There we go. All right, welcome back everybody. We are here with another of our great DEF CON speakers. We have Patrick Hiley here, and you can check out his presentation on YouTube where he talked about reverse engineering, the Tesla battery management system for more power. Welcome Patrick, how are you doing today? I'm great, how are you guys? Doing all right. Pretty good. So can you just kind of give us a little bit of an overview of who you are? Let people hear a little bit about your presentation just in case they haven't seen it or kind of give a little bit of an overview recap. Sure, so my name is Patrick Hiley. I'm a security consultant for Rapid7, part of the penetration testing team. And I got interested in this project back when I just started looking at how the Tesla kind of worked inside the Model S specifically. I'd seen how some people had hacked them. And once I got a chance to peek under the hood, I just wanted to learn more and more. I was already into car hacking and learning more about this. And once I realized that there was an upgrade that this car had that nobody had really researched and actually published information about, it kind of gave me a path forward. So I went to see like, okay, how did Tesla actually make this car capable of ludicrous? And it sent me down a path that was probably the most complicated project I've ever worked on. That's awesome. And I believe this is your first time being a main track speaker for DEF CON, is that right? That's correct, yes. All right. Well, for anyone that is familiar with DEF CON, we have a tradition that you should be very familiar with by now. It's called Shot the New. New speakers are welcomed into the DEF CON speaker collective with a shot of a drink of their choice to bring them into the community, celebrate their joining, the people that are giving back to the community knowledge. So thank you. Here's to you. Bottoms up. Cheers, congrats. Thank you. That's enough. Okay, yep. All right, good. Loosen you up before the questions start getting serious.  How did you go about piecing all these things together? How did you find your next steps to go through everything? Yeah, so piece by piece. I already had like the mechanical skills. So, you know, in the past, I've had like a Mustang that I've either replaced the heads on or put a supercharger on or, you know, things along those lines replaced exhaust systems on. So I had the mechanical knowledge already. I've been doing that for longer than I care to admit. I think even when I was a teenager, I was tinkering around with automobiles and taking them apart, taking carburetors apart. So complex, small items like that. And then just trying to take things apart and figure out how they work has been something I've been doing since I was a child. My parents told me about how the time I locked them out of the bathroom and then just to disassemble the toilet. And I don't remember that, but they remind me of it on pretty much every occasion when I talked about something I've been working on. So there's that. So really, once I started getting into it, I already had the reverse engineering skills from just doing some other stuff and had the CAN bus skills. If you look at some of the previous presentations I've done, I've been poking around CAN bus for some time. So having the DBC files, it was really trivial to just diagnose the stuff going on within the CAN bus. From there, it was just, okay, how do I do these other things? I know that CAN has this protocol that sits on top of the thing itself for writing diagnostics called ODX. So I found those, or called UDS. I found those ODX files and worked with a car fucker who helped show me how to use them. He's one of the main guys for the car hacking village. He showed me how to actually, import those into vehicle spy and play around with them. Helped me figure out some of the security access stuff. I had already seen some of that from Craig Smith's work. Nori, he figured out how to pop airbags on cars. So I knew about security access so I can understand the algorithm. But Tesla's algorithm, fortunately, for this vehicle was incredibly simple. It's a static seeding key. There was no transform required. It's like, you request the seed and you reply with a fixed reply and boom, you're in. So that made that part easy and then the rest of it was just piece by piece digging through the Python code and then building a test bench, which for any reverse engineering project when you're doing the very expensive piece of hardware, try and replicate it on a bench because that was invaluable. I never would have attempted half the stuff I did if I hadn't proofed it out using a much cheaper variant of it that I just wired together and figured out how to work. I was, there was one jump in particular that it was right after you had your Tesla towed home not figuring out what those particular, like what was going on with there. Like, do you remember like what was the final thing that got you past that hump? Like, I think that- Oh, I remember it really well. I imagine that there was some stress involved there. So, yeah. So I mean, I was into day two of trying to. Oh, having a little video loss might be some Wi-Fi interference or something. I said, no, I'm not here for the weekend. I'm over on Irvine. You're here in Rancho Cucamonga. I'm not coming here. You can come like Monday. I'm like, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna like bail out and figure the rest of this out at home. So I only needed your garage to drop the battery and do that stuff. If I have to come back for that, I'm really in a SOL type situation. But so stressing out that for day and a half, I just started capturing a bunch of logs. So just from past experience, I was like, maybe the logs are telling me something. And the logs weren't great, but they did mention this one file and it was a firmware.rc. It mentioned that a couple of times. It kind of just had that around the point where it said error and I could see that it failed. So basically I can stamped.  I kind of noted where that time was and looked right there in the logs and saw an error about that. And then I just did some searching. And it turns out the 10 cent guys when they did their Tesla gateway reversing, they mentioned that file. They mentioned how that file was loaded into memory. I'm like, I've never seen that file before. I've seen it mentioned, you know, I searched through all my stuff, found a couple references to it. And then I just like, well, let's just go to the gateway and see if they'll give it to me and just give you a little background. This is not why I have the car. I had already spent the two days. I was already flustered. Had to buy a last minute ticket home, flew home and I was messing around on my bench. So I was like, I went to my bench version that had a gateway and said, give me firmware at RCA. It gave it to me. I'm like, cool. Okay, you've got this BMS error. I've already replicated that. Looked at the values in it. I actually have a copy of the map here, but there's no real way to share it. But there's basically a tab separated value file. And within that file, it tells you the firmware that that particular battery pack ID needs. And it has a little CRC code. That CRC code needs to be in that firmware.rc file. And once that was updated with the correct CRC code and the BMS I knew was first the version of firmware. I could also see that CRC code being broadcast by the BMS again. I did that. And I was like, okay, well, there's this final CRC file. How do I figure that out? I asked some people that I knew it was like, hey, I don't know a ton about CRC 32s, but here's where I have. And here's the file itself with the CRC value. And then it said, oh, it's a jam CRC. Here's a file, here's a website you can go to to recreate it. So I recreated the last CRC line, uploaded it back to the gateway, rebooted the gateway and the error clears. So I'm like, good, I've got to pass forward to the car to actually try all this.  It was just dealing with 12 volts. So a lot of the components, it would just basically shut down after a little while. So I basically had to make sure it had a good battery maintain honor on it. So it sat there for a few minutes to make sure that the 12 volts had enough juice. And then I tried to get the gateway to go through its process. And as soon as that car woke up and I heard the clicks of the contactors in the rear, it was like, hallelujah. There was one other thing that you said you missed that you would only say over drinks. We did just have a drink. Can you tell us? No, okay. It was basically me messing around with the car and putting on a feature that it didn't really need to have. It was causing the error and it's just, you know, different times I was screwing around with something I shouldn't have been. My own fault is really the crux of what I want to say there. Fair. So to catch you in person over drinks, I tried to slip that in. Didn't expect it to really work. That was pretty sly. Let's try pastes. Yep. So go ahead. Got one question coming in for you that you would have had to pay Tesla about $5,000 to make this transition. What was the approximate cost for you to do it yourself? Counting the towing or not. Let's say not, because maybe somebody will learn from your lesson. So the fuse itself, where I found on the user market for about 350 bucks, I found the contactors for about 200. The rest of that was just basically my time and effort and labor. So just basically me being my labor. The rest of the stuff didn't really cost me anything other than just time. And then of course there were all the components to my bench. You can buy a Tesla MCU for about $700 to $1,000 on eBay or some of the other markets. And the BMS is running anywhere between 150 and 300. I wanted to make sure I got a BMS with the shunt. That was a little bit harder. I just happened to get lucky and saw one. But the bench parts I guess you can consider were major portions of that all. And then there is a second kit that I bought just to be safe. That was actually the exact part number that Tesla used to do the upgrade. So basically people would pay for this kit and maybe be part of their whole upgrade package. I bought one of those as well to make sure there wasn't something I was missing. And that was about another $1,000. Can people just go to their local junkyard and pull pieces themselves to create a test bench? And if so, do you think the junkyards really understand the value of this equipment that you're using? Well, so many people are doing weird things with Teslas. So I'm sure they can, but I'm not sure how many junkyards you may be able to find that actually have Teslas out there. I found the secondary market to be really all, but if you can get one, if you can get to a junkyard and you have one that has an MCU, great. Getting the BMS would be a pain in the... I don't even want to think about it. You basically have to drop the battery pack out of the vehicle to get at that BMS. There's no way to get at it from any other means. So doing that in a junkyard would be problematic. But if you can get that center display and it's not already been snagged, that's the part that you would start with with any test bench, because that's where you learn how to route the car. That's where you learn to do all the changes. That's where the gateway is stored. It really is kind of a central hub of the vehicle. Yes, go ahead. I was gonna say, I keep hearing you mentioned the gateway. Like what exactly is the gateway in the car? Can you talk about that? Is it like actually like a network router or is this something else? So it's called the security gateway. It's a function you'll see on newer Canbus automobiles. It basically is a device that kind of exists like a firewall, but not sort of like a firewall that exists between multiple Canbuses. And in this place, the infotainment unit and the part that actually connects to the internet. So it acts as a ethernet to Canbus gateway. So the ethernet side is what connects to the central display, connects to the instrument cluster. And then from the central display, there's like the cellular connection, the wifi connection, the Bluetooth connection, the USB ports, and then has all the logic for how it communicates out on the internet. And the rest of it communicates with the rest of the Tesla mothership. But then the gateway also bridges the various Canbuses. So it can take a message from say the powertrain Canbus and copy it onto either the ethernet Canbus or the chassis Canbus. Consequently, it can take messages from those other Canbuses and push them onto the BMS as well. Because sometimes devices that are not on the same bus need to communicate with one another. So when you're requesting the firmware, is it coming directly from the gateway or is the gateway like asking these sub-devices to say, hey, send me your firmware? So just to clarify your question, are you talking about the firmware.nrc file or are you talking about the firmware itself? Well, kind of both. I think you did both in your, throughout your talk. There was one particular place where I noticed that you were issuing a command line to retrieve a file and then you made some changes. I think it was, you even used Vim, which represent. And then you pushed it back. Yeah, so that was all from the CID. So the CID on the vehicle that we're talking about is an NVIDIA Tegra running Ubuntu. That, and it's, so it's basically, it's an ARM version of Ubuntu. All the firmware for all the modules of the vehicle sit within that firmware image. And then when people talk about how their Tesla gets updates, it has all new firmware and it pushes out firmware updates, all the various modules that need it. Some module way over here may not need an update, so it may not get updated. But that's part of what the gateway and the main system do when they do an update. The gateway itself does store a few files, but it doesn't store a copy of the entire vehicle's firmware. The entire vehicle's firmware is stored on the central display, you know, on that Tegra-based Ubuntu system on that little EMMC chip. That's the same EMC that people complain about wearing out because of all the logging that's going on, but the, the, the image itself has that entire copy of the firmware. The gateway only has things like the firmware.rc file, the internal.dat file, and a few others, like hwids.acq, which is all the hardware IDs of the vehicle, and it gets that from the CAN bus. So the gateway does that, just queries during an upgrade, but there are also some like, like crash files that are stored on the gateway because it's easier for it to store on the gateway. I don't know why it does that, but some of the crash files are stored there as well because I saw on my bench system some images right before the vehicle was crashed. Okay, so, so when you say crash, it's not like software crashing, it's like a black box from the actual component. Yeah, there's an actual, I think there's another like actual black box device, but the gateway stores quite a bit of that. I'm not going to pretend to understand how the whole, you know, emergency data recorder function of the vehicle works, but it's there. Some of the files are on the gateway. Yeah, that might be an interesting future talk for someone just perversing the black box of Tesla. Yeah. So you also do a lot of stuff with the car hacking village. Is there anything interesting going on that you want to sort of announce while you're here to get people to come and show up in the car hacking village, anything like that? Your question broke up right at the point where you asked the critical part. So do you mind repeating it? Oh yeah, sorry, sorry. So you're very active in the car hacking village. Is there anything like interesting going on, like maybe Tesla related or related to your talk that you're going to continue working on something that you want to like pimp out? So tomorrow at 10 o'clock, I've got a deep dive into many of the techniques that I covered in the main doc. And that's basically because, you know, due to the whole change of the online format, some of the stuff got cut off to the talk. So I have some, some of the stuff that was cut from my, you know, talk itself, but then I also expanded on some additional topics as well. So I go into some of the binary analysis. I load up the former insight IDA. I don't get very far, but I show that I was able to get an IDA. I do some of the like live UDS techniques, you know, the security access as well as the shunt calibration. And then it's just another brief overview. So it's like three different things that I'm kind of talking about. And then, you know, I can't do the C stuff as well. Other than like the setting up a bench itself, is there any particular like software that, or tools that people are required to do this kind of like investigation and playgrounds work with car hacking? So I was using a not free tool called vehicle spy only because it was very powerful and made it a lot easier. Only had it available. You can use tools and some of the other stuff out there pretty much make it possible to do whatever you want to out there. There are a ton of CAN bus interfaces out there. One of my favorites is the Panda. So for this, I'm going to give a shout out to the comma.ai folks for actually making such an awesome CAN bus interface. Comma.ai is a open source self-driving tool that I'll just let people go out and check it out on their own. But they also, they make a tool called the Panda works really well with the Tesla. It can connect to three CAN buses at once. A lot of people that have done hacking on the Tesla use that and I'm very impressed with it. It's a very inexpensive tool that'll give you physical interface. And from that, you can connect over WiFi or USB and from there directly, I'll start messing around with Linux tools that are all free. And those are all I can can use tools. That's cool. What's been Tesla's reaction to the kind of work that you've been doing to get you kind of ludicrous speed? Yeah, so when this talk was accepted I actually reached out it several times and Tesla was very supportive. They actually just asked to review the slides to make sure they're wearing any surprises. I kind of told them, hey, I'm gonna talk about this, this and this. They said, yeah, just do us a favor, send us a copy of your slides, white paper, et cetera. So we'll make sure there are any gotchas in there. And they said, yep, everything looks good. You're good to go. So very supportive. They actually have a program called the Security Vehicle Research Program in addition to their bug mounting. So a vehicle that you're interested in doing security research on can be registered with them and you won't violate any warranties. So basically, and supposedly I haven't tried this, they'll even help you with some breaking situations. Didn't need their help on this one, fortunately, but they do some of the other stuff. Sorry, excuse me. I've got a really annoying thing going on. There we go. Sorry for anyone that was on the stream. I was just constantly getting calendar alerts for the next things that I'm responsible for. Are there any other things that you're aware of in a Tesla that you could possibly try to unlock or bypass or anything else that either you want to look into or you think that other people might wanna look into to build upon your research? I'd have to think about that one for a bit. Yeah, there are some things. I would like to see if where the actual limits are in the BMS. I would like to understand those, but I don't really have a desire to push past them because you're starting to get into dangerous territory at that point. I just wanna find where they are. So it's like, all right, here's the variable that actually controls max power. Here's the power curve that's basically, defined state of charge, battery temperature and how much power is available for the various drive inverters in the battery itself. I'd like to find those. So that's, hence the additional item stuff. And then just more or less actually get more underneath the hood of how the battery management itself and the drive inverters work. The drive inverters are not something that I actually have hardware on a bench for, but because they're very expensive, the whole drive inverter is inside the drive unit and drive units a multi-thousand dollar piece of equipment, but yeah. I thought that's where I would like to get from there. I wanna see where the steps are for the P90D and P100D because those cars are faster. So we did get a really good question that was, for those not familiar with the whole gateway canvas stuff, the car be able to phone home after you've made the ludicrous speed modification. Yeah, so the vehicle within its firmware itself has a function where actually it uploads the config to Tesla on a regular basis. I think it's like vitals.json puts it in json format. So basically they take the vehicles config and whenever, I think it's when the car goes to sleep, it actually uploads that information to Tesla. So anytime someone makes a change that wasn't done by someone else, or I'm sorry, even when the service center makes a change, that is gonna be seen on Tesla's end unless of course you figure out a way around that. And I imagine that you're probably no longer under warranty as soon as you root the front panel or something like that. You know, Magnuson Moss Act affects a lot of stuff. But I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not even gonna go there and try and figure it out. But it's like, if you root the center display and you have a problem with your brakes, how are the two related, you know? Yeah, fair. But if you root your center display and you break your center display, it's a totally different situation.  And to follow up on that question, if Tesla does get made aware of this bypass that you put into place, could they then reverse it and remove it from you? I'm sure they have. I mean, there are stories out there about how people had a ludicrous speed vehicle and then after they purchased it, it was removed because Tesla said they audited it and found out that it shouldn't have had it and removed it. And then of course, the person who bought the vehicle was pretty pissed off. So don't know what the resolution on that was, but that's also, there's a huge amount of controversy around the whole super charging thing. So if you buy a salvage Tesla, it has super charging disabled. Tesla does that, it's, you know, they're prerogative, it's their supercharger network but it makes it very difficult to go on trips. And people figured out using the same techniques that I'm talking about here on how to re-enable that again.  My only suggestion for Tesla is like, why not verify the safety of it and then only enable it to where they have to pay for it? Because now you've got a source of revenue, but. That was gonna be my next question because I know that the, after a certain point they stopped allowing superchargers to be free for Teslas, but it sounds like it's completely disabled on these. On the salvage vehicles, it's disabled. The way I understand it is if the vehicle has free supercharging and has free supercharging, but as soon as the vehicle is sold back to Tesla, it's lost. This particular vehicle has free supercharging because it was purchased with free supercharging. So it should always have that, but you know, as I understand it, they haven't taken it away from anymore.  All right, so it wasn't just like Tesla purchasing it back and then reselling it with a disabled or something like that. It's like, you know, people trade in their cars. People trade in their cars. I think when they sell them out again, they don't have free supercharging. I don't know. That makes sense. I don't keep track of them. Yeah, I didn't know like this. It seems like a really kind of sketchy area. So any kind of details that I can pull out of you. Yeah, their frog is. Yeah. So it seems as though with the, where electric cars are going now, that this is going to be a really great area of research. And what kind of advice would you give to people that want to get started with car hacking research? Like if somebody wants to start from the ground up, what sorts of things could they do? Where should they start looking? Start learning CAN bus. That seems to be a real out of it. Gets from there, learn UDS. And from there, learn about like binary reversing and just reversing engineering in general. Go to a junkyard, find a car that you find interesting, verify, you know, it has CAN bus and start ripping modules out.  Craig Smith helped us. He's the writer, you know, the car hacker's handbook. And we got like several vehicles worth of modules. Even if you just get one module, take it apart, figure out what CPU it has, you know, learn how to hardware hack it. And from there, have fun. Yeah, I thought I've seen in some of the videos with people hacking on electric cars. Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but is there any risk to a car sitting in a junkyard still holding any kind of electrical charge that people should be aware of? Yeah, because high voltage is high voltage. It'll hurt you either way. I personally have never been to a junkyard where I've seen electric cars. I've only seen the salvage yards where they're like the warranty auction places. And you see those online. But the actual junkyards themselves, I don't think I've ever seen an electric vehicle in the junkyard. Even a hybrid would be dangerous though because the hybrid still has high voltage because it has an electric motor. So we got one question. Oh, it's kind of more like Hawkeye is wondering if Teslas have a problem with shutting down if their error message has reached a critical amount of storage space. I'm guessing that has to do with the EMMC logging thing. I've never seen one run out of storage space. It's just the volume of logging. And I believe at a certain point it overwrites itself, but just it's the volume of constantly writing to the EMMC that wears it down. Not for the device storage actually filling up. And it's unfortunate because it's like a $20 part. The EMMC module itself on that DAGRA is a very inexpensive part, but it's a $2,000 repair if you take it to a service center. Excellent. So as we start wrapping this up, what sorts of takeaways do you want people to have from your presentation and what would be your call to action or what would you like to see come about based on your research and your presentation that you've put out there? Well, I'd love for some day for Tesla owners to be able to work on their own vehicles for there to be like a consumer version of the tools that are used to work on and diagnose the vehicles. Cause right now you just have to take it to the garage and pay the service center to do that. I can understand I have a high voltage components why you want to do that, but as these cars age and continue to be out there in a fleet there needs to be another method. In addition to that, just this is kind of like the next version of hot riding. People are going to figure this out. Now that kind of electric cars are becoming more and more mainstream, there are going to be people that want to buy them and make them faster and you can make them faster by either lightening them or you can make them faster by tweaking what's under the hood just like you would on a standard internal combustion engine. So this is kind of like the next phase where that's going to go. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. Thanks so much for your presentation that people can go see on the YouTube with the Defconn channel. So thanks for doing this Patrick. Really enjoyed you discussing this with us. All right, thank you.


If you look at our journey of colors Canada, we've been a number one channel in the Canada GEC space now for 62 weeks including today's ratings for the running and continuously for 62 weeks we've been number one. What we saw is that we think that there is an insatiable appetite with the viewer and there are certain genres which in our opinion we are not able to do and I don't think are so prominently present in the market. So and I think therefore we thought that we should be able to give another offering where we are able to bring more original hours of programming. This new offering will be color super. We'll be doing four hours of original hours of programming. It will consist of fiction, nonfiction, movies. We don't do those many movie premieres on our colors Canada so we will do more here in that sense and even within fiction if you look at genres such as you know, mytho, historicals, some of those genres which are there, I think we will be making a play here. Regional is a very important portfolio for YCOM-18. I have always been very bullish on regional because I keep giving the big macro statistic 59% of India communicates in regional languages so that's you know and even now the viewership on regional and monetization of regional is under indexed in my opinion. So therefore driving regional aggressively is our key thrust. We will continue to deepen and widen our presence in regional so that we are able to drive the viewership as YCOM-18 and in my assessment as industry to the right levels it deserves for regional. We keep looking at all the markets all the time but there is no guidance I can give specifically. We are keen to continue to grow our regional portfolio.


As a doctor, I was told my entire life don't go into medicine before the money, but the idea was perpetuated so much that no one actually ever taught me about money itself, so in today's episode I'm going to break down my favorite books about personal finance that I've ever read. Let's get into it. Book number one is Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. If you're not familiar with the book, this book as well as all the books I will talk about in today's episode will be linked down below if you're interested, but really the story is of his two dads. One of them is his actual real dad who worked a government job really living from paycheck to paycheck and his idea of saving to not get burned later, and his other dad who is actually his friend's dad who owned a business and essentially allowed him to look at money very differently. My two biggest takeaways from Rich Dad Poor Dad is one, working to be 65 so you can finally enjoy the freedom after all of those years of hard work. It's an oversold idea and so instead you should ask yourself how can you make your money work hard for yourself and that really gets into concept number two which is just to look at things as assets versus liabilities. When you purchase something just to the sake of purchasing and having it, most of the time it's just a liability. For example, if we buy a car or a house, those feel nice and make us feel like we're growing in society but often they just cost us a monthly or a one-time big lump sum payment compared to something that would be considered to be an asset like buying a rental property, starting a business, investing in stocks that grow or pay you a dividend, essentially where your money is working for you, understanding the difference of what your dollars are doing and make sure your dollars are actually working and ideally more on the side of assets versus liabilities really helps me understand okay like what do I want to achieve, how much money do I want to have for myself and my family so we can have a lifestyle that we're comfortable with and then what do I have to achieve, how many assets do I have to accumulate over the next 20, 30 years to really help me do that and not have to wait till 65 to actually enjoy it. Book number two is the white coat investor. Now because I'm a physician, there is just so much financial knowledge that no one really teaches you but you suddenly have to know. For example, how to go into medical school, how to pay for it, what kind of loans you should be looking at, what interest rates you should be considering, how to actually pay off those loans, what my options are and then when I get into residency which is where I am now actually just three months away from graduating, what type of things should I be doing when I have my first salary, how should I be paying my loans off, how should I be investing, what other things should I be considering like things like liability and disability insurance both of which I have now thanks to that book really just helps give a nice game plan especially in your first few years in your medical career but then also talks about okay when I'm about to be in attending which is again in about four, five months where I'm about to make my first big boy physician salary, what should I do with it, how should I pay off my loans, how should I change my life insurance, what type of things should I be doing to protect myself, protect my family as well as living a life where my lifestyle is not creeping up just because my income is. The book really breaks down essentially every part of somebody who's on their medical journey and doesn't really matter if you're in medical school you can be somebody who's pursuing nursing or pharmacy or anything related to health care the book is going to be for you. It's a really quick easy read something that you can always come back and refer to you once you're at the next phase of your journey. So if you guys are interested that would link down below. Book number three is the richest man in Babylon. Now I'm a big fan of personal finance books that are told in the form of stories like Rich Dad Poor Dad because it's really just easy to understand concepts instead of having a bunch of graphs and figures and somebody throwing a bunch of numbers at you especially if you're not a numbers person but the richest man in Babylon is exactly that doesn't really feel like a personal finance book and nicely tells you the story of somebody who is essentially subtly focusing on the concept of paying yourself first and the benefits that they're able to accumulate throughout their life. So if you're interested it's a really quick easy read it's very fun but also allows you to focus on okay am I making sure that I have a dollar is coming into my bank account who is getting the benefit of that dollar first is it going to my bills is it going to paying other people or am I making sure that I am paying my future self in five 10 20 years first and different concepts that we'll talk about in the upcoming books really help you understand what to do with that money. Now book number four is total money makeover by Dave Ramsey now Dave Ramsey to put it lightly can be very polarizing on one end you can say I love his concepts on the other end you can say I totally disagree and it really just depends on how educated you are in personal finance on what side of the spectrum really his focus are people who are in debt really have no idea how to manage their money or how to grow their wealth for both themselves as well as upcoming generations that's who he focuses on and if you understand that then his books especially the total money makeover does a great job especially coming from somebody who has medical school debt if you're interested on how much my medical school education costs I will link down below that episode essentially as I'm making this video I'm a little under $200,000 medical school debt that I'll have to pay off in the next upcoming years and so his book was one of the first really breakdown what type of steps my wife and I have to do to make sure one that we're comfortable ready for any kind of emergency like car breakdown health care costs that we needed to pay and then to ready to pay off debts before we go down the line of looking for a house you know saving for retirement saving for you know our kids education essentially what steps are we needed to take now again these are very initial concepts but just like something like the white code investor it helped me break down the different steps that we needed to take so first thing that we did is we set up an emergency fund that is still available today in case so we have you know some kind of emergency like our car breaks down or we have to pay for some emergent travel across country etc so there is a fun setup for those and then we followed those relative steps now since we've learned the basics just like the white code investor then we've upgraded our personal finance knowledge of like okay what do we do with this extra money while we're trying to pay off her debt that's really where I get to the other side of the spectrum in the upcoming books but if you are somebody is like I don't really know what to do with my money I am in debt or I have credit card debt or I feel like my expenses don't allow me to save enough money but the total money makeover is a great book for anyone who is struggling with things like educational debt personal debt or if you feel like I don't really know how to actually save money because I feel like I'm always spending as much as I'm making it really talks to you nicely about it as well as two concepts I really enjoy including both the snowball and the avalanche approach of how to pay off any debt that you have including med school debt it's the same approach that I'm taking on how to pay off my med school debt on a monthly basis again there's more videos on personal finance here on the channel if you guys are interested but if you are on those initial phases of not knowing what to do with your money this is a great book to start and very easy to read now book number five is one rental at a time by Michael Zuber and now we're starting to make a transition from okay cool I understand the basics of personal finance I understand the concepts I should be aware of especially as me as a physician once you have that money what should you do with it I'm a big believer that you shouldn't just put all your money in one basket so it shouldn't just go on the stock market or starting a business or in real estate but you really have some type of specification and so one of the places that my wife and I very soon will be putting our money is into real estate it's also a tangible asset that you can see that you can pass on to your kids and upcoming generations but to understand real estate sometimes the books really get very nitty gritty with the numbers and one of the books I really again nicely breaks down in the form of a story is one rental at a time this is again the story of Michael Zuber essentially breaks down how him and his wife and his family started going from one house what they paid how much it cost what they did and then how they went from one rental to the next rental so if you're interested in real estate or just learning about what a possible future would look like this book is a very nice breakdown of what the numbers look like without getting too number heavy it's a very easy read and it's a book that I often come back to in my Kindle library so if you guys are interested that'd be linked down below book number six is profit first by Michael McCallowitz and this is technically a business book but you can actually still use it for personal finance now I got this book initially because when I was learning to manage the funds of the MD journey and other ventures that have running on the side the real question is how much of that money comes to me how much the money goes to taxes how much it goes to the employees that work on MD journey or other businesses and it really just helped me understand this concept of one you want to make sure that you pay yourself first begin going back to the concept of the richest man in Babylon but also exactly how to do that how much money should come to you how much money should go into a tax account as an example as I've been running the MD journey for the last six to seven years you know there's obviously income that comes to the ads the affiliates or students who decided to buy one of our books or work with us one-on-one that is income but not all that income is mine some of it obviously has to go to my employees other expenses but even the income that's left over still doesn't come to me I have to pay a tax every three months that is essentially a quarterly payment and then I have to pay a tax based off of my yearly income so I have to put money aside to count for taxes at the end of the year something you don't really have to do when you're just working a normal W2 job where your taxes are essentially taken out of your paycheck as a profit first book was a really nice breakdown of okay if a dollar comes in this is how much will go into a tax count I literally have a separate bank account that is meant for taxes this is how much will go into your expense account so enough to pay my employees all the software that we use etc and this is how much money will go into your accounts then you can use it on however you wish whether it be for groceries or other investments but it's a nice distribution now again it is technically a business book very nicely told in the form of a story so those are my favorites but I've used the same concept on how to manage my personal finance so every time we get a dollar whether it be my wife's job or my own job or income that we get from the journey or if I'm moonlighting in the hospital working extra hours that's extra income that's coming where do each of those dollars go and we've decided this is where our priority is this is how we're gonna make sure that we pay ourselves and grow our investment essentially snowball this is how we make sure that we have a budget that is going to cover for emergencies and this is going to be a budget that we're gonna make sure that we have to enjoy ourselves whether it be to buy clothes or buy food or go out to eat or by other equipment such as cameras and laptops and computers we essentially have a direction for each of those dollars and so in a way we've designed our financial life for each dollar is almost like a personal employee and it's going to work for us in different avenues and so if you're interested on how to do that how to break it down definitely check out the profit first book essentially the entire way that my wife and I do reverse budgeting other concepts that I talked about here in the channel are used through this book so if you guys are interested that'll be linked down below now book number seven is lifestyle investor by Justin Donald now this is a book that really just kind of changed the game in terms of what I saw as a possibility obviously when you're working a position you have a very nice comfortable salary that can pay for your family you know yourself and then future investments but the lifestyle investor was really a light bulb moment for me because I got away from thinking about just stocks and real estate and saving money here and putting money in a Roth or a 401k but really thinking about what investments can I have that work for me so then I am having the life that I want kind of going as essentially accumulation of all the principles that we've talked about from the past few books but Justin Donald just to kind of bring down his story essentially just in a few years was able to make enough income from various different investments to essentially have an eight-figured net worth between both his wife and him and so now he essentially just uses his time to work on different investments and projects that he wants to which sounds like the exact life that we want but he's nowhere close to being sixty five and so if you're interested in different breakdowns of different deals different investments that he looks at again this may be a few years down the line for me in terms of where I even get to that position where that's a possibility it still allows me to say okay this is where you ultimately want to be where maybe you're 50 or 55 and your kids are you know in their teenage or mid 20s age you want to be able to spend as much time with them not be trapped and I still need to work X amount to be able to save for my retirement so this is a nice book of really talking about future planning but also things that I can do at the moment so if you want a book that can really inspire you of what your financial future can look like without feeling like here is my Lambo or here is my yacht he doesn't do any of that in the book knowledge it is a nice again story told financial personal finance books of you guys interested that'll be linked down below it also has a very engaging podcast that I often listen to on my runs or my drive into the hospital essentially bring in people who are essentially going from nothing to have these kinds of lifestyles where they can invest in the things that they care for and work on those projects while still focusing on their family philanthropy efforts or other projects that they're interested in book number eight is the random walk guide to investing now when I say that this is the one book that changed my entire perception of personal finance this is it actually still have this copy I give it to friends to read if they don't understand anything about money this is the book that I read in college essentially where I was managing my own money and had a job for the first time and said what should I in the world should I do with this and I randomly just grab this on Amazon and the book just broke down some of the most basic principles that over the span of my college days now you know seven years into my medical journey I've easily been able to save anywhere from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars in various different accounts using various simple principles ideas such as where should you put your money how should you look at investing in the stock market how should you look at a financial advisor things like fees and how to consider them as well as most basic principles like what the hell is a bond what the hell is an index fund the hell is a stock versus a dividend stock and really nicely break that down without getting overly complicated really the last few chapters are really the principles I still use today which is just making my investing in terms of stock investing super simple in the form of index funds so if you have no idea what I'm talking about and you just want a book that says I'm going to read this I'm going to commit to this and it's made a difference in somebody else's life hence being me first few chapters will get into the idea of what you shouldn't do with your money in the last few will talk about actually what you should do are you both are equally important so if you have no idea what to do with your personal finance and you want to make sure they providing for yourself and your family and your upcoming future definitely consider checking out this book I'll link it down below if you found this breakdown helpful and you want my breakdown of other strategies and lessons on how to get better grades how to be more productive manage your time manage your stress go ahead and click the link down below to get access to the absolutely free med school success handbook down there in the descriptions you also find links to our free as well as paid programs in case you're interested and if you enjoyed today's episode all I really ask is you hit that like button in the form of some support if you haven't consider hitting that subscribe and notification bell to be notified when new videos are going out as you're listening to this on a podcast definitely consider hitting that subscribe or follow on your favorite listening platform as well as just taking a second to go to iTunes and leaving an honest review but as always my friends if you have any questions if you have any thoughts go ahead and drop in the comment section down below and if you did enjoy this episode you'll definitely enjoy this episode of my full breakdown of exactly how much it costs me to become a physician my entire medical journey as well as this episode right here on how much the average doctor in the United States makes hopefully you guys enjoy those but as always thanks for being a part of my journey hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours I'll see you guys in the next one peace


What is up you guys, welcome back to another one. If you're new to the channel, I am Goldpony, I do new car truck SUV reviews on YouTube. And today, we are in the brand new 2022 Volvo S90 courtesy of Volvo cars of Hagerstown in Hagerstown, Maryland. For more information on their inventory, please refer to check out the link in the description box below. So we are in this one today because of course, all Volvo's are going to give you incredible safety and every single Volvo in the lineup right now is an IIHS top safety pick plus. I can tell you that right off the bat. Not only that, you have a timeless design with this one, which always looks good with the Thor's Hammer LED daytime running lights. Not be going over the exterior here in a little bit. And this thing has an insane amount of space, especially for a sedan as well. So ultimately in this video, we will be testing out and going over everything about this one from acceleration to braking, steering feel, ride quality, sound system, exhaust clip, all that fun stuff. So having said all of that, what do you guys say? Let's just go ahead and jump right into it. And as always, let's start with pricing. So there will be a few different trim levels for the 2022 S90. First one being the momentum starting at $52,895. Inscription for $55,995. And our design also for $55,995. And for anybody who is curious throughout the video, we do have the inscription trim level with us here today. But regardless of the trim level that you go with, the power plant is going to be the same. Powering the 2022 S90 will be a two-liter turbocharged and supercharged inline four-cylinder, putting out 295 horsepower at 5,700 RPM, 310 pound-feet of torque, coming in at 5,400 RPM, power sent to all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic. Zero to 60 time is going to come in at approximately 6.2 seconds with MPG numbers coming in at 23 in the city, 31 on the highway, taking premium unleaded fuel. But so now having got all of that out of the way, what do you guys say? Let's go ahead and find a straightaway. Let's put the S90 here to the test. And let's see how quickly we can get our new 2022 S90 here up to speed. All right, slight rolling start here. Here we go. Not bad. Nice. Yeah, you're definitely not going to have any issues marching on to the highway. That was plenty of an acceleration for just about anything, quite honestly. So that is plenty quick. It is supercharged and turbocharged, after all, with nearly 300 horsepower. So definitely going to be enough for the S90. Anyways, to go along with that acceleration, as always, braking is equally important.  In the back, 12.6 inch solid rear discs. As far as the S60's year of stopping distance goes, that is going to come in at 115 feet, which quite honestly for the size of the sedan is very impressive. I got to be honest, a lot of sedans will come in in the 120s, mid 120s even. So 115 feet, that's actually sport sedan goods. That's a very nice number for the S60's year of stopping distance. Braking feel definitely is on the firm side of things, so I've had no issues whatsoever in my short test drive here today with the braking. Then touching on suspension and handling, you will get an independent front and rear suspension. Of course, do want to mention though, there is an optional adaptive air suspension that goes for $1,200. It essentially maintains the ride height automatically and also monitors each shock absorber individually, not only adjusting to the road imperfections, giving you a smoother ride, but also tightening up the suspension during heavy corner and giving you the best of both worlds. So definitely one I always like to recommend. Overall, as far as ride quality goes, it's been perfectly fine. Definitely not having any issues with the S90 soaking up Hagerstown's road imperfection, so that is 100% on point. As far as steering feel goes, it feels exactly like I would expect an S92 feel. I'll just put it that way. It's not on the heavier side, it's not on the looser side either. It's quite honestly just right. That is what I'm gonna say about that more or less. Then touching on cabin noise, we are currently going 55 miles per hour right now. You guys could tell there isn't a whole lot of exterior wind noise coming into the cabin whatsoever. There's a slight bit of road noise, but really that's about all you get. But the wind noise is 100% subdued, so that is 100% on point as well. And touching on visibility, it's a sedan. It's a very well shaped sedan, so you're not gonna have any issues with the rear visibility. Rain sensing windshield wipers do come standard for every single trim level across the board as well. So that's gonna assist with forward visibility. And if you were to go with the advanced package, it goes for $1,900. It gives you a bunch of other stuff as well, but you will actually also get a head up display, which is currently what I am looking at right now. So it is currently giving me my speed projected up on my windshield. It is high quality as well. So that is definitely gonna assist with visibility yet again. But that pretty much rounds out the performance segment of this review, you guys. Let's now go ahead and take a look at the exterior of our brand new 2022 Volvo S90. All right, so here she is, you guys, the new 2022 Volvo S90 finished in crystal white metal is the exact name of the exterior color that we have with us here today. But let's go ahead and start up front on the S90 here. Of course, that grille design is going to differ amongst the trim levels. Gonna get some more black cladding if you were to go with the momentum, for example, and some more chrome cladding if you were to go with the inscription that we have here today. But chrome accents continue down below. You guys can see that on the lower portion of the front bumper there as well. To the sides, LED headlights with LED Thor's hammer daytime running lights, as I mentioned at the beginning of the video there. Definitely come to be known as Volvo's signature look up front without a doubt. Automatic feature coming with those headlights as well, meaning when it starts to get dark in at night, the headlights will turn on automatically for you there. Automatic high beams also coming standard, meaning if you have your high beams on a night in the sense of the vehicle coming in the opposite direction, it's gonna automatically dim them back down the low beams. Then when the vehicle is gone, it's gonna automatically bump it back up to high beams. So definitely very nice convenience feature there. Active bending headlights though, also coming standard for all trim levels. Meaning when you're going around to bend at night, those headlights are going to swivel based on the direction of your steering angle. Better help with illuminating what is around that bench. You're less likely to hit a deer or a bicyclist or basically anything in your path around the bend. So that is pretty cool there as well. Then you guys can see down below there, there are LED fog lights with the cornering function yet again, coming standard for all trim levels across the board. But as I said at the beginning of the video, a very timeless design definitely looks good in my opinion up front. But that about rounds out the front end of this one. Let's not go ahead and make our way to the side of the S90. It's up now since we are around to the side of this one, chrome windows surrounds will come standard. Take a look at their side mirrors, body color, power adjustable side mirrors do come standard as well. They will be heated with LED integrated turd signals coming with every single trim level across the board. That's definitely nice. Got some chrome accending found on the lower portion of the doors there. Little bit of chrome accending on the door handles then as well. Then take a look at the wheel configurations.  Of course that's what you guys are looking at right now.  But again, that pretty much rounds out the side. Now go ahead and make our way to the back. All right, so this is the best angle on the S90 in my personal opinion. The back end of this thing looks so dang good. Body color shark fin antenna all the way to the top. Of course you got the Volvo lettering spelled out horizontally finished in chrome. Also looks very good back there. Got their C shaped LED tail lights coming standard for all trim levels across the board as well. Of course you have some badging to go along with that. You do have some chrome accending found on the lower portion of their rear bumper as well. And just below it all you will get dual exhaust outlets. However, they are tucked away underneath so there is no exposed exhaust outlets on the S90 anymore as they used to do just a couple of years ago, I feel like. So anyways, having said that I do believe you guys know what we have to do next as always here is that exhaust clip. It's up now since we are around to the back of the S90. When it comes to opening that rear trunk it is a power trunk that comes standard for every single trim level across the board. So a few different ways to go ahead and open it. There is a button on the key fob. There is a button on the trunk itself and a button by the driver side left knee then as well. But once opened up cargo capacity comes in at 13.5 cubic feet.  Cargo lighting does come standard of course. There is actually a 12 volt power outlet back there. Kind of surprised to see that. You usually find that on an SUVs only. Netted storage there a little bit to the right. We will actually also get grocery bag hooks. Again a feature you typically only find in SUVs but the S90 actually has it. So pretty cool if you were to lift up then underneath of that cargo floor you're actually going to find a spare tire then as well. But then make your way up to the rear legroom. Again insanely impressive here. 40.4 inches for reference. I mean even six feet tall. This is how much space I have back there. Rear center armrest with cup holders and there's actually a little tablet style tray where you can of course store your tablet back there as well if you wanted to. So I did like that. Rear ventilation does come standard.  If you were to go with the inscription that we have today so both rear passengers can actually set their own temperatures back there. So that is pretty darn cool. You will get heated rear seats. If you were to go with the climate package it goes for $750. And there are rear window sunshades all the way around. So not only the driver side rear seat but the passenger side rear seat has side window sunshades but then there is a rear window sunshade in the back as well which can be controlled by using the buttons on the passenger side in the back there. So plenty of sunshades.  Don't want to mention before I forget to mention it there's actually a flag of Sweden of course in typical Volvo fashion they always do this found on the passenger seat there. So nice little nod to where Volvo originates from. Napa leather seating coming with the inscription that we have today. You will get a Napa leather slash leatherette slash new buck combination if you were to go with the R design heated front seats then coming standard for all trim levels. Inscription then is going to add ventilated front seats as well memory settings actually do come standard for all trim levels as well. And that's for up to two different drivers and passengers. Yes there are memory settings for both driver and passenger seats. So absolutely love that. Overall as far as seat comfort goes perfectly fine. Definitely not going to have any issues with taking this thing on a long road trip if you wanted to do that. Then make your way to the startup. Let me start by showing you guys the key here.  You got lock unlock and the button to pop the power trunk again but it is all keyless entry with a turn knob start. So all I'm going to do here simply put my foot on the brake and turn that knob to the right. And by the way to stop it you once again turn it to the right. So that's how that's going to work. But once started up you will get a full 12 inch digital gauge cluster that comes standard for all trim levels across the board. The will of course be steering wheel mounted controls to adjust what is on those digital gauges then as well. So definitely very nice. Definitely very customizable. So always like the look of digital gauges and the S90 has wonderful looking gauges there without a doubt. Now make your way to overall interior quality. There is a power mooner that of course does come standard frameless rear view mirror with homeland controls also coming standard. And that's for up to three different garage doors found on just underneath of that rear view mirror there dual zoom climate control coming standard. However, like I mentioned the inscription does get the four zoom climate control gray ash decor for the inscription. Definitely looks very nice there. Also for the inscription though one of my favorite parts you get a crystal gear selector by Orphors which is a company from Sweden that makes different crystals. So that is pretty cool. I love that gear selector. It looks dang good on the S90 wireless phone charger just to the right of that that comes standard on every single trim level across the board.  You also get dual cupholders and just behind that easy amount of storage within the center armrest with a couple of phone charging ports in there as well. So overall as far as interior quality goes definitely very minimalist. I will say that I do like the contrast stitching but essentially you got one, two, three, four, five, six maybe seven buttons total just in front of the shifter everything's essentially controlled via the nine inch color touch screen display. And so let's go ahead and make our way to that color touch screen display. Now Bluetooth and audio streaming coming standard Android Auto Apple CarPlay as well factory navigation system coming standard as well can adjust your climate control settings up there also your heated seat buttons and ventilated seat buttons if you have the inscription of course and overall everything is insanely quick. I will say that on this screen it's essentially just like your smartphone but kind of like a tablet style instead and just in a car but everything's extremely quick you also have the Hey Google functionality so if I were to say, Hey Google so you guys heard a beep there it will respond to basically any kind of questions that you ask things like that. You also can check out your weather information up there and when it comes to the sound systems there are plenty of them but we have the best one here today I'll explain why in a second but standard sound system is going to be 10 speakers and 220 Watts honestly 10 speakers for the size of this vehicle should be perfectly fine but then there's also a 14 speaker Harman Kardon sound system available with 600 Watts and then there's an optional this is my favorite sound system of all of the vehicles I've driven so far I've spent so long it's been years since I tested it out so I'm about to test it out again but goes for $3,200 by the way but it is a 19 speaker Bowers and Wilkins sound system with 1,460 Watts so we do have that option go figure with wonderful very high quality aluminum speaker covers everywhere as well so having said that this is going to be fun what do you guys say let's go ahead and turn on the radio see what we got playing today and let's test out the clarity of this one I'm telling you guys the sound system it just makes you smile it doesn't matter what kind of music that you're into this sound system will make you smile every single time it feels like it puts you in a concert kind of setting the speakers are coming from everywhere 19 speakers is an insane amount of speakers they're basically in all directions high quality covers as well ton of bass that is still to this day my very favorite sound system that I have ever tested Bowers and Wilkins for the S90 specifically you crushed it so that is amazing sound system without a doubt you guys got to check it out but anyways last thing I want to mention to you guys on the infotainment screen is when you do put the S90 in reverse you will find an insanely high definition rear view camera although it only takes up the bottom of the screen but still insanely high definition letting you know who or what is behind you which is always is going to lead us into safety and so IIHS top safety pick plus which pretty much has it all right there that is the very highest designation given out by IIHS front side, side curtain airbags do come standard driver's knee airbag up front as well in the back you can have latch aka lower anchors and tethers to children for the rear car seats rear child door locks, tire pressure monitoring system also coming standard though lane keep assist, road sign recognition oncoming lane mitigation front and rear parking sensors blind spot monitoring system with rear cross traffic alert adaptive cruise control and pilot assist with lane centering as well so ultimately when it comes to my final thoughts here of the S90 this thing has the very best safety humanly possible according to IIHS at least you got peace of mind there the very best sound system I have ever tested in my last I'd probably get 650-ish review so far the Bowers and Wilkins sounds amazing and I know other vehicles have that sound system but specifically for the S90 it is the best I have ever tested so absolutely amazing there I like that there's an air suspension available as well that's definitely going to smooth out the ride I like how Google is incorporated into this entire vehicle as well that's pretty darn cool so overall this car certainly has a lot going for it let me know what you guys think though of the new S90 in the comment section below that is about it for this one you guys thank you so much for watching feel free to follow me on social media at the bottom of the screen if you want to see what's coming next on the channel before it gets to YouTube be sure to hit the subscribe and the bell notification button if you're into new car reviews that is what we do here on this channel after all do appreciate you guys watching more than you know and I will see you guys all in the next video stay gold go, go, go, ride, ride, go, ride, ride, ride


Can TEFL work for non-native English speaking teachers? TEFL is considered a career with few opportunities for non-native English speaking teachers as a lot of employers only hire native English speaking teachers. However, with the expansion of TEFL worldwide and the increasing number of individuals ready to get TEFL certified and move abroad to teach, there are also many non-native English speakers who enter the career of TEFL teaching. A TEFL certificate allows teachers to explore the world, break out of their national boundaries while working a rewarding job and earning a competitive salary. So what about non-native English speaking teachers? While the competition on the global TEFL market is fierce, a non-native English speaking teacher can still find a suitable job with a couple of things in mind. Finish your portfolio. As with any other job, when applying for a TEFL position the following things are taking into consideration by the employer, the candidate's experience, qualifications, knowledge, working attitude, and personality. If you don't have prior teaching experience, you can get some valuable teaching under your belt by volunteering in your local community or for non-profit organizations. You can also teach online and even earn some money. Online teaching nowadays is regarded almost the same as in-class teaching and definitely counts as teaching experience. Get TEFL certified. If you don't have your TEFL yet, you should absolutely get TEFL certified and take a certification course. Recommended courses for new teachers are 470-hour TESOL professional package 220-hour TEFL master package 120-hour TEFL course Get to know the employer To show a potential employer you are a great teacher, you should arrange a meeting or an interview with the employer personally and let them see you have more than what's written on your TEFL resume. Create your teaching portfolio and materials Nothing will convince a potential employer more than an organized binder of teaching material and lesson plans that you have created yourself. This is also useful as most employers will ask you to teach a mock lesson as part of the interview process. That's why you should make your portfolio unique, highly effective and interesting for learners. Choose the right location Choosing non-native English speaking countries will increase your chances of getting hired as a non-native English teacher. Countries that hire non-native English teachers include Thailand Cambodia China Mexico Costa Rica Colombia Turkey Now it's your turn to get TEFL certified. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


Today we're making some easy homemade tofu. You want to start by soaking the soybeans overnight in some fresh cold water with a bit of sea salt and allow them to sit overnight or for 12 hours. The next morning you want to drain and rinse the soybeans, then pop them into a high speed blender along with some water and blend until smooth. Then you want to strain the milk into a large saucepan using a nut milk bag or cheesecloth and place a large saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil. You want to stir the milk often to prevent it sticking to the bottom of the pan. While it's heating up you want to skim the foam that sits on top of the milk. Once the mixture starts to boil you want to add the lemon juice and remove the milk from heat. Stir it gently through then set aside. You'll see the curdles start to form. Once the bowl is filled with curdles put a nut milk bag or cheesecloth over a tofu mold or press and transfer the milk curdles with a skimmer spoon. You want to wrap the cloth tightly around the curdles and allow the excess water to drain. After 20 minutes your firm tofu is ready. For yourself to tofu check after 5 to 10 minutes and continue to press as needed.


Constraints are valuable tools used in the process of rigging. They allow for simple and complex relationships to be formed between bones and between objects. There are two main types of constraints, object constraints and bone constraints. For the most part, bone constraints are functionally just object constraints but assigned to bones. In this video we're going to go over some basic object constraints, but keep in mind most of the concepts and constraints in this video also apply to bone constraints. Now let's go over a few examples of constraints and how to use them. In this video we're going to go over the copy and limit transform constraints. These include for example the copy and limit location constraints. The copy location constraint is a simple one that exists as a way for one object to copy the location values of another object while ignoring the rotation and scale. Let's see how this works. First thing we'll do is add a monkey mesh so we can have an obvious reference or target object. Now let's say we want to have our cube copy the location of the monkey along the x and y axis but not the z axis. This way we can have the cube follow the monkey around but not leave the ground. To do this simply select the cube and go to the constraints tab indicated by this icon of two objects wrapped together. From there open the drop down menu and select copy location. This will create and assign the copy location constraint to the active object you have selected. Now we can go ahead and left click this eyedropper tool next to the object field. This will use our next left click in the viewport as a way to identify the object we want to reference. Let's left click our monkey object. As you can see the cube's own location is copying the monkey's location exactly. If we select our monkey we can move it around to confirm that the cube is indeed constrained to our monkey. But this isn't exactly what we want. We want the cube to not leave the ground but still follow the monkey along the x and y axis. To do this we can select our cube again and go into the copy location constraint settings. Here we can see that there are settings for how to interpret each axis of location data for the target object. Let's go ahead and uncheck the z axis as we know we want the cube to ignore the monkey's z axis location. And there we go. If we move the monkey around now we can see the cube follows the monkey while remaining on the grid floor. Just for fun let's go ahead and see what the invert checkbox does in the copy location constraint. Let's check the z axis back on and then check invert. Looks like we get a very cool mirror effect. The cube is being told to do the opposite of whatever the monkey's z axis location is saying. Flipping it across the origin along the z axis. Now I mentioned the copy location constraint ignores the rotation of the reference object. But that's not entirely true if we change world space to local space. The first drop down here controls which axis data to interpret from the reference object while the second drop down controls which axis data to influence for the selected object. Let's change the first drop down from world space to local space allowing us to reference the monkey's local axis location values instead. As you can see local space takes into consideration the rotation of the object as the local axis of an object depends on which way it's facing. Because our monkey is slightly rotated if we move the monkey along its local x axis the cube will move along the world x axis instead of following it perfectly. Feel free to experiment with these settings further. One more quick thing, let's say we change both of these to world space again and now we really like how the cube is currently right below the monkey at this frame. But we want to remove the constraint so we can animate it freely outside of this frame. Well let's go ahead and remove the constraint by pressing this x icon next to the eyeball icon in the constraints tab of our properties editor. But as you can see if we do that the transformation driven by the copy location constraint is forgotten. This isn't ideal for us so let's undo that with control Z and try something else. Maybe we can slide the influence to zero, no that won't work but you might notice this x icon next to the influence slider. If you hover over it you'll see that it says disable and keep transform. Let's click it. This will bring the influence slider to zero but our cube stays put. This is because it has replaced the cube's original location data with the constraint driven location data we saw before clicking the button. This also means that we can actually remove the constraint with no changes. Location isn't the only transformation value we can copy. The same concepts apply to the copy rotation, copy scale and copy transforms constraints. So what about limiting transformation? That's simple, unlike the copy transformation constraints the limit transformation constraints actually do not require a reference object. Instead they use values inputted by the user. For example let's say we have our monkey and our cube again but our cube is scaled up to be a room of some sort. If we wanted to animate something where we want our monkey to stay strictly within the walls of the room we can do that very easily with a limit location constraint. For this we'll go into wireframe mode so that we can see and select our monkey. We can do that by pressing Z and selecting wireframe from the pie menu. Let's select our monkey and go to the constraints tab in the properties editor. From the drop down menu simply select limit location. At first nothing happens as all of these check marks are disabled. These are used to enable the minimum and maximum values allowed for each axis of location. Just to demonstrate, if we check all of these boxes on you'll notice that trying to move the monkey will no longer work. However if you left click drag the maximum Z value for example you'll notice that suddenly you can move the monkey but only as far as what you set the maximum Z value to. Setting ranges like this is how the limit location constraint works. To achieve our goal of constraining the monkey to stay within the walls of the cube we can do trial and error but there's a way that I find is the quickest. I'll go ahead and demonstrate on the Z axis. First thing we'll do is simply uncheck the box for the axis limit you want to set. In this case we'll start with the Z maximum. By unchecking this we can move the monkey along the Z axis as far as we want. So we'll place the monkey where we approximately want the limit to be. Once placed check the box again. This will snap the monkey back to its limit so then be able to left click drag the maximum Z value until the monkey moves back into the position you brought it to before.  Luckily since our cube is the same size all around we can just copy this value for all of the maximum values and add a negative sign in front of all the minimum values. But just keep in mind to adjust these values to your own scene how you see fit. And there we go. As you can see as we move our monkey the walls of the cube appear to be stopping the monkey's movements in all axis directions. But you might notice something a bit weird. If we move the monkey significantly past where it's allowed to go based on the limit location constraint and then we try to move it the other way it'll seem like the monkey takes a while to respond to our actions. This is because the monkey is actually still calculating its true location the location where it's supposed to be if the constraint was not active. In fact we can see this visually if we open up the right hand side quick menu and go to item. This will display our selected objects location data. And as we can see as we move the monkey past the limit of the constraint its true location value continues to change. And in order for it to visibly start moving again in the opposite direction the value of its location data must fall within the range of the limit location constraint. To prevent this invisible transformation simply check this box for transform. Now as you can see even if you try to move the monkey significantly past the limit it responds to moving in the opposite direction immediately. We can further confirm this by again checking the object's location data. As you can see the true location now matches the limit of the constraint. Now let's quickly talk about the difference between working with constraints for bones and objects. Bone constraints work very similarly to the object constraints I've just shown you. In fact they work exactly the same. But there are some important things I should inform you about working with bones and constraints. First and foremost let's set bones as the target object for object constraints. How do you do this? Well let's go ahead and add an armature object into our scene. These as you remember are formed from bones and we can add more bones by going into edit mode. I'm going to select the main bone in edit mode right click and select subdivide. This will give us two bones. Now it's recommended to get into a good habit of naming your bones clearly. So let's go ahead and do that by selecting each bone and going into the green bone icon tab which are the bone properties in the properties editor. At the top here we can left click to rename our bone to whatever we want.  Let's say what we want is for our monkey object to copy the rotation of this top bone here. If we do a copy rotation constraint and set the target to the top bone you can see that it doesn't actually register the top bone but rather sets the target as the armature object. That's because our bone is not an object but rather exists within the armature object similar to how vertices and faces are not objects but exist within mesh objects. And unfortunately the target object must be an object. However, with our armature selected as the target object a bone parameter will appear underneath marked with this bone icon. This is where we can select our top bone from the drop down menu. This is one of the reasons why naming your bones clearly is important as we do not have the eyedropper tool available for this field. If we now select the armature and go into pose mode we can rotate the bone and confirm that the monkey is indeed copying the rotation of the bone. Let's say we want the bone to copy the rotation of the monkey object. That's simple. Let's remove the monkey's copy rotation constraint and then go back into pose mode with our armature object selected. Once we have the bone we want the constraint selected we can add the copy rotation constraint through the constraints tab in the properties editor. Except when we do that it seems the monkey's rotation actually drives the entire armature object's rotation instead of just the bone we had selected. That's because what we added was an object constraint not a bone constraint. To add bone specific constraints you have to go into the bone constraints tab indicated by a blue icon that looks like a bone wrapped to another object. Once here we can correctly add the copy rotation bone constraint to our selected bone and set our target object to the monkey. As you can see the bone now copies the rotation of the monkey correctly. There are a few more transform constraints such as the maintain volume constraint and the limit distance constraint that I recommend experimenting with on your own but we'll also go over these in a different video. I hope this gives you a good overview of how constraints work and how you might use them in your projects.


Hi, coach. Welcome back to this new episode with my friend, Andrew Casarro, Valor Accounting Services. Andrew, how are you today? I'm very well, Leo. How are you doing? I'm very well, Andrew. Thank you for joining us again on another episode. So today we're going to talk about something that's very common in this industry, and that is business partnerships. So if you're a coach watching, what we're going to be touching on today is tips and strategies and information from the legal, shall we say, side when you take on business partners. Is that correct, Andrew, or am I going off? No, no, you're good, you're good. We're going to be talking about, yeah, about an overview, really, of it, and in what kind of circumstances will business coaches want to take on partners and things to look out for as well? Fantastic. Really looking forward to this. So let's get cracking. All right, brilliant, brilliant. So yeah, I think the first thing to talk about is why would any business owner want to collaborate or take on partners, right? And there's a variety of reasons. And just to kind of point out some of them, you know, it could be if you're in your business, you know, and you want to get access to certain exposure from an established business. This might be quite common, you know, if you're just starting out. Another one could be, you know, if you're a bit more of an established business, or even if you're just starting up, you might want to have, you know, different types of coaches to really compliment your business. So they could have different coaching styles. For example, you could take on partners that, you know, can compliment you in the sense that their strength may be your weakness. You know, so just to give an example, if you love the coaching sides of running a business, but in terms of the operational side or the admin side, you need a partner to deal with those kinds of things. Then you can take on, you know, a partner to do so, to focus, to allow you to focus more on the coaching side. Or if you want to take a step back from the business, then have a coach and you want to partner up with them in that sense as well. So it is also that and another thing as well could be, I know we spoke earlier about in the previous podcast, you know, taking on staff and this is very much related when you take on partners because you may have a member of staff who has been with you from the beginning and you might want them to have a bit more responsibility. Maybe have, you know, have a share in the business, you know, and we obviously will talk on a bit more about that. Another reason why you would want to take on partners is to share resources. For example, if you've got a sports coach which has access to facilities, equipment, you can make me share that with them. And if you bring them to the table, maybe you've got, you know, a number of clients or participants, you can also share that and that could help save costs, especially when starting out. So there is that option as well. And then you've got market expansion, you know, you may want to access, you know, new markets, customers and a couple of scenarios here is if you want to expand using outside industry, you know, experts, for example, if you're a football coach and you want to, you know, here's a good example, if you're a football coach and let's say you teach kids, right, you may have a Zoom instructor who teaches, you know, strength and conditioning for adults. So a good collaboration would be during the time where the kids are being taught, the parents can then do a strength and conditioning class in maybe the same vicinity. You know, that that might be something. So that's kind of outside industry, inside the industry, for example, if you're a football coach and you want to partner up for example a goalkeeping specialist, that can also happen as well. So that's kind of an overview. Love that. Yeah. And this kind of goes into what a conversation I had with a coach the last week. He has a soccer academy. And what he does in the summer is he partners with another business to run a summer league. So because he's got X amount of clients, he partners up with another company who has X amount of clients and what they do is they run like a 4v4 5v5 summer league. So when his teams aren't playing in matches, because the summer usually is when nothing happens, the league is finished. They team up and do like a 10 week summer league. So that's a great example of what we're talking about today collaborating with another business to run something and leveraging off each other. And then actually, you know, off the back of that, it's a question of, OK, how do they do that? How does actually what the kind of intricacies around that? So there's a number of options which, you know, I think, to be honest, you know, we could really have a separate podcast for each one of these. So, you know, the first one, the most simplest form is, you know, some contracting. So this is more related to, say, for example, you teach specific clients at a facility or a gym, for example, and you maybe have need cover. So you get an instructor to cover for you, a sports instructor, then what might happen is that the gym will pay that instructor instead of yourself. There's actually no money being transferred between you, the business and that subcontractor. The gym, the facility just pays them instead of them paying you. That's kind of the most simplest way. And, you know, normally gyms, facilities may ask you as the business owner, who do you recommend if you need cover? So that's a kind of very loose way of having a partner, someone that you know is good, has a good quality of teaching and maybe teaching the same way that you do. That the clients or the participants, you know, they're not losing too much out on, you know, the business owner teaching them, someone who's a similar kind of teaching style, for example. Another one is commission basis. So this is an example where you may like combine clients, participants and one business, for example, collects the earnings. And then the other business that took part, then invoices them. So then they, you know, and they will be an agreed amount, for example, and just invoices them after, for example, and then that business who collected those earnings then pays them as an expense from their business. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely brilliant. Then we've got another situation that kind of touches on like the staff side of things where, you know, if you've got a member of staff that has been with you for a while, and you want them to have a little bit more responsibility. You can, you know, you can essentially have them as an associate director, or another way is have them as an actual director. So a bit of a difference here. An associate director isn't really a term which is used within, you know, the company when you submit your year end accounts, an associate director won't be, you know, named as a director. However, it is just to denote responsibility. If you are an actual company director, that will just be, you know, that will come under your accounts for submission, and it would show the number of the directors there. And as well, it is just to denote that this, you know, member of staff has taken on a certain level of responsibility, which can be considered a partner of that business. Okay, and now we're going to look at a joint venture. So this is an example where you may have two sports coaches that have just started out, and they just want to form a separate legal entity, or they could be two established businesses. And they asked, they are, you know, setting up a separate business entity to what they already have, you know, and that could be, you know, providing, maybe they want to just not have all their streams of income in one business. And, you know, especially if it's, if it's a business partner, which they, you know, they obviously know very well, but they want to have things separate. And it could be something might be different, you know, in terms of could be merchandising. If you're a sports coach, you know, you may want to form a separate company, which just deals with merchandising and you partner up with someone who specializes in that. A strategic alliance. Now, this is a bit more formal than the commission basis, which we spoke about, but it's less formal than a joint venture. And essentially a strategic alliance is having an agreement in place. And this could be, you know, over a six month basis, it could be a permanent work, or it could be just consistent work, you know, number of days during the week over six months. So there's that option as well. Another option we've got is licensing franchising. So this could be where you're collaborating with another business where they are giving you exclusive use, exclusive rights to certain products, services, could be things from, you know, sports, sports bottles. And your, you have exclusive rights to use that and sell that alongside your sports coaching business. And they usually do it for a set period of time. And it would be a fee that they would charge. And there's obviously a number of different free fee structures and obviously very, very good idea to read the agreement before signing it. But yeah, that's kind of licensing in the nutshell. And then we've got, you know, we've got shareholders. Now this is, this is when you take on a member, they're called members and of your company and they have a certain shareholding of the company. So they could own 10% of that company. They could own 20%, 50%, whatever it may be. And the way that they get paid would be maybe a salary, they get paid for salary or they could get paid dividends, which is essentially profits taken from the business and then paid out equally or in a different way. Obviously shareholders can be a completely different podcast, but that's another way. And finally, we've got percentage of profits or turnover. And that can be that as well as down to the commercial agreement of what's going on. So for example, if you're starting out, you may want to have an agreement where a certain percentage of your profits or turnover will be given to your partner. And you know, these ones are, and we go actually, we'll go on to things to look out for, but these can be quite good to start off with, but can end up being a bit more detrimental going on, especially if you're very successful. But that's just the options in a nutshell. Yeah, no, I like them some really good information there. I always, whenever I speak to coaches that, and this, this partnership topic comes up. I always say the same thing, it's like you've got to make sure that any partnership you do form, it has to be strategic. And a lot of coaches when they're starting up, they want to, they want to form these partnerships because they think that that's, that's the road to success. Which sometimes it can be, but I think it only works if you partner with someone or a product or a service or something that you add value together. So something that I do well, and this is something you talked about just now, something that I do well, that he does well or she does well, and how can we combine the two to make it work. If you're just combining or partnering with someone and you do exactly the same thing, then you've really got to think about is this really strategic and is this really going to grow and take my business to the next level. Yeah, correct. And also, it's not to say that, you know, you choose one option and they become like a shareholder, for example, you could start off as on a commission basis and see how that relationship develops.  It instills loyalty as well. Right, instills loyalty and could definitely help your business to grow in the long run. 100%. All right. Perfect. Andrew. Yeah, we've got a little bit more. We've got a little bit more. Fantastic story. Just, you know, little things to look out for. You're spoiling our audience.  What that means is that you're having income coming into your business and then the, your partner is invoicing you, right? So that'll be an expense to your business. But what's happening is that as your business is going to be taking on a lot of that income, that turnover as itself. What that means is not necessarily inflate your, your income figure, but what would it do is it was, it will, you will reach your back threshold a lot quicker. And that is another thing, but essentially you have to be back registered. If you go over certain threshold, currently 85 eight over the year. Now, if you're on a commission, if you're doing commission basis work with a partner, and you're taking all the income, you're going to reach that. You're going to reach the threshold a lot higher. So before you get there, it might be worth considering doing a different partnership model because then when that comes in, you're essentially paying extra tax. So you may want to consider a different partnership model at that point. You gave a really good example, Leo, about, you know, having facilities partner up with, you mentioned someone who partnered up with someone who provided facility. It was, it was a pitch, I believe, and it was a long term thing. Do you remember that at all, Leo? Yeah, about last week. Yeah. Yeah, this was, this was all fair, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So for those watching, basically, again, another conversation I had with a coach that he was starting up. He was a part, he was, he was living in a, in an area in the US where in the winter, you have to be indoors because just because of the weather, it snows a lot. So it's virtually impossible to be outside. And something he was struggling with, he was struggling with finding a facility. And what he did is he partnered up with a facility and basically they weren't charging him any rent. It was just a case of they were taking a percentage of every customer that he was bringing in. Now, the problem that he then had was that as his business started to grow, what he was giving that facility was a lot more than if he would, if he was paying an hourly fee to them. Okay. So that's just another example of, of taking on partners or partnering up with a facility. Yeah, yeah, that's right.   What happens when there's a dispute and the business breaks up and they own equally equal shareholdings of the business. This is where something called a shareholder agreement comes in. And this is a little bit outside, you know, this is more the legal side of it where you'd need a solicitor to help draft one up, but it is definitely something to consider if you're going down that route, because there are a lot of examples where it's a 50, 50 split. Who decides what what happens, you know, and this is where a shareholder agreement comes in, where in that case that does happen. It's, it's something that they can use to guide that that process which can be quite difficult. Yeah, I love it. Perfect. Okay. Anything else to add Andrew. No, that's it. That's it from me. All right, I'm going to put you on the spot again. So to sum it up to some this episode up, how would you sum it up. Yeah, to sum up, I'd say, look, if you're, if you're a sports coach, and you're looking to partner up, think of, think of where you want, where you want to go with this particular partner, what do you need in your business and really discuss with them, communicate with them the ways of how you're going to be dividing up the income ways of the partnership, speak to professionals, you know, speak to people in the community, if you're a community of sports coaches, how do they do it. And speak to an accountant who could, if especially from the shareholders side of things, you know, you've got to speak to these types of advisors so you know long term that, you know, you're in safe hands. Like that. Love that. Yeah, and I'd like to add something as well that like I mentioned previously a lot of coaches at the beginning. It's as though they don't believe in themselves. So that's why they, they, they feel that if they partner with someone, or they buy a franchise for investing to a franchise that's going to that's the road to success. Sometimes it's just believing in yourself, having a, you know, a roadmap to how you're going to get there, and just implementing. Okay. And a lot of the times you realize that you don't even need to partner or bring on partners until you get to a stage where then it's a, you know, you kind of need it because it's grown and scaled. But any coach watching and if you're at the beginning phases right just believe in yourself it does take time to grow. And if you do partner or bring someone on, then just make sure that it adds value to what you do. And it's something that you can't do. The reason why you're bringing them in is because you absolutely need them in order to add value to your program or to get to the next level. Love that. Yeah. All right, Andrew fantastic. Thank you again for coming on. A lot of the things we we talked about today we could make a separate podcast, which we probably will do at some point and go deeper into into it but thanks again and look forward to connecting with you on the next one. Last one. Thanks Leo.