If anybody want to grab a seat or find a spot against the wall, we're really happy to have you here tonight. It's part of our 150th event. What if eating insects saved the planet? Quite a question tonight. And because there's food involved, I see we have all the students are here tonight too, so that's a good thing. Free food, even if it's bugs. We're all interested in it, aren't we? My name's Jill Dittmeyer. I'm from Indianapolis. I work at WFII right now. It's a PBS station there. But a million years ago, I worked here in Lafayette at WLFI. I was a news anchor and reporter there. I spent a lot of time here on campus. It was a lot different then. This is a beautiful building. I've also produced a couple of television shows, one that featured all the wineries across the state in the Midwest, so I spent a lot of time in the Food Sciences building over there as well. Now I've been reporting and anchoring the news in Indianapolis, and I'm producing an arts and culture show on a weekly basis. It actually airs tonight on Thursdays and Sundays, and our podcast is available anytime. It's called Curious Mix, and that's exactly what it is, a curious mix of stories about arts and culture. I'm also on a board called the DaVinci Pursuit, and that's where I met Andrea at one of our events that was all about bugs and eating bugs. So it's kind of nice to be back here again tonight. What's going to happen is both of our... two experts here. If you ever wanted to know anything about eating insects, the who, what, when, where, why, and how, you've come to the right place tonight, and after we hear each of them give their presentation, you'll be able to ask them questions. I'll help you guys. We'll moderate the panel here, and then you'll get to eat the bugs. So just a little bit of time. So we're going to start first with our out-of-town guest who has arrived safely and here on campus. This is Chef Joseph Yoon, and he is an entrepreneur. He's also the chef owner of Yummy Eats and Dinner Echo in New York City. And most importantly, he's the executive director of Brooklyn Bugs, and if any of you have Googled this guy, you kind of came into it from an arts collision way, too. I'm sure he'll tell you about that. Brooklyn Bugs is currently on their college tour, the national tour. Their work has been extensively covered in the media, they've been on live with Kelly and Ryan, and New York Times have covered them. The Smithsonian Channel, they've been on some TV there as well. And Joseph said he views his participation in this global food movement as an extension of his commitment to his community, and he volunteers his time and resources on a regular basis. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his amazing rescue dog, Paisle, who didn't make the trip today. Okay. Joseph is here as well as Andrea Leciaga, and she is our PhD in food chemistry here. She got that from the University of British Columbia. In 2009, she became a faculty member in the Food Science Department here at Purdue, and her research focuses on the extraction and application of alternative protein sources. The big title, that's why her business card is pretty big. In particularly, she looks at insects and fish byproducts, and she's also the director of the Sensory Evaluation Lab, and that's why we had you on our show that day, where she studies the sensory characteristics and consumer attitudes towards those alternative proteins, which there are certainly a lot of consumer attitudes about both. And that's why you both are here. So Andrea, I will let you lead the way. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, you're good. Thank you, everyone. Welcome. We're really excited to see all of you here tonight, and I couldn't be more excited that Joseph Sheffield was able to come to see us here at Purdue for the 150-year anniversary of the university. So we're very pleased and very excited to share our mission and our research interests and passion with you tonight. I just have a few slides that I want to share with you before I let Joseph take over. And basically, it's a brief introduction to what Joseph is going to talk about after. Basically, we thought of a... Why should we call this presentation a few months ago when we were planning for all of this? And we came up with all the research based on what our mission is and the research we have done. We thought, well, what if people really need to know what happens if we really had to eat insects to try and help save the planet? Obviously, we're not going to solve all the world's problem, but can we actually contribute a little bit towards helping our planet, which is undergoing a lot of drastic changes and a lot of pressure from all the agriculture production that is needed now to feed the world? So with that, the word entomophagy comes to mind. I don't know how many of you are familiar with this term, but this is basically the word we use to describe the practice of eating insects. And this practice has been practiced for millions of years. Actually, archaeologists and anthropologists have clear evidence that 2 million years ago, our ancestors had to eat insects in order to get their protein eats. There's actually proof of that, that hominids used to have tools, specific tools to scrape rocks for termites, and termites are high in protein, and that's where they got their main protein from. If we move along, there's also obviously a lot of cultures through the centuries that have shown to eat insects as part of their culture. So the Mexicas, Aztecs, Mayans, the Pomo in Northern California, the Ache in Paraguay, for example, Arunta in Central Australia, the San in Botsnawa, and obviously in the Utah Piotes also. So here in North America, we also had a lot of insect consumption, and there's actually proof that the Native Americans were sharing insect dishes with colonists. So who all eats bugs nowadays? A lot of people, close to 2 billion people in the world, are eating insects already as part of their diet, cultural aspects as well. I'm originally from Mexico, and we've eaten insects normally in the home on occasion. There's some people from Mexico that don't like insects, like my colleagues and we're here. But we have others that do, so it's not everyone. But about 2 million people worldwide are currently eating insects. And this map just shows you an idea by countries, the countries where insects are nowadays currently consuming insects as part of their diet. And you can see it's mostly, I don't think the pointer's working, but mostly the countries in the tropics, between the tropics of cancer and Capricorn, that region of countries are well known to eat insects as part of their diet, incorporate insects in their diet.  Like I said, they've been consumed for centuries, millions of years, and we really want to go that far back. They are very nutritious. They are actually very high in protein, they have a very good source of fat, lipids, and they obviously have carbohydrates and vitamins and minerals. But depending on the species, that composition, the nutritional composition will vary. So some insects will be higher in protein than others. And vice versa in terms of the fat and the other components in the insect. But overall, they're highly nutritious, comparable to any other animal protein source, and also equivalent to a lot of the plant proteins that we consume regularly, like soy, pea protein, etc. In terms of sustainability, a lot of research has been done, in particular by the FAO from the United Nations, and scientists have actually been able to quantify the amount of protein that is generated from livestock, for example, versus crickets, if you do it per calorie basis or per kilogram or pound of protein, digestible protein, and the amount of, for example, feed that you will need to produce that exact same amount of protein coming from crickets or coming from livestock, such as beef in this example. So the two bags versus 25 bags of animal feed require to produce the one pound of digestible protein. The same with water. Crickets will only need about a gallon to produce that same amount of protein versus 2,000 gallons for beef. And in terms of emission of greenhouses, gases, obviously a lot less emission from insects compared to traditional livestock sources. With this, I obviously want to emphasize that we're not here to trash the other protein sources whatsoever. I love beef. I eat a lot of meat as well, but it's just to make you aware that there's other sources out there and that we can actually incorporate them into our diet. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, one day when we're going to eat, instead of, what is it, no, Mondays when you don't eat beef, meatless Mondays. I know Joseph has occasionally said, can we have, what is it, Cricket Tuesday or Insect Tuesday or something like that. And one more thing also that's important, especially those of us who are in agriculture is to again make you aware that not only is that they produce equal amounts of proteins to traditional sources, but they also require less water, less feed and less emission of greenhouse gases, but also the amount of land that is required to produce this amount of protein. So we know again from the FAO of the United Nations that, systemating by the year 2050, there's going to be 9 billion more people in the world and to produce enough protein to feed these 9 extra billion people, we're going to have to increase our agriculture production by more than 60%. So where are we going to get that land and that's just protein for humans. Where is the protein that the animals need in their feed? So we also need to produce animal feed to feed the animals that we want to consume for our protein. So this comes again with a diagram that the FAO came up with to sort of visually highlight the amount of land in square footage that would be needed to produce one kilogram of protein from different sources including again we have the cattle, pork, chicken and versus crickets. So again, thinking ahead in the future as we need more space and we need more land to grow our food and to grow the feed for the animals, we have to think of farming techniques and I know we've had other seminars for this what if big ideas festival where they have proposed the vertical farming which is an actual way of confronting this lack of land that we are expecting to have in the future. So this is something that's already happening with raising crickets, billworms, house flies, black soldier flies where you have the farms, they will require less space and they're vertical and you can actually farm a lot of insects in 15 square feet to produce one kilogram of protein versus 200, 600 square feet of the other proteins. So in projected growth it's actually estimated that you know, insects are coming to a menu near you in Europe. You can go to a lot of restaurants, cafeterias and you can actually now find insect derived products being served in their menus. I'm really hoping with Joseph's message tonight we will hopefully start seeing that here in North America as well. Because it's predicted that within the next 5 to 10 years the consumption or the value of edible insect market products is going to increase to almost 154 million dollars in the North America alone compared to, again, you can see Asia Pacific, Europe as leading the production and the marketability of insect derived products. So it's coming and I'm glad that a lot of you raised your hand at the beginning of the session today saying that you have tried insects. How many are you willing to try insects tonight? And I have a show of hands. I hope we have enough food for all of you. That's what we want to hear. So we're very happy. And if you don't get to try something tonight we still have Saturday and Sunday for Spring Fest in the food science department and we'll be fitting you there as well. Okay, so just to wrap it up this is just some of the work that we're doing in my lab. We're actually working into extracting the protein from the insects, in particular crickets because we know they're very high in protein and we use food grade commercial enzymes to do that. We separate the protein from the rest of the components in the cricket like the chitin and the lipids and we use those cricket protein hydrolysates or protein powders to try and, as food scientists, food technologists what can we use this cricket protein for in formulation of food products, novel food products or traditional foods that consumers are already familiar with can we actually start substituting some of the traditional protein with this insect protein instead. So the consumers can eat an ice cream or hamburger that is partially made with insect protein. And we're also looking at other aspects of insects that maybe you didn't think about before but because they have been consumed for centuries for hundreds, thousands of years we know that we're getting preliminary research on the health benefits in addition to the nutritional composition and quality of the insects what health benefits they have. So can they actually have anti-cancer, anti-lower blood pressure, prevent type 2 diabetes? What happens to the allergen present in the crickets in the insects? Can we actually diminish this allergic reaction for those that are allergic to crustaceans or insects? So again tonight if any of you are allergic to shellfish you probably don't want to try insects because you will most likely have an allergic reaction as well. They have the same cross-reactivity. And so we're looking at this in the lab and you'll hear from us in the future as we continue to publish our work and this thinking the team and eat more bugs. Thank you. Purdue University thank you so much for having me come and before I get started can you guys please give a very warm and loving Purdue thank you to Dr. Andrea Lyciaga for her presentation. That is great. So thank you guys so much. We are going to address the question of what if eating insects saved the planet?  Eating insects can save the world. Blah, blah, blah. I see people's eyes glaze over all the time when we start talking about eating insects. So my name is Joseph Yoon. I'm the executive director of Brooklyn Bugs and we are edible insect ambassadors and advocates. Our mission is to raise awareness and appreciation for edible insects through delicious creative and educational programming. Our work helps to explain why the UN endorses edible insects to address the issues of food scarcity and sustainability with their 2013 FAO report. But before we can talk about edible insects I really need you all to understand and believe that adoption is even possible. If we talk about space travel and we weren't traveling to the moon you guys would be like oh whatever so I really need you to believe that this is possible. Now I want you to consider the first time that anyone has eaten a banana. Yuck!  So we are still at the stage of eating an unpeeled banana with edible insects. What if we learned how to cook and properly eat edible insects and for example made cricket banana bread or cricket brownies like we'll be serving today. So talk about giant leaps. When I talk about edible insects some of the common things I hear oh it's a manufactured crisis it's only for poor people it will be the last result ever that is apocalyptic food. What we need to address that is a drastic shift in perception from insects as pests to edible insects something that is delicious, nutritious and sustainably farmed and harvested for human consumption. As you know the UN's FAO endorses edible insects address issues of food scarcity and sustainability our main focus is that it is delicious, nutritious, creative and fun. So did you guys know that the livestock industry creates more greenhouse gas emissions than all of our transportation? That really blew my mind as a chef I wasn't aware of that actually. So would you consider an alternative protein source that only creates a fraction of those greenhouse gas emissions? And one that is already eaten and widely accepted by 80% of the world's nations. So how do we go about changing everyone's perception?  So what I really want to do is normalize and demonstrate everyday applications and everyday examples like this English muffin with black ant butter and reintroduce people to insects as edible insects. Now consider the genius marketing of St. Valentine's and the human heart this organ. But somehow we all when we think of the heart think of the Valentine's Day heart. That's the type of perception shift that we need from insects to edible insects. Now do these roasted crickets look appetizing? For those that eat them maybe so but if you're not familiar with eating it maybe not. So what if we start introducing it with food crickets and eggs, maybe it's like oh that egg looks pretty darn perfectly runny and delicious maybe I would try those crickets now. What about comfort foods? Who here likes fried chicken? Okay that's a fair, maybe you guys are very health conscientious crowd but so we did a cricket-crusted fried chicken here. What if we plated it nicer and made it look gourmet? Would that change your opinion on whether you would try edible insects? Now maybe that's not your thing but would you consider eating for your health? Now did you enjoy eating veggies as a child or were you like my nephew way back when when he just loved eating bread and did not want to eat veggies? And did you eventually find them to be tolerable? And maybe even come to love them like I did over time. Maybe you grew to love them knowing that it's healthy, that's nutritious and maybe an alternative to meat and you have all these reasons that are like I should start eating veggies more oh I actually really love eating veggies and you come to grow and your palate comes to appreciate what the vegetable actually tastes like. That's the sort of growth and learning that I feel is necessary for edible insects. Or what if you saw tons of delicious cray-worthy dishes like this gusano worm, mac and cheese. Would that at least make you consider trying it? We'll be serving this chocolate mousse and chavelinas at the spring fest by the way which is what's pictured here. So one of the big obstacles is that the words that we're using right now as Andrea said entomophagy can you guys all try to repeat that with me one time? Entomophagy. It is a mouthful, it sounds like a big science term it does not sound delicious to me that doesn't sound like eating that sounds like some scientific word and if you think about it we eat beef and steak not cow. We eat pork and bacon not pig. So right now we're eating crickets and mealworms we need to come up with new words. And so that is why this is a movement that requires the help of more than just entomologists or foodies or food scientists. We need you guys because we need new words we need new dishes new techniques we need new policies regulations and new ideas. So our advocacy encourages everybody to join the movement entomologists, scientists students such as yourselves artists and musicians marketers, anthropologists, children policymakers this is for everybody. And our work has a big focus on education, engagement inspiration the act of demonstrations that you guys can actually try the food and we want to challenge you to transform your perceptions. Now availability is going to be key and right now I don't know if you guys are aware we have chips and energy bars there are even places that are making pastas and condiments and yes there are cookbooks that are out there dealing with edible insects. But we desperately need hot foods and dinners for mass adoption not just snacks. Snacks are a great introduction but we need substantial meals for adoption. We are currently researching new approaches and innovative ENTO ideas with Purdue University thank you guys San Diego State University and Montana State University as Andrea was talking about her class and herself there is studying insect hydrolysis those are protein extracts that are obtained by using food enzymes which make them easier to use in food formulation. So a question for you guys what do you think crickets taste like anyone can just uh like chicken alright it doesn't that anyone else like chips or grass nuts okay nutty I mean a lot of people tend to use a descriptor of nutty for crickets however what we've been discovering is that crickets only taste nutty from the roasting process when they go through hydrolysis they do not taste like nuts at all and you think about the wide and incredible culinary applications with something that can be an empty canvas for us to manipulate there is also evidence cited in the FAO report that we can bolster the nutritional content of insects amazing so the edible insect industry needs desperately needs funding, grants and research imagine what could be accomplished if the edible insect industry received the kind of funding that the beef or poultry industry received from the USDA over the decades the meat and the chicken that you are eating now taste nothing like what they were eating 50 years ago because of all the development that they've been able to do and the research done to improve and scale those industries so insects are also beginning to be used to feed to livestock and there's a great deal of funding going into this as well and there's also a company working with black soldier flies who receives over a hundred million dollars in funding because these black soldier flies decompose organic waste at an exponential and incredible rate you think about pharmaceutical commercials and they're talking about curing these diseases they're mentioning all the side effects to the most beautiful image of people playing in the fields having fun in the sun and meanwhile they're like these side effects may all occur right so our industry the edible insect industry needs to catch up to the other industries so that we can start our own marketing and branding and be truthful we don't have to be dishonest we want to be truthful but we need to start ramping up the marketing and catch up with the other 80% of the world's nations that already eat insects so what if edible insects were used to garnish your favorite dish maybe lobster is some of your favorite dish out there or what if it were purportedly good for your libido like the black ants are for in Chinese medicine so I don't know if you guys are aware but the FDA actually allows hundreds of foreign bug particles in your food in your ketchup in canned tomatoes in a lot of your packaging that's allowed that is unintentional and to me that's not what we're doing right we are intentionally putting this on your dish and what if the black ants on your dish were a compliment to the flavors of your dish so one of the dishes that we'll be serving today are black ants and shrimp and the black ants have a little bit of a citric or acidic flavor because of their formic acid so imagine if we had the proper branding and marketing like these other industries with edible insects how quickly we'll be and how quickly we'll be able to speed up the adoption process so we need your help I don't want to be like a broken record but we really could use all of your help and I don't mean just the students or the professors but for you kids that are in the audience as well and we try to reintroduce by the engagement and are actively battling on the front grounds of this war and we try to introduce it as fun and delicious the cultural introduction that we're doing is via television and working with different writers and artists and musicians influence makers and we're really trying to make this a very inclusive community event we're actively increasing the overall visibility and normalization of edible insects through our work and we're also validating that it's a healthy nutritious and sustainable source of protein so no one person or event can make this change by themselves not even Julia Child America's favorite chef ever I mean after all Renee Redzepi from NOMA widely regarded as one of the top restaurants in the world already cooks with insects but that has not really changed our perception very much has it so I'd like to change speeds and have you guys consider can one bug save the world my personal relationship has changed with a growing respect and fondness for each every insect with the alarming disappearance of insects in this world entomophogy of all things can help save the insects by redefining them as a food source I have such a great respect for the food products I work with for all the farmers working with the vegetables for all the farmers working with their produce and even with the livestock there is a great love and respect and I think a lot of people have a misperception that we're against insects because we're eating them and that is the furthest thing from the truth and also consider what if the next student or child that eats their first bug becomes the next George Washington Carver for edible insects and finds hundreds of applications for the cricket or the mealworm or what if they become the next policymaker or the next president it is possible this is a movement with far greater implications than your dietary preferences everyone what if you knew that adopting the practice would empirically be better for the world better for the future and better for the next generation would you be willing to make any sacrifices like learning to enjoy veggies when you were a child now if even 10% of you ate edible insects just once a week even that would have a tremendous impact on our environment so we are advocating for people to incorporate edible insects into their diets into their pantry really in any manner possible we're not saying to give up everything else we're just saying what if we were to start incorporating it into our diets this is really something for everyone vegetarians pescatarians meat eaters there's even a new class of eaters that are calling themselves entovegans and they're incorporating edible insects into their vegan diet so like I'm saying you can incorporate edible insects with your favorite protein and in this case this is some wagyu beef with some uni and some vescula flavorseps or for those that like to have a cocktail and not you college students for the adults here maybe you want to mix cricket hydrolysates into your favorite drink it's like oh I'm having a drink and getting some protein with my drink so something to consider is that like Andrea was saying humans have been eating insects forever and we have never stopped so we can hide the insects if you prefer like with these mealworm popovers we can pair with your favorite food like lobsters there is something for everyone to be able to try and find a way that you can enjoy edible insects this is a movement that can have huge impact on how we understand our food in how we live our day-to-day lives and can help conquer global challenges to make the world a better place the normalization of edible insects will occur as it pervades our culture and social media feeds I would love if you guys when you came to the spring to tell us when you eat the food today upload to pictures share it with your friends share your experiences hashtag the giant leaps the Ideas Festival Brooklyn Bobs let's get the word out there as media coverage increases and we read more about it in journals and even in literature as more chefs and home cooks learn how to incorporate them into their dishes as the necessity for alternative protein sources increases as climate change becomes an increasingly larger global threat I don't even feel like I need to ask you guys this especially with the theme of the giant leaps I'm sure that all of us agree that climate change is indeed real can I just get a quick show by a round of applause for everyone whether we need to combat climate change but you know what the idea of let's save the world by eating insects it's weird it's a little off-putting so that's not the only focus I told you guys I tried to focus on the deliciousness of it the fun of it but the fact that it is sustainable and nutritious and can have huge positive huge thing to consider like Andrea was saying with the way we can adapt and work with edible insect hydrolysates it can be the perfect canvas to create the perfect protein something with low environmental impact high nutritional value and is also very delicious I have said it before and I will say it again I believe that edible insects will be widely accepted and normalized in America within 5 to 10 years and when it is you guys could be like oh yeah I thought that guy was crazy but what do you know here's edible insect products at my grocery store I'm going to say even in 3 years we're going to have product on the shelves there will eventually even be a race to put edible insect products in a variety of different locations now there has been enormous transformation that I have witnessed from people eating insects where people might be like I don't know if I want to eat that and they try the first maybe cricket brownie and they are like oh actually that's pretty good I see like they are a little swagger and then like a lot of the events I do I have like 10 courses for your dishes for you guys to try and you guys work your way up it's like all right I tried that cricket brownie I tried that goussada worm salt popcorn give me something a little more challenging let's try something else right and then I have literally seen people that were like no way I will never eat a scorpion and then they see their friends eating it and they try the cricket brownie and there and they kind of inch over like maybe I'll maybe I'll try that maybe maybe I can try that scorpion chef maybe maybe I'll try that scorpion and the what I have witnessed the transformation is one of great accomplishment victory of like I did not think I could eat that scorpion and I conquered my fear victory accomplishment knowing that you are doing something good by replacing some of your protein source with something sustainable these sort of aspects had led me to believe and not accept no for an answer for a lot of you college students out there if there is a wall are you just like oh I can't do this anymore or do you go well let me see if I walk around this wall can I get around this or maybe I could jump over the wall maybe I could crawl under dig a hole and get under it I do not accept no as an answer there are solutions and that is what we're trying to do and that has led me to believe and this is such a powerful and incredible transformation for me to witness and believe that anything is possible now I am not guaranteeing that is how you all will feel by eating insects but I welcome you to join me in trying one bug at a time thank you all very much my name is Joseph you and it has been a great honor and privilege to speak with you guys thank you ask chef and Andrea questions too because we know you've got them so I'm gonna pull chairs up here for you guys chef I'm gonna go with you first what we know Andrea has been eating insects for most of your life stand or would you if you want to stand fine yeah what was the first insect that you ate how was it prepared because I know you came to this pretty recently within like the last five years which is makes sense why he is saying that there could be a national movement of it all within five to ten years yeah well so interestingly I mean my first experience is I don't even recall exactly because when someone would travel to Mexico and come back with crickets or at the bottom of mess cow bottles where you saw no worm or scorpion I would always welcome the opportunity to try and so I've I've eaten them on a good number of occasions but as you know I was a friend of mine Miru Kim she was working in an art project and she was conquering her fear of insects by eating them and so she asked me if I would participate in an art project with her and help cook for her project and it took me a very short amount of time I mean I said yes immediately because I respect her and I wanted to work with her and I did not know anything about eating insects or the benefits of it but within like 30 minutes of looking at edible insects I find out about the sustainability and nutritious sense of it and when I learned that the the UN food and agriculture organization also endorses it it really I literally went into the wormhole and it has been really like my life's calling ever since do you have insects and insect dishes on your menu at at your yummy restaurant no I really like to separate them because the focus on edible insects is so important that I usually 99% of the time when I do insect menus everything has insects and so it's only on very rare occasions when a client very specifically asked for like a few things but really the focus is hey let's try edible insects and like I was showing you guys they're hidden there sometimes they're just baked into goods in a powder form there's so many different ways to apply it that there's at least something for everyone or at least I hope you guys would think so yeah because as a chef obviously you're open to any kind of using food creatively but then you did you dove in and learn more about the benefits to the environment to the economy and Andrea that's what a lot of your research has been in as well too and you made a really good point especially here we are at Purdue you're not trying to chase away the beef and the poultry folks there's a way that everybody can work together on this correct yes so I like we said it's not it's complementing our diet and not just running away from one diet was to move towards another it's complementing them and having different sources for protein the fear factor came out in both of your presentations I mean that the fear of trying something new the fear of maybe it's not going to work the fear of chasing somebody out that kind of thing and you made a really good point chef about changing the language and I never really thought about it until you put it up there and how many people did we do we eat beef and steak we don't eat cow yeah it's that name but there are cookbooks there are products out there are there new words that are being used out there or is that still something we need people to well the mass adoption of new words with lexicon has not been there companies are definitely using different sort of words but that's why for me when I really when I say that this is something for everybody and why when I come to universities and I ask for your help is because you students are the young minds you guys are the future you guys are like way smarter creative you have more energy than I do and it's like help me think of like new words when you're sitting around with your friends and if you're over 21 and you're having a drink you're like let's try to think of a new word for crickets for like entomophagy let's try to think of a new term for eating insects besides that and so what's that word again and you guys can really start helping us for the food scientist I mean Andrea's class with the food science class they are doing they gave presentations they they're doing incredible research that I am so fascinated to learn about and also to try to work with them and trying to come up with like ways of like how do we make this so that it is something that can appeal to everyone where it's just like oh okay that food looks so delicious I'm willing to give it a try I saw my friend Jill she posted it on her social media so I never even thought about it but I don't know Jill tried it and she's got a good palette let me give it a try right so that's why it's like something where I feel like the new words it's like everybody can get involved and really help us to come with like a mass adoption really and really start by kind of like the dominoes it's like oh I never thought of eating insects but Jill did and Andrea did alright okay I'm the only one not eating insects I'm America and Europe we're the only ones in the world not eating insects okay why don't we at least try it and if I may one huge thing that was mentioned earlier is that I still have to train my palate to enjoy insects it sounds like I go home and like every day I'm like oh I can't wait to eat all these crickets by the spoonful it's like I have to find ways to make a lot so all the slides are pictures that I've taken of food dishes that I've made and I intentionally jam packed it with over a hundred food slides to really show you guys what sort of foods are possible and it's like we have to train our palates just like vegetables when we were a kid you might have just hated tomato lots of fruit but you might have hated like celery and maybe now it's your favorite favorite veggie or something right and so it's like you guys start trying it have an open mind it's like okay maybe I didn't like that cricket chip but maybe I like this the the cricket pasta right so I encourage you guys have an open mind and start trying these different sort of foods and that's what in your sensory evaluation lab that's what you guys do isn't you kind of figure out what what insects have you had the most success with in creating palatable food option so we have actually we've done a few surveys first to find out what consumers their attitudes towards eating insects so in 2016 that was the first time we did a survey we had over 4,000 respondents and out of those 4,000 people when they were asked if they would eat protein sources coming from you know animals other animals including fish shall fish they all said yeah yes maybe most likely and then when they had a picture of insects and asked the same question they said you know over 70% of them said no we will not consider this as a protein source but when we asked them again will you eat this food and we had familiar foods like a hamburger or an ice cream cone if you knew even if you knew that it was formulated with insect protein surprisingly that percent the percentage actually a lot of about 60% 65% said yes they would so that gave us that idea of okay we need to work on how can we incorporate actually the protein if they don't really want to see the insect can we actually incorporate the protein instead and so far we've been working with with crickets and chapulines and we also have some mealworms and the protein being a powder it's been it's been going well actually very surprisingly Gabby over there is formulating corn tortillas with with cricket protein and she's been doing some sensory panels and she had very good scores very high acceptability for some of her trials so that's promising if this continues to go that way too does this open up other like job opportunities factories to produce these kind of things or can these types of foods be made in plants that are already processing other types of proteins yes does this open a whole new industry yeah both ways I mean that right now we have a lot of you know proteins are right from milk proteins are right from meat etc there are from plants from soy from pee that are used for food formulation for making a variety of food products that we have in the market already I don't see why it would be any different for for you using insects for the same purpose well how about in some of those countries that that do eat a lot of insects and their meals just like you were saying I mean there are multiple examples of that are they expensive to buy are those products expensive to buy are not there because they're more accepted or I think I know speaking from experience and Joseph you probably have seen a lot of it all over the countries as well but in many of these countries that's more like a traditional dish and they're actually well well caught they're not necessarily farmed although farms are starting to grow now in a lot of these countries because of the demand from Europe primarily with that starting with for edible insects but we have to be careful when you know I know for the US it's not permitted to have insects for human consumption if they're wild caught they have to be farmed and that's why there's now new industry in terms of insect farms being developed in the US and Canada and in Europe primarily for growing insects for human consumption. Is there a difference in flavor between a farm raised cricket and wild ranch cricket? That's my research question. So we are going to be actually researching a few different factors one how what does a different feed how does that affect the the flavor profile of the insects because you think about how small their gastrointestinal tract is it's that even even though you purge it you know before it before eating them you you're still going to have what the difference is in flavor profile but not only that but what are also the different flavor profiles when they get roasted when they're hydrolyzed when you know all these different sort of when they're fried when they're deep fried all these different applications will have a different sort of flavor so if you think about bread try some wheat oh that's gross you add some water maybe some eggs kind of what kind of bread you're making some yeast and then you have some bread and you're like you cut it and you're like oh this bread is delicious and then you toast it okay this toast is delicious each of them have a different taste and so that's why it's so important for us to do this research with our sensory labs as well as the food science labs so we can really have a better understanding of how all these different approaches affect the flavor differently and you know so it's such a there's so much for us to like research and get collect empirical data right and like you said it is a movement because it is all encompassing you do you need arts people you need marketers you need technological people you need environmental people to be a whole part of that not just food scientists or chefs well big part of the reason why I distinguish it as a movement and not a food trend because a lot of people are like oh the the the insects I see it's like a food trend now and a food trend usually like kale was so 2017 right and so a food trend indicates and means by definition that it's something that becomes hot and then it passes maybe people are still eating kale but you know it's kind of like a food trend that comes and goes but the reason why I designate this as a movement is because there's a great necessity for us to start adopting edible insects into what it is that we're doing and it is something that will come and I believe will have a great importance in staying in our diets in the future it's a huge part of half the world's diet too so I don't think that's a trend for those countries it's not a trend traditional why is it just so so easy everywhere else and not here well looking at some of there how they I know from anthropologists we've heard even some anthropologists have realized that it all had to do with the ice age surprisingly and when the regions that were not in the tropics were all covered by ice so who the our ancestors that lived in those regions had to rely on hunting to get their protein versus the humans that lived in the tropics because they didn't have the problem with everything being frozen up they could actually their diet relied mostly on eating insects like the termites ants etc they were right there so they didn't have to hunt for them they would just look them they were right there so eventually that evolved and then that's why those countries are still incorporating insects in their diet as a normal thing question from our audience here they're all ready to eat that's what it is oh we have one I was gonna say well we answered I haven't but maybe you I have also not tried to try any cicadas yet and you know what one very important factor aspect I wanted to bring up as well because you mentioned that is that it's not like we're gonna go in the backyard and get some bugs because I mean the idea of that you know kid you know if you're in like Montana and Yellowstone maybe you know it's okay but I live in Brooklyn New York and your neighbors could be using pesticides their pathogens that exist and so all the all the bugs that we are providing are farmed and harvested for human consumption actually right and so and it's important part for us to realize that and like what one example that I have is I like some of my friends like when I started they're like oh look Joseph there's a bug in my salad like should I eat it yeah and it's like they they're missing the point that that is not what we're doing at all right and they're noticing indeed yeah start and so that's why it's like we welcome this sort of dialogue and we want people sometimes we use ingredients that aren't something that will be for mass consumption like the tarantula dish they had it's not truly completely sustainable to like try to feed like so many people because of the growth cycle and just like the time that it takes but to great conversational piece because I've had so many people go like Joseph that tarantula and so then the onus is on us to direct the narrative and share the work of why we're doing what we're doing and share like kind of like the message behind what we're doing the cicada point though makes a lot of sense because you guys both also pointed out that if you're allergic to shellfish you shouldn't eat insects because structurally and scientifically there's a lot of that same common knowledge yeah so I think a lot of those flavors would be similar as well and they would pair really nicely with your lobster I've actually heard that as well about the boiled cicadas and I and I think that that's um you know I I've probably eaten around or worked with around 40 to 50 insects and cicadas are not yet one of them so sorry that I couldn't give you any first hand and also the tortillas that Gabby's formulating with crickets I know has Al is there she's one of the panelists were trained into describe the profile in the tortillas and one of the correct me if I'm wrong but one of the profiles that they detected on the tortillas with crickets is shrimp dry shrimp so maybe there is some some truth to that if we enjoy the foods tonight what products are out there on the shelves now that we might want to bring into our own home and share with our family and friends too well right now I mean there's a great deal of energy bars that's like very available out there there are also like different sort of chips and sauces a great deal of the products that I get right now are actually just the insects that are shelf stable and available that are in like a roasted form and so a lot of what I've been doing over the past two years has actually been working with the roasted product so that you guys at home could like if you scroll through the social my social media it's like oh that dish looks good and I don't want you to be like oh but something that I can't get it's like weird ingredient that's not possible to get and so I make sure that a lot of what I do is available and I list all my my sponsors and my vendors that I get my product from I think it's just really important to so that people can know so it's not just oh that's just something that chef Joseph is doing but oh you know what I can go on Amazon and buy these ingredients and try to make them at home and you know so what we're trying to make it accessible and we like to push the limit a little bit maybe and get a little extra creative or a little extra chefy to like push other people to try to entice chefs to join our movement as well and that's been a really big part of the outreach that I've been doing because I'm sure you guys watch cooking shows and stuff and chefs are all like trying to outdo each other and be the best and that's why when I introduced myself I introduced myself as an edible insect advocate not as a bug chef because I'm not trying to go like this is my stuff this is what I'm doing I'm like chefs you want to know more about edible insects please call me I would love to send you an R&D research and development package let's talk about it these are the successes that I've had with edible insects what do you think about it and so that's why it's like I feel like the reaching out to chefs and getting more chefs to get their creativity get their input have their sort of followers or people that are like oh wow yeah I've seen that chef like working with insects so that more and more they'll just like really help with the normalization of insects we're gonna get to the tasting so Andrea why don't you tell us what products maybe you have developed in your lab that maybe have gone into the dishes that and then chef what you made from them that everybody's gonna get to try I think Joseph showed the images of that we gave the protein hydrolysis the right from from crickets and I don't know if you're incorporating them today but I I think we have some for the weekend yeah we didn't incorporate them today but what we have today actually we'll move over here real briefly so we're gonna start with some easy sort of stuff for you guys and what about bee pollen and honey right that's not so hard to consider trying I mean come on bee pollen honey I mean we're already you we're already eating insects if you believe it or not I mean we're already like trying them so we have the honey crisp apples with honey and bee pollen and we're also gonna have some crickets for you guys to top them off if you want to try some of those over here we have cricket chocolate brownies and we added cricket powder into the brownies and also there are crickets in there and like we were saying the roasted crickets have a nutty flavor so what do you know you I like to add some walnuts to your brownies what about crickets all right so over here we have some black ants like I was telling you guys black ants have a little bit of the citric flavor from the formic acid so we love pairing it with some cocktail shrimp so I'm probably gonna add some more black ants on here for those that want to try with some more but so this is like another one the dishes that we have here and you know I want to make this like a easy sort of a teaser for you guys and so over here we have some yummy popcorn with some gusano worm salt right so this is also just like easy delicious eating


Fish, mollusks, crustaceans and aquatic plants are fundamental, essential and indispensable foods consumed by people around the world as part of healthy diets, cultural heritage. As food heroes, small-scale fishes, including fisherwomen and fishermen, produce large portion of this food and play an important role in positioning small-scale fisheries Both inland and coastal is one of the key contributors to our food system's livelihoods, culture and the environment. Without our small-scale fishes and fish workers, both food security and nutrition, poverty eradication and the sustainable use of natural resources would be far distant hopes for most of the world's population. In Namibia, despite the immense role that the small-scale fisheries sector plays in food and nutrition security of communities and providing a source of income, the sector has historically been underestimated and neglected from a socio-economic perspective, leaving especially vulnerable and marginalized small-scale fishes without the recognition and support to allow the small-scale fisheries sector to flourish. Fishing communities both inland and coastal are therefore faced with numerous challenges, ranging from access restrictions, resource depletion, habitat degradation, inequitable resource allocation and climate change. The National Plan of Action for Small-Scale Fisheries, the NPOA-SSF, will help pave the way forward to strengthening inclusive governance and sustainable resource management of small-scale fisheries in Namibia towards the socio-economic development and resilience of vulnerable small-scale fishermen and women. Namibia launched its NPOA-SSF in mid-2022 in a bid to uplift the small-scale fisheries sub-sector and address the numerous challenges that it faces. The NPOA-SSF, which is developed in alignment with the principles of the voluntary guidelines for securing sustainable small-scale fisheries in the context of food security and poverty eradication, provides the first attempt to formally recognize small-scale fisheries actors by defining, profiling and characterizing the sub-sector. During the validation process of the National Plan of Action for Small-Scale Fisheries, various stakeholders including government and civil society organization officials, community leaders, fishermen and fisherwomen from within Namibia and her neighboring countries such as Angola and South Africa took to the podium to share the experiences, highlight challenges, solutions and best practices for the small-scale fisheries sector. In the coastal towns of Walvis Bay, Swakob Mound and Henties Bay, small-scale fishers from various neighborhood locations, including the townships such as Mondesa and Kusub Mound, hop into their vehicles, onto bicycles or walk long distances to see if they can hook a lucrative catch to sell or consume. It's just like the government, it's better to help us, just to give us a freedom of fishing and the cost, because we cannot fish all along the coast from fishery to the mall that place is prohibited. So we have to come via footy or aida above May 4. That's not as effective as the ones in the Henties Bay. Well, it's a transport. I've got to do the top of the Henties Bay, you know. You know, I don't think it's possible. So what do you think I'm going to do? I'm going to do the top of the Henties Bay, you know. I'm going to do the top of the Henties Bay, you know. I'm going to do the top of the Henties Bay, you know. I'm going to do the top of the Henties Bay, you know. The role played by women in small-scale fisheries has enormous potential to significantly contribute towards sustainable food systems. Their predominance in the post harvest section of the small-scale fisheries value chain is central in ensuring that their families and consumers have access to food. Yet they face a myriad of challenges such as unequal access to usable assets, technology and financing as well as unfair conditions and practices with regard to fish sales and markets compared to their male counterparts. The big challenge that they are having is attacks from crocodiles because most of the people that fish that side, they fish from the banks of the river and there's no boundary, there's no protection. So it's very easy for the crocodile to just attack the people and they have been attacks that are there. So that's what she's saying that the government should step in and assist them in this regard because it's very risky for the people to fish there. There are quite a few challenges. Like most of the time the first thing that is troublesome or worrisome for us is that the weather. Most of the time it's not very clear by the shoreline and then you are in a way, sometimes you are alone or maybe you're with your family and then you find there's a lot of men. So you are in this frightened situation all the time. But sometimes it's very nice, there are guys out there that love to help. So it's not, but you should be careful. Civil society organizations play an important role in providing effective solutions for the small-scale fishery sector. As small-scale fishers continue to face many challenges to secure livelihoods while simultaneously ensuring sustainability and adapting to changing environmental conditions, civil society's role is indispensable. New government was always overwhelmed with this issue of arresting people, finding but eventually they decided to facilitate a process where they can organize these small-scale fishers to create an enabling environment for them to take in legal fishing and trading. I think in Africa we are the only government that has succeeded in community management of fisheries because we already established and legally established 20 fisheries reserves with more than 2500 hectares under protection where people manage their own resource, nobody can come from outside and commercialize and steal their fish. The NPOA SSF recognizes the important role that the private sector plays in empowering and supporting small-scale fishing communities by providing infrastructure, market access and ensuring that good quality fish products reach consumers. Small-scale fishers and the small-scale fishery sector at large require continued support and development in order to achieve socioeconomic benefits for fishing communities. The development of policy frameworks such as the NPOA SSF is a step in the right direction to ensure that their contribution to global food systems is acknowledged and remains central to ending hunger, malnutrition and poverty not just in Namibia but also in all parts of the world.


What is going on everybody, JR Fisher here. It is a beautiful Thursday, the 25th of February, 2021. And as you know, I'm here today to help you out with your online business. Any questions you may have about making money online, you know, learning stuff, hiring people, which is what we're gonna talk about today. You know, building out funnels, emails, products, you name it, you can put it in that chat section. I will answer all your questions during the live chat. If you're not live, don't worry about that. You can put it in the comments section. I come back around and I answer a lot of those comments. I sat there last night till I think 11 p.m. Just answering comments on videos from you guys, but I really appreciate it. Those comments actually mean a lot. They helped me get distribution of the video. Also, don't forget to subscribe. If you haven't done so, hit that button below there where it says subscribe. If it's red, that means you have not subscribed. So you need to click it and turn it gray. Once you do that, what you wanna do is ring the bell, turn on all bell notifications so that you're notified every single time I go live. You know when I post a video, you know when I'm live, and it saves you a lot of time. You don't have to go looking for stuff. What's going on, James Bring? Good to see you. What's going on, Cameron? Good to see you. Didn't get the usual notification today. Well, that's weird. That's really weird. Thank you for letting me know you can hear me, James. I forgot to ask. That's very helpful. James is always helpful. He's a cool guy like him. He's cool guy. So, ex-truck driver for many, many years. So he's got stories. Man, I gotta hear some of your stories one day, James. You gotta share those with me. That's gotta be super interesting. So today I wanted to talk a little bit. Oh yeah, give me a thumbs up too. That's the other thing I forgot. And don't forget to share this. If you think somebody can benefit from this video, make sure that they see it and they get the benefit of it, okay? So, today I do wanna talk about hiring people. And I think it's not a natural thing to manage people. I think it's a really weird thing to manage people. And I think people go in two different directions that either don't give too much enough instruction and they're afraid to talk to somebody they've hired. They're afraid to tell them to do anything. They're afraid to ask them anything. Or they go the other direction and they think they're a big boss. They think, oh my God, this person works for me. So I can tell them to do whatever I want.  And they're underneath me. And that's how some people think. And I gotta tell you, it's hard to be a good manager. I started managing people in my, I guess early 20s. I used to run car dealerships. And I did that for many, many years. I managed thousands of people over the years and hired people. And I had to learn. I thought I was the big boss and all that in the beginning. And that's not how it goes. Okay, when you're hiring people. And I'm gonna talk to you also today about going to some of these sites and how to hire people. Mike Roberts, what's going on? I'm on for the first time and I'm excited. Man, it's good to see you, Mike. It really is. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me what you do. Tell me what you wanna learn. This channel, what I've been doing is going live since around the 15th of January every day. Six days a week to help you guys out and just answer your questions. And just so you know the value. And I'm not trying to brag or anything. But you know, when I do consulting for companies, I charge $2,000 an hour. Two grand an hour. So you can come on here for free and get any questions you want answered. You don't have to pay those high fees. Need to be a leader manager. Yeah, Paul, and I think you're right. You're totally right. 100% right. But there's a lot to it. I mean, there's a lot to it. And I also wanna talk about hiring people in different countries because the way I manage somebody that works in the US versus the way I manage somebody that works in the Philippines versus the way I manage somebody that lives in India. And I have people in India and the Philippines and Mexico and Pakistan and all these different countries. And I hear varying things from people. Like a lot of people don't wanna hire people in other countries because they say, oh my gosh, I had a really bad experience with that. And this person didn't show up and they didn't get the job done right. And that could be on them. It could be on you. But I can tell you this. I've hired people in all countries, including the United States. And I've had the same problems. I've had people in the United States that hire that were worthless. I mean, they did nothing. And I've had people in India and Pakistan and in Mexico and the Philippines that were worthless. But I've also had some really good people in all those countries. I've had really good people in the US. And what I have figured out over the years is that when you're hiring people, let's see what Mike Roberts says here. Got a new guy, gotta give him some time. Says, I'm an engineer, former plant manager and former car dealership manager. Mike, I managed car dealership for years too. I did sales, I did finance. I was used car manager, new car manager, general sales manager, general manager and I was a vice president. So I did all that and quit doing that in 2010, I guess it was, yeah, 2010. So it's been 11 years. Well, actually it's been 12 years because I started my business online before I quit my corporate job. But 12 years online now. And guys, if you don't know me to give you a little background, I want to be able to leave the corporate grinder and work full-time online. Buddy, you can do it. I'm dead serious, you can do it. You know, I started selling stuff online in 2009. And then I think 2010 is when I left the corporate world. And man, I'm telling you, it's so great, because when I was in, and I'll get a little off track from hiring people, but I just want to talk to Mike here for a second.  Buddy, you can do this stuff. It's not rocket science. It really isn't. It's knowing the right things to do and how to do them. And once you got it, you got it, man. If you worked in card dealerships, you can work online, trust me. You've got the skills to do what it takes online. I mean, personally, technically, I had no technical skills. I had never sold anything online. I can't type, can't type to this day. So I kind of hunt and pack so it really slows me down from what I should be doing. But man, everything that you do online, there's too many people make it online for you to say, well, this person's special or that person's special. That's just not the case. They aren't special, okay? They just know a few things. They figured out a few softwares. They figured out a few things that work. And they put forth the effort. The effort is key, guys. The one thing I'll tell you is, and this goes with hiring people too, whatever you do, you've got to put forth a lot of effort. I mean, hiring people takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of effort just to find the right person. But that's not even where it begins. It begins at your expectations of that person, okay? What do you expect of them? And then you have to train them to do what you want them to do. Somebody can say, well, I'm a great VA, but they don't know what you need, what your requirements are. And you got to really spell that stuff out. And that is what I want to talk about a little bit today because if you actually do these things and you apply these things, you could get a lot of results out of people. You really can. And you know the one thing that made me want to quit my job.  That's it. And the number one reason people quit their job is because of their boss. That tells you how bad bosses are. I mean, that explains it to you right there. And I've become a much better boss. And I don't even want to call it boss.  Like you're above somebody else. You're not above anybody else. You're not, okay?  And you need to respect that person. I mean, you need to give them tremendous respect because don't you remember what it was like to have a crappy boss? Don't you remember what it was like to be talked down to? You know, when you're hiring people online, you've got to give them that same respect that you would give somebody in person or in your country. It doesn't matter. People are people. Period. And as soon as we realize it's not skin color. It's not gender. It's not any of that stuff. We're just all people. It's that.  You know, if everybody would just kind of realize that and go with that, then I think you can do a whole lot better. Let's see what I will do at Mike Roberts. I believe you will, buddy. And you know, ask me any questions you want seriously. If I can help you out, that's my goal in these live sessions is to help people out. And to give you a little background to me, if you don't know me. I started in 2009. I started selling trinkets of cell phone cases and silly things online. And I moved into survival food. I now own one of the largest survival food companies in the United States. We have some days we do over six figures a day. So we do pretty good. I shared, I think a screen share with you guys the other day of some of our sales. You know, and I run a promotion and it's nothing for me to do, you know, a half million dollars in 30 days. So we make money, okay? We make money. I've made millions of dollars online about digital products and physical products. So if you're interested in doing digital products such as courses or ebooks or PDFs, whatever, I've sold those and I sell those every single day. So, you know, I can help you out. Paul, what do you got to say? I like the saying higher, slow, but fire fast. Yeah, yeah, I tell you, and I'm gonna give my input to that firing thing too. Like you said, you need to pick people aligned with your values, of course. I have found that car people are resilient being it's a tough market to work in. Oh, it's dog eat, dog buddy. I'm gonna, I can tell you stories. You know, when I first started selling cars, I was 19. Yeah.    But when I first started, it wasn't like that.  Let me know who's on the deal.  And yeah, I did that, I did that. But I mean, that's what you had to do then. Nowadays, it's, oh, who logged on and you've got 72 hours protection and all this stuff. It's a much more softer environment than it was when I first started. So yeah, if you could kick the guy's butt and you knew you could, go out back and handle it.   Let's see, I learned who you are from watching your interviews with John Crestani. Oh my gosh, John Crestani's a great friend of mine, great guy, really liked John a lot. Really, really kind guy. He has not been on YouTube in over a month. And I gotta text him, I meant to text him the other day. I don't know what's going on. I know he went to New York and he's doing a lot of infomercials, that's his thing now. So he may be spending his time doing that. How long before you hired your first person and what did they do for you? Okay, great question. It was when I finally quit my job and I got a small warehouse. It was, gosh, I think it was 600 square feet. She was on Live Oak Drive in Chesapeake, Virginia. So you can look that up if you want Live Oak Drive in Chesapeake. And I had a little warehouse there and I hired a girl to be in the office and her job was fulfillment of orders. And back then I did a lot of camping products and a little bit of survival food. It was not my own brand. I was selling somebody else's. And her job was to fulfill orders and do some paperwork and stuff like that. She was awful. She was awful. And I got somebody one day and they got the wrong order and I went to her and I said, this person ordered this item but they got this item. What happened? She says, oh, I didn't see any of these so I just gave them this one. I was like, what? You what? So, maybe that was my fault but I would have thought it was painfully obvious if they ordered an item and we don't have it. We don't send them anything. We don't just send them another random item. But she did that. My wife saw what she was doing at the time. My wife actually worked for me at the automotive dealership but she was still at the automotive dealership. And she came to one day and she said, I'd like to help you out. I'd like to work with you. And I thought, oh no, that's not gonna be a good idea. That can't be a good idea. But I went ahead and I did it. I fired the girl and my wife came to work for me and man, she's helped me so much. I wouldn't be where I am now today without her. I really wouldn't. She's an amazing employee. Probably one of the best employees I've ever had and I'm not saying that because she's my wife but her too, I have to learn how to manage, okay? Because certain things are gonna work for her and certain things aren't gonna work for her. And I have to talk to her very kind. I think that's very important. And some people you don't. I mean, every individual's different guys. There's some certain similarities to countries but individuals are different. I raised two kids. I raised a boy and a girl and the way I talked to my daughter was entirely different than the way I talked to my son because I need to get results from both of them. And my daughter would get offended really easy. My son, nothing bothered him.  He didn't care. So I could say things a little bit harsher to him. Not that I wanted to but to get him to do something I kind of had to. So let's see here. Mike Roberts pays a lot less than it used to. Yes, you're totally right about that. During, I would say 2008 when everything kind of came to a crash. A lot of these car dealerships cut back on salaries and pays and they quit giving cars out and benefits and they never went back to it. That's the amazing thing because one of the best things, I'm a little off track here, but Mike, is this talking about interesting thing for me? One of the things that I think everybody went to the car business for was that they could get a free car. You got a car to drive. You got a brand new car to drive. That was pretty cool. So what they did at some point is they got rid of cars for the sales people and it was just the managers that had them. So I had a car. Well, I got a new car every six weeks because I had to put a certain number of miles on it. And I put enough miles on it. I think 3,000 or 5,000 miles.  Then it got to be where you had to get taxed on that benefit.  And then it got to where there's no cars. I don't know if any managers have cars anymore but that was one of the big benefits. But anyhow, getting back to hiring people I hired a lot of people in the car business. And when I started hiring online it was entirely different because there were different norms and different expectations. I hire the Philippines. Filipino workers are great. Love them, love them, love them. If you do the right things by them they expect certain holidays off. They expect a 13 month pay. That means if somebody works for you for a year you gotta give them a month's pay. A whole entire month's pay. That's what they expect, okay? They can get offended very easy. You have to be very gentle how you talk to somebody in the Philippines because they're trying their best. They really are. And if they feel like they're letting you down they feel so bad they just disappear. They just don't show up, you know? And you won't find them anymore. They're just gone. So you don't wanna do that. So I found for the most part, for the most part I've had some crappy employees but for the most part over the years some of the worst situations with employees were my fault. It was my fault. Because I didn't give clear expectations. I assumed they knew they should do X, Y, and Z and they didn't. And they didn't do it and then I was disappointed but I never really told them to do those things. I never told them what the expectations were. I never told them what the timeline was. So when you're hiring people online it's no different, guys. It's no different at all. You've got to give them very clear rules and I think a lot of people when they start a business online they don't know anything.  For example, let's say they wanna get more traffic. They go, well I'm gonna hire this person who does SEO and I want them to increase my sales and then I'm gonna make more money. There's a lot more to it than that. Let me get a sip here. Let's see here. How do you suggest finding someone to edit videos? That's a great, great question, James. Look at their work.  These are the kinds of things I want you to do. I want you to have some Zoom in, Zoom out. I want you to have some B-roll in there. Once again, you got to supply them with a B-roll. I have a membership to the thing called Video Blocks and it has a bunch of B-rolls so they can just log in there and get the B-roll and I say, this is what I want in the beginning. I want an intro in the end. I want some end cards. I want it optimized for YouTube and let's see how you do on this. If you do good, I'd like to hire you full time. So I think one of the keys is with all these people that you hire online is give them a small job, see how they do it. Give them a small job and see how they do it because you'll be surprised that a lot of them have put up some really good examples of what they can do. They weren't their examples. They were just stuff they put up there. So you can get scammed. Now for the most part, I think most people on these sites are pretty honest and they're just trying to do an honest day's work. They really are. But you can get scammed. So if I give them a piece of work to do, if I say, hey, I want you to design this homepage, design this homepage for me and if you do good, I'll hire you full time as a WordPress developer for me. See a sample. That's the easiest way to do that. Let's see here. How did you find your first foreign employee and what country was it? Philippines. No, it was India. I hired exclusively in India in the beginning. I don't know why. I think I found a site called Elance. It's no longer around. I think it's called Upwork now. But yeah, I think it was Elance I used and I needed somebody to do something technical and it was actually to build a Magento website. Here's the truth. I needed somebody to build a website. I never heard of Magento, okay? And I came across this person at really good ratings and they said, well, you need a Magento site. I said, what's a Magento site? And they said, well, what you've explained to me is that you have people that are gonna be selling your products and people who are retail buyers of your products. They all need to be logged into one area and see different pricing levels and be able to put in orders, be able to buy stuff from you. And to do that, you need a really high level e-commerce site called Magento. And I had no clue what Magento was. And actually I really wanna thank that person because that was back in 2010 and they built a Magento site for me, which I'm redoing again. I've redone it like three or four times. They helped me a lot. They really did. And they actually showed me a platform I didn't know existed. So if you hire the right person, they can really help you. A few months ago, I hired somebody in India and they were like, you don't have share a sale. I'm like, what's share a sale? And I'd kind of briefly heard of it before. They were like, well, you need that because it's gonna really help you make money because other people can sell your products and you can make money off them. I said, well, it's like click bank. And they were like, no, share a sale is different because you don't have to really have, they don't have to send out stuff. They can just use your link in different places and they get cooking and they get paid. And I tell you what, I just had a money off share a sale. That one suggestion from that guy was really, really good. Great video. I look forward to grow my community, subscribe, please. Gaming for pleasure. Once people to subscribe, do me a favor guys. And I want, this is for YouTube gaming for pleasure. Don't ask people to subscribe unless they're gonna watch your videos. Really important, really key, key thing. The way that YouTube algorithm works is they look at your subscribers. If they're watching your videos, great. They're gonna push it out to more similar people.  So be very careful. And I see people do this on Facebook too. They were like, like my page, like my page. I have a roofing company. Well, if you like somebody's page and you never go there and you never read any of their posts, you've actually hurt them. You've hurt them because there's no engagement in the audience. If there's no engagement in the audience that tells the algorithm that this content is worthless and they're not gonna show it to more people. So be very careful. Like, I want you to subscribe to my channel. I really do. But I don't want you to subscribe to my channel if you're never gonna watch a video here. That's just gonna hurt me. Please don't do that to me. I got a bunch of good comments in here, guys. Thank you so much for all this. I really appreciate it. In the future post, can you go over how you went from selling someone else's products to making a jump to manufacturing your own products? Also, how you learn the process for making food in a can. Yeah, I've actually hired some experts since they know I did that. But yeah, that's a long story. That really is a long story going from other people's products to mine. And I can tell you, I don't get much credit for it. What I get credit for is I ran into a lot of obstacles and I didn't quit. That's what I get credit for. But it wasn't because I had all these grandiose ideas. It was because I was pushed into a corner and I was out of money. And that's really why, you know. And when you get in those situations, understand those are the big opportunities, guys.  They really are. Mike Roberts, which is, I bought John's book, signed up on Clickbank and Digibank. I don't know about Digibank. I am on Clickbank. I'm a platinum seller on Clickbank, actually. Let's see here. Trying to learn enough to actually place ads so I can actually start doing something. I like the way you put that in all caps. Do you have any materials that can help me? Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, you're not gonna see them now, but at the end of this video, there's gonna be a description that's gonna pop up. There's a free course you can opt in for that. I have a lot of courses, a lot more than John does. Not that that means anything. I'm just saying I do. I have courses on Facebook ads. If you wanna do Facebook ads, I have a really good course called Facebook Ad University. I have courses on Shopify. I have courses on drop shipping. I have a lot of courses. I have an email marketing course. If you get on my list, you'll see some of that stuff and you can always send me a message, or post in the comment section after this is done, what you're looking for, and I'll put a link in there to some of this stuff because I can't put links in the chat box. They won't allow you to do that. So unfortunately, I can't do that. Real quick, I wanna go over some of the sites you can go to. I like Upwork a lot. Upwork is a really good site. I use that for one-off jobs. I don't hire full-time people there. I just use it for one-off jobs.  I have several employees on there like that. If I wanna hire somebody full-time and it's like video editing or WordPress development like that, and I wanna have them full-time 40 hours a week, I go to onlinejobs.ph. Let me see, onlinejobs. I don't think I can put this in there. I'm gonna try it though. Onlinejobs.ph, it did let me do that. Those are all Filipino workers, really, really good. But keep in mind, you don't wanna hire them part-time there. They all want full-time jobs. They will take a part-time job, but as soon as they find a full-time job, they're quitting. So make sure if you go there, you're looking for full-time people. So that's full-time. Also, freelancer.com is a really good one. Like freelancer.com, Fiverr is good for simple jobs. Let's say you need a logo done, something like that. But the one thing I hope you get out of today's session is that you gotta treat them with a tremendous amount of respect. Be very kind, be very polite. And Paul was saying something about hire slowly and fire fast. This is true. However, don't ever fire anybody with malice. It's really bad. And in the beginning I used to say, if you were fired, you're out of here. It was that Donald Trump thing, where you pointed at people and you're fired. And later on in years, I learned that's pointless. Because it didn't work out in this job, it doesn't mean you guys can't be friends. And I would say the last 20 years, I was in car dealerships. If I fired anybody and I saw them out at a bar, they were likely to buy me a drink. They were likely to thank me. Because really, if somebody's not working out in that job and things are working out, then there's probably a better place for them. And that was the talk I used to give them. I used to say, man, I'm sorry, it just didn't work out. I thought it would, but I gotta tell you, I don't want you to take this poorly because you're gonna find something probably much better than this job. Okay, this job is just not a good fit for you, but that doesn't mean that you're not a great employee or a great person. And that doesn't mean that at all. It just means that this situation didn't work out. And not every situation does in life, guys. And not every relationship works out. So why should every job work out for you? It just doesn't. Can you recommend a person for graphic work that's reasonable? Paul, there's so many people out there, buddy. I have a full-time graphic person that works for me right now, and they do all my stuff. So I don't really hire anybody in that area because he has the ability to do all that. But I would just say, look at the reviews on Upwork or Fiverr or whatever. There's some awesome people out there. They really are. Fiverr is really good as far as getting stuff back to you quickly. But all you got to do is look at the ratings, look at the examples. And the reason I wouldn't recommend a graphics person to you if I did have one that I used to barely, I don't, I have a full-time one, is because people want different kinds of graphics. Like maybe somebody specializes in cartoonish type stuff. Maybe people specialize in business type stuff. It's rare to have somebody that does all kinds of graphics. I don't look for people who wear a lot of hats. The one thing I would tell you is I would look for somebody who's specialized. So if I had an e-commerce website, I would look for an e-commerce graphic designer who knows e-commerce. If I had an artistic website, I would look for an artistic graphic designer. So try to niche down. And try to find the people that are niched down because they're gonna be really good at what they do. They're gonna do it faster, quicker, and they're gonna give you the results you want. So yeah, so today, guys, some of my videos got messed up from last week. So I've got to record videos again today. I've got 12 videos to do. I will start at 10 a.m. It's 9.27 now. Excuse me, let me get a drink. I do want you to do this today, though. Can you do that for me today? That's one thing that, where is he at? Where is he at? Mike Roberts just said, he wants to get something done. It's aggravating, isn't it, Mike? I mean, it's like, I want to get something done. And I know when I worked in the car business, I came up with a lot of excuses. I really did. I wanted to leave. I wanted to sell stuff online. But my excuse was I had to be at work at 7.38 in the morning, sometimes 7. And I wouldn't get home to 7.38 at night. Sometimes 9 or 10. And I was a single dad raising two kids. I had to get them in bed, I had to get them fed. And then all I had time was for like an hour or two of TV at night, that was it. So I had totally convinced myself that I didn't have enough time to do any of this stuff.  When in fact, one night I sat there and I looked at the TV and I was like, wait a second. I'm watching TV, huh? And I'm gonna do it for about the next hour, hour and a half. What if I turned it off? We don't turn off TVs like that anymore, do we? What if I turned it off? And I just tried to do something online. And that's how I got started. I just tried to do something online. And that one to two hours a night turned into sometimes three or four. Sometimes I'd be up half the night and I'd get hardly any sleep and I'd have to go to work the next day. And people would say, well, didn't you get tired? I was like, yeah, but you gotta give up something. I mean, it's just required. You gotta give up something, okay? You can't keep doing what you're doing and expect different results. And we hear that's the definition of insanity. And it really kind of is. And I talked to so many people who wanna do certain things and they say to me, well, I can't because of this and I can't because of that, I can't. Just do it. Cut out something else. Make a list of all the things that you do in a day and the things that aren't serving you well. Get rid of them. Get rid of them. Now, some of you say, well, I've gotta have my downtime and I've gotta watch the game and I've gotta go to a movie every now and then, then you're not gonna have a business online. If you don't have enough time and you have to do these frivolous things, then you're not gonna have a business online. It doesn't matter to you enough. It doesn't matter to you to have security. It doesn't matter to you to make more money. It doesn't matter to you. It just doesn't matter. Look at yourself in the mirror and say, it doesn't matter to me. You know, I watched an interview the other day with Elon Musk and he says just about every day, you know, I'm at work at eight, nine o'clock and that doesn't sound super early, but here's the key. He works to one or two AM every day. He says, usually I'll do it six days a week, maybe not seven, but for the most part, yeah, I do seven days a week to one AM. What are you doing? I mean, yeah, he's the richest guy in the world. He's a genius and all that, but he could be a genius and not be rich. What he's added is effort and you can be rich without being a genius. All you got to do is add effort, effort, effort, effort. Nobody's gonna outwork me. I mean, that's the one thing I got going for me. I'm not real super smart. I don't have a lot of talents technically, you know, technology-wise. I can't type, but it's hard to outwork me. I mean, it's super, super hard to outwork me. You know, we've got one of those mixed fitness bikes I was on at last night and the most amount of time you can go, the longest ride they have is an hour and I found one last night that was the longest ride, which was an hour and it was the toughest level and one hour I've earned 836 calories. It's hard to outwork me. It's hard to outwork me. And there's 10 minute, 15, 30, and 45 minute workouts. And you know, it's funny because the instructor even says, I don't know why you selected an hour workout, but you're serious. I know you are because most people don't select the hour workouts. I mean, he even tells you that in the video, but let's get going because we know you're serious. And I was serious. I ate too much for dinner. I fixed this incredible, oh my God, Paul, I gotta make this dish. It was a Cajun, it was like, I think it's called Mardi Gras Pasta, but it was basically a Cajun cream sauce with butter, seared chicken and Pinae Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes. Oh my God, it was so good. But after I ate it, I was like, I gotta get on the bike. This is gonna go straight to my belly.  So that's the one thing. You gotta work hard, man. You gotta work hard. There ain't no way around this. You know, I used to think you could hire people to run your business. You can't, you can't. I mean, maybe you can get to a level of one day where you can trust a few people to do some things.   You're always gonna have to be there. That's the way it is. Let me check some of these comments here. You guys are really, really giving me some good stuff. I really appreciate it. Can you tell us about your monthly membership for beginners? I want to share with people looking for, to escape their job, just over broke place. Yeah, I would say Ecom Road is a good one, or Webcash Academy. Webcash Academy is my private VIP training that I did in person that we recorded with local businesses. Ecom Road shows you how to set up a Shopify store. It takes you step by step for that. And I think they're like $27 a month, something like that. You know, I haven't looked at it in a while, but I think it's around that. Those are some of the best beginner courses, and the free one that's gonna be in the description, which walks you through a few of the things you can do, and then that leads into one of those courses. And I think it does lead into Ecom Road. James Breen suggests you check out Joy of Baking. She has a great channel. Yeah, I know it's off topic. The devil made me do it. No, that's fine. You don't have to be on topic. Okay, but this is not a strict training session.  I will check it out. And I like looking at this. I'm not a baker. I never have been. I haven't really developed an interest in that, to be honest with you. I made some great flour tortillas the other day. I tried that. They came out pretty good, but I'm not a baker. I know that. It's just, it's too precise for me. You know, it's like, you gotta have certain temperatures and certain amounts, and they have to set for a certain amount of time, and I like being able to just taste it and season it, keep moving on. But I will check it out, and I appreciate you sharing that with me. I really do. When building, it's delayed gratification and doing what others won't, so you can have what others can't. Your gift is common sense and persistent. And Paul's hungry now. It is very true, and it is delayed gratification. I mean, working out is delayed gratification. You know, when I go to push-ups and pull-ups and all the things that I do to stay in shape, you know, at my advanced age, I know it's delayed, and I know it's hard, and I know I'm not gonna see a result that day, but over the years, I have seen results. I can do 120 push-ups, okay? Not bad for my age, not bad. You know, am I the best at push-ups in the world? No, am I the best at my age? No, am I better than most? Yeah, yeah, and only reason for that is I put in work. I put in work every day. And the way you make yourself put in work is you say, you know, if I was, we'll take working out, if I was in really great shape for my age, what kind of things would I do to get there? And just do those things. I'd wake up every day and go, that's what I do. Those are the things I do. I just do those things. It doesn't matter if you feel like it. Don't ever say, well, I didn't feel like working out. That's bull, okay? Of course you don't feel like working out. Nobody feels like working out. You just do it, okay? I don't feel like filming 12 videos today. Do I enjoy it? Yeah, but I mean, it's hard. You know, I'll be in here for eight, nine hours doing videos, okay? It's difficult. It's difficult to do, but you gotta do it. You just gotta do it, okay?  You'll be let down every time. You'll be let down every time. Don't expect that. Just get the best you can out of people by treating them fairly, paying them generously, and being kind to them. Just do that, okay? When you're hiring people, just do those things. That's what I would suggest. If you have any other comments, throw them in that chat section right there. If you're watching this after I went live, put it in the comment section there. The chat window will not be there. You have to put it in the comment section. I have a lot of links in my description when this video's over with. You can go in there and look for different products, for different courses, for different trainings. I do have a free $97 course. I guess it's not a $97 course, I'm giving away free, but it sells for $97. I'm giving it away free. You can opt in for that. You'll find that in the description after this video's over with. Don't forget to subscribe, hit that subscribe button. Don't forget to share this video with some of your friends. Sharing is caring, right?  It sounds so wimpy, doesn't it? Hey, ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified every single time I do a new video. I really do appreciate you guys being here. So thank you for taking the time to help people. No problem, Mike. And show up again tomorrow, I'll be here.  I'm not till 10, but I do giveaway gift cards on Saturday, Mike, so maybe get a gift card.   I want you here, Paul. So many great lessons here to share with people. You may find things from Joy of Baking that may help you with Cooking Channel. I'll do it, man. No, I'll do it. Serious, I really will. I'll check it out. I have a lot, I have, I think, 87 channels that I subscribe to right now on YouTube. I'm not allowed to watch them until after about 10 at night. I have to work up until then, that's my rules. But after then, from 10 to 1 a.m., a lot of times I'll watch them. Unless I'm having a project, I've got to work on something like that. But I really appreciate you guys being here. It's been wonderful. I love your comments. I seriously do, guys, seriously. Being able to communicate back and forth with you and figuring out what you want and what I can do for you means the world to me. I really love having you guys around. I really do. Thank you so much for being here. Don't forget to subscribe, ring the bell. Give me a thumbs up, thumbs up. Go ahead and click it now. Just click, go ahead and click, click, click, thumbs up. Boom, did you do it? Awesome. Thank you so much, guys. I'll see you tomorrow and...