't do any of that. Exactly. So it's such an important conversation to have well before you're in crisis and so yeah, you know Katie Warnock CEO and founder staffing boutique check out staffing boutique.org and you can learn about their work. It's such an interesting piece of the puzzle when you think about them just working in the nonprofit sector on this labor side super cool and always a delight to have Katie again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself will be back with us tomorrow. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors, which staffing boutique as I mentioned at the front of the show was our very first one so yay team. We have joined hands with nonprofit thought leader nonprofit nerd your part time controller be generous fundraising Academy at National University, Bloomerang and American nonprofit Academy. Really a cool cool episode. One question just came in and so I'm going to put you back in the hot seat Katie. So, somebody writes in has burnt out in the nonprofit sector affected how recruiting operates. I have burnt out from the sector because of massive overwork toxic bosses inadequate salary and inflexibility in work hours. It's something everywhere though it's not specific to the nonprofit sector, everyone is sort of at that burnout level, you know, and, and you need to do what's best for you is it something that it's worth communicating to your boss and trying to fix the problem, or you are already out the door. And so what are you going to do about it, are you going to resign and then look for another job or you just going to actively look for another job, you know it's really, it's really up to you and if you're a value to the organization, you can start with how you communicate, you can probably leverage it to put yourself at ease to put yourself in a better position. Those are words to live by. Thank you, Katie Warnick this has been great.  And did exactly what you just said she just got to the point where she couldn't take it anymore. And so yeah this is happening. So thank you Katie Warnick, a staffing boutique you are a rockstar happy holidays my friend. Absolutely Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah enjoy whatever you're celebrating. Have a healthy 2023. Absolutely we need to be doing that. Alright everybody as we like to end every episode we want to remind ourselves, our viewers, our listeners, our sponsors, and our guests to stay well so you can do well. Thank you everyone we'll see you back here tomorrow.