Hey man, so keep a bookmark in Matthew chapter 25. So tonight we're starting kind of a new series and this is gonna be something that we do periodically on Sunday nights. I'm super excited about it. We're gonna do a book series and we're starting the first one this evening. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a book and we're gonna go through the book and usually it's gonna be a book that demonstrates biblical principles. So we talk a lot about biblical worldview here but part of biblical worldview is also knowing what's going on in the world, things that have happened in the world. So you can look at the world itself through the lens of the Bible. So we're gonna look at things like that. And I mean, honestly, you think about preaching 150 plus sermons every single year and I can get up here and I can tell you stories about myself and I can make up stories because really I'm not that interesting but it's much better if I can actually, I don't have to just come up here and talk about personal stories all the time because other people have stories. And that's what we're gonna do with this book series is we're gonna use the experiences, the life and the writing of other people and look at these lessons that point out and many times, especially this book, they demonstrate the biblical philosophies that we talk about every single week. So basically, I mean, we're looking at, we're gonna choose a book, we're gonna go through a handful of biblical principles. I've got eight or nine sermons ready for this particular book that we've chosen tonight and looking at the only accomplishment of the series is to just get you to read the book. I feel like I've succeeded. So this first book is called Up from Slavery. It is, most of you have started reading it. It is the autobiography of Booker T. Washington. Contrary to the first glance of the book, the book isn't really about slavery. It's not really about slavery. It's not even about race relations. It's basically the life of a man who grew up. He was born into slavery. He was born in 1858-ish. He doesn't even really know exactly when he was born, but that was basically right before the breakout of the Civil War that ended slavery in the United States. So of course, following the victory, the Union victory at Gettysburg later that year was the Emancipation Proclamation, if you remember that from school in 1863. And that effectively, even before the Civil War was over, that effectively ended slavery in the South. So that is where this young man was, he was right, he was six, seven years old when that happened in 1863. Now the beauty of the book is this. It's an environment that he was born into, that he was, he found himself in when he was just a very young man that was, it was nowhere near success-friendly in this environment that Booker T. Washington was born into. That's why, I mean, everyone in America should read this book. This should be required reading for high school kids, junior high kids, whoever. Look, it's an American story if there ever was one. And it's a story of success through adversity is what it is. It's a man's, it was a man's sheer will, his positive attitude, his refusal to quit and where that can lead you. And not only where that can lead you, but where it will lead others around you which is a big focus of the book as well. So let's get into it this evening. The first thing about Booker T. Washington that makes his story unique was his beginning. So basically, this sermon's title this evening is called Gaining Traction. Gaining Traction.    You know, if you feel like you're spinning your wheels at any point in your life in any area in your life, that's what we're gonna talk about this evening. We're gonna talk about this idea of gaining traction. Now look, I can say this, I don't know exactly how you all grew up and where you grew up, but I can tell you this. I have been stuck. I'm talking about literally stuck in a vehicle. I guarantee I've been stuck more than anybody in this room.  I was late for school, I would get stuck in the snow. I had a 1977 cut with Supreme. It was rear wheel drive. You try driving that thing through the snow. It doesn't work. Okay, so to get out of the snow, you have to not only dig yourself out, but a lot of times we would go and we would grab hay from the hay bales and we would throw it under the tires of the car to what? To get traction.  So I've been stuck so many times literally in my life. We're gonna talk about how to get unstuck and how to get moving in your life in many different areas. It's all about gaining traction to get started. I'm gonna give you three biblical points that are demonstrated from this book tonight on how to get unstuck in your life and how to gain traction in your life. So here's the beauty of Booker T. Washington's life. He started from literal zero. He started from zero. I'm gonna read you a quote from the first page of the book. I almost said the Bible says. The book says this. It says, my life had its beginning in the midst of the miserable, my life had its beginning in the midst of the miserable, desolate and discouraging in the midst of the most miserable, desolate and discouraging surroundings. So he basically said that, I started out in these miserable conditions. He started out like literally in a shack as his mother was a slave, he was a slave. He had zero education. He didn't know how to do anything. He had no skills. He ended up working coal mines to survive once they were the Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War was over. His stepdad had him working as a young man in these dangerous, dark coal mines. He had no advantages. He literally taught himself how to read by snagging a couple books here and there. But then he learned of a school and he was determined at all costs to get to this school. Okay, so the first point on gaining traction in your life, and this is a simple point. We're not gonna spend a ton of time on this point because I've brought this point up many times in this church before. But look, it's still a point that stops people.  The first point is this, turn to James chapter one. The first point on how to gain traction in your life. Listen, look, these are three very simple points, but if you do these things, they will work. Guaranteed, they will work for you. And the Bible says that they will work. Look at James chapter one and verse number eight. James chapter one and verse number eight. The Bible says a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. The first point on how to gain traction in your life is to set goals in your life. Goals will make you single-minded. The Bible says here, it says a double-minded man is just unstable in all his ways. He just, one minute he's doing one thing, the next minute he does, if this is somebody that changes their mind all the time and they're just going in all different kinds of directions all the time, they're unstable. But goals will keep you single-minded. They will keep you focused in the right direction.  You must set goals. Let me read from you page number 18 from the book Up From Slavery. The book says this, Booker T. Washington, quote, there was never a time, you wanna hear it, you wanna talk about goals, here's a goal. There was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me. And that was a determination to secure an education at any cost. That is a goal, right there. He's like, I am going to secure an education, no matter what, no matter what, I'm gonna, look, he's single-minded on that goal. It's simple, it's simple. Do you have goals? Do you have goals in your life? Do you have goals with your family? Men, you're the leader of your family. Do you have goals with your family? There's so many young kids in this church, it would be shocking slash terrifying if the leader of their home did not have goals for that family. Do you have goals for your kids, specifically? Goals for your sons, goals for your daughters. Do you have goals for their school? Do you have goals for their education? Have you thought about these things, have you written these things down, or are you just floating around? Are you just floating? You just get up every day and be like, oh, what should we do today? Maybe we'll do some of this, maybe we'll do some of that.  Now notice, notice in that quote on page 18 that he says this, that he says this inside that quote. I have this quote, this part of this quote highlighted. It says, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, that part is highlighted in my book, which brings me to point number two. So the point number one in gaining traction is you must have goals that will keep you single-minded. That's the simplest point I'm gonna make tonight. The second is this, is obstacles. Turn to Proverbs chapter 26, Proverbs chapter 26. No matter how dark and discouraging the days might be. Look, he's talking about obstacles there. He's talking about there's gonna be problems. He's like, it doesn't matter though. Whatever happens, he's like, my goal is this. I'm determined no matter what. His goal stays the same. Look at Proverbs 26 in verse number 13. The Bible says, the sloth will man saith, there's a lion in the way. A lion is in the streets. That is a brilliant proverb right there. Now I'm gonna just cut that up for you this evening. That is a brilliant proverb right there and it, look, it just shows you the brilliance of the Bible. It's like one sentence and there's so much there. There's so much there. If you just read it again and again and again, you will just start to see, look, first of all, there's two points to this sentence right here. The two points to this sentence, the first one is, let me ask you this, is there a lion? Is there a lion? Like in this, the sloth will man saith, there's a lion in the way. A lion is in the streets. The proverb implies that maybe there's a lion, maybe there's not. We don't really know. But this guy is saying there's a lion so I can't go. And if you read the next verse, it says he's saying there's a lion so he can stay in bed. So maybe there is no lion, maybe there is a lion, but either way, it keeps him in bed. So the real lion or the imaginary lion, it literally stops him. It literally stops him from what he's doing. Going back to Washington's quote, there was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me. And that was a determination to secure an education at any cost. Here's the problem. And this is why everybody needs to read this book. Everybody needs to read the Bible, but people need to read books like this. Because look, all emphasis today is put on, emphasis today is just put on removing obstacles from everywhere. It's just we must raise our children and remove obstacles from everywhere from them. I mean, look, this is incorrect. It's literally the wrong way to go. Because it produces people that will just constantly claim a lion in the streets. Because guess what? There's gonna be a lion's. The emphasis, I mean this is the whole problem I mean it's not the whole problem and it's a big problem with America today. Is we just have to even the playing field because if somebody has an obstacle in front of them, that's not fair or that won't work. And look, the emphasis should be focused on teaching people to overcome obstacles. And that is what this man's life was all about. And not removing them from everywhere. Because notice how it says the slothful man. It says the slothful man. Look, a lazy man cannot overcome obstacles. That's the brilliance of that verse. Is a lazy man uses the obstacle as a reason that he can't go. They think, look, they think erently. The slothful man thinks erently that I can't go because of the obstacle. The diligent man says I don't care if there's an obstacle I'm going. That's the difference. That's the beauty of Proverbs 26-13. Look, the lack of obstacles actually produces laziness. This is what Proverbs 26-13 is telling us. Washington did not suffer from this. No matter how dark and discouraging the days might be. Dark and discouraging. Those days are obstacles right there. He was able and determined to overcome anything. Turn to Romans chapter 12. The Bible speaks a lot about overcoming. We could go to verse after verse after verse talking about overcoming. But the Bible, that's why the Bible talks so much about overcoming. Because look, there's gonna be obstacles. There's gonna be obstacles. Romans chapter 12, look at verse 21. Romans chapter 12, look at verse 21. The Bible says be not overcome of evil. But overcome evil with good. Look, temptation is an obstacle. Temptation to fall into sin. Temptation to not go in the right direction in your life. That's an obstacle. And it's one that some people can't get past. It's real. Turn to John chapter 16. There will be obstacles. Guess what Jesus did, by the way. Turn to John 16, look at verse 33. John 16, verse number 33. The Bible says, these things have I spoken unto you that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation. That means trouble. That means people coming after you. That means people giving you a hard time. Jesus says, in the world you should have this. In the world you'll have this and heaven you won't have this. So in the world you're gonna have trouble. People are gonna come and they're gonna put obstacles in your way. They're gonna do things to you. But be of good cheer, why? Because I have overcome the world, Jesus says. Well, Jesus overcame the world. That means he's implying that you can overcome any tribulation is what Jesus is implying. Look, parents you should be teaching your kids to overcome obstacles. Not avoid them. This is why you will see two types of people out there. You will see in your, all you adults out here you see two types of people. You find the first type of person who finds solutions no matter what. And then you find the second type of person they just find reasons to not get things done. That's Proverbs 26, 13. Look, the diligent man, he gets it done anyway. The lion is irrelevant. In Proverbs chapter 26 and verse number 13, the lion that the slothful man brings up should be irrelevant.  Look, here's the thing. I've said this before, I'll say it again. Guys, gals, everybody. Nobody cares why you can't get it done. Nobody cares. I mean, if you've learned anything about me, please. Know this, I can see through every excuse. Don't make an excuse. It'd be better to just come up to me and be like, you know what, I did that and that was a really dumb thing to do.  It's way worse. All these people that are claiming lions are doing is just proving that their person number two is all that they're doing. Let's go back to obstacles. Without goals, like first of all, without goals, he would have constantly in those dark and discouraging days, he would have constantly been switching directions and just taking the path of least resistance. The goals, the starting point, without it single-mindedness cannot exist, you'll constantly float around looking for the easiest way.  So he claims unemployment and he hangs out for two years. No, there's no unemployment. There's no welfare. There's no food stamps. He's literally starving as the Bible says you should. The Bible says you should starve. So what does he do? He's sleeping under a boardwalk in this city. He literally is crawling underneath this wooden sidewalk, sleeping there and he's walking around hungry. So what does he do? He's hungry, so he goes and he sees some people unloading a ship and he just starts working. He just starts working and pretty soon the captain of the ship's like, well, this is helpful. And he's working and the captain is kicking him just enough money so where he can eat and he can save a little bit of money to continue his 80-mile journey. So look, he finally gets to the school.  He gets to the school, he's got zero. He's got zero dollars, zero pennies, zero. But the point is this, Lions did not matter to this man. He overcame them. I wanna give you another quote from the book. The book says this, Washington says this. He says, I've learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. All successful people know this, by the way. If this is news to you, all successful people know this. Lesson number three. You have to set goals, lesson number one. You have to be prepared to overcome obstacles.  They need to learn to overcome things. They need to learn to be able to push through problems. Look, you gotta learn to slay some dragons in your life. That's really what it boils down to. And here's the thing.  Slaying dragons is doable and I like it. And then you just get, they don't bother you anymore.  But if you've never faced a line at all, you're scared of everything. So set goals, learn to overcome obstacles, teach your kids to do the same. Everyone thinks that they just have to raise their kids to just have this easy life and give them everything that I never had. You're gonna ruin them.  Lesson number three on gaining traction. Lesson number three on gaining traction. The small things, the small things. You say, I have a goal. I have a goal, you've convinced me. I'm gonna make some goals. I'm determined that nothing will stop me through these goals. I'm ready, but where do I start? You start with the small things. I'm gonna read you a story from the book on page 24. He gets to Hampton Institute. He gets to, this is a paid institution. You pay to go to school here. He has no money. He has no money. He finally gets there. He reaches the Hampton Institute and I'm gonna read you how that went for him out of the book on page 24. As soon as possible, after the reaching the grounds on the Hampton Institute, I presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, a change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favorable impression upon her. And I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or a tramp. Well, first of all, he's like, it's because of the way I look and he wasn't like, how dare they judge me on the way I look? I mean, imagine this, the guy's been sleeping under a sidewalk for days and days and days working. He has no money. I mean, he must have been a mess. And he knew he was a mess. He continues, for some time, she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in my favor. And I continued to linger about her and to impress her in all the ways that I could with my worthiness. In the meantime, I saw her admitting other students and that added greatly to my discomfort for I felt deep down in my heart that I could do as well as they if I could only get a chance to show what was in me. After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me, the adjoining recitation room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it. Notice what she asked him to do. She asked him to sweep the room. He says, take this broom and sweep the room. He continues, I swept the recitation room three times. Then I got a dusting cloth and I dusted it four times. Was he asked to dust the room? He was not. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table and desk, I went over four times with my dusting cloth. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. That means he did that. I had the feeling that in large measure my future depended on the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the head teacher, she was a Yankee woman who knew just where to look for dirt. She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets and she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the walls. She checked that he dusted even though he was not asked to dust. You see that? And over the table and benches, all he was asked to do was sweep. Yet he dusted everything and they checked if he dusted everything. When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked, I guess you will do to enter this institution. The small things. The small things turned to Luke chapter 16. No, actually turned to Matthew chapter 25. I'm sorry. Matthew chapter 25. Matthew chapter 25. I'm gonna read for you the parable of the talents that we just went through and then I'm gonna explain to you just two points on the parable of the talents and how it relates to what I'm talking about with the small things. Where do I begin? I've got goals. I'm determined. I'm determined to get past these obstacles. Where do I begin? Look at Matthew 25 and verse number 14. Jesus is giving a parable. He says, For the kingdom of heaven is a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents to another two and to another one. To every man according to his several ability and straightway took his journey. Then he that received five talents went and traded with the same and made him another five talents. Likewise, he that received two, he also gained other two. But he that received one went and digged it in the earth and hid his Lord's money. After a long time the Lord of those servants cometh and reckoned with them. And so he that received five talents came and brought other five talents saying, Lord, thou deliverst unto me five talents. Behold, I have gained besides them five talents more. He gives 10 talents. Verse 21, The Lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of the Lord. He also had received two talents. He that received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliverst unto me two talents. Behold, I've gained another two talents. Beside them he gives four. His Lord said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of the Lord. Then when he had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou has not sown and gathering where thou has not strawed. You know what that is right there? That's an excuse. That's an excuse. He saw what everybody else had done and he knew where this thing was going. So what does he do? He starts making excuses. And I was afraid and went and hid my talent in the earth and, Lord, thou hast, that is thine. His Lord answered and said to him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, Thou newest that I reap where I sowed not and gather it where I have not strawed. Thou oughtst therefore to have put my money to the exchangers and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him and give it to him which hath ten talents. Look, there's a lot here, okay? There's a lot here. I really just want to make two points. The first point I want to make is in verse number 23, where the Bible says this. It says, His Lord said unto him, this is the person that had two talents and then gained another two. So this guy's kind of mediocre. He was only given two. He was given a small thing to take care of and he gained two more. So what does the Bible say? What does the master say to him? It says, you've been faithful over a few things. He's like, over a few things you were faithful. He said, I will make the ruler over many things. He's going up. He was faithful in the small things and now he's gonna be given a responsibility for a larger things. And the second thing is this. The second point is this. The second point is this. He took the talent from him that buried it and he gave it to the one that did the best job. The guy that produced the least was left with nothing.  He rewards the producers. He rewards the producers. So look, take what you have. Take the responsibilities that you've been given and be as faithful as you can be with those responsibilities. And look, you know what? And then the Bible says, you will be given more. And the story from up from slavery that I just read you, it demonstrates that. Homeschooling. Look, homeschooling is a perfect example of this. It starts small. It starts small. It starts with like pre-K. It starts with things like small learning. Like ABCs and shapes and animals and all these things that you teach your children. It's small things. And then reading. These are all small things. But you can use this time to be faithful in those small things. And then you can use this time to get organized in those small things. Think about this, ladies. You are turning your home into a school. Think about that.  You don't see, I mean, that's gonna take some organization. But look, you don't have to do that. You don't have to be faithful in those things.  You don't see too many public school kids running around in their pajamas. Or maybe you do, I don't know. You don't see too many public school kids going to school at different times every day. Look, use this time when you have the small things to get a solid routine. Build these things when the responsibilities seem small and then guess what? The talents will increase. The talents will increase. Make your home a school with the small things. Be faithful in the small things when the kids are young and then guess what? When the kids are older, you'll be able to achieve great things with their education because you've been faithful in those small things. Go back to Luke chapter 16. Guys, guys with work, go to Luke chapter 16 and look at verse number 10. Luke chapter 16, look at verse number 10. Luke chapter 16, verse number 10. The Bible says, he that is faithful in that, which is least, is faithful also in much. Again, in Matthew chapter 25, when the Lord came back, he said, well done, good and faithful servant. The first step folks is showing yourself faithful in the small things. Because people know, everybody knows, God knows, God in here is telling you that He knows if you're faithful in the small things, you'll also be faithful in the big things. And that's how you'll get to move up to bigger things. You say, I work, you know, I'm low man. I'm low man on the totem pole. He's like, I'm not giving any responsibilities. I hear that. Look, take the responsibilities that you do have seriously. Clean that classroom four times. That's what you should do. It's from the small things that you're given that larger things will be given after you're proven what? After you're proven faithful. But no, you know, everybody wants the big responsibilities right away. That's the problem. Everybody wants the big responsibilities right away. You're not gonna get those until you've proven yourself faithful in the small ones. I remember my first construction job, like my first official construction job, I could tell like when the foreman, he didn't know like, I didn't know how to do anything. I didn't know how to do anything. So what he would tell me to do when I would come up to him and say I did that, now what, he'd tell me like, we didn't have anything for me to do. He'd tell me to go pick up nails. Go pick up nails around the building. So I'd walk around and I'd just pick up nails. But I kind of knew that this wasn't really a super valuable thing that I should be doing, but I mean, make sure I didn't miss any nails. And while I was picking up nails, I'd be watching like what everybody else was doing. And I told the kids this, I told Garrett this, and see he was this tall. It's like, you need to start figuring out what needs to be done so you don't have to be told every single time what needs to be done. So I mean, I started seeing that they'd drive the forklift over to this pallet of sheet metal sheets. And the guy would have to get out of the forklift and cut the bands on the sheet metal sheets.  So as I was picking up nails, I just went and I put a tin snips in my pocket. And the next time he drove over there, I ran over there and I cut the bands for him. He didn't have to get out.  These are the things that you need to do. You need to be faithful and pick it up nails. Then you'll be given other things to do. So look, in conclusion, what are the three lessons? This is how you do it, folks. This is how Booker T. Washington did it. You must have goals. You must learn to overcome obstacles. And you must prove yourself faithful at the small things. This will get you started. If you do these three things, you'll get traction and start moving forward. In your life in general, in your Christian life, in your family life, things will start moving for you. But if you're stuck, if you're spinning, one of these three things is your problem. One of these three things is your problem. Turn to 1 Samuel chapter 17. Let's end here. 1 Samuel chapter 17. Look, these are valuable lessons that are demonstrated by Booker T. Washington's life here. Just getting started, getting traction. He had a goal he would never stop. He was determined to push through any obstacle to achieve his goal. And then when he was given a chance at that goal, he was told he was showing something small to do. And he took it very seriously and that kept him moving forward. That got him to bigger things. Look at 1 Samuel chapter 17. Look at 1 Samuel chapter 17. This is the story of Goliath. You probably heard the story maybe a hundred times or more. Look at Goliath, what he said to the children of Israel. Think about this. I want you to think about this story of Goliath in a little different way this evening. Look at verse number nine. Look what Goliath said. Do you remember how terrified the children of Israel were of Goliath? Look what he said to them in verse number nine. Goliath came out and he's basically saying, send me a man. Send me a man to fight with me.  But if I prevail against him and kill him, then shall ye be our servants and serve us. Do you know what this guy is doing? You have two armies here. And this guy is proposing that we settle this with a single fight. That's what he's proposing. He's saying, send me a guy and we'll have two guys fight. Hundreds, thousands. There was a battle in the Old Testament where 500,000 people died. In hand to hand combat. Can you imagine that? I mean, look at the Civil War. How many people died? 600, some thousand people died. But look, he's saying, let's settle this. Let's settle this with one fight. Me against your best. Everything is on the line. But here's the thing. Here comes this, David. Do you think that it just took somebody who was brave enough to go out there and fight Goliath? You think they were gonna risk the whole nation on just somebody who was just brave enough? No, they're not gonna just give this responsibility. Like, yeah, let's send the worst warrior. He's really brave.  Let's just send him out there and risk all of us for this one fight. No, they wouldn't do that. But look at verse number 32. David goes up. Look, David had to make a case. David had to sell himself to Saul. Saul's the king. David had to go up and say, hey, I can handle this fight. He had to not only say I'm brave enough to fight him, but he had to convince King Saul that he could win. Think about that. This man is nine feet tall. He's a warrior since he was a child, the Bible says. Look at verse 32. And David said to Saul, let no man's heart fail because of him. Thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine. He says, I'll go fight him. Look what Saul says. Saul said to David, thou art not able to go fight against this Philistine to fight with him? It's like, thou art a brother of youth. He's like, you're just a kid. And he, a man of war from his youth. Right away, Saul says no. He says no. He's like, you're just a kid.  This guy's been a warrior since he was a kid. Look at verse 34. And David said, yeah, you're right, I'll probably lose. Look what David said. David said unto Saul, thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock. And I went out after him, and I smote him and delivered it out of his mouth. And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. He's like, I killed the bear. And then the lion came up, and he's like, I grabbed him by the beard, and I killed him. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them. See if he hath defied the armies of the living God. Look, this is the irony of this, how we end the sermon tonight. There was a literal lion here. There was a literal lion. And David slew him. And that was clean in the classroom for David right there. David used the small battles of the lion and the bear to get permission, to get promoted to fight the big battles. And then David became king. Look, we see this method demonstrated in someone's life in this book. It's not just me talking. This man demonstrated this biblical principle in his life in the late 1800s. It works, and it'll work for you. It worked for David. And look, this guy, the reason that this book is so great because he had it way harder than you, this guy. That's the beauty of this whole book. And it's the same plan that we see in the Bible. David did not care that there was a lion there. David saw the lion and he just slew the lion. And it was that classroom lesson that got him permission from King Saul to fight Goliath. And then he slew that obstacle too. And he just kept going through obstacle after obstacle after obstacle. But it starts with the small ones. So look, there's this plan that we see in the Bible of setting goals, of overcoming obstacles, and of starting by slaying the small lions and getting to the bigger battles, by being faithful in the small things, and then you'll be given the bigger things in your life. Booker T. Washington demonstrated it in an environment, in an environment. That's why you have to read the book about what he went through. Think about it. He is a black man trying to navigate this world right after slavery ended in the South. I mean, if he can do it, anybody can do it. That's why, so there's no excuse for you. You need to teach your kids to overcome things. You need to teach your kids to be faithful in small things. Look, these kids need to be given something to do, other than play games or whatever. You know, and then they can learn this method. There's no excuse for any of us when we see that this was executed by people in the Bible and especially in this book. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


QuickBooks Online 2023 recurring transactions invoice versus sales receipts. Get ready to earn the skills needed to boost your bank books on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. Support Accounting Instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Here we are in our QuickBooks Online test company file using the account view as opposed to the business view. You can toggle between the two views by going to the cog up top and switching the view down below. We're going to duplicate some tabs to put our major financial statement reports in as we do every time. Right click in the tab up top to do so duplicate that is then we're going to duplicate the duplication process right clicking and duplicate again. Back to the tab to the middle going down to the reports on the left hand side. We want to open up one of the favorites the balance sheet report as it's thinking go to tab to the right reports on the left hand side. This time we want the profit and loss the income statement. I'm going to close up the hamburger and just put in the range so we're going to go from 010123 tab 123123 tab January to December 2023. We're going to run it to refresh it and then tab to the left. Same thing closing the hamburger scrolling up and changing that ranging 010123 tab 123123 and then you got to run it to refresh it just like I do every morning running to refresh. Just kidding I don't actually run every morning and I'm not refreshed but any case on to business. We're looking at the recurring transactions and there's two major ones that we can take a look at with the sales with the sales type of transactions. That's an invoice and a sales receipt. So in prior presentations we talked about turning on the QuickBooks payments which you can find in the cog up top in the accounting and then in the payments options. You have the QuickBooks payments the next and what that does of course is allow the customer more options to be paying us at the expense of possible fees related to different payment options. The next thing we might want to do is try to automate some of the sales transactions two ways we can do that. We can make a reoccurring invoice and give the client that'll give basically the customer more options to say if they want to be automatically paying the series of reoccurring invoices as they will be receiving them. Or we can try to automate the sales receipt which will basically be more like automatic payments that will be set up now you can recall the differences in our flow chart. This is the desktop version flow chart but it's the same thing for the online version we're just looking at our sales cycle. The invoice is the form typically used when you did the work first and then you build the client. But if you have a repeat bill for some kind of service item that is happening you could use of course an invoice that will be sent out periodically like every month. And then on the recipient side they can determine whether or not they're going to try to like automate the invoices they're going to be receiving. So you have a little less control of automating you know the actual payment the facilitation of the payment in that method. The other form is the sales receipt which traditionally we can imagine is the form when you're at actually a cash register and you're getting paid at the same time you do the work. If you're going to set automatic payments that automatically get paid rather than having the invoice that then gives the option to get paid or possibly an option to automate it on the customer side. Then the sales receipt you would think would be the form that you can do that with because that's the form that that's going to say that there's going to be the payment happening at that point in time. So if you can automate the sales receipt instead of going in and out of accounts receivable it's going to go directly to the payment on the sales receipt. So that's the two options now there's a couple different ways we can get into the automation. So for example if I hit the plus button just our normal invoice I can go into invoices here and this is the new look on the invoice. So notice that you might have the old look and you can you still have similar options typically under each of the each of the two looks. It's it's but you might have to get into those options in a little bit different way. So that's the that's the idea. But they have an automation thing down here. So if you don't see that you can hit the manage and then here's the automation and notice the difference of this invoice when I add the recurring invoice here. It basically pops into a recurring invoice which is formatted like this. So now we've got some more fields up top to put in that series of payment information. So I'm going to close that out. We'll go back into it in a second closing that out just to note that if I go to the plus button up top and I go into a receive payment form. I'm not a receipt payment. Hold on a second. I want to go into a sales receipt. A sales receipt form the other one the other sales type form. You don't have that little thing over here that that goes to the automation item. You could try to have payments that are recurring if you take a look at the payment option and you set up like a credit card. Right. You go down to the credit card and then you enter the credit card details. So you might be able to do that possibly even out without the the quick books payment stuff because you're going to actually enter enter the credit card details into here. So now you've got the credit card information and so on and so forth. But we can also get into this information. If I close this out by going to another area do you want to leave without saving I do please poor five or we're going to go into the cog up top. And we're going to then go into the lists and recurring transactions recurring trend. I always want to say reoccurring reoccurring trend recurring transactions. Shouldn't there be an A there. I feel like it anyways reoccurring reoccurring. I don't know. Do you speak English. I do. I don't get it. I feel like there should be. Okay. So in any case here we have our list of recurring transactions and we can then add new transactions and we can add all kinds of new transactions. But the two we're looking at are the sales types of transactions which once again would be the sales receipts and the the invoice invoice and the sales receipt. So just let's take a look at that sales receipt first and say OK to note it's a little bit different look and feel when you go into it from here because now you have it listed as a recurring sales receipt as opposed to just changing like the payment option basically down below. So let's do a couple of these. I'm going to close this out and we'll just make believe we're populating these items I'm going to start with the invoice. So the invoice will give more optionality to the customer will have a reoccurring invoice. And again they can decide on their end whether they got how they're going to automate the payments on the invoice versus the sales receipt which once set up should be kind of automated if we get the automation process set up as the general idea as I understand. So we're going to say new. Let's do the invoice first invoice. And now instead of putting the template name I could just choose a customer customer J customer for example that has an email address. They typically are going to need one and it populates the template name up top. Now you could adjust the template name once you have done that possibly have you have multiple recurring recurring recurring customer J here. So you could say recurring one two three or something for that customer. But I'll just take the customer name which populated automatically we can either schedule this reminder or unscheduled. Now the reminder is going to give us basically a reminder instead of actually recording it. I wanted to just do it just do it man. And so we're just going to schedule it. We're not going to create days in advance. We're not going to create it before we send it out. You could think about possibly a situation where you want to create the invoice maybe before it's before it's automated to send out possibly. But we're going to leave that like customer. We've got the email address is important. And then the options send automatically send emails. So I'm going to say yes automatically send the emails print later include unbilled charges. I'm not going to include unbilled charges. Those would be charges like if we enter time or for using billable items on expense forms and we're trying to pull them into the invoicing process. And possibly if you already have an invoice that's going out every month then you might be that would be pretty pretty neat pretty nice system. If you can actually because usually when you have these invoices that go out automatically you would need them to be the same in terms of what you're putting down here. However if you're billing your clients based on billable items such as time that you're putting into the system or such as billable expenses that you're making billable that you're entering as bills or forms that you later pull into the invoice periodically. It would be pretty nice if you can automate that system so that whatever you did that was billable pulls into the invoice automatically right and then populates on an automatic system. However usually you would think if you were doing billable stuff you'd probably want to double check that the invoice is properly populated with all that stuff. But in any case and then we've got the online payments. So here's the payment options. These are here because we have the QuickBooks payments. If you didn't have this stuff here then you wouldn't have you know you wouldn't have the automated payments because we set those up. So because we set up the payments which is QuickBooks payments options. These are the payment options that are there. We did that in a prior presentation. Want to check that out if you want. Edits will only apply to these series of recurrent invoices. Cards bank transfers. So we got the cards. You can edit payment methods for all future invoices in the settings. Okay. So I'm going to say okay. Moving B to the end intervals. We can do it on a monthly basis. Daily basis basis weekly basis. Oftentimes these things are done on a monthly basis. So on the day I'm going to make it on the 28th so I can try to make one happen here because it's the 27th right now. So I'll do it maybe tomorrow. On 28th of every month and then the start date. Let's say it starts. It starts today. And then the end date. And you don't if you don't want an end date it could be indefinite. So maybe you don't put an end date but if you want an end date then you can say end date. I wanted to end. Right there. Maybe there's my end date. And then terms net 30. So these are the terms when it's going to be paid by that's important for an invoice because the invoice gives a number of days from the date. Of the invoice in terms of when you expect to be paid. So so and obviously it's it's going to be a different end date in terms of when the invoices is going to be based on the start date. So 30 days after each invoices created is the payment interval for these and we've got the tags if we want to add the tags and everything. I'm just going to go down here and say it's ours. Hold on. I wasn't trying to add something. Ignore that. Ignore that. Let's do our trusty two dollars and a penny. Let's do let's do one one seventy nine for a random amount. A dollar seventy nine. That's what we're charging. We're making big bucks over here. So there we have it based on location sales tax. So that's the invoice that we want to be generating on a monthly basis. And so we'll send that out. So I'm going to say I'm going to say save the template. Save the template if you would. So there is our template where once again back in this recurring reoccurring recurring reoccurring reoccurring recurring transactions. So there they are. Then you've got your options here that you can use it. You can duplicate it. You can delete it if you so choose. And of course you can edit it if you need to do some edits in there. So I'm going to close that back out. Let's compare and contrast that if we may to a sales receipt. So I'm going to hit a new one here. So I'm going to say I don't even want to invoice. I want a sales receipt. I want things happening right then and there. Automatic payments sales receipt boom. Okay. So similar kind of template. So once again I'm going to choose customer J which populates it up in the template. Although you can change it if you choose we can schedule it reminder or unscheduled. So we want to just schedule it just make it happen. Just make it happen man. And then I like to send an automatic email because that's nice to do to tell people hey I'm doing a sales receipt over here. And then monthly let's do the same here to on day 28 again day 28. And the end date by or after after start start date is going to be I just did that. And then after to have occurred. Let's do that. That'll be good. All right. And then down here we're going to say that we'll have another service item services. And we'll just say this is 1.19. All right. So there we have that. And so there's our recurring sales receipt. So let's save that template and something's not quite right. What's the problem man? What's your problem? Another recurrent. Oh I have another template named that even though it's an invoice they couldn't differentiate the invoice from the sales receipt. All right. This is a recurring template for a sales receipt. Quick books. You should know the difference. But whatever. Save the template. Okay. So there's our sales receipts have now been created. So in future presentations hopefully we'll see what basically an email might look like as they pull this in. And what will happen when they start to create these sales forms. But if I go back on over into my sales tab we would expect then that in the sales transactions here we're going to start to see those transactions as they start to populate over here. And if we go into the customer side of things and we go into customer J J customer that's that's the one we're going to basically see as the as the forms the sales receipts or invoices are created. We should start to be able to see them populating in here and be able to track them as we normally would.


Pollination by animals is essential for the production of many food crops, as it helps to ensure high quality and quantity of harvests. This study examined the impact of animal pollination on various aspects of crop quality, such as appearance and nutrition. The results showed that pollination has a significant effect on the quality of fruits and vegetables, but only a minor effect on other types of crops. Additionally, pollination did not significantly affect the quality of stimulants or spices. The authors also found evidence of a possible decline in pollinator services, although this was not statistically significant. Overall, these findings suggest that pollination is still adequate to support crop quality, but further research should be conducted to determine whether there are any long-term implications of this decline. This article was authored by Elena Gazia, Peter Battery, and Lorenzo Marini.


Now, that's the Cloud Editor, which is basically the web application on Trinca that you can use to write or edit your document, and Autophile Edit, an easy way to actually get your document edited once you've written it on any writing platform. This slide highlights the key differences with the Trinca Cloud Editor, which we will demonstrate in a few minutes from now. You can actually write your content as you would write on any application like Microsoft Word or maybe Google Docs.  You can also get writing suggestions, write in real time in your writing, writing the paper, which makes the entire experience very seamless. All you need to do is just review each suggestion and then apply, accept or reject them, basis your context. You can also have the option to actually submit it to a professional editor, who's powered by an Ago, of course, who are experts in their subject, in the particular subject you're writing your paper in. And finally, you can also download your file from the Cloud Editor. Now for the Autophile Edit feature, you can simply just upload your MS Word document onto Trinca, which then just in a couple of minutes gives you all the corrections in the document, in track changes. And that obviously makes for a very fast method of editing your paper, and all you need to do is just then review your changes, if you like, to retain or reject once you do not like. You also get a summary table, finally, in the document, which gives you an understanding of how, what kind of suggestions have been made, what kind of changes have been made in the document. We will talk about these use cases in detail in the demonstration as well. Before we move on to the demonstration, a quick understanding of where Trinca is available. So for all the authors, academic writers, Trinca is available as a web application on the Cloud, which is www.trinca.ai. We also have an MS Word plugin, which basically enables you to get the benefits of Trinca's grammar suggestions right within Trinca's, but within the words, familiar in writing environment. We also have browser plugins, which enable you to get Trinca suggestions on any writing platform, like Google Docs, or even Word Online, or three or whichever you use. And finally, for enterprises, Trinca is also available as an API, and it can be uninstalled on premise, or it can be a JavaScript, which integrates within your, within your writing platform. With that, we will move on to the demonstration. So we will be talking about the Cloud application, which is, like I said, www.trinca.ai, the website where you can register for free and start using Trinca for free as well. Once you make your account, all you need to do is just log in with that account, and you are taken to what we call My Drive. This is the space where you upload all your files. You can keep as many files as you want. There is no limit, and you can access them then at any point on any device. All you need to do is just log in with your credentials. It also enables you to create a folder and then organize your files neatly. Once you upload a file onto Trinca, it becomes accessible for edits or writing within the platform. Let's look at a file. This is a Trinca Cloud editor. As you can see, the file that we had uploaded is already rendered. And you will see that on the right-hand side, you will have suggestions for all the errors that have been found by Trinca's AI writing, AI engine. We have several categories of errors that we identify, of course, which I will be talking about. But the experience for you isn't very simple, because all you need to do is just understand the highlighted error and make the corrections by clicking the suggestion there. It's as simple as that. You can also make amendments to the text that you have written, if you would like. And you can also filter suggestions. If you want to see only, for example, grammar errors, you can just select grammar errors and see only grammar corrections in the document. Now, coming to the category suggestions themselves, Trinca will make about four different categories of error suggestions, which span about 3,000 different error types. The grammar, grammar is where you get all the grammatical error correction sessions, like your article correction, your subject verb, pronoun usage, et cetera, which is to do with the core grammar error within the writing. Within spellings, Trinca supports contextual spellings, which means it can distinguish for the subject that you're writing, if a word doesn't really fit for the context or not. For example, the difference between from versus form is handled by Trinca, and that is also for technical usage as well. That makes our spell checker quite unique. Within writing advice and enhancements, you get suggestions which improve your writing for tone, structural clarity, readability, and finally, the delivery of the entire content itself. With these overall four categories of suggestions, Trinca ensures that you not only just improve your writing for grammar accuracy, but also in terms of its readability and overall appeal for the audience. And all you need to do is just click on each error suggestion, understand it. We always have explanations for all the errors that we are highlighting within the document and make those suggestions by clicking on those. You can also then select the academic style guide. Style guides are very crucial for the language writing compliance within a journal's preferences. But to meet the journal's preferences, all you need to do is just select these style guides that we have already built into Trinca. AMA is very suitable for, for example, all the life sciences and medical content. Once you select so, Trinca will then check the content entirely for the writing suggestions in regard to the style guide. You can see that as a category as well in the filter. And as Trinca processes the document, you will have those populating in. And then you can just simply select the error again for that particular style guide and make the correction there. Similarly, you can also choose the tone that you want to use within your writing. If you're writing a blog or maybe some technical report which is not intended for publication, you can select general writing. Or you can choose academic writing if you're writing a paper or a book, chapter or a thesis. Once you do so, Trinca will also then let you choose between the different types of paper that you can write or even the subject area. Trinca automatically detects the subject area that you have written content in. And you can also then overwrite, for example, you can, let's say, select cardiology for this paper and save it. Doing so gives you more control on how the publication checks work for the document. So that's, that's quickly how the grammar suggestions, grammar suggestions work on Trinca. Now for consistency, it's also important when you're publishing your paper to make sure that there are mechanical inconsistencies, inconsistencies are really removed to make sure that your content appears very professional. And to help you with that, Trinca can identify all the inconsistencies. And for example, over here, dashes, you have two different variations, one without a hyphen, one with a hyphen. All you need to do is just navigate through those and understand which one contextually fits better and apply that variant. And when you do that, Trinca will apply that throughout consistently and you eliminate the inconsistency. There are about nine different categories of inconsistencies that Trinca can capture and makes it easy for you to eliminate those. Now finally, we have publication checks which are about understanding how ready your paper is for publication. We have eight different categories of checks. Once you start the check, you will see that the Trinca background engine has also assessed your paper's suitability for a particular journal, which you could have input. If you do not input any target journal, you will also get suggestions as to which journal really matches the content that you've written. And you can choose to submit to that journal. And we have technical compliance checklist, which will help you with meeting the basic requirements which are a part of any desk screening process for any journal. For example, the inclusion of a title. Some journals might want you to not include it in the main manuscript for blending reasons, the affiliations, the abstract. All of that is completely understood by Trinca's structural engine as well. And the suggestions then that you get in terms of this technical compliance checklist will help you in making sure that you meet the requirements that the journal imposes for submission. Similarly for ethical compliance, Trinca will see if you have informed consent or ethical approvals made or not. If it's a life sciences or a medical paper or any research that involves humans or animals. And similarly for financial disclosures, if you have been receiving any financial support, you should be declaring that and Trinca will make sure that you have that declaration present. If not, you will be alerted. Similarly for conflicts and data availability. In the same vein, Trinca will also check for authorship details, which is whether your author names are present or not in the document. This again forms a quick check whether if the manuscript really requires to be blinded, that's an easy comparison against the journal guidelines then. And you realize that you didn't have to do anything additional apart from uploading the paper to actually get this checklist. Because Trinca will understand your paper not only in terms of the content, but also in terms of its structure. And finally an important check for academic writers or authors who are writing research papers is a references check. Trinca will not only assess whether you have references present in a document or not, but also give you a sense of how many of those are very old and you should be replacing them with newer references. The intention being that old references can be found upon by peer reviewers because they weaken your argument. To avoid that, Trinca will give you these alerts which you can then use to replace with newer references which will then make your argumentation much stronger.  So that's a Trinca cloud editor. You can also then once you're done with your edit, download your file. And you have two options, which is the final file. If you would like to download a clean file without track changes, you can do so. But if you want to retain the changes that you have made on the Trinca editor, you can download the file with track changes and you can review the file later on. That's a Trinca cloud editor. And then we will move on to the autofile edit feature. The autofile edit feature is designed for writers who have already written the paper and are in a need of a quick editing for the document. To use this feature, you will have to navigate to the autofile edit section on Trinca cloud once you log in. And on this page, all you will need to do is just click on the file and on the browse button and just upload the file that you need to edit. Then choose your preferences, whether you would want to use American or the British English. And if you want to have any categories removed, you can do that as well. But if you want to apply any style guide, you can choose a style guide to apply during the edit process. You can also choose to include comments if there are suggestions which require your input and then submit it. Once you submit, in a couple of minutes, you will get a file which will be downloaded by Trinca's AI engine for all the corrections that are required in the document. And then you can download the file which will be a Word file with all the track changes included. Here is a quick demonstration. In this file, you will see that Trinca has automatically made the corrections required. And there will be comments explaining suggestions which need your review. Since all the changes are in track changes, you can always obviously reject them or accept them, which gives you control of how the document should be edited finally. And at the end, you will also have Trinca's summary. This summary will give you an understanding of the overall score, which is basically the effort involved in improving the language quality, as opposed to the original. And then the category of revisions in each major grammatical error category, the number of revisions in each category. This is particularly useful for enterprise clients who are looking at document quality overall. That concludes the auto-file edit feature as well. Are we happy to take any questions? Sneha, are there any questions in the Q&A panel if you could help me with those? All right. I think I'll take questions from the Q&A panel that I can see. I think we have a question from one of the participants, which is what should I pay for using Trinca for a single manuscript? All right, so Trinca works on a subscription model. You can use Trinca for free up to 10,000 words a month. If you have a manuscript, which is less than 10,000 words, you can get the edits from Trinca for free. If it exceeds 10,000 words, you can choose between a monthly subscription, which is for $20, or an annual subscription, which is for $80. We also have a quarterly subscription for $45. So these are the different subscription plans which are available. And obviously the premium subscription comes with additional benefits as well. For example, you get early access to all the new features that Trinca is launching. And also the word plugin is available for premium users. And you also get five credits as opposed to two credits in the free plan, which you can use for autofiladet and other features available within Trinca. There's another question by one of the participants, which is the availability of a plagiarism check is within Trinca. So currently Trinca does not have a plagiarism check. However, this will be launched within the month of November within Trinca. And we will have multiple options of plagiarism check depending on your need. So do check it out. We have another question by one of the participants, which is will the consistency checks and publication checks be made available in autofiladet anytime soon? So consistency checks and publication checks will be available within autofiladet in the near future. I believe participants can also ask questions by unmuting themselves live. Okay, I believe there are no additional questions. Can perhaps conclude the session. If you have any questions, you can always write to us at supportattrinca.ai. We'll be happy to help you. And do remember the word plugin and the Mac plugin version are also coming soon. Any additional questions? Okay, any free code check by Trinca? I'm sorry, I'm not entirely sure of the questions. If you could maybe help me understand that. The question was any free code check by Trinca. Do you mean the coding as in like programmatic code check for a free coupon code for using Trinca? While I wait the clarification, we do roll out several coupons at different time points for Trinca, the premium subscriptions. So please do stay tuned. Do subscribe to our newsletter and our mailing list as well. Okay. I think that's all the questions we have so far. Maybe you can conclude the session at this point. Thank you everyone for joining the session and as always, if you have any queries, you can always reach out to us at supportattrinca.ai. Thanks again. I hope you enjoy using Trinca as your writing assistant.


Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. I had a great weekend. In fact, I'm probably experiencing peak happiness right now. So listen, I don't believe in listening to my gut. I find my gut to be unreliable on many levels. Sorry about my voice, by the way, I've been screaming for four days. But yeah, when you live with an illness of disordered thinking as I do, you have to learn not to trust your intuition because it's constantly lying to you. To cite a minor example from my own life, my intuition tells me many times a day that I did not lock the car door when, in fact, I always lock the car door. I bring this up because on Saturday morning, my unreliable gut told me that in order for the soccer team I've loved for most of my life to win the Champions League, I needed to give away one of my most prized possessions, a jersey signed by former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard. Now, this is the part of the video where I tell you that, of course, I understand that giving away a signed jersey is not going to affect the outcome of a sporting event that's happening thousands of miles away, but no, no, I don't understand that. I mean, I get it intellectually, I guess, but one, like a lot of humans, I'm incurably superstitious, and two, who am I to say why we won the Champions League? But I think something else might have also been going on, which is that lately I've been thinking a lot about the verb to treasure and how valuing something can sometimes lead to hoarding it when what would help the universe most might be to share what you value rather than clinging to it. Like, that jersey had brought me a lot of joy, and maybe it was time for it to bring someone else joy. Right, so I was in New York City for book con that day. I walked into a soccer bar, found a guy sitting alone wearing a Liverpool shirt who appeared to be approximately a size L, and I told him that I'd had a premonition that I needed to give away this signed jersey, and I gave it to him. He was a nice guy with a PhD, and I think something sciency? He didn't know who I was, but he was very excited about the jersey, so we chatted for a bit, took a picture together, and then I left. He told me his name, but I don't remember it. I'm not going to show his face, because I don't know if he wants his face shown, but if anybody happens to know this guy, I'd love to know how his day went. Due primarily to me giving away this jersey, and secondarily to the exploits of the players on the field, Liverpool won the game 2-0. I was actually backstage at book con during the last couple minutes of the game, and Christine Frohseth, who plays Alaska in the Looking for Alaska Hulu show, got this video of me very nervous and excited. After the game, Akilah Hughes and I went to a Liverpool bar in the neighborhood and sang our hearts out, and everyone was hugging everyone. At one point in the evening, I was hugging a stranger, which is not something I do in the normal course of daily events, and I noticed that he was crying. He was heaving sobs, and I didn't understand why he was crying until I found that I was also crying, and then I knew why. Sports are about winning and losing, heartbreak and joy, grief and celebration. They provide simple narratives when life only provides complicated ones. But more than that, I think they are about celebrating together, and grieving together, and being together. Sports remind us that what we have is not as important as what we share, and that we are never truly alone, not in loss and not in victory. At the end of every game, Liverpool fans sing a song that ends walk on, walk on with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone. My wish is that each of us might always know that truth as profoundly as I did on Saturday night. Whether you love football or not, you'll never walk alone. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.


Hey guys, this is Matt Beck from freesaloneducation.com and I've got a business tip for all you salon owners. And this is something that I've been doing for about two years and I love it. It's a team contest that we run. The contest is based on the frequency, or not frequency of visit, scratch that. We'll talk about that later. But team contest based on services per guest. So how many highlights, colors, any upgrades that your staff does, let's say that they're booked for a haircut, you wanna get multiple services per guest. So I'm gonna try to upgrade them to something maybe in the wash house, something else behind the chair, maybe pop in a couple foils, whatever. So how many services per guest they're doing? Retail per guest. So how many bottles of product are they selling? And then rebooking percentage. The thing I like about those three numbers are that anybody can compete. So I've been doing here for 10 years. I can compete with a girl that's just out of beauty school because it's not about dollar amounts. Dollar amounts are just what is the outcome of those three numbers. So don't look at the dollar amounts. I don't even look at top stylists as having the best dollar amounts. What it's really about is who's performing the best on a daily basis. So those numbers, services per guest, all about the upgrade, take home or retail per guest, all about selling, and then rebooking percentage when you get them back into your salon. So we basically take that. I give out $10 a week to the winner of each category. So a total of 30 bucks, which as a salon, that's not a big deal, but to a stylist, it's gas money, it's whatever it is. It gives them incentive to want to better those numbers and they get to compete with each other. So we run it Sunday through Saturday. So every Saturday when we get off of work, everybody checks their numbers, we go through it, and whoever wins each category gets to take home $10 from that category. So it works really well for us. The report I use for that is the MA055 report from Millennium. I use Millennium software. So that's the report that's the best for me. So if you guys use Millennium, and I know there's a lot of you out there, this is the report that I love. I also have the Palm Mitchell edition of Millennium software. So there's a toolbox that comes up and it really gives us those key numbers pretty easily as well. So if you get a chance, check it out. If you don't have Millennium software, go get it so you can start doing things like this. This is what grows a business, is having fun and showing your staff what they need to look for to help them grow. So my name is Matt Beck from freestyleneducation.com. Make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube, follow us on Facebook, and we will see you on the next video. Thanks.


What's up, everyone? It's your girl Kinsey here from Lane Sports Cards, and I'm ripping a couple of personals here for Jeffrey H We've got two of the 21-22 Panini Donrus optic basketball hobbies. All right, best of luck Jeffrey. Here we go Get everyone we're gonna have some guests in the building on Wednesday We're gonna have Cole Anthony, Michael Carter Williams, and a couple other magic players In in the shop ripping with Caleb over on Lane gaming They're gonna be ripping some I believe it's 2012 Pokemon. So Pokemon from about 10 years ago So definitely check that out to 99 Kyle Kuzma on the red wizards color match there Cole's really big on Pokemon.  Oh, I know that. Yeah characters.  He recently started ripping like Pokemon cards 75 years Bama to bio But yeah, it's kind of funny, huh? Yeah, how they're ripping gaming Robinson Earl. We've got lighted up hollow Bradley Beal So there's a break that you can buy into it's a random pack style James book night 75 years silver kid Cunningham Believe it's like one tennis spot Something like that for Wednesday streaming on the waiting game Sadiq Bay hollow That starts at six o'clock Wednesday nights great brown Dominators Excited excited to meet them. I should be a lot of fun hollow rated rookie Joe wise camp. I know Kayla's a quarter Six Hollow Julius Randall, right I ripped that morning I think I'm done around three or three thirty probably stay to meet them Keita We've got hollow the rookie Scotty Barnes nice one there my wise man We've got for the net a hollow rated rookie Otto of Kessler Edwards Kessler Edwards gonna be your auto out of the first box for you Jeffrey raining three Sadiq Bay See some more color come out Wise camp hollow feel my mom Josh Christopher orange stuff curry 12 of 99 or two night 12 of 199 sorry Nice curry color Lance Laws or fields win? We've got Jonathan Cumminga Devon Booker pink velocity Devonte Graham 57 79 on that one I really only watched a stealer game and like part of the Sunday night game last night To be fair the Bears game was very Wagner light it up.  Yeah, Jared Butler. We got green Duncan Robinson heat to 149 It was funny how they got on sportsman like conduct for the bringing the towel onto the field That was crazy 35 years silver from Wagner before a kick they tried to like dry off the turf And they got a flag a 15-year penalty for it Bones Highland rated rookie. Oh, we got a photon here Jeffrey. Good luck photon Rated rookie Moses moody your rookie photon That is sick little dusty here. I'll have him wipe that down before we put it in a mag for you Thank you That is sick baby on Mitchell and Last pack box one heating up here with the personal Evan Mobley rated rookie and hollow of Lonnie Walker the fourth Says the ultra rare photon sometimes you'll get a couple per case, but yeah Short print That's a that's football. I think that's retail short friends. Yeah I've been trying to buy a nausea one of those and I keep getting out of it at the last second on even man I won't one of those so bad.  Rain rookie Shagoon Ray Allen 75 years Luca Garza hollow Lamella ball star gazing 75 years Julius Randall Enjoying your Monday ready for some Monday night football got bones Highland rated rookie Vucevich lighted up Bradley Biel Boston jr. Hollow rated rookie Xair Williams Rated rookie of Moses Moody and orange to 199 TJ Warren Pacers Hollow John Collins rated rookie of Jalen Green Pink velocity of Wendell Carter jr. Magic 11 out of 39 Wow, that was a heck of a game though Andrew huh Kessler Edwards rated rookie. It was a heck of a game, man I didn't I should be completely honest. I didn't think they're gonna be I'll do it Like I keep saying a W is a W. I'll take it hollow Spencer Denwitte David Johnson lime green Evan Mobley 136 of 149 boom Man these optic basketball boxes have been hot so far tonight There you go Jeffrey big hit in each box heck. Yeah, we'll mag this one for you Wow Orangecade earlier photon those is Moody We got a green Mobley it was my Garuba Jason Tatum lime green. Let me not say green cuz green is out of five that was That lime green though. It's sick. I love those lime green parallels That one and then the velocities the pink velocity is probably my favorite in the black velocity Kispert rainy threes try young holler rated rookie David Johnson and last time a tee hop as an eagle fan. I'll take AJ all day, so And hollow elite dominators Luca Donch itch Alrighty Jeffrey heck of some boxes there congrats as always. Thanks so much for hopping in and we will get these right out to you