Good morning and welcome to the thirdyw fairness meeting of the education children and young people committee in 2022. We have received apologies from Stephen K Ker MSP. The first item on our agenda today is to take evidence from the Minister for Children amendment Scotland regulations 2022 and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, Exclusions and Exceptions Scotland amendment number 2, order 2022. I would like to welcome the minister to the committee again, along with her officials, Alison Martin, Solister for the Scottish Government and Kevin Lee, head of policy from Disclosure Scotland. Good morning. Ms Holly, can I invite you to speak to the draft instruments, please? Good morning, convener and committee, and thank you for inviting me to give evidence to the committee on two draft Scottish statutory instruments. The Police Act 1997, Offences and Schedules A, B, A8A and A8B, amendments Scotland regulations 2022 and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, Exclusions and Exemptions Scotland amendment number 2, order 2022. I hope that the following is of help to committee members. Those instruments make amendments to the offence list in the legislation covering disclosure. Those lists contain the offences that must be included when disclosure checks are carried out on individuals. The package of SSIs are required in order to ensure that there is consistency between state and self disclosure. Most of the amendments to the offences list made by those instruments are in order to bring them in line with the equivalent lists passed by the Scottish Parliament in the Disclosure Scotland Act 2020. The changes made by those instruments will remain in place until that act is fully commenced. If an offence is not included in the list, a conviction for that offence cannot be disclosed on any level of disclosure once spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Higher level disclosures are used for roles involving a high degree of sensitivity or where there is an expectation of integrity or for the purposes of public protection. The offence lists therefore serve an important safeguarding purpose by ensuring information about serious and relevant spent convictions can continue to be disclosed once they are spent. The legislation contains two lists of offences known as A and B. Offences in list B are for convictions that must be disclosed in accordance with rules and include those such as fraud or theft. An individual can apply to have spent convictions in this list removed from their disclosure, and to do that they must apply to the sheriff court. There are some offences that must be disclosed regardless of how long has passed since the conviction.  An individual can only apply to have those removed once a certain amount of time has passed, depending on the age of a time of conviction and an application must be made to the sheriff court. When the offences lists were reviewed for the disclosure act, several offences were removed from list A and B, some were removed entirely from list B, and new statutory offences, which have been created since the offence lists were established in 2015, were added to both lists. For example, the offence under section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Scotland Act 2018, which is abusive behaviour towards a partner or ex-partner, is specified in list A of the disclosure act but is not specified in the offences lists in the existing legislation. That means that currently a spent conviction for such an offence cannot be disclosed on a form of higher-level disclosure. I have brought forward those instruments in advance of the disclosure act to remedy that and to reduce any safeguarding risks that might arise in the interim period. In addition to the changes made to align the existing legislation with the disclosure act, some further amendments to the offence lists are being made to take us through this interim period. Those relate to amendments that could not be made during the bill process as it was impacted by the onset of the pandemic, new offences created since the disclosure act completed parliamentary passage and a general review of the offence lists. The same factors that informed the creation of the offence list and the review of the disclosure act were revisited in order to classify offences as either serious list A or less serious list B. Full details of the amendments are set out in the policy notes that I believe the committee has. Corresponding amendments necessary to update the disclosure act offences lists will be made as part of the implementation of those provisions in 2024. My officials and I are happy to take questions on the draft regulations and the order. There are no comments, so we can now move to agenda item 2. The next item of business is to invite the minister to move motion S6M-06431 that the Education, Children and Young People Committee recommends that the police act 1997 offences in schedules 8A and 8B, amendment Scotland regulations 2022, be approved. I would like to invite the minister to speak to and move the motion. Do members have any comments? The question is that the motion S6M-06431, in the name of Clare Holly Beer, approved. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The committee must now produce its report on this draft instrument. Is the committee content to delegate responsibility to the deputy convener and I to agree this report on behalf of the committee? The motion is therefore agreed. The committee must now produce its report on this draft instrument. The next item of business is to invite the minister to move motion S6M-06432 that the Education, Children and Young People Committee recommends that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, Exclusions and Exceptions Scotland amendment number 2, order 2022, be approved. I would like to ask the minister to speak to and move the motion. Do members have any comments? The question is that the motion S6M-06432, in the name of Clare Holly Beer, approved. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The committee must now produce its report on the draft instrument. Is the committee content to delegate responsibility to the deputy convener and I to agree this report on behalf of the committee? I would like to thank the minister and her officials for their attendance today and thank you all for your time today. The public part of today's meeting is now at an end.


Marines with First Law Enforcement Battalion are showcasing their skills and capabilities during large-scale exercise Javelin Thrust 2012. Javelin Thrust is an annual large-scale exercise with First Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, 29 Palms, California. The exercise allows active and reserved Marines and sailors from 38 different states to train together as a seamless Marine Air Ground Task Force. First Law Enforcement Battalion Marines spent two days refining their basic infantry skills. The training consisted of squad rushes and firing crew-served weapons. Basic Marine skills, you know, just refining the basic infantry riflemen and all of us and just running downrange, putting rounds downrange. The Marines will continue training throughout the exercise, which ends July 13, reporting from Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, 29 Palms, Sergeant Deanne Hagstrom.


Are you tired of the vague instructions when it comes to light and plants? I've got you with my new guide on light for house plants! I have been getting many questions from you guys about light and plants, especially how much light is good for our plants, what is the actual difference between direct and indirect light or medium and low light, and especially during the darker days of the winter, grow lights. I am so excited to be releasing my first ever plant care guide, and this one will be especially focused on light for plants. The guide will be divided into three parts. The first part is all about how plants use light. I find this part really important and super beautiful because we get to understand a little bit more about our plants, and especially how they use light to grow and thrive. The second part is all about natural light. This is where we will discuss how we define these lights, so direct versus indirect light, and what these definitions mean, also how to measure natural light, so we make sure that we provide the right light for our plants, and in consequence, where to place our plants. And the third part will be related to grow lights. So in this part, I'm going to share with you everything that I have learned about grow lights in my last three years taking plant, and this will include how to pick a grow light, the different factors that we should consider for that, some of the options that I use when it comes to grow lights, as long as how long you should keep your grow light on and why. And guys, this guide is incredibly searchable and easy to use. You can type or ask a question. Yes, you can talk to the guide, and it will not only take you to the section when I talk about your question, but also to the exact second when I'm actually answering that question in the video. And if you don't have time to watch the whole video, believe me, I understand, it is actually transcribed. So you can read the transcribe at your own pace. Also, if your first language is not English, I've got you. The guide has subtitles in multiple languages, including Spanish, French, and German. So you can watch the videos with subtitles, and you can even listen to the guide in your mother tongue. Also, I keep one of my favorite parts till the end. You can always reach out to me if you have any questions. You can ask me on the chat. You can send a picture of your issue, or even a video. And of course, I'll be there to reply. We are actually working on this guide to make it as helpful and accessible as possible. And I would love to hear your feedback so we can improve it and make it better for all of you. So I'll leave the link to the guide in the description down below, and make sure to check it out and tell me what you think in the comments. Okay, I hope to see you there.


My name's Ian Mulliner, I'm the technical director for Massachusetts Youth Soccer. I'm going to do a session on ball manipulation, and what we're going to do is we're going to have the boys work on four individual moves. Then we're going to combine all four into one, and we'll see if we can get them up to speed with some fast footwork. So we'll see how we go. So the first thing I want you to do with your favourite foot, doesn't matter if you're left or right with your favourite foot, inside, outside, inside, outside, inside, outside, inside, outside. Off you go. Okay, and time, hold it there. Okay, now, watch how far I move, and think about how far you're moving. So inside, outside, inside, outside, inside, outside, inside, outside. How far am I moving? Ten millimeters. So don't be going all around, keep the ball close. Shouldn't be going forward, and you can move around away from each other just to find a space. Yeah, some of you got it. Yeah, a little bit quicker with the feet. We're trying to make the world's fastest players. Good, now try it with your opposite foot. Opposite foot.  You shouldn't be crashing. You should be better than that. You're moving forward again. Come on, get the feet moving. All right, both feet together. Try that, both feet together. Try not to move forward with it. All right, hold there. Let me give you a demo. I'm just going to steal your ball. Okay, so now we're getting both feet, outside, inside, outside, inside, outside, inside, outside, inside, outside, outside, outside, inside, outside, inside. How much did I move that time? Off you go. Inside, outside, both feet. Better. Faster if you can. Faster if you can. In, out, in, out. Talk to your feet. All right, hold there. That's pretty good. Austin, can I have your ball? Thank you. All right, so we're going to add to it. So that was move one. This is move two. You tell me what you want to call this. What do you want to call that? A double touch. You want to call it that? That's fine with me. Just roll it with your toe. Inside, inside, roll with the toe. Inside, inside, roll with the toe. So we're calling that a double touch, Austin, yeah? I like that, Oscar. I like that. That's it. Two taps. Inside, outside, inside, outside. Go to inside, outside. The first thing we did, double tap. All right, very good. Have a rest. I'll steal your ball this time. All right, so what would you call if we call the first one outside, inside, and the second one, a double tap? What do you want to call this one? Laces, laces, circle, laces, laces, circle, laces, laces, circle, laces, laces, circle. You want to call that the scissors? That's good with me. I never understood why it's called the scissors, but it doesn't really matter. Right foot, scissor, left foot, scissor. Off you go. Now you can move around the square.  Don't crash. Especially you, Oscar. I like it. I like it. Can you get your eyes off the ball as you do it?  Inside, outside. Double tap. Scissor, right, scissor, left. Good. And have a rest. Last one of the four, so this is move number four. What was the first one? Inside, outside. Inside, outside. What was the second one? Third one? Scissor. Scissor. So what do you want to call this one? I'm going to drag it back. I'm going to push it behind and I'm going to go forward. Dragon push, drag, push, take right, drag, push, take left. Did I turn my body? Okay. Give it a try. Just practice that. Dragon push right, dragon push left. Dragon push right, dragon push left.  You've done this before. Well done. I like it. Inside, outside. Double touch. Scissor, right, scissor, left. Dragon push. Inside, outside. Double tap. Scissor, right, scissor, left. Dragon push right, dragon push left. And time. Have a rest. All right. Who can show me all four without stopping? One after the other, after the other. Oscar, you think you can? Go on then. I've got a question for you after this. Where's he going? Is he leaving? Okay. How many touches in those four moves combined? Twenty. Twenty. Here's the challenge. 11-year-old player in Massachusetts in the USA, 11-year-old player managed to do seven of those in one minute. That's 140 touches in one minute. That's what we do. That's what we do. Oh, do you? We do a hundred. Find your space. We do a hundred. Find your space. We do 245. Yeah, but in that sequence? Oh, no. Yeah, no. Oh. Are you ready? On your marks, get set, go. Four, three, two, one, time. How many? Four. Six. Six. Seven. Six. Six. Five. Five. Six. Six. Okay, so what was the purpose of all that? Make your feet quicker. Make your feet quicker. You can get out of tight spaces or you can do better in tight spaces. Really? Make the defender look silly. Make the defender look silly and you'd enjoy that, wouldn't you? Yes, I'm sure you would. So great, so get out of tight spaces to get faster feet. Which part of the ball were you using? Pass. Which? Ball of it. Top of the ball, bottom of the ball, side of the ball, front of the ball, back of the ball. Yeah, so different parts of the ball. Which part of the foot? Oh, sole. Everywhere. Did you really get all of them? Yeah, because we did laces. Laces, laces, laces. Outside, outside. Did you do the toe? It's too count. Did you do the toe? Yeah, because when you do your laces, you can't get over your toe. Oh, you cheated me. All right, what about this?  So on the double tap, how did you roll it across? The sole. With the top? Yes. That counts. So it's the sole, but it's closer to the toe. So it's a toe roll. What about the heel? Did you use the heel? No. Use your toes. When you went like this, you did that. So it's the back of your foot. Was it the heel? Yeah. All right, so watch this.  If you want to put it all together, as you've just put all four moves together, outside, inside, laces, bottom, toe, heel, turn, outside, inside, laces, bottom, toe, heel. So in somewhat fast mode for an old guy, out, in, laces, bottom, toe. That's your homework for the next time we meet. So you've got 20 years to figure that out. Okay. Did you enjoy it? Yeah. And I enjoyed you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Peace out, keep it real.


We have a question around family and we have a question from Japan. Me, Settle. And me's question is, thank you for always guiding me. I have a question, it is about the difference between people-pleasing and kindness. I think that people-pleasing has a lot of fear in it. But when it comes to kindness, I'm not sure if what I want to do is kind or not. For example, after talking with someone who was going through a difficult time, and I felt as if he was a reflection of my mind, I suddenly felt like doing something for him and wanted to make lunch for him. Also, when I see someone working in the midst of feelings of dissatisfaction, I want to help them with their work. Does this mean that I'm just looking at my poor self because I can't see them as spirit in a safe place yet? What can you tell me about kindness? That's a really good one. We love these kind of deep questions. Yes, yeah. It's so beautiful that you're asking this too because having an awareness of, we'll say, the Japanese culture and Francis and I have visited there in Tokyo and done digital gatherings and so forth, I feel a sense of honoring, a deep honoring, a very deep honoring that's actually even part of the Japanese culture. I have friends sometimes, a friend, Nicholas, up there in Canvas one time when Kirsten and I were doing an interactive online retreat and he was having a lot of resistance coming up before the online retreat but seeing these amazing, honoring, gentle, meek, kind Japanese women, he just cried. He just couldn't believe that there was such kindness and gentleness and honoring and presence. He said to me after the retreat was over, he said, well, I broke through my resistance. I'm back. I'm back now with Jesus just from the interactions with these women and their kindness and sincerity. It was so strong. So let's take a look at this more deeply because I know a lot of people are saying kindness seems extremely important and yet kindness has to come from a state of mind of true alcoholic gentleness or meekness. That's what Jesus even said 2,000 years ago, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. It's got to be pretty important if he says meekness is associated with inheriting the earth. And he says in the course, he explains himself, he says they will literally overcome the earth with the strength of their perception. Wow. That's an amazing interpretation of meekness. But meekness must come from true gentleness, which must come from true empathy.  So this is where you start to realize that you can't really act kind. You have to feel the kindness. You have to have the kindness state of mind in order to be strong to overcome the world, as Jesus says, the meek shall overcome the world. Another thing and aspect of it is to be truly gentle, you have to be defenseless. If the mind is identified with the body, it can't be kind. If the mind is identified with personhood, with family constructs, with societal constructs, it can't actually be truly consistently kind. It may be have glimmers of kindness, but it won't be able to be consistently kind in all circumstances because of an identification with a self-concept that God did not create. As soon as you start to believe in ego things, like then expectations come in and you may go visit a friend and they may talk to you and say things and you may keep a kind smile on your face and you may keep a sweet look. And yet, if they say something or do something that the ego, the mind takes offense to, it identifies itself in a personal way and suddenly it just takes something personal. The ego will say keep smiling, but it's not going to feel good.  That's part of the self-concept of being a woman. You're supposed to be kind. But as soon as you take something personally, even a little bit personally, then the mask tries to stay there as a kind look, a kind appearance, but inside it, ooh, that hurts. Because the mind has taken something personally and when it does, the kindness of the spirit is out of awareness. The spirit never takes anything personally because spirit isn't personal. So it's a really good question and you have to remember in my defenselessness my safety lies. Now, even with the Course in Miracles students and teachers, this has been a very big lesson. I know there was one course teacher who always was talking about kindness. Be kind, be kind, be kind. And yet when it came to the copyright controversy, the teacher seemed to take a side. Whoa, when you take a side in this world, the kindness is just a word. The kindness is gone as soon as you identify with one brother over another or one side of a illusory issue with another. Kindness is gone because as soon as judgment enters, gentleness is gone, tolerance is gone, and kindness is gone. And remember I said yesterday, truthfulness, honesty is consistency. So that's another aspect of this. In order to truly be kind without any people-pleasing involved, you have to say what you mean. You have to mean what you say. You have to have a consistently peaceful state of mind and then just let the actions, if they are to come, come involuntarily from Jesus so that it's not a person acting. It's just the words, if there's words, they'll come or if there's a smile, it will come or a laughter, it will come. But it all comes from thoughts. It's not about trying to act kind. And I think that's part of the struggle and the human condition is even with core students, they say, I should be kind. Should be kind? What does that even mean? I should act kind. Well, don't worry so much about your actions. Watch your mind, watch your thoughts. That's what we're always working on. I just remembered when I read the Tao Te Ching, there was one sentence that says when people lose the Tao, they try to act normal. So when I first read it, I was like, wow, when people try to do good, it's because they already lost the Tao. When we're trying to do good, even though that looks so good in this world, that's maybe the best, the highest standard, but inevitably we already lost the spirit. So the spirit is the only good. The spirit knows all situations, how to be truly loving. And another example, when you were talking about taking sides, I was thinking, you know, when Bill Setford, again, when he went to a course group and two students were arguing about what a course sentence means. And then someone asked him, what do you say, Bill? And he said, just rip the page of the book. And that kind of action is a demonstration of an attitude, is a demonstration of the spirit. It is coming from an attitude to be in alignment consistently with the miracle and with the truth. Then that comes through, that becomes such a gentleness that's really out, really it out. Good old Bill, that was a good example. It's better to rip the page out from the book than to argue with your brother. That's what he said at the time. And that is such an example of go into the kindness in your mind, go into your right mind and be defenseless. And that's accepting, be accepting. I think two, two thousand years ago, Jesus had a teaching where he said, if someone smite you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. And that, even for Gandhi and Yogananda, they were kind of like, whoa, that's a strong teaching. If somebody smite you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. But Jesus, I don't think was talking so much about the behavior, like a literal thing, is he was saying, come back to your right mind. If you perceive an insult, if you perceive something that is offensive, if you perceive an attack, turn back to the love of the spirit in your mind. Come back, turn to your right mind. And in that sense, you don't get into a defense.  If someone does something wrong, they need to be punished. If someone does something wrong, they need to face the consequences. What Jesus is saying, no, the meek shall overcome the world with their strength. By turning the other cheek, he's just saying, calmly remember what you're here for. You're here for the miracle.  You're here always for only one reason. It's to shine the light of heaven and to shine it for everyone and everything. And therefore, if we perceive an offense or an attack, he's saying, that's just a misperception. Come back to me. Come back to your right mind. And I think, to me, that really relates to your question. That's how you're kind. If you're a miracle worker, you will naturally radiate kindness. And it will come out with clarity. Kindness and ignorance don't go together, but kindness and clarity do. So a clear mind that's free and open and the light shined through will naturally be kind without trying to please any person or place or thing. It's just a beatitude. It's like the beatitudes. Kindness is like one of the beatitudes. It's peaceful. Thank you. That's a very subtle Christian. It's very beautiful. Thank you.


We had spent our last bit of money on some milk cows. The mistake I made is I had never milked a cow. And the cows I bought had never been milked and they were pregnant. So we're waiting every day. And I remember all of a sudden it just occurring to me this thousand pound animal probably doesn't want me, you know, yanking on its nipples to get milk out. My name is Jason Craig. Welcome back to the Till and Keep podcast. Today I'm going to interview a good friend of mine. His name is Jim Curley.  Good morning. Good morning. So we began this podcast talking with Connor Gallagher.  And the conversation we had was that a lot of men today, it's, you know, in our primordial, our original vocation that we work, right? And this podcast is not exclusively for men and fathers, but they were dealing with the fact of the economic arrangement for our life, the ordering of our life and the need for physical things, you know, the need for food, shelter, those things, you know, drives a lot of what we do. He brought up, you know, that the original meaning of the word economy means household management. Today, however, the economy and the household are practically totally severed. And he was making some really good points about the need for businessmen to be more intentional with using some of the skills they might have in business and bringing order to the home. Instead of just bringing, going out to a job, which makes money, bringing the money home to be consumed in the home. He said, you know, you need to come home with yourself and your own skills and do the work of bringing order to your household, even if your household doesn't have work. I was bringing up our answer to the problem of the severing of, you know, the quote unquote, economy from the household, but actually bring it back to its original meaning, bringing work back into the home. And our story was discovering that when I was studying for a master's degree in theology and I was working for an apostolate I still worked for called fraternice. Fraternice trains men to mentor boys. It provides an opportunity for men to be brothers amongst themselves and study the virtues, grow in virtue because we do that better in fraternity and brotherhood, but also with a very intentional eye towards the next generation. So it's a place for fathers and sons. And I was, as I was studying that for that and kind of had that work in my mind, it was the question was, why do we have to do this? Why is it so difficult for men and their sons and men and their families and fathers? What's going on? And I was drawn to the writings of Chesterton, Belock, McNabb, a lot of the guys known in the Catholic land movement that have known as the Catholic land movement in England that they saw industrialization as the problem. And in this podcast, we are not trying to defend the pros and cons of having more goods. I guess I think there are, that is an argument worth having. It's just not, you're the wrong person to argue with. We'll be two on the same page. But in that process of studying those things, I did come to the conclusion that a lot of the tension we find in our work, in our lives is that we're pulled away from each other because we have not really recovered from the reordering of society away from tradition, away from land, and away from working together in the home as an economic unit. So I, we didn't sell anything because we didn't have anything. I think we were in a foreclosure. Yeah, this was a while ago, but we did have a bit of a, we being my wife and I, we had two kids at the time and pregnant with a third. We jumped ship from the city and moved back to our home state of North Carolina. And we didn't buy a home state because we didn't have any money but we landed on a homestead that we were able to barter some work for and have free reign over like a hundred acres. It was a little bit absurd, which we didn't know how to use a hundred acres. So it was, it went from an apartment to a hundred acres.  We actually used our last little bit of money that we had to buy some milk cows. And then we bought some pigs, we bought some pigs and realizing as they got older that they don't actually make themselves into bacon and sausage or some processing in the middle. And a friend of mine through church said, you should talk to Jim Curley. I'm pretty sure it was through our friend, Jim Dorcek that he said, yeah, and you came up and helped us kill our first pig. I think it was in July or August. We might be on some kind of anniversary right now. July 27th, 23, this might be our 11th anniversary of meeting. And it was the first time I had, you know, processed an animal with anybody and that was with you. And since then you have been a friend and a mentor, whether you like it or not or whether that's good. And we've kept in touch and we're not that far away from one another. But so what I want to do today though is that you're ahead of me in dealing with the question of how do we order our family in our present situation?  We're gonna say 20, 20 sounds better. We're gonna say 20, roughly 20 years ago. Tell me how you got where you are and what you did.  So we had this idea in mind. Matter of fact, we had a chock full of nuts, coffee can with a written on a permanent marker, saving for a farm, right? But as we got closer, you know, as, you know, our life went on, we had kids, I'm working. That was always in the back of my mind, but now it became something different. Now it was, life seemed a little unnatural. Remember, you almost took the words right out of my mouth. It was like, the only thing that our household produces, I went away every day and produced money and then brought it home, we all consumed it, you know? And it just, it didn't seem natural. With the kids, let's say with the boys, we'd go backpacking several times a year and I could tell that they just, they wanted to be free to the outdoors and this was really the more natural life for them instead of, you know, living in the suburbs and in our little, you know, quarter acre fence yard where they were trying to always dig the China or something like that. It just, and the time I spent with them, I wasn't working with, I mean, the close I came in working with them was, you know, on backpacking trips and it was a totally different experience. Like, this is, this environment should be the way it is all the time. And so at some, you know, and we were, I was reading Chester D'embele, Bob McNabb, you know, I was John Seymour, the Nearing's who wrote The Good Life. I mean, so I was reading all this stuff for different reasons. And so when the opportunity arose, which was we had been saving money, we were, you know, getting out of debt and then my company laid me off. It was great. My boss was sorrowful. I'm like, yes, this is what I've been waiting for because we're in a pretty good economic situation. So you were delaying it.   I felt it might be irresponsible. Here's this gift I've been given. Good job, good salary, good boss. I wasn't really happy about, you know, it's really going to work every day. I wasn't that interested in it. But it's like, how could I, you know, seem like this was a gift I was given. I couldn't just throw it away on this whim. You know, for several years, Larry and I have been praying about guiding this direction and opportunity and then finally the opportunity came. And it was actually at the right point. You know, if it had happened a year before, it might have been said, you know, we can't, we'll have to put this off again. I gotta get another job. We're not out of debt yet. We're not, you know, so the only debt we had left was our mortgage, which was, which we had a good payment down on. And then we sold the house, bought something cheaper and had a little, little nest egg to say, this will keep us going the first year.  And that's the one you're on now, right? So you bought, you bought a whopping 1.9 acres in an old farmhouse in Bethune, South Carolina. And so you, the reason I'm asking about this is it seems, I see a lot of people moving towards the homestead and almost shooting themselves in the foot. And I mean, perhaps I'm in this category in some ways, not when we first started maybe now. Where they sort of continue the model of financing and debt and everything just farther out, trying to keep it, where they just kind of tack on homesteading as another to do and that requires money really. I mean, so there's people that find themselves actually the homestead becoming just another expense. Your, the way you did it is actually different. You shifted to a totally different way of life to I think probably the first, not having a mortgage and then having a piece of land that you intended to make fruitful.  Well, we knew, well, yeah, first of all, I knew that being totally out of debt would make us much freer. I had actually learned the lesson of debt from a friend of mine in the city who had 11 kids and was a manual laborer. And that's another story, but he sort of taught me about debt and freedom and in that sense, but yeah, no, I knew what we were doing was a risk. I wanted to make sure that we always had a roof over our head. And I figured in South Carolina, the primary taxes on this place were only a couple of hundred bucks a year. And I figured I can come up with that. So we were always going to have a roof. So it was really important that we went there debt-free so that we could try to live the life we wanted to live. You know, yes, we still need cash. And I've always had some kind of part-time job while we've been out here, but it's a part-time job that has always allowed me to, you know, it's part-time. In other words, so I'm out there doing the chores, feeding the animals, killing the animals with the other family members. So it's, so we have cash, but the idea was we want to be as debt-free so that we can actually live the life and not sort of pretend as a life, you know? That we could actually- I mean, if you're thinking about it on a spectrum from between the suburb and the homestead, what a lot of people like myself are doing is supplementing their home with their homesteading, meaning most, they're still predominantly, you know, run by the money that they make and the expenses of the household that they pay for with that job. You're actually kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, meaning your money is but a supplement to the rest of it because your general needs and time is spent on the farm. And I think the observation, you know, in different stages in our homesteading and in ordering of our home at different times, knowing that to do that probably does require that sort of financial situation that capable of being, so, you know, someone who's in a whole bunch of student loan debt or something just probably can't do it and to romance about it too much might be abstraction. But you were able, so you're supplementing your natural economy, which you're growing food and doing work with the, you know, the money economy, the artificial economy. Because we're kind of doing the opposite. Now, we have milk cows, so it's not a petting zoo, it's real work, you know, but that's the, you know, we have milk cows and pigs. You have done primarily pigs, right? I mean, that's, and that's how we met. Yeah, no pigs, Chase, we had, I'm trying to think, when we met, we definitely had milk cows then. Yeah, you were milking a Daisy or? Mabel. Mabel, now Daisy's the last name, Mabel. The Brown Swiss, right? Brown Swiss. Actually, the Brown Swiss was Dolly, so we probably had her too. We probably had both of those at that point. And up until a few years ago, we always had a milk cow. But yeah, that's. Yeah, I mean, you tell me, if you have a milk cow, you've, I don't know, crossed some sort of line into craziness or in a good way.  And I know that you all just went to milking once a day, which gives you more time. In some sense, it could give you more freedom depending on what you're doing.   Yeah, so those leave you, I don't know. If you're listening, you're not familiar with milk cows, you have to milk them. That's just, there's no option. So when a berry says having a milk cow gets you out of all sorts of things you don't wanna go to. But we have, we moved to once a day because it's about 30% less milk, but 50% less work. Our idea was that would give us time to have a better garden in the evening. And I'll just say it was a great idea. But you, in that time though, you, all right, you sold the farm and then you've, I think pigs has been your, I mean, that's like, I don't know, that's what you're known for, that's what you.  But generally chicken and pork was what we ate for meat.  So we got about pretty proficient at it. At least my kids did, you know, so. I don't know when this occurred. It seems to be after when we moved to homesteading, but I know that a lot of people learn a lot these days from YouTube on how to do these things. I have somewhat mixed feelings about it, but instead of, I don't know, criticizing that as a model, I'll just say, we did, you and I didn't learn that way. And I think actually, maybe even my way is better because I got to go to putt on your experience, meaning I had people, you were teaching me and then my friend Clifford, you know, I had these, it was interesting to men who just did their pigs differently. But that's where I learned from, and you didn't have YouTube, certainly. And, but tell me about the first time you did a pig. And if you don't mind, because I have some insight or knowledge here, make sure you arrive at the describing yourself, looking over a book and then figuring out where the tenderloin is. Yeah, no. So how did you guys figure it out as my question? Yeah, no, we had, so I consulted a bunch of books on slaughtering or especially on pigs. And the best book we actually found, we actually found it in the Richardson County Library, it was, can't remember the name, I remember the author's, Gita Dardic, it was written probably in the early 70s. And, you know, we had this book out during the whole process, you know, we're, it was a July, a very hot June or July day. I mean, it was like 98 degrees or something like that. And, you know, we have the book out, if you go to the Richardson County Library now, you find that book, there are stains in it from our first experience. We're gonna need a listener to verify that it's Richardson County, South Carolina. We actually, I have, I actually found a copy of the book eventually and have my own copy now. But it is actually the best guide for all. I mean, it's a small game all up to cows and steers. But, so we did that and we are, we started something like four o'clock in the afternoon, it was hot. I mean, the boys had built this eight by eight shed and I had this bathtub in it with these big blocks, you know, 300 pound blocks of ice. And there was an air conditioner in there that we had run a wire to try to keep it warm because we killed it. And then we brought it to the shed, hung it up to, you know, eviscerated inside. There's three of us in there doing it and we couldn't keep the shed cooler than like 78 degrees even at 10 o'clock at night. And with the ice there, with the air conditioning there and I know one of my cohorts.  The other two guys lived in Columbia and we just shared the cost of the feed and then we came to processing time they came out. And this was the first one. And one of my friends cut himself and went in. The other one decided that he was gonna save the head to make head cheese. So he took the head and went in and I'm in there. It's 11 o'clock at night. We've been at this since four in the afternoon. We had no idea what we were doing and we're, and I'm practically, I'm not gonna say I was in tears but I felt like I should be in tears saying, what have I done? And I have two more of these to do, you know, in the upcoming weeks. But, you know, we finally got him done in on ice and went in, had a great, you know, great time retelling the stories of the day. Next day we're butchering it and we were pulling the parts out and wrapping them. I pulled this part and said, okay, here's the tenderloin. We wrap it and then we get deeper into the pig. And I'm like, oh, this is the tenderloin. What was the thing we wrapped? And it turns out it was the kidneys. We wrapped the kidneys as tenderloins. So, Yeah, so I've heard the story because you and I, Jim, the listener is, Jim helps us on our farm, which we call St. Joseph's Farm. They're calling it St. Joseph's Farms now. There's other people joining around and I'm trying to get Jim there. This really my life goal at this point to get Jim as a neighbor. But we do weekends with fathers and sons or sometimes workshops just with guys wanting to learn about pigs.   I mean, we do it on Friday, we cool it overnight and then we butcher in the morning and we start cooking and we split the wood to cook half of it and usually butcher the other half. If there's something amazing, I like to say, it doesn't matter if the father shows up with the son, he can be a chattacus of totem, nerd or a nihilistic, rebellious, public school kid, whatever, you put a bullet in a pig's forehead and everything changes. It creates a series of events.  So Jim and I do these weekends as this sort of act of very natural culture. So this is what humans do, you know, your food doesn't just, well, it takes work, but doing the work, of course it's less perhaps efficient than just going to buy it at the store, but actually doing that work together has been, I cherish that time, I mean, us doing that. I guess that's what we've done. Most of the hours we've been together, we have either, I don't know, maybe a little bit of drink and beer beforehand, but then kill the pig together. But I think actually that experience you described, if you don't have that of, how did I get into this spot? I'm not gonna make it. And you have to come to that when you're on the homestead. Those moments of, I can't believe this is not this, oh, it's the simple life and it's idyllic and it's really hard. Ours came, I remember that moment, I mentioned we had spent our last bit of money on some milk cows. The mistake I made is I had never milked a cow and the cows I bought had never been milked and they were pregnant. So we're waiting every day. And I remember all of a sudden it just occurring to me, this 1,000 pound animal probably doesn't want me yanking on its nipples to get milk out. And sure enough, my wife and I, we went in, we had trained her in a stanchion and I had a jar of iodine to clean it off and I reached forward to put the iodine to clean the teet off and she kicked it and iodine is red. So it just looks like blood splattering all over this barn and it wasn't even a barn. We had screwed some boards onto like an open shelter and I kept trying to go to milk this cow and she had just had a calf where the calf's hollering. Of course it's gotta be summertime. There's manure, there's flies, I'm sweating. My wife is there with a baby on her back strapped to her back. I think it was Peter strapped to her back on some kind of baby carrier or something. I remember saying to her, I don't think we can do this.  And he said, they said, you can't do it. You don't even know what it's like to have a cow with mastitis kicking at you or something. That he was very, and here I am in this moment of, maybe he's right, but my wife being there with the family, needing the milk, we had spent our money. We needed this milk to eat. It wasn't, I don't know, this wasn't an add-on. This was a necessity. And then my wife, she says, if this was one of the kids, you wouldn't let them get away with kicking you. We've got to get through this. And see, there's a little trick. You can hold the tail up, anyone in the back. And so she's back there holding the tail up in the air. While the cow is, we call it anger pooping, I don't know if the listeners don't know. Cow can actually pass, sort of express its displeasure with you by expelling manure that's not quite digested yet. So it's even worse. So she's back, it's coming towards her. I'm on my hands and knees on the milking of this cow one hand at a time, and we made it through. But it was, I think that was our moment. I don't know, that was your moment of like, what have I done? Yeah, no, I mean, there's, I can think of several, and one of our moments like that had to do with milking too. And when it's not just a hobby, that you can take up or give up, but you need it, there is, and you come to that point where, as you said, I don't think I can do this, but you have to do it and you keep going. There was a moment, we were putting in a wood stove and... Yeah, I see it behind you. I was gonna wonder if you could tell that story because there it is behind you. No, and I was actually talking about this with my son Connor the other day. So the chimney had three flues in the bottom. And so we wanted to put the wood stove in, we had to knock out the flues to get the stove pipe through the chimney. And the only way to knock them out was to lower someone into the chimney with this huge crowbar and they would bang it and just knock the bricks out. And I didn't even know all the details of the cell sign with my son the other day. Basically, they hooked Connor up to a come along, Nicholas and Matty did and lowered him in. That way they could crank him out if he got stuck. And at some point, and I'm on the inside, I'm assembling the wood stove from down here and doing the stove pipe here. And I'm talking to Connor, he says, we can't do it. You're talking to Connor through the wall? Yes, I'm standing where the wood stove is and he's in the chimney there, just above me. And he's telling me, we've been at this all day and we're not making much progress, it can't be done. And I said, well, Connor, this is gonna be our only source of heat. It has to be done. And I'm sorry, I can't fit in the chimney to help you. You guys have to do it and it has to be done. And they did it. But it was, and I'm thinking, I hope we can do it because otherwise I'm gonna have to be in the chimney because we did have to do it. I mean, this was gonna be, this was our heat. So it was that moment when we got Dolly, I'm milking her and she's kicking like crazy and Matthew's there and says, Dad, let's do this later. And I'm like, we can't do it later. You know, I'm scared. He says, I'm scared. He says, I'm scared too, because she was going nuts. And it was just like, there are these times that especially if you are depending on it, you don't have a choice. Or your other choice is, I think I'll abandon my family so they won't know, you know? So they won't know why I'm leaving. To, I mean, to go back opening about your story of, the reality of debt and trying to homestead, just the economic reality that we face if we're wanting to live a different kind of life, you've chosen one that has allowed you to work with your family to do these things. But it just comes with, it's a whole different ordering of things where you can't escape reality. I think, I mean, that's what, I mean, that's what debt is. I'm buying something I can't afford very often or something perhaps I shouldn't afford. Now the other side of that, most of us dads and families, the debt we take on is actually to usually justifiable in some way, because we're trying to, you know, provide a home for our family or whatever. And maybe we have a senses of luxury and superfluous goods that we don't actually need. But I think, you know, most of them are actually doing that for, you know, or noble reasons than just consumerism. But till you're really having to work directly for those goods, there are, I guess realities, lessons of formation of character that doesn't happen. Or at least, you know, in the last episode Connor was talking about just, he's a good businessman. He's able to like come in and make decisions and see problems and fix them and create systems. But I don't think I'm inclined that way naturally. It takes a lot of effort out of me, but I can, I like working with my sons and I like working with my children, I like working with my wife. And I think the home set for us is provided a, you know, the place where that happens without intentionality. So if you're trying to come up with an exercise, a trust fall-like exercise of how to get your son to have good grit and character, probably wouldn't be lowering him down to chimney with his brother's in a, but you needed to heat the house. Yeah. I mean, it has been a pleasure to work on a daily basis with a family. You learn a lot about each other, you know? I mean, for, you know, dad comes in, throws money on the table and, you know, we party, but we don't know, my kids don't know how I earn that money or what I have to do. And they don't know very much about themselves because they're just spending it. I was, I was talking to one of my sons this past week, but, you know, when the, when each of the boys went off to college, by that time, when we were doing projects together, we were working like as equals. Sometimes it took me a little letting go saying, you know, Thomas, you were in charge of this, I'm just your helper, you tell me what to do because I didn't have time to plan the project. And so he's in charge.  And it, and I knew who they were and they knew who they were, you know, and we sort of sort of knew our place because they had been tested.  So, yeah. And you had all that experience together. Yeah, I mean, and that is, that's what most people are trying to do. I mean, when they try to go to the homestead, from the, when families have their, or like to call, have their agrarian moments, like, should we do this? The reason, what they really want is to find each other and find God. I mean, that's what they're after. Jim, we've gone through 30 minutes really fast. Do you mind, we're gonna have to have you back on because I happen to know all of your stories and I'm looking forward to teasing them out of you. So thank you so much for being on it, on the Till and Keep podcast. I appreciate your time. Okay, well, thanks for having me. Good to see you. This episode of Till and Keep has been brought to you by Tan, Fraternus, and Sword and Spade. Till and Keep is a podcast that shows how the primordial command from God to Adam to Till and Keep the garden applies whether you toil on a farm or in a concrete jungle. Visit tillandkeeppodcast.com to subscribe and follow the show and use coupon code Till25 to get 25% off your next order at tanbooks.com.


What I hope to achieve is not only maybe protect the future for my own grandkids, but I'm hoping that, you know, with this, by the time we get there, people will look at all the forecasts that this computer has put out. It's never been wrong on the long term. You know, it's not my personal opinion. It's the computer. And then if we look at that, we can maybe rely upon it to recreate the next form of government, which will probably last another 200 years.


Hello everybody. Let's talk about oral mal odor or otherwise known as bad breath. So what causes it, how does it happen, and how can we help our patients. So there are two separate things that you should know about this topic, and that is it could actually be a systemic issue so they might have the cleanest mouth ever, but if there's something going on that they're not happy with. It could be a systemic issue so either acid systemically or just something's going on that needs to be looked at by a doctor. Or of course there is something about the mouth that they're either not brushing twice a day their oral hygiene isn't impeccable, maybe they're using the wrong mouthwash there are a couple different things and that's what I'm going to talk to you guys about. So I'm just pulling up my notes here so I don't forget anything. So basically, if your patient is bringing this up to you they're concerned about it so you don't just want to say, well brush better and you'll be fine. Let them know this is such a common problem, and actually 90% of the time it is coming from the mouth so it's not a systemic issue. It's basically micro organisms on the tongue and the teeth, often people forget about the tongue. If they're not cleaning the tongue if they're not doing that then this is how oral mal odor can happen. But to be honest, I don't clean my tongue and I don't have any any issues with that. But some people just need to go the extra step right you just never know. And it could also be caused by somebody who has a lack of saliva. Either because they're taking a lot of medications or that's just the way they are, or they have some other condition that causes them to have a lack of saliva, which can cause oral mal odor. Those are kind of the main things. So how do you talk to your patients about improving that. Make sure they are using their toothbrush every day twice a day, and they're cleaning in between the teeth as well with something, whether it be a water pick anything just as long as they're cleaning in between the teeth every day that will help and take it a step above and use a mouthwash that will also make a big difference, but then also tell them if you are a smoker, you got to stop smoking you can't. You're not going to have very good breath if you're a smoker so that could be part of it. They typically want to stop smoking but let them know even if they reduce their smoking habit that could help. Maybe they drank a lot of coffee. Caffeine can also cause that, but make sure to tell them going back to oral hygiene, they might need to be cleaning their tongue twice a day. They can use their tongue cleaners or they can even use their toothbrush. They could have a toothbrush specific for their tongue and then a toothbrush specific for their teeth, or they can use the toothbrush for their teeth and their tongue it doesn't matter they're all being cleaned the same way in my opinion, but let them forget their tongue to forget their tongue. If lack of saliva is the issue then that needs to be taken care of, either by using special melt wash, melt washes, toothpaste, xylitol products, all of that can help. If it's something that has to do with allergy so it could be a nose and throat issue then the allergies need to be taken care of but that can also play a big effect. So let them know there is hope for them, but you might have to try certain things before you try other things. It's very simple have them clean their mouth as much as possible. Tell them it's not going to solve the problem overnight, especially if let's say you're seeing a patient with severe perio. You can let them know you have bad breath because you have severe perio, you have a lot of gum issues happening that's causing the bad breath. After we clean the teeth and get things maintained the bad breath is going to go away if that's the cause of it. It's not going to happen overnight if they start to brush twice a day is not going to magically stop if they still have severe perio but try things first. Have them maintain their oral hygiene if that for some reason isn't working they're doing everything they can, then maybe you need to incorporate a xylitol product. Maybe it's the foods they're eating so kind of looking into things for them because the patients bring it up they are concerned about it. They might have to kind of say okay well brush better we'll talk about it next time. They're probably embarrassed to bring it up. So just a couple things to help you and help them, and let them know you might have to try different things before you find something that works for them, because everybody's different. So let me know you guys have any questions, and I'll see you in the next one.


I'm on a call session three weeks ago um phone rings guy picks up I said hey Mr. Johnson and he goes no not Mr. Johnson I went all right well uh looking for the owner of 127 Orchard Lane is am I anywhere near the mark and he goes no you've totally missed the mark and I said okay well I'm bombing this call anyway I'm a local real estate agent you need a good realtor and he goes well my wife and I have been thinking about buying a house we're not sure from qualify and I said you see I'm not bombing the call and he started laughing if you can make them laugh during the phone call you tear down so many barriers that they've erected in their brains random people calling what's up everybody welcome back to another road to 10 000 with uh me as your host ricky keruth I've got my guy Juan Carlos better dieci all right how do we get to episode 10 man and you're not going to get this right one more time bad and itchy see no no I told you last time I said you roll the Rs like a like a couple d's in a row and that wasn't good enough for you it's not Italian though he's got it we got to get that out there have you ever seen Shane have you ever seen a guy so Italian calls himself Latino agent has a Latino middle name and Italian last name have you ever seen in your life yes you have you're looking at him right now well yeah yeah other than him not never first time for everything you know dude you're gonna be known as the most Italian Latino agent in the world own it you're gonna have to change you're gonna have to change your Instagram handle that's obviously something I'm scared about two years down the line someone calls me like you can't do this anymore you gotta go Italian now oh yeah yeah for sure listen are you the only ricky crew without that have you checked that there's no doppelganger is anyone copying you dude there there is like there are some like fake accounts out there trying to give people like Bitcoin advice or something I can't track what does that do just some he's trying to do something with stocks or something or whatever yeah there's a forex trading thing yeah there's a ricky crew out there and like I posted it on my story and then a bunch of my followers went there and like started messing with him and stuff and it was so funny some of the screenshots about he was talking about like charging like 20 and 20 and 25% commissions and stuff okay this is the new norm right here and he were charging 25% commission oh man it was definitely a rip off Ricky you know but I have my picture and said Ricky Krooth fan page and stuff but there is a real Ricky Krooth I think the Facebook page is like Ricky Krooth or something like that and I wanted it like I wanted my URL you know mine's like Ricky dot Krooth dot nine or something like that and no kidding but what is it what do you do I didn't really do much I mean I try to message the guy and then I pretty much left it at that I wasn't too worried about it but you know whatever so is he in real estate no no he was like a young he was a younger a younger kid you know who knows man hopefully hopefully I mean Shane don't don't don't don't do not search this guy and start trying to recruit him bro do not try to recruit this guy we don't need to imagine you just build up this whole entire brand for him and he just turns like 25 and he just takes over yep oh man the legacy of Ricky Krooth I got you I got you cool man we'll listen good to be here with you fellas I got Shane Noble in here with this I wanted to bring him on the show today my guy that's found a lot of success with my program and just an example of you know what it really takes to make it in the business and a hard worker and dependable and disciplined right disciplined so Shane what's up buddy go on Ricky how you doing doing good doing good man and tell everybody where you're at and how long you've been selling yeah I'm in northeast North Carolina um up here near the Virginia line uh right on the Albemarle Sound um my anniversary date for getting my license is April 1 so I'm coming up on my first year in the business wait a minute bro hold on a second wait whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa I thought you've been in the business for a while well for one oh my gosh not even 12 months I honestly thought this is what I thought I don't know why I thought this I honestly thought that you were an agent who had been in the business for maybe a couple years and was kind of like floundering and you know and needed like a new spark and then boom you know you found my coaching program and then boom you kind of explode so you were like brand new yeah yeah yeah I was brand new um the brokerage that I was with really didn't offer a lot as far as direction on how to generate leads other than get out there and meet people so I fell into the trap of uh Zillow and Opsity leads and paying the money that that that takes I did um three deals through those lead generation sources and figured that there wasn't enough money in the world to put up with what they were uh putting out there so I did a youtube search tell it was a stupid youtube search it was how do you generate real estate leads I mean it was that's as simple as it got and you popped up and um I don't think I ever told you this before but when I first watched one of your call videos um I laughed at at the script for lack of a better word because uh like like I just thought it was uh or uh when I thought it was I thought it was odd that you paused and waited for them to converse back with you like I was looking for this uh this sales pitch and I assumed just not knowing any better that uh you know they pick up the phone and you would go right into selling them and your approach was completely different than that you you said hey how you doing this is John and they'd say yeah and you say all right how you doing John my name's Ricky Caruth with uh at the time it was remax with remax and are you enjoying this weather and and I thought it was strange how you would pause like at each one of those points you would stop and basically force them to get into a conversation with you after about five minutes of watching you on that call session I was I was sold I shut down Zillow shut down Obsidian and uh started calling people nice nice nice yeah now I never heard that story I mean like like did you laugh out was it one of those LOLs like you laughed out loud or one of those LOLs or LLPs like what what kind of laugh was it exactly I just thought it was odd I yeah it didn't come off like a sales pitch to me it came off as you're calling to talk to somebody you already know yeah well that's that's exactly what it's not a sales pitch it's it's right it's literally just to see what I can do to help people you know that's what I'm trying to just you know pound into the industry's head you know like use your use your career as a as a vehicle to service people and help other people that's how you're going to get a lot of business so don't you think it's funny your first uh isn't that funny your first brokerage you know here's your training get out there and meet people like get out there and meet people dude it gets even worse than that I was talking to an agent the other day this lady was telling me that her brokerage which was a well-known brokerage I sat her down in a room with a computer and said get on youtube because she had learned how to write contracts they told her to get on youtube do a youtube search for how to present how to do a listing presentation and she goes okay well which one any of them like this brokerage didn't care just go on the internet search a random listing presentation thing and take anybody's advice on it on youtube it just it blows my mind how some of them are well you know it's crazy so my first year in the business I learned through youtube I worked at one of those big franchises who had all the training in the world and I still found the way to go on youtube and learn from there and Ricky was one of the I'd say fourth or fifth coaches I stumbled upon at the time but before that I had people that were doing uh objection handling and cold calling and script and role playing and I got to be honest my my company even though they offered all the training they did I got more from youtube than I did from just going into the office and learning from them so right I think we're going through a huge transition where even if you look at colleges and universities everything's online nowadays and if you could take that education and put it on the cloud or put it on youtube people are going to take advantage of it yeah yeah so Shane tell us where you are now now that we understand and realize you're not even into your first year of the business give it give us your stats and what have you what have you accomplished so far give us the uh you know the proof is in the pudding bro let me hear it all right so June 19th I did my first call session in my first call session I got a listing appointment which turned into a uh listing for a home in a waterfront community which turned into me working both sides of the deal bringing the buyer to the transaction as well just a random to be called saw the sign and called me wasn't represented and I ended up getting both sides of the deal since June 19th um I have completed 18 transactions uh off of cold calling I currently have 10 listings on my board with three pending uh deals two buyers and one one that I'm representing the seller on and uh when I left my old brokerage and came over to the new one my wife was still at the old brokerage so I had transferred 10 of my listings that I had collected up to that point over to her and she worked them to completion and I have uh 16 people on my 30 to 90 day board wow so you're you're close you've closed 18 transactions and basically your first eight months yeah wow I'm telling you bro I thought I like I like you see why I you see how I didn't realize this was this dude's first year in the business like just like where he was when he joined us was at a place that it was somebody that's been in the business for two three years so how okay what what what did you do your first year two deals four I think four or six I think it was four I I did one my first year Shane just to give you some uh averages I think the average agent if they still are in the industry 12 months from now uh I think they do one to two deals their first year so you're you're not even like 10 xing you're like 20 xing the average agent like these are like abnormal numbers right yeah it's it's it's nuts it's nuts so how and how many listings do you have right now I have 10 listings right now 10 listings bro 10 listings in a low inventory market okay there's no listings anywhere nobody has listings there aren't even listings on mls and this dude has 10 himself okay this is a low inventory market do sitting on 10 list of runes right I got one this morning around it out of 10 I woke up and ate breakfast and I got a listing yeah I woke up I drank some coffee I ate some oatmeal and did some push-ups and uh got a listing I mean what how do you like your coffee two milks one listing that's it that's it that's it it's funny because um the biggest dilemma with this listing is it's a couple that lives in Maryland but it's a waterfront building lot that they have here in North Carolina it's a $200,000 lot and uh the biggest dilemma I had is it's an older couple and they operated by fax and who has a fax machine anymore I don't I don't have a hard line at my house so I had to go on and download an app on on the computer just to be able to fax it to him and get the listing back via fax right right you got to do what you got to do right yeah you got to do what you got to do you know it's so crazy we did that we did we pulled it up somebody pulled it up on a team call it was like they said that like 30% of Americans don't have an email or something like that is that right that's what I think huh yeah that can't be right I mean everybody has to have an email let me google it let me google it while Juan asked you something hold on okay so so Shane so so you're cranking these listings out are you getting the majority of your business just strictly through cold calling or is there some other lead source that you're tapping into yeah no I do I do all cold calling and it's all geo prospect and I don't do any fizz bows I don't do any anything else um I listened to what Ricky said in some of his videos when I was first kind of digging in and uh one of the nuggets of advice that he gave out was do one thing really well so like I have no social media game at all my website is the basic one that they gave me here at the brokerage um all I do is get on radax and make phone calls when I have the time of course you know any uh anybody that calls because they saw my sign on the street or whatever they go in the database as well but you know for the most part it's just it's just calling people and creating those relationships no but what I love is that you're just focusing on that one thing and you've probably you've probably gotten more experience in cold calling over the last eight months than some of the agents have in the last five or ten years just doing this so uh yeah doubling down and being consistent on that one prospecting method that's going to pay off huge well it's funny this morning I made because I had the listing and then I had about I don't know 30 or 45 minutes before we started this broadcast so I fired up the redx and picked a neighborhood it's a $200,000 price point neighborhood I made 17 calls I had five people pick the phone up I got three emails and one lady that wanted my business card via so like I'm four out of five when people wanting more from me nice nice 10% of 10 10% of americans don't have email address wow 10% of americans don't use the internet wow that's 30 million that's a lot that's 30 million people right so I don't know and they say it's it says that uh it says there's four point four point or there's four billion email users worldwide um you know so you know there's there's a there's an untapped market there for sure yeah shane let me let me ask you out of out of all the people that uh that you're calling right I'm assuming you to get results right away or how long did it take for you got your first listing just from calling first call session no way he said remember he said his first call session he got a list of appointment turned into a listing and he got both sides of it first first call session first call session so if you got results so fast why do you think new agents are just so against just doing the work I think new agents want I think they want to lean on Facebook they want to lean on Instagram and not saying that that isn't a a means of getting leads but it's a lot of new agents don't want to put in the work they want to sit back and wait for the deals to come to them they want to you know um the hell everyone I speak with in my market will not cold call they're terrifying on you know um well further I don't know why well further more I think a better question could be out of the people who do call okay out of the people that do call you know where they going wrong with uh you know you producing results day one versus them producing results month six or whatever here we go so I'm on a call session three weeks ago phone rings guy picks up I said hey mr. Johnson and he goes not not mr. Johnson I went all right well uh looking for the owner 127 orchard lane is am I anywhere near the mark and he goes not you've totally missed a mark and I said okay well I'm bombing this call anyway I'm a local real estate agent you need a good realtor and he goes well my wife and I've been thinking about buying a house we're not sure if we qualify and I said you see I'm not bombing the call and he started laughing I I love getting people laughing if you can make them laugh during the phone call you tear down so many barriers that they've erected in their brain against random people calling them so um the gentleman he was a uh he was a truck driver he gave me his wife's phone number asked me to call her I called her I got her with my lender my lender calls me 30 minutes later and says hey they're good for up to 400 000 so I'm going Saturday with this couple I showed them a new construction home over the weekend um after seeing it's exactly what they want it's a ghost listing so the builder's gonna have to build this home on another lot but it's exactly what they want uh we're standing out front talking about it his wife starts crying and she's like thank you so much for calling me and I went Stephanie it was a wrong number it was just you know luck of the draw that I happened to call you she goes I don't care how it happened thank you for calling me yeah Ricky has said on his cast are his um you know videos these people are waiting for you to call they are and if you can I think where a lot of agents miss it is they're really rigid in their delivery and they don't just they don't just have a conversation with people and they maybe they go into it with expectations if you go into it not expecting anything it's amazing how many things will just fall in your lap I think you fit it on the money man its perspective a lot of these agents uh have the idea that they're bothering people you know but you're going into with the serving mentality and when you look at it that way it's terrible if you're not reaching out to them why because you could provide so much value to them in their life and they're just missing up and not knowing you but you also have for me I'll go ahead I'm sorry well for me it comes down to just do your job your job is to reach out to people in the community and see what you can do to help them buying and selling real estate why aren't we doing our job it goes back to Shane saying they're leaning on Instagram and Facebook wanting things to just come to them like social media should be used as a tool like a hammer you know if you if you see generic content on Instagram what do you think lazy lazy yeah right lazy yeah you see drip you see drip campaigns of emails of agents and and then right there in the inbox is three other ones that came in at the exact same time at the exact same subject saying the exact same cook trash cook shrimp at two faced stuff you think lazy right that's not that's not who's gonna that's they're not gonna pick you as an agent because you sent the same email three other agents sent about what color to paint your walls in the fall or the top 10 bar tips in the spring okay they're not gonna pick you because of that stuff they don't want to they don't want to know what the national statistics are of housing they want to know what their local statistics are what really means something to them and you just have to you have like you say you have to put work in even if you're doing social media that's great DM people like comment under people that are following use post engage right way Ricky so you're telling me posting Thanksgiving pie recipes is not going to give me listings do listen if I want to learn how to cook a pie okay I will google because I've been selling out weekly pasta recipes and I knew something was wrong well for you now but hold on though for you it's different because that's more of a personal branding thing you know what I mean like you know you're sending Italian recipes you know what I mean and remember you know and share if you do the ranchero and eggs one though that's going to be a no-go man as soon as they see your as soon as they see your mug shot they're going to be like this guy's a fake it's over but no listen I get where you're coming right you could go pull up hashtag real estate on instagram and if you go through the 10 first profiles you see you're going to see everything's the same it's like they all come from the same office yeah creating the same content right 100% 100% it's a it's a it's a it's a wild world out there you know well it's funny you know going back to your question though about what agents can do to have success and I go back to comedy if you can get your prospects to laugh during your conversation it tears walls down so I was on a call session probably two months ago and I was 47 calls in and I dropped I don't know 20 or so voicemails and each day I put a personal voicemail in for that day so I'll say hey happy Tuesday to you I hope you're staying dry if it's raining um this is Shane with the exp shooting a call when you get a chance and I leave my number but I always make sure to put something in it personal so they know that that voicemail was recorded that day and hopefully they think I just left it on their machine rather than automatically dropping anyway um I'm like 47 calls in and I look my phones lit up showing that there's a call coming back and I'm assuming from a voicemail that I dropped so I switch over and I said hey this is Shane thanks for calling me back no idea who it is here the lady on the other line she goes um this must be a prank call I don't know no Shane and she hangs the phone well I thought that was funny like that that was comedy to me I'm 47 I hadn't prank called anybody since I was 12 so I immediately dialed her back it was a hang up I immediately dialed her back right and it rings four or five times and then it goes voicemail I wait till her her things done and I'm still giggling as my recording starts and I said hey thank you for giving me a good laugh today that was really funny I haven't prank called anybody for for 30 years um but just in case you wanted to know my name's Shane I'm with exp reality would love to chat with you sometime give me a call so I went back to my call session couple minutes later I looked down my phone's lit up again she's calling me back so now I've dropped a voicemail she's called me and hung up on me I've left her another voicemail now she's calling me back again so I pick up the phone I said hey thanks for calling me back again this is Shane and she goes honey you are funny I said well thank you man that's you know it just is what it is we're out here you know trying to trying to make some money and um I'm I'd love to meet you know people and you know right now with COVID we're not doing a lot of meeting I said but you live in a great neighborhood and there's no homes available so I was just checking with you to see if you needed anything she goes I ain't selling my house and we've entered this point where we're it's almost like banner back and forth and I said I don't want you to sell your house matter of fact if you told me you were selling your house I don't think I'd come sell it for you and she starts laughing again she goes but I really am not going to sell my house I said well that's fine one day down the road you might want to sell your house how about we stay in touch and she goes well I got another house to sell and I said okay well tell me about that house she goes well it's the next neighborhood over I've been renting it but I'm tired of renting it and I said do you think I want to sell it is this a house worthy of me selling and she goes well I don't know when can you come over talk to me about it and I said well when do you want me over she goes well how far away are you I said 30 minutes like we're back and forth it's hilarious I've never met this woman right I sound like 30 minutes away she goes all right we'll see you in 30 minutes I said you better be ready and she goes all right I'll see you I went over got the listing headed in MLS that day off of being funny off of making a joke out of it getting her out of her defensive like she didn't know me she hung up on me but I created an environment that was comfortable for you that's good ma'am that's good let's take it back 30 years though let's take it back 30 years to your prank calling days tell me how that tell me how those calls go been so long ago I don't even remember you don't remember what the script is I'm sure it was something about as your refrigerator running you need to go catch it or something like that who knows hello I gotta say Shady you have to be probably the smoothest real thing we've ever spoken to like you have a way with words really no no I've seen I've seen a few of them on there that that that have made me stop and go man look at how they are god but it's all to be as good as them one day you're having a conversation that's all it is and people want to connect and it is for the people that are listening like you have the script everyone wants to like give me the script well how do I learn what to say they could retake they could just take the last two minutes what you just said and apply that to every single person they speak to and get listened to everything right everyone it really doesn't even come down to a script it comes down to knowing to have them it's almost like a roadmap to a conversation and that roadmap has turns which are the transitions and you you have to hit your transitions with some force so that the conversation continues because if the conversation starts you only have five seconds to grab these people on the phone if you don't grab them in the first five seconds all of my calls are done just like this i'm standing up i'm moving around high energy like you have to grab them in the first five seconds or you'll lose them yeah a hundred percent man a hundred percent people the first couple seconds they're going to judge you right then and there because a lot of people on the calls what they do is is they they kind of like agents assume um you know like if somebody calls they're in a bad mood they hang up on you let's say or they say oh i'm at work i'm busy what can i do for and they start to turn it starts to turn the wrong direction you know agents agents don't understand that that person had the time to answer the phone right if they didn't want to talk or they're too busy they could have just not answered the unknown number yeah but they answered the phone you know which means which means what right they want to see right so they gave you an opportunity to to wow them for about 1.7 seconds and you blew it and you think it's them you think that they're mad that they're just unhappy or mean people and really they gave you the opportunity but you don't realize that it's you that that that made that call go south not them right it's up to you to do this enough to get the experience to learn how to wow them with your tone within the first 1.7 seconds and then from there you can actually build a build a conversation but you got to really break through to them yep yeah that's good stuff man that's good stuff i used to do the same thing um people would call i would call people and they say oh no we're gonna keep the bill we're gonna keep this property forever and i say okay you're gonna keep until the building crumbles and and some of them would just laugh and laugh and i've i had a whole list of like little jokes that i used to tell um you know like in my head uh back when i used to really you know get on the phones that first go around that first go around when i wasn't even trying to build relationships i was just trying to do deals right the market was the market doubled in two years and i was just pounding the phones not trying to get emails not trying to do anything but sell a piece of property uh like that we we have these things called phone call festivals we had phone call festivals where it would be like three or four of us would get in a room in this office and we just make phone calls for like two three hours we would all have our list and we'd all just go to town those days are so fun but there was no dialers right there was no auto dialers we're literally dialing by hand and uh we would laugh and laugh because we it was almost like we were prank calling at that time right because we were like 21 you know everything was funny at the time you know we were we were a little pranksters at the time and you know it was fun but when you take it back to those days and you when you can be that comfortable that's why i tell people i'm like i'm like you know pretend like you're prank calling people i literally that's some of my that's my advice a lot of times to people who are scared to make calls i'm like well number one you're not trying to sell them anything you're just talking to see if there's something you can do to help them you're talking to i'm like family i said have fun with it yeah i said listen call somebody up and when the answer go hello all right just do it one time and see how you feel afterwards you're going to feel exhilarating it's going to be an amazing experience and you're just going to want to keep on making calls you're going to feel more confident you know it's like who cares if the call doesn't go good you have 7.4 million other people to call you're never going to get to the end of that list right exactly no i i i i love the concept it's just plain simple don't take it too seriously that's all it is do the work don't think it over twice be consistent how many hours away how many hours a week do you think you're calling chain uh probably four five it's about an hour right yeah you have a certain time you do it and you do it in the morning you do it when you have whenever i've gone yeah yeah whenever i have time i was on a call uh back over the summer um waterfront community i hit a guy with the hey is there anything in the world i can do for you you know after getting to the first part of the conversation he goes yeah bring me a box of money and he hangs up so the next day i went by the dollar store i bought a little cardboard box i put five dollars worth of play money in it and taped my card to the top of it wrote on top of the box as requested and went left it on his front porch i didn't ring the doorbelled it in anything right and he called me two days later and said i've been laughing about that for two days and i said well thank you he says uh my daughter's moving here from florida in a couple of weeks can you show her some homes maybe maybe find her something to buy and i said i'd love to so i ended up getting the buyer's lead out of a hang-up but it's just getting creative you know if they leave the door open you got it you got to find a way to jump through it you're making me think of every single time someone hung up on me that was a potential that i could have converted that's kind of crazy yeah absolutely absolutely and not everyone i mean i could hung up on all the time but uh people have bad days it's not a reflection on anything that you're doing so you know just don't take it personally and keep it moving yeah a hundred percent a hundred percent so so changing subjects a little bit um kind of moving over to the hot topic here lately on the zillow thing did you see that uh wand did you see the article that um kw or inman put out with kw kind of uh you know gary keller kind of said a little fighting words towards zillow on this whole thing really no no it wasn't like anything too crazy um it wasn't anything too crazy here i'll share it right here see can you see that yes sir all right now i just said that uh you know they had their little um their whatever you call it their family reunion um and uh basically basically they were saying that the uh that they felt like zillows like they felt like that this was kind of uh the acquisition and showing time was a way for the company to take more real estate agents commission dollars right um just to squeeze down on agents a little more and basically you know they said that um they said that the uh basically the the way that you combat this i guess where was it the way that you combat you know what they're you know you know what everybody fears about this is to own your own leads you know and like i i just did a video it's not out yet but i'm like look guys if you're worried about zillow if you're worried about uh you know this then then why are you still buying zillow leads right why are you still using dot loop that they own and why will you continue why will you not send a letter to your board saying please quit using showing time yeah all you gotta do is quit using all the stuff that they that they have make it unprofitable what's that make it unprofitable yeah exactly exactly you know i mean it's it's the trojan horse of the history of real estate you know but but basically they basically what they're saying is is you know if you own your own leads you don't have anything to worry about that's what kw said they said if you own your own leads you don't have anything to worry about um you know they said that their command their crm tool uh the lot cost per lead in 2020 was just under two dollars far below the twelve dollar average generating 2.7 million leads but but at the end of the day what they said was yes we do believe this is a squeeze on agents income and the way to protect ourselves from it is to own own your leads you know so anyway i thought that was really interesting um let let me ask you rick you i'm i'm kind of curious what you think what's your definition of a lead because everyone's always talking about leads leads leads and i think the whole realtor community is addicted to leads how would you define a lead dude a lead is literally the definition of an elite is a human in your market right a human like a human being you know warm blood flowing through in your market that's it a relationship pretty much right well not even a relationship right not even a relationship because that that you know the lead turns into a relationship the lead turns into a prospect that's converted into a relationship once you have the conversation and find the comfort comfort ability and to find if there's a working relationship to be had you know i mean some humans some human in our markets have mothers that are real estate agents you know or best friends from high school that are real estate agents but you know that you know those don't turn into you know i mean hey uh you know i want to create a relationship with you see here's the here's where here's where people really lose on the whole relationships over transaction thing they start to use it in a way that they try to make their self look like they're four people and so they're like oh building relationships but they're really only building relationships if the person they're building a relationship with can benefit their business right and not only benefit their business but benefit them in the next 90 days i think what you said is on the money where people are confused with what a lead is which is just a basic human being in their market versus a prospect who's a human being they built a relationship with that's ready to buy or sell the next 90 days i think everyone's addicted to prospects however they keep identifying them as leads and that's why they get disappointed when there's a human being that doesn't want to sell for two years but who knows they can refer you to their mother their aunt their cousin their colleague over the next six months it's long-term thinking right it's not even long-term thinking see that short-term thinking short-term thinking for them yeah see that yeah see that's well no no no for us too see that that that see that right there is one thing i hear so much you know ricky your strategy is so long term well why does shane have 18 closings in his first year why does william patrick is converting one person on his first session yeah right he eats listings for breakfast why does why does william patrick have six closings and seven pending deals and 12 listings in a low inventory market is that short term you know what i mean there's i could tell you story after story after story of people who get deals look at quintavius look at quintavius 100 deals in his first year circle prospecting 85 of his business that first year was just calling 200 people a day on red x the other 15 deals there was 85 deals circle prospecting 15 came from meeting people at kroger right he made it a point to meet 50 people in public once a week uh or not once a week but 50 people a week at a grocery store um which you really can't do nowadays with covid and stuff i can't wait for this to be over like i can't wait like do we see the light at the end of the tunnel like is it happening it has to be happening there's been drops in cases vaccines out there i'm ready to get back on the road and do some events man i'm dying over here yeah i have so my body is like clammed up i'm like you know i'm just feeling all stiff i'm ready to get out there and get on a plane and come see some people right it's crazy but you know every interaction that you have in the public can can very easily turn into another another deal i mean it's it's everywhere i go i get into conversations with people at the gas station the person the next pump over that's pumping their gas you know we talk about the weather we talk about whatever and i always always lead in with what do you do for a living but which in turn they'll answer and then ask what i do which is a good segue into giving them my card hey if you ever need something you know hang on to this i love it i love that strategy man i love the strategy of just like conversation that naturally like you have when you're a good conversationalist and you communicate well with people you know like and you lead in with that and then it kind of segues into i'm here to help you if you need something this is what i do for a living here's my card or whether it's by phone or email or anything it's like because you you've drawn them in with the conversation itself because you're a great conversationalist yeah you know and now they're involved in this conversation and they're emotionally invested in this conversation now you know and then when you do bring up the fact that you're an agent or something you've they've already shown you that that that you guys you know can talk in a manner yeah yeah yeah you you've already proved that you guys like each other you know on a certain level and then it's just so easy to segue that into this is what i do for a living or is there something i could do to help you and then at that point you're not even trying to like shove it down their throat or sell them on anything you're just like i'm here if you need something then they're like oh well i'm looking to do this or that it just makes sales so much easier when you don't try to sell and people don't want to help you once you connect with them like people actually go out of their way to send you business and it's because you didn't you didn't leave with business first you built those relationships and and emotions from day one right well cool man it was a really good conversation here shane where can they follow you ma'am i think follow me on shane knoblin realtor on facebook and then my name shane knoblin on instagram nice nice and and one are you still latino agent now till instagram reaches out to me got you got you got you got you i know it's all these ricky fake accounts just reporting me every single day all you all you have to do is make sure it's the one with the blue check and you're good there you go yeah the blue check guys i hope you guys enjoyed the episode give us a five star review on itunes and click subscribe like the like the video comment below let us know what you thought and if you want us to continue doing these shows and we're just trying to put as much content out there as we can to help you guys grow your business we're always here to help reach out to me wan shane anytime if there's something we can do for you and oh ricky we forgot we have to give everyone a little update on our account okay where were we monday where were we monday monday we were 585 as of this morning we're i think we're peaking at 590 so we've actually brought on five people in two days so rocking and rolling nice nice nice yeah absolutely absolutely yeah look i'm looking for this thing to hit a thousand in about three or four months and then be around the four thousand mark you know mid next year you know so yeah and once it once it catches fire it's gonna go quick so oh yeah excited to be here grinding with you fellas nice it's good talking to you we'll see you guys on the next episode all right guys see you man