We continue on today with chapter 12. The attraction of love for love.  The Father has hidden His Son safely within Himself and kept Him far away from your destructive thoughts. But you know neither the Father nor the Son because of them. You attack the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in order to attack it, you will never find it. For if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself? Offer it, and it will come to you because it is drawn to itself. But offer attack, and love will remain hidden, for it can live only in peace. God's Son is as safe as His Father, for the Son knows His Father's protection and cannot fear. His Father's love holds Him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, He asks for nothing. Yet He is far from you whose self He is, for you chose to attack Him and He disappeared from your sight into His Father. He did not change, but you did, for a split's mind and all its works were not created by the Father and could not live in the knowledge of Him. When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else.  What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. The definition of reality is God's, not yours. He created it, and He knows what it is. You who knew have forgotten. Unless He had given you a way to remember, you would have condemned yourself to oblivion. Because of your Father's love, you can never forget Him, for no one can forget what God Himself placed in His memory. You can deny it, but you cannot lose it. A voice will answer every question you ask, and a vision will correct the perception of everything you see. For what you have made invisible is only the truth. And what you have not heard is the only answer. God would reunite you with yourself and did not abandon you in your distress. You are waiting only for Him and do not know it. Yet His memory shines in your mind and cannot be obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever, always. You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you have made of it and rejoice that it is not so. Son of God, be not content with nothing. What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it.  Everything you made has never been and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. By making nothing real to you, you have seen it, but it is not there. And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself. Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and truth. God's Son can be seen because His vision is shared. The Holy Spirit looks upon Him and sees nothing else in you. What is invisible to you is perfect in His sight and encompasses all of it. He has remembered you because He forgot not the Father. You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by seeking the unreal, what else could you find? The unreal world is a thing of despair for it can never be. And you who share God's being with Him could never be content without reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible. For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness.  Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make everything else invisible. For beholding it is total perception. And as you look upon it, you will remember that it was always so. Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge, for only perception is capable of error, and perception has never been. Being corrected, it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the only reality. The Atonement is but your way back to what was never lost. Your Father could not cease to love His Son. And from the workbook, Lesson 93 Light and joy and peace abide in me. You think you are the home of evil, darkness, and sin. You think if anyone could see the truth about you, he would be repelled, Recalling from you as if from a poisonous snake. You think if what is true about you were revealed to you, You would be struck with horror so intense that you would rush to death by your own hand, Living on after seeing this being impossible. These are beliefs so firmly fixed that it is difficult to help you see that they are based on nothing. That you have made mistakes is obvious, that you have sought salvation in strange ways, Have been deceiving and afraid of foolish fantasies and savage dreams, And have bowed down to idols made of dust. All this is true by what you now believe. Today we question this, not from the point of view of what you think, But from a very different reference point, from which such idle thoughts are meaningless. These thoughts are not according to God's will. These weird beliefs He does not share with you. This is enough to prove that they are wrong, but you do not perceive that this is so. Why would you not be overjoyed to be assured that all the evil that you think you did was never done, That all your sins are nothing, that you are as pure and holy as you were created, And that light and joy and peace abide in you? Your image of yourself cannot withstand the will of God. You think that this is death, but it is life.  The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all, and anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good, it is unreal, and nothing more than that. It does not battle with the Son of God. It does not hurt Him nor attack His peace. It has not changed creation nor reduced eternal sinlessness to sin and love to hate. What power can this self you made possess when it would contradict the will of God? Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it or change what God created as eternal.  Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God, and light and joy and peace abide in you. Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought.   Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged. Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created. Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there. There are longer exercise periods today which would be most profitable if done for the first five minutes of every waking hour. Begin by stating the truth about your creation. Light and joy and peace abide in me. My sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Then put away your foolish self images and spend the rest of the practice period in trying to experience what God has given you in place of what you have decreed for yourself. You are what God created or what you made. One self is true, the other is not there. Try to experience the unity of your one self. Try to appreciate its holiness and the love from which it was created. Try not to interfere with the self which God created as you by hiding its majesty behind tiny idols of evil and sinfulness you have made to replace it. Let it come into its own. Here you are. This is you. And light and joy and peace abide in you because this is so. You may not be willing or even able to use the first five minutes of each hour for these exercises. Try however to do so when you can. At least remember to repeat these thoughts each hour. Light and joy and peace abide in me. My sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Then try to devote at least a minute or so to closing your eyes and realizing that this is a statement of the truth about you. If a situation arises that seems to be disturbing quickly dispel the illusion of fear by repeating these thoughts again. Should you be tempted to become angry with someone, tell him silently light and joy and peace abide in you. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You can do much for the world salvation today. You can do much today to bring you closer to the part in salvation that God has assigned to you. And you can do much today to bring the conviction to your mind that the idea for today is true indeed. Light and joy and peace abide in me. Today we give way to the attraction of love for love. Our attack thoughts have never changed reality. Attack thoughts are unreal and only can seem to change awareness of reality. God's son is as safe as his father for the son knows his father's protection and cannot fear. His father's love holds him in perfect peace and needing nothing he asked for nothing. So what is perceived as the linear projected world was made visible and not true. And then what is true which his spirit became invisible to you. But the Holy Spirit still sees this spirit with perfect clarity. God created spirit perfect and nothing can change eternal love. Today we call upon the memory of God. We desire it. We want it. We call upon it. The son of God cannot be content with anything but eternal love. It does not matter how much distance has been interposed between our awareness and truth. Truth remains true. Only the truth is true. And as a stepping stone to that eternal truth, we remember the real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. Today we would behold the real world. Today we let go of all thoughts of evil darkness and sin. Today we let go of all fixed beliefs that would make separation seem real. We question the belief of separation from a very different reference point with the Holy Spirit as our strength. We are overjoyed that all the evil that we thought we did was never done, that all of our sins are nothing, that I am as God created me, as pure and holy as God created me, that light and joy and peace abide in me, and that my sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over today, this I will repeat, my sinlessness is guaranteed by God. I am as God created me. My sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Light and joy and peace abide in me. My sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Amen.


Quitting PHP was a very difficult decision for me and I want to give you guys details. Let me explain. This video was brought to you by Digital Academy, your number one source to learn how to make money programming and get that six-figure salary you desire. Our academy have a wide range of courses including 3K in 30 days, our mentorship membership program, and much, much more. When you sign up for our free community, you get access to our membership community with like-minded professionals who's gonna help take your career to the next level. So let's take the first step to get started and really take your career to the next level with our seven-step money guide today. So let's go ahead and click the link below to sign up for our free seven-step guide to help you get your career started today. Believe it or not guys, let me tell you a story as far as why I quit PHP programming and it actually wasn't my decision alone. It was a lot more components involved than me just saying I quit PHP and I'm not doing any projects in PHP anymore. And I want you guys to really listen to what happened to me so that when this happened to you and it's going to depend on which programming language you use or you picked, the market dictate what you need to do professionally as a software developer. It's different when you have a hobby and you're working at home and you're doing your passion projects. I'm talking about if you are a professional software developer working for a company, especially a growing company, a company that want to really get an advantage in the market and scale out and have different projects, you're gonna find yourself working with top players that you really are a program language that you really didn't think you'll be working on. And I want to give you guys a reason. Well, first of all, what to expect when this happened and how to handle it and expectations going forward. So guys, let me tell you my story. I made some notes here so that I don't get lost and I can give you guys a clear understanding of what's happening with some easy points. So guys been working on a few projects, big, big, big, big integration project and trying to consolidate some companies, trying to consolidate infrastructure, technology and really massive, massive scale. And in the past, I did a lot of work with WordPress, PHP, MySQL and life was good. It was one of the first programs I used. I always preach it, but lately I haven't been leveraging it. I've been using SQL, specifically Microsoft SQL Server and structured query language based off of the project that I've been working on at least the last year and a half, been longer, but I noticed a difference between the programming language that I use for this programming. So that being said guys, I start to look back and I was like, man, I don't do any PHP work anymore at all and don't have any signs of doing it at least at this particular moment. Part of it is I'm focusing exclusively on the database side right now, but even if I got a front end job right now as far as just, hey, I need some PHP work done. If it's not an existing client that I know the infrastructure that we can turn around and get back to the primary project, I'm probably going to turn it down and not say PHP is bad. It's just that my company is a data focused company guys. That's what we're focusing on now. You're gonna find out pretty quickly. Number one, you're gonna start naturally niching down. And once you niche down, it makes your organization run more efficient and it gives you an opportunity to scale, be able to solve problems quickly, especially when you start bringing in more staff. They know, hey, this is the focus. If a company, if a client wants anything outside of this, depending on what situation, how fast we can turn around, we'll take on that work, but we primarily work on SQL. We primarily work on database work. And that's how here at DigiLink, how I'm rolling going pretty soon. You guys are gonna have this where you're gonna focus more on the front end, focus more on C sharp, focus more on Java, Python, depending on what that particular client or that market wants, you're going to naturally focus down. At this point, people start to realize, man, right? You know, I started off using PHP. I started off using Python. I don't use it anymore. I'm using this other programming language. I'm afraid that I'll lose these skills. Don't worry about that guys. It's just like riding a bike. You know, once you learn the basics of programming, the fundamentals, you actively working on projects with a programming language. It's just a matter of switching over, understanding the context, understanding the specifics of that language as far as just the use cases, you know, what's the advantages and why you use it. A lot of people come into a lot of projects thinking, I'm gonna force a particular programming language now in this client's throat, which in the past, you was able to do that pretty good because nobody really knew what was going on. They didn't have existing infrastructure and you have the flexibility to add something in a stack that really didn't in line with what that client wanted. This happened to me on older projects. I used to come in and look at a lot of websites and I see just my Microsoft shop or a Microsoft infrastructure that has this off the wall, Joomla, non-popular framework and CMS and it's just out of the blue. I'm like, guys, you had to go do new infrastructure that's to account for this and even then it's not a mainstream open source project. And it's classic, hey, a new developer, an existing developer came in. They ain't even think about the client's existing infrastructure coming. This is what I do. This is what I'm gonna put in here regardless of what they do and they wasn't supervised as far as just a question why are you doing this? And the client was stuck with this outdated technology that they didn't know how to manage as far as just scale wise. Obviously that account or that vendor end up losing business or didn't survive. I had to come in on the back end. I'm like, why do you guys do this? And that was the first website they did or the first real content management website that they did and they didn't necessarily look at. In that case, guys, if you're gonna go offside of the standard company software stack, at least make sure the solution you put in place is a mainstream solution or software like WordPress. I work with a ton of Microsoft C-Sharp related shops and you may think, well, WordPress is outside of that. You probably won't wanna implement that but guys, WordPress has a huge community with huge supported plugins and things and all this stuff to where if it's the best solution versus the Microsoft counterpart, it makes sense. But if you are not even picking the most popular, well supported, a huge community is going to be difficult. But guys, let me get back on topic. This is the kind of stuff that at the end of the day, you have to really leverage. And I talk about this in my seven step guide. So if you haven't already, go sign up for that. I'm gonna be making updates to this. I'm gonna start niching down my content to really be more specific on the tech side and kind of focus on the data-driven stuff guys. So if you already signed up for my seven step guide, go check out my premium courses. I'm redoing everything in my academy guys. So if you buy it now at the cheaper rate, you get all the new stuff and the most updated stuff for free going forward. So go ahead and take advantage of that, links are below. So guys, at the end of the day, that's why I end up quitting PHP. Not because I just made a conscious effort to say no more PHP. It's just that the projects that I'm taking on right now is mostly database focused. And don't worry about losing your skills or as long as you're working on a top 10, top 15 programming language, and you have the opportunity to get to enterprise level, which is mostly job-inching sharp. Some Python work. If you work for, if you're at Silicon or some of the larger markets, you're gonna get into the reacts, different frameworks to sexy ganglers and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, regardless of where you at in the software development world, just make sure whatever you're learning, translate to other companies and other industries so that if you need to leave your existing situation, it makes sense. And you're always taking that next step, even as you're moving to different companies. So that I make sure I don't forget or any points that I wanted to cover, professional versus hobby projects guys. This is another one. A lot of you guys may think, hey, I'm sitting with this program language because this is the one I enjoy the most. Yeah, from a hobby standpoint, go right ahead. If you're doing this for a passion project, you don't have to do anything for a client, turn this video off. But if this is for a client, this is for somebody who's paying you money, your opinions of the best program language doesn't matter. The market's going to dictate that. And if you don't fall in line with that, you're going to eventually come out in the matter of your deadlines, you're not going to meet. Other people are going to start questioning your decisions on your software stack and what program language you use. And as the net or the internet software development matures more, it's consolidating guys. So it's more standardized than what it would have been in the late nineties, early 2000, where it's basically the wild, wild west. And whatever ideas you can come up with, you can implement them in a company because they didn't have any existing infrastructure. You try to do that in 2020, you in trouble because companies have existing infrastructure. You got to know what works, what integrates with their current software stack and take all that into consideration.  We're in no regard. So looking and integrating, you're just setting yourself up for failure guys. Don't give us a bad name. We are already trying to remain relevant and not like a cost center at most of these companies.  And at the end of the day guys, do not force PHP in a software stack that it doesn't belong. Most of my clients, when it comes to WordPress, a lot of the popular Lambda stack applications and C-Panel, it's okay, it works great. But a lot of times when you start to get into the enterprise C-Sharp Java world, yeah, there's some integrations that we can leverage as far as just marketing, PHP, or marketing automation, and some of the CRM functionality from a web perspective. But don't get carried away guys. Like, subscribe to the content. If you haven't already, go check out my premium courses. Like, subscribe to the content. If you agree, comment below. If you disagree, comment below. And you guys see the link over here? Sign up for that seven step guide and I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.


authors always want to know reasons for rejection. So how do you perceive their work? And when I say authors, I'm referring to foreign authors from English as second language in some countries as well as, you know, authors from US. So according to you, from your experience, what are the major reasons for papers getting rejected? Well, I can't say that there's necessarily any single reason. There could be any number of reasons. All of our rejections and acceptances are determined by our associate editors and our editor-in-chief. And the possibilities can range, you know, from it's not high enough quality or priority. Maybe it's not innovative enough or it could be that we recently published something very similar. There's just any number of reasons that might lead to a piece being rejected. But say, for example, in your editorial, say, discussions or updates, have you as a group identified, say, top five issues that you face or top five reasons that lead to rejections? We haven't really done any, really any studies or reports about that. Like I said, it's really just depends, you know, it goes through the peer review and it just depends on what they find that's positive or negative about the study. You know, we'll have multiple people look at it even before a manuscript is accepted. We have, you know, the entire editorial team have, they have an opportunity to take a look at it just to see, you know, if it meets the high standard of quality, you know, for GIE.  So, let me put this across this way. So, what are your top quality expectations from a manuscript? Well, really it needs to make sure that you need to make sure that it's sound research. You know, check that your statistics are correct. Check that your facts are correct. Make sure that it's original work. It's something that hasn't been already published. You know, you can definitely do a search of the literature and see what else is out there. And just make sure that you're writing clear, concise work. Content is really the most important thing, I would say. You know, it's important to, you know, when you're submitting a paper to any journal to look at their guidelines, read the instructions for authors. Make sure that you're submitting the correct components, the correct formatting, but it's really all about content when it comes to acceptance or rejection. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if the science is sound enough. Right. Like you said, one of your main challenges is to get good publications. If the science is good enough, there are higher chances of getting accepted in the journal. Quality of language is a common reason for rejection? No, it's, like I said, a manuscript could be accepted or rejected for any reason, but we do give leeway when we have an author who's not particularly comfortable writing in English. You know, it's more about content when it comes to that, but like I said, we do encourage authors who are uncomfortable writing in English to use translation services or have somebody who is a native English speaker look over the manuscripts so they can, you know, help kind of clean it up, I guess, a little bit. Just, just, it certainly makes it easier for the reviewers and editors to understand and appreciate the research if the writing is clear. Well, we do recommend that if you're not comfortable writing in English that you have a native English speaker look over your submission before you submit it or you use a translation service. We give leeway to non-English writers. Obviously, we're not just flat out rejecting papers if they have grammatical issues, but it's, you know, it's always great to just make sure that you're turning in the best quality submission that you can, and if that means that you need to have it looked at by somebody who's more familiar with the language, then, you know, that might be a good option.


Are there any questions so far? Yeah, but as I said in the previous day, you start with an eigenvector, and you keep solving for the eigenvector, then equate it as the constant, and say n w is equal to the v1. And at some point, you'll run out. And why you will run out, why this Jordan is true, we have not proved it yet. But that's the beauty of it. You'll never fail to find a suitable number of vectors to form the basis using these so-called generalized eigenvectors. So these will always contribute sufficient number of eigenvectors or generalized eigenvectors to span the entire vector space. That is what the crux of the matter is. And that's why it's a fantastic result. Otherwise, what was the guarantee? Like, you solve for a minus lambda i into v is equal to 0. And let's say you got v1, v2, and v3. So the geometric multiplicity is 3. Now you look at this as a germ for the first Jordan block corresponding to lambda. So you look at this as a germ. What do you do then? You equate this v1, and you say I want to have a minus lambda i v11, sorry, v11. Solve for this v11. At the next step, you equate this v11 on the right, and you say a minus lambda i v12. At some point, you will fail to find a solution. Terminate at that point. But gather together all these vectors starting from v1, v11, v12, until you have got a solution. That will exactly give you the first Jordan block in that entire Jordan chain. Then you again start with v2. Same thing you do, a minus lambda i v21 is equal to v2. And perhaps this is all you can do with it. So then this will generate, let us say, of three vectors you have. Let us say this generates 2. And maybe the third one, you will see a minus lambda i. The moment you try to solve for this, perhaps you will not get a solution. It means that this one is just a singleton. So you might want to know, hang on, I just got six vectors. But the magic of the Jordan form is then this a must be of size 6 cross 6. They will add up to give you the sufficient number always, every single time. If you start with eigenvectors as your commencement of this journey, each of them will generate a certain number of generalized eigenvectors. But if you keep stacking them up one after another, one after another, one after another, stack them up with starting with v1, v11, v12. Start this one with v2, v21. Start this with v3. And no further solution is possible. So you have six. The magic happens because you need no more than six. If you needed more than six, then at least one of them would have given you one more, somewhere. Why that is true? That is why we'll need to go into the proof of this, right? So I hope you understand how this Jordan form actually works and serves to massage our way around matrices or operators that have repeated eigenvalues, right? Also something that I also specified the other day. But not very, maybe not much detail. So the point is that when you have repeated eigenvalues, I mean all it's, all your eigenvalues are repeated and identical. Then the diagonal matrix is the most boring matrix you can have. Because you want a whole family of matrices that share the same common form. All right? Which is to say that suppose you start with a diagonal matrix, which is lambda times I, because all it's eigenvalues are repeated. Now you hit it with any basis change, which is some non-singular transformation. You'll still get D. So the family of all diagonalizable matrices having all their eigenvalues identical is just a single term. No matter what basis you look at it under, it's always going to look like lambda I. On the other hand, if this wasn't diagonalizable, then starting with any Jordan form, you hit it with a T inverse JT and you'll get a matrix that looks completely different. You hit it with another T1 inverse J T1. They will look completely different. This will look like say A, this will look like B. So there's a whole infinite family of, so among the set of all matrices of size n cross n, which have all their eigenvalues at exactly the same location, the set of diagonalizable matrices is a single term. But all other matrices that you will run into will not be diagonalizable. So it is like, if you think of it like a problem in probability, if I'm already given the precondition that I'm searching for n by n matrices which have a characteristic polynomial, say x minus lambda to the n, right?  Unless you exactly have the lambda times i, any other matrix will not be diagonalizable, right? So then the Jordan form paves the way for the best possible representation that you can have for such matrices. Also, up to a permutation, if you want to check whether there exists a similarity transformation between two matrices which share the same characteristic polynomial, then you have to look for their Jordan canonical forms. So it's an if and only if condition. So two matrices are similar. I hope you understand what similar means. Similar means subject to a change of basis. So two matrices are similar means, of course, the characteristic polynomial is the same that eigenvalues are same. Everything is same, right? It implies and implied by the two matrices have the same Jordan canonical form representation. Of course, up to a permutation. One side is very easy to see. Suppose A is hit upon with T inverse A T and B is hit upon with P inverse B P, so that both of them look at look like the same Jordan canonical form. Then of course, T inverse A T is equal to P inverse B P, which is A is equal to T P inverse B P T inverse. So the similarity transformation is what? P T inverse whole inverse B P T inverse. So they are similar. So if they share the same Jordan canonical form, then they are similar. That's pretty straightforward, right? So two matrices have the same Jordan canonical representation, then they are similar. The other side of the proof is very easy. This side of the proof requires a bit of thought. It's not that obvious, which is to say that two matrices are similar. And suppose, assume that they don't have the same Jordan form. One thing is for sure that the algebraic multiplicities are the same. So let us look at only those Jordan forms for matrices having the same eigenvalue, lambda only, because it can be generalized to extended to more arbitrary operators, right? So suppose that two matrices are similar so that A is equal to T inverse B T, right? And A can be massaged to a Jordan form.  And J A and J B are not exactly going to look the same even up to permutations like all of those examples that we gave. So how do you contradict this? One is that these are similar, but on the other hand the Jordan forms are not same. Well at least one thing we know that minimal polynomials and characteristic polynomials are invariant under similarity transformations. So at least if they are similar, they share the same characteristic and the minimal polynomial. That means the size of the largest Jordan block corresponding to an eigenvalue is the same in both of J A and J B. But the others are not same, you see. So I will just give you a counter example. So I will just disprove by some counter example. Suppose you take lambda 1, 0, lambda and lambda 1, 0, 0, lambda 1, 0, 0, lambda. What is the minimal polynomials degree? 3. The characteristic polynomial of course 5. And suppose you have another one where you have lambda 0, 0, lambda, lambda. Let us not write the other 0s. So we can just have lambda 1, 0, 0, lambda 1, 0, 0, lambda. You agree that both of them have the same minimal polynomial which is x minus lambda whole cubed. Both of them have the same characteristic polynomial x minus lambda to the power 5. But they have to have because they are similar, right? But in this case, suddenly you cannot get from this to this, that is what we are claiming, right? So you cannot get from this to this through a similarity transformation. Why not? If there exists a similarity transformation that takes you from here to here, what would be violated? Yeah. The geometric multiplicities are different here. So but even if the geometric multiplicity is fixed, I asked you to think like even if the geometric multiplicity is fixed, are you sure that the Jordan canonical forms will be the same? No, right? So the geometric multiplicity also does not hold the answer. It turns out that you must have exactly the same number of blocks of same size, not just the size of the largest block being same, but if there are two blocks of size 5 in one form, the other form must also have two blocks of size 5. So you can match up all those numbers and yet you might still land up with a different Jordan canonical form. I am giving you the answer there. Think about why it is true. So what is it that is violated? Suppose that there is a similarity transformation that takes you from here to here. That is, suppose there is what do I call it? Some S inverse this S is equal to this. So look at lambda i minus this matrix and lambda i minus this matrix. That will also be the same, right? So you can just pull out the S inverse and S outside and keep raising it to higher and higher powers.  The moment you raise it to a power, it is squared power here. What will happen? It will lose rank. What will happen to this? This is already lost rank. The moment you take lambda i minus a, of course in this case it is because of a geometric multiplicity, but even if you had, okay, I need to choose bigger matrices. The point I am making is if you keep raising things to higher and higher powers, eventually at some point you will see that there is a discrepancy in the rank unless if this Jordan form carries 2 by 2 blocks numbering 5, the other must also carry 2 by 2 blocks numbering 5. If one has 5 2 by 2 blocks, the other has 4 2 by 2 blocks, then after raising it to its second power, one loses rank by 4, the other loses rank by 5. Is that clear? And the i minus this object will be left with just the Milpotent operator's Jordan representation which is just 1 under 1, raise it to another power, though both those ones vanish, whereas the other fellow, yeah, if it did not have 2 of them, if it had 3 of them, then that fellow's 3 blocks would have become 0. So you would have lost more rank as you raise to higher powers, on the other hand if they were indeed similar matrices, then their ranks would be same. Similar matrices cannot have different ranks because after all they are manifestations of the same operator, right? So that is the reason why this both sided argument works, bear this in mind, yes? Yeah, but again you will be left to argue that this and this cannot be similar, which is similar to, sorry? No, a is similar to j a, yeah, yeah, so eventually you are arguing that 2 Jordan blocks that do not resemble each other up to a permutation cannot be similar, that is what I am arguing. My crux of my argument is exactly that, that this is a different Jordan block, this is a different Jordan block and therefore there cannot exist a similarity transformation which takes me from one Jordan block to another, because if it did, then I raise this to higher and higher powers, they will also be similar to each other, but they cannot be similar to each other because in one you will lose greater rank as you keep raising it to higher powers and in the other you will not lose as much rank, but if they are after all the same operators, then their ranks must be the same, not exactly the same up to a permutation of those blocks, yes, exactly, that is what the crux is, once you have seen that then this other part is also very straightforward. So go back, read this up, work out a few numerical examples in your own head, write them down to convince yourself that this is true, okay, I am not going to go into the detail writing up of this because we will wrap this theory part up with a proof of Jordan canonical form only, so these results are, but these results are very important observations, okay, so do keep them in mind, they are used not just for solving differential equations, okay, but they are also very useful in proving results on the spectrum, what are the spectra of linear operators or matrices, okay, for different applications. So I have covered differential equations, for example you might encounter different equations as well, so just like in differential equations you have e to the at, in fact the evaluation of e to the at, we have seen how it is simplified greatly when we had a diagonal form, when we have a Jordan form e to the at is also very simplified, there is one hitch, I mean hitch as in which something I am not going to prove, you see if you have e to the a plus b, this is not equal to e to the a into e to the b unless a b is equal to b a, alright, but now you think of the Jordan canonical form, what you have is lambda i plus n, so lambda i obviously commutes with n, how does that help because now you have e to the j is equal to e to the, so this is something I am not going to prove, you can check this out, it is not very hard, you have to take an infinite series, forget about the convergence properties of the infinite series and you have to make use of the fact that they commute, so that a cubed b is the same as b a cubed is the same as, you push the a through any how, so a squared b a and so on, so basically you can treat this expansion, binomial expansion of a plus b whole to the n exactly like the scalars when a and b commute, so I am not going to prove this and you also do not worry too much about the convergence properties of that, the point is now this becomes plus n and this becomes e to the lambda i something which we like, because this is exactly the exponential sitting in the diagonal and e to the n, what is so great about e to the n because n is nilpotent, if you keep raising n to higher and higher powers up to a certain power, you will have some non-trivial matrix beyond that it is all 0, so this is going to be just our good old fellow who we had encountered during the diagonal diagonalization technique and a finite sum, so this entire infinite series that we were required to evaluate, once you have transformed it to the Jordan canonical form, this evaluation of e to the a becomes very easy and then you hit it with the same similarity transformation back like t e to the j t inverse and you get back e to the a, so this is very useful, this is the best it gets, what is the equivalent condition for diagonalizability now, now that you have this Jordan canonical form, this minimal polynomial and all this, just think about the minimal polynomial, what does it tell you, what is the minimal polynomial telling us, size of the largest Jordan block, what is the size of the largest Jordan block in a diagonal matrix, 1, so that means the minimal polynomial having simple roots is any fan only if it is a necessary and sufficient condition for diagonalizability, so you can list that out, now with all those properties we had listed like having n independent eigen value, eigen vectors, right, you remember right, we had listed out those equivalent properties that a is diagonalizable it means, a has n linearly independent eigen vectors, right and the geometric multiplicity of each eigen value is equal to its algebraic multiplicity, along with that you can now say the minimal polynomial mustn't have repeated roots, minimal polynomial has simple roots only, if it has simple roots then it will always be diagonalizable, right, so that is another important observation, okay enough observations about this Jordan canonical form and I know I had promised the proof of Jordan canonical form in this module but it gets pushed back, but now finally no more digressions which is going to get straight down to the business of proving the Jordan canonical form, the existence result, okay, okay, so we'll move on to the next module.


During his two terms as governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey did an awful lot. He managed to pass a flat income tax with a rate of 2.5%. He reformed public sector pensions, universalized some of the most important school choice measures in the state, reformed occupational licensing rules and turned a budget deficit into a surplus. He substantially reduced the size of the state's government workforce as well. He built a makeshift border wall, though, out of shipping crates and pushed back on marijuana legalization. Then he was accused by his constituents of doing both too much and too little during COVID. Today he runs Citizens for Free Enterprise. In December, he received Reasons Savas Award for privatization, which is given annually to someone who is advancing innovative ways to improve the provision and quality of public services by engaging the private sector. When he was in town, the governor and I sat down to talk about his time in office, his worries about the future of the Republican Party, his commitment to fusionism, and why Arizona politicians are so weird. Thank you for joining us, Governor. We're excited to talk with you here at Reason today. Good to be here. Good. Thanks for having me. Let's start just right into it. Arizona politicians are kind of built different. What is it about Arizona that seems to just generate a little bit of a kind of heterodox or unorthodox politician, would you say? I don't know. I think it's a good question. I think maybe the fact that we're the youngest state in the lower 48 that we're a place where so many people came to live, so few people that are there today were actually born there, so people make that decision. And then I think there's something about the West and the spirit of Barry Goldwater where it brings an independent mindedness to it. Arizona has been red of late, but it's trending blue. What do you attribute that to? Candidates matter. I would actually push back pretty hard on where it is. I was able to win in 2014 with the wind at my back and win by a larger margin in 2018 with the wind in my face, what was really a tough year for conservatives and Republicans around the country. And I was also able to capture 44% of the Hispanic vote against an opponent named David Garcia. So if you have the right candidate who's talking about common sense kitchen table issues and actually persuading the electorate, I think the state is still a center right state. If you have somebody that wants to come and re-litigate 2020 and only speak to the base, that's a losing message. You campaigned in your first campaign on bringing taxes in Arizona as close as possible to zero and you got to 2.5% flat tax in the end. How did you do that? I feel like as long as I have been involved in kind of free market or small government politics, people have been talking about low tax, flat tax, you're going to do your taxes on a postcard, usually more talk than action. So what happened? Persistence, persistence, persistence. It was our goal every year we lowered or simplified taxes and we actually had the left overreach and came into Arizona and I think deceived the voters with an initiative saying we can put a billion dollars additional into K-12 education and it won't cost you any money, only the rich people. And they took our 4.5% tax at the highest progressive level to eight. Now 8% in Arizona would have been a cancer that would have metastasized over decades. That's Bernie Sanders, Vermont, Washington D.C. or New York State but it was popular. We worked hard to beat it. It was pulling at about 65-35. We were able to drive it down to 51% on election day but when I was a young boy there was a show on Saturday morning, Wild World of Sports and they would talk about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. We suffered about 18 months of the agony of defeat while we challenged the initiative in court, it eventually got to our Supreme Court and then we reformed taxes in the legislature in the interim. The law, the initiative was struck down and we had reduced taxes along the way. So had we been successful on election day, taxes in Arizona today would be 4.5%. But because we had a bad result, we persisted in the legislature and we had a Supreme Court that was not going to let out-of-state interest deceive the voter. Today we have the lowest flat tax in the nation. So I would say a combination of good planning, good timing and good luck. Is this something that other states can duplicate? This sounds like a lot of things coming together just right. Is there a path forward that other people could follow the Arizona tax reform plan? I believe so. I think if you make a pledge to your constituents that you're going to lower or simplify taxes every year and you win on that, then you have the permission in which to do that. If you can grow your economy, you have surplus funds so it allows you to basically buy down your tax rate and I'm a huge fan of the flat tax. I want us to be fair and equitable and I think a flat tax makes a lot of sense and it's also very hard for the left to change because people understand it. Massachusetts is not known for being a low tax state but they do have a 5% flat income tax and they've not been able to change that or raise it. Today in Arizona, like I said, we're at 2.5%. But if you get your economy growing, that's my background, Catherine. I came from the private sector, Cold Stone Creamery, the ice cream company was my business and I ran on a platform of kick starting the economy. I said I'd grown a business, now I want to shrink a government and grow an economy. I was looking at places like Texas and asking why are they so successful in comparison to other states and I was trained coming out of university at Procter & Gamble. P&G is a big fan of best practices, of something called search and reapply. If you see another good idea anywhere in the world, you bring it back to headquarters with attribution. In politics I found people find good ideas all over the country and bring them back to their state often without attribution. Texas was the model Rick Perry and governors before him had turned an oil and gas state into a cosmopolitan place with international businesses that did business around the world. I saw no reason at all why Arizona couldn't occupy that space and I also was aware of the bad decisions that California was making so I thought we were perfectly positioned and I wanted to be the chief salesperson and spokesperson to do that. When I came into office we had a billion-dollar deficit that first year and I think the first tax reform that we were able to pass was to make certain that you weren't indexed out with inflation and that was the start. We got the budget under control, the economy began to grow and we were able to ratchet that tax code down. I think sometimes particularly in the modern GOP you get a lot of emphasis on the tax cutting and a lot less on the reduction of spending or the balancing of the budget. This has always been an issue of course, tax cuts are a lot easier to sell than austerity but do you think that that issue is getting worse? Do you think that there's a way to reconnect to those two ideas in American political rhetoric or in voters' minds? Well, Catherine, I think you live here in Washington D.C. and that's what you are responding to as to how the Republicans in this town behave.  Governors don't get to print money and there's no appetite to borrow money except in the worst of a crisis. So you really do have to find a way to shrink your government. I'm proud of the growth and attractiveness of Arizona. I think we have 400,000 additional people in Arizona versus the day that I came into office but our state government is smaller. We were actually able to shrink the footprint of our state government, the number of people inside state government, the number of buildings and real estate holdings of the state government. So I think if you look at governors around the country who take this winning game plan and execute it, there's a model that could be used in Washington D.C. but here no one really seems to want to persuade on why we need to tighten the belt or I did take a hit that first year to balance the budget. There's no constitutional obligation to balance the budget. I just came from the private sector and I had lived through several downturns before and I knew each time I had navigated through a downturn as a CEO I wished I would have acted faster with more of a sense of urgency on right sizing the business. So I don't want to lose those lessons in the largest responsibility I had in my life to date at age 50 so I said to the legislators who said we don't really have to balance the budget nothing's gonna happen that I wanted them to blame me for it that I ran on it. I wanted to do it. I thought it was possible and the economy was going to get better and we could begin to invest again next year and if the economy didn't get better we'd be happy we acted today because we wouldn't be exaggerating problems for tomorrow. It was the cut or elimination or reorganization that you enjoyed the most during that period. I'm sure it's never fun to fire anyone but there had to have been something that were a little more delightful than others. So I had a lot of people from the business community that helped me become governor none of them wanted to come work with me in government so I had to find the best people and these agencies are the best people from around the country to come work inside these agencies and in my first month you have inauguration of state of the state you present the budget and in 2015 we were hosting the Super Bowl so I was meeting with each of these agency heads and basically asking them the same question I would have asked somebody who wanted a top level position at Coldstone who are you what do you do and how do you know if you do it well and you really want to hear somebody tie something to a metric as to how they they measure things inside their agency we had a director at weights and measures who said let me tell you what I'm gonna do I'm gonna sting Uber and Lyft during the Super Bowl and shut them down obviously he wasn't paying much attention to the campaign I was able to ask my general counsel what's my authority over these agency heads he said they work at the pleasure of the governor I was able to release this gentleman into the private sector in what would be soon a growing economy but that was my way to capture the attention of the state government that I was serious about making real reforms and I think if you do have a plan we went through a strategic plan just like we would in in business I wanted every agency had to know what the mission of that agency was to have public metrics and how they could advance it to have transparency to taxpayer monies and then to memorialize what they had accomplished the past 90 days and could could accomplish in the next 90 days and make adjustments and so it basically a six sigma type thing that you can do but I'm someone I want to see us have less government but I'm not somebody on the right that thinks government is unnecessary I think government serves a purpose and when the government is responsive and it's not putting obstacles up in people and small business owners way people flock to your state businesses grow and have great success and then in this economic development competition that we have among the states we were winning the majority of them and in yesteryear was all taxes and I think you'd see today that Arizona is leading on this places like Texas continue to do well Utah is very good Florida Tennessee are all states that are really growing and they're following the same model where do you think immigration fits into the picture of attracting the best people and kind of opening up the state for enterprise you during your term as governor built a kind of makeshift border wall you know that's something I would say where you generally differ with the reason line to some extent talk about how you see those ideas connecting because to me it seems like everything you just said sounds true and we should want people from Mexico to come to Arizona too so I think people in Washington DC confuse border security with immigration they are separate and mutually exclusive issues border security is about law enforcement it's about national defense it's about public health if we had a pandemic over the last two years the border in Arizona is wide open and unprotected under President Biden it was in the same condition under President Obama and that's not how the law works this is an illegal migration so if we can secure and stabilize the border which was happening in 2019 and 2020 we can talk about immigration and I'm pro-legal immigration and we need new immigrants from the service sector to software engineers my first visit as governor internationally was to Mexico City my first international visit upon re-election was to Mexico City and my last visit as a sitting governor was to Mexico City they are our number one trading partner times four it's not even close we had an incredible relationship with them but we weren't open to people illegally migrating so if we'll solve solve the border situation which is very solvable it was already done in 2019 and 2020 then we can talk about immigration reform but border security happens in Texas New Mexico Arizona California immigration reform happens down the street here in Congress let's talk about schools we sometimes you mentioned earlier metrics we sometimes evaluate teachers these days with their value add so give me your value add on schools what was the state of play on school choice in Arizona when you came in and what did it look like when you left Arizona has always been very good on school choice and it's something that I believe in I stood on the shoulders of giants like Lisa Graham Keegan and Fife Simington at the state level we have 525 schools of choice in Arizona charter schools your your listeners will know those are our public schools with with private management if you take those schools that's the number one state in the nation for accomplishment on math reading and science so we did a lot to grow that model we have systems like the basis school system in great hearts were both founded in Arizona part of what animated my run for governor in 2014 was universal school choice the Milton Friedman idea that he shared on free to choose in his book and in his PBS series and it's something that took me all eight years of my governorship to accomplish we actually were able to pass a a limited ESA program in 2017 we have an anomaly of our Constitution where if you get enough signatures you can refer a law to the people and ESA's was referred to the people in 2017 and it was crushed it lost 65 to 35 and these are just education savings accounts so essentially vouchers well I would call them scholarships but many people who love vouchers would and Milton Friedman also said in in a crisis people will look for the ideas that are lying around and the crisis that came was COVID and parents were able to see what their kids were being taught or not taught and the level of rigor and expectation from the public schools they also saw that the charter schools opened and the Catholic schools opened and many of the largest public districts chose to stay closed for nearly two years even when the government was telling them to open so we were able to pass universal educational savings accounts and this is for every child in the state of Arizona is able to take a large portion of their tax dollars and go wherever they would like to school including home school micro school or a new school so I think we were able to move the bar to the highest rung nine other states have since followed with universal school choice taxes in Tennessee are on the one-yard line and it reminds me a bit of Roger Bannister was the first man to break the four-minute mile people thought that that was physically impossible and from the the marathon in Greece to the 1960s no one man or woman had written a broken a four-minute mile I think it was several months after Roger broke four minutes somebody else broke four minutes and it's been broken over a thousand time since I think that this universal school choice is the way to truly reform K-12 education and I think in many ways renew our country this one across party lines it was actually the African-American pastors and a lady that leads the black mother's form who wasn't very happy with the way that I handled the summer of 2020 who was my lead advocate on universal school choice not one of them a Republican and we were able to pass this with no Democrat votes I wanted those votes but they were beholden to the teachers union in Arizona in my final year we had a one-seat majority in our house a one-seat majority in our Senate we had a confluence of circumstances that happened that we were able to get that in the final days and like I said other states have since followed you were governor during COVID and I saw that you there were moves to recall you both from the Arizonans for liberty who wanted to recall you for doing too much and also from accountable Arizona wonder recall you for doing too little which of them was right I made the best decisions I could for the state of Arizona I didn't want to play politics with COVID and I didn't want to compete with other governors I was going to make the best decision in real time for what was needed in our state I did it a lot different than many of the other Western states I prioritized lives livelihoods and individual liberties I came from that private sector I was the owner of a small business those are the people that I know and I understand what they go through and there were a lot of calls from elected officials with guaranteed government paychecks people that would not miss a paycheck or a salary and we're choosing to to work from home and I wanted to keep our businesses open and I think the evidence of how Arizona came out of COVID in comparison to other states is where the proof lies and to how COVID was handled is there something you would have done differently though in retrospect I imagine there is but not in the real time of what was happening because of course I'm somebody who thinks you surround yourself with experts but I made the decisions so the experts were not on top and I aired on the side of caution until I had enough evidence that we knew where the vulnerable people were we had communicated to the vulnerable people and and then they live in a free country and it's up to them to make the decisions that they want but to get kids back in school to have our businesses open and to allow people to make responsible decisions is something I felt very passionate about advocating for. Let's talk about the current state of the Republican Party at the national level as well as kind of in the states you recently took a new gig as at the citizens for free enterprise and I think you're you're maybe even speaking with some folks about that here in town in Washington DC it's kind of kind of got a national scope my perception is that the current Republican Party to say nothing of the current Democratic Party is not too friendly to free enterprise these days what can we do about that? Well again I would separate what you're seeing in Washington DC and some of the big government Republicanism that's happening here versus what you're happening see happening in many of our states yet there are some folks out there that are bullying big businesses I think if we're going to be a majority party if we're going to win on our ideas if we're going to look to there's a lot of freedoms we could we could talk about over the course of this discussion from freedom of speech to freedom of religion and freedom of assembly all all rights that we've seen under assault in the last several years but they're all undergirded by economic freedom and it's what's allowed us to be the the mightiest military and history of the world it's also allowed us to make a lot of really stupid spending decisions and overcome that and I do think that if you go into a college classroom today and you held up a sign that said socialism and capitalism it's about a 50-50 proposition and that should scare every freedom loving individual in the country to death so I think we have some work to do not only with our youth and college classrooms but also with our electorate part of the reason citizens for free enterprise exists is because it's an evergreen issue there's going to be certain social and cultural issues that we fight about every two years and these are worthwhile discussions this is how we answer these questions but it wasn't that long ago that a blue state governor who became president was actually accused of being pretty good on the economy and under President Obama it became more of a class warfare between the haves and a have not the have nots with I think an over emphasis on an inequality while not looking at the government supplements to what we do to those in the most vulnerable positions so we want to advance the cause of free enterprise and we'd also like to drain some of the partisanship out of it but it should always be protected on the right and through what we're going to be doing people that are going to be attacking it are going to feel consequences regardless of what party they're in what consequences would those be well the consequences in politics is that you are no longer in office it's a pretty big project to convince Americans to feel better about capitalism or to like free trade or something like that it's reasons project as well in many senses where do you see the the doors that are open for that what are the openings that Americans might sort of be willing to make change on or sort of hear the at least hear the argument out well I would come at it from a different angle I think that Americans love small businesses and they love small business men and women and they love many of these entrepreneurs and local shop owners and their own cities towns and municipalities and if you go to citizens for free enterprise dot com you'll see many of their stories on our website so part of it is of course the the principles that you and I have have read and understand and want to make certain are are being communicated properly in our grade schools and our high schools and our colleges and happen in many of a place like a great hearts Academy in Arizona kids come out really understanding what makes the economy tick and and how to live within your means and why this is not only a good personal habit it's also a responsible habit of a of a business or or a government or an enterprise but I think when people can hear the story from the entrepreneur whether it's the local micro brewer or the guy who runs the four wheel shop who retrofritz the pickups it helps people understand why this is important and we have so many stories of people that have had great success and the other thing that I think it happened rather recently is we've separated the the entrepreneur and the small business owner from the employee we're actually they're interested are aligned and the more successful the the company is or the the city or town or municipality the more opportunities are there for the for the employee and they may or may not want to cast their lot in the entrepreneurial world they may just want to climb the economic ladder and be able to build personal financial security and without that opportunity to build financial security is there really freedom there I mean these are things that go hand in hand there does seem to be a bit more bipartisan agreement though that maybe we should all hate billionaires or we should all hate the very wealthy I I agree with you Americans are generally have a lot of warm fuzzies about small businesses but economic liberty requires more than just protecting small businesses right what is there you know what is there to do about this sort of oh we'll tax the rich and solve all the problems mentality well one the numbers don't work and you know that the math on that is is never going to work and that's not unusual I actually think that's playing on some of the worst of human nature to build this this envy in folks and there's all kinds of social scientists that will show you that people actually feel better if somebody's doing worse while they're doing better and we're not going to participate in any of that we're just going to to educate and advocate around free enterprise and try to bring that voter into the fold so that they can make the decision on election day on who's in support of it and it's regardless of party I think you'd find more of that right now on the right but as you mentioned there are some folks here in this town and there are some folks in state capitals that are that are beating up on businesses and I think if we continue to do that or allow that to happen we're only sharpening the knife that the left will eventually use on us who are some folks either in DC or around the country that you think are doing good work right now well I I mentioned the states Greg Abbott's doing good work in taxes right everybody's seen what Ron DeSantis has done in Florida Bill Lee and Bill Haslam before him in Tennessee Pete Ricketts just came out of Nebraska and you're lucky to have him in the United States Senate here hopefully can bring a little bit of the common sense of what governors have to deal with Eric Holcomb and Indiana and Kim Reynolds are also people that are are taking states that don't have some of the the Sun Belt attractiveness but are attracting companies and have have their their citizens very happy with what they're doing is attracting companies the right the right measure I'm thinking here in DC we're currently having a battle over where our stadium is going to be and of course with that comes a bunch of cronyism can you talk about how to make those distinctions well I think a company would be different than a stadium are always a special case for a kind of fever that comes over everyone involved absolutely and I was trained at Proctor and Gamble that any business that is one on price will be lost on price so all of the incentives that we had in Arizona were performance incentives and they were in statute so we were not able to negotiate with that business owner and listen if it was all about the numbers and all that mattered was the bottom line on that decision you would have states going to the absolute lowest cost place in which to do business but no business owner or CEO moves to where they do not want to live and they also know that that quality of life is going to attract their senior management team and their employees and that's the mix that I believe we had right in Arizona not only low tax light regulation affordable and reliable energy with excellent education but we had a great quality of life and they could have confidence that their taxes was we're not going to be hiked and that they would be able to hire people from across the country and around the globe that would want to come live in these communities. What do you think about the rise of the kind of economic variant of national conservatism again I agree with you this is to some extent a DC phenomenon and certainly a DC chattering classes phenomenon but it's manifesting in our politics for sure this idea that is increasingly coming from the right that we need to cut off trade and competition maybe just with China maybe with everyone cut off immigration generally kind of favor subsidize you know tax favor US businesses you know does does that in the end kind of hoist us on our own part are there ways to do that in a way that's more or less damaging it seems to be an ascendant orthodoxy certainly here in DC. Well the right has always been a fusion I think the right especially from from Barry Goldwater and we like to say in Arizona that he never lost that election in 1964 it just took 16 years to count the votes but that idea of what William F. Buckley and Goldwater and Ronald Reagan projected was what made the Republicans and the right a majority party and that not only had the fiscal conservatives and the tax hawks but it had the social conservatives and the people that cared about Second Amendment rights and then Tea Party folks and evangelicals and each time the party continued to grow I think you will see this Washington DC free con that con discussion one thing I wholeheartedly agree with the Natkins is countries have borders and those borders should be protected and ours is not on the southern border and I think that's that's lost on people of responsibility here including the president and vice president who have not been to the border or understand the situation that that ranchers in the small towns are going through but I think the fusion between the the folks that want to talk about national identity and our borders and what you see on the the freedom side of the equation is is where will land I am much more of a free trader and I do think that we were able to get some things right in the Trump Pence administration in finally understanding what was happening in China I know from opening ice cream stores and both Beijing and Shanghai that they were able to play by different rules no one had ever called them on it there's an immense amount of trade that happens between the two countries and I think the both countries benefits but I don't think it's unfair for us to expect that they behave by a certain set of rules if we're going to continue to do that and the other opportunity I think COVID gave us was that we don't want to be put in that position again with our supply supply chain so when when when we do have the opportunity to to reshore or repatriate or to work with our neighbors one thing I really liked about them the US MCA which was an improvement of NAFTA my focus was was first and foremost on Mexico as our top trading partner well our number two trading partner was Canada and you can say that pretty much for all 50 governors so if somebody's not going to open their business in Arizona I prefer they open it in one of the other 49 states if not one of the other 49 states I prefer Mexico or Canada and that's not only good for North American free trade it's also good for peace and prosperity and any pandemic or or global crisis this doesn't mean we decouple from China but it also doesn't mean that we allow them to steal our intellectual property and to run roughshod over any way they would like to in which to do business I mean we have we have a vote as well what do you see for the next say five to ten years in terms of the evolution of the kind of US stance with respect to the world so you know I think that we're kind of in a moment where things are trending a little more closed in many ways by both parties but at the same time you know our communications technologies and our media are you know making us more connected than ever how does that play out in our politics I mean people are gonna feel closer to we're seeing this with the Israeli Palestinian conflict we're seeing it in Ukraine people are gonna feel closer to conflicts all around the world how does that play out for US involvement either in terms of foreign policy or trade well I'm generalizing here but I think that you and I have basically come of age in a magical American moment I mean in our lifetime we've had one bad day on September 11th and it changed a lot in in this country but we were one of two superpowers around the world then we were the only superpower in 1989 and smart people were able to write books where they claimed it was the end of history and freedom and democracy and free enterprise would would spread around the globe and then we had the shock and surprise of 9-11 now this is a return to real history while I fear that we've projected weakness around the globe and these conflicts are what is more normal in in the course of time so I think us making responsible decisions at home making sure we're investing in our defense projecting strength so that we can achieve peace and then we're divided as a nation and there is an isolationist attraction right now this is not new in this nation and it's not new for the right or for the left we weren't eager to get into world war two until the morning after December 7th 1941 what we don't want is that kind of shock to our system or to the what's happening around the globe I do think of course Ukraine and Russia's aggression is something we were all talking about until October 7th and then we saw how how fragile geopolitics are right now so I think we're gonna have a real discussion this is going to happen in an election year and I'm gonna be advocating that we project strength where we're necessary and make sure that we keep our alliances you mentioned a few influences earlier very Goldwater Ronald Reagan Bill Buckley in this sort of American era that you just described what are what were some of your influences that shaped your politics well what Mitch Daniels did in Indiana I found very encouraging I always look for a model of someone that I can study and Mitch really talked and thought and wrote like a like a businessman I'm from the Midwest I grew up in Toledo Ohio and lived there till I was 18 and God bless the Big Ten but Mitch did an inherited estate where a lot of people were dreaming of retiring he did this in the traditional heartland and I thought in his book in the Republic were a lot of innovative entrepreneurial policy ideas and that really is the great thing about being a governor most people wouldn't know who a governor is in another state COVID might have changed a little bit of that because I think you were able to see a real difference between red states and blue states and how we handled it I didn't realize how many of my peers on the left were closet authoritarians but before that we were all trying to solve problems we might have solved them from a different point of view but governors are very collegial and I think and I spoke about this in my last public speech before I left the governor's office at the Reagan library of a return to federalism I simply think that our federal government here in DC tries to do too much and it does most of it poorly so why doesn't it focus on on national defense and securing the border and reforming our finances to protect a social safety net for our elderly and most vulnerable and then push everything else back to the states and let the states compete governors communicate we're collaborative but at the end of the day we we compete with each other we want to show up at a Republican governor's association meeting and talk about who's lowered the taxes the most or who's eliminated the most regulations and we know that Americans vote with their feet and there will be a time it may not be in Gavin Newsom or Andrew Cuomo or JB Pritzker's time but where these governors will be held accountable for the people that are fleeing their states to go to to better qualities of life and I think we would have better policies if we were able to do that with no strings attached because I don't know what happens when someone gets elected to Congress they can be a good conservative in the state legislature and they come here and of all of a sudden they think that you're a middle manager in their federal corporation when Mitch Daniels made a kind of earlier foray into national politics he ended up drawing a lot of fire for saying something that's always stuck with me which is essentially we don't have time to do culture wars because our economic situation is so dire and our fiscal situation is so dire we simply cannot get distracted by culture wars this was many many years ago I think it's fair to say we have in fact gotten distracted by culture wars that's certainly what this election seems like it's going to be fought and one on was he right I think it's a reality of politics is you have to meet the voter where they are I have the same sense of of concern around our finances and our debt we've not paid a price for it so so to speak and when we do it will be devastating so I think somehow you have to navigate what are the the social issues and and maybe part of the silver lining of an October 7th if there can be any is the exposure of what's happening on so many of our universities and our elite institutions that we realize it's young people aren't learning 20% of these young people don't believe the Holocaust happened and they've divided the world into oppressor and victims so I think if there's an issue right now it's the the woke stuff that you're seeing for lack of a better way to put it on the left and then some of the discussion on the right that is much more top down and driven from the newly elected king that will come to Washington DC but those are realities and it's it's going to be up to leaders to present a better more constitutional alternative. I think we'll leave it there. Thank you very much governor. Thank you.


That's what the name of the game is, staying busy. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ricky! Karoo! He is an investor, a speaker, and soon to be remembered, in my opinion, as a legend in the industry. The cool thing about what he was doing was he was documenting everything. Like, he would post his calls, his work he was putting in, strategies, he was sharing everything. He said, let me come by and just see what you got going on and see if there's some value I can bring, something I can do to help you sell it on your own. If we say, hey, we're working with buyers in my database, you're just proving a point. But anyway, listen, we're all here competing with each other, healthy competition, to see who gets the most listings. Let's do, let's compete. What we have to do is figure out what's going on here and what we can do to help them. When it naturally fits in, it works great. When you try to force it, then it gets weird. Literally all in the head, it's the exact same people that you say the exact same thing to. The way I did it was, is I called more people in a week than people called all year because they're doing all the marketing stuff. And here we are 30 days later and he listed one, put it on the market yesterday. And he said, I wanna meet with you next week about these other two houses I'm fixing to put on the market, about a game plan for those. So think about that for a second. He pursued someone who was not interested in an agent, already done deals. And now he's got one working on two more listings from that guy. It just goes to show you guys the relationships over transactions mentality, right? He said, let me come by and just see what you got going on and see if there's some value I can bring, something I can do to help you sell it on your own, right? He's just trying to build his name, build his brand.  And you say, I need an asking price, a commission, right? You're gonna pay me if I sell it and pictures of the property. How fast can you get that to me? Put them to work.  Yeah, send me the information, right? As soon as you see me asking price, commission you're gonna pay me as the buyer's agent and pictures of the property, then let me look at that and see what I think and then I'll come take a look at the property and see if it might be a good fit for my buyer. Put it on them and see if they come back. I've had hundreds of agents calling me like that and guess what, not a single one of them send me an asking price, commission, rate, or phone or pictures, you know why? Because they're lazy. They were just trying to mess with me and act like whatever, no. Yeah, I got a buyer, get to work. Send me the stuff so I can get to work on this. You'll never hear from them. And if you do, awesome, let's pursue it and see if it's a good deal for a possible buyer we might have. If we say, hey, we're working with buyers of my database, you're just proving their point that you didn't actually have a buyer and they're like, oh, okay, yeah.  That's what they're gonna, that's what they're gonna do, right? Gotcha, mm-hmm, yeah.  Good to see you. I'm gonna make some live calls today. Over the screen share the Red X and kind of show you guys a little bit of the back end getting set up and everything. So we're gonna do that. I'm gonna hit the triple line. I plan on trying to have maybe three, four conversations. That way I'll leave a little bit of time at the end for some Q and A. Put in the comments right now as I get into a few things before I do that and let me know if you want me to do million dollar and up expires because I already have that filter in my arm. But anyway, listen, we're all here competing with each other, healthy competition to see who gets the most listings. Let's do, let's compete. Let's go out here and get listings. Let's stir the pot. Let's make it happen. Let's stay busy. That's what the name of the game is. Staying busy. You heard what I was saying. Are you gonna re-list it with this other agent? How did that go? Blah, blah, blah. So it just depends. For me, it's all, every conversation is a little different but my wills are turning to understand the situation as much as possible to figure out where do I insert myself into the situation, right? What we have to do is figure out what's going on here and what we can do to help them. You know, and then you figure out what that means per situation. The setting of the appointment or whatever just comes naturally because that's like the next step in the process. You know, once you realize that that is the next step, you know what I'm saying? When it naturally, here's the thing. When it naturally fits in, it works great. When you try to force it, then it gets weird. Hey, Ricky. Ms. Harrison with EXP and Dallas. I have a real quick question. How are you marking the calls so that you know they're not calling back or they're done or whatever? You can say not interested. If you're not gonna call them back, you can mark them down interested in the disposition. So if you wanna call the voicemails back, right? Like say you called nine to 12 on a Tuesday and then Thursday afternoon, you wanna hit them at a different time of day to see if the voicemail people actually answer. You can just go to that same list, hit dial and hit voicemails to call all the people up. And then you can leave another voicemail. Hey, I left you a voicemail Tuesday, right? And then maybe you get some of those people to answer, but you can play around with that and call this back and like filter out really quickly based on how you disposition them. It's really cool. Hey, Ricky. Hey. I survived my first day of calling Fisbos and I am here to tell the tale. So I just wanted to say some more about it. I was ashamed, yeah. Yeah, how'd it go? Well, I got one guy who wanted me to send my resume so you could see my picture, sir. But apart from that, it went pretty good. I got about three or four people on the phone. I had a woman who yelled at me and then sent me a text to apologize. Don't you love it? She said, I'm so sorry. You're like 5,000 days into this call. But I didn't get any appointments yet. I got an email address, but it was just, I felt so much better by the end of the morning than the first beginning of the morning. Cause it was, I was super stressed. And I've done red X before. I just hate making the calls. It's really hard for me to start doing it. But once I started, I was okay. What do you think? Had you worried about the calls? I've just never liked doing them. I've never liked doing, never. You think you just had the wrong perspective on the calls? Like in your mind, like you were thinking about, you were thinking it was something that it's really not? 100%. Yeah. I mean, it was just, it was just, I've never had a coach who's helped me kind of taught me through it. Like Shane was on the other end of the, you know, in my ear. So it was just so much easier having someone there just to kind of hold my hand until I get better at it.  I've never kind of done the fizzboats or the expires or anything. So this was really hard for me to do, but I did it, I survived. Oh yeah.  It is just absolute bliss.   You're on, you're on the phone with people. You're talking to them. I call all the time. I just, yeah. But they always can't, yeah. But my perspective is that those are the exact same people that I called today.  It is all in the head. Literally all in the head. It's the exact same people that you say the exact same thing to. It's nuts. It's like, hi, here I am. This is what I do. I'm here to help you. What you got? That's it. Every single time, no matter what the lead is, there's no difference in leads, guys. There's no good leads, bad leads. These leads were, they called me first. These leads are, you know, me. There's no such thing. It's all the same boat. Have you ever called a lead, Lisa, that called you first, that was mean to you? I don't know if I did. Oh, yes, I have. Okay. Yes, one for once. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You can't get away from it. Even the people that called you don't know who you are and get mad at you. So you might as well settle in and realize that the fastest, the way that you outpace every agent is to understand that it's all about conversations. Okay. And whoever has the most wins. So let's just have them right now. What am I doing wasting time waiting on people to call me or sending out marketing, waiting on leads to come in or open, why am I doing all this? It all comes back to conversations anyway. So I wanna be the best. I wanna sell more than everybody in my market. I wanna be the number one agent in my market. So how do I do that? Well, the way I did it was is I called more people in a week than people called all year because they're doing all the marketing stuff and getting all the leads trickling in and they look like they're busy, right? Meanwhile, while they called 200 people in a year, I called 200 people in a week. I literally did a week of their work, a year of their work in a week. That's why I was the number one agent in my market because I understood this hack. This is a hack guys.  You don't have to do any marketing. You don't have to do any of that stuff. You don't have to do any of that. We've got everything right here. All the leads, bam, you just call them. Call them, have fun, see what they wanna do.  That's not who they are. That's just the front they're putting on because they're scared. Oh no, it's somebody I don't know. That's their crocodile brain getting in that fight or fight mentality. All right? When people get mad at you, I can't believe this is the 15th agent that called me. You guys need to keep calling.   They're saying, hi, you sound like a really nice young man. You know what? I'm not really interested right this second. I might be later, but right now I'm just not quite interested. I only have a whole lot of time to talk to you. So I gotta go, all right? We'll see you later. That's what they're really saying, but the way they're communicating it is just backwards, right? They're not great communicators, let's just say. They don't do this for a living like we do. Yeah, answer a couple of these questions in the chat and then we'll get up out of here. Let's see, what's your opinion on EDDM? I'm guessing your EDDM, somebody tell me what that is. I'm thinking it means earnest money, but I don't think it does. It's every door direct mail. What's up? Every door direct mail by the phone calls. Yeah, I'm not listening like around, you're just listening to just solds followed by phone calls. Yes, to do it on an ongoing basis in today's world, it's just not real effective. There's too much stuff happening, social media, email. Would I ask who their friend agent is? Yes, I would ask who the friend agent is in that conversation. Yes, I would. Oh, who is it? I thought you knew who it was, Denise. I would have said yes, who's your friend? I may know him, blah, blah, blah. Let's see, I'm doing direct mail, but it's in addition to the calls and the handwritten letters. Yeah, it wouldn't be something I did, but everybody has to do their thing. You know, everything works. If you're following up with phone calls, it's gonna work. If you don't follow the phone calls, it ain't gonna work. All right, cool guys. Enjoyed it. I hope you guys got a lot out of this. Shane's gonna be in here teaching us for sell by owner stuff next Monday, and then I'll be back the following Monday. And I plan on making some more calls. So I don't know who I'll call or what'll be going on, but I plan on making some more calls then. So we'll kind of pick it up with that when I get back with some more calls. And then after that, it'll be February. We'll be moving into the February challenge. So be sure you guys are hitting me up on VMs on the Gold Bar platform when you get listings. So I could put you guys in on the leaderboard. We've got a Gold Bar ticket, Gold Bar Live, Ryan Sirham, myself, Josh Altman, Juan, everybody, and also 10X Roll books I'm gonna sign for you guys for the top three people, all right? Cool, hey. Yeah, yes, I'm excited. You guys go crush it. Let me know what I could do to help. Thank you guys, see ya.