Hello and welcome to another episode of our special series, Meeting Our Lords. It is said leaders are forced in crisis. A true leader can turn adversity into his advantage. So in these times of other crisis that has left all of us locked in our homes for over seven weeks now, we are speaking to leaders who are working relentlessly to ensure that pandemic doesn't leave a long-term impact on our businesses. With me today are two such leaders, Mr. Harish Timberwala and Mr. Sanjay Mehta, joint CEO of Miram India. Welcome to the show both of you, sir. Did I say Miram directly? Yeah, Miram is like five, absolutely. So sir, to begin with, I was going through, I was doing my little bit of research and I saw this interesting detailed report that you had launched very one week before the crisis. And it said that 80% of the marketers are expected to raise their market expense. Now these were pre-COVID days. A lot has changed in the seven weeks. So if, I mean, either of you, Mr. Mehta or Mr. Timberwala, who so ever would want to respond? How much do you think this figure is relevant even now? Yeah, well, I'll take this question out there and you can just call us Sanjay and Harish. I think we're going to be very, very formal. So yeah, it's just very interesting. We released the report just about a week before the entire COVID thing started. And I'm Mark Reed, the WB Global CEO happened to be in India. So we got him to release the report. When we see this spot as a difficult spot, the Q2 will be a difficult spot for all of us, I believe the second half H2 will be actually very favorable for digital companies, digital businesses and IT companies because the COVID has kind of accelerated the need for digital transformation. It's six months back, there were people thinking whether our company really needs to go digital, my supply chain is completely offline, my customer is offline. Today everybody realizes that digital has to be there. That is like a resurgence policy of these kind of things happen again in future. So people who are considered are going to be investing digital. People who are already investing in digital will see the need to increase the investment in digital. So for me, once COVID, COVID lockdown opens, it's not 80% marketeers. 100% marketeers will want to invest in digital strategy. But will marketers be left with that kind of money because the situation has really affect everybody's businesses and there is a crash crunch likely in the market when it opens again. So you think they'll have, they'll also want to spend on upgradation or kind of things that you're suggesting on market right now. So Nazir, to me, market is the heart of how marketing happens. Marketing is not only about putting money on Facebook and YouTube. Marketing really is investing in these products. And that is where Miram comes into play. Being a market player, we do solution building, we do strategy building. We will guide the client what kind of e-commerce models they need to build. We will set up these platforms and technology platforms which will actually enable them to make the company digital. And then you start spending some money on marketing. If businesses come back, we believe that they will have cash flow. They're kind of handing on to cash for this quarter. We will have less cash flow. But whatever money you have, you want to kickstart your business, you will need to actually invest with money's cost and vision to get things up to top. So to add to what Harish said, basically the question in that survey was that whether the marketers will increase their budgets on MarTech and basically marketing technologies. So that was 80% of them had said that they would be doing so. And as Harish said, we believe that this will only accelerate that. And even the 100% marketers will now feel that MarTech is the way out. So we are talking about businesses that are going to come back, right? So if there was a way, you know, like early stage startup, we didn't have money, you know, that's a different kind of a ballgame. But companies with good balance sheets and we'll see this as a hump to cross.  There is gonna be life after. So for that new normal, it will be even more emphatically clear that what they need is a sharper and smarter marketing piece which can enable them to run even through these harms. So digital, we have seen already in this phase while this car crisis is also going on, the few brands were able to continue some extent of business, whether it is through e-commerce delivery or whatever, are the ones who had invested earlier and had got their engines running. So the ones who did not will only feel that, hey, I can't be left unprepared next time. And this is the way to go. You know, there's not gonna be a huge number of people in the malls. There's not gonna be a lot of people, you know, going into activation and events. So there's going to be marketing monies which would have otherwise been spent in other places available. And those will be diverted to investing further into market, market, you know, infrastructure. So I don't think that that should be a problem. There will be budgets available and that will be invested in the right places. I want to come back to that question on increasing digital consumption and digital marketing. But another interesting thing that I found in your report, which I wanted to understand in detail, was that there will be a report says that shifting of emphasis towards ROI rather than the flat planting approach. Mr. Mehta, can you explain this to me? What exactly does this mean?  So you do a lot of different kinds of, you know, spends across various media and you hope that some of it hits the target and it delivers money. So the additional marketing norms have probably have that factored in that while spend a hundred and some of it will deliver. I don't know which of it is delivering but as long as some delivers is fine. Now, thankfully with technologies like digital technologies and marketing automation in particular, what we are able to do is to sharply define our audience, sharply define our objective for audiences on a literally on a one-on-one basis. So if you are currently in the market for, you know, buying a new dress of a certain kind, I don't want to give you a message, anything other than that. I don't want to waste sending a marketing communication about, you know, shoes, which you're not likely to buy, for example. So if as long as there is sharpness in the marketing, the right audience, the right message at the right time, there's a conversion chances are much higher and which means that of a $100 spend that is due, $100 is effectively spent and the chances of getting conversion are the highest versus spending a hundred and hoping that some 2030 does hit the right target. So that means that your marketing money that are giving you return on investment and more and more, especially now post COVID when people are going to have a belt tightening in a way, marketing will have to be that kind of marketing which can be delivering measureable return on investment and which is what technologies like Marta can even do. Sir, as you just mentioned, I would want to talk about increase in digital consumption. These seven weeks, everyone has more time to themselves, people are sitting at home. There is a clear increase in both television as well as digital consumption. What kind of consumer trends have you noticed in these two weeks, in these seven weeks? And also, what would you advise marketers right now? I mean, should they, because a lot of marketers are shying away because there is no production. There are a lot of other constraints because of which people are not marketing right now. What kind of suggestions would you have for them? Again, either of you can choose to answer. I just, I'm interested in answer, either of you can give me. Sir, two specific thoughts. The first question is that, you know, right now marketers are not spending because there is no consumption. So what should a marketer be doing? Interestingly, we get access to a lot of data points that are happening in China. Being part of a WPP company, you have the benefit of getting this information. And China has been, let us say, ahead of the COVID curve by about three months. They started in January and by the end of March, they're kind of getting out of it. You are able to see what are brands doing in China. Who are the brands who are advertising even while COVID was happening and how are they selling compared to those who compete even silent. And one clear thing we observed is that at a point of time, when there is consumer attention, it is the best time to grab share of voice and actually build your brand. It happens at a lower cost and then you get better consumer time, you know? And a brand is not just a seller of a product. The brand is an emotional connect. I connect with the brand not just because I want to buy something that I believe in the brand. So in times of need, the brand cannot go silent. It has to continue talking to me. It has to be empathetic communication. It doesn't have to be product communication. So when things come out of COVID, you know, I'm still connected to the brand and these brands find a way to pick up market share easiest compared to somebody who stayed out of market for that period. That is one clear learning that we get from the Chinese market, you know? And that will be our guidance to market share. There's a data point which I have read in a report that whenever there are crisis of this kind, brands that have cut marketing spends post the crisis, they have dropped their market share to about 60%. I mean, I'm talking about reasonably established brands, right? So they have gone from 100% to 60%. Those who have maintained the marketing spends in spite of a crisis period, they have seen market share go to 2.5 times what their original market share was. And those brands who increase the spends during this crisis have seen market share go as much as 3.5x. So, you know, what is the reason is that right now, the clutter is lesser. There are not a lot of brand advertising. So there's a chance for your communication to be visible. Also, because clutter is lesser, for the same money, you get better advertising reach. Your reach is improved because for the same money, you're getting even more reach in a uncluttered market. So your marketing message goes much better. But what to communicate is, of course, as he's talking about, it's an emphatic communications. We are not talking sell, sell, sell. So the narrative goes not from sell, sell, sell, and not just from say, say, say, but perhaps do, do, do.   You know, you're talking about what you've done.  It's basically more purposeful marketing, right? Purposeful or more caring. I mean, basically you could just have a care message also that... An empathy. And all those kind of things. An emphatic marketing. It just stood the brand's persona. So not every, suddenly some brand will never talk about caring if it comes out. They'll look not very original. They will not look right. But at least then you can stay close to your business and see what you're doing. Maybe even talk about what you're doing for all your stakeholders, what you've done for your employees, what you've done for your partners, what you're doing for all your stakeholders. So anything of that kind, there is some, there's a connect because everybody's kind of cooped up and suffering and you share your story about how you as a brand have taken some steps. It works well. So you still stay on top of the mind recall with the consumer. So despite all the numbers you just gave me, addicts is all time low. I mean, there's almost like 60, 70% drop in the addicts. People are not, marketers are not really buying these numbers. That's another trend that we have seen. All agency people are recommending that, you know, people should advertise at this point of time, but it's somehow not going in or there are other constraints. Would you want to speak a little more about it? Why, why is it that marketers are shying away? Naji, it's rather easy to understand it at a given point of time when I'm not seeing consumers in the market in the mall and in my whole whole process, first is to hold on to the cash, whatever cash I have, till I'm able to see an end game. I think none of us are able to see an end game at this point of time. And we are completely into long term. But my feeling is the moment you see long term starts opening and people getting back into market place, you'll see all these marketers come back. I'm sure nobody we are trying to talk to using this forum of communication does not understand what we are saying. I mean, all of them understand exactly the same thing. Okay, but they would just like to want to hold on to your cash till you start seeing the market kind of open and come back. Having said that, I mean, look at a brand like Amul.  They're completely bought TV, completely restricting centers in the kind of messaging and communication they're putting in place. You see a whole lot of brands wherever the balance sheet is strong, you know? So what part this is going to do? People have a strong balance sheet or a strong brand are actually going to become stronger because they will leverage their balance sheet well in our offering. Okay, people who have weak balance sheet will actually become weaker because they will not have those well with all to manage this kind of thing. That is how we're going to see this panel when you come up on the other side of the panel. How about if I want to ask you some of your own clients? Have you seen your own clients increase marketing spends during these times? Any of your clients, you may not name the client, but has it happened? So the initial, once this sort of lockdown happened and it took most of us by surprise because we never saw it coming to this extent. You know, if there was a hint and it was a gradual moving into a situation like this, people would have tried to prepare in whichever way. But everybody was caught by surprise. It was the first reactions as soon as the brand were able to grapple with the reality was to dramatically slow down spend. So most of them slowed down or some even completely stopped. But now, as you rightly said, you know, five, six weeks, seven weeks have gone by and people have had time to analyze what's happening and what is it relevant for them as a specific brand. So, you know, classic case, we have a brand whose factories were shut, but I think two weeks back, the factories were finally opened and they have products which have a specific relevance in terms of being, you know, bacteria free. It's a kind of health oriented and they have resumed and they have not only resumed but they are doing like, you know, what is known as an always on kind of campaign which means their ads will be available pretty much like 24 seven, which they were not doing even earlier, but now they realize that that same money is buying them that, you know, the lesser budget is buying them a lot more inventory on advertising. So that as well as that they'll have a free hand. There's no other competitor of theirs who is advertising at this point. And so they are doing it. We have brands in the pharma sector who have very high relevance at this time because there's a lot of healthcare communication which needs to happen. A lot of concern that people have about their health not just around COVID, but, you know, if you have diabetes or if you have an allergy issue, I mean, how does it connect to COVID?  Is it okay to delay because I can't move out of my house? So there's a lot of communication which needs to happen. Those people, of course, have increased their visibility on digital in all respects. So specific brands who see a relevance to see, you know, there are no kind of fundamental hurdles in reaching their product or the service out have been not only maintaining, but some of them are increasing as well. But it's happened after about five weeks. Initially there was all quite a pause which happened. Now they're learning that how it's going to be. That is not, you know, digital is not just about advertising. It seems to keep coming back to digital means advertising. Digital also means technology. It also means marketing automation. It also means taking care of your website. And in our own business, we have a creative and a media part of the business. We have taken the marketing automation part of the business. The second marketing automation part of the business has been no drop in revenue. Every single client was in the process of building a website or getting the marketing automation setup done, continue to do it. As a matter of fact, I was surprised when about three weeks back, we acquired a major retailer, you know. And my point to my sales team was that everybody shopped this closed.  And the philosophy from the retailer side was this is the best side when all our people are free to get the marketing automation setup done and completed. So when we come out of it, we'll be the first off the ground, you know. So when you look at digital holistically, maybe advertising is where people may not spend money, but are they going to be spending money, building the backend, printing and stuff? That is still happening. If there was strong manage sheets, are actually investing in doing all this. We have asked, we have exact six minutes to close this now. My last question to both of you is that in times of such crisis, you are both leaders, you're running for big enterprise.  What kind of initiatives have you taken? What kind of communications conversations with them because it's not very easy for each one of us to walk from home or you know, there's so much uncertainty. So how have you helped your teams, your employees, fight through these crisis? I can start with Mr. Timberwala, yeah. You can start and then Mr. Mehta can close. Sure, sure. So, Nazia, just like we said that brands need to have an empathetic sense of communication, I think this is also the time for empathetic leadership, you know. This is not the time for leadership to think only in terms of profits and operating margins and cash flow. Leadership needs to realize that only when you have those 200 or 500 people working in the company does the rest of the business manifest. Setting in our own offices, we cannot deliver any of the revenue or the operating margin. So this is the time that empathetic leadership step up and say, we'll do whatever it takes to take care of our people. We want to protect our people and be sure that they come out on the other side, you know, we have a strong team in which continues to work and deliver our needs to build up. Some of the things specifically we did over in, we kind of started remote working even before the government announced lockdown. We were already working from home for almost a week before it happened, you know. So people were completely set up. There was no panic when the lockdown was announced. Our HR team has the concept of a cocktail art where every hour at six o'clock in the evening, the company stimulates like a town hall and somebody does some performance, some talk, something happening to keep the morale high. We came up with the concept of street data, you know. Normally, when you're a member in a very large company, you don't know people in other teams. We thought this was a great opportunity to get five people randomly from five different teams into a virtual room and get connected to each other and make friends. Just keeps our motivation going. All our heads of department, including Sanjay and myself, are doing town hall with smaller teams. You know, this is the time to overcommunicate. You need to overcommunicate. You need to be out there. You need to demonstrate empathy. And you need to show your people that as a company we are strong and we'll come out of the sooner or later. Mr. Mehta, would you like to add to that? Yeah, so in addition, you know, as a team, we've somehow managed really well to collaborate in spite of being remotely set up. So we're producing some really good work for our clients and that itself is a huge, you know, motivator to people because the fact that they could pull it up, it's like a challenge, right? You're not sitting next to your copywriter is not sitting next to the art director or the video guys somewhere else and videos have been shot different places. Some of them are shot at people's homes. Some are being shot over Zoom calls, interviews are being done. And then piecing that together and then coming out with a production which looks like you would have done in a proper studio with everybody there. I mean, just to the satisfaction of getting that out and then client appreciation and appreciation on the social spaces now is a huge motivator and the fact that you're doing that. So that's one. And the fact that we keep celebrating these things, you know, we have our internal newsletters and stuff which happened, acknowledging and of course there's a lot of one-on-one speaking. So there are a few people in the team either the family, somebody has not kept well, somebody's taken to hospital. I mean, none of them, thankfully on COVID but some of the other reasons. So we take time, we try to be sure that, you know, even at a one-on-one level whoever be the person whether they're in our direct reportees or not, we're talking to them, we're empathizing, we're giving them room that look, you know, if you have a problem, it's okay if you need to take a few days off just make sure you get sorted. So I think all that is appreciated. You know, people sometimes have some infrastructure issues that, because now we don't have an IT guy who can come and help you quickly with your laptop or something. Again, figuring, finding ways, supporting them in all through all these ups and downs. I think all that, you know, comes sort of naturally because that's, I think that's a cultural organization. We're not doing something which is one off, that's how we always think. And people appreciate, I think mostly we see that people have managed to stay reasonably upbeat in spite of all these challenges. And I think delivery of good work is one of the big motivators as well. You would surely would be interested in watching these videos at a pace. That's the work that has been done at home and looks like a studio to tell your team to share with us. We want to put them up on our side. So thank you both of you. Thank you so much for taking out time for us and speaking to us and keep inspiring all youngsters and keep us motivated by your thoughts and stay at home and stay safe. We wish you good health. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge that you're doing a great job in, you know, keeping up the show, you know, remotely in this manner.  I mean, I've seen some of your other work previously. So good show and keep it up. I think this is great content for people while they're sitting at home. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Mr. Sopriwan. Thank you. Okay, bye.


So welcome to part two of a video series that I'm running on the common mistakes road cyclists make in training. Now please keep in mind that I'm not riding a high horse here, I have made these mistakes myself over my journey in the activity and sport of road cycling, but now as a road cycling coach I'm keen to isolate these mistakes and help people overcome them. But before we get into the number two mistake road cyclists make in training, where I'm gonna share with you a proven methodology to take your road cycling performance to the next level, just to reflect quickly on the number one mistake cyclists make in training, I'll link to that video below if you haven't seen it. I discussed in that piece in detail working on base fitness and the reason why I made that the number one mistake cyclists make in training is because, not only from what I've witnessed, but all the books and research that I've done is that training base fitness is critical to taking your performance to the next level. I'm not saying it's more important than high intensity training, but what I want you to think about is let's think about building a house. Base fitness is the foundation. If you have a solid base foundation, you can build a skyscraper, i.e. take your performance to the next level. But most cyclists will be going into building the levels of the skyscraper straight away.  To prove my point here, I've got some GoPro footage that I've recently taken that I wanted to share with you. And this footage I captured was from my bike and I will fast forward a little bit from time to time here. Just note, I use power for training and we'll be referencing power in this video, not heart rate. You can see that I'm sitting in my zone two, which is my base building fitness zone, on undulating terrain. I am consistent both uphill and downhill. Yes, there will be some deviation from zone two from time to time, given the lumpiness of this road. But the cyclist in front of me, his output is being dictated by the terrain and momentum of the bike. He's riding hard uphills and coasting down the other side, not even pedaling at times. So let's just think about that for a minute, the not pedaling thing. If you were running or swimming, you don't all of a sudden stop in the middle of a lane or in the middle of your run. But just because you're on wheels in road cycling, people just stop. And I doubt this rider is even touching his base building zone two, which is okay if he's doing high intensity workouts on this road, but I really don't think that is the case. And the unfortunate thing about this footage is that this is the way most people ride. And he's the one probably thinking that I'm the dickhead passing him down hills and then not riding hard uphill. Little does he know that I'm the one being consistent with my pressure building a solid foundation. And what's also worth noting here, as we continue to watch this footage, is that I bet you when he's riding on flat roads, he's most likely riding zone three, which many consider to be no man's land in training. He does this because zone two feels a little too easy and zone four, his threshold one hour power zone feels a little too hard. And unfortunately, zone two gets neglected. So that was the number one mistake that cyclists make in training. The number two mistake cyclists make in training, I've actually got a little treat for you here where I'm gonna share with you a video from an online course that I've got called up level road cycling course. And it's a video that I actually recently shared with my email newsletter subscribers, but I thought I would share it with you too to help me celebrate the relaunch of this course that has just been updated with five new videos, including four specific on road training examples, the private Facebook group, access to two road cycling coaches, being David Sturt from The Hurt Box and myself. Now, if you're not quite ready for the course just yet, I've also created a free online video training, 35 minutes where I share many of the critical factors that help road cyclists take their performance. To the next level, I'll link to that below. And it's typically for road cyclists where they've been riding for a while, but the plateaued. And that's a great segue into talking about the number two mistake road cyclists make in training. You see, what typically happens when people first get into the activity of road cycling is this. In the first two, maybe three years of their road cycling journey, their form rapidly increases. They go from getting dropped in the bunches to hanging on to maybe pulling some turns. But then what happens is a plateaus. And when a plateaus, sometimes you feel good and other times you might feel shot and you can't quite figure out why.  No doubt the plateau may lift a little bit from time to time when your motivation changes. You start doing more volume of the bunch rides, the solo rides, et cetera. And as a result, this plateau lifts a little bit. But ultimately you still have the days where you don't feel so good or weeks. And then other times where you feel really great and you can't figure out why. But ultimately you're not getting this spike. And the big mistake, the number two mistake cyclists make in training is there is no structure to both the workout itself and the overall weekly, monthly, or target event plan. To extend on that, there's no base building period, too many high intensity workouts in a week, no gradual increasing of difficulty over time, both with base and high intensity training, no targeted rest periods or weeks, little consideration for the target event needs in training. The list goes on. So what I'm gonna do with you here to help overcome this mistake. You might be stuck on a plateau and you're really keen to take your road cycling to the next level. I'm gonna share a proven methodology to training. I call it the step ladder approach. Now, this isn't the only methodology to training, but it's a methodology that I personally use. It's helped me take my road cycling to the next level, middle of the pack B grade rider to competitive A grade rider. And it's a methodology that I've seen hundreds of athletes take their road cycling to the next level, improving FTP numbers by over 30%, best power numbers, standing on podiums, et cetera. So let's get into it. In this video, I'm gonna share with you the proven methodology to training. And between now and the end of this online course, you're gonna hear and you're gonna be seeing this methodology in action. It's called the step ladder approach. And whether you're looking to build base fitness or perhaps you've already built base fitness and now you're targeting a specific event, we're doing high intensity training, this is a methodology that is proven to work. And it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it because the human body is not designed to be on all the time. Nor are we designed to go from here all the way up to here like that. We need to do things gradually and that is what the step ladder approach is all about. We start down here, we build up and we build up again and then we take a step back. When we take a step back, that step back, we're actually a little bit higher than over here. And gradually we're going up, coming down and up, coming down till we end up. Right here, so whether it be a 12 week program for building base or whether it be a 12 week program for building towards a specific target event, this is the methodology that is proven to work. Now there are two big questions. We need to ask ourselves before we get further into the step ladder approach. Number one, what are we training? Base fitness or are we targeting an event and thus training high intensity? And number two, how much time do we have in the week to train? So let's just say the maximum amount of time you had in the week to train was 10 hours. So this is an example of how the step ladder approach would be utilized. Week one would be six hours, week two, eight hours, week three, 10 hours, then we'd back it off. Week four, six hours, week five, eight hours, week six, 10 hours. And it doesn't have to be six, eight and 10. It could be seven, nine and 10. Either way, we're gonna be building and then taking a step back. It's gonna be easier week, moderate week, hard week. Easier week, moderate week, hard week. You might ask yourself, okay, well, if I'm building base fitness, how does it progressively get harder if the volume is exactly the same? So let's call this block one. So let's just say we've completed our first block and we're moving on to block two. In building base fitness, how do we make it a little bit more difficult as we progress? What you might do is, block one, you're starting off in your bottom end zone two. As you know, in zone two, that's where we're building our base fitness. So you might increase it by maybe five to 10, five to 10 watts here while you're building base fitness. You might also, when you get to the third week here, on your longer ride on Saturday or Sunday, you might increase it by half an hour to an hour. So maybe in your big week, you'd do 10 and a half or 11 hours. Here it might be 12 hours. And here it might be 12 hours. And here it could even be 13 or 14 hours. And you're gradually increasing the wattage as well. So we're progressively getting harder. Now you don't want to drift into zone three. So just make sure if you are increasing your watts, you don't end up in zone three or zone four. If we're building base, we wanna focus on zone two. Now conversely, with high intensity training, the same rule is gonna apply. Our high intensity efforts are gonna gradually get harder as the weeks progress. But there are two big considerations when we're going from base training and now we're focusing on high intensity sessions. We're targeting the event. Two things we need to be thinking about. Number one, refrain from doing more than three high intensity workouts within a week. And number two, refrain from doing more than two high intensity sessions in a row. In training specifically with high intensity stuff. We want quality, not quantity. And what a lot of people do is they're out doing bunch rides every single ride, back to back days, back to back weeks, high intensity, high intensity and they get fatigued. And they're not properly absorbing the training that they've done and they hinder any improvements. Now while we're targeting a specific event, we're doing high intensity training, we still wanna be topping up our base fitness. So here's what an example week might look like when we're training at high intensity. This is just an example. Monday we rest, Tuesday we're at high intensity, Wednesday we recover in zone one, Thursday we're at high intensity, Friday we rest, Saturday it's high intensity again, and Sunday we go out and do a longer base ride. Now something to be wary of when you're training at high intensity. In your easier weeks like here, here, here, et cetera, it's a little bit different to when you're building base. When you're building base in your easier weeks, you're backing off the volume. When you're training at high intensity, we're not only backing off the volume, but we're also backing off the amount of high intensity sessions in that week. So we might ideally only do one high intensity session in our easier weeks.  And then for the rest of the week, we're taking it pretty easy. We're doing perhaps some zone one rides, some zone two rides, coffee shop rides with friends. And just be careful when you go out with your friends, it doesn't turn into a competition because quite often it can or if you're rolling on undulating terrain, you're going super quick uphills and then you're coasting down them. We don't want that because if you essentially make these easier weeks, high intensity weeks, you're not absorbing the previous two weeks of hard training. And that's gonna impact your improvements because what you will note in your rest weeks, you'll start to feel really good. It's because your physiology is changing. Additionally, if you are doing too many high intensity sessions in the easier weeks, when you get to the second and third, second and third, second and third weeks where you're ramping up the high intensity sessions to make them even harder, you're gonna be fatigued. So we talked about quality over quantity. We want quality in order to have quality. We need to have these rest weeks implemented. So that is the step ladder approach. We're gonna be talking about this a lot in the videos to come. But I just wanted to set the foundations for you. So you have a clear understanding of what it looks like. And I could almost guarantee that if you implement this type of methodology into your training, you'll be super surprised where you can take yourself.


Welcome to All Hands Update, I'm Petty Officer Brandi Wills with your headlines from around the fleet. The 19th Annual Cooperation of Float Readiness and Training, or CARAT Malaysia 2013, came to a close this weekend. Sailors and Marines joined Malaysian Armed Forces in training events designed to enhance shared maritime security and relationships. CARAT also marked the first overseas deployment exercise for the Latorral Combat Ship USS Freedom. Pacific Partnership 2013 concluded its mission in the Kingdom of Tonga this weekend. The mission treated more than 5,400 patients, evaluated 3,000 animals, conducted 25 donation events and completed eight construction projects which included two water catchment systems. You can read more about these stories at navy.mil. From All Hands Update, thanks for watching.


Benningo still has its small country towns sort of feel and because of that it is a bit of a difficulty. As I was growing up, community I don't believe had changed enough that it was as accepting as it is nowadays and that was only 10, 15 years ago that I was in high school for that. That I didn't really find myself until towards the end of my high school years and because of that atmosphere that was in school, that atmosphere that was in community did make that a little bit harder. So I joined the CFA probably about a bit over 10 years ago so I got my 10 year membership last year and I chose to join the Brigade out of a want to get back in and support my community in a way that I felt that the community had started to support me. Being able to come out of your shell and really have that trust in people that you're around with was really big. Being accepted is massive from my family point of view. My family is probably the best that I could ever ask for with regard to anything about my identity or anything about my sexuality. My friends and family also helped that again being in that supportive environment makes things so much easier in identifying with yourself. You don't have any dislikes, any hates that you have towards yourself from what you hear in the community, particularly with who you surround yourself with. So with the people that I surrounded myself with, great supportive environment. Experience that I've had CFA has been very open and very accepting and we continue to develop and strive more on that to be an open and inclusive organisation but not only that it almost takes a little bit of the challenge away from it in that CFA has that welcoming atmosphere to it and that may help in their own personal life as well. For those that are coming to terms with their identity what it says is we're here and we'll have you for who you are. What we do in the community is giving back to the community with all the amount of people that we have that give their time to help their communities all throughout the state of Victoria. Being able to celebrate that and see that the organisation is very welcoming, very accepting of that means that that's not an issue that people have, they can sit that one aside and go, so how can I help my community by being part of this organisation that's ready to accept me for who I am.


Hi, my name is Leon Rowe currency trader and trading coach at trading 180.com We're welcome to this week's fundamental and technical supply and demand forex and gold analysis and starting off with the week ahead 20th of February so this can be found as well this analysis is on the trading economics.com website and short summary of what is coming on the important news is in the US the focus would be on the FOMC meeting minutes and speeches by Fed officials Investors will also closely follow personal income spending Personal income spending PCE price index and second estimate for Q4 GDP growth rates So the second estimate pretty much is just any kind of revisions for the already Q4 GDP so it's not really that important and this is a massive revision also the attention will be taken by fresh PMI manufacturing and services reading from major economies including the US UK France Germany in Japan and finally central banks in Guess New Zealand is what we're focusing on as the currency that we're going to be analysing in this video We'll one of them will decide on the course of monetary policy and then you can read the details if you scroll down now getting into the technical side of things and a bit more fundamentals in the In the dollar index so the dollar's been making some new highs right broke past this supply zone and As I always say there's no real level of there's a technical level That's going to stand in a way of really fundamental analysis What you're supposed to do is is Understand your fundamental bias before looking at a price chart and then understand Where you are on a price chart secondly and see whether you're a cheap or an expensive area now the dollar Seems to be appreciating and the really the reason why is because Fed officials stressed and need to keep raising rates to cool prices. So over the past couple of months What's really you know been going on is that the market has had one idea of what the Fed is probably going to do with Monetary policy and the Fed has been basically saying that they're going to be doing something else and There was this bit of a divergence between whether the market was would be correct or the Fed would be correct now Recently we've had not only you know Outstanding jobs numbers, but we've also had Inflation come out and even though it's kind of you know came out slightly lower than expected or then the previous month it was higher than expected and So the inflation CPI course consumer price index and core CPI Is really kind of seen it's seen as is a sticky so it's not It seems like to is trending down But it needs to kind of come down a bit more and at the moment It's being a bit stubborn. So in order to get the inflation down to their 2% target The Fed still see the need to you know hike a little bit more sort of Richmond Fed chief favoured 25 basis point increase in February and Miss Governor Michelle Bowman says policy not yet slowing the economy which Hikes can and tend to do right if you hike a bit too much it can contract the economy But at the moment it seems like obviously the Fed hikes haven't worked their way through to the economy yet and So With that being said I did say in my private members group this called group that on the Thursday We had a weekly call on every Wednesday a live group call on Wednesday Private members meeting and I did say after that in on the Thursday that I was saying yesterday's call I can see the dollar appreciating in the short term So over the next month or so as an extra rate hike is priced in But it seems as though the banks consensus is for the dollar to depreciate by the end of the year And I said I can see the dollar rising to even the 106 is one awaits in the short term But as the Fed ends its rate hiking cycle I think it should it should be the limit so borrowing some major risk event for either the dollar or globally Or inflation remaining sticky or rising so the counterforce to the dollar appreciation will be China reopening and risk on and so When we look at you know the 106 is to 108 You know, we've got some central back Um, it's his angel bank, but some uh some investment bank analysis that talks about you know the 105s to potentially the 107s 108s as well um Technically probably looking at this area here, but the more that the markets price in more Fed hikes is the higher the dollar should go and again in the short term And we also have this viewpoint from HSBC Bank talking about the market reassesses its view on Fed rates And that's due to rising inflation, right? So evasion is still seen as maybe sticky or you know problem Then the Fed have to hike more so in you know January right the gray line was what the market was pricing in in terms of the percentage of Fed Rates or what they would potentially be by a certain date, right? But now We have from the 8th of February They the market has really priced in The rates to be actually a bit higher in the short term any ways of March May going into July We should then see a you know a drop off etc. Right? So this HSBC, you know, these are some of the smartest guys I'm doing their analysis. So again in the short term. You're starting to see actually more Rate hikes being priced in one or two more being priced in which again in the short term Possibly I think if again the data supports that narrative Should push the dollar either to the one of fives or at least at the limit the one awaits But by the end of the year Or towards the summer and into the autumn and winter months I think the other dollar should want to decline. So with that being said I did you know saying the group that if you did want to be long on the The dollar that's not a bad idea in the short term definitely not so waiting for any kind of pullbacks Right into a demand zone, of course, you're not necessarily trading the dollar dollar index. You'd be looking for a pullback Into the you know the dollar pair the dollar cross and then just looking at this as confluence really and on the dollar index as a pullback and then just pull the trigger on a On a dollar cross like the dollar yen or dollar Swiss if that's what you want to trade or if prices do come back down to the 101's and there's really no reason for it to come down to the 101's So when I say no reason for example, you know, the Fed is still, you know quite hawkish in terms of their rhetoric and inflation is still sticky Then I think this is actually going to be a decent bargain to look to buy the the dollar if you are looking to sell the dollar Then I would say probably the highs Maybe the 105 round number 105 50s is probably where you want to start to look for any kind of Sell trades to short the dollar But the dollar is going to be a bit of a tricky one for now But I think the momentum really and I'm without using momentum, but you know, I would say the I would probably lean more towards the dollar appreciating in the short term then I would do You know the devaluing in the short term overall again as long as the data supports continue to support that narrative So moving on to the dollar yen and the dollar yen Given what we've just said about dollar The yen I am actually bullish on the yen, but I've taken a bit of a backseat on this trade I do think this is a really nice technical level to look for any kind of short trades, but with Dollar potential strength you could see obviously this reverse, but maybe not as much as As you might hope depending on obviously where your entry Is and you're all you know your stoplosses and what your risk reward is right? But I do think that if you want to do want to get long on the on the dollar yen This is decent. I think that the the Japanese yen at the moment. They're new their nominated governor new governor I think isn't that a pronounce it who dear He's actually neutral when it comes to whether he's hawkish or dovish on policy. And so I Think as I think the yield curve control should be coming to an end and monetary policy should be coming to an end But I think that is probably gonna start to gather pace probably more towards You know, maybe March April and I say March April like March is a while away March is what about another week and a half away But probably towards March April if I think any you know moves to the it to maybe the one three sevens I think a very good shorting opportunities and again as long as we start to get the the rumour that The yield curve control monetary policy is going to change for the Japanese yen There's been a lot of Forecasts talking about again going back to maybe the one two sixes one two eights and so the higher Prices go this exchange rate goes. I think it's decent shorting opportunity or again in a short term If you get any pullbacks into that demand zone, I think that's a decent long opportunity dollar Swiss dollar Swiss My bias would be to go low on this pair if you're looking to buy the dollar one of the Pairs I would buy if I'm buying the dollar against any pair one of them would be for example the Swiss Frank You do have some demand Right here and I think any pullbacks into this lower demand zone in 91 area I think is going to be decent for a buy especially just below around the 0.90 so that's a 90 cent area I think that's actually really nice technical buy for the US dollar over the Swiss Frank If you think the Swiss Frank is a bargain somewhere I would probably say maybe up to 94s 94 50s before looking at getting Short but personally I would probably look for in the short term anyway Any kind of long trades on that on that dollar Swiss if you're looking to buy the dollar same thing with the dollar CAD I think the dollar CAD I Think is a decent buy if you're looking to buy the dollar So any kind of pullbacks into this lower zone the one three two fifties I think it's going to be seen as actually a decent bargain for the The US dollar the US the Federal Reserve is still hiking rates and the Canadian dollar Actually, you'll look still look into hold rates and that is as long as Inflation isn't a problem in Canada doesn't become a problem again and so Central banks typically don't you know once they start to hold or once they start to you know You know start to cut rates. It tends to be a cycle. So they tend to Do you know their policy for a duration of time meaning that they're going to hike it tends to hike You know two three four times if they're holding they tend to hold for you know a good maybe you know a few quarters And so I do think that this might actually be you know the The beginning of a potential uptrend for the dollar CAD if you get a pullback down to these these areas here I shall think it's quite decent for a potential buy New Zealand dollar US dollar has come down to this nice technical level of 62s the New Zealand economy is going through Had a bit of a natural disaster. I think it was Cyclone Was he cyclone? It begins with G the name begins with G. I can't remember exactly what it was But yeah, which you know kind of devastated some of the some of the country the RBNZ the Reserve Bank of New Zealand are making their monetary policy and they're expected to hike by 50 basis points But due to the natural disaster that recently happened There was there is talk that they actually might Hiked by 25 basis points so lower than expected if it comes out lower than expected If they you know hiked by 25 basis points, I think the New Zealand dollar may start to sell off Especially as you know, the US dollar is actually starting to hike being priced in a bit more hikes than what was what was expected So ultimately, I think this pair not necessarily Trading this pair, but if you are there are supply zones there if you want to be a buyer of the The US dollar so you're looking for a pullback into this zone here before looking at getting short And if you're looking to get long I would probably look for a fresher area of demand as this lever has been touched what once twice Three this is that the third time so anything anything around that 0.61 area any fresh area of demand is a decent area to look for a buy trade technically pound dollar and the pound We had some news regarding inflation so Britain's easy inflation puts end of BOE Bank of England rate hikes in sight So Bank of England may make just one or two more increases So prices remain more sticky in the UK than in the US or Eurozone so Because inflation came down more than expected the expectation is for the Bank of England to actually not hike as much because As a rule of thumb central banks typically don't want to mess with interest rates if they can because they understand the effect that interest rates can have on the economy and so Yeah, you know Britain has turned the corner on the worst part of inflation since 1981 raising the prospect that the Bank of England may soon Complete its unprecedented interest rate hiking cycle. Yeah, so investors are now betting the central bank Key rate peaks at four point five percent this summer that suggests one or two more increases from the current four point 4% as recently as October a peak above five percent was being priced in so obviously now They're pricing in potentially only four point five percent which in the short term Could mean the pound looking at you know coming down a bit more. Yes, there are hikes But not as much hikes. So that has to be priced in so I do think that any pullback into a Supply zone around here actually is a decent area to look for short trades I am looking for prices to come up to here if it can and get and get short around here for for various reasons as well other than fundamentals and so Yeah, for me if I was looking to buy one or the other if I'm buying the dollar the pound would also be a top contender for me to look to to short against the against the dollar or buy the dollar against the pound Euro dollar so the euro dollar and Europe is still quite hawkish one of the most hawkish central banks at the moment when it comes to interest rates And this is because Again, high inflation High inflation is pretty much everywhere. So ECB Schnauble sees risk markets underestimate inflation Right, so border disinflation hasn't started If the official says in interview and transmission of policy action may be weaker than in the past and there was a couple of Quotes in here and it says I think this is one of them the markets of price for perfection She said they assume inflation is going to come down very quickly towards 2% and it's going to stay there Well, the economy will do just fine. That would be a very good outcome But there are risk that inflation proves to be more persistent than is currently priced in by financial markets and Talks about traders bolstered hikes Bolstered hikes bets after Schnauble's remarks fully pricing in a 3.75% 5% peak in the deposit rate by the end of October for the first time so Yeah, there are there's definitely More hawkishness going on so a 50 basis point hike next month is necessary under virtually all plausible scenarios She said insisting that there is no inconsistency between our principle of data dependency and these Intentions because it's very unlikely that the incoming data is going to put this intention into Questioning so it looks like you know wage growth is still picking up inflation is obviously still a problem and the ECB At the moment have room to hike and so I think definitely in the short term again short term Maybe month for two with the dollar being repriced in terms of you know, they're hiking a bit more I'm looking at potentially buying in and around this one or six one or five area I do think the dollar will have a bit of a Year I guess a ceiling to its appreciation When you have two central banks actually hiking at the same time What you should have is more of an agreed auction right fair value auction Some people know it as a as a range or sideways moving market It's actually known as a fair value auction I think the fair value auction should be really between this high and this low So I think to all the one of six one of five areas if we can get down there I think that's going to be really nice for a potential buy for The euro I'd expect prices to start to auction from around there. You do have a Excuse me a supply zone right here But personally I wouldn't necessarily look at that as a as a strong Supply zone I Would probably look at that more as this this area here would be the area I'd look for any kind of Short trades, although this is a definitely an option here intraday wise I Would probably look for Trades more and a 109 if I was looking for any kind of short trades But my bias is still long on that euro. So that's where I am Australian dollar US dollar the Australian dollar hasn't had some hasn't had great news at the moment, I think employment wise The data came out and it wasn't fantastic But I think the market is looking past that although obviously with the with the US dollar Strengthening you could probably see prices come down a bit lower But I think overall the Australian dollar is a buy and in fact I'm going to analyze the Aussie Swiss and a trade that I took a profitable trade that I took last week To give you an idea As to you know the type of trades that we look for in a kind of breakdown But if I'm buying the Australian dollar, which I am I'm not doing it against the US dollar because you know I think overall the dollar again their their Interest rates of being repriced which you know kind of strengthens the dollar a little bit I think overall if we do get a bigger pullback China reopening I did mention it again It was it here, right? So one of my concerns. I said, you know Counterforce to dollar appreciation will be China reopening Risk on and if that continues China will be a better The Australia and the Australian economy will be a beneficiary of China reopening and China economic strength commodity prices You know will rise due to Chinese demand and infrastructure and investment And so I do think any pullbacks are decent buying opportunities But just right now I'm very cautious on the Australian dollar US dollar when it comes to buying in and around here though Many will recognize that as a potential for a stop-hunt in that area, but I'm I'm gonna you know sit out I think my my main plays on the Australian dollar or the Australian dollar and The Canadian dollar and I'll get to that Sorry, my I should say my my main place to buy the Australian dollar would be against for example The Swiss franc and they can and the Canadian dollar. So Yeah, we'll get into that a bit later gold Again putting back due to dollar strength and so again this demand zone didn't play out We do have an area, which is okay, but I think a better area to look for Gold if you're looking to buy gold Yeah, probably down towards the 1800s just a bit further down would be a decent technical level into that demand zone But again, this is you know, you're buying gold based off of potential dollar strength So if you think the US dollar is going to Weakened right so inflation actually is coming down And the Fed are less likely to you know hike You know three or four times rather than one or two times Then you want to be a buyer of gold, but if you're looking at you know buying the dollar Because the Fed are looking to you know continue to hike interest rates Then gold may start to come down a little bit right and again come back to the the DXY if if you You know the dollar index starts to go up to the 105s 106 107s Then you have to expect gold to probably come down to somewhere around these 1800s to even like the 1760 1740s may actually be a decent area to look for a pullback to buy gold plus gold is due for Very deep pullback because we've just had this almost now I wouldn't say parabolic one, but we haven't had they really a decent pullback on cold So when you get moves like this Where you get kind of shallow pullbacks What tends to happen is you get bigger? Pullbacks eventually right so you get a move probably down to this area this 1740 I wouldn't be surprised if prices came down to that those 1740 areas before potentially looking at going Higher as the dollar index, you know prices come up to the 107s 108s starts to go lower so there's the there's that correlation there and Yeah, so my trade of of the week I'll break this down Not in too much detail because it would be unfair on the on the guys who are actually in the room for me to reveal everything that I do of course, but just You know the Australian dollar Swiss Frank took this trade and it was a profitable trade and so You know really the fundamental bias is to buy the Australian dollar against Swiss Frank in a risk-on environment, right? So first of all wearing potential risk on or more risk on then then risk off which would mean again with China reopening You know, there's zero covert policy. I'm going to definitely favor the Australian dollar the Swiss Frank I definitely you know their central bank are hiking rates still as well. So It's not, you know, a perfect divergence, but just on there on from a risk-on perspective, you know The Australian dollar is really tipped to be one of the buyers for 2023 and so all I'm looking for really is just pullbacks, you know on a daily time frame back into this demand zone Brilliant now. I have no idea whether prices are going to reverse here Nobody does right but when prices pull back and if the market agrees, you know The market agrees that this my entry is is the absolute bottom then brilliant I make some money right make a make some the decent amount if it doesn't then I'll just and it pulls back at even more and Gives me an entry then I'll get in right here, right? That's really how you know to trade or the idea behind trading fundamental analysis is just understanding where the bargains potentially are and so When we look at this trade prices had really kind of come down to This, you know this demand zone here and so I'll go down to like a four-hour and I entered into a few positions managed to get Into three positions and so The blue lines right here, right aware my orders were right well where my market order was at and I'm zooming a bit more So it was a 0.636 I had one at 0.635 355 and then I had another one at the absolute bottom, which was 0.635 Zero and I had a 15 pip stop, which is about here from that absolute low So I had three orders now you can see that all orders got filled right the top one the middle one and the bottom one all got filled with price and The bottom order. Yeah ended up Going for at least a three-to-one, but I took that off at actually a two-to-one, which was somewhere around here and Also as well Why why do is my orders are I get heavier as prices go down? It's meaning that top order, right? Got three orders and if you're looking to be a buyer, then the top order is 0.1 percent Yeah, the second order is 0.2 percent and the third order is 0.3 percent Yeah, and so With that Yeah, if I get filled and all free my total risk is going to be 0.6 percent of that so not every trade is going to be 0.6 percent. It depends on you know the What what price actually does but if I'm fortunate enough to get in all three then my maximum risk on this trade Is going to be 0.6 and I'll let the market, you know dictate Dictate that right and that's my maximum loss as well now on this trade Yeah, I managed to get in on all three positions and with a two-to-one on my 0.3 position it's lower position at the 0.635 I managed to do a two-to-one. So now my reward is 0.6 Yeah So now I've swing trading. I'm actually swing trading these two positions zero point three percent On these two positions and even if I lose these two positions Yeah, the maximum I'm losing is zero point three Which means that in fact I cannot lose on this because ultimately my profit now I banked is You know at the worst is zero point three percent Yeah on this one trade But the maximum amount I can make is you know, I mean unlimited really but my ultimate goal is for You know prices to actually reach to the highs of this of this auction here So I have a lot of upside potential on this if I'm right about this fundamentally against the Swiss Frank But if I'm not right about this Any more and the other two, you know prices come down then this is still a profitable trade ultimately So at the moment, this is where I'm swing trading and that's really kind of a breakdown of the trade And so so yeah, that's really one of the trades. I'm in this week There was a couple of others actually that I am in I Mean on the cad yen And a couple of others and so let's see how that goes But I thought that this would be a decent breakdown of Of this trade and really how you know, I approach the markets and how I Manage my risk of my trade so you can get a bit of an insight as to You know, how we actually trade a trading 180. Anyways guys That is it for this week. I hope you have a great trading week and Yeah, I will see you in the next video. Stay blessed and Cheers and thanks for watching The really the short answer now what we ended up going on to is actually a decent concept which was what makes the the pound or any currency Can you judge a currency's value based off of historical or Technical levels now, I would believe that The answer is yes and no Yes, in so far as it's a reference point. Yeah, so let's say, you know, this I was actually I'll go to a live chart Make it a lot easier. Right. Let's go to a live chart It's a good technicals are a good reference. So if we zoom out to the weekly Right, let's zoom out to the weekly Get rid of everything on the parts chart now if you've gone through the course You will know that what I say is is that at some point This is obviously deemed a bargain area for the pounds. This was a bargain area for the For the pounds back in 2020 During the during the pandemic. Yeah, brilliant. Excellent. Now as a reference point The question then becomes Is that a bargain? now Yeah, now price Just looking solely at price. It would suggest that it is a potential of course none of us know But we don't I don't base my Analysis on what bargain is a bargain is based off of price because price is not a reflection of value Yeah, I mean it can be but typically you need to know You know how what a currency or any asset how it derives its value and it's not through really looking at price I Understand 100% understand that it was a bargain here. So it could be a bargain there But on a deeper reflection What happened what what drove prices higher here for the pounds? Yeah May not be the same thing that drives prices higher here for the pounds Yeah, and So let's say prices come all the way down have come all the way down here now Let's say for example I don't know Rishi Sunak was the person that ended up getting Prime Minister and his policies would have been totally opposite You know from Liz Truss is obviously Because he would have ran on different policies and let's say for example the market thought that his policies were terrible Yeah for the pounds Because fundamentally, you know, we're looking at you know the fundamentals, right? That's what we're looking for is to derive value not price So although we can look to the left and see that it was a bargain two years ago a It's not the the same thing the reasons for the pound going higher is not going to be the same as as as today and So and be fundamentally we need to know what's going on now, which basically you You know makes us understand why price should go lower or beyond that point or actually if the pound is actually a Boggin down here based off of what we understand about fundamentals Yeah, so just because something is seen as for example the dollar might be seen as expensive Does that mean that the pound is cheap? Does that mean that the pound is cheap? That's the question to you guys it's not a rhetoric question Just just just to get just to get you know your feedback. No, it's exactly it doesn't something can stay expensive forever And also as well who's to say that this is expensive exactly It's two different stories. That's exactly it first of all now had this let's say for example This wasn't a weekly chart and let's say for example this nice little price action that happened Let's say for example one month ago. Yeah Let's say it happened one month ago Now you it's it's easy to determine whether anything has changed Fundamentally when prices come up to or down to this point. So let's say for example the the Bank of England's Let's just go into fantasy land and the Bank of England now have decided that they want to you know Everything is lovely with the economy right GDP is growing Everything is is is wonderful, right? they're growing going into the you know expansion phase of the economic cycle and Inflation is trending away and do you know what I mean? It's everything is brilliant and then you start to see this happen Yeah, prices are going, you know against the pound. Yeah, but The situation the scenario that caused price to go higher here has not changed Yeah, so GDP is good. Everything is good central bank is hiking into strength order that is Does this now look like a bargain or does it not today? Right month for go and nothing has changed by the way. Nothing has changed here. Yeah, we're still Snorriol fundamentals are still the same Exactly. It does look like a bargain now, right? Yes, it better see that exactly right So but and and this is the point. This is exactly the point whatever drove prices here and cause traders to buy yeah Price is not value and value is not always reflected in price if you can understand that The banks would have buy at bargain prices and you're not looking at this is and scratching your head and going Oh, well, why why why why why rather than just looking at it like prices are coming down This is absolutely a fantastic by an opportunity because nothing has changed fundamentally from like a month ago Then this is a bargain. Yeah, so so great, you know I'm thankful for for Edwin for for highlighting this and going through the conversation and I think it's a really important point. It's a very very important point That you know, we should we should make yes price Like I said, typically we know that to be a bargain or an expensive area It doesn't mean that this is going to be a bargain based off of just typically what price has done there We need to know The fundamentals and what risk sentiment is and what the central bank is doing, etc. That's what is the most important so More things to go over but loads of things to go over and something is very important as well, which is Where are we now Bank of Japan intervention language that is There's an article today Which came out which I thought was again Fantastic. No a great article


Welcome to another episode of Condo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura, I'm your host for the show today, and today we're going to be talking about the Contractors Repair Act, and this deals with condominium defects. And my guest today is Scott Batterman, and Scott is an attorney with a law firm, Clay Chapman, Iwamora Police and Nervell. And thank you, Scott, for being with us today. My pleasure. Can you tell us what kind of practice you do? I do a lot of complex litigation of various kinds, but my main focus now is construction law, and that involves both consultation and dispute resolution. So part of what I do is negotiating contracts, writing contracts, and part of what I do is dispute resolution. I've represented general contractors, subcontractors, equipment suppliers, equipment rental companies, material suppliers, but also owners and developers. So again, sometimes I draft construction contracts, sometimes I'm representing a condominium that's suing because the contractor had a defective job, sometimes I'm defending the contractor, because the condominium is suing them, or also non-payment to get a lot of those kind of cases. So that's basically my practice, but I also do a lot of general contract law as well. So you're here on our show, and condo and cider deals with condominium living, and most of our viewers are boards of directors or property managers. And so I guess the issue would be when a condominium has a problem, and they would be calling you, it would be because they have a construction defect. Yes. I've handled those cases. And so this would happen if it's a brand new condominium, they would be suing the developer, and if it's an existing condominium, they might be suing a contractor who just put in pipes in the building or other kind of work. So what does a condominium have to do? If they have a complaint against, they think that they have a complaint against a contractor or a developer about work that was done on the building. Well, they have to go through a process that was put in place called the Contractors Repair Act. The Contractors Repair Act is a law that was passed by the legislature around 2004. The idea was to try to force the parties to work things out amongst themselves before they take the case to court. The idea being that construction litigation is complex, uses up a lot of time of the court. Cases settle anyway, so let's force them into a process where they're forced to deal with each other and maybe settle the case before it goes to court. And so there are things a condominium or any other homeowner has to do before they can file a lawsuit. The interesting thing with condominiums, by the way, is that there are certain time limits in the law that are 30 days, but for condominiums, those times are always 45 days. They give them an extra 15 days because they assume that they don't have to have an important meeting before they can do anything. So they take that into consideration. The law was written with condominiums in mind. Okay. And why was that? I mean, in 2004, what was the reason why the Condominium Repair Act was... This contract was written, when I said with condominiums of mind, it was with the understanding that a lot of the major construction defect litigation involves condominiums. Those are the big case. A home construction condominium case, remember the home construction contractor case. It's one house. They don't tend to be very complicated, but you have a condominium and now you've got contractor. You've got the developer, the general contractor who built it, the mechanical contractor, the plumbing contractor, the electrical contractor, and very subcontractors. A lot of subcontractors, I mean a lot of subcontractors, and there may be 15 different insurance companies, there may be one. They're very complex cases, and it makes sense to try to settle them before they go, but this will apply to any homeowner, but the interesting thing is, again, it's called the Contractor Repair Act, but contractor is defined under the law to mean anyone who's engaged in the business of designing, manufacturing, supplying products for developing or building a dwelling. It's basically, it covers everybody but the broker. The brokers are specifically taken out of the law. So it would include going after an architect then. Yeah, the designer's part of it. Yeah, the architect is part of it. If the defect is a defect in design, the architect's a part of it. If the defect is something, you know, from any of the subcontractors, they're involved with it. As an example, outside of condos, you have like people doing like multi-house units or duplexes or things like that. They're covered too. The law specifically includes multi-unit residential associations and a defect is very broadly defined. A defect is anything in or rising from the design, specifications, surveying, planning, construction, supervision of the construction or anything or even the observation of the construction. So anybody who basically had a finger in the building. Even the project manager. If the company hires a separate project manager, they're considered a contractor for the purposes of the law. Okay. So that means that this law would cover everybody in the chain, so to speak. Yeah, that's the idea. Has it applied to licensed contractors? Absolutely. And with spectacular licensed contractors, any licensed contractor who enters into a contract has to include a paragraph in his contract that says, warning, if you want to sue me, actually, in the contract of a paragraph, it's in section 613 of the law. It says, in your contract, you have to have this paragraph in all capital letters. It tells you, it basically says, you know, the paraphrase, before you can sue me, you'll have to go through the contract as a paragraph and do all the things that that act says. You should be aware of that fact. Okay. So what if you get a condominium who doesn't have a clue or doesn't know about that and decides to sue a contractor? What happens? If the contractor wants to, he can have the case dismissed. The law specifically says, if you don't go through the whole contractor repair act process, and I'll talk to you about what that is, the court is supposed to dismiss it without prejudice. You can bring it again.  And there goes the complaint, and you got to start all over again.  Yeah. And now the condominium's got some questions about, you know, the lawyer that they hired. So that's not a good thing to have in the relationship, obviously. And then you put back here. And the other thing is, you're now starting the process later on. Now there's an exception to that. The statute of limitations is about to run, or the contractor refuses to go along with the process for some reason. Then you don't have to go through all of the steps. But there are a lot of steps to be followed. Normally, the statute assumes at least 90 days and possibly quite a bit more from when you first start the process to when you can finally get to court. Why don't you tell us about the process then? It starts with writing a letter to the contractor or the developer whoever. The letter is called the notice of claim. And it basically has to list in detail all the defects that you're complaining about. And it has to be sent by either personal service, like you're serving a summons, or by certified mail. And if you don't do that, you haven't followed the statute. And so you could, the contractor can say, you haven't done this right, serve me right. They could slow it up. So let's say that you, and let's say you have, have you had testing done on the condom. Typically speaking, a condominium before it files a lawsuit will have hired an architect or an engineer to look at the problem, say, this is what's wrong. They may do some testing. They may give you a report. Any testing, you have to tell the contractor about in your notice of claim of defect. And you have to give them copies of any test results and things like that. You have to send it to the contractor. Now the contractor, once he gets it, they've got 30 days to act. If they don't act within 30 days, they've rejected the claim. Within those 30 days, they can do, they have several choices. They can basically say, no, I disagree with everything here. Don't wait to 30 days, just say, no, I'm not doing anything. That's rejection. Or they can say, oh, look, I'll fix these three. And I'll give you this much money for everything else. But that's what I'm doing. Nothing more. Or and this is the most common thing. They can say, I want to look at the problem. Can you tell me there's a problem? I've got, they have a right to inspect. So if that happens, and the process comes to a halt until they do their inspection, and they can do more than just look at it, they can do destructive testing, they can open walls, dig holes, as long as they put it back the way it was when they found it. And it can go on, let's say they do a little testing, and they find something else that requires even more testing. They get to basically find out what the real problem is. And if it goes to a lawsuit, they'd be happy to have the same rights. This gives them those rights in advance. So it helps to get everything out on the table. Now, if you're condominium, they may, some of the issues may be inside individuals' apartment. Condominium is required to arrange the association required to arrange for the contractor or the developer, however, to go into each unit where we would have a right to do an inspection. And the process isn't over until you see every unit that he would reasonably have a right to inspect. So the association gets a reasonable amount of time to arrange for the initial inspections. So you can see that this could take a long time because they arrange for inspections. And they do some physical, oh, this shows a different kind of problem. We now have to go back and do some more. This can take a while. At the same time, also by the way, let's say the condominium is doing more testing. Yeah, from the point you send the notice of claim, you've got to allow the contractor in to look at any other testing you do. Lab tests, onsite tests, whatever. So at this point, everything's open, you're looking at everything. So finally, at the end of this process, the contractor now has 14 days. He's back to the start of the issue, which is at that point, this is the notice of claim and then, and then he gets to do all the inspections, all the inspections. So he finishes all that. Now, at that point, he has 14 days to once again, either reject it, accept it or make an offer. Basically, that's his chance to respond. By the way, he's probably not doing this alone, because the law also suggests that the contractor should, as a developer, he'll contact the contractor, the general contractor, the general contractor will contact all the subs, and basically he has to go to each one of them and say, we have a problem, he has to send them by certified mail again or personal service, whatever it is he got from the condo. And so that the typical condo defect case, I've been involved in them, architect comes in, makes a report about the thick. And this is a problem, this is a problem, problem with the building envelope, problem with the plumbing problem with this problem with that, we have to send that to each one of the subs who might have been involved in that particular problem. They have a right also to be part of the testing and see what's going on and to do their inspection. Probably they'll do the inspection at the same time as the general contractor. So that process goes forward as well. And again, at the end of it, the contractor and the different subs also can all say, this is the deal we want to make. Now what happens at that point? Then the association can either accept it or reject it. Now, or they can make a counteroffer, obviously, at any point during this, you can always make over a settlement of some kind. This is one of those cases where let's say one party that says, I'll sell. The condominium says, I'll take X dollars, the contractors, I'll pay X dollars, but they can't come to an agreement. If they make the offer under the law and the thing goes all the way through to a hearing and a trial, then if you don't do as well as you would have done if you've taken the settlement, you're liable for the other side's costs from the point forward where they made it. There are other similar ways to do it in other cases, but basically, if you're the condominium and you say, we'll take 100,000 dollars and the contractor says, no, we're going to trial and they get a order of 125,000 dollars, they can also say, okay, fine, now you have to pay all my costs. And I incurred going forward on this. So it's something to be careful about. It's also a tool you can use if you're the condominium to try to settle the case. It's a bit of a hammer. So there you stand with the, at this point, let's say they can't come to a deal. Can you go to court then? No. Well, this is a good time to take a break and why don't you hold that and we will answer your question when we get back from our break. So we're going to take a one minute break now. Aloha. I'm Keisha King, host of At the Crossroads where we have conversations that are real and relevant. We have spoken with community leaders from right here locally in Hawaii and all around the world. Won't you join us on thinktecawaii.com or on YouTube on the Think Tech Hawaii channel. Our conversations are real, relevant, and lots of fun. I'll see you at the Crossroads. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years and we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book which is also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success, and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person and want to improve your life and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 a.m. as we go beyond the lines on thinktecawaii. Aloha. Okay, welcome back. This is Kondo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura. I'm your host today and my guest today is Kat Baderman and he's an attorney who specializes in construction defect litigation and during the break we were talking and Scott used to serve as a board president of his association. I bought into 909 Capulani when it first opened. I was on the first board and I was the second president after the developer had sold enough units that I couldn't stay on the board anymore and we had construction defect litigation. I went through that process and I want to talk a little bit about that as we go forward in this. There's one other thing I wanted to mention by the way which is that sometimes you don't find all the problems in a building at once and the question is let's say you set your notice of claim letter and the process has started then then you find something else wrong. What happens? You have to send a new notice of claim letter to cover the new defect you found, tend it the same way as the other one and you're back at the process again. What the law says is that if you find a new defect and you don't go through the process again you can't include that defect in any lawsuit you may file. So you have to go through it. That's one thing I wanted to mention. Another thing I wanted to mention is that this applies the idea that you can't file a lawsuit. You also cannot file an arbitration. The law says that if again you file a lawsuit or you file a dispute resolution before you go through this process the court or the arbitrator is required to dismiss the proceeding without prejudice until you finish the process. Now we're in this What happens when you if the parties can't settle the monks themselves? What is fairly common? The law requires you to go to mediation. I want to talk a little bit about that for a while. Yeah we want to tell I mean so where do they I mean who who does the mediation and they just open up you know just go on the internet and figure you know find a company that does mediation or how do you find a mediator? Well normally your lawyer should know who the good mediators are in town there are a number of companies and a number of individuals who do mediation and any lawyer who practices in construction or who practices in any sort of dispute area will have gone through mediation and will know the mediators. There's a local company that the American Arbitration Association has a roster of mediators dispute prevention and resolution which is a local company has a roster of mediators. My firm does mediation I know other firms that do mediation. If you have a lawyer who's in this and who doesn't know the name of the mediators who are out there who are good at this particular area you should think twice about who it is you've hired because if you're a construct if you're representing a kind of medium or you're in the construction area and you don't know who the mediators in town are there's a problem there. Yeah because the thing is mediation has been extremely hard pushed in the last few years. They passed a court rule that allows courts to send cases to mediation even when it's normally mediation has to be an agreement in advance. I agree to mediate. Now what this act says is whether there's agreement or not you have to mediate and they go a little bit further. They say that they define mediation as having a third party who comes in and tries to bring the parties together. There was a case recently where a developer tried to avoid the contractor or a parent arguing well we sat down and talked with them. That's as good as mediation and the federal judge said no it's not. Mediation says you bring somebody in to help you mediate. So what happens with mediation? With mediation you basically hire somebody who understands construction understands the insurance companies that are involved in this because the insurance company will probably for the contractor or the developer will probably send a representative to the mediation because that's where the money is and the both parties basically provide a written brief to the mediator stating their case. They'll have experts involved. They'll give their extra reports to the mediator and the mediator if he's a good mediator before anything else happens he'll talk to each side you know on the phone before the mediator trying to get more information that he needs. Then comes the big day everybody goes down to the mediator's office or one of the attorney's office. What will happen is we'll sit in a room together you on one side the other side on the other side sometimes there may be three or four different sides you may have a developer a contractor subcontractors they may be aligned in interest they may be opposing each other and how many sides is this how many rooms you're going to need to divide everybody up at the end. The mediator will start off by telling you what mediation is how you don't have to settle the case if you don't want to and that it's your last chance to have control over the process before you give it to an arbitrator or a judge or a judge or a jury and so then what it'll do is we'll sit down with each side and with each side he'll tell them you know this is you this is where I see the problems in your case this is where I see the problems in your case this is what you'll have questions it'll take them back and forth the parties will not be sitting in the same room together because that just leads to people pointing fingers at each other and accusing the mediator basically he's Henry Kissinger going between the Israelis and the Palestinians trying to you know make peace amongst them and he'll go back and forth and at some point during the process they'll start throwing numbers around and that's how we'll go now some one of the things that's good about both mediation and to some extent arbitration is the use of experts I want to talk about this just for a minute in court if you have experts here's how it goes each does a report then you take a deposition of their expert they take the addition deposition of your expert then you go to trial their expert testifies you cross examine them the other guys expert test your expert testifies they cross examine them and it it's a long drawn-out process and very often it just leaves everybody confused with mediation particularly with a mediator or an arbitrator who knows the parties in this town knows the experts and again Honolulu is not a large community and most of the experts know each other most of the construction attorneys and the mediators know the experts and what they'll do is they'll put the experts together sometimes they'll put them together in a room by themselves talks about where they're coming from and see where they can actually reach common ground and then sometimes they'll put them together with the mediator or the arbitrator and one will make his point and the other expert will then question the expert on the other side and this is very efficient because the experts understand and speak the same language it takes less time it crystallizes the issues it saves money and it helps very often to bring the parties together and to limit the issues so but you said the experts are there and and sometimes the mediator or the arbitrator is there are the parties also oh yeah they're also in the room too okay here's how we're going in that case the one expert will make his will make his statement the other expert will question him about it try to poke holes in it then the mediator or the lawyers may ask some questions but the thing of it is in order to question the other guy's expert you have to have your expert educate you and you go back and forth and you're still not going to know it as well you're not an architect i'm a lawyer i deal with attorneys i deal with architects and engineers and i understand what they're doing but not as well as they understand what they're doing so they can get to the heart of it a lot quicker than i can and also it gets rid of some some of the you know atmospherics and the gamesmanship have them go after each other and then have the mediator or the arbitrator be able to ask them in the presence of the other the questions that he has and it all gets done at once it gets done in in a compact form it ends up saving a lot of time and it's something that you can do that really can you know cut the cost of it down and so what is that called i mean is that called mediation or what do you call that process with the with the experts it's called an experts round table oh that's what we call it it's you're doing an expert round table either within the mediation within the arbitration i've done it several times and it works i've done it in cases where the experts got together and by the time they got done their points of difference after they had basically gone after each other and pointed out you know where one was strong one was weak were narrowed to only a few areas it streamlined the case i've also done in cases where you know they've been in the room and the arbitrator's been able to ask them both questions at the same time and have them go back and forth and it is a much more efficient and educational way of doing things than the other more formal court-oriented way of doing it and here's something else to consider in this whole process mediation works the vast majority of cases do settle mainly because it's so expensive to to mitigate it exactly and there's very there's very little certainty involved in litigation exactly and the thing about mediation is it settles at an earlier stage the other thing is with the mediated what you're getting and what you're paying for in part we're paying for somebody who hopefully has two different sets of skills one is the skill of bringing people together and that's a separate skill of getting people to settle cases and there are some guys who are very good at that the other skill you're also getting is somebody who knows instruction litigation and defect litigation and who can look at your case and say i understand what you're saying here this part's nonsense you know condominiums now for disputes between board members and they pay for a free form of mediation that provides an analysis value of mediation value of mediation well in construction litigation you can also get that to a certain degree and and a good meter will tell you to some degree you know if the parties aren't coming together quickly enough he can he can go back and forth and tell them okay in my experience this part's going to work this part isn't and another an important thing is as an attorney or as a party you suddenly get tunnel vision about your case and sometimes it's good to have a neutral party who doesn't really have a dog in the fight you know give you a reality check on where you're weak and where you're strong and to help the parties come together so that's a very useful aspect of it so i'm very strongly favorite now if you get all the way through mediation and you still haven't settled the case well finally now you're back in court and you're about to spend a lot of money yes and litigation is incredibly expensive because what you're gonna end up doing again is taking depositions you know be looking construction litigation used to be expensive because of all the documents now it's 10 times as expensive this are 10 times as many documents because now you've got email and so fine during the course of this construction project each side set the other side about 10 000 emails in total and someone's got to be paid to read them all go through the construction litigation has gotten more and more expensive just because all the litigation has just because word processors and email have vastly increased the bulk of documentation so it becomes much more expensive incredibly more expensive and that's why i support the county's repair act forcing the parties into mediation was in mediation you're more you're probably going to settle the case anyway better settle at the front end before you spent two hundred thousand dollars and at the back end right and especially too if you're on a board and you have to spend and you end up spending two hundred thousand in litigation you got a bunch of homeowners who probably very angry at you i've been to those kind of meetings right and then so both as the attorney and as a court member and so you know you that that's another that's another reason why you associations would probably want to uh you know resolve these things quickly and and try to make the best deal they can and and and have to be done with it you know we're running out of time right now and thank you scott for being with us and and informing us about uh the contractor's repair act and what you have what it all entails because it looks like it's very complicated and so for our listening audience i mean the the lesson here is if you have a construction defect you got to get yourself a construction defect attorney and uh to guide you through the process because it's not doesn't sound very simple and and this is our last show of the year so for our listening audience and for those people who who are regular viewers of condo insider we want to wish you a happy and safe holiday and please join us next year for more episodes of condo insider uh merry christmas merry karikimaka and happy hanukkah yeah and thank you for joining us


In Minnesota, road construction is everywhere during the summer, and one place that seems to have been hit particularly hard is Brainerd. Recently, South 6th Street in the historic downtown has been closed, affecting some local businesses. Some of the businesses on or near South 6th Street are Sheps on 6th, the 612 station, the Brainerd American Legion, and Sage on Laurel. The construction is needed to add new underground city utilities, upgrade the sidewalks and surfaces, and replace lighting and sign fixtures. We definitely have seen a drop off, it just makes it a little bit harder for people to get down here. Maybe not quite as much as I was thinking it might be, so that's that's good, but yeah, it definitely presents a challenge for people who want to come to downtown Brainerd to shop and dine. Construction is expected to continue into late August before moving to the north end of South 6th Street from Pine Street to Highway 210. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.