Welcome to MIT Supply Chain Frontiers from the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Each episode features center researchers and staff who welcome experts from the field for in-depth conversations about business, education, and beyond. On today's episode, center director, Professor Yossi Sheffi, speaks with two seasoned supply chain professionals about some of the business and leadership innovations that the disruptions in 2020 brought about for them and their organizations. And he asks some compelling questions as we look toward the future. Take it away, Yossi. Hello, everybody. I'm Yossi Sheffi. First of all, thank you, Linda Day, for joining me today. Let me quickly introduce the two of them to our audience. I'll start with Lynn, Chief Procurement and Supply Chain Officer at Flex. Flex is the company that used to be called Flextronics. Many of you remember Flextronics, started 51 years ago at Silicon Valley, then moved the headquarters to Singapore, and later changed its name to Flex. It's a contract manufacturing, which does and can do almost anything. Many of the things that brands are selling are actually made by Flex. The company has $24 billion in revenue and 160,000 employees, and very complex, actually, multiple supply chains. It's hard to talk about Flex and think about these supply chains. They have so many. Now, Lynn Tourette is responsible for this multitude of supply chain. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with an MBA from the Kerry School of Business in Arizona State. High Lynn, thank you for joining us. Hi, Yossi. Let me introduce Dave Wheeler from New Balance. New Balance was founded in 1906. So it's an old company in Boston. It's an art support company by William Riley, who actually, I don't know if it's true or not, but the urban legend is that she followed the way she can balance their gate and decide this is the perfect way to balance ones. And they say that he had the chicken leg on his desk for many years. By now, of course, the company sell athletic wear in 120 countries with $5.5 billion in revenue and 8,000 associate. It is a private corporation. David Wheeler is the chief operating officer of New Balance. He studied Merrimack College. He's an engineer and has an MBA from Miami University. I should say that both Dave and Lynn were generous with their time in the middle of the pandemic, which taxed every supply chain executive. They both allowed me to interview them about what was going on during the pandemic around the world, providing material for my book that came out in October this year, the new abnormal reshaping business and supply chain strategy beyond COVID-19. Both have operation in China. It's interesting because Flex, of course, is a B2B operation, while New Balance is a B2C operation, serving consumer directly. So they come from one private company, one public company, coming from two sides of the supply chain. So what I'd like to do now is start with a few questions. We just went through an amazing and tough period. What's the biggest insight or a moment that came out for you and for your organization? Well, I think one of the most interesting dynamics is that 10 months ago, nobody was really talking about supply chains. People just expected them to work and deliver the products. Now, supply chain is a topic on everyone's mind. And it is very pervasive in the industry today, the importance of supply chain and supply chain resiliency. I also believe that digitalization tools provided great information to allow our organization to address the supply chain challenges throughout the pandemic. But it also highlighted to me the importance of supply chain professionals making smart decisions with imperfect information throughout this challenge. And I also believe that it validated the investments that Flex has made over the past years in our digitalization tools to be able to stay as quick as we could in our decision making as we addressed all of the challenges that we were faced on a daily basis throughout the pandemic. Thank you, Lee. Dave, what was it for you, the insight and how moment that came out of the pandemic? Good morning, Yossi. And yeah, thanks for having me on here. Good to share some stories. This has certainly been a challenging 2020 for sure, a combination of loss and chaos and certainly some opportunity as well. And I think maybe two parts I'd share. One is, I guess I'm not too surprised that having a burning platform brings people together. If I think back to the earthquakes in Haiti, we rallied around our suppliers to make sure that they were supported. And we also figured out ways to get back up on our feet in fairly short order. So seeing a team come together for a common cause certainly was the story of this year for us. I also think we all surprised ourselves around the ability to come together in a virtual way using tools that have been available but certainly have come together for the masses which enabled us to work together really in a more seamless way and in many cases more effectively to get to conclusions, make decisions and take action in a way that hadn't happened in the past. So that for me, the ability to work virtually essentially was the big aha moment for me in 2020. Thank you, David. And we may come to this point because it would be interesting to know later how much of this will stay after the pandemic including working virtually and on the thing. But Lynn, you mentioned before that supply chain became people used to ask my wife what your husband's doing is they're doing research in supply chain and they said, what is it? Nobody asked what is it now? They said, oh, wow, that's important but within the company, what happened to you and your function as a result of this? Well, supply chain within the Flex organization has always been a critical aspect of our business. So it was always highlighted as a strategic importance within the Flex organization but I do think in many companies, supply chain became more prominent in the discussions and direction and decisions that companies were making. Yeah, Dave, you used to be the head of supply chain now you're running the whole operations. Right, yeah, I think New Balance is a little bit different, right? So we're a consumer facing brand so when we think about the most prominent functions in the company, it's about marketing and merchandising and those types of functions. Supply chain is there to support those efforts and in the early parts of the pandemic and actually throughout 2020, supply chain has been thrust into the forefront a lot further, very visible. Often having discussions with ownership and the CEO and the CFO and really trying to make sure that our efforts are headed down the right path to support the demand, which has really fluctuated both down and up in a significant way. So the V for us has been real. We'll still end the year on the negative side versus 2019, but certainly in the latter half of this year volume is up significantly. So we're actually chasing the supply at the moment. Oh, wow. Let me follow up on this with you, Dave. To do this, of course, the supply chain has to be not silent but work together with every other function in the organization. Can you talk more about the cooperation with other functions? Yeah, sure thing. We found in 2020 that working in an agile way really helped us accelerate change. And in the past, we had run projects in a more traditional, longer term, get a Gantt chart, really have key milestones. We created in the March, April timeframe a series of what we call pods, agile pods that were very cross functional, had a 90 day time limit and had key deliverables along the way. And so every other day that team was together in a cross functional way. And that synergy was really game changing for us because we could pivot a lot quicker given all the inputs from the various functions. So that was significant for us this year for sure. Lee? Well, when the pandemic first started in January, we were getting information out of our Chinese operations. And one of the things I did is we created a daily call with my leadership team and other areas of cross functional business leadership from our resiliency team, our legal team, our tax team. And we had a daily call at 5.30 in the morning, my time for months. And I think that was incredibly important in how we addressed the challenges we were facing. We would have a very structured agenda for the daily call. We would hear from our regional leaders what they were hearing from customers, what they were hearing from suppliers, what they were hearing from the media or local governments. We'd look at the information we had from our suppliers and our customers forecast to understand where we may have supply chain risk. And then we employed tiger teams to address the significant challenges we had. And that daily rigor of the calls and our ability to move very quickly and readjust our teams to focus on the most critical aspects that we were working on provided a great deal of resiliency in our supply chain. We had, we cover a great number of industries at Flex. So we had instances where some of our customers' forecasts were going through the roof and we were chasing our medical supply, medical business, for instance. Drop in lead time demands, shortages that we were chasing. And we had other parts of our business where the forecast were declining rapidly. So having that daily rigor, being able to deploy the vast resources that we have within the supply chain organization to both expedite orders and cancel orders and understand what other challenges we might be facing such as sourcing PPE equipment or freight and logistics challenges and making the decisions based on the discussions we were having on a daily basis was very critical.  Yes, in many cases the rebound has been dramatic in the increase and like Dave, we are chasing supply right now because the demand is high and now we're certainly seeing some shortages that we're working on to make sure we clear to recognize revenue and support our customers. But, and I do think throughout the entire pandemic with the forecast going up or down, we really worked with our customers closely to validate their forecast. And I wanted to ensure when we were working with our suppliers, we were giving true demand signals and prioritizing appropriately. So they would be able to work within their organizations which were also challenged because of the pandemic. And we worked very closely and collaboratively and compassionately with our partners to try and ensure we could meet the demand. Dave, could you just comment on working with your suppliers? Sure, yeah, it certainly was challenging in that April and May timeframe as we went in and put a hold on production. But we also wanted to make sure that we had really strong relationships with our tier ones and also respecting the tier twos and tier threes as they tried to stay financially solvent. And so it was a real delicate balance actually. And we put a lot of emphasis, a lot of resources around understanding the data at a very detailed level so that we could repurpose the certain materials that were already purchased by the tier one into the tier twos rather than leave them, holding the financial liability. And so fortunately, we were able to work down a material liability of over $10 million essentially down to zero by just trying, just really using the data, again, respecting the suppliers because we need them for the long run. And I think those relationships are so critical. I would also maybe tag on there that living in this virtual world, it does certainly become challenging to maintain those relationships at the level that we have had in the past, in person really does make a big difference. So we can get 90% there, but that extra 10% makes really does make for a much stronger supplier relationship. And we look forward to getting back to at least some level of travel in the near future for sure. Yes, I mean, interesting guy. In the book I quote Lynn actually, that talks about the fact how important it is to sit at the end of the day face to face, have tough negotiations and then have dinner together. The way trust is being built. But Lynn following on other discussion that we had before, there's a lot of focus on resilience from your customer. We want you to be resilient. What are the challenges here? That's a great question. And it's actually a topic that I'm exploring in a series of blogs on the Flex website. Everybody's talking about a resilient supply chain. And we believe that there are a number of ways in which you can work with your customers and suppliers to drive more resiliency. Visibility is incredibly important. Digitalization and collaboration. So when we're looking at driving a resilient supply chain, there's numerous ways you can do it. In some cases it's like an insurance policy is that having additional inventory and if so who funds that additional inventory is it looking at alternative suppliers to de-risk the supply chain? And it's also from an internal standpoint looking throughout your entire organization to find out where you may have resiliency risks and continuously improving internally to drive improvements in that area. Thank you. And Dave, you face different challenges because you are not faced by huge customers. Each one is a large percent of your business who can exert pressure.   But so you have, how do you deal with the move to e-commerce and omni-channel? Sure, I mean, even prior to the pandemic we had seen quite a shift from wholesale into our wholesale retailers over to direct to consumer, e-com type sales. And it's certainly accelerated in a big way in 2020. I think as many companies have found as folks stay at home and can't get out to the retailers. So we have seen an acceleration in that type of sales that's launched us three years beyond where we expected to be. And as you can imagine, that puts a lot of stress on the supply chain from the way that we distribute the product and then finally delivered into the consumer's hands versus a customer of wholesale. A completely different set of processes. So we have quite an effort underway within our warehouse network and that transportation capability to make sure that we can catch up and also sustain what happens in 2021 which we expect will be continued growth in e-com. And I think on top of that we are certainly getting into the omni-channel capability utilizing our stores to ship smaller volumes of certain SKUs that consumers want in a relatively short period of time. They're used to that Amazon potentially same day within two-hour type delivery. And we are working down that path with a couple of pilot projects utilizing our brick and mortar which is super exciting for us. Thank you. Both of you have operations in China. Both of you are also setting in China. Lin, let's go to you. Are you gonna move out of China? No. No, Flex has a large- This was a setup, a setup, I know. Yeah, Flex has a large footprint in China and we are committed to our employees and other stakeholders there. And we also have a diverse and global footprint and depend on supply chain from China to support our customers. China is unparalleled in their electronics manufacturing and supply chain capabilities. And the hubs, the technology hubs that have been built have been decades in the making. And so we will continue to work with our valuable suppliers from China to support our customers. I think at the same time, we need to look at resiliency and do you risking the supply chain? So I anticipate change, but not in the short term. We'll continue to value our suppliers and our production in China. Dave? I think similar to Lin's perspective, certainly New Balance has a strong consumer base in China. So producing in China for consumer consumption in China makes a lot of sense to us in the apparel and footwear business in general. It's not as high of a value add as electronics, for example. And so across the industry, we've seen migration generally away from China, but still some volume remains there, especially for let's say high performance technical running. And certain capabilities that China has built up over the decades are outstanding that businesses like New Balance wanna stay there in particular. But China certainly has and brings a lot of great production capability to the table that we're certainly proud of for a lot of different reasons. And we source globally. We're proud that we're the only major athletic brand that produces right here in the United States with five factories in New England. So we're very diversified on our supply chain base. Thank you. And there's a lot of related question before we go to the technology, lots of technology questions, about the Trump administration and others are talking about regionalization and moving to insourcing instead of outsourcing. You see, I did not see much of this, but do you see in your company, do you have part of the strategy to bring more stuff in home, Lynn? Well, Flex has the benefit of a large global presence, large global footprint. You wrote in your book about China plus one. Yes. Flex can offer China plus 50 for manufacturing. So I do believe that talking about resiliency and regionalization, it means different things to different companies and to different industries. We believe that there's an opportunity to look at partnering with customers who potentially have done their own manufacturing and want to look at maybe de-risking by using a partner like Flex to take on a portion of their production to provide that resiliency and risk mitigation strategies. But in general, I do believe that there is a lot of talk of regionalization and resiliency and it needs to be defined exactly what that means for a customer, for their strategies and then looking at, is that something they want to do themselves? Is that something they want to partner with? We also offer services in engineering because the manufacturing is one aspect, the entire supply chain is another aspect. So if we have customers who have a single source device as part of their technology innovation, can we provide alternatives that come from a different supplier manufactured in a different region to help de-risk the supply chain? So I think there's a lot of ways in which we can drive resiliency and support regionalization as our customers want to define that. Dave? Sure, we have a real interesting combination, I think. I guess I would tie it to a key initiative we have underway and have had over the last couple of years, but especially in 2020. It's been focused on design for lead time. And so as we think about an agile, responsive supply chain, a lot of that is around lead time, shortened lead time so that we can sense demand and rapidly respond with supply. And that tends to focus our energy around localized, regionalized supply base. And our ability to open up our own capabilities there in every single country that we sell into is unrealistic. And so using an outsourced specialized capability on a regionalized basis makes a lot of sense to us. And that will certainly continue to be the trend as we design for lead time so that we can respond, shorten up our inventory turns and really get a little bit more precise around what inventory we have on hand based on our sell-through. So that would be our trend at the moment. Thank you. Every virtual conference that I'm on, every other question that I get is digitization of the supply chain. Okay, the question is, what do we mean by this? Which technology grows where? What are the technology? For example, Flex, I know develop this unbelievable NASA-like worm that looks at the whole supply chain. That's something that takes a lot of money and time to develop lead. If you can just say a word about your system that was developed actually even well before the pandemic but then about the technology that you think are critical for making the supply chain more agile, responsive, shorten the lead time, increase inventory turn and all the good things that we expect. Yeah, Flex benefited greatly during the pandemic in the investments we've made in our digital technology. And the best example is the Flex Paul Center which we started in 2015 and have been continuously innovating since. So Flex is a cloud-based intelligent platform that provides real-time visibility into our entire global supply chain. And we use it to manage all aspects of our business. We're able to go in with a click of a button and look at a global picture, drill down to a regional picture, a site level, a customer level to a part number level and understand what potential gating aspects we may have. So the insights we are able to glean from our Flex system are incredibly powerful. Prior to joining Flex, I was a supplier to Flex that I remember my first visit to the Flex Paul Center and I told my predecessor that I had data envy because it was so powerful. Coming now and joining Flex, I realized how critical and important those investments are in managing such a complex supply chain. Yossi, you mentioned it at the beginning, we have, we support over 1,000 customers with 16,000 suppliers and that translates into a million SKUs. So that working across multiple industries makes it incredibly complex. So the visibility that we have from our Paul Center is incredible. It was a significant investment in the continuous innovation and we've innovated even with lessons learned from COVID. And one of those was, and Dave, you mentioned that the tier two, tier three supplier and the lack of visibility, both from their supply chain, but as well as their financial health. And those are areas where we believe furthering the capabilities of our system will require third party partners to support us with that information because even before COVID, we had environmental issues impacting our supply chain. Then you had the trade tensions, then the global pandemic that need for resiliency and visibility is more critical than ever. And in some cases, it will require really an industry wide type of connection to be able to gather the information and provide that visibility. We have nine of those around the world, Paul Centers and their wall length across a room, digitalization tools that provide live streaming and really actionable insight towards where we may have challenges. So it is a very state of the art from what we've developed. Absolutely. Dave, can you tell us about where do you see the most important investment in supply chain digitization? What problems are we trying to solve? Sure, yeah. Now, we've made the decision to, as many companies have either in the past or at least thinking about it, to really invest in a new ERP and a new supply chain planning suite, which will bring in demand sensing, actual sell through data, point of sale information, use AI to give us a better forecast. That's the expectation because it all starts with the forecast. So we're excited about that and we're about ready to get started on it. So as far as software and the platform to help us tie end-to-end supply chain together, that's a big deal for us. I would say on the product side, there are a couple of areas that really came to the forefront in 2020. One was in the past, we have done some 3D product modeling. So our suppliers have capabilities that we have helped them get ramped up with to be able to create a 3D computerized model of a shoe that's in the design phase. And in the past, we've created physical prototypes which get produced and then sent, transportation, handling all that. All that adds about four to six weeks onto the overall production cycle. And if they get it wrong, then we start that over again. With the 3D model, which we've really invested quite a bit of money in and just in the recent past, in 2020 we were able to really turn these prototypes quickly in the virtual world. And so that's been a big, big improvement for us in the digital transformation. The next step is to be able to take that 3D model and have it blow out into a bill of material and then digitally right to the shop floor. And so there is a lot of work across a number of different suppliers to help us get to that point as well. And I know a lot of companies in our industry are working toward that. And that I think will be true product, you know, digital transformation. I'm excited about that. Good. Let me change tags. Let's go back to Lina. During the pandemic, he's changed the way that as executive, you do your job. How you lead the organization. You have a pretty large organization reported to you and did it change your leadership style? I think it probably enhanced some of the strategies that I've always employed. One of my leadership tenants has always been collaboration. I always believe that it's important to have teams working together to drive the best results because it's a very complex industry that we're in. And I think that came to another level during our pandemic. Because certainly, you know, I was relatively new to flex when the pandemic broke out. I joined of October of 2019. So when we started those daily calls with my leadership team, who are phenomenals, experts in their area, we would have a discussion and I said, I wanted to hear everybody's voice and everybody's concerned when we were having these discussions because we needed to make quick decisions to mitigate our supply chain and we would meet again in the morning in case we had to adjust them. So I would say I think collaboration was something that increased across the organization as people understood all aspects of our business needed to be in constant communication to understand the customers, the suppliers, our manufacturing capabilities.  So we shifted product around the world to make sure we could recognize revenue and support our customers. So collaboration was enhanced. And I think communication, one of the things I learned personally is the importance of ongoing regular communication. In some cases I thought it might be repetitive but recognizing the organization wanted to hear from the leadership team even if in cases it wasn't perfect information or we knew exactly what was going on but really learned that regular communication to the employees was very important in such an uncertain time that they would hear from the leadership team on the strategies we were employing for the business. Dave, what can you say about your leadership style and did anything jump to your doing in the pandemic? Yeah, I think I would just 100% emphasize Lin's points right on target as far as communication, collaboration. I would just maybe add an additional point that I've recognized certainly working in the virtual world with the staff folks that are working from home and in other locations. My leadership style when in the office has always been let's have a meeting and prior to that meeting there's a lot of work that actually gets done. After the meeting when you're breaking up and having hallway conversation a lot of work actually gets done there and in Zoom calls or team calls when you hit that leave button, that ends. And so that's the part that I recognize that we were missing out on even though during the meeting super collaborative people can hop on in almost on a moment's notice with no travel, which is fantastic but intentionally carving out a little bit of extra time to connect into individuals for five or 10 minutes has made a big difference because after all we're all part of the human race we like to socialize, we wanna talk about what's on our mind and as we do that we not only create new ideas and innovate but we feel connected. And so on top of what Lin said I just add that additional part. Certainly people did amazing thing during the pandemic I wrote the book usually takes me four years I wrote it in four months but that's nothing compared to developing the vaccine that thought people can do it takes 10 years people do it in eight, nine months. I mean, amazing with new technology. So I didn't mention the fact that Flex started making ventilators and Lubano started making masks. Amazing how companies just did the right thing and without much prodding and all these just I'm just mentioned that it was interesting to me that the masks that new balance develop would develop by the supply chain people not by the designers. So it looked great. But it's one thing to do on this as you say when the whole team feel that there's a burning platform it's important and people work on a lot of adrenaline. The question is, so we learn how to do things fast the question is how to keep some of this going forward. Well, it's interesting. I had a discussion about this yesterday. Flexibility is in our name and in our DNA. I think it's flex. We have, as a contract manufacturer and logistics provider, we support our customers and we have to be very agile. We are introducing new products around the world and any one of our factories multiple new product introductions at the same time that we're bringing products to end of life and managing that complexity of the supply chain. So it was, I would say, you know we always work fast in trying to be flexible and agile to support our customers because that's our business. When we moved into the ventilator production we added passion because we understood that, you know we were making products that were desperately needed around the world to save lives. And that was something I felt was really critical for the organization. I mentioned those 5.30 a.m. calls because they were really early for me when the pandemic started. We started getting ready to ramp our ventilator production. I was up before my alarm. I couldn't wait to get on the phone to understand what we could do to get the products we needed to get the engineering resources, the supply chain resources to drive that product. So certainly that, you know for our business we need to be flexible and agile but we certainly saw a difference in the level of passion during that time. Dave, how do you keep the spirit that made, I don't know, I described in the book making masks within basically over a long weekend putting together MIT and messages to general hospitals and all your manufacturing material on hand and just doing it in days really, which is amazing. You mentioned that it's a product of the supply chain and that is a true design for manufacturing because we leveraged our available capabilities and materials and there was a ton of passion around it no question about it. We did it within like you said a long weekend and really tapping into the talent that we needed to bring to the table because we weren't mask experts. We didn't work in the FDA world prior to this. We're footwear and apparel makers. And so there was a lot of learning and unfortunately folks came to the table and rallied together. I think, you know, how do we keep that momentum up? We learned a lot along the way in the mask making business that has actually helped us. There are some lessons learned and new processes to your point.  You know, we, as you recall back in March we didn't even really know what type of mask to make. Was it an N95 mask, a surgical mask, a basic face mask? What was the demand? And you know, all these changing consumer inputs and you know, we made three versions within about six weeks and we produced over a million masks and have donated those in hundreds of thousands of masks at this point. But certainly lessons learned as far as implementing certain quality processes along the way as we shorten up that timeframe so that we don't, you know, incur any additional errors on our apparel and footwear business. So kind of a combination of things, of new processes to ensure quality as we accelerate the process that's needed right now in this new, you know, consumer environment. I really want to thank both Dave and Lee for taking time out of what is a very busy and active schedule still today to share with us some of the lessons learned from this period. Thanks everybody, stay well. All right everyone, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this edition of MIT Supply Chain Frontiers. My name is Arthur Grau, Communications Officer for the Center. I invite you to visit anytime at ctl.mit.edu or search for MIT Supply Chain Frontiers on your favorite listening platform. Until next time.


Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you, my name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And today we're very pleased to have our Finance Director with us, Mr. Tim Finch, welcome Tim. Thanks Adam, appreciate it, glad to be here. It's good to have you here as some of you may be aware, it's that time of year again when the county and many units of government across the state are working on their budget development. We're working on our 2009 budget and it's a very important responsibility of Tim and his team in the finance department. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit today, but before we get going, Tim please begin by telling our viewers a little bit about when you started with the county and in the finance department. Sure, yeah, I started with the county in 1999 and I've been in the finance department since May of 2000. So had a little bit of time here before I moved to the finance department, but and I've been in Sheboygan that same period of time, I'm not a Sheboyganite. But I enjoy it here, it's very nice, great place to live, so I really enjoy it. And big picture, what are the key roles and responsibilities of the finance department? Yeah, a lot of things and it keeps our jobs kind of exciting. It's never a boring moment in the finance department. Budgeting as you mentioned is probably the most labor intensive thing we do because it's pretty much in all your process. We do external and internal financial reporting, counts payable, counts receivable, internal auditing, debt management, financial forecasting, financial policies and procedures for the county as a whole and financial analysis, so lots of fun stuff. A lot going on, how many staff do you supervise in the office? We have 10 people in our department and kind of fluctuates depending on whether positions are filled or unfilled and periodically we'll have a position that remains vacant, but 10 people. Well as I mentioned, the budget process as certainly we've been talking about since last February, March already, but really getting in the heat of is one of the most important documents that's developed, in fact it's the most important policy document that the county board ultimately adopts. How does the process work? What's a thumbnail sketch of the budget development process timeline? Sure, yeah, it's an interesting one. As you know, it really starts in January, February. We'll get together and start talking about what are the challenges for the year, bringing in the county board chairman. Kind of get a feeling for what hurdles are we gonna have to overcome in the budget process and then look at what's an appropriate target for that coming budget. So that starts in January, February, March and that period of time. And then that really kind of builds up to the budget kickoff, which is in June. And at the budget kickoff, that's where the chairman, yourself, the finance committee will relay the targets for each department to all the departments in the county and give them a chance to ask it in questions and really set the stage for what's gonna happen with that budget. Where does the county wanna go? What do they want the tax rate to be? How much are we gonna levy the taxpayers? Or will the levy go up or down? So that's the budget kickoff in June where the targets are given to all the departments. Then after that, there's a period in July and August when departments will have to come to you. You're kind of the first line of defense against to guarantee that we're gonna meet our overall budget goal. So they have to come to meet with you and myself. And the job is to position them to go to their committee with a balanced budget based on their targets that they were given. Then after that, they go to their own committee. Again, their budgets are reviewed. Their committee can remove anything they don't feel is appropriate, add things. Their job also really is to position that budget to meet the overall goal for the county. After that, then budgets will go to the finance committee. And often the finance committee has to do heavy lifting as far as making tough decisions on what we can afford to do, what we can't afford to do. So that's a very important step. That usually happens August to September, October 14th. We actually publish the budget. It's available. We publish a summary of it in newspaper. Make it available online. October 21st is presented at the county board. And October 28th, after they've had one week to kind of digest it, then there's a public hearing and a line by line review of every single budget. And November 4th, it's adapted by the county board. So it's a long, long involved process as I know you and Mike are well aware. You went through that pretty quickly and for our viewers benefit. The budget process, as you said, it's almost an annual development process. We start already in January, February, working on the next year's budget and really starts heating up this summer and fall. As you pointed out, we're in the midst now of reviewing individual department budgets and the liaison committees will then get involved in the finance committee and ultimately adopted by the full county board. Both Tim and I have been with the county now for almost 10 years. I started in 1999. I mentioned off the air just a few minutes ago how important it is to surround yourself with outstanding people. And Tim is certainly one of them, just a fantastic finance director. And one of the things that we've done probably increasingly over the years is really tried to develop specific targets that positions the county board to achieve its goal. In my experience, and I'd like to hear your point of view, Tim, but in my experience, the liaison committee, the liaison committee again is that standing committee that oversees the Health and Human Services Department, for example, or the law committee oversees the Sheriff's Department. They have a very important function as policy makers to establish priorities. But in our experience, what we've found is generally those liaison committees are not necessarily real objective when it comes to establishing the budget. They tend to be very supportive of their respective departments and that's human nature. And sometimes they're not the ones who really have to make those tough priority decisions and pair down the budget to get to a point where it meets the county board's overall goal. The finance committee, and you and I get involved with a lot of that, as well as obviously Chairman Banderstein.  Well, I think probably the best thing that the county board has done, and I know you were instrumental in seeing that happen was that number of years ago, we went to a different approach. Instead of just giving departments, taking their previous year's budget and adding a certain amount to that, we actually look at what do we want the target levy to be for the county as a whole? What do we wanna do for the taxpayers? What's appropriate? And we actually set a levy target for every department. So they knew right up front, here's what you have to work with as far as levy and then you have to make your budget work within that. So I think that's just really been critical to the success of the budget process over the last number of years. The best thing I think we've done. Very good, thank you, Tim. Tim, it was about nine years ago when we established this new budget process, setting these goals and targets to eliminate some of the large swings we'd have from year to year in the tax rate. How do you think the counties perform in the years, five years after that was done compared to the previous five years before we established these targets? Sure, actually I've got a chart here that I think will show that. I'm gonna put this up here. I think they can get it on camera. This one goes back to 1992 and then goes up to 2009 where we're hoping to set our tax rate or have set our target tax rate. And you can see back in 1992 it was fairly high, it was about $7 per thousand. And then it took kind of a roller coaster ride there all the way up to 1999. Then from 1999 on through 2005, it's been pretty flat and that's a reflection of the budget process that was established, I believe when Adam came in, to try to reduce the ups and downs in the tax rate and keep it more stable. And that was very successful, you can see in this period. Then the last four years, what's happened is we've seen a consistent drop in the tax rate as a result of two things. The first thing that happened is that the state imposed a levy limitation that had not been imposed previously. So that restricted local units of government how much they could levy. So that was partially responsible for 2006 and 2007 tax rates dropping. Then in 2008 and 2009 continues to drop. That's really a reflection of the county board and the fact that they've taken a very targeted approach to what is the levy going to be in Shoeigan County. And as you guys know, some of the taxpayers may know and some may not know. This will be the second year in a row that the tax levy has actually gone down. It's not just we've reduced the growth in it, the levy has actually gone down. Last year it went down about 1.2% and the target for 2009 budget is to go down another 1%. And that'd be the second time in 22 years if that's happened. So last year was a milestone, number two, doing it two years in a row is practically unheard of. So it'll be quite a feat to do that. Just a quick clarification. You just mentioned tax levy two years in a row yet of course you're showing a chart here that is the tax rate. Maybe you want to just very quickly clarify well what's the difference between the rate and the levy? Right. The rate can go down and it doesn't necessarily mean that the levy will go down. It's a function of equalized value. So in this case though, however, the rate is actually going, tax levy is actually going down. That's not really reflected here because it's just a tax rate. But you have to look at really where the rubber meets the road is the tax levy. That's what hits the taxpayers pocket. So if you're asking in a local unit of government, how are you doing for your taxpayers? Ask them, what is your levy done? Has your levy gone up? Has it gone down? Most are gonna say it hasn't not gone down. It's pretty rare to see that happen. But how much has your actual levy gone up percentage wise? 2%, 3%, 4%. The state's idea of a reasonable levy increase is 2%. That's pretty much what they've mandated. And I think that's a very reasonable amount to have. We, of course, beat that target two years in a row. Tim, on the levy, the county board can't go up to what is it, 2%? Correct. And how has this been changing in the last few years? Well, at one time there was actually no levy cap whatsoever. There's been a rate cap for a number of years. Since 1992, we've been capped at the tax rate of so much per $1,000. However, that doesn't control your levy because the equalized value goes up.  So really, the rate cap was not all that effective in controlling levy, but it is still in effect. But for the last several years now we've had an actual levy cap so we can't raise our levy more than roughly 2%. So the state, that's their attempt to control taxes at the local level. Whether they've really followed through at the state level or not, I'm not sure that they have. But anyway, that's their attempt to satisfy the taxpayer that they're doing whatever they can to help them at the local level. Tim, what do you think the most challenging issues we face in trying to hold the taxes down? Oh gosh, Mike, how much time do we have? Well, just give us the highlights. Just kidding. One of them that is there, and there's just not a lot we can do about it, but the constant increase in wages every year, roughly two and a half to 3%, which is a pretty normal wage increase, is that compounds, it builds on itself year after year after year. And over time, truthfully, I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges that we face. We've met that with a couple of things. We try to meet that with keeping negotiations to where we can have a wage increase that's reasonable. We'd like to be down to the two to two and a half percent range, often it's three percent. The last couple years it's been two and a half percent. We're thinking three percent for 2009. So that constant compounding of wage increases over a long period of time has a huge effect. Health insurance has been a big issue for a number of years. Not so much now. It's quite under control now with some things that have been done by the HR committee and HR department to really control health insurance costs. That's much improved. That's helped tremendously. Rocking Hill, the healthcare centers have been a huge challenge. And we sold Sunny Ridge, so we've solved a big part of the problem there. And in fact, selling Sunny Ridge is the reason, the primary reason why we've had been able to reduce our levy now two years in a row. Without selling Sunny Ridge, we would not have been able to do that. So it was critical. Rocking Hill still remains a challenge. Healthcare is very, very expensive to provide. But we have a good team in place there. We have a new director. The healthcare centers committee is devoted to doing things that are proactive and to marketing Rocking Hill. And in fact, for 2009, they're looking to reduce their levy by about 500,000, actually more than 500,000 over their prior year's levy, over the 2008 levy. That's pretty big. So they're doing some really good things here. So that's much more in control than it was previously. Unfunded mandates at the state level continues to be a real source of irritation and worry at the local level. Because consistently, we're seeing state revenue for grants for human service programs and other programs, flat or declining. And yet our costs continue to go up. And there's really not been a good response from the state on that. So we have some challenges ahead of us for sure. We have one for this year, for 2009, that's a little unusual, is recession has brought about lower interest rates and short-term investments. We have some short-term investments, so we're losing interest revenue on those. So trying to find a way to mitigate that right now. So we have some challenges, but that's what makes the job fun. And Adam and I love to dig into stuff like that. So I'm glad you do. Thanks, Jim. You're welcome. Tim, you mentioned earlier, you commented that the state cap of a 2% on the levy has, to a certain degree, been a good thing. Because of course, you and I and Chairman Van der Steen and I think the full county board would always like to see our levy increases be modest in that perhaps two, two and a half, 3% range, certainly no more than that. However, the board's also gone on record, rather concerned about these one-size-fits-all caps, though a 2% cap sounds good. The reality is that when you have utilities that are tripling or you have costs associated with your nursing homes doubling or you have health insurance costs skyrocketing along with just the ongoing costs of wages, which certainly you want to give people a fair and appropriate wage, there's been some real concern, not only in Sheboygan County, but across the state that these caps are, you know, they sound good. And though most of us would like to work within them, it may not necessarily be reasonable. We've been fortunate the last couple of years because of the privatization of Sunny Ridge and some other things we've done where we've actually been able to reduce the tax levy. But at some point, we're gonna be back, I think, to two, 3% increases each year. And in those situations, you know, do you feel that that 2% cap is fair and reasonable? Oh, gee, you know, that's a tough question. I think for us, I think a two to 3% I think is doable because County Board has done some really, made some really good decisions that have positioned us to be able to live within that. Is it responsible from the state's point of view to tell us that that's what we have to live with? No, I don't really think it is. I think local government has done a better job than state government at controlling their budget. So I don't think it's reasonable, but you know, it's just what we have to live within. But you know, for Shboyton County, I just feel fortunate that we're in a really good position financially to be able to address whatever the state brings down. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's nothing the state can do to us that will kill us is we're in good enough financial condition. They'll go under well before we would ever go under. Pretty bold words. Very bold and I, yeah, I believe in them totally. We've talked a lot about holding the line on taxes, reducing taxes, and of course, there's a lot of public support for doing that, especially with today's economic conditions. But with that said, the County Board has also made a heck of a lot of investments in this community from an economic development standpoint and educational development standpoint. A number of areas where they've invested capital improvements, please touch on some of the things that have happened. Yeah, that's some of the exciting stuff. Right here at UW-Shaborgan, the Technology Center has been recently completed. It's beautiful, you know, I've been in there I think once or twice. I don't know if you've got, I know Adam, you've been in there, Mike. I, you've probably been in there too. It's incredible. The science building a few years ago was completed. We've used that a couple of times for conferences that we've had for leadership forum. Just an amazing facility here and getting better all the time. So those are some of the good things that the County is working with the UW System to improve out here. The airport, extremely exciting things going on there, expanding the runway. They can bring in jets with more fuel, they can fly. Actually, I think they're approaching the point now where they can take off from Shaborgan and if they wanted to fly to Moscow or somewhere equally far away without stopping to refuel. So really amazing stuff and Morgan Aviation planning a development at the airport that looks absolutely unbelievable if they can bring in the number of jobs that they're talking about bringing in and it looks pretty positive for them that they'll be able to do that. A new line of aircraft will be coming out of there. Very, very high tech business jet type of aircraft. So airport's just an exciting, exciting place to be. Then there are the kind of more routine things like phone upgrades, computer system upgrades, software upgrades, ongoing roof replacement throughout the county trying to keep our buildings up to date and expansion of our trail systems. Interurban Trail is something that they've been trying to really finish that off for a number of years. And then also, more brand new software program at Human Services which will replace many of the, the aging software programs they have there. That's been a major project. So lots of, lots of exciting stuff coming up. And a lot of things that people wouldn't think about perhaps if they're not watching this program or following things with the newspaper. I know we've said it during this program before but with the Acuity Technology Center and the Science Edition here prior to that, recently UW-Chaboygon was co-located here with UW Extension, UW Extension moved here from falls. This facility is one of the best, if not the best, 13 year camp, two year of the 13 campuses across the state. Beautiful facility. And if you haven't checked it out, I would encourage you to at minimum poke your nose into the new Acuity Technology Center. Just gorgeous. In fact, Dean Al Harderson recently sent some correspondence to Chairman Van Der Stien and myself saying that since that addition's been put on, the numbers of people that were going to the old Learning Resource Center, essentially the old library, which was about 10,000 a year if memory serves, has now gone to about 40,000 people a year going into the new Acuity Technology Center. So just beautiful. And the other area real quick, the airport as Tim mentioned, if you haven't been out to the airport recently, check that out. Chuck Mayer of the airport manager is doing a fantastic job and just some wonderful infrastructure and improvements out at the airport. When the county boards going through this process of trying to meet Chairman Van Der Stien's challenging goal of a second consecutive year with a modest property tax levy reduction, and all the 22 departments are clamoring for additional resources and there's only so much to provide, how does the county board go about establishing priorities and making decisions on where they're gonna provide these limited resources? Right, the budget process is critical. Setting a target right up front, here is where we wanna go for 2009 or whatever year we're dealing with. Here's our levy target and giving that to the departments and let the departments run with that and find the way to do that. So the budget process and how we look at that and I think now how we look at it is very, very successful is just key to that. We also have a five year capital plan. That's where our larger expenditures like airport expenditures, major building renovations and additions, things like that are in our five year plan. That's really a separate budget process from the operating budget. It equally is important and is also scrutinized closely by yourself, the chairman, the finance committee and other county board supervisors. So the main budget process, the five year plan budget process and then Pepsi. Pepsi was initiated back in 2000. Pepsi and people are drinking Diet Pepsi. What do you mean by Pepsi? Program evaluation and prioritization. Committee? Committee, thank you very much. I was thinking process. No, that's not a P on the end. Extremely effective. That's a few years old now but I've heard rumblings that it's gonna be updated which I think is an excellent idea. I think that's something that Mike wants to do. I think it was very, very effective and I think it's gonna be more effective as a budget gets tighter. Pepsi can be used where we have limited resources to determine where do we fund? If we run out of money and don't have enough funding, who gets funded first? Which programs get funded first? So Pepsi I think will be critical. If memory serves, there are 1,922 local units of government in the state of Wisconsin. And Tim, you were a huge part, as you know, of this program evaluation and prioritization process. And we are probably one of a dozen local units of government out of that nearly 2,000 that have actually gone through the painstaking process of reviewing and evaluating and ranking every program and service. And when we did that a few years ago, we learned we had about 206, 207 programs and the county board and department heads now can use that as a tool when it comes to making budget decisions. It's been very valuable. Absolutely. And Mike's looking to update that next year and that's certainly something we're gonna pursue. Good, I think it's a great thing to do. Moving along here, the public that's watching this program and may have some interest in one of those 206 programs or services or something they wanna see added or something they feel is not a good use of taxpayer dollars. How do they get involved with the budget process? How do they have input? Couple of ways they can do that. One way is they can go to a standing committee meeting. They can go to a finance committee meeting and look for the agendas. Those are posted online in our website. And on the agenda, it'll tell what budgets are being considered. So if there's a department they're interested in, check out our website, find out when the finance committee is meeting, attend a meeting, they're open, all open to the public. So that's a good way to do it. Or they can go to the law committee or another committee if they wanna see specifically programs that would be administered by the law committee. Can they just show up at the last budget meeting at the county board or is it better to get involved a little earlier? Well, it's probably better to get involved earlier. And that's where the decision making, initial decision making takes places at those committee meetings, finance committee and the other committees. So that's really a bit of better flavor for how the budget is developed by doing that. But if you don't do that, you could still go to the public hearing. That's October 28th, six o'clock, fifth floor of the courthouse and county board chambers. That's where the public hearing will take place. Anyone can come, speak to the budget, say anything they want, ask any questions that they want. And also the county board that night goes through the budget. But department by department and can make changes, additions, deletions, whatever they want to do to the budget they can do at that point. So it's a real good night to show up if you have some questions about the budget or just want to make comments. What was the date again on that? October 28th, six p.m., fifth floor of the courthouse. And as Tim mentioned, not only is that a good forum because that's the public hearing for the county board to hear from you before the full county board. But all three of us would tell you from experience that the sooner you get involved with the discussion, the better. And if you attend one of the respective committee meetings, whether it's a law committee, if it's dealing with the Sheriff's Department or health care center, if it's dealing with Rocky Noel, health and human services, dealing with the health and human services department. If you attend a committee meeting sooner rather than later, your input I think might have more influence on being considered and perhaps improving something. But we will say this, nearly everybody puts the pressure on the three of us and all of those county board supervisors to hold the line on taxes. But we rarely hear anyone suggest a program or service that can be eliminated or reduced. Rarely does that happen. We almost always hear people suggest a program or service that can be beefed up or needs to be expanded or needs to be added. And if you have any thoughts on how we can deliver our programs or services more efficiently or if there's a program or service that you feel is not a good use of taxpayer dollars, contact your county board supervisor because we need that input. It's very valuable. So again, public hearing on October 28th at six o'clock. Tim, in the final minute we have anything else you wanted to share or comment about your department or staff? Yeah, I'd like to thank my department for all the work they do, ton of work throughout the year on the budget and do a very good job and support me. I couldn't do what I do without them for sure. So, Mary Wegman, Deputy Finance Director and everybody in my department are incredible. Big thanks to them. Outstanding. Well, thank you for joining us and thank you, Mr. Finch, for being here today. You're welcome, thank you. It's a busy time and it's a very important time and the county board is working diligently on your county budget and what ultimately will be your property tax rate and how much you'll be levied to support those programs and services. So get involved. If you have questions, contact your county board supervisor. Next month our guest will be Mr. Mike Tobinheim, the administrator of Rocky Knoll. As Tim mentioned earlier, doing some fantastic work at Rocky Knoll, really more proactive, competing more effectively. It looks very encouraging. In fact, Chairman Van Der Stien had a letter in the Shiboykan Press that if you didn't see, you might wanna check out. Very good news, future looks bright for Rocky Knoll. So with that, on behalf of Chairman Van Der Stien and myself, thank you very much for joining us.


I'm gonna be sending my girlfriend the wrong text message. I just sent it.   Where is she? Babe, go away. You're scaring me. What is going on, squad? Welcome back to our channel, guys. If you are new, make sure to go down and hit that subscribe button and turn on those post notifications so you guys will get notified every single time we post, guys, today. I'm gonna be sending my girlfriend the wrong text message. Something you never want to do, something you never want to come across wrong is over a text message, guys. I'm just chilling outside right now. Raya is at her house. She went to her house last night because our new cat, Taco, actually had to go to the hospital yesterday because of something was wrong with him, but he's all good now. She wanted to go over there and say hi. I'd stay here and edit. And it actually worked out pretty good because I saw this video last week on my feed and I'm like, oh, my God, I need to do this. I need to find a time to text Raya and just... because I know she's gonna freak out and just make her go crazy. So I'm literally just gonna set up the camera right here in a minute and just go at it. I'm gonna screen record my text messages. I'm just gonna be like acting like I was talking to some other girl. This is bad. This is bad. For guys that don't ever do this to your girl because I know Mariah's gonna freak out. Luckily, she has a good sense of humor. So I'll probably say something along the lines of like, yeah, my girlfriend's not home. She probably won't be home for a while. You can come over. You know, I would love to see you. No one's home right now. Something like that. Something like really crazy. Right when like Mariah like gets this message. She's gonna be questioning it right away.  What are you doing? Who is that supposed to go to? And we're just gonna try to see if we can get her good. I don't know. Let's just get right into the video. Thank you guys so much for watching. Make sure to give this video a huge thumbs up. I'm trying to get this video to 22,000 likes, guys.  And Team Mariah has been coming back way too strong. So I need to get her back. I need to get her with something good today. And this is just a prank to do it. So make sure to sit down, relax. Have a good time. Enjoy the video. And I'm gonna try to get her in a feel today. I'm gonna try to get her to think that I'm actually fooling around with someone that I shouldn't be, which I never would do. But we're just gonna see how it all goes because I'm very curious as I'm sure all of you are. All right, we're getting into this right now. I'm screen recording in three, two, one, boom. Here we go. As you can see, we literally have not texted anything this morning except like, good morning. And she sent me a picture of our cat. Literally, our cat always wants to snuggle, but that's besides the fact. Let's get right into this. What should I say first? I'm gonna be like, okay, sounds great. I'm gonna act like we were already talking, like with a random girl or whatever. I'm gonna say, okay, sounds great. Mariah shouldn't be home till later. You could come over now because no one is home. And I'm gonna hit her with the one and only smiley face.  So we're sending it. I just sent it. Oh my God, I'm so scared. Everyone get ready because she literally is going to be spam calling me, spam texting me.  She's literally gonna go crazy. She usually responds quick. She has her reds on. So I'll see you guys when she reads it and we'll see what she says. Oh my God, she just responded, guys. She said, what? Why did you send me that? And hello with so many question marks. She's already getting into it. Oh my God. What do you mean? I'm coming over now. What? Oh, she's calling me. She's calling me, guys. Oh, what do I do? Hello? What?  Who am I messaging? I'm messaging. You said Mariah shouldn't be home till later. No, baby. No, no, no. I did not know. No, no, I meant like come over. Like I meant like you come over. Wait, what? I'm not texting someone else. I'm texting you. Chill. No, I was literally, I did, I did not mean to like say, I meant to like be like, hey, Mariah, you can come over if you want. Are you actually coming over? Don't come over. It's fine. You don't have to come over. I'm messaging you, baby. Stop freaking out. It was just a, I accidentally, I meant to text. I'm actually, I'm. Who is it? I meant to text my mom. She's at the store and I.  I can't hear you. I'm sorry. I can't hear you. I thought you had stuff to do at your house. Why are you coming over here? I thought you had stuff to do at your house. Why are you coming over to my house? Oh, so you are up to something. No, I'm not up to something. I was just wondering why you're coming over. You said you had stuff to do at your house today. Are you in a bad mood or something? Like she hung up. Guys, she literally called me. She's, is she actually coming over? Wait, I need to call her back. I need to figure this out because she's actually coming over. Guys, what the heck? I did not expect a reaction. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic call. Bitch, she did not just send me the voicemail. I think I pissed her off. I think I woke up the, uh, oh, she's calling me. Hello? I'm texting you. What do you mean? Nothing. I'm just chilling. I'm, I'm. You're clearly up right now. Yeah. You found the girl. Yeah. I'm out. Okay, I'm not. Why would I cheat on you, babe? Okay, I really don't understand why you think it's okay that it's, that it's okay. I would never cheat on you. Why are you accusing me of cheating on you?  Are you driving? He reads the matchbox, gets in the car and now I'm packing up my stuff. You're, are you actually coming over?  No. I'm very suspicious. No. Go. You have to go home. All right. Don't come over. Put your clothes on. Put your clothes on. I acted like I was talking to someone. Oh my God. I guess we're going to get her reaction coming over.  I literally tried to hint that there was a girl over here. Okay. I guess, I guess we're going to wait for her to come over and get her reaction. I'm not going to tell her it's a prank until she comes over. I literally thought I was going to FaceTime her and tell her it was a prank. She chose to drive over here. This literally turned from a hundred to a thousand on a prank scale. Guys, this is going to be crazy. Fry is coming over and we're going to get her reaction pulling up. This is crazy. I need to get ready. Where should I be? Like, where should I go? I feel like I should like chill outside. I don't want to like cause a ruckus in my house. All right. Well, I will see you when Mariah pulls up. Wish me luck cause I don't know how I was going to go down. Guys, I'm not even kidding. She just pulled up. You can see her in the car right there. Oh my God. She's probably so mad. I was so scared. All right. Instead of setting it up, I'm actually going to hold it because in case she goes anywhere in the house, I want to be able to like follow her around.  So let's get her butt. She's probably going to be walking inside anytime soon. So let's go on. She's actually calling me right now. Hello? Babe, where are you? What? Why are you here? Why are you here? I looked everywhere. I looked everywhere inside. Where is she? Wait, you're in my house? Guys, where are you? Where is she? Did you even knock on the door? Yes, I knocked on the door. The door was open. Calm down. Why are you? I'm outside right now. Okay, but where is she? Where's who? I'm coming outside right now. No, do not. Right. Just go. Guys, she's literally freaking out right now. Where is she? Babe, go away. You're scaring me. You're scaring me. Where is she? She's... Where is she? Where's who? Where is she? Why are you walking through my yard? What the... Babe, I don't know what you're talking about. Where's who? Where's who? The girl that you told to leave the house, Bill. I did not tell any girl to leave the house. Mariah, can you please stop? No, I'm not going to leave the house. Stop freaking out. Where is she? Oh, my God. No, where is she? Why are you even here? Where is she? Oh, my gosh. Calm down. I'm not going to calm down. Give me a hug. I'm not going to give you a hug. Where is she? Give me a hug. No, get off of me. Why are you being like this?   There's no girl here. I'm trying to tell you the whole time. I did not mean to send you that message. How much did she is because you said on the phone where she needed a leave. Just give me a hug. Hi, I'm not going to give you a hug. I missed you, though. Okay, but I didn't miss you. Tell me where she is. Really? Why do you think this is funny? Because. Because what? Because. Then that's funny. Babe, it was just a friend. Just a friend? Yeah. Just a friend. Who? Just a friend. Who's the girl? Who was the girl? It doesn't matter. It does matter to me or you're about to lose me. Literally, you just need to calm down. I'm not going to calm down. Who is she? Babe. And why the heck is the camera out? Why the heck is the camera out? Because. Why do you have the camera? Why are you filming me?  Why? I want to get your reaction. Get my reaction of what? Babe, I was joking. Joking about what? The girl being here? Are you lying to me? Yeah, there was no girl here. I told you. I don't know why you were coming over. Literally, I didn't know. I was just joking. It was just a prank, babe. I thought I was going to. You were holding my plans for the day. Come on, you got to admit that was kind of funny. No, that wasn't funny. All I did was send you a text message that you just took way out of proportion. I took out of proportion. We also want me to think when you're telling me.  You even said it on the phone. I don't know why you'd be that dumb. That's why I was confused. It was just a prank. It's not funny. I'm going to get him back. Go on left. Left. Come on left. You got to left. A day's not a day without laughter. Come on, babe. You're so cute, babe. I'm sorry I had to get you like that. I hit you where it hurts. Right in your heart. Yeah, you're so broken. Right in your small little heart. I really was so sad.  I was fans outside trying to say hi to me. Really? And I said hi and I couldn't even really talk to them because I was rushing. Sorry, Mom was kind. If you were the fans trying to say hi to Mariah today, I'm sorry. Mariah was really, really confused. I hope they didn't like... I was rushing. Did you look mad when you said hi? No, I just like, hi. Okay, good. Because I was going to say you're probably in a bad mood. Yeah, I was. Babe, I'm sorry. Come on.  It was just a prank. Okay, it's a prank. Did you actually look around my whole house? Yes. Guys, she was here. I filmed her. Like, I filmed you pulling in. But then I ran outside because I didn't want you to see me. I wanted... I didn't know what you were going to do. Low key mouth spot. I was thinking of setting... I thought this would have been way too mean. I was thinking of setting up on the couch in the front. Pillows with a blanket over it. So it looked like there was a person laying down.  What? Mom, what? Why are you even down there? Guys, I was going to set up that. And then I wanted to set up the camera so it looked like you were, you know, packing the girl. And that would be funny, right? Tell me that would've been... That would've been so funny. I'm going to get you back so good for this one. No, you're not, girl. Get out of my league. Get out of my league. Okay, yeah, you pranked me a couple times. You know you know. Oh, I know I beat you. Yeah, I know I beat you. Babe, you're mine forever. I would never do that to you. Gentlemen, never cheat on your girl. That's the longest thing you do in the world. I love you. I'm sorry for doing that. See, I'm sorry for getting your heart pumping like that. But do you want to know what it was good for? What? A team bill prank because all my team bill in the lobby are like... They're all bumping out right now.  Nobody's saying team bill. Everyone. Everyone in this... No, they're not. Yeah, some people are going to be like, Oh, I still support Team Mariah. Oh, you know, but they low key... Team Mariah is the best team. They low key like Team Bill. No, they don't. They're just supporting you because you lost. Because you guys know Team Mariah. They're supporting the person that lost today. I'm sorry. You took an L, but it's okay. You have good prank. I admit when you have good pranks. That's the thing. She does not admit when I have good pranks because she doesn't want to take it. I'm not going to team bill be the team leader. Okay. Push me. Team Mariah. Why are you going to push me? I'll push you back. Push me. Push you back. You hit me in my balls. I'll hit you in your balls. You do it hard. You go like this. Oh. You didn't hurt. That's how hard you do it to me.  I'm more brittle.  Yeah, but I'm more brittle. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this video because I did. It turned out way better than I actually expected. I wish I got her going through the house. I did just think that's so funny that you actually ran around the house. It was that a funny twist when I was like telling like the girl to like that. She has to leave and to put her clothes on. You didn't even hear that. I didn't hear. Oh my God, you said that?  I was like, oh, she probably didn't hear that. But you were pissed because then you actually thought there was a girl here. Oh my God. I know. I'm sorry babe. Hey everyone, if you are new to our channel, like I said at the beginning, make sure to hit that subscribe button and turn on your post notifications. So you get notified every time we post. Thank you guys so much for watching. Make sure to get this video to 22,000 likes, 22,000 likes. Yes, 22,000 likes for my sadness. For her sadness, for her reaction because she got a pretty good reaction out of her today. I'm so happy. I'm so satisfied with this video and I cannot wait to rewatch it because it's so fun. I love pranking you, baby. You get so cute after I tell you it's a prank all the time. It's so funny. I love when she goes from like really pissed to like, oh my God, he just pranked me and then really happy in like two seconds. You're not funny. Talk about you. But anyways, all squad, we're going to give our end of the video post notifications. Shout out. We're going to give a shout out to Minecraft Plays. They said they're the cutest couple on YouTube. Plays, thank you so much for saying that. You are awesome. We love you. If you also want to post notifications, all you have to do is be subscribed with post notifications on. Comment down below and we might give you a shout out. Yes. And we have to do an end of the video question. Yes. We ask you guys a question that you have to comment down below at the end of the video so we can read, like and comment back to some of your guys' comments. Today, I think we should ask, we were thinking about opening up a PO box. What do you guys think about that? Should we? Comment down below if you guys think that we should open one. A PO box is basically you can send us letters or fan mail or anything to a PO box that we can open up. I know many of you guys are asking us to open one up. We've been thinking about a heart quarter. If we do open one up, we can start opening up some of your guys' packages or gifts or whatever on camera in the beginning of each video. At the end of the video, you can like... And that'll be so fun, I feel like. Like unboxing up a day. That'll be so fun. We can just do that intermittently in like the video. So comment down below yes or no and I hope you enjoyed this video. We will see you in the next one. In the next video. Until then. Peace. Love you guys.