Good morning everybody. Good morning committee members members of the public. We're going to start this morning revisiting a couple of bills that were introduced last session that were follow-up to good editorial vetoes on minimum wage and paid leave. And as I mentioned to the committee. A minimum wage. I think we all realize that most people would exceed even the $15 that's proposed in this bill. I think it's 24 25 and 24 25. But my hope on this one is just to get the statutory level up at that parallels what the minimum wage is sort of out there in the real world. So when the inflationary figure kicks in each year that that won't be meaningless. And on paid leave those that fell one vote short. It's complex program administratively. It may be hard to reach the finish line in the short session we have left. But I think the need has been really demonstrated by COVID. So some states have done have done paid leave bills. Some have done just sick leave kind of bills for a few days like we have for 5 days in the state of Vermont. And they've expanded that and they some of them have isolated just for COVID. But I'm going to let Damien's Damien has done. Thank I thank Damien a lot for doing the research he has done. It's not exhaustive at this point. But it's enough to get a conversation going I think. So Damien if you can walk us through the minimum wage bill that was put in last year and there may be some dates that need to be tweaked there or amounts. But I think it's pretty straightforward. Great. Is it all right if I share my screen with everyone. Yes. OK. Great. Is it do we also Damien have this posted is it possible for Scott to post it for the public too. I mean for people are it's on our committee page. OK. Great. You go to go to I haven't looked at documents today. Right. Bills and committee is it S 52. It is S 52. I just pulled it up on the screen here. Yep. It's under your name. I got it. OK. So this bill well for the record Damien Leonard Legislative Council this bill picks up next January and continues the increases that have been occurring. So under current law we'd switch over to an inflationary increase next January which is capped at 5%. And it's based on the increase in the consumer price index for Vermont for the 12 months preceding this coming September 1st. So this would replace that for the next couple of years with an increase on January 1 of 2023 to 1335 in 2024 the minimum wage would go to 1415 and then in 2025 it would go to $15 and then it would revert to the 5% CP 5% or CPI whichever is lower increase each January 1st. Damien could you refresh or memory. I'm sorry if I'm putting on the spot here but the history of this issue. I remember a $15 minimum wage bill that I think was vetoed and then even the one that's in law now that goes to 1255. I think that was also vetoed but was overridden. I'm trying to remember if if that is accurate and the one that was vetoed that went to $15. If that if I'm right in those facts and when did it go back to $15 by that particular bill. Let me go back 23. I think the original proposal was $15 by 2023. I think Senator Clarkson is correct. I'm going back. See here but I don't think that 15 now by 2023 ever passed the legislature because the House had objections to that. Yep. So the right which which we work really hard on and then we ended up compromising at the getting us forward to 1250. Right. So what happened here is the the Senate sent a proposal of amendment. So the original bill that passed the Senate on S 23 would have gone to $15 on January 1, 2024. And that's OK. And then the House sent back a proposal of amendment that would have slowed down the increase by allowing for a two and 2.25 times the CPI increase each year until it reached $15 and then reverting to the CPI increase. And I believe at the time before we had the pandemic related inflation that we're dealing with right now, the projection was that that was going to be like 2025 or 2026. I can't remember the specifics on that. And then the House and the Senate compromised at the beginning of 2020 on the current proposal, which goes to 1255 or which went to 1255 this past January 1st. That proposal was vetoed by the governor and it was overridden in the House on a vote of 100 to 49. And it was overridden in the Senate on a vote of 24 to 6 in February of 2020. OK. So the Senate version. So there was only one veto that was overridden. And the Senate version of that bill had been $15 by 20. It would be it would have been two more steps as opposed to the three steps that's in S 52. Yeah, it would have been two more steps and it would have gotten there two years from now. And the I can't remember if the biennium before that we had minimum wage bill that made it to the finish line and was vetoed. And that may be the 2023 proposal that Senator Clarkson is remembering. And I would just have to look back to see if we actually had something that made it across the line that year. That's good. So is there anything else in this bill? What is the inflationary increase in law presently? It's the greater or lesser of something. It's it's the lesser of the CPI or five percent. So the right now with inflation being above five percent, we would be capped at five percent. Most years, it's the CPI because in in general, recently, the CPI has been somewhere between two and a half and three percent, I believe. So most years, that's what the increase is in the minimum wage. The the pandemic has obviously thrown the CPI out of whack with the various costs increasing and and shipping costs and other complications in the supply chain. So like next year, if we don't do anything, the minimum wage would go go to 1255. It would go to 1255 plus five percent, which is roughly 60 cents more. So it would go to 13, 13, 13, 15 or some thereabouts. Yeah, I'm seeing 13, 18, 13, 17. So yeah. Yeah, my goal, which is this bill is a little out of even this draft bill is a little out of date, given where we are into labor market is. Well, that's one thing that I would wonder is whether or not either DOL or the JFO could perhaps tell us what is the for all practical purposes, the prevailing minimum wage today. In other words, what's the distribution of people who are even at the low end of the minimum wage? And I suspect it's not really high, right? But I don't know. Well, they're they're coming in on another bill this morning, but we started to ask them about this last week. But I think for today's purpose, this is just an introduction and I would just say my gut will tells me, but I agree that we need to hear from see if we can get some numbers to back it up is that instead of having this go to fifteen dollars in three years, I would probably my own personal desire would have it either go there in one year or two years and then let the inflation kick in. But it is dependent in significant part of the numbers we hear from Matt Barowitz and others. So unless people have further thoughts, we could go on to paid leave. Sure. And I will I'm going to move very quickly on this bill because it is a fifty seven page bill. OK, can I before we move off this, may I just ask a brief question? I just I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand. I'm sorry. Damien and I suppose we could also do this research. But I'd be just curious, given what's happened to wages across the country. I mean, you know, we're not the only state that's going through this in in as we emerge from the pandemic and have such a severe labor shortage. Would you be kind enough to find out what I mean? Or maybe you already know what other states are doing in regards to the minimum wage, given where we are with the market advancing it so fast. I mean, just like the cost of gas. I mean, last year it was like roughly two fifty at this time. And now it's roughly three fifty. I mean, it's amazing that it's gone up. Everything has gone up so substantially.  Our states responding to that and then doing what we would hope to be doing, setting at least a floor, reestablishing the floor. You know, I I don't know off the top of my head. I I do know that there have been some other minimum wage bills that have passed now since we last looked at this issue or that have taken effect at the very least. But I don't know what the latest update is, because this is just not something that we've focused on in the last couple of years. So I'll update my my chart. Wonderful chart. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I'll I'll update my charts from a couple of years ago. And when we get back to this issue, I'll I'll provide that information that would be great. Because my guess is there's been lots of movement on this across the country. Sure. Yeah, I'll at least give you a sense of where we rank. And I would I would I would guess that maybe people are thinking about it like we have, but legislatures are really slow to move in reaction to this kind of stuff. So I mean, well, I think you'll see some movement like we're suggesting here. I'll bet that there's very little that's actually been enacted yet. So we'll see. So, Damien, I don't really. You said it's a 57 page bill for the purposes of today. I guess I'm more I'm more having interested in having our minds refreshed of the general concepts that were floating around. I know you were really deeply involved in this one in terms of the House and the Senate and the governor and and also if we can touch upon a little bit of the challenges that would be faced in terms of starting up a program like it is. I remember the governor, one thing the governor's plan had. Well, in addition to having the governor behind it, it had the, you know, some simplicity in implementation that he was able to go forward very quickly where the legislative proposals were seem to be more intricate and it's not just the conversation on this to the extent it continues will not just be solely on a paid family leave bill, but paid sick days or something to get wage replacement in people's hands to deal with future COVID kinds of things, which may not necessarily need to be as as broad. So because I think we've seen the COVID, especially now we're seeing a lot of short term needs for time off or paid time off. So anyhow, and you know, if you maybe if you just give us a synopsis of what you remember happening and then maybe talk a little bit about the the research you've done on on some of these prospects. Yeah, the COVID related, it would be great. Yeah, sure. So that that probably makes a lot more sense just in terms of our time. So I think starting with the the bill that passed the the legislature and then was vetoed by the governor, that bill would have created the paid family leave program within the state, but allowed the state to contract for the administration of that program with a private insurance company. So and then the fallback, if the private insurance company, if either there was no insurance company that came forward with a viable proposal or the proposal was more expensive than implementing it through the state, the fallback would have been implementation by the state. The the program had sort of was administered jointly through that private insurance company and then Department of Taxes collecting contributions, Department of Financial Regulation, vetting and monitoring the insurance company and then Department of Labor providing the the rest of the rulemaking and oversight for the process with the day to day administration being provided by the insurance company. The the legislative proposal provided a maximum of 12 weeks of leave with 12 weeks for bonding and a combined total of up to 16 weeks for two parents per child. So in one parent could get up to 12 weeks by themselves. If it was a two parent household, you would have up to 16 weeks total for those two parents. Eight weeks to care for a family member under that bill. Although that was reduced to six weeks. If it was a sibling or a grandparent and then employees could voluntarily enroll in medical leave coverage for themselves, which would provide them with six weeks of leave. So in the context of the current covid situation, you are essentially looking at eight weeks to care for a family member or six weeks to care for yourself. So that would have covered, you know, that the two weeks that people typically mess with covid. What it didn't cover was quarantine, which is something that speaking of other states is something that a number of other states added to their existing paid sick leave laws. If they had them, they added leave for quarantine purposes if there's an infectious disease. The the governor's plan provided for six weeks of leave, if I'm remembering correctly. And it was six weeks for each of the qualifying causes. So bonding your own medical needs, caring for a family member. And then that also added exigencies related to a family member who's in the military. So deployment, if the family member comes back injured, things, things related to that so that you you can also take paid time off from work related to those military needs. And that program was as Senator Brock said, voluntary. So the idea was that the the state employees would all be enrolled in it to provide a core. A core group of people paying premiums into the plan and then other employers could enroll their employees in the plan. And there was also discussion of potentially allowing individuals to enroll in the plan at some point. So that plan there that would have been entirely administered by a private insurance company and the state would have gone through an RFP process with an insurance company every two to four years to basically hire a new insurance company to come in it and or to rehire the existing insurance company, but would have continued to bid it out to ensure that the state was getting the best deal and the best service on that plan. I did ask a question there. My recollection is the governor's plan had the state using general fund dollars to cover the premiums of the workers. And I don't know how much money was was projected for that. But you said something about it's voluntary for the state employees. Why would no sorry, that was a misstatement there. It's the state employees were all automatically enrolled in it. And then it was voluntary for other private employers to join. They provided the 8000 guaranteed sort of foundation. Right. But that was the idea was that the state would guarantee that the employees would be enrolled. It's worth noting that in the interim, the state had negotiated with the VSEA to provide paid family leave. I don't know what the status of that program is. I know that the rollout was delayed because of COVID. And I don't know if that's actually been rolled out at this point, or if that's still in process. I was just about to ask about that. My understanding is that in the contract negotiations, there was an escape clause that if the program didn't go forward, it would translate into an add-on pay increase of a small percentage. And somehow the state employees, I don't know how it came to pass, but somehow the state employees like the pay increase more than the paid leave benefit. And they took that. And now, unless you take it back from them, I don't know where the money would be to pay for the state employees at this point. I think that's the status. They had a backup plan and they took it and paid leave, went by the wayside. Okay. But we obviously confirm that. That's my understanding too. So the difference, the main, it's coming back to me. I mean, under the legislative plans to my chagrin, because I know some states have the employers paying for it, and other states have 50-50 contributions. The bills that passed the legislature had the employees paying the full fee. Of the paid leave insurance. But because it was a universal plan, everybody had contributions deducted from their paycheck. It turns out that it was by all accounts, it was a lot smaller than people would have guessed in the first instance. But the difference and the problem of that, the legislature had with the governor's plan is that while it offered some semblance of paid leave, it required a conscious choice by the individual to join up. And history told us that it was going to become pretty expensive very quickly because so few people would join up. So in some ways we needed the mandate. Of everybody doing it. So it sounds. Why? Senator Brock, you're muted. I'll get your hand up, Senator Brock. Modeling done at that time. And I believe also there was some preliminary. Not our keys, but information from insurance companies that suggested that it was in fact a viable alternative. It's quite a lot of work done. I'm sending a note off to folks. I was dealing with the administration at the time to try to get an update from that end. Good. Well. You're talking about the governor's plans viable to the extent you had the core base of 8,000 people. That's correct. Now that, you know, that changes that could. Clearly. Right. So I guess I just want to ask in a minute. Maybe Damian, you can help us out or maybe we need to. We're going to have to take more testimony, obviously. I just walked away from that experience. In addition to having a lot of scars on my back. With the feeling that the. What was being offered by. The legislature suggested by legislature was. More administratively difficult. A longer roll out time. And the administration's plan seemed to be more. Turnkey and ready to go. Is that the sense. That you had and is it also. Other things you see in the way we set it up that would. Make that true. So I, I think that's a fair. Assessment. The, the reason being is that the. The administration's plan dealt with. Basically finding an existing insurance company that has the infrastructure. And bids on the project. And having them. Administer it with a fairly short lead in process. The legislative plan required. Some administrative stand up from the state. And if you'll remember. Before the, the bill that. This year's or the current biennium's draft is based on that the governor vetoed. The. There was a completely state. Operated option that was proposed. And that had a multi-year rollout because of the, the state needing to stand up the administrative structure. And then the bill that was vetoed. That we were discussing this morning. And the state was still using private insurer for the majority of the administration to help speed up the rollout. But the state has still had some structure. In place, the tax collection with the tax department and so forth. And the reason for that was so that the state had the option of taking over administration. At some point in the future. But I think. Any time we're talking about doing this with the state, there's a, there's the need to build up the administrative structure, because we just don't have it right now. And the other states that have done this. Have opted to go that route. Or at least that I'm, that I'm aware of. But they've all had a lead time of two to three years. As they put together their administrative framework. To collect taxes to collect applications for the benefit. And to administer the benefit. Going forward. So. There, there's definitely a trade off between those options. So. You're, you're right though that the private setup is more turnkey just because those companies. Theoretically at least have the, the administrative framework ready to go or able to stand it up quickly because they can base it on their existing processes. I remember. Could you. Maybe for. Late next week or something. Could you. Pull together some of the. Charts from the past year on the costing out. The program that the legislature passed. And maybe there's stuff as, as Senator Brock has already reached out, but also just. Just the history because I'm wondering. If it's possible to you. Might be possible to use. ARPA dollars. For a portion of this, at least people are taking time off for. COVID. So the, the complication with ARPA dollars is we can't do it for an ongoing benefit. But maybe we can use it to get it set up. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, if you do a short term benefit that's tailored to COVID. Then it's a permissible use. What we can't do is, is a longer term benefit program. That's tailored to sort of broader purposes. But, but I was thinking that maybe my understanding for COVID is. You can use money. You have to obligated by the other 24, but it has to be spent by 26. So for four or five years. We could establish a. And then we could, we could, we could, we could need a program and then maybe turn it over to employee paid. But it has a lot of people who have experienced the benefit. We get some cost projections. And then a transition or ends or transitions. To another funding source. But this could jump, jump, start it. I just don't know how I seem to remember. For some reason. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. 30 million for the, what passed the legislature. The house had a more expensive one because. They wanted to include. Illness of the individual. As well. Right. Well, we did too, ideally. Ideally. But we didn't. So. But anyhow, so if you can get those. Numbers. On to that, Damien, because you had done this work of what we could do to supplement the federal paid the federal family leave program. And this could be, we could maybe use ARPA dollars to do that. As a supplement. And a bridge for that time too. Right. So. There, there is. What other states have done. And so it's important to note that the federal sick leave and paid. Emergency paid leave. Both of those programs have expired. At this point, they expired in September. But what other states have done is they've supplemented their existing.  And then in at least one case. They've offered, they've basically used the ARPA dollars to reimburse employers. For the cost of providing the sick leave. So Maryland. Did that to the extent funding was available. And then. Let's see. Massachusetts also set up a fund. To reimburse costs to employers. So that, that's another. And that would be an easy. That would essentially run like a grant program. Like we've already set up for some of the other. Benefits to employees retention bonuses and hazard pay. Where the employers could pay it out and then. Apply to receive a grant to reimburse them. For the costs that they've incurred. So that. That's another possibility, but yes, I can. What I wanted to ask is what you're looking for is the projections on costs from the last. The last paid leave bill that we did then. So just pull up those exhibits and get them out to the committee. Yes. Perfect. Just making sure I was on the. The same page as you. I hope we are always in your boat. As long as we're all paddling in the same direction, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, I, I unmuted before this last part of the conversation, but I think, you know, my two overarching questions coming into today were how do we use the existing paid sick leave infrastructure to help get immediate relief to people. So I think I'm. I'm, I've Damian's been really kind enough to ask NCSL and keep following up on the pros and cons of different state approaches as we're starting to hear. And my other question just being how. As we, as we look to hope that, you know, the build back better bill continues to include paid family leave. And continues to move forward. How much our current best. proposal or most agreed upon proposal could dovetail with that to ensure it's bolstering it may be out a couple weeks to it but those were my 2 questions coming into today and I think we're starting to answer them. They means work really help. Yeah, one thing that's just important to note is right now are sick leave law and our family and medical leave law in the state would cover.  The medical leave law which is the longer term job protection, but there's no guaranteed pay covers provides job protection if an employee gets severely ill with COVID-19 or if they need to care for a family member who's severely ill, which is likely not the case because that family member would be hospitalized.  In some cases on just an emergency basis, they provided a public health emergency. You know trigger where if there's a declared public health emergency quarantine can be covered. And then like I mentioned, some of those states that have done that have added grants to employers so it doesn't become an added burden on the employers. Can I make sure I understand that?  I mean, they, you know, a lot of times the schools require a quarantine. So we would have to have an emergency order in place in order for them to get access to any emergency funds. So the sick leave can be used right now if the school shuts down because of the public health emergency. So to the extent you have, you know, the it's happened in our school district where some of the schools have shut down because so many teachers and staff are out that they they don't have enough staff for the day or because everyone is a close contact. Particularly with the Rocksbury Village School in our district.  That would be covered. What's not covered is when people when the school remains open and you need to quarantine unless your employer decides to provide coverage for that, but the law doesn't require employers to do that. So some states have extended the requirement to cover those instances where you're required to quarantine. But the the child care business hasn't shut down. One thing that's that's worth, you know, and this gets more complicated now that we're starting to do tests to stay. And other other things like that.  And then that gets into the question of, you know, with like I mentioned, a couple of the states have added grants for employers because they they recognize that paying paying to have your staff out for extended periods of time can add a significant cost. And so they've added these grants to help mitigate the cost together with the other funds they're getting out to employers to help address the impacts of the pandemic. So there it's it's a complicated discussion. But there there are. There are a number of different options out there, whether it's providing some sort of paid leave insurance or grants for employers to provide this leave and extending job protection and that sort of thing. So there are a couple of different ways to approach it. Right now, it seems like the states that have tackled this through their paid leave programs have existing paid leave laws that they've expanded on the states that have tackled it through their paid sick days programs include both states that have paid leave laws and states that don't. The states that have paid leave laws are really using the paid sick time as a bridge to get people to pay leave if they're going to be out for a long term with, you know, severe COVID. But otherwise, they're they're recognizing that a lot of times COVID is is not long term enough to qualify you for that. The long term paid sick leave, you know, so New York and California are two states that have a paid leave law where they've they've enhanced their paid sick time to address instances where people are out for five days or six days but not for three or four weeks. So it it gets very complicated as we start to take into the the nuances, but I'm happy to send out the costing information and I can I've shared with at least three members of the the committee here who have asked questions about this and I can share put together a summary that can be posted to the committee's web page of the information I've shared on what other states are doing. No, it's it's been very helpful both with workers, com UI and these paid leave sick day options. Yeah, and CSL has been a huge help in getting this information together. So oh, thank you. One one remaining question I have is we can't be the only state where child cares and early learning centers as a business are really suffering because of what's happening, you know, having to shut down possibly forgoing revenue. Are we, you know, are other states looking at how to help those centers stay open in a float and keep keep paying their staff when they have to deal with so many cycles of shutting down? I imagine that they are, but I I don't know what's being done on that. My colleague Katie MacLenn might know more about that. Mr. Chair, I know we have that done here and he only now has 10 minutes. So our time challenge here is a little bit. Well, yeah, trying to move us along. OK, so Damian, we'll have you back and we'll be in touch in the interim to narrow the issues here. But this does seem there's some interest in trying to do something in response to these short term absences for work just before you leave in 30 seconds. Can you explain what the retention money and the budget adjustment act is? So my understanding about the retention money and it's not a provision I worked on, but my understanding is it's grants provided to various service providers in, I believe, health and childcare. But I may not be accurate on that. But it's it's money provided to service providers similar to the way we did Hazard Pay. Yeah, but the service providers have a little more discretion in how they use that money to retain staff. So it's it's I think up to three thousand dollars per staff person. And it can be used by the providers to provide retention bonuses and other benefits to retain staff during this. The current staffing shortage and struggle. OK, thank you. Yeah, thank you, Damian.


Cody, dude, you have been one of the most successful individuals that I've known that has built a personal brand. I would love if you could just take us along that journey. First off, this is going to be an interview style. I want to interview you. I want you to unpack as much as you can. We could probably do this for three hours because that's how big the story is, but we're going to try and condense this and get some nuggets of actionable takeaways that these insurance agents can learn from and work towards building their personal brand. The first thing I would love for you to walk through is, first off, why did you decide to start building your personal brand as aggressively as you are? When did that light bulb switch? How did that start? It really flipped about two years ago this month. We first started four and a half years ago putting up videos on YouTube, not really knowing what would go, what would be the point behind it, why I was doing them. I just thought, wow, this is kind of cool even though I was sucked at it. At some point it clicked and I'm like, you know what, I've got something special here. People are responding. I'm actually doing good in the world. I'm helping insurance agents. Why don't I really double down and go a little bigger and just see what happens? Because every time I've ever done that in my life, something good has always happened on the other side. What does that mean though to you? Did that mean doing one video a month instead and now doing a video a week? How did it start? Take me to the very beginning. Two years ago to this day, we added a second videographer who is now the main videographer in Dylan. We decided to put on 8% Nation because I thought, well, I've seen other brands explode because they not only had a YouTube channel, but they had a conference. Then we also started to actually spend money. I could remember two years ago when I was spending at one point $1,000 a day on advertising and marketing. How important is building a personal brand in the insurance industry? It's a lot more important than people think.  I would do it on a national scale. I would hammer home with a brand and attention, YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc., Instagram, and I would eventually be the thought leader for whatever niche I wanted to be in. And yeah, it would probably take a few years. I could redo everything we've done faster now because of everything you know. I made a ton of mistakes. We learned a lot, but insurance agents can absolutely do it. I could just cut everything off at the knees right now and say, okay, I'm going to go back to building an insurance agency direct consumer and have a seven-figure company inside of 24 months. For sure. Without a doubt. In fact, so many meetings have we taken where they're like, why are you not doing that already? You're saying, and they're like, well, you're just like your heart is in it for the insurance agents or whatever it is. It's just, yeah, it's not in. I enjoyed selling. I was really good at it, but I enjoyed helping Susie make sales more than I enjoyed myself. That's awesome. So what does it take to build a personal brand in the insurance industry? What are some actionable steps that someone just going into the industry needs to take specifically to start going down this road? A few things for me, you've got to put out video content multiple times per week.  A limiting belief for me has always been, and I've learned that I've got to get these things like, I've got to grow in time and get these things out of my head. I've always used to care, like what people thought, I would read all the negative comments and they would wear on me.  I don't know where they get that from.  It's just, oh, you're from Arkansas, you've got an accent or no, you don't talk like you have an accent. It's insane. You can't please everyone. So the sooner you realize that and just do a lot of it, I used to think a website didn't matter. Boy, does that really matter? We have great websites now and we get leads that come in all day every day. What's super unique? I never saw this happening this fast. I'm less thinking about building a national brand and I'm more thinking about how to build an international global brand. It was crazy to me that this weekend, on Memorial Day weekend, just happened. We're filming this on a Tuesday, who cares. We had agents reach out from Australia, Singapore, Egypt, Canada, and the UK. I think I'm forgetting in India, all six of those different parts of the world this weekend. I got proof on YouTube, Instagram, emails. It's astounding to me that I feel like, so I've been in the marketing world my whole life and I got my degree in marketing and this wasn't really a thing even five or six years ago. How important building that personal brand and putting that content out because I think it's also easier now than ever. You can upload videos on YouTube straight from your phone. You don't even need software at this point. You can shoot within the actual platform. Not to mention with Google, they are integrating the actual search engine optimization with YouTube as well. If you're a Medicare agent or a life agent or a health agent and you're not creating content, to me it's like, what are you doing with your life? You've got to be doing that. There's nothing else you can do that would make a bigger impact aside from just throw money at radio or TV or whatever.  That's actually the biggest reason that's our 8% nation. Nobody's actually looking at me as a thought leader. I'm going to just physically change it at all costs. Video content is one thing. Walk me through your mindset because you are absolutely a leader. I've walked through airports with you and you get recognized by randoms in the airport. That just happened once as weird as that is. Obviously you have a consulting business for insurance agents but being noticed by a random insurance agent in the airport is pretty much as on point as you can with your marketing strategy. Walk me through your mind. Whenever you're doing stories or connecting Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, what's your thought process? Do you wake up in the morning with, you know what, I'm going to shoot this type of content?  What's your mindset? A little bit of everything I guess. I mean, for me, it's never really been about, okay, how much money can I make today off of doing this. For me, it's like I truly enjoy having a personal brand. I truly enjoy helping insurance agents. I truly enjoy waking up and coming in here and shooting video.  I'm like, yep, I'll be right there. I love this stuff, man. A lot of people, it's not their passion, you know, which is okay. That's great. It is absolutely my passion. How do you actually come up with the videos and the content? That's pretty, well, now it used to be very random and it still is on occasion. I'm like, hey Dylan, I got an idea. Let's shoot a video. Well, he also sends me 10, 10, 15 new great YouTube titles every week as well that we like grab a few and shoot some content. I used to tell myself, it's really crazy, I used to tell myself two years ago that I'm not a very creative person. Now it's like it just flows and I think that's part of when someone finds their passion and they enjoy it and they like wake up and try to do a lot and they're very active and they're doing stuff all the time, the busier I am, the more creative I flow. I agree. That didn't used to make sense. I agree. You know, motion and activity creates momentum and just more motivation for me as well. So one of the things that, so basically you have a schedule. Do you have like a certain goal of content you try to put out every week, month? It used to be 15 videos a week, which was a lot and the quality wasn't always there. Now we're putting out at least a handful of solid videos a week. We're putting out at least an email per day for multiple brands. We're putting out social post multiple times a day. I'm putting at least, I'm trying to get to at least 15 to 20 stories on my Instagram every day. We're spending money on Facebook, YouTube and Google. You know what my goal is? Moving forward of pieces of content per day. Yeah, 60. There you go. I want to get 60 pieces of content a day, man, between stories, between social posts. That also includes CA and 8% though. From this house, let's send out 60 a day is my goal. I think we're closer than you think. No, I know. Especially if you count your stories because there's a third of them right there. Exactly. Well, and Danielle just put like eight ticket purchases on my story that were real that I'm like, Hey, let's start sharing that stuff. That's like social proof. It's a little bit of urgency. Like for sure.   That to me is like tagging. When I started doing that, just deck me.  I would, I would, I would send you please don't let me ever do this. And if I do, then just stop me immediately. But anyways, there's a line you can cross. But I really feel like as long as you're keeping it classy, being able to show how you're winning is important as well. People don't really, people want to like, they want to get, they may get inspiration from, from the, the arrogant jerk that nobody wants to really meet and they may follow some stuff, but they don't really ever want to like hang out with that person for a long period of time. I agree. I want to be the dude that we can throw a retreat in Dubai one day and people want to hang out, you know, and that sounds insane. You know, for me to say stuff like that in some of the stuff that we do and say is, is off the freaking wall. Well, what I find is, is I've got a, I've got a boom. Hey, if you're loving this video, I know you are. I know you love the branding. I know you love the stories.  We have a new marketing channel. Landon and I are going to be putting out videos constantly. All right. So stop what you're doing. And if you want to see the rest of this, click the link, go to the new marketing channel, secure agent marketing, brand new YouTube channel, marketing content, drop and freaking hammered out daily. You want to see them. That's how you blow up a business. I'll see you on the new channel.


What do you do when your horse is bugged or hypersensitive to bugs? This is such a Common question that I get and this is the time of year where it's beautiful and we get to be outside and we're excited and All of a sudden we come out to the trails and our horses are throwing their heads and they're uncomfortable because of bugs So what do you do about this? Let's let's talk about that I'm on a thoroughbred that's got quite a bit of life. He raced a long time So he's got some brace in there and and so the bugs it's one of those things where you know, you can tell it bothers him He's sensitive.  It's going to take that energy that he has that That sort of life that he has it's going to put him to work directed into something like movement There's another feature and that is we will be moving air will be flowing and the bugs won't be as bad at the trot Now I'm pretty bold so I can take a horse and if they're bothered by by bugs I can cancer or gallop and then I really don't have an issue of bugs But for met most of you just even trotting is enough to get a little airflow and Get your horse to where he's not being bothered as much. So as we go, we're just using obstacles I want him to think about his feet Not about bugs on his side or bugs on his head. I want him to think about his feet Take that energy in that life put it into looking at where my dog is here or where your feet are What's in front of you go through some brush? because that's going to rub the bugs off of them and move them for Some time maybe a few minutes depending on your situation. I might reach up Grab some branches. I might even reach over and help get the bugs off of him and Make him understand that I'm a good guy because I'll help him here. You've got some bugs on your neck I'll help you've got some bugs on your up. I'll help you take the whip use it as a fly shoe as you're moving Pretty soon. He will become more comfortable.  You might need to adjust to fit that situation. You may need to take your horse out by yourself and Work in this manner So now he's moved quite a bit and I'm walking in fact It's kind of interesting. I'm able to take him through branches and he sees a reason he says Yeah, I'll go through those branches rub those bugs off a little more reason to go through that He's more comfortable because I did move for a few minutes. So now could I bring the walk down slower? Now if he starts to get bothered with bugs and he starts to flip his head or swish his tail I won't get too greedy. I don't want to force the walk I'll chase my dog here for a second. In fact, use my dog's little energy to get my horse's energy up there Look at that. That's awesome. So my horse is really looking at my dog, which you can't see Buster thinks it's fun. We're not as bothered with the bugs. It's fun again Movement I Want you to go under things So the branches going under this is a tough one for me going under the branches going through the narrow passageway So we go around Under all helping to get bugs away We'll find a through go through the brush Right, and so pretty soon my horse looks to me. He thinks about his feet His attention is not so much on on the bugs and I can then say let's take it easy Let's slow down a little bit and maybe even we'll get to a place where we can stop now Don't get greedy because if you stop too long, he's gonna get antsy.  He's gonna get bothered as life will come up and he'll want to move But if we think about this we can take this Sort of irritation, right? And we can use it to get our horses lively Directed into what we want work and use that as a lesson to work with our horses I hope that makes sense about what to do when your horse is bothered by bugs I hope this these are some techniques that you can use Take take this and go ahead and give it some time practice with it See what you can do maybe keep your horses on the move a little more before you know it They're gonna settle in and they're gonna be able to handle these bugs a lot better


The Riverside chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC has disowned the claim by some of the factional chief tens of the party, Tony Okocha, over his comments, suggesting that the state's ministerial slot should be given to the former governor of Riverside, Yesamuike, reacting to Okocha's speech at the party's secretariat, Potakot, the state publicity secretary of the APC, Dalintin Uwaju, denied any agreement that the ministerial slot should be given to the former governor. Dalintin also emphasised that Tony Okocha is not a member of the party and has not received the mandate from the national secretariat of the APC to speak on behalf of the party. Proporting to have seated the ministerial slot of the state to the media part of Riverside, Yesamuike. The state chapter of the APC has never interacted with the amalgamated bulletin book and campaign council, which are the purveyors of that force who claim to represent or to be representing. For the umpteenth time, we want to say that Mr Tony Okocha is not a member. Fresh News Updates


Mae'n ddweud am y cyfnodd o'r hyn sydd yn ei ddweud. Fy enw yn gweithiau i Gwyl Sightsearch. Mae'n ddweud i gweithio'r C-studio Cynllun. Mae'r gweld Dunedig Milburn. Mae'r architekt cyfnodd o'r gwbl, ac mae'n gweithiau yn y ddigital cyfnodd yn ychydig, fy nghymru 14 oed. Mae'n edrych i'r cyfnodd o'r Gwyl Sightsearch o'r cyfnodd o'r gwaith yma. I've had the opportunity to develop custom search solutions in various different content management systems. And I've also had the opportunity to implement paid and open-source third-party search products on the site search. Now, today what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about the types of site search there is available for search. We're going to have a little examination of a case study that I was recently involved in. And also, hopefully, I'll discuss some of the tactics I employ when I deal with the implementation for site search. And with a little bit of luck, you'll be able to take away some of these lessons and apply them to your own projects and those sorts of things. OK. I wanted to share some observations of what I've learned over the last few years of implementing search is that everybody wants Google. It doesn't matter what they say, they all go, oh, I need to have Google on my site. However, the problem is that's really expensive. Google spent millions and millions of dollars on their algorithms. So it's far too expensive, but they all really like and say, oh, Google, give us Google, give me Google. Unfortunately, what happens is too costly. Now, in addition to that, what you find is search, particularly onsite search, is the first thing that gets neglected once the deadline hits or when the scope starts to go live starts to come along. It's the first thing that gets missed and starts to crunch. The other thing is that it tends to be a very black box issue. What happens is people get a little bit nervous about it. It's kind of like you've got this index and nobody really quite knows what goes in. You throw some keywords at it and all of a sudden it gets some results and nobody quite knows what goes on under the hood. So people tend to be a bit confused about it. Hopefully I should be able to share my experience and provide you with a little less of that black box experience. So there are essentially two types of onsite search. There's pattern matching and what I would refer to as a relevance engine. So pattern matching is essentially what you do is you take a keyword and you throw to the index. And then what it does, it goes through the index and matches that keyword against the documents in the index and increases the count by one however many matches there is. Now the more matches in that result, the higher the item gets shown and displayed in the result set. This is typically announced in the box search solution. A lot of pattern matching, a lot of out the box CMSs use pattern matching algorithms. It's also a very quick and cost effective method of implementing an onsite search. But it's not wonderfully sexy. I'm not a great big fan of pattern matching. The reason why it can result in a really poor user experience. We've all seen the result set where you're kind of like how on earth did that result get up to the top of the list based on that keyword. There's no visibility about how that result set gets returned. So it can be quite a poor user experience. The other thing is that pattern matching is typically a very, it's kind of a costly exercise to be able to manipulate it. If you want to customize it or modify any of the search, particularly when it comes to pattern matching, is it tends to be quite costly to change and also enables to incur technical debt as well. You've got to manipulate the core and mess around with it. Now on the other side of the search we've got this relevance engine. Now relevance engine is kind of like the Google experience. What happens is you do a search, somebody else does a search, they click on results, the algorithm then smushes it all together, figures out what is the most effective result and spits back the results. So it's all based on a more intelligent algorithm rather than just pattern matching. Now typically these, excuse me, relevance engine comes as a third party product. It comes as a software as a service. They can vary between open source and proprietary engines and however they can be very expensive. There's some really, really expensive third party products out there that could range like license fees of about 30 to 50k a year. They can be quite costly. However the good thing is that they are a wonderful user experience both for the user that's actually using a search and for the business owners that have the opportunity to manipulate the search and manage the index and you don't need developer assistance to be able to manage the index. One thing about tends to be with proprietary as well as open source with relevance engines is they're very easy to customize as well. They provide you with support files and APIs and that sort of thing that you can just manipulate and theme however you want. Now we've had the opportunity to talk about the types of search we use. I want to introduce the case study. Now this case study I was involved in the building of a website with onsite search. It was a very large implementation. It was large for a large law firm of about 150 partners. Now this case study I just highlight some of the user requirements that we had for this project. First up people needed to be because it's a law firm it requires a lot of partners and law firms are built on the individuals expertise. The people in the organization need to be ranked through multiple capabilities. They need to be able to be targeted through family law or mergers and acquisition or lots of multiple skill sets. The business wanted to be able to tweak the result set according to the business needs. They kind of wanted to be able to inject results into the top of the list based on their business requirements. They also needed to provide support for synonyms. Not everybody searches on the same terms so they need to be able to get that kind of support. The results should be faceted so the different sections and categorizations of search. The budget was quite low as well particularly when it came to search. The whole site was budget was fairly tight and we need to have it delivered within six weeks in time for a conference. They want to launch this new website with the search algorithm in time for the conference. The partners can go away to the conference and hand out cards. The people at the conference can come back and search their names on the site. What they also wanted they said we want Google.  The first challenge was actually to implement a relevance engine. How are we going to do that for this search service? The first thing we asked was can we develop this in-house? The answer was no, we can't. Why? It was just too costly. The development time involved to create indexing, creating search manipulation, faceted results was just too pricey. We thought okay we're not going to build it, we might as well find a, we need to look at third party suppliers. Now these guys said they wanted Google. They were like okay we'll go to Google, perfect site search. Then this happened. April 2018 we suddenly realized it was discontinued. So we panicked. We went oh no, what are we going to do? We panicked and went oh god. After a while we calmed down a little bit and then expanded our search to the wider market. What we found was there are loads and loads of search products out there. However the majority of them come at a cost, they are really expensive. Which didn't help us, right? It wasn't very, it was very difficult to find a very cost effective search solution. So we fine-tuned our search and searched a bit more and searched a little more. Then we whittled them down and found these five products. Now these are all software solution products and they also meet the cost criteria. These five products all are able to maintain index for under $1200 per annum. Which is very, very cheap when it comes to site search. So after a few decisions we eventually decided on Swift type for implementation. So all these search products will all meet the content requirements. Faceted search to provide the ability to manipulate the index. They all provide very effective statistics engines and that sort of thing. So in summary we want to talk about some of the key takeaways that I had from this search is when looking at a relevance engine don't build it yourself. It's just too expensive and people have already done it before. I know it can be a quite sexy technical challenge but it's just too costly to be able to implement it yourself. Also third party products provide visibility of the index. They're really, really effective to provide an understanding of what goes on in that index and what goes on and why those results are returned to you for specific keywords. Finally these products allow you to manipulate the results. They allow you let's say you've got a particular keyword and you need to inject a service or a very important document at the top of your list so you can move that customer onto that journey. That's what these products are great at doing. So challenge number two. We've made a decision. We've got our search engine. We knew it was a critical success factor and the next stage was dealing with the unexpected. So first of all we knew search was a critical success factor. It was vital for this site to be successful. So we're like yeah that's cool we'll do that. So the first thing we did was create this search engine, develop this search engine on a test environment and it was humming. It was perfect. We tested it with test data. It came out with lots of information. It was brilliant. We were like ooh pass on the back, job done, drop mic, leave the room. That's it but there was a problem. When we got to UAT testing and we actually started to test with real life data the client was like this is not matching our expectations. We're not getting the relevant information from the information you saw. We're not meeting their business cases. We weren't meeting their business requirements for the search which was really really scary because we were a couple of days away from launching this site and this was the first time we had the opportunity to actually test with real life content. So the client started to lose confidence. They were just like oh we can't have this search. This search has to be right before we go. So we had to postpone the launch unfortunately. What we did then was a couple of key takeaways for this is what I would suggest is factoring time to test out your search with live data. Nothing is a substitute for live data. If you can't do that, manage your expectations. Tell the business users if we have a search and we don't have time to test it post launch we have to tweak it. We have to fine tune that search. Then coming up to challenge number three. Now we had to postpone the launch. We knew research didn't meet the requirements. So what we did, the client said they wanted relevance. We implemented relevance. However when we came to do the testing relevance was not quite what they wanted.  A light weight that we could quickly test and figure out what they actually wanted when we implemented. And we found that what the search they wanted was this thing called fuzzy search. Now fuzzy search is kind of like a pattern matching algorithm. It's kind of like a spell checker. It kind of looks at variances for the closest words. It's kind of like what word and Google use when you're doing autocorrect and spell check. So we figured that out. We got that. We implemented that which was like who got that done. And what I want to also highlight with some of the key takeaways with this challenge was don't be afraid to get it wrong. We got it wrong. We had to postpone the launch. However, it gave us more clarity around what we needed to do and provided us with more clarity to find the success factor. Sometimes it's okay to get it wrong to be able to get it right. And also what I've also found is pattern matching is an acceptable criteria. We spent all this effort getting this relevant engine only to find actually pattern matching solution is more effective. And we could have found that out had we done that sort of iterative development in the start. So in summary, in terms of the case study, we didn't get the site live in six weeks. We got it live in eight weeks. However, we got it live in time for the conference. Everybody was happy. The site's been live for about nine months. It's a great user experience for search. And we've seen an increased uplift in search conversions because they have the ability to inject these ad words into the index. We're still tweaking with the search and improving the experience. However, we're using the analytics from the third party search to be able to tweak that engine and get better search results. And so in summary, I just want to leave you with three key points. First of all, first up is allow yourself time to fine tune the results with the real content factor of that in that is vital when it comes to search because you've got to put contingency into the project plan. Second, when it comes to relevance, third party products are the way to go. Don't don't try and build one yourself. It's just a waste of time and it's too costly. And then third, remember to bring the business along your search journey, consult them, show them things that get wrong. That way you can refine your understanding of those requirements and refine the models so you're managing their expectations and they're brought along with that journey. And that's everything. I want to thank you for coming and listening to me talk today. Do you have any questions? Why we selected Swift type over Elasticsearch? Well, it's partly down to cost. The other applications were a slightly higher cost ratio. It's still under budget and also their ability to inject items into the index was a lot more sophisticated than the other products. So, with these kind of websites because it's a greenfield development, we didn't have the actual content. It's usually what happens when you develop the sites. It's the last thing to come. The development isn't the tricky bit. It's getting everybody to write the content. So it just wasn't there. We had to write all the profiles and create all the insights and all that sort of stuff. So we didn't have the data at the time. What was the calculating in the annual fees? What was calculating? It's a subscription-based services. They're usually based on the amount of documents you create. Typically, those are all under about 50,000 documents for indexing. And then also they charge on API calls as well. So as soon as you throw a call to the index, that's counted as one API call. So you've got to be careful if you're doing autocomplete. So each keystroke is an API call. So you've just got to be careful about that. But those are the lowest tier subscription models. They have a little bit of a leap after that, but you've got a lot more API calls and document indexes. OK. All right. Thank you. You mentioned that you guys built some light with prototyping to test out what kind of search that you would decline once. Was that with real data? Yes. What method or what tools did you use to build this library? Oh, it was very, very simple JavaScript algorithms. We applied some JavaScript algorithms. That's how we established it. We needed to use fuzzy search. So it was just a very, very lightweight hitting the index quite quickly. What we found it wasn't the relevance engine that was the problem. It was how it was returned. It was kind of like how it sent the data into the API. OK. Thank you guys. Thanks.


What's up everybody, Jason here for jazbeaksgazebrakes.com, 21-22, Panini Immaculate Basketball just sold out, this is a 5 box break picket team's number 6, and here we go guys. So, we technically did have 2 R&B's, which was this one here that featured like 13 teams, this one here that featured like 6, or sorry, 4 teams. But just to let you guys know that FY, I know we gave away some in a filler, but Carl ended up buying all the spots straight up. So he ended up winning the free spots, and then in the filler he also won those spots, so basically those teams are all his. So we didn't technically have to do a randomizer for that, but for the other one we did of course. So we're good there, and this is of course the 13 team one, so there's a names with the teams there. So just basically 1 R&B we have to worry about. And then here is the Immaculate Basketball case here. Again, this is probably our last one, not saying we're not going to get more, but for the time being at least. This is pretty much it. First we've got a Steph and Curry, 34 out of 34 out of 99. Steph Curry, go and say Wars. That is Carl, going to the all R&B, just his. Tyler Hero for the Heat, 97 out of 99. Miami Heat is part of the R&B. Seven, that's Carl. We've got a Kevin DeRavrelec to 99. That's Brooklyn Nets going to Justin Weber. We have like Aaron Wiggins, a rookie autographer of the Thunder. Sean Attic for the Thunder. Then we have a Arfreni Simons to 99. That is Portland Trail Blazers, which is going to spot zero. Zero's Carl. And then we have a Alperin Sengun rookie autograph, 46 out of 99. Houston Rockets, that's part of the R&B that Carl bought out, so that's all Carl right there. Nice little autograph right there. He's a pretty nice big man there. Next box. Alright, we've got a Zaire Williams, that's to 10. 10 of 10 rookie base. Sometimes, depending on the player, these actually sell pretty well. Memphis Grizzlies, that's going to Oren. Jalen Green Relic to 99. That is going to Carl and the Rockets. How about this Jumbo patch of Dasun Mu Team Logos, 11 out of 25. That is going to the Chicago Bulls R&B. And that is 11, spot one is Anthony. We've got Brandon Clark to 99. That's another one for Memphis and Oren. We have an RPA to 49 red, Aaron Wiggins. OKC Thunder, Sean Maddock. And then how about a long card, Dominique Wilkins for the Atlanta Hawks. 41 out of 49. Spot one is Anthony. It's your day today Anthony. There you go man, very nice. Alright, third box. There we go. Alright, we've got Scotty Barnes, 58 out of 99. Toronto Raptors is straight up Andrew. We have Lamello Ball to 99. Charlotte Hornets, Tristan with that one. Dual Relic, nice three color patches. They're Miles McBride and Queen Gramps. That is Nix, Zach with that one. Alright, Sea of Redemption. Let's hide that redemption for now. Let's go with Michael Porter Jr., Modern Marks to 99. And Maha City, Denver, Oren. And then how about a little Carl Malone Scores Club. Seven out of ten for the Utah Jazz, Walter. That's a sweet one right there. Alright, let's go with the redemption now. Let's see what this is. Patch autographs gold. Card number 16. Julius Randall, very nice for the New York Knicks. Let me see what gold is out of really quick though. I'm kind of curious now. Gold is number to ten. And number 16 is New York Knicks, so it's very nice. Alright, two boxes. Nick, I'm better above the Borough of Jefferson than my loss. Which one's that one, Nick? I don't know. Is that a joke? Yeah, you're going to get something better, man. And yeah, Zach, that was pretty nice, right? 20 out of 99, Devin Booker for the Suns. Incu with that one. We have a Fred Van Vleet, tonight at 9. Raptors is going to end here. I just jumbled a patch out of Corey Kesper, 31 out of 50. Washington Wizards, 1. It's Anthony. I say we have another redemption in the third slot. And we have Robert Williams, tonight at 9 for the Boston Celtics. Warren with that one. And then Franz Wagner, 60 out of 99 for the Orlando Magic. It's going to Orlando Magic, 60, spot zero, that's going to Carl. Nice hit right there, buddy. He's a great player. Alright, so this has been somewhat of a little bit of a weird case. Franz Wagner's nice, but I feel like we're still missing a big rookie or something massive, right? Sneaker swatches signatures, nice. Alright, number 26, Kevin Johnson. That's Suns, Kevin Johnson? And yes, Phoenix Suns, and that's number to 10. He only has 10 of these. If it's a gold, then he'll probably last maybe to five. That's Phoenix Suns, going to Incu. I can't remember because it hurt. Well, that one shouldn't be hurting you, Nick, because that actually was a chaser hit. So it's probably like a $300, $400 card. And there's probably a lot of Joel and B autographs that are less than $100 now. He doesn't sell for as much as you think. So I mean, I think that card that you got is probably much better. Since it was a chaser, it's probably like a $300, $400 card. We just had a Joel and B autograph here. It was like $100, and it was numbered to like $15. So I think a rookie won't like that. Probably a little bit better. SGA to 99 for the Thunder, and DeMar de Rosen to 99. And Chicago Bulls, that's going to the Orlando R&B. 59, it's going to Carl. And we've got Donovan Mitchell to 99. Utah, going to Walter. 27 out of 49, Harold DeSignatures, Rick Fox. Rick Fox. Lakers R&B. 27. 7 is Carl. Then we got a Gary Harris to 10, Modern Marks. Orlando Magic. Magic's part of the R&B. Zero's Carl. Alright, last one here. That's what we were looking for here. 54 out of 99, true RPA of Jalen Green. Very nice. Carl. You have the Houston Rockets because you bought out the R&B and won. The R&B free spots. Congratulations, buddy. That probably is a couple G's. I assume so. So very nice Jalen RPA, man. So I appreciate it, guys. That was the way it goes right there. So I appreciate it, guys. That was Immaculate basketball, five box case break. Picketing number six, jaspyscasebreaks.com. And yeah, hopefully we get more soon.