Welcome everybody, I'm Steele Wagstaff. This is the August press books product meeting. We'll cover some new features that we've released that you may want to know about. We'll give you an update on some of our big development projects, especially the press books directory, which is nearing completion. And we'll talk about a couple of things that network managers can do to get their network books ready for public display when the directory goes live. We'll give a little bit of an update on what's been happening with the LTI advantage or results for LMS, as we call it. And we'll leave some time at the end for community roundtable for any of you to share, news, projects, other things of interest for the rest of the user community. So thanks everyone for being here. And I will start by just sharing a couple of things that we have done recently at press books that may be of interest for you. One of them was, I can't really demo it very well, but if you're using our LTI provider plugin, whether it's 1.1 or 1.3, we have made a change to how the user roles get assigned. So I'll give you an example of a press book network and show you what the setting looks like. Press book settings are set. You'll see globally, at the network level, you can decide based on the LMS role, what role a user gets mapped to. So if I'm an LMS administrator and I launch a press book about the LTI, I would have the role of whatever press books role I wanna give them. If I'm a staff member, meaning a faculty or instructor or TA, what role would I get upon LTI launch? And then a learner, what role do they get? Usually the defaults are all just set to subscriber and that's the global defaults. But at the book level, you can change it. So if you are a professor and you are teaching a course and you have an LTI link to a press book and you want students to be provisioned with say the author role in the book or the editor role, because you're collaboratively writing a book for your class, you can do that using the LTI settings. We had had a problem previously where if a user was created for the first time upon LTI launch, it was always automatically making them a subscriber. It wasn't respecting the settings. So we fixed and changed and deployed that. So now whatever settings you set at the book level, they'll be respected whether the user already has an account or whether the user is newly created. So you can use this feature with confidence, knowing that the role provisioning will happen as intended. So that was a recent fix that's been pushed and deployed to all production networks. If you're using the old LTI or the new LTI tool, you should see the same or similar behavior there. So the next thing that we were doing was we've added for all links in a book in the XHTML. So the XHTML that's used to make the PDF, we added an additional attribute to all of those links which includes the full path of the URL. That attribute is called data URL. And the way that you can use it is in your custom CSS, for example, PDF, you can decide like for example, in the print book after a link using the pseudo element after, print out the content of this data URL attribute. So here was a specific example where the book that Aparva was just showing you, they wanted to be able to display the actual link references in the print book after every link. So they added a little bit of custom CSS to their PDF print export. And then you see the resulting PDF will say, this book has, so this is a link right here. And here's the printed value of the link displayed in the book. The same thing would happen in the footnotes. So that's available and it can be targeted and used with CSS. It just helps if you want to print your, the full path of URLs in the print book and Aparva and the folks that read this have been the people who requested it and I made the first use of it. So that's now available there in press books. And we also made a couple of changes and improved the performance of a third party plugin called Lord of the Files. This is mainly used by network managers, but by defaults we have a pretty strict allow list and block list for what kinds of files can be uploaded to press books. Press books isn't meant to be a file server, but it can handle some media files. And Lord of the Files also lets you sanitize and check file uploads to make sure that they are what they say they are. If you wanted to use it at the network level, if you're a network manager, but it'll be network activated if you host with us. So here in this particular case, you'll see tools, debug file validation. If you're an administrator network manager, you'll be able to upload a test file and debug it and see, is this file allowed to be uploaded? Is it what it says it is? So for example, I'm gonna pick a PNG. I'm gonna upload it and it's gonna tell me, okay, we validated this file, this was a screenshot of PNG, it says it was a PNG, it actually is a PNG, we tested it and it tells me you should be able to upload this file. If it's not working, you've got a problem. So sometimes you may wanna upload a file or a file type and test whether it's permitted or allowed. If I were to try to upload a SVG, for example, that would need some stricter validation. This also means that there are additional file type extensions if you need to be able to upload specific file types for a book. So we recently worked with someone who is uploading some sheet music files created by an open source musical notation program. They wanted to be able to allow those type of files on their networks. Network managers can email Pressbooks premium support and we can add certain file types to your allow list and this tool, Lord of the Files, will help validate and test them. We are also working on a couple of pretty exciting things that haven't been released but will be released soon. I'll give you a sneak preview of them. In Pressbooks, we have had for a long time or for a little while a cool feature called shape shifter that's available in Malala. So if you go into your theme and you apply the Malala theme and you come to theme options, you'll see that this shape shifter feature allows you to select a different typeface for all of your headers so you can choose any one of these many typefaces for the header and a different typeface for the body font. You can do that for the web book. You can also do it separately for the PDF and for the ebook so you can really choose your preferred type font pairings with Malala. It really lets you kind of modify and customize this theme. Up until now, Malala has been the only theme this is available for. We've added a couple of new typefaces to this list. One of them you'll notice is source sans pro was relatively recent. I can't remember who requested it but they may be on this call. We also have recently added sorts milgoody which is a serif font that some people like to look of and that was somebody in Oregon who requested that. And we're adding a new font called new Athena Unicode.  So if you're working in a project that has non-traditional scripts and don't wanna declare them in a different way, you can choose to display this new Athena Unicode and that was something that UC Berkeley had requested. They have a huge Greek manuscript and really wanted to be able to use this typeface as an open license so we were able to add that. That will be coming soon. The other kind of exciting thing is that previously Shapeshifter was only available in Malala but people liked the feature and wanted to be able to use it elsewhere. So we have turned it on and we'll be turning it on soon for McLuhan which is the main core press books theme. In the near future, when you use McLuhan you will also see these font selector options for McLuhan. We're considering doing it for other themes as well. If this is important for you, you like the feature and wanna be able to use it in your favorite theme you can let us know and we'll make the decision to start releasing this and other themes as needed or as requested. But that's a little bit about what's coming soon for theme options. Another pretty important change for a small group of users is you can see that we provide language and script support. So this feature is pretty cool because it allows you to declare support for any number of languages which have different alphabets or different scripts. When you select the language we will download the typeface that's needed to display those characters and make sure that it's used as the fallback. Up until now it's previously been other language sets. So we recently added a couple of Western African alphabets, Adlem and Niko. But one of the new ones that's brand new to us is called musical notation. So in, if you're writing music there's a whole bunch of Unicode characters which are not typically represented in many conventional typefaces. We have learned from our friends at SUNY that there is an open source, a really nice open source musical notation font called bravura text. It's used for musical notation and it's using this standard music font layout and it's an openly licensed font. And so now if you want to have bravura text supported in your books and have the fallback for those Unicode characters you would simply need to add musical notation in the language and script support. And then those Unicode characters will have a fallback that's represented in your web book and all of your exports. So that should be cool. I don't know that much about musical notation so I can't really demonstrate it professionally but I know that there are people and users that are really excited about this feature and we're hoping to include it on our next release on Wednesday. So that's a little bit about what's coming with some additional typeface and language support. It's really fun learning about the many different ways people represent language and other symbols and it's been a growth experience for me personally so I've enjoyed working on that and hopefully this will help meet the needs of more of our users who want to publish more diverse kinds of content. Rahma, I'm glad that you appreciate Niko. I just learned about it myself and the AdLamb as well, it's pretty exciting. It's actually my dialect and I am surprised that it's actually there. So they've made a long progress to get it there. That's pretty impressive that Pressbook now has that. Like I can't wait to share that information with some linguists as I know. Terrific, yeah, we have a, Hugh has a friend, Florence who runs the Science and the Communes Pressbooks Network and they're doing a lot of work publishing Francophone African literature and just literature in any African language is trying to, I think she calls it epistemic justice or something. That's the term for it, so. Nice. Yeah. So great, yeah, we'd love to see more books in Niko, Rahma, even if I can't read them. And was that just a surprise, Rahma, that we've added that? Yeah, it was a surprise, but I think it's also, I know that it's sort of been like in the development for a while. So it was actually surprising to see because it's not often that I feed or even know it about or like many people know about it. So I definitely have to do a little bit more research on the development of Niko and how it's progression since the last time I've learned about the actual written form version of it. Because I come from a Francophone country and that is my third dialect but I learned French instead of that. Because we didn't really have the written system set up for school yet, very impressive. That's super cool that you're on the call while it feels and helps in that. Yeah, fun, be happy. Me too. I'm glad to have a user who's able to appreciate it because sometimes you do these things and you don't know who it's gonna affect. So thanks Rahma. If you visit staging.pressbooks.directory you'll see a work in progress. We're gonna be working on cleaning this up and improving it but you'll see the directories here the search filter, the search feature is still available. We've added a couple of refinements here to the filters. So you can now notice that you can choose to include any filter or you can also choose to exclude a filter. So Amy had asked about this a while back she's not on the call anymore but suppose I don't wanna see any all rights reserve books I can choose to exclude that filter and it will show me all of the books which have any one of these open licenses. But it's a quicker way to get to what you're looking at there. The filtering behavior is both included exclude now for all of the binary filters that appear in the directory. Another thing that we've done is we've added the ability to change the number of books you display per page whether it's 10, 20 or 50. And we've also given you a couple of sort options this was requested. So the default sorting will be alphabetical title A to Z but you can also choose to sort by word count and by how recently a book was updated. Not all of the books have this metadata in the directory yet so we're gonna be improving it and making sure that the book cards have that information but those are a couple of new sorting features. We also have added the pagination at the top as well as the bottom. So there's a couple of places that you could look for pagination to move through results. You'll look at the book cards and when they have very long descriptions we're also gonna truncate the descriptions after six lines so that they don't make the cards keep flowing and look super enormous. And we're gradually cleaning up and refining the directory. One of the big changes that people had requested was to have more granular control about whether a public book appears in the public directory or not. We heard that, that was really important to us and so you'll notice now in press books if you go to an individual book, so here's a sample book and I will pick a book that's public. I have a public book, typically this book because it's public would appear in the directory but now every public book if you go to settings, sharing and privacy you'll see an option whether you want the book to be listed in the directory or not. So the default value would be yes, public books are in the public directory but you can toggle it and say no exclude this book from the directory so you can choose to opt in or opt out from the directory for public books. Private books will never be included no matter what but this is a toggle that you can turn on or off for the public books in your directory. We will be working this sprint to make sure that the directory applies that behavior so even though you can choose the setting now the behavior won't be applied immediately but we will be applying it quite soon and it will definitely be in place before we release the full public directory. I know that was a feature that was requested so that individual authors could have a public book that's still a work in progress. They don't want to list it in the directory yet they can choose at any point to change that setting and the setting should be instantaneous or close to instantaneous once it's finished. The other option is for network managers. So at the network manager level you will see under network options at the very bottom here, book directory option a network manager can choose to exclude any non cataloged public books from their directory. The network managers of course if you remember you have the ability to decide which of your books are in your catalog or not. So if you're using the catalog and you have a bunch of books in your catalog you can say I only want the books that are in my catalog to show up in the directory. That's a little bit more of a drastic step and it does remove agency from authors because generally you're the only person who decides what goes in the catalog or not. We would recommend in most cases that you not do that unless you're really sure that's what you want to do but some of you have networks where that makes sense where you're very tightly controlling the publication process and you only want your catalog books to be in the directory. So that's an option or a feature that's available there. So JR, if that setting is chosen then only catalog books will appear in the directory. I think in fact if I'm not mistaken if I choose to exclude the non-catalog public books I believe that we take the choice away even from the, yeah. If you've chosen that at the network level the individual book authors don't even see that setting because it's irrelevant to them at that point. So that's how that works. If the global setting is on the setting is not available at the book level but if we go back to the global setting here and we were to say, oh, we want to give individual authors the choice then the individual authors will then see at the book level under settings, sharing and privacy they'll see their toggle to be able to choose whether or not they want to in the directory. So those are the two new things that are coming. Obviously you can start to make those adjustments and those changes now as you like but you won't see the changes appearing instantly in the staging directory quite yet. That will be coming, we're working on this sprint it's one of our goals. So that'll probably be there by mid September and we'll give you an all update. You can also expect if you're a network manager on a hosted press books network you can expect an email from me in the near future explaining all of this in more detail and giving you some options and making some recommendations to help get your metadata ready for public view. So that's a little bit about the directory that's what I wanted to show. There's probably a few more tweaks and features that I forgot about but just know that we're hard at work at that and our goal really, our major goal of our next sprint over the next two weeks is to get the directory cleaned up and ready for closer to ready for public release. Yes, so thank you, Lillian and Purva, Kathy there's a question about what the name of the open source musical notation typeface was it's called Bravura text. There's this organization called SMOOFL I don't know if I'm saying that right but the Bravura text was designed by Daniel Spreadbury who seems to be a big person in open musical notation. That's great, thank you for showing that. So that's SMOOFL.org.Fonts you can read more about Bravura. Steve, I have a question about the display order of cloned books. So I know one thing that struck me when I was testing on the directory was that are a lot of copies of the same book on different networks. So is that a way you can sort maybe by the original book and then list all of the other cloned copies to follow? Yeah, that was something that we did make a change behind the scenes of Purva so we can control the default display order and what I did was it's alphabetical and then in a tiebreaker it will be original book before clones now. That was a setting that had not been in place when you asked about it privately a couple weeks ago. So we now turn that on so it should be whenever there's a tie an alphabetical name it will try to display the original before it's children. I mean, if you notice, I think the staging should be updated there. If we notice some kinks or some problems with that, let us know and we can keep working on that and tweaking that behind the scenes but we would prefer to display the original before the children. Another thing that you can do is if that's kind of feeling frustrating you can always try to use the is original is a clone filtered so you could weed out. I don't want any of the derivatives I only want books that are in their database as original. Hopefully that's working a little bit better and if you notice that it's not letting you know and we can take a closer look. Okay, so the next thing I wanna show is we have been updating our LTI plugin. We have a new product that allows you to use the newest standard of LTI and exchange grades and performance in a book between the press books with HIP activities and your learning management system. It's called outcomes for LMS or results for LMS and press books supports this LTI 1.3 standard. So it's an additional add-on that some networks are starting to purchase and starting to use for their courses to do a bit more of the courseware type thing. Many of you have seen demos of it some of you are installing it and using it. I just wanna let everybody know that if you are interested in using it or you've begun configuring it we've published in our network manager guide we're publishing documentation for how to configure it with your LMS. So there's instructions for how to configure with Canvas. This is for the LMS administrator so this is a little bit technical. There's instructions for Blackboard. There are instructions for Moodle and then there's a demo video with instructions for D2L. We're still working on Sakai. We have some things that we need to work out with the Sakai maintainers and then it shows you how you can allow grade reporting in individual books as a network manager if this plug-ins active on your network. So this would be a decision a network manager would make to either allow grade reporting in a book or to allow it globally. And then there's some instructions if you have this turned on how an instructor could turn a press books chapter into a graded activity. So it describes you add the HVIP activities. There's little screenshots and descriptions for how to get it ready as a graded activity and finally how you would add the graded activity to your LMS and make sure that the grades are being exchanged. So this documentation is there. It's the first cut of it. We've been working with people who are doing it in live production environments. And so there's a couple of things we're cleaning up and improving to make the documentation clearer but just wanted everyone to know that that's there and available if you are using that tool or product. So that's a little bit about what's happening in the LTI courseware kind of space. Okay. So the last 10 minutes as always this is community roundtable time. I'm gonna open up the floor to any of you if you have news or projects or things that you wanted to share that are related to press books or press development or just open publishing your campus. Time is yours. Love to hear from you. Rebus recently supported the publication of this collection called open at the margins. I just dropped a link to it in the chat. It's a wonderful collection of very informal works, blog posts, articles, lectures, talks by 43 different diverse authors edited by a fantastic group of open education advocates. So that's something that we were really proud of earlier this month. And I hope that some of you will take some time to browse through and read. Hey, I can't remember if I mentioned this at our last meeting but we recently had a press books book that was co-created with students at UW in Rick Bonas's Critical Philopnex American Histories class featured on the open education network. And there's an article that I just shared talking about the book and how we worked with Professor Rick Bonas and students in his class on. Thanks Lauren. That looks like a really exciting project as well. I have a project that happened on our network and I'm not personally responsible for it or involved at all but I just think it's really cool. We have had some faculty members completely unfunded and unprompted and unsupported creating a medical terminology foundation text. And one of the things I think is really amazing about it is that every chapter has pronunciation flashcards on how to pronounce different anatomy and physiology terms. It's one of the biggest grassroots projects that has happened in Ontario across like six or seven institutions and I'll drop a link in the chat. I'm just super, super proud of these guys. They've worked really hard to make this happen despite people are just saying use a commercial textbook. We recently just released the electronic version of a music theory text. It is the text that Steele so kindly helped us and how we discovered River a text together from my faculty member who's really on the up and up for these sorts of things. So we just have the online press book version available right now and we'll be having the PDF later this month but it's really the author put so much work into it and it's really very detailed. Lots of multimedia resources in there. So yeah, hope people find it useful. Thanks Alison. I have a chance to look at this one a bit more closely than most of the books that get published and it blew my mind. It's just an incredible, I mean, it's huge and it's really, really an incredible impressive work by this person and it's so exciting to see that it's open and licensed. So well done to you and to Andre and everybody who worked on it. Tim, you wanna tell us about this enormous Scolia project that's going on at Berkeley? That one's kinda been blowing my mind a little bit too. Yeah, one of the professors here, Donald Vastrana, is doing, well, he's trying to archive a huge Greek Scolia project that he's been working on for years, I think. And that's what Silas mentioning, providing the additional font support for that in press books so that we can get it into various forms for people to look at, archive it, get it into our catalog, get it into the open textbook network. So he's been just plugging along and thanks to Steele and the press book support for helping like get this additional feature going. So we're excited about it. Yeah, this one's been pretty exciting.  So I mean, if you're interested in the ancient Greek drama, this is where it's at and it's something this faculty member seems to have been working on for decades and it's been a pretty quick transition in the press books which has been really gratifying and he looks like he's nearly finished with that and when it's published, I'm sure everyone will have a link to share, but it's a bit niche in its audience but very impressive in its scope. Elaine, if you're here, I know that this was going through the rounds recently but I don't think it was ever announced on this call. There is a very impressive film studies book that was published at the University of Arkansas. Do you wanna say anything about that or do you have anything you wanna share in the chat around that project? I hope I'm not stepping on any toes. I'll just share it with everyone. It's called Moving Pictures and Introduction to Cinema. It was a professor, Russell Sharman there and it's one of the most impressive like film studies things that I'd seen. It's all open and licensed and it's again, kind of like that Andre Mount project, largely one professor project with support, of course, from the libraries and the publishing books there and I will drop the link in the chat. I think it's pretty amazing. I came across my, you know, you look at those new books when they come out and this one, it was like an hour later and I was like realizing I was still reading it and still looking at it. I was like, I wanna take a quick look and it just definitely sucked me in. It was great. Okay, does anyone have any questions or product, things that they'd like to talk about? I can stop the recording now.


So at E3 2018 I got to play Wolfenstein 2 the new Colossus on switch in handheld mode They did not have a docked mode available to play or I probably would have checked that out as well for those Who don't know I am a huge fan of the first game in the series now when I say first I'm talking about the rebooted version of Wolfenstein because Wolfenstein is actually a very old IP that goes back many many years that I remember my dad playing on old-school PCs way back in the 90s However, Wolfenstein 2 the new Colossus is actually a sequel to Wolfenstein a new order and I played the first game on PC and beat the main campaign I don't really remember a whole lot about the main campaign Not because the story was bad just because it was a while ago and I played a lot of games since But I remember the gameplay and the gameplay was utterly fantastic. It was extremely fluid I played at 60 FPS on PC and That is something that's a bit of an adjustment when I played it on switch because it's obviously not 60 FPS Just like doom before it that panic button also ported over because panic button is handling the port of Wolfenstein 2 the new Colossus. It does not run at 60 FPS Nor do I expect it to on hardware like the switch not without the resolution dropping to something that I would deem Unusable. I mean I know there there's been talks about how Paladins in portable mode drops down to like, you know 360p and stuff like that like, you know, one of the lowest resolutions on YouTube, but It needs to be even worse than that to hit 60 FPS and Wolfenstein It would have to be like 160 120 and that's just that's unplayable Like there are sacrifices to be made for FPS and then there's literally unplayable because you're just looking at a blob on screen And that's what would have to happen for these games to be at 60 So I'm fine with Wolfenstein 2 the new Colossus on switch not being at 60 It was a little bit of an adjustment from what I'm used to because it's the first time I played it on switch But that's okay I got to say that the the area we got the plan wasn't enclosed area. So we were not outdoors it was a rather large room and Some sort of factory which was really neat And there was a lot of different facets and a couple puzzle elements because it didn't hold your hand Right you you're kind of dropped into the beginning of entering this room and there's enemies everywhere. There's cover There's different things to do. There's key cards you have to find which is a classic thing for Wolfenstein and like doom back in the day and stuff like that so Very much into that and there's a little bit of storytelling I don't remember much of the story because I was kind of holding the switch away from me So Eric could get really good footage the footage. You're seeing now is what he was able to get Obviously off-camera off-screen of portable mode. I don't know if there's even a way to capture Portable mode at all unless it's off-screen. I don't even think digital fondries figure that out But I will say this as someone who played a lot of doom last year Relatively a lot of doom and then played Wolfenstein this year on switch It is smoother than I remember doom being I went back and I tried out doom again Just yesterday just to reconfirm my thoughts after rewatching this footage of Wolfenstein and sure enough I find Wolfenstein to the new classes actually smoother is that because there's less particle effects. I don't know Maybe panic button just got better at porting the ID tech 6 engine after having an experience with doom Whatever the case is I felt it was smoother. I felt there were less dips now It doesn't mean there weren't dips because it's not a locked 30 FPS but the dips I experienced were usually in the middle of Melee animations and those are canned anyways So the FPS doesn't really matter as much during melee animations because there's some pretty gruesome melee kills Just like there is in doom actually a lot of similarities between these games in terms of play style Obviously one's about killing demons the other ones about one killing Nazis In a Nazi a Nazi occupied United States This is basically an alternate reality where the Nazis ended up winning World War two Hitler was not killed Or did not commit suicide or whatever the case may be as I don't think we would a hundred percent Know how he died just that he did but yeah, it's very interesting looking back at this revisionist history style game and dealing with the worst possible outcome from that that moment in history and The high technology You get to see some of the tech in action with some certain enemies that were like robots It was it was pretty insane most of the characters I unit of fighting were fellow humans that were just decked out and you Know new new age body armor and stuff like that But it was it was very very fun It was very fluid way more fluid than I even remember doom being last year And that's kind of my takeaway from Wolfstein 2 is that it is just a more well polished port to switch and That's saying something considering that by now after some patches and stuff doom is pretty smooth And yet I still found Wolfstein 2 the new classes even smoother now There's always going to be a bit of a letdown with this game, you know coming out in just a week because It was announced before the game released anywhere else last year, right? So some people Wanted this game to be day-in-date and can I blame them for wanting a day-in-day game Well, we need day-in-date treatment as switch owners And it does feel weird because right now there is currently no big Bethesda game announces coming to switch Follow-up 76 as far as we aware is not coming to switch rage to as far as we're aware Is not coming to switch and we're not even sure the next doom or Wolfenstein young blood are coming to switch either now There is a rumor of a panic button announcement coming in July. That's a major IP I assume that's going to be the next doom game, but again assumptions to setting that aside I'm picking up Wolfenstein 2 the new classes I wasn't sure if I was going to because of how late the port was coming But after playing in a D3 I've been putting off playing and other devices to decide if I was gonna get it on switch or get it on PC And I'm going for the switch version because I want to play it anywhere It worked in handheld mode so well that I don't know if I'm even gonna stream the game to you guys because I'm going to be Playing so much handheld mode But that's okay. I have Mario Tennis Aces and other games I can stream for you guys at this point But yeah, I'm actually going to be picking it up instead of getting crash insane trilogy even though the crash insane trilogy is cheaper Just because I don't know I'm I'm a little I'm not exactly happy with how with what it took to get crash insane trilogy on switch though The methodology of the one person who loves switch being able to convince, you know Activision and and visceral to bring it like it just not not really something I want to worry about but and yes I realize I just said visceral games. I realize that's not what it is My bad notes the studio sort of the v poor old visceral. I miss you guys. I miss you before I even knew you But that's kind of my takeaway I think on Wolfenstein 2 the new Colossus is it runs very very well the story the little bit of story that had in the demo Was fantastic in handheld mode. I was not bothered at all Hey, here's someone's gonna ask someone's gonna want to know did it run at sub HD probably cuz doom runs at sub HD Sometimes did I notice while I was playing? No, and that's kind of the big thing People forget when they hear about these sub HD things like what happened with Paladins is on that tiny of a screen It is so hard to tell at times Because the pixel density is smaller right when you shrink down a screen the less and less you actually notice if it's 720p If it's 1080p, etc So in the case of switch max it can be a 720 and it can be running at 640 or 580 and I guarantee You personally are not going to be able to even tell when that's happening Especially in motion with motion blur and everything else going on The game's just fantastic I have zero complaints if you were on the fence of a wolf inside you because of how how it performed on the platform All I could say is at least in this enclosed massive room with I think I killed over Over 18 different enemies that were present in this room and they were all there from the beginning I gotta say go pick it up, man If you've been waiting for it get it because the switch version is Fantastic and we need to keep showing companies like Bethesda that we want their latest and greatest games that we want Rage 2 that we want beyond good and evil 2 that we want Fallout 76 or any sort of fallout game that isn't just follow up shelter These are the kind of games when they're these this high quality of a port we need the support. Alright folks That's all I got to say. I will catch you guys in the next one


Please come to order this joint assembly is convened pursuant to the provisions of JR s5, which the clerk will now read JR s5 Joint resolution to provide for a joint assembly to hear the budget message of the governor Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives that the two houses meet in joint assembly on Thursday, January 24 2019 at 2 o'clock in the afternoon to receive the budget message of the governor Chair I'd like to recognize center from Chittenden district for the purpose of making a motion Thank You mr. President. I move that a committee of six be appointed by the chair to wait upon his Excellency the governor and escort him into this chamber for the purpose of receiving his budget message Now the center from Chittenden district has moved that a committee of six be appointed by the chair to wait upon his Excellency the governor and escort him to the chamber for the purpose of receiving his budget message Are you ready for the question? If so all is in favor, please signify by saying aye Those opposed signify by saying nay The eyes have it and the motion is carried The chair will point the member from Rutland City representative Fagan the member from callas Representative Ansel the member from Danville Representative toll the senator from Caledonia district senator Kitchell Senator from Washington district senator Cummings and the senator from Essex Orleans district senator star Will the committee please assemble and perform the duties assigned to it Mr. Mr. President Madam sergeant arms. It is my distinct honor to present to you the Vermont State Senate And the governor as well and What going on? Mr. President it's my distinct honor to present to you the governor of the state of Vermont the honorable Philip B. Scott welcome It is now my distinct honor to present to you the governor of the state of Vermont the honorable Philip B. Scott before we begin I'd like to first express my gratitude to the speaker for not canceling my budget address Mr. President Madam Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice members of the General Assembly distinguished guests and fellow Vermonters Two weeks ago, I stood before you and outlined what I believe are the major challenges we face and opportunities to address them For those who've been here a while. I don't have to tell you building the budget is never easy Year after year we're faced with many worthy initiatives and programs It's our job to separate our wants from our needs Make sure we're meeting our goals Determine where we need to do more and where we can get by with a little bit less This is the difficult task before us It's a process that forces us to find balance between our hearts and our minds Understanding that each dollar we spend comes directly from hard-working Vermonters many struggling to get by But I'm certain if we build consensus on solutions and compromise when we can't We can come to agreement on the budget that supports everyone By growing our economy making Vermont more affordable and protecting the most vulnerable The budget I present today is balanced and Spends within our means while investing in both our obligations and areas that will give us the highest return As I've said many times. I believe our biggest threat is our declining work workforce It's the root of every problem we face To put this in perspective Every county except Chittenden has seen a decline in the number of people working Every county including Chittenden has fewer people available for work This makes it incredibly difficult for businesses to recruit new employees and expand Harder for communities to grow and leaves fewer of us to cover the cost of state government This is the problem as our working-age population continues to decline. We simply need more people helping to pay the bill Together we have an opportunity to change this with policies that better prepare students for a career Keep more of our kids after graduation Provide training for Vermonters so they can get a good job and attract new workers and new families to join our communities This is how we can grow our economy and revenues and be better able to support the programs We've arrived today and meet the needs of an uncertain future. This work is crucial Because despite having a surplus for the first time in many years. We still face difficult budgeting decisions put simply The day-to-day operational costs of state government and increasing payments on our debt Exceed growth in our economy Without any new investments just paying the bills. We began building this budget with about a 40 million dollar gap That's just our basic obligations debt service pension funding Contracted salary increases caseload pressures at AHS clean water and others Through this process I challenged my team to think differently To question our assumptions and the way we've always done it To think outside the box and to innovate So that even with these spending pressures we can make a difference and emerge stronger and more sustainable With this in mind all of us in this chamber today Understand the pressures we face with our unfunded liabilities the future financial commitments for pensions and retiree health plans. I Welcome the opportunity to work together with you and Treasurer Pierce towards a future when our liabilities are fully funded and I'm pleased to say this work is already moving forward in the House Appropriations Committee My team the treasurer and legislators met to share ideas and collaborate on a proposal Which will retire a portion of our debt using? 22.2 million from this year's surplus to pay off a loan currently funding help benefits for retired teachers Another 2.4 million Would be used to put ourselves on a path to pre fund this liability for the first time in history and if successful We'll have 75 million in this fund for future retired teachers health care costs by 2025 additionally Directing 3.3 million of surplus as a prepayment of to the teachers pension fund will further decrease that liability Finally we can redirect 50% of future year surpluses to the retired state employees health fund to pay those debts as well These are examples of the work. We've done to present a bunch it to you today. It's balanced Makes investments to expand our workforce Strengthen our communities and support economic growth in all corners of the state Now I know you have your own priorities for this year's budget Which is an important part of this process and I look forward to hearing them Because we need all ideas on the table to restore our fiscal fundamentals As I said my inaugural address Despite the challenges we face we can be hopeful because we know there's a path forward It starts with making sure we maintain the things that set us apart The health and safety of our communities and our commitment to protecting our neighbors in need I've long said public safety should be the top priority of any government Today keeping people safe is no longer limited to our highways and homes. We must also protect from honors online As cybersecurity threats grow and cause more harm Keeping data safe and systems operating is essential To do so I've called for a one-time investment of 2.3 million to strengthen the state's firewall and upgrade critical IT infrastructure We must also stay focused on protecting our communities which starts with our children Last year we acted quickly to strengthen the safety of school buildings across the state But we have more to do With the same sense of urgency let's use budget adjustment to immediately fund an additional 1.5 million in safety improvements in schools who couldn't secure grants last year We'll also make capital investments to ensure more schools are E911 compliant I'm also pleased to share I'll be joining with the Vermont NEA to launch a see something say something public service campaign And we'll invite the media to join us in this important cause To further protect our kids we can direct 1.3 million of this year's surplus to lead testing in every school In my first budget address. I talked about the most undeserving victims of our opioid crisis the children born to addiction That day two years ago. I vowed we would not fail them This budget continues to support our investments in prevention treatment recovery and enforcement And with an increased investment at two million dollars to the family services division We can give those children more of the support hope and opportunity they deserve We all know the serious and harmful impact of our opioid crisis and with your help will continue to address it Today I'd like to address another threat to public health between 2017 and 2018 1.5 million more kids began using e-cigarettes and vape products across the nation This is the biggest one-year spike of any substance in nearly 50 years Right here in Vermont Use among young people nearly doubled and the surgeon general has declared this an epidemic After all the progress made to lower nicotine addiction. This is not only concerning. It's frustrating. I Think you all know it's not my first instinct to add a tax But with a growing health risk for our kids. I'm proposing to levy the same tax as we do on tobacco products Let's learn from the past Let's learn from the past Let's not make the same mistakes with e-cigarettes or anything else Our kids must know the dangers of these behaviors and we should stop it in its tracks Two weeks ago. I asked you to consider the power of transforming the good education system We have now to the very best in the country Combined with our quality of life Good jobs and working to make Vermont more affordable. This could be the most effective economic development tool We could ask for It's an alignment of assets and priorities to accomplish what most of us have told our constituents. We would do Give every family in every community the chance to succeed and prosper It would it also enhance our brand Unfortunately Marketing our state is a safe healthy and beautiful place that we are isn't enough anymore If it was we'd be seeing our labor force in communities growing instead of shrinking We have to distinguish ourselves in what better way than as a state with the best education in America Think about how powerful this will be really think about it Imagine what it would mean for our kids our communities in our state Imagine what it would mean for our economy and Imagine what it would mean for the ability of future generations to solve problems and help people But we must do more than imagine it. We must have the courage to make real change together As a demographics demonstrate We can't afford to do the things the way we've always done them Not if we want to maintain services Revitalize every county and invest more in our priorities We must continue our work to transform our system. So let's keep moving forward I know you have thoughts on how to do this as well But to get the conversation started Here's some ideas to consider First I Propose we invest an additional seven million into our child care system to make it more accessible and affordable for low-income and working families If you'll work with me to modernize our tax system in response to the Supreme Court's wayfair decision We can improve compliance and fund these investments in child care without raising property taxes to To help more people pursue education and training opportunities outside the traditional college track Entering credentials to my budget increases funding for Vsac's non-degree program by over one million Last year we also committed 400,000 from the capital bill for programs and equipment to increase training opportunities for adults looking for new skills It's been successful. So let's do it again this year And we'll continue to increase our support for higher education So my budget proposes 700,000 for UVM to replace declining Medicaid revenue and 3.2 million more to Vermont State Colleges with This funding the State Colleges will stop a planned 3% tuition increase on Vermonters for this coming school year It will also support the creation of an associate degree program Delivered in at least three tech centers throughout the state Where students earn the first year of their degree as a high school senior and the second as a Vermont State College student if we keep the If we keep the focus on our kids and the good we can do for them We can continue to strengthen our system giving every kid the best possible education and the tools to reach their full potential from cradle to career To help revitalize all areas of our state Let's modernize regulation to support growth in our local economic centers Expand broadband access and take action on climate change to strengthen our environment and economy Last term we agreed on the need to evaluate Act 250 These regulations were put in place when we were growing too fast Over time they become complex and in some cases redundant with other regulations Today with many areas not growing at all we have an opportunity and a necessity to do better We can enhance our high environmental standards and breathe new life into our downtowns and village centers specifically Let's give communities the opportunity to raise the bar when it comes to planning an environmental protection and When they meet these new standards, let's reward them Encourage growth by exempting them from Act 250 adding even more balance Let's help them expand protections for natural areas and give our rural economy a fighting chance Given that chance they'll make it because there are few more resilient than our farmers and loggers Let's create flexibility for our forestry businesses working lands and trail networks Let's simplify construction approval and rule industrial parks and reduce their fees Let's help farms create new revenue from tourism and on-site businesses Let's get the most mileage from our transportation dollars by exempting projects that have environmental protections already built in and If other state permits provide the very same protections Let's not force applicants to jump through the same hoop twice These are my ideas. I Know you have others and I look forward to working with you, but here's the bottom line We need to modernize Act 250. I believe it's essential to expanding our economy and restoring the health of our smaller communities We must also continue to strengthen broadband in our state Currently 75% of the state has high-speed broadband or better There's clearly more work to do to make this essential tool available to more homes and businesses And we have to acknowledge. It's not just about access. We need increased speeds Many communities are trying to expand infrastructure And while there are grants and loans, they don't always fit with local plans or budgets To help and to support our focus on the rural economy I'm proposing to make bonding available for municipal broadband in the areas that need it To expand service I'm also proposing to invest one million in connectivity and let's eliminate and let's eliminate the sunset on 248 a it's work to speed up telecom projects and we must continue to make progress My team has also been working closely on a partnership with Microsoft To expand access and computer science education to communities with the greatest needs This partnership will come with an investment in Vermont to support expanding broadband and To help kids and families in our communities learn more of the digital skills they need Making these opportunities equitable and accessible for all is a goal we share and I believe these initiatives move us in the right direction We we can also have a stronger economy By building a cleaner economy Transitioning to electric vehicles can save millions of dollars Think of it this way in 2015 Approximately 830 million dollars was spent on gasoline sales in Vermont If this travel had all been powered by electricity The cost would have been significantly less Saving drivers about 500 million dollars Plus our comprehensive energy plan Recognizes more electric vehicles are essential to meeting our climate and energy goals We need 10% About 50,000 of the cars and trucks on our roads to be electric by 2025 and 25% by 2030 I Don't believe we can meet these goals unless we help people make this transition Today we only have about 1,000 EVs on the road less than 1% of the new passenger vehicle registrations We all know transportation costs are high for rural Vermonters That's one of the reasons I I can't support a carbon tax But in its final report the Vermont Climate Action Commission Recommends an incentive to make electric vehicles more affordable Which I believe is a better approach Because as we've seen incentives work So I'm proposing 1.5 million dollars in rebates to help more people purchase or lease new or use EVs and to leave by example, I'm asking for your support in using 500,000 to invest in more EVs and EV infrastructure for the state fleet this This is another great area of balance Because meeting these targets isn't just about making our state cleaner and healthier. It's also about growing the economy. I View water quality clean water the same way The environmental benefits are obvious What might be less obvious is that it's also an investment in growing our economy and creating jobs In just the last two years. We've invested more than a hundred million in clean water projects Improved 15,000 acres of agricultural lands and conserved or restored more than 1500 acres of river corridors floodplains and wetlands It's not an exaggeration to say that the 20 year two billion dollar project ahead of us is as much a major infrastructure program as it is essential environmental policy That's why my budget fully funds the clean water boards recommendation This includes about 15 million for the state's clean water fund over 12 million in capital funds and 1 million in transportation dollars Combined with over 19 million in federal funds All told this budget dedicates nearly 48 million to clean water projects. I Want to thank treasurer Pierce for a continued leadership in this area her bridge plan for fiscal years 18 and 19 and the legislature's input and support have set us on the right track and For what is one of the worst-kept secrets of Montpelier Our clean water proposal includes Dedicating 8 million in ongoing revenue from the estate tax to the clean water fund Now before either side of the aisle jumps to conclusions. I hope you'll listen to the details Because it's a package concept First the estate tax is a stable source Average revenue since 2004 has been about 19.5 million and the lowest year was 2015 at 9.9 million Using a portion of this revenue for long-term investments makes a lot of sense And what this budget shows is that we can fund the clean water plan with existing resources What we've also found in this research is that by reforming this policy We can better sustain the revenue and the fiscal health of our state Tax professionals consistently tell me that because we are so far out of line with other states The estate tax is a factor in retirees leaving As part of this plan I propose increasing the current exemption from 2.75 million to 5.75 million over four years This will align us with Maine and New York and more closely with the federal exemption Here's here's why this is so important Currently we're one of only 12 states that have this tax at all and the recent doubling of the federal exemption to over 11 million dollars Makes our exclusion radically out of step Vermonters impacted by this tax are well advised from tax professionals and they are highly mobile If we can come together this change will help keep more of these taxpayers here and support a legacy of clean healthy lakes Rivers and streams all at the same time This this is just one example of reforms we can make and Policies we can implement to help us keep more people and more revenue here Last year we worked together to make sure that low and middle income Vermonters weren't taxed on their social security Helping retirees live a little more comfortably after spending their lives in the workforce And this year we can help another deserving group Our veterans have served their country Put others ahead of themselves and in many cases place their lives on the line for our nation and the values and principles we hold dear Only seven states including us fully taxed military retirement benefits Before we leave this spring. Let's reduce that to six and eliminate it completely by the time we adjourn next year I believe it's the least we can do for our veterans Another area where we've agreed is the need for more housing that's affordable I'm sure you hear it as much as I do From young families trying to find that first affordable home Seniors looking to downsize and even employers trying to recruit workers Across the state there are abandoned vacant and blighted properties which are currently driving down property values But have the potential to unlock needed stock So let's eliminate the land gains tax This was implemented in the 70s to halt rapid development and housing speculation But that was before most communities adopted land use regulations Before act 250 was fully implemented and before we faced a demographic crisis Currently when a property owner sells within six years of purchase They may pay a substantial penalty Eliminating this tax will reduce a major barrier to investment in our neighborhoods Create more capacity and increase grand list as low-value properties are restored to their full potential Next let's make sure these updated properties are efficient 80% of our housing stock is at least 40 years old and nearly half of that is 80 years old We know the cost to heat these homes can push them out of reach for some So my budget includes one million dollars to restore these units if weatherization is part of that project Finally so many of the neighborhoods affected by these issues are in and around our downtowns We also know young families and workers want to be close to jobs services and restaurants social and community events So let's continue to make these areas attractive places to put down roots by increasing the downtown and historic tax credit to 2.6 million Each of these initiatives will encourage upgrades to homes that already exist in the places. We want to see grow Attracting and retaining more workers is also a key goal the pain paid family leave plan I put forward last week with Governor Chris Anunu Our proposal would provide universally accessible and Competitively priced plans for all employers and employees in both states Now I know that some of you want to go all the way to a government-run program funded by an increase in the payroll tax Let me address that by first saying if you give my plan a fair shot You might see their advantages to taking the step. I'm proposing First we can launch more quickly More affordably and more reliably than if the state had to create the program from scratch Second it ensures we aren't placing the burden of startup costs or the risk of underfunding and insolvency on taxpayers and Third we're not mandating another cost on employers and employees for an expense. They may not be able to afford. I Understand your concerns that a voluntary approach might not have a big enough pool to sustain a program That's why our proposal places all eligible state employees from both states into the plan Creating a large and diverse pool overnight And my budget includes funding to offer this coverage to our state employees if we move forward With a voluntary plan we can deliver a workable and scalable program. It's administered efficiently reduces risk to taxpayers and state government and Balances the value of paid family leave with our ability to pay Let's show vermonage. We can work together to reach a goal We agree on even if we have different ideas on how to get there in every corner of our state There are communities businesses and nonprofits large and small ready to grow But good jobs go unfilled because we need more working-age people That should alarm each of us in this room But we can work together to change it We can change it by creating the the greatest cradle-to-career education system in the nation We can change it by investing in housing Downtowns in our environment to make Vermont an affordable and attractive place to live And we can change it by reaching potential for monitors and showing them a clear path to move to our state I'm pleased we move forward on smaller initiatives last year like your remote worker program Return ships and the state-of-state pilot all focused on growing our workforce Each of these incremental steps have helped But we must do more This year my budget includes a total of 2.5 million to identify those most likely to consider moving to Vermont Tell them our story and make it easier for them to get here It starts with data-driven marketing to identify and reach those interests in what Vermont has to offer It includes funding for relocation support to really sell Vermont By helping those who want to move here find a great job Housing in a community they're drawn to in the regions and job sectors that need them the most From the overwhelming interest in the remote worker initiative you proposed last year again. We saw incentives work So let's build on that success and invest more this year to relocate new workers for jobs with Vermont businesses The fact is Every new worker we recruit to live here allows a business a community a school and tax revenue to grow We cannot lose sight of this fact If we want to fund more early education or science and technology for kids We need more taxpayers not more taxes better roads and bridges more taxpayers More drug prevention and treatment more taxpayers Each new taxpayer provides a bit of a relief to someone who's already here and Allows us to continue funding programs and services that for monitors need and value This has to be our focus and we must act now We all know our challenges are great But I believe in the strength of this institution. I Believe in each of you and our ability to solve problems and help people At a time when it's so easy to focus on the bad Let's believe in the good the good that comes from the people of Vermont and The good that can come from this building. I know I do I've seen it It's what keeps me coming back after nearly 20 years Our success our ability to achieve real results relies on the way we choose to engage each other How we choose to treat each other in the issues we choose to address We have an opportunity to follow the example of those who came before us who confronted the challenges of their time Who faced adversity with a courage to do what was right over? What was easy? And when the world seemed as though it was coming apart Had the wisdom to bring us together Today We can be the example We can reject hate and anger Partisanship and division We can recognize for a monitor's call for balance for civility and for us to work together And we can commit to solving the problems ahead of us and helping the people who sent us here to do so If we do let me go back to the civility part Do that again We can recognize for monitors call for balance for civility and for us to work together And we can commit to solving the problems ahead of us and helping the people who sent us here to do so If we do we'll make a difference in the lives of our monitors And our actions will prove that the best work still comes when we're guided by our core beliefs in freedom and unity Thank you very much committee. Please reassemble and escort the governor from the chamber Be at ease in one moment, but I would like to just make a request if possible when we do adjourn the combined assembly if it would be possible to allow the Senate to exit the room before The center gets swamped that would be really helpful the Senate actually has to go back into session and last time it took about 10 or 15 minutes for that to happen that would be that would be appreciated you may be at ease until the committee returns There being no further business. I do hereby declare this joint assembly dissolved


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The number one success secret nobody talks about until now. Hey, if you've been trying to achieve things, and it seems like at every angle you keep getting stopped, things keep happening, things keep going wrong. Well, I'm going to show you how to get around all that stuff in this video, and we're starting right now. Hey, I'm JR Fisher. I've been selling online since 2009. I've sold millions of dollars of both digital and physical products. And on this channel, I just share with you the things that worked for me so you can get good results too. Now, I also have a course below. It's a $97 course. You can get it absolutely free. All you have to do is click and learn no credit card required. Also, give me your comments at the end of this video. I want to know, what do you think of this video? What did you get out of it? What do you find that's useful? Don't forget also to subscribe. Give me a thumbs up. And of course, ring the bell. Got to ring the bell so that you get all notifications. 100% of the time when I do a video, if you turn on all notifications, you'll be notified. You'll know when I'm going live. Okay, let's jump into this and figure this out. I also want to suggest that you take some notes on this. Don't do it on your computer.  And I promise you it's going to help you out. Now, here's the bad thing about life. We're kind of sold a wrong program in life. We're programmed wrong, maybe. That's what I want to say. It's because we're told that we're supposed to go to work and we're supposed to take the weekends off. And in the evenings, we're supposed to watch TV. And we're kind of programmed to do those things. And what happens is you get on this kind of hamster wheel thing where you're just running on this hamster wheel and you don't really live your life. You're just going through these processes of working and eating dinner and watching TV and getting up. And then on the weekend, you're supposed to go to a movie or go to a ball game or whatever.  It's all filled up. And there's no time for the one thing, the one thing that's going to make you successful. And what is that one thing? It's called reflection. How often do you actually sit down and look back about what you've done, what you want to do, the results of what you've done so far have gotten you? I think a lot of people don't do that because they weren't taught that. And the other reason they don't do that is because they don't want to see where they've come from. They don't want to see where they are now. They don't want to see what direction they're heading. But you've got to do this.  You are programmed to use up all your time with work and sleep and eating and weekend entertainment when, in fact, maybe you want to take that weekend and do some reflection. Look at what you've done for the past five or 10 years. Look at what direction you're heading right now. And maybe that direction is going to change. You know, and I want to share my story with you. I was a single dad and the situation I was in where I was working from 7.38 in the morning and getting home at 7.38, 9 o'clock at night. And I was doing that six days a week, sometimes seven days a week. And I had sold myself a bill of goods. I had told myself, you don't have time to do anything else. You've got two kids. You've got this job. This is your life. This is what you've got to do. And late one night, I was sitting there and I was watching TV because I watched TV for about an hour and a half, two hours every night after the kids got in bed. And I thought to myself, right now I'm watching TV. And what I'm essentially doing is watching other people live their lives. That's essentially what you do. When you turn on a television, you're watching somebody else live their life instead of actually living my life myself. And what I started doing is working on an online business. And every night I would spend that hour and a half, two hours working on my online business and just leave the TV off. The TV never did me any good. And it's kind of funny if you ask yourself, you know, what happened on your favorite show three months ago, you probably wouldn't remember. Okay, so it really doesn't matter to you. It's just bubblegum for the mind. Now, I'm not saying you can never watch TV, but some people actually spend so much time watching TV that they literally live their life watching other people live their life. It's the craziest thing in the world when in fact you could actually sit down and reflect on what you need to do. Now, when you reflect, you may be faced with some things you don't want to see. You may reflect on your life and say, well, gee, I'm not very educated. And I don't know that much. And I'm physically out of shape and I'm overweight. And you may look at that and go, oh my God, I'm in a bad situation. But here's the cool thing about all those things. You can change them. You can change them. Okay, you can get smarter at anything that you study. You can get better physical shape any time you exercise. You can change your diet. Now, you don't have to be perfect. And this is the thing that I think kills a lot of people is they will start a diet or they'll start an exercise program or they'll start learning something. And then they'll skip it for a while. Okay. And then when they skip it for a while, they go, well, what's the point in going back to it? What's the point?  So I might as well just, you know, can that diet because I can't lose weight. I was trying to learn a language, but I missed a couple of nights. And, you know, I'm going to get behind on it. So I might as well just quit that. I was trying to get in shape, but I didn't exercise all of last week. So why even bother this week? And that's just not the truth. You're going to have situations where you're working on something and you're going to screw up and you're going to miss it. But that doesn't mean you have to quit all together. And that's what kills most people. You also have to look at your priorities. Your priorities are super important. I know when I was a single dad, I worked in a sales environment and those sales people would go out after work and they would drink and they would party and they would meet women and do all these things. And that just wasn't my priority. My priority was raising my kids. I wanted to be really good at it. I had no experience in doing this whatsoever, but I wanted to be really good at it. So I actually read books on it and I thought about when I talked to them, you know, what effect was it going to have, you know, 10, 20 years from now? Do you do that? Do you stop and think about what your actions are doing every single day? And I knew that if I went out to a bar and I got out there and I was drinking and partying, doing all these things, long-term effect on me would not be good. I could possibly get into some trouble too, which I didn't want that to happen either because I had these two kids and there was nobody else to look over them. If I didn't show up at night, they had nobody, okay? So I had to be there. That was my priority. So ask yourself, what are your priorities? Is your health a priority? Is your family a priority? Are your bills a priority? And if you make all these things priorities, you'll start doing the actions that you need to do to change them. It doesn't matter if you screwed up in the past. Use this reflection tool. Use this reflection tool to see how you screwed up and what you should have done and you can't change it, but you can certainly do it different now going forward using reflection. The next thing I'm going to tell you is to spend time with successful people. Who do you hang out with? You know, it's been said that your net worth is going to be the average of the five people that you hang out with, okay? So who are you hanging out with? Now, we can't pick our family members, but we can adjust how much time we spend with them, okay? If you've got that negative family member and they're always negative about everything and they're down on everything and maybe they're doing the wrong things, you don't have to spend a lot of time with that person.  Also, your friends. A lot of times we'll select friends that are a lower status than us to make us feel better about ourselves. I would suggest that you select friends that are going to actually push you.   Now, I have a lot of courses and I'll tell people to do certain things and I gotta be honest with you, about 1% of the people will ever act on what I tell them to do and they will act on things as long as it fits in with their narrative. In other words, if it's something they feel comfortable with doing, they'll probably do it. But I gotta tell you, if you're gonna achieve more and do more, you're gonna get uncomfortable.  As soon as you start trying to achieve something else, you're gonna feel more uncomfortable and it doesn't matter if you're exercising, I'm on this pull-up kick now and I feel uncomfortable, right? It's uncomfortable to do those last few pull-ups. Those last few push-ups is uncomfortable but I know that I've gotta do that to get to the next step and it's the same way in business. It's the same way when achieving anything. It's the same way with learning a language. You know, if you start learning another language and trying to speak that language, you're gonna feel uncomfortable. You may feel embarrassed. You may feel dumb. So, you know, you'll shy away from it. So, most of the people, when I tell them the steps that they need to do, they'll do all of them until they hit an uncomfortable zone, okay? When they hit that uncomfortable zone, that's when they stop. That's when they quit. And I gotta tell you, that's exactly when you need to move forward. When you're starting to feel uncomfortable doing something, you gotta just, you gotta head in, okay? You gotta go right into it and keep doing that thing that's making you feel uncomfortable because that's the thing that's gonna really make the big changes in your life. Now, once you start, whatever you're starting, whether it's learning a language, whether it's exercise, whether it's building your business, once you start, here's what you gotta do. You gotta check your numbers. You gotta check your numbers, okay? Everything that gets checked improves.  You know, the business I used to run, we had a no smoking policy around the front of our building and nobody ever checked it and people were smoking and throwing down cigarette butts. It was terrible. So I got all my managers together one day. I said, we're gonna start checking, okay? We're gonna start telling our sales associates that they can smoke if they want, but they've gotta go to the back corner of the lot and that's gonna be a long walk back there. And these people were salespeople, so they wanted to see the customers as soon as they came in. And that lot back there was about two acres away. So that's where they're gonna need to smoke it. Every day, I want you to do around three or four times a day and see if there's anybody up front and if they are up front smoking, you need to send them to the back. Now, some interesting things happened out of this. First off, nobody smoked up front, obviously, because we were there checking it. But the other interesting thing was, a lot of them started to realize that if they were in the back corner of that lot, they may miss a customer and it could cost them money. And they started looking at that cigarette as something that was actually cost them money. And lo and behold, some of them actually quit smoking.  But you know what, I quit smoking. I don't smoke anymore because of it because it was gonna cost me money if I had to go to the back corner of that lot. And I hated you for it at the time. But you know, now I look at it and I think that was a really good thing for me. So these things that are uncomfortable and believe me, it was uncomfortable for me.  Of course I did. But I also knew it wasn't the best thing for the business. So once again, I fell back on priorities. What's my priority? Is it getting that salesperson to like me, to enjoy being around me, for me to make them feel good or is it to sell more of my product? And it was definitely to sell more of my product because I knew on down the road, I may or may not ever know those people again. I may never see them again. But the amount of money I earned during that period of time based on their sales meant a lot to me. I was a single dad. I had to pay for things. Okay. So my priority became that business, not those individuals. Where are you setting your priorities? Okay. So now you know that the big secret is reflection. The reason we don't do reflection is because sometimes it's uncomfortable. We see things that we don't want to see. We look at decisions that we shouldn't have made. But here's the cool thing.  You can get in better physical shape. You can lose the weight. You can learn the language. You can build your business. You can get better at all these things if you stop and use reflection in your daily life. Hey, if you liked this video, do me a favor. Give me a thumbs up. I would really appreciate it. Put your comments below. Have you reflected on different things? Have you changed different things?  You got off a hamster wheel. You looked around and said, wait a second. There's some things I need to change in life. I think so many times people wait for people to change things for them. They wait for their politician to get in office to help them out. That politician's not going to help you. The biggest changes that you'll see in your life from this point forward and really prior to this too are because of how you reacted to a situation, not the situation itself. That situation could face a whole lot of different people, but it's how you react to it. Do you react positively? Do you try to change it for the positive or do you buckle under and go, oh my God, look what happened to me. Poor me. I was on the phone with a relative the other day and this relative actually said to me, I can't catch a break. You won't catch a break. I got news for you. There are no such things as breaks. You're going to make your own breaks. You're going to make your own opportunities based on your decision. So don't forget, subscribe below. Don't forget to do that and ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so that when I do a new video, you can be notified. Also, I've got that course below. It's a $97 course. It's an excellent way to get started. I would highly recommend you taking advantage of that. Thank you for listening to this video and I'll see you in the next one.