Hey guys, what's going on? I'm here today with my man, Alex Smith. Guys, I'm going to tell you this. This is Spartan Army, Elliott Army. You say, Spartan Elliott Army. Yeah, that's right. But what is that?  So if you want to see the most elite sales team in the world, and I mean, it's in a level 10 earning opportunity. And really, I would say a podcast that would change your life. If you're looking for that, you want to watch this whole video. Check it out. All right, guys, what's going on today, guys? I'm here with my man, Alex Smith, guys. I want you to understand Alex. Number one, he's a killer. He's a savage. He's really a leader, man, of one of the biggest solar teams in the world. I want you to understand something. What's going to go down in the next couple of years? You know, it's like, if I was Nostradamus and I could predict, you know, like, hey, man, if I was wanting to be great in sales, if I wanted to really get ahead in life, you know, a couple years, a couple of good years in anyone's life earning good money would physically change their entire life, right? Just a couple of good years. I think people think they got to work for 20 years. Not even a couple years, honestly. It could be a lot less now.  No, dude, you need to find the right company. A few good years literally would change everything. And I think if I was like Nostradamus, I would predict right now we're in a solar boom. And I think the next two years, you know, maybe three years, maybe 10 years, but for sure two or three, there's going to be this cash cow. And by the way, listen, guys, everybody write this down. Zero skill. All you got to want to do is work hard and help people. Okay. Solar sells itself.  Everybody wants it. Everybody wants to save money. Everybody wants to be inflation proof, but you built this company that's not just a company that install solar, right? So all of your solar guys, they get paid really good money. They're really happy. They love you guys. And obviously we've partnered together and we built the Elliott, you know, solar Spartan solar army team. And I called an army because you guys know I called it Elliott army forever. And then I met Alex and Alex is like, damn man. You know, he's like, we kind of believe the same.  And you have women that make a lot of money that work for you. And the craziest thing is you could be 18 years old, right? No experience and you could have the opportunity for a level 10 earning opportunity. Now you see on the screen right now it says level 10 earning opportunity. What that means is you could make seven figures a year. If you work hard and if you're coachable and if you if you care, it's so crazy and the product sells itself. And by the way, we do train everybody how to be great at what they do. But you got to you got to decide, man, like right now where you at? What are you doing? Do you love what you're doing? Is it paying you the money you want? Right? Well, today I'm going to talk to Alex about why why selling solar and especially for, you know, Elliott's, you know, Spartan solar. Like, why is that so great? Like, why is that the place to go? Why would that be?  That's all I want you to do. Okay?  You know, I didn't think selling cars is my way out. But you know what? I got really good at it. And man, it paid me really good to be great. I've learned that solar is actually easier than almost anything, right? Oh, yeah. So let's go into that for a minute, right? What does someone have to do to qualify to sell solar and then tell me a little bit about the Spartan solar culture, right? Like, what what it's like, like run us through it so we can get a picture, right? So in order to be able to sell solar, it really just boils down to this. You got to be coachable. You got to have good attitude. You got to have good work ethic. But do they got to the need to be licensed? You don't need what they got a felony. If you have a felony, it's in your past. It's not who you were. It's what you're going to become. Okay. So what like so what if you don't know how to sell? You don't know how to sell. That's what we're here to teach you how to do. Luckily, you're not selling something they can't afford. Most of the time people look at sales as someone adding an expense. They aren't currently budgeted for like you get a new car that went from a $400 payment. You're used to with the Honda. It's now an $800 payment with the BMW. That's a real sale. That's a challenging sale, especially if they're not budgeted to pay. You can put them in a bad situation possibly. So you're saying basically this is a utility bill, which is energy.  Everybody wants energy. And they currently are paying a bill and your company literally you hire people, give them a great life, take care of them. You guys work out. You guys have a brotherhood. You guys have a family. You guys do the coolest stuff. They have the ability to make all this money. They lower people's bills and then make a lot of money. That's it. Come on. That's all it boils down to is you just have to be able to put someone into a better situation they're currently in.  Because most competition, what do they want to do? They want to sit back at their office. They want to sip some lemonade. They want to try to make a phone call every hour. While we can go out there show them who we are and luckily we're working on ourself pretty hard. That's why we brought in, you know, the beliefs that you guys believe in. That's why we brought in the fitness division. We're trying to get everyone looking right so they could feel right so they can perform right. Hey guys, what's going on? It's Andy. A lot of you leave comments telling me that you need help. Do me a favor and take the best way to get a hold of me. Shoot me a text message right now 918-210-254-918-210-0254. I'll help you with whatever you need.  Let's get back to the video.  This is why your company is growing so fast. This is why the company is scaling so quickly. Is because you want people to make a lot of money but you also want people to become better people, right? Tell me about that. I want to talk about something for a minute. You know, what's the number one? And I want to say what I think it is. I want to tell you what you think. What's the number one? And then we'll get into the culture because I want to say this first because a lot of people get turned off when they hear when they hear the word solar because there's a lot of amateurs, right? But your training, it literally, it can take anyone that's coachable, that wants to work and they can make a bunch. But what I've learned is that what a lot of people why they don't get into it is because they're afraid of what other people will think about them like you knock on doors. You know, my buddy Keaton, Keaton Hoskins put on the limitless society event. He's massive. He's a he's a multi, multi, multi millionaire. He said that when he was young, he lives in Utah. They they had to go to a Mormon school or that it be a Mormon that he go two years of it, right? They got to go away. They had to go away. And he goes, dude, from 18 to 20 years old, he could only write his dad. He couldn't even call him. And they made him knock doors every day and share share God best training ever. He's one of the greatest salespeople I've ever met in my life. And I want to tell you something. Listen to me. You know, a lot of people laughed at him. He said everybody laughed at me because I went away for two years to do my Mormon deal for two years. He goes, I came back the world's greatest salesperson. I could master talking to anybody. He goes literally, man, he goes, you know, you want to sell something? Go to somebody's door and try to sell one religion and they'll slam the door in your face.  And he goes, my friends that were way ahead of me in school, they didn't go. And he's like, I smoked him as soon as I got out because of what that taught me. Now, my point is door to door as I think everybody in this world should have to go door to door at some point in their life. And people, they mock people and they laugh at people that go through that. By the way, door to door sells people. A lot of them are millionaires. Okay. And they build big bad companies and they believe in themselves and they've learned the art of communicating with people and saying hi. And what happens is in the beginning, it's a little scary, but really because you're a great person, it's not weird at all. When you got something good to offer, when you're saving people money, you have no problem going to someone's house.  And sometimes they think you're there to make them pay money they don't have and when you can get them to understand what you're actually there for. And that's why you guys train pros. And so you guys make professionals out of 20 to 25 year olds, you know what I'm saying? I mean, there's some people that are older that do this, but 20 to 25 year olds, these people get their future started right. Lots of them make anywhere from 10, 15,000 a month to $100,000 a month. You know what I'm saying? With no education, no degree, the barrier of entry was zero and all they had to do a show up, be coachable, have a good attitude. And let's talk about what their families, a lot of them mock them in the beginning, right? When they start, but then a couple months later when they're paying their parents cars off, they're not laughing. Dude, I had a guy back in California when I was over there and he was in the same fraternity I was in college. He was hitting me up looking for an opportunity. He was working in sales for a basketball professional NBA team, but the problem was all the tickets were sold out so he had nothing to sell. So he could barely make any money. He could barely afford rent. I remember this very vividly and he finally hit me up because he thought that was his dream job and his parents approved that job because you're working for the end. You're working with the NBA in some capacity. The title sounds cool. Sounds amazing. So he got out there. He wasn't getting the money he expected yet. He could barely survive in reality, although it was very supported by the parents. He hit me up and I remember these conversations because he talked to his parents and tell him what he was about to do. He's about to move to California. And by the way, this is right when this is basically right when COVID hit.  So he got out there right at that time. His parents the entire time were just, they didn't even talk to him actually. He got to a point where they didn't want to talk to him anymore because they were just so pissed that he was going this direction with his life. But because he saw what he thought was his dream and what it turned out to be, he was willing to go against the grain even though his family is everything to him. He's like, his family, he's very tight. So this wasn't like they weren't close and he was making this move and it didn't really matter. This matter, this was a hard move for him. He got out in California in the first summer and this is, you know, through COVID, right? The first summer with COVID. I believe he pulled in like $90,000. That's so awesome. And everything flipped with his family, right? Everything flipped going back. And for me, it was one of those experiences where you have to just get someone that can be willing to push through that resistance. If it's coming from the family, I've never seen a family side push that much resistance on someone, but then to see him go in and just practice, practice, practice, train, train, train. Because for a while it's all. It made 90 grand in a summer, man. 90 grand in a summer and then a lot more over the past couple years. Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, so a lot of the guys, they're killing it. They're making a lot of money. They're really crushing. And by the way, listen to me. If you guys right now, if you're like, man, okay, so how does someone get set up, right? With a guy like Alex? How does a guy like get set up with a company like ours? How do you get this opportunity? Well, in the description box below, there's a link. You can see it, okay? And it basically says join our army. Click here. That's all you got to do. And then if you go click there, it'll ask you some questions and welcome to the inner circle. And we'll tell you what's next. But I want to move on. Tell us about this culture, right?   Obviously the goal is to build an army of 10,000 plus, right? And I think that's going to happen by next summer. It's going to be huge, right? All around the world, all 50 states. All 50 states. Tell us about the culture. Maybe not Alaska, right? We're not going to be. Yeah, we're not going. Great, let's go with the 49 states. Okay, yeah. So, so tell us what you think about why you set these standards, right? You say going against the grain, right? Like, you know, I see a lot of solar companies and they're all about money. Got to make money. Got to make money. And I see everybody burned out. They're out of shape. They're lazy. They're tired. They're drinking. They're running around. You know, tell us about the standard of your company. And number one, it's growing so fast. It's insane. It's scary. It's before you even activated. Oh, yeah. Like, it's scary. But let's talk about your culture because I want to talk about, right, like, what everybody in this world is looking for. And you've broken it down to a science, right? So, and obviously, Elliott Army and then, you know, we partnered up with your team and we're building this.  You run the company. It's super cool. It shows that the youth can do crazy stuff, okay? And you treat everybody in your company like they're an owner. Like, you treat everybody. You show everybody about the kindness. That's how it was built. That's what we have today is a model that allows people to become leaders and to build within. And it's one of the most empowering things because at any point in time, when you become extremely skilled at what you do, if you can sell a lot of solar, if you could build a team, you want to feel empowered to have autonomy over the choices you make. You want to be able to build something your way. Yeah, you don't micromanage people. No, I can't micromanage people. I don't have time for it. I hate it more than anything else. If I had to tell someone, you're the same way, right? If you had to tell someone what to do to get them to do that thing, they're just not going to have a job. Yeah, I love that guy. So listen, if you're looking, you know, and if you don't need to be babysat, right? And you want to work hard and make a lot of money and be around cool stuff. Like it's almost like, can you believe people get paid to have this fun life? Isn't that crazy? It's never been this fun. So I want to like talk about the culture for a second. Yeah, I'll talk about the culture. Because I've always believed in solar specifically that because I graduated from FSU with a triple major in finance, sales, and marketing. I never used one of those degrees to get the job to sell solar, right? So it was never used. The LinkedIn they told me I needed to build up was never used. I just heard from an acquaintance at FSU that I can make $10,000 a month selling solar. Back then we got paid a lot less, about one fourth to one fifth when we get paid today. So we got paid a lot less back then. I took the gamble, went out to California because I was like, that means I can make six figures. That sounds a lot better than most of the jobs my friends are getting. What I didn't realize what was going to happen was that I was going to be able to put myself in a position where within three months I could run an office. Where can you go in this world where it's not what you make, it's what you become in the process, but where, what other career path can you go in sales and anything else where you can not only get really good at the craft of maybe it's on knock doors, closing the deal, communication, follow up. Where can you go where you can then translate that to teaching that to other people like that and you're going to get paid even more to do it and then running a whole team of people because you're able to duplicate yourself. So I quickly realized that this career is so much more. What we're doing is so much more than just making money. And this is going to tie into what we're doing now which is totally different than even what I'm talking about today because I just realized that growing in leadership and having the ability to get tested regularly and where nothing matters, right? Seniority doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how long you've been in a company. It doesn't matter what you did in the past. It just matters what you're doing now. You can go and claim whatever you want. You can build an army and I continuously built armies over the past seven years and I never built an army to the degree we have today because no other place did what we are doing now. Talk about that, the differentiator between other companies in Europe. There's a few differentiators. If we're going to go, I'm not going to go in too much in detail in the differentiator. No, no, no, like, but as far as like culture, core values, standards, standards, yeah, stuff like that. So most companies, they play this game and I used to go this route too because you just kind of echo what you hear sometimes, right? Someone says lead from the front. Everyone's going to say lead from the front. We all believe in leading from the front, right? But it's continuously getting echoed and a lot of companies, they just say it's a numbers game, right? They're just trying to get as many people in the door as they can. They're trying to see what sticks. And I played that game for a little bit because there's points in the development phase where you feel like you just need more people and I got to that phase for a little bit of time and it gets exhausting because then you start bringing in the wrong people because you're playing the game where if I just have enough people here, this is going to spit out this result. And so that's how you treat people, right? You're just part of that machine. You're just a number. Yeah, nobody really cares about anybody. Nobody, yeah. And so that's the message that's continued in the solar industry. And there might be some companies that have a little bit of something else, but no one really got to the point where they stopped talking about production. Like, we talk about it, right? Because it's recognized what you're doing and the field shows us the work you're putting in behind the scenes, right? The training, everything else if you're actually being active and listening. But we talk more about now getting your life right as far as physically, making sure you're spending the time on yourself, making sure you're eating right, making sure that you have the alignment in our beliefs, which means you're never going to screw anyone over. You're not going to lie that we have each other's back until the day we die. We've gone that direction and I owe a lot of that to you is because it's stuff I've already believed in. And I think we synced up on that before, but I already believed in everything you talk about. I just didn't know I could talk about it the way you do. I didn't know I could freaking ingrain it in my team until I saw someone like you ingrain it in your team. And now that I realize that is a possibility. And production is dangerous. We're freaking, and now we're at, I mean, we have just to get an idea of the growth we've experienced. In June, we had about 86 people in the company. Now we're at about almost 400, and that's after trimming anyone that doesn't align with our beliefs. So we've made an effort every week. We trim people. We literally, as a team, as a leadership team, we'll cut anyone out that we don't feel like is doing the right things on a daily basis, whether that be the gym, whether that be getting out on the doors, whether that be doing the work. It doesn't matter if there's a misalignment. We're instructing everyone to get them out because it's really easy to freaking run over all the competition. You've told me this, right? It's really easy to run over the competition if the whole team has one straight path. We're all going in one line.  It's really easy to do it. And it's because we're focusing on this part of their life. You take care of yourself. You could take care of other people. You could take care of your customer. We just focus on making it so that you can take care of yourself, but not just take care of yourself. You want to make sure that you're proud of the person you see in the mirror every single day. You look in the mirror. I used to think I was proud of the person I saw in the mirror. Dude, I was nothing. Change 360. I was nothing. Meeting with you and Aaron and throwing up five times in the car after one workout and realizing just how... That was good stuff. That was an impact, right? That was a checkpoint in my life.  I want to tell everybody... Wait, wait, I saw a higher standard is what happened. I had a standard because I could actually like see where I was at. I knew what I did. I saw a different standard. I've never been exposed to before and it made me realize how important it is to bring that standard to everyone around me. And the only way to do it, you have to do it, right? Aaron has to do it. I have to do it. That's it. Yeah. And so anybody watching this right now, you know, we preach self-development all day long, right?  You know, but we've never really talked about like where someone could go to find that, right? Because when you... Because I want to explain something to you, okay? We talk about proximity a lot, right?  You know, what can I do? Like, who can I join?  That's why this movement is so dangerous. Okay? Anybody right now that's watching this and you know, I'm just going to ask, like, you want to look in the mirror and you're like, dude, this isn't me. Like, I'm better than this. Or you're like, man, dude, like, I want to earn more money. You know, like, I want to be financially free.  You know, hey, I want to become worth more. I want to create more value. I want to help more people. You know, in proximity, I want to run with, you know, a team of people that all have this same belief. Imagine this. If you ran with the group of people that all had the same belief that positively peer pressured you every day to play at your best.  You know, like these kind of circles, they don't exist. Like, people look for them, but jobs like this, they don't exist. They're super rare. 00.1% of the world would even, even talk about this because everybody's standards have gotten so low and people like, they're like, go to work, make money, and then like, we don't care about the rest. Well, how many people do you find just complaining about the job they have? When you ask them what they do, I stopped asking people what they do because I was expecting a complaint. I was expecting, and I was so stoked about what I did the whole time being in. Yeah, or even when you see people that are making money now, right? Like, you see that what they had to put their body through or what happened. Just the decline. Like, they declined. It's like, dude, like when you're, the goal is to increase, right? And I think, and multiply. And I think that's the craziest thing is that like, as we get older, you know, I'm getting younger looking now. And it's so crazy because it should be, it should be, it should be. I say the same thing all the time. I feel like I'm getting younger every day.  Your body's saying thank you. Hey guys, what's going on? It's Andy. A lot of you leave comments telling me that you need help. Do me a favor and tell you the best way to get a hold of me. Shoot me a text message right now,<PHONE_NUMBER>.<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'll help you with whatever you need.  Let's get back to the video. And I want to say something. And I was telling my wife this the other day, you know, for all the bad jobs I had, for all the leaders that told me, don't put my health first. For all the leaders that told me that I wasn't worth. For all the leaders that told me that there wasn't another place anywhere that there was a better opportunity. Thank you, I owe you. Because you guys, you guys taught me. I had to find my own way. And once you find it, which is this, find yourself a group of people who believe the same way you believe. Find a group of people who believe in you and who want you to do great in life. Find a group of people that aren't running around. And I'm not saying that you can't have a drink, but that aren't going and drinking. The people who aren't going and doing drugs. The people who are being good to their families.  Like, like that exists now. And that never exists. So in 2023 right now, there's a lot of companies that are struggling. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of. In this industry, especially right now, it's. Oh, dude, dude. Solar has broken apart. It's never been easier though at the same time because of that. Yeah, yeah, they're going to expose now. Yeah, that's right. And you know, and what I love about you, Alex, is that you and your team, you guys do things the right way.  This is super important. A big problem that I've always had is people betraying people.  I hate it, man. And you guys preach loyalty in your company and not betraying people, being good, mastering your mouth.  Here's the cool thing about this company. Right now, you're in a pivotal point where anybody that wants to be a leader, right, who really wants to raise the standard, who wants to be an example to others and make good money and help people, you can get in and, and almost everybody should look up and in six months, they should be a team leader and have a team. Yeah. Right? Because most, most of the time, the growth is all going to come from what you can bring to the table, right? Like, what you can do on the sales floor yourself is going to determine your production, your production usually determines your influence, which determines how many people you could bring to you, which is fine. That's how I've always grown. That's how I've always scaled. But now, because of the way we've shaped, because we're not a solar company, right? We're a town acquisition, town development and software company. We've come to a point where we're able to get, we can't resurrect the dead.  Yeah, we're, but we can, and what we're doing every single day is we're pouring gasoline down everyone's throat and we're lighting them all in fire. Right? They coming to us. We have a guy here. He's sitting right over there, Sam Manley, for example. And he came in, he's been in the industry for 10 months now. So 10 months, just three months prior to this month, it was just him in about, I think it was three or four other people. Right? So that's a small group, brand new to the industry overall. And they did, I forget how many deals, but they threw down some deals, right? Nothing crazy. This month, this past month, which is September, they threw down 183 accounts, which is crazy in solar, and now there are 60 to 70 people in their division from nothing three to four months ago. So right now with what we're building at Spartan Soul, and it's just increasing the Spartan LA Army, it's just getting, it's just getting started really. Now that it's the full forces are combined, it's about to take full effect of what's coming next. If you do stand out as a leader, if you do stand out as a top producer, we're able to build underneath you so fast, and we're able to help you grow exactly where you want to be. Now we're not going to be the ones to pull you there the whole time. No, never works that way, right? Every time you try to make someone become a leader, we know what happens, right? They usually end up floundering because we were wanting them to do Yeah, we wanted them to succeed more than they wanted to. And it always, and sometimes that's like that happens a lot, right? But now we can just help anyone build and grow faster than they ever grown and built before, which means guess what? They can make a lot more money. Their skill sets can increase a lot faster because they're forced to duplicate themselves, which I think you know more than anyone. When you start training other people on how to do and believe what you do and what you believe, you become freaking phenomenal, which is why you're the best in the industry, why you've just absolutely dominated all the X competition. Yeah, in your eyes, this is so crazy. When you come to your company, you self-develop so fast. You learn to be a coach. You learn to be a teacher. You learn to educate customers and you get paid really good to do it. And literally, man, there's never been a better time in the history of the world why everybody's like whining, complaining, crying to dive in on this movement. And dude, just like recreate your life and change. And I think anybody that's watching this right now, I don't care who you are. I don't care what you look like. I don't care what you got going on. I don't care. If you're like, dude, I want to change. You know what I mean? Like I want to go to another level. Like listen, like count me in. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I'm in. Guys, I mean, how many states are you in right now? I believe we're active in 21 states. The goal by the end of the year though, because of how fast we're able to move with what we've built will be in about 31 or so. And these are going to be the best states to sell. So right now that's right. It's a good place to sell. So no, that's right. Some utility companies are like, hey, we're not doing that. But the ones that allow it that make it make sense. Yeah, we're going to take over. Yeah. And so what you can do guys is you click on that link. Okay. Going on the description box, you click on that link and it's real simple name, phone number, email. That way we know how to get a hold of you. You ask answer a couple of questions, right? We'll tell you a little bit about it. There's a video from me and him on there, which you can check out and then literally, man, you put in what state you're at and then we'll connect you with somebody that you're close to, right?  I mean, we're you're everywhere. Everywhere. Well, I'm just making a point. Like somebody's like, damn, I want to go to Florida. Well, cool. Go to Florida.  Yeah. Go to Georgia. You know, come to Scottsdale. You know, it's like wherever, like just you guys can go to different places. And the craziest thing is, is you go to wherever or maybe there's one local where you're at and then it's like a brotherhood, man. They open, they open their arms and they say, hey, come on in, man. Listen, dude, if you're willing to work hard, if you're willing to have a good attitude, if you're willing to believe like we believe, if you want to, if you want to grow and become a better person, they plug you into great training. They give you this opportunity, hands-on training, great leadership.  I want to point out something that's actually, even if you are in a place where you have good leadership. So you're in a place where you have good leadership. You're learning well from them. You're able to sell, you're being effective. Maybe you're already selling solar. Maybe you're not, right? But you have some good leaders.  I had that my entire career. I was very fortunate to be a part of companies where I felt like I had good leadership in that one dimension. I didn't realize though, because I never really felt like I was part of something much bigger. Like I did my best to be at the top where everyone knew who I was and I was able to really run things. And so that was what gave me that kind of energy. But it was always like one dimensional, maybe two dimensional. There was never a group of leaders. There was never a company that covered every aspect of the life. Like every single pillar, every dimension that matters that ultimately gives you endless energy, which human being doesn't want to feel energized, enthused, and feel adjoined, love every single day. If you have that every single day, does it matter how much money you're making? No. Is it awesome to have that every day but make a ton of money at the same time? We all want to be happy. We all want it all. So my point is you might be in a situation where you even have good leadership and I had it, but it's going to come to an end because it's only one or two dimensions. And that's why me and Andy have tapped in together. Earned it all. Because you got to earn it all. But because it covers everything. It covers the relationship side of things. I was just talking to some of the guys that are here right now about, you know, I'm learning to develop on this side of my life, which what company is working on that? Yeah, dude, no relationship with your significant other. What company is working on that side? Yeah, I want to say that too. Listen, man, hey, this is crazy, dude. You know, I know a lot of people that have made money in business. And what they did is that they had kids, they have a wife or a girlfriend, somebody they really love. And then this earning opportunity comes up, right?   You know what I'm saying? I mean, because it's not, it wasn't the goal. And what you guys preach, which we preach in this company that we're telling you about, which is amazing, is we want you to take care of your family. We want you to bring them with you. We want you to be a good person. We want you to get it all, you know. And by the way, listen, what we're talking about right now, it's foreign to most business. Okay, because they don't care, man. They want you to produce and they want you to do well, dude. There's this next movement, right? I'm going to tell you this. I'm nothing without my wife. I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm nothing. I'm going to tell you this. Once you go to work and you start making money and you forget about your family if you have one. Some of you have done this. Dude, like, you lose your purpose. And then you look up, man, and you're making money. And you know, that paycheck, it feels good for just a second. But once it goes in the bank, you turn around and you realize that this isn't who you are. But because you don't know how to get out of it, you just keep doing it, right? You get trapped. It's like you're stuck in the crash site, right? And that's why I love how you built this. And that's why I love how many states this is in. And that's why I love that everybody can qualify for it. You know, I know a lot of people that, you know, there's second chance people like me, you know, like a lot of us and really like 9 million chance. But they're, but like, but like, I need, I need someone to say, hey, man, you know, dude, listen to me, you're qualified. You're qualified. All you have to do is be hungry, want it, okay? Want to raise your standards.   People don't speak up. If you're down to go that right, that's not what we're doing here. Like we're gonna hit you upside the head. You hit me upside the head today and yesterday about what you thought about how I looked a couple months ago. I didn't realize how much you guys talked about it, but I was like, damn. But I love that because I don't get that. The world doesn't provide a lot of that because everyone's afraid to say things to people because they're afraid to hurt people.  I changed. See, that's the cool thing.  And honestly, I think we're in a world right now where people don't speak up.  We're in a world right now where people don't call their own shots and we're in a world right now where people honestly don't really give a shit whether somebody does better or not. If you had food on your face right now, a lot of people wouldn't even say nothing to you.  But dude, right here, we're going to be like, dude, you got food on your face, bro. And that's who you want to be around.  And that's why this company's growing so fast. And that's the reason why I love this movement. And that's why this is healthy. And by the way, this is the way every company should be because this is what's right. Like this is the right thing to do, man. Why don't you think more companies are like this, though? Because if you realize it for a second, which I realized that a lot of the leaders and owners of other companies, they don't ever talk about these other pillars. It is the one pillar. But why don't you think other companies have gotten to this point of thinking it out? Dude, because people don't believe that it's possible. It's a belief, man. Like, dude, listen to me, man. Like, people don't believe that it's possible anymore. So what happens is that a lot of people just giving up. And by the way, or they've gotten comfortable and they don't care. I mean, honestly, dude, if there's looking in the mirror like in who I am, getting in good shape, treating my wife amazing, you know, having her admire me, my kid's looking up to me, choosing me as her hero, being close to God and making money, right? If I just get one of those, like I might count that as a win. If I get two of those, you know, I might just count that as a win, right?  You're doing better than most. No, man.  Like every day, like you're right now on this podcast, like our heartbeats together, talking and sharing time with them. Like, like that's gone. Like, dude, one day you're going to look up and you realize you're out of heartbeats, okay? And if you know right now that you should be doing more, you should be doing better. You should be, you should have a different life. Like I'm just saying, like, if you're sitting there and you're so like, do like, I should have a different life. Okay. Click that link below. Okay. Join the army. Join the company. Go learn. Dude, go be around people that want you to be great because all these things that I said you can just have, you can have every freaking one of them. And guess what? It feels good. It feels so good to get this. This is the best feeling in the world.  But now that I know that that was all lie. See, if something's a lie and you start to believe it, it becomes the truth because you believe it, right? And that's the reason why I'm trying to tell like everybody like, dude, and you don't even have to come over to this. You should create this in your own company. If you don't have this. I mean, we wish to aspire you.  No, no, no, we're not. We have an audience. I get 150 million views every 28 days and a lot of people are looking for great leadership. And I'm trying to tell them that it does exist. Companies like this do exist. You can go get it right now.  The world creates something that nobody else has. What's the great differentiating factor from you and all the other companies? Okay. Your pay plan.  Your pay plan only lasts so long. People lose their families.  People aren't aren't home to see their kids. And you know what I love about your stuff? Dude, a lot of your guys make more money and they literally work. I know you guys work all year round, but a lot of them work half the year, right?  Like you pretty much own your own schedule, right? Can you talk about that? Like about the different, you know, commitments that people can have. So every division operates a little bit differently, right? There's different groups with different ways that they run and it usually based around how their team and the leader wants to run. So some people love to stay home, right? They love to stay in their home. We call it home turf, right? So say you live in Tampa, they like to keep working in Tampa. But then there's other teams that want to do a mixture of that and then they might want to go to a new area where they never go to Dallas or something. They want to go to Dallas. They want to go to, you know, Montana. So if you're younger, you don't have a lot of commitments. Maybe you want to travel around. Maybe you want to hit that side. But if you are hunkered down and you got the family, you probably want to do home turf. So we have a blend of absolutely every side of what you could possibly want. I think that's super important because not every person's in the same place in their life. Can we talk about you said you got it? You know, got in when you were in college and stuff. We know we have a lot of college kids or a lot of people going to college, right? I've got a kid that works here with me. You know, me and Bradley got an insurance company together. We run this kid dropped out of college. I'm not telling anybody to drop out of college, but I'm telling you what he did. He dropped out of college, okay? And, you know, you said you got three degrees, right? You never used any of them. But my point is, it was disciplined to get it, which I probably rolled into this, right? Because you have to finish it. Most people don't. But my point is he dropped out of college and within six months, the kids make it $100,000 a month selling insurance on the phone, working his own schedule, okay? Now I coached the kid, right? He literally quit where he was at and he moved here to Scottsdale and I hand coached him. The cool thing about what you... That's the accelerator. Yeah, that's the accelerator. I can't, I can't, I can't do that, right? Like I only have so many people in the Elliott group that I hire, but now with the Elliott Spartan movement and with the solar company, dude, we can onboard literally 10,000 people. Which is, I think, why this was a match made in heaven, right? It's freaking crazy, man. Because anyone you touch turns the gold because they become really good, really bad. That's what I was gonna say. The hands-on accelerator is the people. Just so everybody knows, the cheat code in life, the hands-on accelerator are the people that you're around. The better people you get around, the better you get. The stronger they think, the stronger you think. When you go work out with somebody, if you've been working out in life and you go work out with somebody who really works out hard in the gym, like all of a sudden you start to think, man, dude, I ain't really even been working out. I never, I just learned today that I have never worked out legs in my entire life and I've been working out for about 14 years now. Yeah, so you start to learn there's new levels, you know what I'm saying, to different stuff. And I think though that that's another... Hey, and can I ask you something? Because this is super important. I've never sold a solar system in my life, right? But I've trained people on everything that you could physically sell in this world, but you've sold a lot of them. How hard is it to sell solar? The hardest part of selling solar is just the act of going to get the person that's going to go listen to you. Once you get in the door... So you're saying working. It's working. You just have to work. But it's not even that hard, because when you're outside and you're moving around and you get in your groove, it's just like anything else. It's always going to be hard right out the gate. But once you get some traction... When you start, the leaders go with you, right? They help you out, right? You get that little handheld for a little... A lot of companies, what they'll do is they'll just give you a script and throw you out there and hope for the best. I thank God that that didn't happen to me. I was taken out by a leader and here's the hack. And this is how you know if you're going to be great.  So you're going to see how it's done, which means the world, right? That's where you learn the fastest. But if you think at that moment, I could do this and I could do this better. That's what I thought. I was like, I could do this, and I could do this better than this guy's. But hey, it wasn't as hard as you thought it was, right? No, it was easy. Yeah. It was just nerve-wracking because it was new. Yeah, that's exactly right. I was just saying this to somebody earlier. You know, we got a solar guy. I've been selling a couple of months, made 20 grand last month and he's like, damn, man, he's like, I'm getting better at it every day. I'm starting to believe in myself more every day. When something's new, you can't be good at it. Like, it's physically impossible.  But dude, if they gave us one for about a week, we'd be hula hoop and son of a bitches, right? And that's it. That's like what everybody needs to know is I remember in CrossFit, me and my wife started it and they do these dumbbell and dumbbell enters, right? Where you're like jumping twice and it's with the speed rope.  After about a week or two, man, we're snapping those suckers doing 100 in a row. I remember doing muscle-ups in the gym with CrossFit. I do. There's no way. These are only for gymnasts. After about a month, I'm doing muscle-ups and I'm stringing a couple together.  And guys, imagine this, okay? If you want to get rich and you're watching this, you want to get rich. Sales leadership. That's it. Sales leadership. And I do want to say something, okay? You got to learn how to master a stranger. The beautiful thing I love about all these men and women that are in this movement, that are making all this money and they got this great culture and they have this great life and they're earning it all, they're learning how to communicate. And we're literally in an era right now where people do not know how to communicate. People don't know how to shake a hand. People don't know how to communicate. They think they do. They don't. They don't know how to communicate. They don't know how to talk. Dude, it's freaking crazy. But this teaches you how to change your life, make a lot of money and communicate with people. And I love that. By the way, everybody that's ever spent a dollar with me on training will make this clear. In this program, in this company, you get all free training. Like how cool is that, man? Like live events, right? We're doing it every so... Every month. This is crazy. Every quarter we're doing leadership retreats.  You got to go to these leadership retreats which are very special. And then every single month, we're now doing Spartan Elliott Army summits. Yeah, that's it. Sell summits. They teach you live. Every single month. Live at the Lions Den. Hosted by yours truly, right? Yeah. We're running together a power session to get you good really fast. Yeah, with your team. Yeah, with the whole team. With everybody else around you in the country. So you get to bring everyone together in one hub and feel that energy and that energy will last for months. Yeah, and by the way, you say, well, why is it an army? Well, because I'm going to tell you this. It's the people with the core beliefs and dude, it's the craziest thing, man. When you get everybody together, you're like, man, dude, you know, like, I don't know any of these people. And then within like 10 seconds, you realize that every single one of them cares about you. They identify you as one of them. And they're like, damn, man. You're like, dude, this is crazy. I didn't know I had this many friends because they're your family. And that's how we run. It's just, it's just a wildest thing. But every time we get together, we're going to drop one of these podcasts. You know, every, every, I'll say a couple of weeks, we're going to drop a new one. We're going to talk about different topics and different things going on the company. I want you to understand this, right? You're worth it. You're qualified for a great life. If you're not getting everything in your life that you want, I would draw a line in the sand right now. I would tell you this, sell in solar. I know that you can do anything at any age.  But 20, 30, 40, it doesn't matter. Willing to work hard, right? Clearly like some of the core values that we have, we've talked about all the way through, but just willing to be a part of the culture. Am I right? You have to be fully into what we, and if you don't believe that's okay, there's other places that are just happy to take the number. No, no, no experience. We don't need the experience. We don't, it's actually almost better if you come in without some experience. Yeah, I was about to ask you that. If you don't have any experience to me, and by the way, if you sold solar, right?  You guys don't hire them. I don't know.  We've got an army of guys that are literally waiting on you and gals. You get some really good women salespeople that are literally waiting on you. What does that mean? That means they're like, dude, come on. Let's roll like we're going to build this. And by the way, the coolest thing is you got wife, you got a kid, right? Like whatever you have. Like if you've been waiting on that opportunity like this is my way out, I'm going to get them financially set. I'm going to give them the lifestyle they've always want. You know, everybody said I wasn't going to make it. You know, I don't know what you're doing right now, but I'm going to tell you this. If you believe that you're capable of a greater life, now's your time. You guys click that link below, okay? Down in the description box. And like I said, man, I can't wait to see you in 90 days. Number one here at our events so I can personally meet you. Crazy that every month that anyone in the Spartan Elliott Army can come to an event where they can level up like that because we've only known each other for several months. Like our relationship is pretty new. Yeah, when I met my wife, I knew I was going to marry you. Seriously, second day. I was like, dude, this is it. We're getting married. Yeah, and I told her so we're going to get married.  Like when you know, you know, Sean Pollard, my right-hand man, he's in our company when he came down to an event. Yeah, mindset monster.  And I was like, I'm not even hiring. And then the second day I was like, all right, this guy's crazy. I know he's going to be with me. You know what I mean?  It's time for me to raise my standards. It's time for me to level up. It's time for me to get around people who want to positively peer pressure me to have a good life. Dude, it's time for me to prove all my haters wrong. And maybe you've been trying something and it hasn't been working and this is an opportunity to recommit, okay? To what you once wanted. Dude, I promise you, if you're in this group, you're going to grow. If you're in this group, you're going to make money. If you're in this group, you're going to be a leader. If you're in this group, you're going to recreate your life.  Sometimes the resources and people you're around in a regular base, if you're already in the industry, sometimes the resources and people that you currently have and you've built, you may have built something special already, right? There might be something you've built that is special, but the resources and people you have have gotten you to this one point and that one point is not going to get you to the next point. You got to add some other resources and people if you do believe in scaling and growing and building and seeing what you're capable of. Some people are just very happy. Like I got here, I'm going to hold onto this. And by the way, trying to hold onto that is a death sentence, right? We always know anyone that holds on to anything for too long. We've seen some people do it in your industry. They try to hold on to the same way they did things.   You're either gaining ground, losing ground, getting dollar, getting sharper. Nothing stays the same. So guys, anyways, I just want to tell you guys this is Alex Spartan solar. If you don't know him, how do they find you on Instagram? It's Alex H. Smith. Guys, go check him out on Instagram. He's got some really cool stuff. You can check out some of his podcasts, his reels, kind of how he believes. And then obviously, if you're like, dude, man, I need to work for a guy like that.  Like this is kick butt. Guys, click the link below, man. I always try to give you guys access to things that will give you a better life. Not until this point have I really been able to guide you to a specific company. Now, we don't recruit people from just make this good. We don't recruit people from companies. We're not taking anybody from anywhere. We want you to know if you've been looking for something and you don't have it, well, we're going to make sure you have an opportunity to get it, okay? And if you've been following me for a while, a lot of people have asked just hundreds of thousands times, Andy, how do I join you? How do I do something with you? You know, how can I get around people like that? Bam! We just gave it to you. So we love you guys. There'll be tons more of these podcasts. We'll talk about different stuff every single time. But I'm just introducing Alex to the world. We're going to go deep on some of these. That's it. Yeah, so guys, we'll see you in the next podcast.


Now we'll talk about representation of participation. We'll start with the legislature, okay? What does the legislature look like? Yes, please. Oh yes, there was a question. So the question is asking, the question is about, we've got at the horizontal level, we've got the president in 2017, the next year, being basically a Republican party. We've got both houses representing, with majorities representing Republican parties, same party. So we have, we do not have divided government. We have the opposite of divided government, which is unified control, okay? And we've got, in the Supreme Court, four of the justices are leaning towards, you know, liberal ideas, ideals, norms, and the other four of the justices are leaning towards more Republican conservative ideas or ideals. And the ninth judge, I mean, it becomes very difficult for the court to operate with four to four, right? So we need the ninth judge. The ninth justice will be appointed next term, so from 2017, with the Congress and the president working together. And it'll most probably be, you know, the person that the new justice will be leaning towards, you know, conservatives, conservative ideas or ideals. So we have the judiciary, we have the executive, and we've got the legislature all in a way dominated by one single party. How can we talk about checks and balances in the system, right? Isn't that a good question? That's a very good question, right? The system is so intricately detailed. Yes, there will be one political party or one political coalition dominating each organ of state or branch of government, but the system is so institutionalized that it's so regime-like that it becomes, as you've seen, very difficult to make a decision unless there is collaboration, cooperation. And in this system, one may assume that this is easy. So in theory, it looks very... I mean, the process will be a smooth functioning process. It won't be a complex, intricate, inefficient system. It may run very smoothly because all, you know, branches of government are representing the same political faction or the same political consolation of forces or coalition of forces. But it still is very difficult to pass new legislation. As I've mentioned the other day, it becomes very difficult to pass legislation, especially those legislation which really expands federal jurisdiction vis-a-vis state governments. So this, there will be, or there may be, frictions from the state level, but also popular ideas or popular concepts or popular institutions. For example, Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. Will it be easy to retrench, reverse all those acquisitions? Once those middle classes, interest groups, even interest lobbies, once they're there, is it difficult, is it easy to reverse all these policies? It's still very difficult to reverse such a policy. This we shall be talking about or we'll be thinking about as we go along. You will be watching a documentary on the legislative process and the decision-making process of the Affordable Care Act. So you'll be thinking about these as you watch the documentary. Keep this question in mind. I think it's a very good question for debate as we talk about how the system works. So I don't have a hard and fast and easy answer for that. But my hunch is that my personal opinion is that it's very difficult still. Yes, there won't be frictions or less frictions in theory, but in practice, will these translate into a smooth functioning process? I really doubt it. So when we look at the legislature of the Congress here, it's the institution which concentrates most of the powers according to the Constitution. So the Constitution sets the Congress as the key or central branch of government or governance. There's always been tension between the Congress as well as the President, especially under the general rule of divided government, but even when there is unified control, there may be frictions between or among both houses of the Congress versus the President. So even when we had unified control, the President and both houses of the Congress, we still had problems, frictions, which resulted in efficiencies in the system. So no smooth functioning, no hard and fast passage of legislation is secured. So that's important to remember. A bill for it to become law, it has to pass through both houses, both the House and the Senate. It's supposed to be or it is reviewed by committee or subcommittee and then it will be signed by the President or vetoed by the President. So unless vetoed, it would be signed by the President. Let's look at the legislature in more detail. We've got once again a bicameral legislature, House of Representatives and the Senate, membership for the House of Representatives, is based on a particular state's size of population. And there are two-year terms. So members of the House are elected for two years and there are 435 members in the House. And elections take place as was the case two weeks ago. Every two years, even numbered years in the month of November. And it's the first past the post system. So whomever will get the highest number of votes will be a member of the House of Representatives, will be a House member. The Senate, the membership for the Senate is based on equal representation for each state, 50 states, each with two representatives. That makes 100 senators. And each senator is elected for six years, as opposed to two years. And one-third of the Senate, so about 30, 33 senators are renewed every two years. So we've got a splintered system. So every two years, we've got a third of the Senate being replaced by new members. So we've got 66, 67 senators remaining every two years and each serving a six-year term. But every two years, to get the pulse of the citizens. So basically, in a way, there's some kind of a rotation involved. And again, the members of the Senate, the senators are elected on the basis of a first past the post system. So whomever wins the highest number of votes will be the senator here. So just like the presidential system, first past the post really represents the electoral system here. Political parties, we have a two-party system, a clear, clean two-party system. Unlike any other systems in the party systems in the advanced industrialized countries, we do not have any third party, a large party arising or emerging into the system. So since the 19th century, we have these two parties which represents a two-party system political culture. So there is no faction coming out of either of these two large constellations or coalitions, large parties, independently running for any of the positions for which there are elections. So the parties themselves, in a way, are coalitions of different political forces. And the electoral system, which is a single-member plurality district or first past the post system, really concentrates power in the hands of the two traditional large parties. And a large geography also means that it becomes very difficult for a third party to emerge and organize at different areas in this very large country. It says large, geographically as large as Europe. But Europe, you know, consider it from Ural Mountains to the West. So it's a large-scale mass. So no one can afford a third party, will not be able to afford all those expenses, costs related to organization, mobilization, campaigning and all that as a separate third party. Republicans and Democrats, when you look at the basis of political support, traditional basis of political support, which still represents this day, we've got upper income, you know, echelons or ranks in the income distribution. We've got, I mean, those individuals are voting for Republicans. Social conservatives are voting for Republicans in general. Small business owners, small and medium-sized enterprises, those owners generally vote for Republicans. Rural, you know, when you look at the red states and the blue states, I'll show you a map. When you're within the U.S., I mean, coastal areas in the East and coastal areas in the West, except for those, we've got most inland states voting for Republicans and evangelical Christians. So they're also, you know, representing a faction within the Republican Party. Democrats, these are mostly urban. So when you look at large urban, at the county level, when you look at the map, urban areas, metropolitan areas, they vote mostly Democrats. For example, New York State is something, but New York City is something. In fact, Manhattan is something versus Queens may be something else. So there is variation with respect to urban areas versus less urban or rural areas. The elderly generally vote Democrats and this has been increasingly the case. The younger generation are more inclined to vote except perhaps for Obama, Republican. Racial and ethnic minorities have traditionally been voting Democrats, but there has been, you know, exit polls show that in the most recent elections the Latino vote, and well, the blacks seem to be voting for Mrs. Clinton, but the Latinos have been, turnout-wise have been much lower than everybody expected. Export-oriented businessmen or those who are in the export-oriented sectors are generally voting Democrats. Unionized labor traditionally have been voting Democrats and working women, which everybody expected to be higher in terms of turnout and voting for Mrs. Clinton. It hasn't been so. Much less number of women had been voting for Mrs. Clinton. But in general, if you're a woman and participating in the labor force, you're more likely to be voting for Democrat Party. In terms of how divided national government, we've talked about this. I just wanted to come back to the same thing. Divided national government at the federal level has been the rule since 1960s. The presidency and the Congress have been divided between two parties. We've talked about this. I remember this, but I thought I wanted to remind you this once again. Unified government has been exceptions or rare moments of exceptions, rare years of exception. There were exceptional years. The presidency and the Congress are dominated by one party. Only six times in 2017 during the past 50 years. When Democrats dominated those three or four years, 77 until 1980, 1993, 1994, 2009, 2010, briefly, Republicans, 2001, 2003, 2007, and now 2017. But will it last until the next elections that will take place in 2020, 2018, for the Senate, one-third of the Senate, as well as the House. And we will have 2020 as the year, the quadrinal year in which we'll have presidential elections once again. So will this, how long will this last? Will it last for a year? Or will it last for, let's say, two terms or two House terms? Or so until the next president comes to power. So will this last? That's one $6 million question as we shall be talking about. Yes, later on. I don't find it likely personally. Impeachment is, impeachment is something, it's an extreme form of intervention into the system, which we haven't seen really. I personally find it, find the likelihood to be, it is possible. The Congress, well, it depends. Don't forget, these are coalitions of political parties. I mean, these parties, there are many coalitions, there are many factions within each party. We haven't seen one faction, one large faction, separating, seceding from any of the two parties yet. I don't think that's possible in the near future. I don't see it in the foreseeable future. But we shouldn't assume that all senators or all members of the House will be voting in a party discipline to support whatever the President says. I'm not expecting that. This is what I meant when there was a question about, how about checks and balances now? There is de facto checks and balances in the sense that these political parties are coalitions themselves. So, which may mean that the House and the Senate may vote for impeachment. But personally, I'm not expecting that. I may be wrong. Please. Not to leave the presidency. I don't know. I haven't seen that. I don't think that's possible in the sense that one of your classmates also told me, asked me about this, whether that's possible. I don't see it in the Constitution. I don't see it possible. I don't think the system will work that way. The system works in a very organized manner. It ticks. It really ticks. Yes, this is one of the most inefficient systems in the world when it comes to policymaking, decision-making, but with respect to the constitutional system, it's quite clear. And the doctrine is there. Traditions are there. And you see the system to be based on collaboration, cooperation. Yes, there has been increasing polarization. But despite that, I think everybody will behave in the way that their predecessors did. Is that enough? Yeah.  And I don't think any one actor will go beyond, above and beyond what the Constitution even means. So it's a... In this sense, I call it regime-like system. It is an institutionalized system, please. Will he have immunity? That's a good question. I don't know the answer. But for impeachment, you have to be guilty of treason. Or you should be able to lie to the Congress. And then there is a vote. Okay, so for the president to be impeached, you need to jump through all those hoops. So I would find that least likely for impeachment, if we're talking about impeachment, the probability or possibility of impeachment. Will he be immune from that? I mean, would the president, according to the Constitution, be immune from... I mean, will he have the immunities to basically postpone the execution of the decision? I think there is some kind of an immunity in that respect. I mean, I don't think... See, we should look it up in the Constitution, what the Constitution says. But whatever there is, there's so much... There's so much talk about what if this happens, what if that happens. Yes, there are marches, there are protests nationwide. I don't know. I don't know what will happen, but it seems that things may calm down as the transition of power takes place early next year. So next year, let's wait and see. I don't want to say anything. I don't want to signal anything like, OK, things will go out of Pandora's box or I don't expect that. It's a stable system with all kinds of regime-like qualities. It's a highly stable system, institutionalized system within which actors will operate in a path-dependent way. Because of the dominance of Republicans in both houses of the Congress. Mr. Trump is a very interesting character in the sense that it has been... I mean, he has been the target of many Republicans, influential Republicans too, right? So it's hard to tell, hard to say what's going to happen because I don't think we've had any candidates in the history of the United States in this way. We had Mr. Trump, who was the celebrity, and Mrs. Clinton, who was also a celebrity. So we had increasing levels of polarization. So two celebrities, increasingly polarized, Mrs. Clinton getting the popular vote, but Mr. Trump is being elected. So all of this, it sounds too much, but I personally expect... I mean, having been working on the U.S., especially welfare state social policy, a little bit, having read expansion, retrenchment, cycles of social expenditures, social policy reform, I don't expect... I don't expect... So our roller coaster changes to happen in the next term. But this is my personal opinion. 2017, as we've discussed, we've got House of Representatives being dominated by the Republicans. Senate also dominated by the Republicans. Presidency, a Republican candidate. Supreme Court, the ninth appointee. The justice will be appointed by a constellation as such. And all of this really boosts interest group activity if there had been divided government. But will this mean that there's going to be more interest group activity? We'll see. But once again, these are rare moments in recent U.S. history. For the past 50, 60 years, we haven't had... For 50 years, we haven't had this constellation as a general rule. Unified control and public policy, divided government. When we had divided government, we always had, you know, two groups working across the aisle together collaborating, long-rolling, quid pro quo, tit for tat, so a lot of negotiation taking place. So this is common, but there have been moments where we had administrative or legal legislative stalemates happening. But we don't generally have a paralysis of the system. So this is what I meant. Institutionalized systems of governance, such as this, such as the U.S., will see no prolonged periods of paralysis. There may be stalemates, there may be some, you know, conflict situations, but, you know, the government being inept government halting activity will not be for a long time. Unified control, landmark research shows, Baumgartner and his colleagues have shown that landmark policy changes occur more often in unified control than in government control, divided government periods. But policy reversals are possible. You know, once again, you know, the question of Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, will they be able to reverse that policy cycle? It looks quite improbable to me. There may be some cutbacks, but, you know, an overhauling of the system, you know, reversing the entire system or reversing the entire policy looks quite improbable to me because of many reasons which include bureaucratic inertia, but also interest groups, social movements, all of which provide a check and a balance on unified control, which brings us to discussions on social movements, interest groups, and elections. Elections, there has been a long-standing commitment to democracy. Elections are proof of their evidence of this long-standing commitment. Interestingly, we see the importance of federalism here, which, you know, in which, I mean, in this system, we've got the states setting the rules for conducting elections. It is the state level, state governments that make rulings on suffrage of, you know, who is eligible to vote and vote counting, okay? So when to stop a recount? It is the, not the federal government, but the state government will say the last word on that. On the Bush recount, for example, in Florida, it was the state level which said, okay, we're not recounting this anymore, as you may remember from there. So there may be some confusion, some burnout, which gets reflected in, I mean, declining, dwindling turnout rates. I don't remember the turnout rate for the most recent election. It's above 50%, but it's below 55%, if I remember correctly. But I don't remember the exact turnout level for the time being. So all of this is really showing up in declining turnouts. 2012 electoral college map. Once again, I just wanted to show you what the electoral college system or how the electoral college system works. California citizen residents or residents and citizens in California are voting for the electors here. There are 55 electoral college votes. And whomever gets, and for example in New York, 29 electoral college votes. For Texas, 38 electoral college votes. For Vermont, just 3 electoral college votes. So based on population plus number of senators from which we have from each state. So in the large states, Florida 29, those, Pennsylvania 20, so whomever gets 270 of these will be declared president. So for Obama, it was 330 something versus for Romney, it was about 200. And in Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton's case, the numbers were in reverse. You know Obama, I'm sorry, Mr. Trump guaranteed more than 270 and Mrs. Clinton remained around 200. So as you can see, the electoral college map based on the weighted average of state polls. But this is how the system works for presidential elections. This is what happened at the county level. I got this from New York Times. The red ones, the red arrows represent Republican, you know, don't forget, this is a first pass the post system. Okay, so and those reds are representing Republican votes and the blues are representing Democrat votes at the county level. As you can see in large cities, California out, I mean like coastal areas of California versus inland areas of California. So here the rust belt generally had been voting Democrat. So this has been changing from Obama to Trump, as you can see. This is sometimes referred to as the Democratic crack down which really works for Democrats. Older workers, workers that have been overwhelmingly voting for Democrats, but this has been changing over the past, well, in the past election. So the electoral map has been changing but popular vote was won by Mrs. Clinton. Electoral college votes, it was the electoral college map that determines who becomes the president. Social movements, Americans are traditionally known to be involved in collective action. There has been, however, a declining civic engagement in time. So in this, I mean, so a very influential observer of US politics, Robert Putnam, defined it as, now we're bowling alone. The Americans are now playing the bowling game alone. So as opposed to how they were playing the game of social movements, civic engagement, in collectivities in the past. So increasingly we've seen social movements more driven by elites on an issue basis, not by revolutionary zealots or groups or youth or women. This has been changing, which also has ramifications for accountability and legitimacy. Interest groups, interest groups are organized on single issue or group of issues. They rely on money and professional staff, and they've been increasing with respect to and expanding competences, especially at the federal level. So distributory policies or distributionary policies or redistributed policies had been expanding. So did interest group activity in time. So interest group activity, lobbying had been expanding, had been increasing, as the federal government had been expanding. And interest group activity has been criticized for turning a blind eye to those who are ignored by the polity anyway. So again, all of these have ramifications for accountability and legitimacy of the overall system. So yes, there has been some interest group activity, but it's not revolutionaries, but it's more elites lobbying the government, as was the case in the example of iron triangles. So it's become more professionalized. It's become more narrow. It used to be more atomistic actors. It used to be more competitive. But now there are increasingly privileged actors who have privileged access into the system. So this has been really changing the US governance in that respect. Citizenship and national identity. Core values had been liberty, equality, democracy. Sounds like the French ideals. Distinct regional cultures have been very important. Traditionally very important. And there has been ongoing immigration. US is a country of settlement. Has traditionally been a country of settlement. In terms of percentage of the population. So look at the percentages. This is 19th century. As you can see, around potato famine in Ireland, 1940s, 1950s. Percentage of population. Basically previous decades immigration as a percentage of national population. So these are percentages. The figures here. So as you can see percentages increase. Then dwindle a little. Then late 19th century. Then early 19th century. World War I. Around World War I. Then great depression. And towards World War II. So percentage of the population. Incoming population had been decreasing. Then steady increase. To around less than 4%. So yes, percentage wise had been increasing. But immigration level in terms of millions. It used to be less than a couple of hundred thousand thousands. Then jumped up to 2 million. 1850s. Jumped up to 1880s, 1890s to more than 5 million. Then right before World War I. Jumping up to 8, 9 million. Early 1900s. Then dwindling. But then around 10 million. The most recent figures. So the makeup of the United States. The melting pot idea has been changing dramatically over time. I mean, what is U.S. citizenship? How to define U.S. citizenship has been changing over time. Okay. I think I should stop here before discussing current challenges. So we'll convene next time to discuss this final bit on the U.S. case. I'll see you next time.


Now, the appeal committee of the APC has recommended the nullification of the governorship primaries of the party in Benway state. The ministry chapter of the party has adopted direct primaries which the governorship congress held on 27 May 2022 and produced a suspended Catholic priest, Reverend Father Hyacinth Ellia Aswina. The appeal committee in the report submitted to the national chairman of the party, Senator Abdullah Yadamot today in Abuja, said the exercise should be nullified to avoid the agony of not fielding a candidate in the 2023 governorship election in Benway state. The report was signed by the Benway state APC prime election appeal committee chairman Barista Uzomaka Onyama and the secretary, Gang Dong Yang.


Hello everyone, my topic of overall presentation is unraveling the fetal circulatory dynamics in the growth-restricted fetuses with impices on the granular circulation and the particular correlations. I am the president of the government Dr. Mahesh Mandir with my co-authors and affiliation to the Department of Operative Diagnosis at JNP Nappur Maharashtra. Am is an objective of the study to evolve the patterns of the fetal and circulation by a threat or doctor in cases of the fetal growth restriction. To investigate the interrelationship and correlation among the doctor measurements and acquire from the good and the adoptive while concretely assessing their incisors and gestational issues. As we all know the growth-restricted fetuses present a considerable clinical challenge marked by the compromised fetal growth and potential adverse outcomes. I am showing you the dynamics of the fetal circulation in the square-tool initiating these pregnancies. In cases of severe or severe cases of the fetal growth restriction, and there is a deviation of the normal growth criteria between the fetal and the developmental side disrupting the intricate process. We all know that the doctor does not need to understand the hemodynamic changes in the fetal circulation with the study integrates with the ultrasound imaging and including the fetal doctor to evaluate the fetal renaissance in the healthy, healthy and the growth-restricted fetuses. The primary focus was to establish the correlation between the fetal, fetal renaissance and the doctor and the fetal growth restriction and uncovering these correlations can provide insight into the physiological adaptations and impairment in the renal circulation linked to the fetal growth restriction. This cross-sectional study has happened during the September and on 2020-23, on November 2023 with Oman attending the ANC clinic of the OBGD Department of Agents in Akkur. We have included the singleton pregnancy between the 20 to 38 weeks of gestation with maternal age in between the 19 to 35 years with confirmation of the LMP by a patient. With the exclusion criteria includes the multiple pregnancies, uterine anvilis fetus with congenital anvilis fissure, anvilis and unclear renal margins. The examination we have here takes place on the Sampson-Haris-Atee-Eho machine with transducer of the 3.7 million-guards, caribbean and transducer. The participants in distribution includes the food for two months which is divided into the croupé and the croupé. The croupé consists of the fetal growth restriction and the croupé consists of the normal pregnancies. The gestationalized determination based on the day of the last menstrual period with further confirmed by the ultrasound scan. The assessment conducted and now conducted the fetal biometric and coladopter measurements including measurements such as the heart circumference and abdomen circumference, hemorrhage and isometrial birth fetal bed. With the on-dopter PI and RI measurements updated for the critical vessels including the renal arteries, MEMC, umbilical arteries, bilateral uterine arteries. The PI calculations we are now done using the ultrasound equipment built-in software. Here we can see the renal toplar, the fetal renal toplar with the PI RI values and the toplar waveforms. Here we can see the two-dimensional renal length and two-dimensional renal sizes. Results obtained from this study have summarized into the data groups of the croupé and the croupé with the mean standard deviation variance range and variance and range. What we completed from this study was the mean age group of the croupé approximately is higher which is 26 years and the mean age group of the patients of the 25 years. While the gestational age of the croupé shows a period range between the 32 weeks to 35 weeks while the croupé shows the 34 weeks to 35 weeks. The fetal kidney measurement showcases both similar average fetal kidney sizes for both the kidneys. PI and RI are of the fetal renal arteries. Here we measured the major trend where the croupé tends to have higher PI RI values for both the fetal arteries considered to the croupé. PI values of the MEMC and the umbilical arteries were found to be relatively higher than in the croupé than the croupé. How are these values? You mean within the normal percentage limits according to the fetal Barcelona calculator. The PI analysis, further PI analysis was done and for the both the kidneys, for the both the kidneys, the mean BI of the fetal renal artery in the croupé which is around 2.5 to 2.5. Which is higher than the croupé stating that there is a statistically significant with PI value less than 0.001. Here the RI values also calculated and the analysis of data values. Here we can see there is no significant difference in the resistance between the croupé and the croupé for both the kidneys despite the slight numerical difference. The correlation study has done for GA by LMP and the kidney sizes and there is a strong positive correlation in the both the croupé noted. As the gestational age increases, there is a simultaneous increase in the size of the kidneys which indicates a consistent relationship between the gestational age and fetal kidney sizes in both the croupé. It implies that the individual kidney sizes are not affected in the cases of the EFG. The growth seems to be proportional to the progression of the gestation. Discussion, as you know the fetal growth restriction has had a multiple influence by the multiple factors like the mass of the fetus and the placenta. We can diagnose the fetal growth restriction on the ultrasound if the fetal weight is less than 10%. It is small for AH and BAP and if it is less than 3%, it is the fetal growth restriction. It is characterized by the placental incisivity with leading to the circulatory adaptations. We had the study on the fetal renal circulation adaptation. So here the previous study indicates that the reduced renal perfusion linked to the inferior nephrogenesis in EFGR which highlights the connection between the ultraternal circulation and the fetal growth restriction. The renal RTPI in EFGR focuses on the PI of the major of the renal blood flow in the fetal growth restricted cases. There is early manifestation of the ultraternal artery flow restrictions before the kidney side changes. Here we can identify the renal perfusion indicated by the increased PI due to the fetal hypoxemia. These study findings conclude the strong difference in the renal RTPI values between the normal and abnormal group with the renal RTPI sensitivities. They can be used as early diagnostic marker for the compromised fetal renal circulation in EFGR and it also such as the potential area intervention and the management strategies. To conclude the study, the comparison between both the groups and the group A being exhibit higher PI values indicating the higher renal resistance and with the stronger correlation with the renal PI values in the group A. Study strength lies in the detail fetal and maternal measurements. But limited change lies in the sample size and the data which cause the data for new interpretations. We mainly can focus on the renal RTPI index which directly measures the renal blood flow and early changes in the flow resistance precedes notably in the kidney side differences which happened in the fetal growth restriction in less stages. It also detects the altered circulation and then the size changes. It shows the significant difference between the normal and the growth restricted fetal assist. Hence, the significance of the renal RTPI impasses its role as an early indicator of the altered renal circulation and its changes before the conventional of the markers and kidney sizes. It shows the importance of the timely intervention in managing the EFGR for the fit and better of the fetal outcomes. We can use this as a multi-parametric approach which is the promise in defining the diagnostic and monitoring strategies. The future direct use can be used to validate and extend this finding and potential for re-defining the pre-analysis practices for the high-respectancies. Here are the references for my study. Thank you.