My name is Kavi Arya, I am faculty in the computer science department at IIT Bombay. I would like to share with you some thoughts and perhaps a direction. You have been taught about research methodology, how to do research. What I am going to talk to you about is how to find research problems. How to find research problems. The happy thing is that in our country at the moment, we are surrounded by so many problems that finding a research problem is not a problem. And the wonderful thing is that that opportunity belongs to us. We own those problems, which is a lot actually because people are looking for problems abroad all the time and they realize that many of the problems are in the developing countries, so they want to come here and solve those problems. We should upstage them and solve our own problem and typically I find much of the technology that we import from abroad, we are paying roughly about 8 to 10 times for that technology than what we should be paying. We have been doing projects for industry and for the military and things like that and typically some rig that costs about 2.5 crores to buy from say Israel. Something is not rocket science, it is reasonably straightforward which talented faculty and students at engineering colleges can build themselves. 2.5 crores and I have often come to a conclusion after analyzing that that if the same thing was done by local talent, we can do it for about 1 eighth to 1 tenth of the cost. So how do we find these problems? I am going to leave you with another question then I will show you a possible way to generate answers to this through our Iyantra project.  It is going to take us only 6 to 7 years to become a 2 trillion dollar economy. That means that none of us know what the meaning of that is because I mean we have grown used to such slow evolution in this country that what has happened since independence to now is going to happen from 2007 to 2013 and then after that it is going to take 2 to 3 years to become a 3 trillion dollar economy. So we are growing at an exponential rate which is similar to that of China, only we are 10 years behind. Now what is the meaning of that? The meaning of that is that there is going to be huge demand, there is going to be a tsunami of consumption, of malls opening, of products being developed, of things being sold to you, of services being in demand and stuff like that and who is going to build those things, who is going to build those products, those services and all the new technology which we need at a fraction of the cost of if we were to buy it from abroad. I will bet on it, it is going to be some talented student of yours, as much as any IIT student who seems to be going into banking jobs and abroad, many of them, it is going to be your guys who are going to come and do m techs at IIT Bombay or go straight into entrepreneurship from their own colleges and we need to use that product if you like more fruitfully and productively and we are going to show you how. As you know we are running this project called E Yantra, if you see my slide here, this comes out of years of teaching embedded systems in IIT Bombay. Embedded systems are machines where you do not see a computer, that is all and we found that robotics fits very well into this. So we want to trigger a robotics revolution in the country based on stuff that we developed. We want to create engineers who can build complex machines. Now what are these complex machines? They could be Jharukatka machines, they can be dishwashing machines, they can be street cleaning machines, they can be anything and if you go back, how do you plan to do it? By designing and deploying robots, by conducting workshops for faculty and students, by partnering with colleges, creating lots of open source content and we found that we have been trying to give workshops for the last two years and we have done about 60 workshops and trained 1600 faculty and students. But a great way to actually move ahead is to have a competition, national robotics competition. So this is what I shall speak to you about and think about how you can use this to motivate your students to do something interesting.  There might be a robotic component to it, which may be you with your students can address and solve. That is how you get a research problem if you like, by finding problems around you and solving them. This is the platform that you have, but I cannot bore you with too much detail, you can go to our website and have a look at it, e-yantra.org, there is a lot of open source. This, consider this robot as a pen. The pen is not so interesting as the stories you will write, the interesting research you will do with that pen. So, this pen if you like supports a lot of different languages, C, Esterel, Luster, Skade, open source environments like Sylab, which communication is available on this and we have a simulation engine, which is all open source. So, you can do very interesting things, so what we are urging you through this competition of ours is to take problems, we take real world problems around us and solve them in the small and create a culture. These are variants of the robot, this is how a class is, a laptop is shared with two students and a robot is also shared. So, this is what you, we would like you to do, we want your students to register at e-yantra.org for this competition. We launched it on the 15th of June and until the 15th of July, we have our site open. Selection is through an online test. Selected students will be brought to IIT Bombay and trained. We want to make 120 teams of 4 students each and we will divide them up into teams to compete to solve one of 6 themes. One is a pothole filling theme, the other is a cleaning theme, the other is a fruit picking theme and so on. We will supervise them, we will bring them here, train them, then supervise them for 12 weeks online and then choose 3 winners from each of these themes and then get them to IIT Bombay to take part in a live competition in TechFest. So, this is the way ahead, motivate and mentor your teams to come to us, host an e-yantra workshop where we will come and we will train your faculty and students also if you like. Set up e-yantra labs, we can help you with that also and we want your faculty perhaps next summer to attend through the same infrastructure and embedded systems course and to seed this all through our e-yantra project. So, this is the picture of the first lot of robots that went out and this is what e-yantra purports to be all about, engineering a better tomorrow and we feel that with your collaboration and by motivating your students, we will be able to seed some very interesting research ideas at your colleges.


Oh, you did? Okay, which one? Yes, the one that, I guess you were introducing yourself. Actually, it's this one, the one that you posted here over here as well. Yes, okay. This one. And then what you want to do is you want to go into the settings and you want to make sure that the video is public unless you meant to have it unlisted. I only did that because it said that I checked the video, you know, on YouTube because I didn't know how to upload a video and it said do unlisted, but okay. Yeah, yeah, you did a great job. Just as far as I think sometimes by default, especially in the beginning as you start to build a channel, I think by default, as you upload, the default is unlisted. Okay, you have to, you have to switch it to public. Okay. Because the only the only folks who will actually see it are people that you share the link with. Okay. So just like over here, you share the link. So if I click on it, I can see it. But as far as, as far as anyone being on your channel, they won't be able to see it. Okay, so I'll go back and do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And then you have to reload it here then. No, no, no, you just go into the settings. In fact, I can show you on my end and you want to do a lot of this from a computer as well. You can upload it from your cell phone, like record the video on your cell phone and then upload it to your YouTube channel. After that, what I would do is I would come over to a computer and update all the settings on a computer. Okay. Because you just see, you have a completely different view of the dashboard. It's very, it looks very different on a cell phone. For sure. So on a computer, it'd be, it'd be much better. So when you're, when you're on here on YouTube, just make sure you click on your profile here and you can go to your channel right there. Got it. And then once you're in your channel, you can click on customize channel. Yeah.  So video, video manager, and then all you're going to do is you're going to come over here and find that video and then, and then edit and then open it up to edit it. Okay. So here, let me give you an example. So you'll see your video right here. And all you want to do is you can either click on this right here, schedule. You can click on this, but what I would do is I would just simply click on this details, this pencil right here. Yep. And that's going to allow you to come into the full, the full settings of everything. All right. And then what you're going to do is you're going to come down here. Where did it go? They're always moving around the settings. But if I come up here, actually, it's right here. It should be under scheduled. Um, yeah, here we go. So it's under save or publish. So you have yours under unlisted. Yeah. You want to just make sure it's public. Yeah. Okay. Do that. Yeah. So that, and then I don't need to reload it to Facebook, right? No, it's already, it's already there. And is that pinned to the top correctly? Oh yeah, definitely. It's pinned to the top. But here's, here's what you want to do as well. Um, you want to park the video on, on both platforms. So in this case, now, now it's only, it's only when it comes to running, running a Facebook ad, like if you actually plan on running an ad on this video, then you want it to, to be parked on Facebook, not, not only on YouTube. Now you can always upload it to YouTube and share the link onto Facebook, just like you did. You can always do that. Okay. But you won't be able to run a Facebook ad on that video. Is there any way to get rid of the YouTube URL there? Or is that? Yeah, for sure.  Once you post the link and you click enter, like for example, let me give you, let me, let me just show you. So if I, if I copy this link and I come over here to Facebook or my business page or whatever, and I just simply paste it, what you want to do is you want to paste it and then you want to hit enter. As you hit enter, this image, the text down here will pull up.  Too easy. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what I'm saying is the fact that sharing a YouTube link is, is, is good. But what you want to do specifically for Facebook, specifically for Facebook, you want to simply take that same video and upload it to Facebook. Yeah. That makes sense. So, so you'll have, you'll have a, you'll have the, you'll have the video parked on Facebook and you'll have it parked on YouTube. Yeah. Which it is now, right? Both. So what's that? So that's what it is now. It's parked on Facebook and it's parked on YouTube. No, no, no, it's only parked on YouTube. You shared it to Facebook. Oh. So, so what, that, so that's what I'm saying. Don't, don't, don't just do that. What you want to do is you want to upload it to Facebook as well. Yeah. Okay. Don't, don't just share the YouTube link. Okay. So let me give you an example. Here's my page over here. Yes, sir. And I have, I share a bunch of YouTube videos over here. So let me show you an example. So here's my YouTube video.  That's what I did, just like you did. But this video up here. I simply took the video and I uploaded it to Facebook. Got it. So just like you uploaded it to YouTube, I'm going to also upload it to Facebook. So go to the home, home screen and then upload it there. Yes, exactly. So just like you, just like you would post anything on Facebook, same exact way. You post that video. Okay. But you post it on your business page, post it on your business page first, and then you can share it to your personal page. Okay. So, so yeah, you always want to upload it here first, just like this. This is a video that I uploaded to Facebook. Yeah. And the reason for it is because I'm running a Facebook ad on it. So if I plan on running Facebook ads on any of my videos, that video has to be on Facebook, not on YouTube. Now, again, it can be on YouTube, but and you can always share it to your Facebook. You just won't be able to run an ad on it. Got it. It has to be uploaded to Facebook, just like this one. Got it. Okay. So that's, that's what I would do with, with your, um, with your video over on your business page is I, I wouldn't necessarily share the YouTube video and, and, and, um, pin that. I would, I would, I would do exactly what I showed you. I would upload that video to Facebook. Yep. And then I would pin that. Yeah.  You could totally do that. But I'm just saying, if we plan on running an ad on it, you won't be able to run an ad on it. Yeah. And I'm not going to run an ad on that one, but okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, but however, the, these videos right here, Jay, I'm telling you, that's all it takes, man. That is your ad. All, all this takes rather than, and I touched on this on our first call, rather than thinking you need to post everywhere, rather than thinking you have to be omnipresence on every platform and, and posting on LinkedIn and Instagram and your personal page and your Facebook business page, rather than thinking all that, I'm telling you, it's easier than you can, than you can imagine. It literally comes down to one video like this per week that you're running a Facebook ad on targeting your local area. Yep. That is it, man. Like that is all there is to it. That's it. That's it. Like that. I'm trying to keep it that simple. That is it. If you were to do that, you'd be getting more deals than you can possibly handle. Now, now in your case, are you, are you dealing nationwide?  You're just annoying Indiana and I focus on the Chicago market. See, if, if you were running a, if you were running one weekly video, just like that, and you were running it every week, a different video, one every week. So let's just say, for example, every Friday, you go live with a new video. And that's a, that's a Facebook ad and you target Chicago. Yeah, you would crush it. Jay, like you would crush it. You would crush it.  Because as you start to post everywhere, it becomes overwhelming and it's a waste of time. Yeah. If you just focus in and do one video per week and run it as an ad and target Chicago, that, that, that's all you need to do. Like that's it. That's literally it. You take that same video, there's two places you're, you're parking it, you're parking it on Facebook and you're parking it on YouTube. Yeah.  That, that's all there is to it. And, and when it comes to these Facebook ads, you want to budget at least, at least to start a minimum of at least 300 a month. Like 300 a month is what I took, what I mentioned last time. Yeah. So $10 a day, that video is running for seven days and you're targeting Chicago. The following week, you do another video. You're targeting Chicago, $10 a day, seven days, and you keep going, you just keep going, you just keep doing that. You want to, you want to be omnipresence to everyone in Chicago. Yep. That's how it happens. All right. You know, and, and, and even with YouTube, like although YouTube is, is, is a very, very, very powerful platform, what ends up happening on YouTube is that we build, we build a YouTube channel, like over here on, you know, on my channel, you, as you start to build a YouTube channel, the thing that really, that it really takes over here is, is consistency.  But with YouTube, it's very similar where you want to upload at least, at least a minimum of, I mean, you want to do at least a minimum of two videos per week, minimum, minimum. Like over here on my channel, I literally upload a video every day. I know you're an animal. And all I do is I have, I just, I just document, Jay, like I document. Most people are trying to create. Most people try to find that best picture, the best positioning, the best lighting, the best, you know, background, everyone on social media is thinking that we care, like no one cares, first of all, no one cares. Yeah. And most people are trying to, trying to find that perfect video or image when no one, no one even cares. Yeah. Yeah. They're trying to create, they're trying to create magic, they're trying to create this perfect image or this perfect video. What you want to do is just document, document. That's why I love what you did over here. You're just documenting.  Looks like you're just hanging out with the family. Beautiful day. You're just documenting. Like creating. Now, may have, you may have sat back and thought about that for a few minutes. You might have thought about that for a few days. Okay, cool. In a couple of days, I'm going to go out to the backyard and I'm going to talk about this. You probably thought about it. But at the end of the day, you could have thought of that one minute prior. Like there's so many videos where I think of something one minute and one minute later, I'm pulling out my cell phone, no matter where the heck I'm at. I can be in the parking lot. I could be driving in the car. I could be at my son's school. It does not matter. I'm simply pulling out my phone all of a sudden because I have an idea. I'm pulling out my phone and I'm talking about it. That is simply documenting. Yeah, you want to document. Don't think you need to create just whatever you're doing day in the life of Jay. As you're funding a deal, pull out your phone and talk about it as you just locked a rate for a client. Pull out your phone and talk about, Hey guys, this is Jay. Just want to share with you. I just got the phone with one of our clients and we were able to lock in a 2.9. You guys have no idea how many how much money this this this client's going to save over the next 30 years. They're super fired up. Document. All we're doing is documenting. I love that. You know, we're documenting. We're not creating. We're documenting. You can be in the conference room. You could be in the office. You could be at home. You could be drinking your morning coffee. It's documenting. Yeah, that's social media. And so if you can do that, you know, once per week on your cell phone, but actually bring value, right? We're not we're not documenting, you know, as we're actually, you know what to tell you the truth. Yes, we are documenting that to documenting when you're taking the dogs out. Hey guys, this is Jay just on a morning stroll with my three dogs here. Hey, I wanted to talk to you about the market and where interest rates are headed right now. Like it's simple, Jay. Like it's documenting. Yeah, but it is. My point is, is that you're staying on topic. You're staying on topic and you're educating, you're bringing value. And it's in it's short form. It's not like it's a long form 30 minute video where I'm, you know, conducting a seminar. No, it's just a two minute short form video that I'm educating and staying on topic. And at the end of every video, every video from video number two and on at the end of every video, there's a call to action. And hey, guys, by the way, if you click learn more, it will take you straight to my webpage where you can download your free 2020 home buyer guide on what it takes to qualify for your next mortgage. See you guys there. So at the end, at the end of every video, there's a call to action to download your free PDF, your free guide, your free home buyer guide, your free interest rate guide, whatever guide you want to put together, but that becomes your bait and that becomes the call to action after every single video that has to be at the end of every video. All right. So so if you can do that, that that that's how you that's how you win. You're educating people on the on the front end through that video. It's always Jay. Hey, there goes Jay again. He's in my newsfeed. I'm not friends with him. I don't like his business page. I don't know him. But he keeps showing up in my newsfeed. Yeah, it lives a couple miles away and this guy keeps educating me on mortgages. Let me see what he's doing. Yeah. And so not only are you educating and in grabbing people's attention on the front end, which is the video, but you're also giving them something of value on the back end.    You're clicking on these emails that I'm sending you because I could track it all through my email system. Right. Yeah. And that's nurturing the list. That's that's building a relationship. That's getting Jay more value via email. So after I capture him on the front end, I'm now nurturing him on the back end via email. And in those emails, I'm also getting people to schedule an appointment. Right. That's those emails that you're getting from me. So at the end of so if you're watching any of these videos that I'm sending you via email after you download the book in each video. What am I telling you? I'm telling you, hey, guys, and by the way, click the button below taking straight to my calendar where you could schedule a call. Yeah. Yeah. So that's all I'm doing is I'm getting you on the front end by giving you something. And then and then on the back end, I'm simply educating you and bringing more value. But the call to action is to get you to schedule a call. So the front end, the video, the call to action is to get you to click learn more to download the book to download my PDF to download my free home buyer guide. And then on the back end via email, my call to action in these emails, whether it's a video like I do via email or whether it's just text via email, the whole call to action in the in the emails is to get you to click the calendar to schedule a call. Yeah. So it all starts with a weekly ad targeting Chicago. If you can keep that up consistently, then the whole back end becomes full. That funnel is always full and people are scheduled appointments. Yeah. That's that's good. I need to get that witch or not that wicks, but I need to really get out of Wix and do that part. Yeah. The Cartra Cartra is I mean, I've seen every platform under the sun and Cartra it's not that it's it's not that it's better. I mean, if I just sit here and, you know, convince me how it's better here and it has the tools. It has the tools. That's what we need. The three main tools that we need is we need an online calendar. We need an email auto responder and we need landing pages. Yes, those are the three. And if it wasn't for Cartra, those three would all be individual separate services, separate monthly bills. That's what everybody pays. So nine out of 10 marketers on the internet that are actually trying to capture leads, pay three different companies. If they're not aware of Cartra, they're paying. That's just how it always been. We pay 100 bucks a month for landing pages and then we pay 50 bucks a month for our email auto responder. And then we pay another 30 bucks a month for our calendar. That's how it all that's how it is. Yeah. But yeah, but with Cartra it's all in one for for I think it's like ninety nine dollars a month. Yeah. And there's a 14 day trial. But anyone that I that I refer to that software, Jay, I end up giving all I end up giving them all my time for free. Yeah. So not only are you going to have a great software, but you can always reach out to me. We can always jump on a call. In fact, I'm in a Cartra account right now. I'm looking at different. This is for another client of mine. I'm looking at different, you know, functions. I'm helping them switch out their their funnels and email automation so I can always jump on with you and give you my time and help you with it. So that's awesome. That's an added benefit for sure because no software is going to is going to do that. So not only do you have my time for free with with Cartra, but we also have two trainings every week. So every Tuesday and Thursday at four p.m. Eastern Time. Cartra support does a live Q&A where it's them on screen share just like this and there's answering questions. Hey, how do you do a landing page? Hey, how do you set up an email autoresponder? Hey, how do you change the colors on a page? Like any random question that people have they jump on for an hour and they just walk us through everything. That's awesome. So that is tremendous support. Like no software company does that. No none of these wicks like click funnels. None of these none of these other landing page companies do that. So so that's amazing. But that that that's needed for those that are running Facebook ads. If you're not running Facebook ads or any type of ads like that to tell you truth, you don't you don't need it. Yeah, yeah.  No, I'm just saying you won't need to be spending 100 bucks a month. I would say don't even get it. If you're if you're not really going to be running ads. Well, I'm I'm committed to getting it. It's just I want to get the page lights up. Yes. You know, maybe I'll run the Wix thing for three months or something like that in order to start to build some some money in the pocket so I can spend the 300 bucks and then, you know, jump on Karcha, but I need to you know, I need to fund some deals. I'm just yes, for sure. For sure. So I got I got two things and then I need you to help me wrap up because then my boss left and he's throwing all of his 550s credit score shift to me. Oh man. Oh man.  Did you see my can I share my screen? Yes. No, first of all, I don't see my like ad on my Facebook page. Let me. Can you see my screen? I see you. And I know right there. Let me pull it up. We'll start seeing like an increase over the next over the next couple of days, Saturday, Sunday. We'll start to see an actual increase. Let me know if you can see my screen. I see your picture in my name. Let me share the screen again. OK, so here's your actual like it. So it's running. It's running on my side, but it's running from your page. Love it.  Did you get my email? I sent you a picture of it. I sure did. Oh, awesome. Let me show you what it looks like as it as it goes live. So it's live now, but we'll start to see an increase over over the weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and we'll see an increase fast like it's not a long term ad. It's like in a few days we'll be at our we'll be at our goal. But this is this is the back end of it. So as I click on this and I and I look at it in the news feed, here's what it looks like in the news feed. So as people are scrolling through, they come across the ad. Yeah. And then if I unlike the page, this is what it really looks like. If I unlike this. So just like as I mentioned in every other in every video, every ad, it's all about clicking learn more. Yeah. With the like ad, it's like page. Yeah. So people come across this love real estate like page and share. And so and so we'll start to see that climb up climb up this weekend. OK. And then for the YouTube, did you see my thank you video? This one right here. No. Let me show you. I'm going to jump on. Share the screen. Yes. See that.  Hello. Try sharing again. I'm trying to but it doesn't come up on the bottom. Let's see. No, not that video. What's the deal? Over here. See it. No. Click on the green button again. The share screen. Yeah. Yeah. I see you. Yeah. You may have to share a screen again. Yeah. I got it. And I enjoy that. Start video. No.  I'm sorry, David. I'm not. No, no worries. No worries. I just did a thank you video that doesn't come up on the bottom. That's maddening. I go like this. Now do you see anything? No, not yet. Oh, never mind.  There we go. All right. See this screen over here? Yes. OK, so there I that's the form. You've already seen that. And then if I say sending my free analysis goes here. Thank you for your request. And then I recorded this quick. Awesome. Thanks for requesting your free buy versus rent analysis. I prepare each analysis for the individual that requested the information. So if I don't happen to be in the office at the moment, it may be a couple of hours before I get your report prepared. When you get your report, you'll find that it's loaded with lots and lots of solid financial information to help you make a decision whether buying a home or continuing to rent is right for you. If you have any questions at any time, I've put my contact information below. Feel free to give me a call or certainly be checking your email for your free analysis report. Bye for now. Love it. That was it. Does this always come up? Yes, when it's on YouTube. OK, so if anything, can you upload a video to Wix? Yes, probably. I'll have to check on that. Yes, you may be able to. You may not be able to. But but yeah, definitely check. If if anything, that could be that could be a video that's just on Wix. Yeah, therefore, they don't see all that.  So, you know, that's where I'm at. You know, I'm with you 100 percent.  I love talking to you. You're very personable. That's what I need. Jay, thank you. I'm with you, man. I'm with you. Let's do this. Yeah, I talked to a attorney yesterday and I said, man, I need a realtor. I said, I need a realtor referral to an attorney because I need one of these idiots I can talk to. Yeah, that's the whole thing. It's all communication with me. I love it. I'm I'm I'm available and I'm available, Jay. So just, you know, reach out if you ever have any questions or, you know, ready to take on the next step. I can either I'd love to either teach it or run these Facebook ads yourself or maybe just help you in the beginning, get it started until you start cranking. But that's where your ROI is going to be, man, is when you start targeting Chicago and taking them to a landing page to capture the lead. Is your compensation, David, is driven by Cartra subscription on the car? Yes. Yeah, on the Cartra side, yes, they there's an affiliate program where they just simply sent they just simply give me a referral fee, not much at all. But but but that's it's a residual. So my whole job with Cartras to help people succeed with it. So they end up keeping it and my residual income keeps building. In fact, I did a video a couple of days ago on my YouTube channel. In fact, it's this one over here. Passive income. Yeah, this one is where I'm talking about how I make, you know, just a passive income on these on these on this basic software. As I refer it to people and get my clients on it. So yeah, that that's my incentive over here on Cartra to help you be successful with Cartra. So you're, you know, you keep it. What I what I do do, though, is I coach on Facebook ads. So there's two types of clients that end up coming back. So after we do the like ad, there's two types that come back. One one type of client will come back and say, David, I'm ready for step three. I'm ready to start running these weekly ads to my city. Can you coach me and teach me how to do them? And that's where I have a coaching program, not a lot at all. A few hundred bucks where we set up a handful of coaching calls and I teach you how to run these ads yourself. Yeah, that's person number one, the one that actually wants to learn how to do it themselves. And then person number two is the obvious. That's the person who doesn't want to do it themselves, but they just want to delegate it to someone else. And so that's when they end up just bringing me on for a monthly retainer, not a whole lot at all, a few hundred a month. That's when they bring me on and they just delegate everything to me. And what I end up doing is I end up running all their Facebook ads for them. They don't have to touch a thing. All they have to do is upload one video per week and that is it. You don't touch anything else.  I'll make sure leads are coming in and I'll manage their entire culture account. That's ultimately I want to baby step and do that. I want to get to that point. I mean, here's the honest to God on it. You've been a L.O. Yes, you know that once you start to get above 10 or 12 apps of a month, you know, you are really at a point where, you know, you're pushing it to keep things going. And so, you know, the manager that is on vacation, he does 30, maybe 35 a month. I love that's crushing it. He is crushing it and he doesn't do much of this stuff at all.  But he's got, you know, a business that just keeps going. But he's been doing it for 26 years. I haven't. How does he get his business? Is it just by at this point? Is it just word of mouth? He's got so many real referrals and he's on the South Side of Chicago. If you know, it's very clicky and he just, you know, he's one of those South Siders and just he rolls. Wow. Right on, man. That's that's crushing it. When we're when we were doing deals, we thought 20 a month was a good number. You know, we thought we were crushing it at 20 a month, but someone at 30 plus, that's that's killing it. Yeah. He's an animal and he's he's a great coach for me. I mean, he's taken me under and, you know, so that's why I just I'm tired of being just one of the guys. Yes. Yes, 10. Yeah. Time to take it up. 10. Well, see, here's the deal.  You have these these these guys that have been in the business forever and have it like that. And that's great. But today, if we're going to do any marketing at all, I'm just convinced that it's here on social media. And if we're a local business, it's through Facebook advertising. Yeah, that's just that's just what I'm convinced on. I'm just, you know, I'm a marketer, but I'm I'm obviously a businessman as well. And I just see where the where the attention is at. So if I don't have a huge book of business or if I'm not partnered with a bunch of referral agents, I have to market somehow some way. It has to be on social media. If I'm only building a local business, it has to be through a Facebook app. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's just what I what I pitch. You know, it has to be it has to be unless we're nationwide. If we're a nationwide brand and we're dealing and we're taking on clients everywhere, then building a social media brand as far as posting on every platform and Jay's active on Instagram. He's active on LinkedIn. He's active on Twitter, on Facebook, on his business page. If you were taken on clients from all over the country. But if you're only taken on clients or or I should say if you if you prefer to only take clients in Chicago, for example, then it's a Facebook ad 100 percent. Yeah. You know, yeah. So so I mean, kudos to that guy for crushing it like that. But for everybody else that actually has to market, we got it. We got to do something. That's one percent of the LOS out there. You know, yeah, for sure. One to two a month and they just kind of limp along. Yeah. That don't work. And here's my my last question and then I got a run and I surely apologize for that. No worries, Jay. I have a realtor that I really like. And she's someone in the same position that I am. She's committed. She, you know, her and I are both Homes for Heroes affiliates, you know, where we give up part of our compensation to bring these Homes for Heroes into their their home. And I think it'd be kind of fun to entertain the idea of her and I starting up our own Facebook page and then rolling on to you, give it to you and just let you run a, you know, realtor lender page. Is that something you think that would work?    You guys can do videos together and talk about that whole process with the lender and the and the agent. Like there's so many creative ideas that you guys could talk about and and and get on video. Yeah. I haven't talked to her about it, but I'm thinking that would be super fun.  Yes. You guys would do very, very well. I haven't I have not seen and I and I'm telling you, Jay, like, trust me when I'm saying this, this is a fact. At this point, since just since just 2016 alone, I've literally looked at tens of thousands of Facebook business pages like literally. I'm not joking. Tens of thousands, not thousands, not hundreds, tens of thousands of Facebook business pages for real estate agents. And I haven't seen one page like that where it's an agent and a lender or an L.O. Like I haven't seen one single page like that. Yeah. So that's very unique, very, very, you know, creative. And I love that idea. Yeah. Well, I'd like to keep mine separate and then I'd like to do that one as well. Yeah. For sure. For sure. So here's I think where you're going to go and I'll go to is once we have a thousand lakes, then we need to get back on a call and strategize next step. Yeah. Yes, because the likes are one thing. Like those likes are going to come from everywhere. We're targeting all of Facebook. We're targeting everyone on Facebook who fits the interests of home ownership. So that's a very general broad ad. That's not where our leads are coming from. We're going to get that like number high so we can have just the credibility on the page. But after that, yes, it's back on to strategize for these weekly ads. Yes. And I'm telling you, it's that simple. That video right there, man, that's all you got to do. That's all you got to do. Even the one in the in on the thank you page with you inside of the was at your home office. That right there is perfect. Like that. That's perfect stuff, man. One minute, two minute, three minute videos of teaching me something in the process of, you know, purchasing. I just got to get a little more loose. It's a little stiff, but, you know, you're already there, man. You're already there. You're already there. I can't imagine what your what your third, fourth, fifth, fifth, sixth and seventh video is going to look like because that one was great. Yeah, good. And I'm telling you, man, I've been doing I have over here on this YouTube channel, I have almost 800 videos. So trust me when I say what I see what I say, like this is all it takes. You don't need anything more fancier than that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's do that.  I really want to do this. I want to make this, you know, like my number one and maybe my only advertising and expenses is all going to be into this, creating these funnels and getting on Kertra and working on it. Yes, I'm ready, man. I'm ready. So stay in touch. Email me, message me. We'll jump on any time. And I'm I'm excited to see you grow on social media. OK, thank you, brother. Yes, sir. Right on, Jay. All right, brother. Have a great weekend. You too. Thank you, sir. Bye bye.


And then you don't even know that there was a five clause script with sub options and alternative spending paths behind this. All you see is the route the tap route. Taproot activation is coming fast with ninety five percent of minor support needed and more than ninety one percent currently flagging for activation this long in the works protocol improvement has implications around scalability privacy and more. I'm Adam be Levine and this is speaking of Bitcoin for today's session I'm joined by the other host of the show Stephanie Murphy. Hi, Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Hello, and Jonathan Mohan. Hey, so in this episode we're going to discuss very briefly in as accessible terms as we could get to what taproot is why it matters and what it means in the bigger picture of Bitcoin's evolution as prices for the token it will eventually power hit all time highs. So, Andreas, can you just start giving us a quick rundown of what taproot actually is? Sure. Taproot is a package of changes being proposed for the Bitcoin protocol. And taproot is also the name of one of those changes, the other two being a change called tap script and a change called Schnorr signatures. All together Schnorr signatures, tap script and taproot together have been bundled in order to get the maximum effect in terms of privacy in a single proposal called taproot. This is planned for introduction into the Bitcoin protocol sometime in twenty twenty one. OK, so what do these proposals actually do? So these proposals do three main things. They improve the scalability of the Bitcoin system. They massively improve the privacy of the system. And they also set up some foundational scaffolding, if you like, for future improvements and new developments that can be built on top of them. When I hear taproot, I always hear the phrase scriptless scripting sort of in the same topic. Are they related? Does taproot enable that? And what the heck is a script with that script? Yes, they are related. So here's the bottom line. It all starts with Schnorr signatures and Schnorr signatures are a signature protocol that is different from the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm that is used in Bitcoin. The reason that Sadochi didn't use Schnorr signatures, even though they were invented in the seventies, is because they were in patent until two thousand eighteen, I believe. Oh, the least cypherpunk thing I've ever heard. Oh, it's patented. This anonymous cypherpunk can't use patented cryptography. Well, it certainly makes it difficult for anybody else to implement any libraries that would work with this system. So we're going to go into a bit of detail about this. And it gets a little bit wonky for people who are newer to kind of the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. But the basic idea here is that when improvements come to Bitcoin or any chain out there, oftentimes they come in the form of a new type of address. Right. So an address that does one thing might be different visually. Like it might actually look different and you might be able to tell when you're looking at a transaction, what kind of transaction it is. One of the big things that this technology or at least part of this technology does is it makes it so that those things are impossible to tell apart. They all look the same. Now, at first, that's going to not work terribly well because it's a new standard and it'll just be another one of the many different types of ways that people can identify things. But as time goes on and as implementation of it becomes more ubiquitous around the different parts of the ecosystem, different wallets, different exchanges, things like that, then that problem will actually condense into just this single new type of address that will make it much easier at least to do these sorts of things privately without necessarily people knowing exactly what you're doing. The other thing is that a lot of the ways that we do things right now, as far as like if you want to have, you know, a multi-party lockbox, right?  Not only does that look different, but it takes up a lot of space on the blockchain and that makes it more expensive and it makes it so that fewer people can fit those types of transactions into the blockchain without pushing up the price of what it's going to take to do that. This also solves that because just as it'll make all of these different types of transactions look the same, well, it can actually take multiple types of transactions or multiple individual transactions and combine them into a single transaction, which, again, has very positive privacy implications and also has scalability implications is better for that. Now you can fit more in there and it makes it cheaper for everybody, too. So now let's get into kind of the detail of this. So Schnur signatures like elliptic curve digital signatures are basically a mathematical way of proving that you have control over a private key by producing a digital signature, which is a number that is derived from applying your private key together with a message fingerprint to say, here, this message has been signed, the message often being a transaction. Now Schnur signatures are interesting because they have a couple of very, very useful properties that elliptic curve digital signatures do not have. To put it simply, one of the really interesting properties is that you can aggregate them in such a way that the sum of a set of signatures is the same as the signature of the sum of the private keys, meaning that instead of presenting five signatures for five private keys that can be verified against five public keys, you can present one signature that is the sum of the five signatures. That can be verified against the five public keys summed together as one public key to prove that whoever signed this was in control of the sum of the five private keys as one private key. The advantage of this is that if you're presented with a single signature against the single public key that proves ownership of a single private key, you can't tell that there was actually five people who composed that together. And in that you get two effects. One has to do with scalability. It has to do with the fact that you could produce and verify one signature for five different parts of a transaction or even potentially five different transactions in a block. So that's an aggregation capability. The other is that you can hide complex scripts as a single signature on a single public key, which makes it look like a simple payment. Let's take a specific example. Let's say you're closing a lightning channel. A lightning channel is a two of two multi-seg. If you sign that as a two of two multi-seg, everybody can see it. Everybody knows it's a lightning channel. It's kind of obvious, right? But if instead you aggregate those two signatures as you're closing the channel and you present it as a single signature on a single public key, no one can tell that this is a channel. It just looks like a straightforward payment the one person signed for. And that massively increases what's called the anonymity set. It makes every payment look like a simple payment, even if it's a channel, even if it's a multi-seg, even if it's a complex script. Now, just like we saw with the implementation of SegWit several years ago, once this goes into effect, if it goes into effect, but presumably it will, you would have to move coins into a Taproot-compatible address in order to be able to do these kinds of transactions or is that incorrect? Yes. First of all, Taproot introduces a new address type. It actually uses the versioning capability of SegWit. So what we have today as native SegWit addresses is SegWit version zero, which was introduced in 2017. And Taproot will be SegWit version one. So today, addresses start with BC1Q and SegWit V1 addresses, I believe, start with BC1P. And what that means is that we will see a slightly different address format. And to get the full benefits, you have to start using Taproot in your wallet, which means your wallet has to implement Taproot. So we're going to see a hodgepodge of wallets implementing this over time after it gets implemented in the Bitcoin protocol. Yes. So like the previous changes, this is backwards compatible. You don't have to use it. It will become available. Once it becomes available, it's a valid type, and then you can use it. If you decide to use SegWit V1 type scripts and addresses, then you can use all of the different functionalities. Now, so far, I've only talked about Schnorr signatures and the aggregating scalability and privacy capabilities of that. There's a couple of other changes happening here. So another big part of it is this idea of scripts. So scripts are basically like Bitcoin's version of smart contracts, right? You can build actual smart contracts at higher layers built on top of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin itself does support something that feels and works a lot like simple smart contracts in the form of these scripts, right, Andreas? That's correct. A script is a very simple type of program. And in Bitcoin, the programs only do one thing. They give you a true or false answer. True means you are allowed to spend this. False means you are not allowed to spend this. So if you can produce from the script an answer that is true, that means you fulfilled all of the conditions and you can spend it. So Bitcoin has a scripting language that allows you to specify conditions to spend something. And the most obvious condition is show a signature that proves you have the private key and then you can spend this. That's obvious. And it's a fairly simple short script. It gets even shorter with Snore signatures and Tapper. But that's not really the big scalability improvement. The big scalability improvement comes from more complex scripts. So if you have a complex script that says, here are 10 keys. If three of these keys sign, then you can spend it. Or if two of these keys sign, but 90 days have passed, then you can spend it. Or if this key signs while producing a hash of this other message and also 120 days have passed, then you can spend it. So that's three or four different conditions. And these conditions are specified in a script. Now, if you wanted to spend with the script, you would have to present the entire script and then show which part of it you're using and provide all of the prerequisites. So you could say, here's the entire script, all of the conditions that are required. And also I'm using the second clause and I have two keys and 90 days have elapsed and therefore I can spend it. Great. And the Bitcoin network will recognize that and allow you to spend it. The problem is, that's a very, very long transaction. And if you're signing lots of inputs, it gets longer and longer and longer. What this Tapper enhancement does is it hides all of these different conditions in a tree using a technology called Merkle trees, which is also used in compressing all of the transactions into a block. And so instead of providing a list of conditions through a long script, instead you provide a tree and you say, is this tree specifies all of the conditions? I'm only going to show you the hash of the top of the tree. And when you want to spend it, you say, I'm going to use the second clause in the tree. Here's a proof that shows that that clause was part of the tree, but I'm not telling you what other clauses exist. The first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth clause that exists, you will never know about. I don't even need to show you. And therefore the proof I provide is very, very short. That concept was first introduced as a concept I believe in 2014. It was called Merkleized Abstract Syntax Trees. We talked about it on the show many times. We talked about it extensively in 2016 and 17 in the run up to Segwit and Tapper finally makes it a reality. So this feels kind of zero knowledge proofy where you can demonstrate that something is correct without having to disclose what the something you're proving correct is. Is that sort of in the same ballpark? Somehow, yes. Essentially, you're shielding all of the parts of the script that you're not exercising to spend. And that's the Merkleized Abstract Syntax Tree part of Tappered. But there's an even better one, which is that in the example I gave before, you say, here's 10 keys. If three of them sign, then you can spend. If two of them sign and you have 90 days, then you can spend. If one of them signs and you have a hash and 120 days, then you can spend. But in almost all of these types of scripts, there's also the case where everyone agrees. This is called the K of K, the unanimous option. And that is simply all 10 keys agree. And in many of the protocols that you construct over Bitcoin or corporate spending environment or other types of situations, it's actually always possible to get a unanimous consent instead of the individual spends. And you might be able to make the vast majority of spends with the unanimous consent option. With Tappered, the unanimous consent is produced as a single signature that is aggregated from all 10 keys, for example, against a single public key that is aggregated against all 10 public keys. And that appears to everyone on the network as a simple payment. And then you don't even know that there was a five clause script with sub-options and alternative spending paths behind this. All you see is the root, the Tappered. And that's why it's called Tappered. And so how this gets to being more privacy focused is if we compare Bitcoin to ACH, the world we're in right now is the Ethereum world and the Bitcoin world, where if ACME wants to pay Warner Brothers, you not only see the payment occurring, but you see the entire contract and the negotiation and the agreement and all of that gets disclosed. But what Tappered's going to allow you to do is when ACME and Warner Brothers has a deal, you just see the end of the deal, which is, hey, some money went from ACME to Warner Brothers. And in fact, you might not even see that, because if ACME and Warner Brothers are represented by some kind of aggregating payment channel, like through a lightning channel, you'll see an aggregated signature that looks like some other party that's unnamed has signed for this. But what you don't see is that behind the scenes, that's actually 10 different payments being made. So you get all of these aggregation capabilities and aggregation also means privacy. So that's one of the big capabilities. Now, all of this is immensely technical. For most Bitcoin users, what this will mean is that their wallet will be able to do an upgrade to the current address format. It's a relatively simple upgrade for wallets that have already implemented SegWit, implementing SegWit v1 as opposed to just SegWit v0 is not a huge upgrade. The code is already integrated in the test libraries. It's running on the test networks and the liquid network. And it's already incorporated in all of the application level libraries that build on top of Libsecp. And so it should be a fairly easy upgrade for wallets. And once that's done, the obvious thing that's going to happen for most users is simply their transactions are going to get cheaper. That's it. But what's happening for more sophisticated users is that all of their scripts that used to be a needle in a haystack now become a needle in a needle stack. I guess I was wondering, like, if there's any good reason that this should not be implemented, like, why would someone oppose this? Or what have the mice just not, like, done their research on it? Or is there any kind of security concern as Bitcoin gets more complex and potentially adds more features? There's always, like, a trade-off between, you know, security and complexity? Stephanie, my gosh, I never took you for a status. There's no such thing as one solution in the free market. There's 50 solutions. One of the issues with Taproot is it's the Ben and Jerry's delight of which flavor do you go for? I think Jonathan's correct in one way, which is that there have been several rounds of review and improvement on the whole set of the proposals. And we're getting to the finish line where the code is getting to stability. The proposals are stable. The address format is stable. In fact, the latest address format was only proposed last week. Now, the next part is difficult. The next part is activation of this on the Bitcoin network. And in the past, we have seen, to the shock and horror of those involved, that what should have been a relatively non-political scalability improvement became very, very hotly debated, became a lightning rod for a political battle of power, and eventually became a very difficult activation. I think a lot of the Bitcoin Core developers and wallet developers do not want to repeat of that scenario. So this is being approached very, very carefully to make sure that it does not become a fight. A lot of consideration, a lot of review, a lot of testing, and an activation process that gives everyone a lot of time to decide. Now, contrary to what Adam hinted at the beginning, we do not have an activation process yet. The activation process itself is still being debated. One possibility is what's called a BIP9 activation, which is an activation where you have to reach a threshold of 95% to which point it gets locked in, and two weeks later, it's activated. But there's no deadline. This can be below activation forever. This is what was used for Segwit. It's not a very popular option because of the opportunity to politicize that decision. An alternative is called BIP8. BIP8 is a threshold activation with a flag day, which means miners have the opportunity to signal their approval for this change. And if 95% of the miners approve of this change and signal that in their blocks, then the change gets locked in, and two weeks later it gets activated. But if they don't, then at a certain date, it gets locked in and gets activated anyway. So they can activate it sooner, but they cannot postpone it. And so that's being looked at as a better approach. So recently, in order to decide how best to activate it, one of the developers did a poll. It's a very, very old-school approach. They posted on various forums and said, hey, if you are interested in telling me as a miner what you think we should do, send me your opinion. Do you think we should go BIP9? Do you think we should go BIP8? Or some other combination? And are you in favor or not of Taproot? And eventually, they got more than 90% of the miners by hash power to signal privately by messages or through public postings and tweets that, yes, we support Taproot and we would prefer BIP8, or we would prefer BIP8 with a one-year threshold, or we would prefer BIP9 modified this way. And from that poll, that informal poll, I expect over the next few months, we're going to see an actual activation plan be put in the code and the possibility of activation sometime in 2021 or 2022. This is not imminent. This is not coming to a blockchain near you in the next few months, but we are on the final stretch. Okay, that's really interesting, just like you brought up the activation of previous changes was controversial, to say the least. But this time, it seems like there's been more of an effort to build consensus before anything happens, and that's interesting. We could do a whole show about that. Well, we're definitely going to do a whole show all about that. And let's be real, the reason why that particular one was contentious is because there were two narratives about what Bitcoin was going to be. And different priorities came along with those narratives. And really, what we saw was a battle of narratives where one was a winner and we moved on from there. I think it was more fundamental than that, which is it was a battle of wallets because at the end of the day, it was the miners that signaled. And Jihan had access to a technology called ASIC Boost, which if he used, if Seguin didn't exist, could make him more money, but he was never going to use it. So don't worry about it, guys. Well, that's another angle too. But like I said, this is a complex topic, and I don't think we can simplify it for the end of this episode. So let's save it for one in a week. Let's fight the scaling debate again now. In the last show, we talked about big banks and behemoth institutions that want to make changes to Bitcoin. And Tapper as a package seems like a change that upholds privacy. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, which is something that big institutions wouldn't necessarily support. This is where it gets complicated. This actually, in some ways, it throws down the gauntlet. This is a proposal to improve privacy in Bitcoin in a way that also opens the door for future privacy improvements on top of it in such a way that it will make it challenging for regulators to keep up in a game of whack-a-mole against decentralized innovation. So there is a possibility, and we are already seeing pressure for miners to conform to expectations of regulators about what does and doesn't go into a block, and to do various kinds of surveillance and control of block contents. Now, that may start putting miners a bit more in the crosshairs of regulators, and we'll see. Hopefully, this isn't the fight. Hopefully, this one just sails through over the next year or year and a half. And we get to a more private situation with Bitcoin. We get better privacy. We get better scalability. And then we live on to fight another day. And so with all of that said, that is all the time we have for this episode of Speaking of Bitcoin. Thanks to all of you listening and to my fellow hosts for sitting in on today's session. Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll be digging into the good, the bad, and the ugly of blockchain voting. We'll see you next time.


Hey, what's good y'all? It's your boy Dump in the Down Show of France. I'll be back for another K-Pop reaction. Now, what we're going to do tonight is Stray Kids' S-Class music video. So we're going to do that tonight. All right, so please hit the like button, ring that bell, share, subscribe, subscribe, and also make sure you check out my Patreon because of the fact that I do four videos on there with the music videos where just in case they try to destroy my YouTube channel and have me delete them because of copyrights, you can find it on Patreon when you watch the whole day full video, all right? And all my other videos that's going to be coming out on this channel. So yeah, and also one more thing and we'll get started on this. I just I'm starting to take pre-orders of my I Am Dance t-shirts. It's my brand that I've been running for over like 12 years now and my shirts are available. So if you would like to continue to support me and my work that I do as an artist and easy in the content that I create, you can pre-order now and you will be getting your merchandise this month. No, no, no. Well, when you watch this, it's July 1st. So this month I will be mailing out all the pre-orders. OK, all right, got it. OK, back. All right, so in that, y'all, let's get into it. Straight kids, let's see what we got. So we got going on in three, two, one. I'm here for it, looking like a movie. I like that. I like that. I like that. What we got? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. First off, I love the intro. I love how it came in. I thought it was going to hit a beat like real, real fast.  I really did. I like this. I'm already liking this. And y'all know, I don't watch a lot of music videos like I used to. So for me to like this, it said something. I like that. That was cold. Mmm. And I love how they did the choreography and the connection to it. It was matching. I think I would have loved that shot if I had a music video and I made up that choreography. I'm not even mad how they recorded that part. What do you think about that? You let me know. Now, this right here, I like how this came in. I thought it was about to be crazy and it hit me with something subtle. I like different. I'm for the different. I like this. I like this. Yo, yo, I didn't even think I didn't expect this. It's been a while since I watched Stray Kids, but I really, this was tight. I love this. Hey, keep playing. I'm going to keep watching more music videos if y'all want me to because I'm getting this now. Let's see here at the mirror. This was this was called to because they still in a position in the choreography.  This is cold. Okay. Okay. I don't really have nothing to say right here. I don't. Yeah. Okay. Cold transition. If Carter was standing right here right now, he's probably running around doing something creative, but he would love that transition. He would have banged with that. We got to hit him up. Y'all find out where he at right now. Hey, I like that transition into the choreography. Did y'all notice that when y'all was watching this? Look at this. Okay. The set up. Right. Now watch this. It gets here. Boom. And then you can see the whole group set up. And then I love how it's going to That's raw. I like that. I like that shot. Hold on. Let's go. Hmm. This is a very creative music video for real. Okay. Hold on. Let's digest that for a second. Water break. Now I'm just putting some water in this thing. Now for me, y'all know I don't like, I don't watch a lot of music videos. You know what I'm saying? So for me to really like this, this is dope. This is really, really dope. Like I want to talk about my shots real quick. Okay. So the first, like the very beginning of the video, I love these shots from here. I already banged with these shots. These shots right here were cold. All these shots right here, I was here for all of this. I was here for all of this. This was cold. Whoever thought of this, great job. Great thinking. Now this part right here, it was cool. Not my favorite part, but the part that I do rock with, it wasn't my favorite, but doesn't mean I had some parts where I was like, hey, I did it. This was cool. This was cool. You know what I'm saying? I like these, how they're playing with the music, the action, the close-up, the kick, transition. Also different to feel. But this right here, this was a money shot right here. Like I really like this shot. Yes, I know the music is on mute. I'm doing that on purpose because I want to actually talk about what I like. And the music is loud over here. Okay, so that's why, not because of YouTube. It's because I want to talk about the parts. This part, and then here, and then this whole setup. And I love how the color is, how the color feels. It's like, I don't know, it gives me this 1950s type of color scheme, Harlem Renaissance, you know what I'm saying? Like the, you know, that gangsta, the mob feel. Boom. And then right here. I really do like it, I really do. So I was all with this, I was all with these parts. I had, those were my great shots. This right here, it was cool. This was cool, this was cool. You know what I'm saying? This was cool. Now, this part right here. When he transitioned into this, when it came into the hand, right here, this was cold. Matter of fact, let's play some music a little bit right here. Boom, cold. I was with it. But I think the first half for me is my favorite shots right now. Listen, y'all know how I am about that red. Y'all know what I'm about to say? Y'all know how I am about that red. We're getting into it, let's go. By the way, they was using, you see the wrist rolls? All of this, it's coming from locking. Got that feel a little bit of locking into that. In the middle of me talking, I just saw it coming in. And I lost my whole thought process. I was trying to talk to y'all about that. They was using a little bit of movements from locking. And they see, you know, they came into this choreography. And I was trying to tell y'all what they was doing. Boom, boom, boom. Let's go. I like this. I like this. Let's go. Very creative, very creative. You know what I'm saying? I see how they be showing a love to the hip hop culture and everything like that. Like that's really, really dope. Fun fact about me. A lot of the OGs and pioneers that went overseas to teach and bring the dance to them, like that travel overseas and teach masterclass right now, those are also some of the people that I trained under since I was a youngster coming up in the dance world. So it's pretty dope. Like I could see significant moves and I could be like, oh, I know where that came from. So that really kind of like, that's kind of tight. That's really, really tight. So I was just dope. Let's get back into the music video because this is creative as hell. Man, the budget to have this. Let's show respect to this. This is really tight. I like this transition. I really do. Like they, they switch up. It takes me to like different worlds with the music video. It's like different realms. Okay. That flow reminds me of Bone Thugs and Harmony. Uh-huh. It's like a movie. It takes me through all these different realms of perspectives. You know, I haven't, I ain't go a lot of y'all. You know, people be like, I was watching the lyrics. I have not been paying attention to the lyrics.  I was not paying attention to it. I was paying attention to the music video because it's been great so far. So I'm just going to tell the truth, you know. But yeah, I just feel like it's taking me through different like realms and different ways, like a, like a movie cinema. So this is tight. Luxury like I'm a, okay. That's the best of the first class. Okay. This is actually funny. This is actually funny. You don't see them shadows, sir. Go right back into it. Okay. Okay. So, okay. See now at the beginning when they started doing shots over here, I didn't, I wasn't a big fan of it. But it's amazing what you can make the whole room feel like when you change some things up with the fire. That's crazy. Man. Lighting is really anything like when it comes to like film work. Isn't that crazy? Just the light of that, the fire and the brightness. I, great shot. Give me a little stranger things feel for a second. Let's go. Okay. Give me a dramatic scene. Hair Potter.  Hair Potter? Was that significant to Hair Potter? Was it? That feel like Hair Potter. And the car drops in the back. Stick it around places. Whoa. Great shot. Great shot. Great shot. Great shot. Yeah. This is, this is, this is really different. Like different. Feel like I'm going to like a multi-verse or something. I'm guessing because I didn't, I didn't, I didn't pay attention to the lyrics. I was too busy paying attention to the music video. Let's see. I like them outfits. Let's go. Let's go. Oh, hey. I like how that was shot. It felt like it kind of let it breathe just for like a quick second. Not too long, but just enough. What am I talking about? Let's talk about it. Right here. Okay. Boom. They start moving. Action happens. I like that. Okay. Great job. Great job. Great job. Great job. I got to hurry up and get rich. So I can make videos like that. That was great. That was great. What were your favorite shots? Because it was so many of them. So many shots. The other thing I didn't, I should acknowledge, too, is that I really do love the colors in this music video. Like I'm really big on that. One thing I can say is that when I do get cinema cameras one day, I'm going to be sensitive about the color, like the color work in it. Oh my God. That was so tight. That was so tight. That was so tight. That was so tight. I really like that. Like for real, I really do. Like, hmm, toast to that. All right. So what were your favorite parts? And should I watch the dance practice? Is it something different than dance practice that they cut out? If so, I'm probably watching anyway. So it doesn't really matter if you don't want me to watch it because I was going to watch it. So, but listen, y'all, other than that, y'all, I appreciate y'all. You will see this on Patreon, and hopefully you see this on YouTube. But other than that, y'all, you have a beautiful night. Enjoy the other videos. I just uploaded. I just did this real quick for y'all while I'm doing other work for y'all right now. So hope you enjoy this video. You have a beautiful night. I will see y'all this weekend with more videos. All right, peace.


My name is Mark Shklav, and I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. There are some things that laws cannot control, but perhaps parents can. This is especially true in the digital age. My guest today is Lauren Pair. In today's special program, Lauren will share the counter-intuitive practice that Silicon Valley executives use to give their own children an edge in today's overwhelming and constant technological environment. This is kind of a secret that these Silicon Valley executives have. Lauren is passionate about passing this secret on to others and helping families navigate the uncharted waters of raising confident, capable, and resilient children in the digital age. Lauren, welcome. Good to see you. Thanks for having me, Mark. It's great to be here. Well, you have some good points that I never knew about, and first of all, though, tell me a little bit about yourself. What's your background, your education, where you grew up, professional background? Yeah. Please. So I was born and raised here in Oahu. I went to Punahou School and then went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where I studied economics. I started my career in finance in New York City. I worked as a researcher for the New York Federal Reserve, multi-strategy hedge fund, and Goldman Sachs. But several years ago, I left Wall Street. I'm from a fifth generation from a missionary family, and I love Hawaii, and I decided to return home. And since leaving Wall Street, a common thread on the projects I've been working on is that they involve education, workforce development, and public policy, responding to changes that came about due to the digital age that we're all living through now. So you were on Wall Street, and I know you had a successful career. You were doing financial things. What really made you change? What brought you back? I mean, I hear what you say about the love of Hawaii, but you were making money in New York in the Big Apple. Yeah. Well, my last job in finance was working for a hedge fund, and the work was lucrative and interesting. But I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to make a bigger contribution to society and also to Hawaii. Okay. All right. Now, so what are you doing now? What's your present focus? Where are you hoping to go? Well, my last couple of years, I've been really interested in how screens, which means smartphones, tablets, TVs, computers, all of it together, how it's affecting child development and child well-being, and ultimately their success as adults. And so coming up with new creative solutions and getting government schools and parents all involved in this process. Okay. So screens, I guess you're talking about these things that we have here on the table. Indeed. And all different types of screens. So you left New York, you left a good profession, okay? And you came back to do something else and where are you now? I mean, what got you interested in the screens? I mean, what prompted you to get into that area? Well, I would say it was really the convergence of these two different projects I was working on. The first was working for a World Summit on technological unemployment. Technological unemployment is when jobs are displaced by technology through either automation or robotics. Okay, now let's say that again for me because I want to make sure I understand. Technological unemployment is when jobs are displaced by automation or robotics. Okay. All right. So I was working on a summit that we had in the fall of 2015 in New York. It was the first high-level gathering of high-level policy makers, academics, and thought leaders to talk about this issue. And we had some really great speakers like Robert Reich, Larry Summers, and Joseph Stiglitz. And so in addition to being the director of research, I led our education panel, which was called Educating for the Transition. And so I was sort of thinking about, well, how do we create kids that are resilient against technological unemployment? And what I came up with was this idea of focusing on human competitive advantages, things we do better than computers and look poised to continue to. Right. So these are things like deep thinking, interpersonal skills, create a problem solving. And what was a little concerning was what I was reading was that employers were complaining that these skills had actually been declining. And so I started thinking maybe all this time we're spending with machines and devices, maybe that's making us more machine-like and sort of stunting these human competitive advantages. Not having the creativity that we had before we had, before we had... Before we had iPads. Please. The iPad. Yeah. And so these thoughts came to you while you were doing this project in New York. Right. Which sounds pretty substantial. Yeah. Yeah, that was one way. And the other, I started a company called College Consciously around that same time, which was focused on giving college students career and college navigation counseling. And so I was talking with a lot of kids. And I noticed that they seemed more stressed and on edge than my peers had been just a decade prior, roughly. And I also noticed when talking to them I was very interested in how they wanted to grow during their time in college. And something that came up repeatedly was they said they wanted to be more grounded. And this also, I don't think that my peers would have said that. So it was these two kind of, one was this intellectual pursuit on how we prepare students for the digital age. And the other was more in-person connection with college students and sort of getting a pulse for their emotional state and stress levels. So really you've always kind of had this passion for kids, for students and helping them learn. And now you discovered from employers in one sense and from the students themselves that despite having all the advantages of technology, something seemed to be missing. And that's what kind of got you thinking. Is that it? Absolutely. Always had an interest in students. And I've also long been interested in sort of the interface between technology, economy and society. Okay. All right. And then you came back here and so you were an entrepreneur, you started a company that you thought would help kids. And then you discovered something, right? And let's talk a little bit about the real theme of the program. And that's the counter-intuitive secret that Silicon Valley elites use to help their own children thrive in the digital age. That's a long title, so that's why I read it. But that intrigued me. What is that? What is that? So, you know, as I mentioned, I sort of got interested in this topic and started doing some research because I'm a natural researcher. And I expected screens to impact, you know, maybe attention and sleep and things like that. But when I started doing the research, I found that it really affects so much more than that. When you study child development, you realize how interconnected the systems are and how many unintended consequences there can be when you introduce a new variable into the environment or, you know, take something away. And things like kids vestibular systems, which is like our balance systems, are less developed these days because they're spending so much time like this and not moving around. Was one of these things in front of them? Exactly. Versus, like, moving around. And who knew, right, that underdeveloped vestibular system, that has implications for your reading ability and your emotional control and even your ability to pay attention. And just walking. I mean, in a way. Well, that too. That too, right? Yeah. But it has all these unintended consequences. And at first, honestly, I started, like, doubting myself because I was seeing all of these ways that children were being affected, but this was two or three years ago and it wasn't in the media very much. So I was like, if it's having such a profound effect on kids, why aren't we talking about it? Am I creating, like, an echo chamber, you know, like a biased research bubble? And what really gave me confidence that I was onto something and that this was a big deal was this article I read by a journalist, Nick Bilton. And he interviewed Steve Jobs. And apparently he'd stepped on Jobs' toes before. And Steve Jobs is a titan. He surely is. Yeah. Okay. And so he'd stepped on Steve Jobs' toes before and so he was asking him a softball question to butter him up, right? And he said, your kids must love using the iPad. And Steve Jobs said, no, they've never used it. We have tech limitations in our household. And that's an understatement. He had a teenage son. Never used it. That's pretty strict restrictions, yeah. And so that's what Nick Bilton said. He was surprised, but then he realized, you know, he talked to other of these high-level executives on Silicon Valley, what I call the Silicon Valley elite, and thought leaders there. And this was actually a common practice. Steve Jobs was not the exception. He was the rule. And so that's when I knew that all of these effects that I had been seeing, they were real. And I think that that's why the Silicon Valley elite were quietly shielding their kids from the impact of excessive tech exposure. Wow. That is, I mean, that's all, that's shocking. Yeah. In a way. Isn't it? Yeah. No. You can't use this. Right. And what was, was there an explanation that Steve Jobs provided? He just said no. I don't think in that interview there was. You know, he talked to Chris Anderson later, who was the first editor of Wired, and he talked about how he had seen friends that have fallen into it, right? Because these are also people that have been in the industry. They've seen the effects before the rest of us, and they have a better sense of how it affects the economy and society and individuals. So Steve Jobs saw what you saw. Yes. So did Bill Gates, by the way. OK. And did Bill Gates have the same rule for his kids? He had strict rules on his kids' tech time as well. OK. And they saw the same thing about employers. Well, these kids are not quite the same they were. They're not a creative, perhaps. They're not as together. Human. Human. OK, there you go. And then you saw, on your own, the kids were a little distracted. And what I want to ask, when they were talking to you, were they going like this all the time? Not constantly, but they did talk, I mean, they talked about that being an issue. You know, that's something they were somewhat cognizant of. So then you saw the secret. Right. You put it all together. Yeah. You put two into a game. Where did you go from there? Well, you know, I saw the secret and a lot of people wonder, you know, why exactly are they doing it? You know, more specific. What motivates them? Right. What are the benefits? And so I think, like, all parents, they want what's best for their children, right? They want children that are happy and healthy and successful. And so I think that they do this because they believe it confers benefits for their children. And I'll go over three of them today. The first is that it gives their kids a valuable edge in the digital economy, which is something that we already started talking about. But I think this is the point I'll spend the most time on in Wannahammer home, because it's really counterintuitive to a lot of parents. A lot of parents think that to thrive in the digital age, their kids need to be on tech early, not have too many restrictions so that they're comfortable in the digital world. But what these tech executives are seeing is that as children are developing and especially in early childhood, like the first 10 years, it's far more important to hone those human competitive advantages and build those foundations. And that actually too much exposure to tech early stunts the development of it. That's very interesting, because I know young parents who are saying, I want to get my kid knowledgeable as soon as possible, and the little children are on their machines or on their technological toys. It's the number one pushback I get from parents, right? It's like, but they're going to live in a digital world, don't they need to know this stuff? And they do this. But the motivation behind the think tech, I mean behind the technology giants is that we want our children to have a little bit of humanity. Humanity and those are also valuable skills again. These are what employers want. And so things like deep thinking are undermined by the constant distractions that tech bombards kids with and adults for that matter. Empathy, you know, they've done research where they take just screens away from kids for five days and they score significantly better on reading nonverbal cues than they do prior to their break. And things like problem solving, things that I learned studying child development. A lot of the foundations for that are from unstructured play. And as screen time has gone up, free play has gone down. And you know something else, like I know a lot of people that are probably thinking, well, I can't argue that empathy and problem solving are good, like clearly they are. But what about these tech skills that are so in demand, like coding? And I think that's a great question. Well, let's wait and answer that question after our break. Okay? Sounds good. And also, I do want to also hear more about these tech billionaires. And I may ask you why they keep it a secret, okay? So we'll take a short break right now and come back and talk some more. And Aloha. My name is Calvin Griffin, a host of Hawaii in Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring you the latest in what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaii in Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Hi. I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30, Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs. There's so much to discuss. And the guests that we have are very, very well informed. We have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. We are back with Lauren Pair talking about the secrets that the tech billionaires have and are really the secret that they have and that they use to help their children be successful in the digital age. We left off, Lauren, you were talking about some of the benefits and motivations, so please continue. Yeah.  And then that, you know, a response that's frequently, you know, would be given by parents is, well, what about coding? These are really important skills. And so, no doubt, that's true. But what I would argue is if you look under the tech veneer of something like coding, what you see down there is, or what really makes a good coder, is these human competitive advantages that I was mentioning earlier. Things like deep thinking and creative problem solving and grit. And if you actually Google what it takes to make a good coder, you'll find that. What you won't find is people saying you need to be on hours a day, every day starting at, you know, age six or seven or eight. And that's because, you know, coders, they get a problem, they have to sit down with it, think of different ways to solve it, think forward to see obstacles that are going to come up, pick a solution, and build. And the reason patience and grit is so important with coding is for anyone, anyone who has coded, it's very persnickety and precise. So if you put a semicolon instead of a colon, that can break your whole code. And then you have to go through and figure out where that little mistake was. It's called debugging. So if you don't have patience and an attention span, you're not going to be a good coder. And there's actually one other thing that I think coding can really enlighten us on, and that is how counterintuitively limited tech can make people more efficient and really sharpen their tech skills. A while ago, I was reading this book Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, which is on high-frequency trading, which is a very tech-heavy corner of finance. And so they have a lot of coders. And one of the characters was trying to, he noticed that the best coders were Russian, and he was trying to figure out why this was. And finally, one of the Russian coders enlightened him. He said, well, our cohort of coders, we grew up in the Soviet Union, and we had very little computer time. So before we got on our computer time, we'd spent a lot of time making our code elegant, which means concise, and easy to debug. And it's these same traits that made them the best coders that were so in demand by Goldman Sachs and all the other big banks. And so counterintuitively, that limited time made them more efficient and sharpened their tech skills. And I would argue that that's true for kids. If kids have a limited time, they're gonna be very intentional about how they use that time and more efficient. They have all the time in the world, nothing's pressuring them to be efficient, and it's very possible they're gonna unconsciously just consume and consume and consume. And so being more human is what the tech giants are trying to help their children and to be more successful in the tech world. Doesn't mean concentrating more on tech. It means maybe concentrating on some of the human values that actually help. And I think that concentrating on those human values allow kids to take better advantage of tech later when they're more developed, right? So it's not that tech isn't important, but protecting from excessive tech allows them to use technology better when they're older, as their tool rather than their master. And they'll jump into the second benefit, which is that it really helps their kids reach their academic potential. Now, screens in school is a rich topic, we don't have much time. But I will talk about two areas that are increasingly holding a lot of kids back from reaching their academic potential. And that's executive function problems and mental health issues. And so executive function for people that don't know, it's an umbrella term for high level thinking we do, planning, organization, motivation, emotional regulation. It's in our prefrontal cortex, and it's called our control center. And there is research that suggests that a lot of tech exposure can impact the executive functioning skills. And everything that affects attention, affects executive functioning. And I also think it's kind of concerning that there's been a bit of research on video games. And they find that heavy gamers have less gray matter here in the prefrontal cortex. And we find that boys are how executive function has become a bit of a buzzword around schools. And that's because they're seeing a lot more problems with it. And particularly among boys, and boys are consuming a lot of video games. So I'm saying it's just video games, but it's concerning. So the tech giants are saying, again, this is another thing.  Exactly. They want to shield to protect so that these skills can develop. Yeah. I think they figured it out. And then the other one is mental health issues, which is also increasingly holding a lot of kids back from their academic potential, really. And that's also, I think, the third benefit. It would slide into the third benefit.  It's really sad and alarming. 20 years ago, of disabled kids, only something like five or 6% of them were disabled due to mental health reasons. Now it's 50%. Right? That's a 10-fold increase. Bipolar diagnoses in young people is up 20 to 40 times what it used to be. And we're also just seeing skyrocketing anxiety and depression and manifesting most seriously and tragically in suicide. Teen suicide had been on an upward tear between 2007 and 2015. The suicide rate for teenage girls doubled, fully doubled. And for boys over that period, it's up 30%, which is still a lot and very stark. And we've all heard about the connection between some technology and suicide. True, yeah? Yeah, yeah, we have. And there are a number of ways that technology can affect mental health. One, that kids don't have a break from social stress anymore because they're always connected. So home isn't the refuge. It used to be even 15 years ago. Because they go right on their screen. Exactly, so they never escape. Another is it disrupts sleep and dysregulates their nervous system. It actually creates a lot of stress in their nervous system and their bodies that parents really underestimate. It also displaces time for human contact, which texting and messaging, they don't have the same emotional benefits to us as in-person communication. And there are a few other ways that it affects too. And I'm not saying it's 100% responsible by a long shot, but I think that there's more than enough evidence to act. And to me, it seems like at this point, the burden of proof is that it doesn't cause harm. And not that you should have to prove beyond a speck of doubt that it is causing harm. And the tech elites seem to agree. So your position is you feel there's a connection between the technology and things that are not helping. And I've read research that suggests there's a connection as well. OK, and there's probably good and bad involved in technology. We'll agree on that. Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's kind of what you're saying. And one really quick thing I'll interject too, if people have kids that have behavioral issues or psychological issues and they think it might be connected to screens, digital fasts can really turn kids around. So it's not all, you know. Let's talk a little bit about that. So you say that these tech billionaires, executives, these guys who developed things, Steve Jobs and those folks, they're telling their children, let's lay off this so much. What benefits, how do you tell parents nowadays to do that? Or how do parents nowadays do that same thing? What tips can you give them? Yeah, I mean, as far as tips, I would suggest two mindset tips. And maybe I'll alter three tactical tips. So for the mindset tips, I mean, the first thing for parents today is just remember that you're in charge. And also, you have a right to change. I know it sounds obvious, but a lot of parents forget. And also, you have the right to change your mind based on new information on what you think is appropriate screen time. So that's really important for parents to remember. Second, I encourage parents to think about it as a family solution. And what this really does is help kids buy in. And by family solution, I mean that the parents' habits are on the table, too. They've got to be involved, too. It's not just the kids. Exactly, because kids complain and complain about parent hypocrisy, right? The parents are saying, you can never be on, but the parents are always on themselves. And on top of that, to be honest, modeling behaviors is the most potent way of learning. So if you're on all your phone all the time, your kids are going to pick up on that. They're going to see that. They're going to see, and it's going to affect them and how they act. But conversely, if you are non-defensive when you're talking about your tech habits and you try to make changes, that's also going to affect them. It's going to make them easier for them to do it as well. And I think that through this idea of family solutions, you can really make it something that draws the family closer versus something that is constantly creating conflict. As far as the three tactical tips, the first I would say is taking away your kids' devices at night, take them away at night, ideally two hours or so before they go to bed. So they're on to the covers. Yes, they don't have the prefrontal cortex development to self-regulate. And they will go on. It will ruin their sleep, which affects every other aspect of development. I would also suggest some articles will tell you you can leave them in common spaces, like the kitchen or the living room. I say keep it in your room, because I've talked to multiple parents where the kids sneak in. So don't risk that.  And I would sort of tack that as a habit onto the first one when your kids check in their phone for the night. Look over with them.  And actually, you don't even need Moment if you have an iPhone and do it every night. If you go into Settings, Battery, it will show you for the last 24 hours how much time you've spent and on what apps you're on. So that's the second piece of advice. And the last one? And the last one I would say is, you know, schedule family fun activity that's screen-free once a week. Exactly. Go for a hike to the beach without your phone. You know, one parent can have it as a timepiece. But yeah, a rule with no tech allowed. And if it's terrible weather or you just can't motivate that day, then play a board game or a card game. It's really important for kids to have family fun. And that's sort of a more positive way to interject positive family experiences versus always being about limiting and restricting. I seem to remember when I was a kid, that's what we would do. Right. You know, in the minute we have left, tell me what your thoughts are. And where do you want this to go? What's your vision? Oh, and then it is tough for that. But yeah, so my vision is that government can play a role in funding research and getting public health education out there. But I think the most important role is the family. Everything starts at home. And that this can really, there's a way to address that where it makes the family closer and doesn't have to create a lot of conflict. I also really want to see more collaboration between right beneath the family is school, because kids spend so much time in school. They're so affected by their peers. So I want to see schools and families working together to create more positive tech and media cultures in the schools. And personally, I've been working on a few concrete solutions for parents. The first is a parent mastermind. This idea is that I'll get a small group of parents. We will meet weekly for a month. I'll have a mini lecture. We'll have a discussion where everyone gets to talk about what's worked and hasn't worked for them. And over the month, each parent will have one opportunity to be on the hot seat where they'll be able to bring a specific question with the group. And me and all other group members will focus on helping them solve that problem. As far as I'm aware of, this has never been done before. A number of parents have been really interested in this and asking for this. And so if anyone out there is interested, please email me. We'll be putting my email up. And let me know. And I'll put you on the list. And also tell me how old your kids are. Quickly, the second solution that I'm working on is a solution guide. It's compiling solutions from different sources that I've been researching, parents, books, articles. I think of it as a menu that parents can pick from to create a system that works for them. It will go over things like other things you can do, other than being on screen time, which is a huge question I get asked, how to set up a screen time contract, which I think is a great solution for parents, some of the best apps, ways to mitigate kids' resistance and to get them on board. And so that is an early bird price of $35. So you can email me if you're interested in that too. There's one more thing I have to say, Mark, which is that the last thing I'm doing, and I'm sorry it's going over, is doing some sessions with parents on screen time. And for people watching, I'm going to give away 10 half an hour sessions for parents. We'll go over a specific question or challenge they have with screens and come up with practical, actionable solution points. Lauren, thank you very much. I learned the secret, and I am glad to have it. Thank you very much, Allah. You're welcome. Thank you, Mark.