All right. Hey, good afternoon everybody. Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. This is Smart Business Moves and our special guest today is Shara Riedel. Shara is, uh, Shara is, uh, Liz's daughter. I knew that. I knew you did. I agree, Tom. You don't even have to, like, explain to me because I know. Hopefully you get it right. Shara, how are you today? Doing great. Thanks. How are y'all? Let's run with your sound. I love your new wallpaper, by the way, in your office. But you sound terrible. I mean, I have allergies. Is it my voice or is it the actual audio on the computer? A little bit of both maybe? I think it's for your computer. Yeah, it's kind of got an echo thing going on. And she sounds like she's in a tunnel. Yeah. But, you know, we've had worse. That's true. Yeah. The good news, Lava, you don't look nearly as bad as, as you said you do. A lot of me heard you, heard you sound. Yeah, that too. I'm sorry. I'm not helping a bit, am I? I don't know. Is there anything she can do, Tom? Any way to help? I think we're going to go with it. So, Liz, what are we doing today? All right. Well, y'all know that we are doing just two sessions. I don't know what we want to call them. Two Facebook lives a week now. We're going to be doing one on Monday and then one on Wednesday. We hope to change them up a little bit, but it's a little glitchy for us right now, obviously. We're hoping to do Zooms also, right, Tom? We've been working on that. And actually, we've worked on some stuff this week and I think it's going to be more awesome than anything that we've been able to do with Zoom today, which is not setting the bar extremely high, but it won't be there shortly. Yeah, okay. Well, that sounds good. Sure, it's like, well, if they don't like the way I sound, I'm leaving. That's it. My name is Ava. It might be something to do with, for me, I can't hear very well, too. I can't figure out how to turn on my computer, so there's also that. Runs in the family, y'all. Runs in the family. That's all I can say. So today, we are going to be talking about sales and Tom, what are you talking about on Wednesday? Sales. You're also talking about sales, right? Sales week. Yeah, we're going to... It's going to be from Mark Durses Rose. And so I think that that was sort of our plan is to have a different topic each week. I'll do a presentation sort of from my slant, and then Tom will do a presentation from his slant on Wednesday. And I'm glad I get to go first, so I get to get all the goods, and Tom has to pick up whatever I don't get. He didn't get leftovers. Yeah, which is awesome for me, although we rarely take the same slant on any topic, so I can't even imagine that it's going to be any kind of a problem. So we also really wanted to talk a little bit about, at the beginning of each Facebook Live, we wanted to talk a little bit about financials and profit just because, you know, that's kind of our gig. That's what we like to talk about. We're talking about clean profit builders, and we want to make sure that everybody is focusing in on some of the different financial things that are going on, around the country, or maybe even around the world, depending on where you're listening from. So is there anything new going on right now, Tom?  Now they raise the cap to $500,000, and it could be for like 24 months, so, you know, I don't know this for sure, but just kind of doing back of the envelope math, whatever money you got before up to $500,000, you can take what you had before and multiply it times three, add it to what you had before, and, you know, either get three times what you got before up to a total of $500,000, based on the way I read it, of course, you never know until you try, but we should all have gotten emails by now, and I had the link last week, I need to get up if we need it, that if you haven't submitted the email saying, hey, I'm interested in that, you need to do it, because they're basically working through those emails, first come, first served in terms of processing you for the additional idle funds. If you want them, you might not want them, because it is long, you have to pay that over 30 years at 3.75% interest, which a couple of years I'm betting is going to seem like really cheap money, but, you know, that's a pretty good choice. So I really wish we weren't talking about this while I had my daughter on, because I have an idle loan, Lava, and like, what happens with that when I die? Well, now you know, no big surprise now. Actually, actually, you know, you personally guarantee it, but your ears really aren't responsible for that. Now, they could come after via state, you know, inheritance and stuff like that, I guess, would be liquidated to.  That's the first time I've seen anybody cough into their hand in a really, really long time. That's so weird, you haven't seen anybody. Linda, oh, you know, I don't have my comments up over here. Sure, you're in Dallas, right? Yeah. Okay, so you guys don't believe in COVID anyway, right? Everything's kind of open. I saw like, you know, 40,000 people at a baseball game the other day, it's businesses, but the numbers are awesome.  So go figure. It's kind of irritating. Like, they never really buckled down very hard, not like we did. And yeah, their numbers are so great. It's like, what? Something's wrong there. You want to see more sick people in Texas? Is that what you're saying? I do not. No, I absolutely do not. All of my favorite, or a lot of my very favorite people are there. Look at how pretty Sharis freezes, Tom. That is one way that she does it. No, it does not. Her mother never freezes like that. And actually, Tom, you do freeze pretty well. No, I'm usually like scratching my nose or digging my ear or something. I did see a couple of things coming through. Great. Awesome. I'm so glad. Well, Sharis going to come back. Just let me give you guys a heads up. For those of you that don't know, Sharra, my clients moving back to Texas, I clean for today. Cool. Well, I know a lot of good cleaning companies in Texas. Linda, if you need a referral, depending on where they're moving to. But I know a ton of great cleaning companies. But the reason why I was bringing Sharra on, for those of you that don't know, is that she is, has been the top sales person at her company for, I don't know, less, maybe five years or so. I hate to neat. And she sells millions. Do you remember how many millions of dollars Tom? She sells so much and electric fencing, right? And they don't actually sell it. They rent it, I guess. And so that's why I wanted to bring her on, because she has, her company is a very large company, and they put a lot of time, energy, effort and resources into continued training through COVID, sales training, and helping her to see whether, how are we going to be making some shifts? What are we doing? And I was like, well, our company should be doing that too, just because, you know, we're little. A lot of times we do things late. But why? There's no reason for us to be making those changes late. The big companies are doing it. Darn it, we need to jump on that too and get, get on those trends. If the big companies are seeing that they have to sell differently, and they do a lot of B2B, but they also do business to customer as well. So I thought, we might as well take a page out of their book and, and start doing the same thing. And, you know, I mean, a year ago, we started talking about unprecedented events and talked about a lot of them. We're not done with unprecedented events. We're starting to see it, you know, in the labor market and, you know, just the price of everything and the whole dynamic of, you know, a lot of money floating around out there. What's worked for us in the past? Is it necessarily going to work for us in the future, or at least work as well as it should or could? And now is the time to really be looking for, for ways to, to adapt and change. Yeah, absolutely, Tom. So you're speaking to my presentation today. Hey, Leslie, hey, Danit. Yeah, you're speaking to the presentation today. Today's presentation is more, I was hoping we'd be able to do it by Zoom and have more interaction, but you all know how to type. So I'm going to be, we're going to be talking a little bit about what, you know, what selling is going to be like after the crisis. Yay, Leslie. I'm happy for you. Super happy for you. And, and we're going to be getting your insights into other ideas. So it's going to be a little bit of a brainstorming session, as well as a presentation. Okay, so we want to just move forward with this thing here, Tom. Absolutely. We'll try. We're going to try. We're going to share one of Liz's screens. It's easier with two monitors. You mean, you mean Michelle's screen is one of two. Michelle's screen. All right. I see it down there in the queue. Bam. All right. So selling after the crisis is the title. And I know that we are not after the crisis at this point in time, but we are after enough that we are able to start making some changes. We're probably a little behind the gun there, right? Like I was saying with, with Sharers Company, they're making, they've been making changes all along. So the first thing that I want to talk about is, now remember we're talking specifically about sales. Hey, Tisha, is that you need to evaluate your entire sales process. So all of the things that you've been doing and thinking up until now are, should be up for evaluation. We talked a little bit about this last week, Tom, with regards to employees, right? You've got to go through your hiring process with a fine tooth comb. Looks like Leslie made some changes too. So yeah, congrats. I know three of them. That's amazing. But same thing with, with sales. So I have three up here that I think that are kind of obvious, but I wanted us to brainstorm what a couple more might be. Let's talk about these first three. So target customer, Tom, do you think, do you think that our target customer has changed in any way since COVID started? Yeah, I would say it's changed or at least, you know, the market shifted a little bit. You know, certainly there's a much more of an awareness as to how cleaning can affect health, right? Yeah, I think people are looking more at that. I think a lot of cleaning companies didn't, didn't have health and safety so much even on their, on their radar. Their target customers were, and you heard it a lot, was busy, busy families, right? So the people that they were looking to help and looking to clean for were people that were very, very active. Their kids did a lot of outside of the home stuff that they worked outside of the home. That customer is different now, y'all. There are not a lot of people that have their kids in a ton of recreational things. Their kids aren't in school four day or five days a week all day long. They're, they're not as busy. So talking about your customers and for sure on the B2B. So talking about your customers or thinking about your customers in terms of giving back their time and some of the things that we've focused on a lot in the past, that's different nowadays. Hey, Lava, long time to see. You look, you look good though. So yeah, so we're talking about the different evaluations, Lava, that we need to be doing. The first one is just the target customer. You and I had talked about the, the main thing that cleaning business owners have been talking about for years and years and years is what is the big message, you know, give back your time. But that's not as much of a message that people are looking for now. That's, that people aren't stressed out about time like they were in the past. A lot of people aren't working. A lot of people aren't taking their kids all over the place. So target customer has changed in that way that what they're, who they are is different and the people that are looking for cleaning are different now too. Back in the day, I would say even just like a year ago, here in Missouri, they are, oh, they are maybe back in school at least four days a week. We still have all our competitive sports going on and you know too, because you have baseball, right? She owns a football company. Is that such a thing as a football team or how does that work? I'm not sure. Anyway, so yes, there are still people that are busy. But that's, that's not the only thing that's out there anymore. So just evaluate who your target customers are. What we did was just looking at the customers that we had before we found that our customers, our concerns, their pains are different now. And so that's the second thing. What are the pains today? Yes, we, nine competitive baseball organization. Yeah, so that's a great tagline. That was, is even more for sure useful now than it was in the past. And you got to jump up on everybody with this one, Leslie, because people know you as people that are using science to clean for health for a long time. Where not everybody else so much. And my one girl, the soccer and one is in softball. Yeah, we don't have that here yet. So, so the reason why I'm not suggesting on any of these slides that you need to change for this one reason is because I don't know if you do. This is an evaluation page because you need to evaluate these things in your area. Has your target customer change? Are there opportunities for other customers for you? That's what that third is about. The second one is what's the pain? So in the pain and in the past, as we talked about, the pain was people didn't have enough time maybe to be able to get their cleaning done. They just didn't. And they didn't have inclination to do it either. But now what's the pain? Who's got some ideas? What are the pains now? I can give you the first jumping off one. We got our house cleaned and a big thing for us since COVID is, we're home a lot. I just don't want to be in a dirty home that much. There used to be, you didn't spend a whole lot of, or we didn't at least, our weekends are usually out and doing things and going places. But now that we're homebound, the house is dirtier. And I don't want to be in a dirty house. So I need it cleaner than I've ever needed a house before. Okay, so you need more cleaning. So, Lava, are you like potentially even in the market to have your house cleaned more often? We would do more often. We're at every two weeks right now and that seems to be working up pretty nicely. But we didn't have a cleaner at all for a while. Yeah, that's really Grand Hog's day. They're constantly into everything. Just my toddler destroys my house daily. So it's nice to have it. And we look forward to our every other Thursday, very, very much around here. That just FYI, a quick plug there. You have Demi Baku coming out there, don't you? Yeah. I know. She loves them. So just a quick plug for Demi out there. Anybody, somebody here said they needed somebody to clean in Texas. If you're around Flower Mound, we got your company. Okay, so the pain is, one of the pains that's a little bit different is people are home now, which they were before. I mean, some people were, but not as much. So there are working parents that are home now. We've all read in the paper and the news. We've all seen it everywhere that since people started going virtual, they're not all going back. Businesses are empty because people are able to work from their home. But if they're able to work from their home, they have a different pain now, right? Their houses are dirtier. They're there. They also want their space clean, but they don't really like to be in your space a lot of times. So one of the pains also might be they don't want to have one person in their house all day long. So if you're a solo, if you have solo model, how are you going to overcome that? Because a lot of people also have the pain of not wanting a lot of people in their house, right? Because they don't want to be exposed to other problems. So we have some conflicting pains. Like I said, I don't have the answers here. These are all things that you need to be evaluating in your company to be able to sell better to your people because selling in the same way that you've, okay, so this is tricky too. What I'm saying right now is going to sound like, Liz, I know what you're talking about. I'm closing jobs right and left. I can't staff. I've got so many people that want to get their houses clean. So it feels like I don't really have to change anything. Everything is going great. It's perfect. But y'all, people are just jumping back on. All of the bars are busy. All the restaurants are busy too. That's going to flatten back out again and people are going to start to settle in. So you have to be evaluating these things for the long term. We have a question about, do cleaning companies, they want people in and out of homes faster so are teams better? I think that depends upon what pain you're addressing. You got some clients that are concerned about that because they're working from home and they just don't need the extra distraction and get in and out quick so a team would make sense. There are others that are concerned about having anybody in their house and the fewer people, the less of a chance of spreading some infectious disease like COVID. So a solo would be preferable. So it's just kind of depends upon what pain you're addressing. And where do you live? What part of the country do you live in? If you live, where Sharra lives, she wants a team in. Bring five people into my house. Clean this thing up fast. Get them out of here. I'm not worried.  We got guns. That's different than where I live. Here, what are you doing? Five feet away from me. You're supposed to be six feet away. And your mask looks like it's right on the edge of your nose. It needs to be completely covering your nose. So this is different. I have different pains that I'm dealing with than cleaning companies do in Texas. So that's the whole point here is that you need to be evaluating your area right now and it needs to be continued to evaluate. All right. So what is your solution based on your target, your, the pains that you know of? What is the solution that you can offer? I don't think teams, it doesn't work for us. Drive time is the thing here. You know what, Leslie? I feel your pain on the drive time. I don't have it here where I am, but we've had it in another location. Drive time is a thing. I totally get that. So you've got to work with what you have as well. Right? We have to, we have to work with what we have. Now the point of this slide is just to evaluate all, all of the things. So I want to, I'm going to type here. Also, what do you guys have? Oh, oops. Didn't mean to do that. Just click right through all of the, all of the slides. I want to type on here. Tom, can I not type on here? You would have to type in the original deck. If you have that open on the other screen, you can, you can type on the one that you're showing. Well, that, that doesn't work out the way I want it to at all. If you find the little icon that's got the little PowerPoint widget in it, like in the tray, if you hover over it, it should show, you got a presentation. Well, maybe not. You might have to hit escape and type into it. Depends how you have it set up. Hmm. If I escape out of this, it's going to go away from PowerPoint. See, does that, which I know you hate. Oh, and this is not even PowerPoint. This is Google, right? Yeah, it's like Google's PowerPoint because it says Microsoft PowerPoint format. Right here. I don't know, Liz, you're on your own. Darn it. All right, well, I'm just going to have to leave this up. So what else is there, y'all? What other things do you need to be evaluating? Lava, from your perspective, what are other things that people need to be evaluating when they're thinking about selling? Because it's not just about the customer and their pain in the solution, although a big part of it is that, but what, what other things do they need to be looking at? So one is your location too, right? What other things should they be evaluating? I think, I don't know how this would be for y'all, but what I have really noticed in our industry is everyone is so, they believe so strongly one way or the other. So I have had people be frustrated with me for asking me if they are accepting, yes, yes, or, you know, can I name them coming to you for a meeting?  Why would I even offer to get on a plane and come there and possibly get their people sick? So the mentalities that you have to work with, how do people in your area and location, like you said, how do they really think? Like you said in Washington State, all day and then it is here in Texas. Might be different. Okay, so like your local beliefs, what are you dealing with in your area and your people? I did read on professional house cleaners, there was a post, I think it was yesterday, and somebody was saying that the business owner came with her employee and the employee walked in and didn't have her booties in her hand. And the owner of the company said, I think I'm getting this right, I might have, you know, the game of telephone. You mean her shoe covers? Yeah, did you read that? What did I say? You said booties. She covers booties. Shoes covers. In the theater professional house cleaning. We're going with shoe covers Tom, but I do believe she said booties, but we'll go shoe covers. And she, I believe she told her employee that she was going to have to go out to the car and get some. And the customer said, you know, no, you just need to leave. I need a professional company if you don't know how important it is and your people don't understand how important it is to walk into my house with the correct protective equipment, then you're not the company for me. And she was complaining in the group that this lady is ridiculous. The thing that was very interesting y'all is that normally when a cleaning business owner goes into a group and complains about how ridiculous a customer is, everybody jumps on board and says, yeah, she's terrible. We're lucky. Fire her. You know, blah, blah, blah. But in this scenario, people were on the client side. They're like, hey, sorry. You need to be, you need to be responsible. You need to be prepared. You need to go in. That's different. That doesn't happen very much. That does not happen. I've been seeing a lot of these little things happening, which is making me, those are the things that are making me say, evaluate y'all, evaluate all of the things, evaluate where are your customers? And that was the other thing I really wanted to put in here. Where are they location? Where are they going? As well. Where are they hanging out? Where are they going? What are they doing? So not just where they live, but where are the things? What are the things that they're doing now? They're not all going to the gym anymore. A lot of them have, Peloton sales have gone skyrocketing because people aren't going to the gym. People are bringing their gym to their home. So what can that tell you?  Is there anything else that you guys think I need to be adding to this slide? Well, in a COVID-19 world, and this is kind of becoming, you know, hopefully less of an issue here shortly, but there was a time when we were really concerned about the health of the client. We were evaluating, you know, did anybody in their home not feeling well? Anybody got a fever? And if we thought there was any chance that anybody in their home had COVID, we wouldn't want to. Yeah. And, you know, one year ago, if somebody would have said, there's going to come a time when you're going to be worried about going into your customers' homes, because you don't want them to get you sick, you would have been like, please, how would we know if our customers, of course they're sick.  That's a real thing now. That's a real concern, right? So evaluating. All right, I'm going to move on. So there are four basic, maybe I'm going to move on. We'll see. Hi. I was thinking you, this is probably not the right time for it in your, in your deck, but if I were, if I were in y'all's industry, I would be thrilled about this. I know it's been really rocky in the last year for sure. And it's been terrible and difficult. But really, for us and a lot of our friends, it has gone from like, Oh, that's what absolute people do. And it's a luxury to know you need to do this for the health and safety of your family and anyone that comes into your home. It has moved from being a luxury to almost a necessity, which we have never, I mean, I worked with my mom since I was 14. We never had that. It's never been a regular job. We need to have their house cleaned for the safety of their families. Like this is a huge, it's extraordinary. Yeah, it really was people that had had money to spend. Now people are finding money that they might not have had before. Yeah, you're at the perfect spot here. So the, the main pipeline that we use when we're talking about sales is this ADA idea, the ADA pipeline, where it's awareness, interest, desire, and then action, right? You're trying to push people through this pipeline. And the first, the first one is awareness. And what are they aware of? What are they, what are they thinking of? What are they caring about? What are they noticing about cleaning companies, your cleaning company, other cleaning companies out there in the world? What are they paying attention to? And safety and health, just like you said, Lava, that is, that is just top of mind for people right now. Because in the past, it was more of a luxury. Now it feels more like I can't afford not to get my house cleaned. It's a safety issue. And I've got to keep people healthy. Do you guys agree with me here? There's a segment of the market that feels that way for sure. It does, right? And different. And Char, you're even saying that in Texas. So I'm thinking, you know, even in Texas, seriously, what about Florida? I'm wondering about Florida. Yeah, I don't even care in Texas.  Fits a lot of self-care for mamas that have an overflowing plate. Yeah. And there's a lot going on. And it's scarier now for, you know, for a lot of people, mamas thought they could do it all. They had the training, right? Their moms taught them how to clean. They knew how to clean. But now that, like, people are, their safety and their health is at risk, it feels like they need to know more. So we can use that to our advantage. Another thing that they can be aware of is that we can use to our advantages. And Leslie, we talked about this as education. They're looking now for certification. Nobody cared if you were certified before. I'm sorry. But five years ago, they didn't even know what that meant. What is certification? But now certification actually means something. They're like, oh, they're certified. Oh, they know how to clean. Oh, so they know the difference between sanitizing and disinfecting. That means something now. Two years ago, I don't care. Now, can you come or not? Can you be here on Tuesday or not? That's what I care about, right? Was availability. But now they do care about education. They want to know, who out there knows the stuff? Who out there has the right training? Who out there preach? Yes. So what else? What else are they aware of, you guys? I think I can type over here now. I don't know if this is awareness necessarily. But for a lot of us down here too, working from home means that you're never really done working. Because at eight o'clock at night, if something needs help, your office is in your house. So your days feel longer. And whereas I can pop out and do a little laundry, because everyone's in my house, that's difficult. It's difficult to get it in the washer and then in the dryer and then hung up. The process is difficult because I don't have four hours at night where it's time to do house stuff. My work leads into that. So would I put that here under awareness, Leva, that they are aware of who's in the house or how long or what do you think? You know, I don't know that it goes in this particular area. But I think it was a quiet moment and I thought I didn't say I probably forgot. I think that they have a strong desire to have somebody in there so that they can. So the time thing is going to matter. It sounds like they are going to have a strong desire to be not working. To be able to get time off, which is different. Getting time off is different than finding the time to clean.  So it's different now. They know the difference between a professional cleaner and someone is just doing it as a side job. I agree. I think that they're going to be aware of that. They're going to be paying attention to the that there is a distinction. I think in the past when you said you were a professional house cleaner, and maybe not in the real recent past, but in the past when you said you were a professional house cleaner, it was like, isn't that cute? She gave herself a fancy name. But I think now there's a chance that professional house cleaner actually means something. Doree, you say, Tom? No. I mean, this kind of ties into the idea when it wasn't about how when it was just about making things look good, then it was kind of a commodity. But you mentioned the whole health aspect of it. So they're aware of the market and they're aware of pricing. And money isn't as much of an object as it used to be in a lot of markets in the minds of a lot of consumers. They will pay a premium for for a higher value service. Yeah, I like that too, as far as awareness to pricing. I'm going to put that on here too, because I do think that that is something that is really matters to them in a different way. So in the past, we did find where people thought that they just and out cleaning was the same. So just get the cheapest cleaning company you could. But that's not the same now. It's different. And if you use that to your advantage, knowing that they're thinking that now, then use that. How can you use better terminology? How can you use words like shoe covers instead of booties? How can you say cleaning clogs or microfibers instead of rags? What can you do to elevate yourself and your behavior and your professionalism so that people can see that you really are a professional versus this low charging person that maybe doesn't maybe doesn't get paid as much because they're not worth as much. I also really like what Patricia says here about cleaning supplies. You know, back in the day, it was kind of funny, people would say, what are you using to so what kind of cleaning products would you use? And people wouldn't say this to me all the time. They're like, they want to know. I said, I've got a test for you that I think you'll find they don't care as much as you think they do. Ask them this. So they would say, well, what are you using on my house? And we would I would ask this question, what do you want the brand name or do you want to know what type of cleaning? The response 99% of the time was, oh, yeah, I don't know. Well, um, yeah, uh, and they've asked me a different question because they really don't care, didn't care what you're using to clean. If we told them we were using professional grade products, they're like, oh, yeah, that's what I wanted to know. They didn't know what they wanted to know. They just thought they should ask now they know what they want to know. Are you using a true disinfectant? Are you using it correctly? How, how are you cleaning my house? And are you cleaning it? So that's really good. Back in the day, a lot of times they were looking for the answer green. So you can say, we use some professional products and they go, are they green? Oh, yes, they're green. Good. Yeah, good enough. Because people were trying to make it more of a statement than, than anything. Let's see, also social distancing, cleaning while we're in the same room, we would be in a different also, what is the steps we take? Oh, yeah, what about if the cleaner is sick too, right? Professional cleaners, you have a, you have something in place, you have a plan in place for how that's going to happen. They're, they're going to expect that you can't send the same person to their house every single time because what if she's sick? And you're taking unnecessary precautions, not only with the PPE, but doing the surveys every day and making sure that, you know, at least, you know, you're, you're doing everything you reasonably can to make sure that everybody's healthy before sending them out in the field. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And then Leslie is saying vocabulary. Yep. You guys know I preach on this all the time, right? So I'm glad. I'm glad other people agree with me on that. Let's see. What, what is the next slide is not going to come up for me. I know it's interest. There you go. Interest. All right. So the interest part is what are they interested in? What, when they're looking for a cleaning company, what interests them about you? And this is a little bit different than awareness because this is, awareness is what they're kind of noticing and they're paying attention to. And they might not even know that it's impacting them. Like if you drill them on it and ask them about it, they might know, but they're not actively looking for a lot of those things. They're just being influenced by these things that the awareness factors. But the interest is things that they're actively interested in that they're looking for. Would you agree with that, you guys? Absolutely. Yeah. And so these are the three that I came up with just as the top that I really wanted to talk about. The first they're interested in making the correct choice.   But now people are very, very concerned with hiring somebody. They're interested in finding a company that they can trust and that they're interested in making the right choice. Yeah, Linda, great.  Of course. I call that the first question. If I don't want to ask the cleaning service. Yeah, that's good. And then how, how are they looking? This has not really changed very much. People are still looking at reviews. Business to business though. I was reading in HBR, if you guys love this magazine, close magazine, HBR. So I was reading in here that one of the things is people are expecting more from their reviews. So in the past, they're like, pop up the reviews. And they're like, yeah, yeah, look, what are the worst reviews? What are the best reviews? How does the company handle it? Now they're digging into them more. They want to see the worst reviews first. And they're reading every response. They're reading every bad review. They're not reading like the two bad reviews and then two good. No, they're reading every single bad review. And they want to make sure that you're handling them well, that you're handling those things well, perfectly. So the a lot of big businesses too, from what I heard, and I know, Sharon, you're probably guys are dealing with this, the customers are looking for better proof than what they've looked for in the past, just because somebody writes it on Google. Yeah, that's good, because that's all I have, but they're looking for better. If they can get a personal review from somebody they know their words, and that's always had more weight, but now it has even more weight than it has held in the past, because they're less trustworthy right now. So that's kind of a big one, I thought. Another thing that they're interested in, which we've never heard about in the past, is continuous improvement. They want to know that your company is staying up on the new stuff now. That wasn't a thing before, just come in, clean my house, give me the same price, if you have to raise my house my price once a year, okay, fine, but really they're not expecting you to improve anything, improve any of your processes. Now they're looking for that. Now people are interested in, are you staying abreast of the news? Are you paying attention? Are you following what the, like Shari, you were saying earlier, are you following like the mandates, like the booty shoe cover lady, professional house cleaners, right, where even the professional house cleaners are saying, you got to be better. You got to be getting better. You got to be improving and paying attention. So I think that's huge. Did you guys agree? That's interesting. I like to think it's true. I'm not sure if I've seen that personally, but at least put it in the context of continuous improvement. But it would make sense, you know, you wouldn't have to twist my arm to convince me of that. A more educated consumer. Yep, more educated. And they don't want to feel like they know more about cleaning than you do now. They want someone that knows what they're doing. And so they're expecting you to be getting better, not just staying the same. So I think you have an opportunity, or we have an opportunity to show that we're on top of the changes. When new materials are coming out, when somebody gets brand new flooring, what do we usually do? Okay, you got a new floor now. And so we're going to charge you more. I say again, but I think it's an opportunity. So instead of you got new countertops, whatever, we can talk about what, what type of countertop that they, their new countertop is, the correct process, we know how to clean it. This is what we'll be using moving forward on cleaning your new countertops, you know, we have an opportunity to show them that we are staying abreast of what's, what's changing and as things are moving. What I would say too is, as a consumer, I, I know that I really need to have more information. I need thought leadership is what I expect now out of my cleaning people. I expect them to tell me what's going on. Hey, we are focused on this right now. This is what's really, we're seeing out there. This is really important to your safety and your health. I really need to feel like you have the impression and you're giving it to me. I don't have the time to research and help up everything. I don't know. I would never start. So I need the thought leadership behind people staying on top of what is happening locally and nationally. And so you've, you want to feel like we're managing it so you don't have to. I need that. Yeah. Okay. And I like that you say that you, you need that Lava, instead of just that it would be nice to have, you know, that, but that's, you're looking for that. And that was not true two years ago. Right. Two years ago I worked with you. I had cleaned houses my entire life. I don't clean the house. What I needed was, I needed someone, now though, I need somebody to come in and be like, Hey, because of these strains and what's going on out there with all the sickness, you really have to teach me the difference between disinfecting and sanitizing a year ago. So I need that. All right. Are you, are you noticing any need for continuous improvement in your company? It's hard to know if there's any, my, my BP is very continuous improvement oriented. We haven't had anything to say the same for about six months. Nothing is ever the same very long. So I don't know if the need is external or if it's just a visual part of our culture at this point. Since you guys have always been doing it, nothing's really changed. I'm not sure. Actually, I'm sorry. We didn't ask that question, Liz. I thought you were talking about ragmops cleaning. No, no, no. Yeah. I'm glad that we clarified that. I'm not talking about ragmops. I was actually talking about Amarok, which is an amateurist company. And then the other thing that they're interested in dealing with is they've got kids at home. So they're interested in who is going to be around their kids. And we, we, I think we have in the past known that what we look like and how we carry ourselves and, you know, how we act and how we speak, et cetera matters. But I think it matters a lot more with people having their kids in the house and them being in the house a lot more. They're paying more attention to who's coming to clean. Is it, you know, do you have, are you sending three men with baggy pants and facial tattoos in the clean my house? Because that's going to be a different scenario.  And so I think they're going to be more interested in uniforms and, you know, the appearance. I think they will be more interested in, you know, what do we, what do we call it when we have different color clogs for different areas of the room cause contamination and those types of things. I'm happy as a client. Some clients are hesitant to complain for concern that cleaners will get this fund. That not, yeah, that's still a thing. I don't, I don't see that changing any, anytime soon, except to say that they might want them disciplined when it comes to their health and safety. All right. That could be a twist. I don't know. Anything else that you guys see that they're interested in currently that they might not have been interested in before? Just point of information. We've got about five more minutes. All right. Oh, goodness. I forgot that we were going to try and do the other thing too. But oh, well, so much for that. Well, I'm going to move past the interest slide just so we can hit the desire slide real quick. Maybe try. And I'm just going to go over them real quick. So you want to be thinking about desire. What do they desire? What are they, what is the main thing that's going to get them to the point where they're like, oh, now I want this company, this company is, I don't have to worry with them. All of the things that we talked about before, it's making them feel like, yes, I don't have to worry now. I'm doing right by my feet. What are the other things that they're desiring from you? And it might still be in your area might be like Trish was saying in her area, they still need time, right? That they're going to give me back time. Maybe. What else? What else in the back time? What else are they, are they desiring in your area? So looking forward for that. And then the last thing I really want to talk about here is action because we only have four minutes. Really want to hit this slide is the action needs to be different here. So it doesn't need to be, but my guess is you probably have an opportunity to have different action. We were talking about a few weeks ago how people are someone to communicate with absolutely, absolutely, which is kind of where I'm going to right now, Linda, too. A few weeks we were talking about how things are starting to trend toward people wanting in-home estimates again. That was not a thing for the longest time, but what is that? What's driving that? What's driving people to begin to seek the in-home estimate again? It's the connection that they are trying to really get that right person, the right company, make the right decision, get the person that they can trust. They're looking for that again. And so one of the things for connecting better is get your face out there. If you haven't been using videos, maybe start using videos. Don't forget that nowadays a huge percentage of the population is very, very comfortable with a Zoom meeting. Everybody's comfortable with Zoom right now, so there's no reason not to pop on a quick Zoom call to go over what they want. So we used to only have the option to do bids by, we either did them by in-person, we did them on the phone, or we did them by our website, right? They could get like a quick one. But we have another option now, y'all. We have this Zoom option where we can talk to people, we can connect with them, we can find out what they really want, we can meet their needs. You're going to have a hard time having somebody else take that job away from you. It's the best of both worlds from the phone and the in-home. We can sort of marry those two. And people are willing now. They might not, they weren't willing to a year ago. They didn't know what that was. They know what it is. A lot of our customers now have been doing Zoom meetings. I think you're going to be hard-pressed to find anybody, any of our customers that haven't done at least a couple of Zoom calls in the last year about something. Even the doctor, right? If you need to go to the doctor before you go to the doctor, you go to the phone, they check out your Owie and they tell you whether or not you need to come in. So people are used to doing Zooms. I was talking to someone about in-home estimates over the weekend, video phone app to talk to them from the start. Is there a time, a video phone app, do you know what you might be thinking about there?  I think if people are dealing with their, if they have iPhones, I don't know how you find out about that. But if they do, I think they might be interested in doing FaceTime. That could be, that could be a thing. People are not loving their email. They're not loving a phone call, right? They're not loving having to pick up a phone and talk with someone. But Zoom call for this purpose feels like they're doing something professional house cleaner again. Answering their calls by video when they first call for a quote. I like that idea. When they first call, if you can answer by video, I like that. So they're actually talking to you right off the bat and they're seeing you at the same time. I think that could be, that could be a better picture for you. So the point here under action is look for how you can take bigger, better action in your sales process and how can you get involved, right? I also really quickly, just because I got Robin on here, hey Robin, Robin is brand new to the MMA groups today, Tom. So hey Robin, welcome, Denny. I've seen him in there. So hi to Robin. Hey Charlotte, thanks for coming on here today. I'm sorry that we're a little bit wonky on this call, but I appreciate your help. Yeah, thank you so much. This was good material. Some of the technology aspects of it. We need to tweak a little bit, but we'll get the Zoom thing going here within the next week or so. Sounds good. You guys, if you have any questions, get us up later. Talk to y'all soon. Talk to Wednesday. We're going back Wednesday. We're going to be continuing sales. Our topic on Wednesday is going to be sales processes, best practices. You know, we're going to be talking about CRMs and, you know, sometimes the most complicated solution isn't really the best solution. We're going to be talking about the sales process that all sales aren't created equally either. And the idea is to get sales that create the most, you know, value, the most profit, the most lifetime value of a client. So we're going to be talking about those two aspects on Wednesday. Matt Ricketts is going to be our guest. He's going to be helping us through that. So we'll see you Wednesday, five o'clock Eastern, smart business moves. Till then, bye bye. Bye y'all. Hope you feel better, Lava. Thanks. Bye y'all. Thanks for having me.


I can recall that Playboy article coming out, and people come up to me and said, have you seen Playboy? It says he's done it. He did it. The deny detector says he's done it. It's got to be a damaging thing. What happened with that lie detector test? Well, first I think you'd have to start with the Playboy interview. I had two interviews with him. I was just supposed to have one. I had the first one here right where I'm at now. And that was more of a sensible interview. It was what I call a net question. But after I escaped and come back, then they returned the original author. I think his name is McKinley, James McKinley. And he had a senior editor, Gonzales, with him. And that's when they started bringing up the lie detector and all that. And asking what I consider net questions about would you kill a guard to get out of that tension? You know, it's difficult to answer that type of questions. But anyway, I agreed to take the lie detector test on the grounds. Now everything I'm telling you now is on tape with Playboy. On the grounds that, I mean, providing that they would take the same time the committee did. Because I didn't promise the committee I would take one. But before I took one, I was going to do some research and read up on it, just like it would psych out for anything else. But they wanted a test before the committee got it. So apparently, Kershaw, he agreed to it. And they came down here. And at that time, I was in the hallway. And they gave me the test. Now I don't want to make excuses for it.  There are certain things that I learned later that shouldn't have conditions. I shouldn't have took the test on it. For instance, we interrupted frequently. It was hot in the room and all that. And all that affects your blood pressure and things. But I think the main... You had headaches, too. Some mentioned that you were taking aspirin. And I don't know whether that affects the test or not. No, that's not supposed to affect it. The only thing that affects it is interruptions. Because the interruptions are all over your blood pressure and hot room. Now I read the text of the company put it out. Reed, John Reed, I think it is. And there's a lot of... They use a lot of strategy, I guess you can call it, but... You wish you hadn't taken it? Well, not particularly. I think after reading the books, I don't think that... Initially I thought it was going to be damaging, but after I read four polygraph books and it didn't seem all that damaging because it's not all that exact. And once you read a book, you can't beat the test. But you can keep them from beating you. For instance, you can learn how to breathe with normal things like that. So the conditions have a lot to do with it. And I feel that those conditions were particularly good at that time for that particular test. Yeah, but I wouldn't discredit the test just on those conditions, although I suspect the Reed Wood polygraph firm. But I think where I made a mistake on it, like I mentioned, is not reading the text. Because once you read it, you're more comfortable and you know how to... How do we act and what to expect, I guess? Well, you're just more comfortable because you know how the machine operates. Well, you take another one or has this turned you off, lie detector? No, I'm going to take one with the committee. But I'm going to go into more depth with the committee. For instance, I think there's been allegations that I mentioned King and prison and all that and Kennedy and all that. Well, I'm going to have... Well, two questions would be if I ever had any recollection of ever mentioning either of them until I was arrested. And that probably would be... I think there's none allegation that I took. But your answer to those questions would be that you had not. Yeah, I have no recollection of it. The story says...  You're true or false? That's false. That's not on the tapes. See, Kershaw made... Attorney Jack Kershaw made tapes and Playboy made tapes. And I asked Kershaw, I said, did I say something like jokingly? And he called him, he listened to his tape and said it wasn't on there. So... Now the rest of the questions, I don't know... I think they added... they might substitute a yes for a yes or a yes and something like that. Well, do you feel damaged by the article to the extent that you might try to file some legal proceedings against them? I did file a suit in Niceville. I mean in Knoxville. But Jack Kershaw, the attorney, he would suggest I would do it. And I did and I think now Mark Lane's going to. And if he don't, why I will. Jack Kershaw, we're told, got a lot of money for this.  Well, I know there's money involved because when they come down the polygraph test, it was mentioned in money. But I don't know just how much. I know it's between ten and twenty thousand. But... You don't care about the money particularly, although it had to disturb you a little bit. No, I'm not concerned about the money. I've never taken any money from... What concerned me about it is the article. See, they had a contract original with me. It's an informal contract. We...  We thought we... We didn't say they thought we said or something of that nature. And that never did happen. They just went ahead and published what they had, what they wanted to. So Jack Kershaw is out of the picture, because of that, partially because of these t-shirts that ticked you off pretty good. You've had thirteen attorneys. You must wonder if there's anyone around you can live with. That's really not quite correct. I've had attorneys a quarter point, and I never even spoke to them. For instance, when Percy Forman, he had a quarter point of two attorneys to public defenders. Well, I never did speak to them, but of course now they're on the record as me firing them. I did hire more of them. One attorney, two attorneys, Bernard and Festerwald and James Bazaar, they represented me seven years. And they got me firing them. Well, usually when a suit runs out, that's it, there's no more firing them. But I know all these stories that, you know, we've fired thirteen attorneys or something. You've studied an awfully lot about the law where you've been in here, as I understand. You're very studious in that particular area. And someone mentioned to me that Tennessee law says that when a new trial motion is filed and the trial judge dies, there's automatically a new trial. Why hasn't that happened? Well, I suppose it's been a law. And as you mentioned, Judge Bantle, the trial judge did die. He died...  We had a motion from the new trial. Well, the successor judge, he ruled on the statute. Statute 17117. But the successor judge denied it. But we appealed it, and neither the Tennessee Court of Appeals, nor the Tennessee Supreme Court recognized it. So I guess we could go in there on some type of writ of error or something. You want it there? I think most people understand now that there was no conspiracy in the escape that you acted on your own. You've said it time and time again, and I think everybody believes you. But what did you hope to do? They mentioned that the trial that you wanted to break out of prison, to break into a courtroom, that's a poetic way of putting it, but that's it? Of course, the main thing in escaping prison is to naturally get out of the penitentiary room. But of course, I did have it considered several times. If I should have been able to got out, I could have... It would have been extremely difficult for me to stay out long and two or three months. There was a possibility that I could have some intermediary contact Griffin Bell now. Griffin Bell can't give me a trial, but he can recommend to the courts through some type of friend of the court brief or something that they'd act favorable on any petition I would file seeking a new trial. But of course, I never did get that for. You just were frustrated. You just felt nothing was happening and you wanted to try to get something moving, is it? I don't know if frustrating is the right word. There's really two things going to escape plus the possibility of working out some kind of arrangement. Bell, because Mr. Bell, he's mentioned several times he wants to get this cleared up one way or another. And of course, I would too, one way or the other. But a lot of this has to do with declassifying some FBI files. You feel there's a lot of suppressed information that nobody is talking about. Well, I know there's, I think a lot of these information has been put under seal in Washington, D.C. I think Judge, or the judge of Federal Judge Smith, I believe his name is, he's some SCLC members of file suit saying there's personal things in there. But I've suspected the FBI or the Justice Department has put a lot of other things in that personal. You mean personal things involving Dr. King? But I think that's a cover Dr. King. But anyway, I wrote this SCLC representing Philadelphia and I wrote the committee and I told them if there's anything in there personal as far as I was concerned they could destroy it, you know, in the forthwith. As long as we could get a transcript of the items in there it wasn't personal. So I haven't heard anything from the committee yet but I think they're like favorite one.  Do you have any inkling or any idea what they might contain? I don't have any idea. I know the church committee come up with a bunch of files that was damaged to the FBI and everything that's damaged to me has been published in Time Magazine publications like that so I know there's nothing there damaged to me so it must be a favorite one. You figured there wouldn't suppress them if there was nothing there. You've spent a lot, well you're in administrative segregation here now and we're talking about your life in prison if we're talking about an escape, I'm sure. You've spent so many years in solitary and it's taken a toll. Do you feel that it's taken a tremendous toll on you physically, emotionally, mentally? I think while you're in there it takes a toll on you. You seem like you're aged and get nervous but I always seem to recuperate a couple weeks after I'm out. I know I was in three years straight one time and I had to get out and do an exercise and stuff back to normal. How do you get in shape? Do you drink fruit juices or what are you talking about? Exercise more sun. Little sun, fresh air seems to work. You're pretty well content here at Brushy Mountain. You certainly don't want to go to a federal prisoner or have I heard that incorrectly? No, you may have too many. First of all, I'm not a federal prisoner and once they get you in there they can keep transferring around. You may be in four or eight hours one day and usually state prisons you have more access to legal material and things. Federal prisons have a good propaganda system but that's about it. I'd rather be in just about any state prison, a federal prison. You're afraid to try to do something to you? Federals? Well, FBI, they use these informers. They might throw something when you're asleep or something but there's really no reason me going to federal prison because they've tried this two or three times. In 1973 I think it tried to send me to a mental institution in the federal Springfield. Springfield, Missouri? Springfield, Missouri, yes. You fought that? Yes, I beat that one. It's clearly against the law. We have a law that says they can't transfer you out of the state against your will. Are they actively trying to do that? They were trying to do it and while they were trying to do it they knew it was against the law but they figured they could get away with it as well. We're talking with Warden Lane and he was talking about the FBI swooping in here at the time of your escape. They were after you, that's all that they were concerned about. You figure that the same way, don't you? Yes. And if they found you, what do you think they would have done? Do you have any of that? Do you think the FBI wants you dead in two extreme statements? I know they arrested one escapee named Larry Hacker and they beat him up trying to make him tell them where I was at. Well, he didn't know where I was at anyway because when we escaped we all went in different directions. But I don't know whether they wanted to do something to me or just, you know, get all the glory for bringing me in. But the FBI has harassed me. That's been going on for a long time. My brother, John, they got him down there 17 years and the guy that supposedly, the guy that played guilty robin got 18 months. Arrassing Carol back in St. Louis? I understand they burglarized her house, sister's house. This troubles you a great deal, doesn't it? Uh, yes, I, uh, you mean all these various harassment things? Yeah. Well, I think it's kind of lightened down now because there's no one to arrest. They've either got him in jail or... We were mentioned about taking your father back to prison. Yeah, well that was before I entered the guilty play. He'd escaped from my way or something. There was going to hold him back up. Well, I never did say anything about that and go about a year ago because I thought they might do it. I talked to the house committee and they said if anyone was arrested on the 18 case, but just, you know, harassment were they considered obstruction of justice. At least that's the way I understood them to say. Okay, put a little black between there and we'll go on to Memphis here for a minute. Okay, I'm still going. When you were brought into Memphis, your attorney, your attorney now, Mark Lane, says that there was, I think he was using the word torture. There was some conditions there in the penal institution that I'd like to explore with you a little bit. Keeping lights on all the time, that kind of thing. Can you describe that for me? Yes, I think when I came back, you mean when they extradited me from London? Yes. Well, yes, they did have a special one. They called it a vault fixed up. They had a steel place that would win this and they had these TVs that would monitor you. Two sets of them and they would watch you 24 hours a day. Two guards in the cell block like you would. And they had microphones in there. You couldn't discuss anything with your attorney because they could pick up up on the microphones. I think the officials said they turned the microphones down when attorneys come in, but you just had to take the word on that. Consequently, we had to write a lot of notes out. But the people that fixed these up wasn't the sheriff or state of Tennessee. There were two lieutenants from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and of course you couldn't light them on 24 hours a day. You know who these lieutenants are? Well, they got their names out there. I know when I see them. Do you think it went higher? Do you think Ramsey Clark was awfully active in that area at that time? Did he have anything to do with this? Do you think? Well, the Bureau of Prisons, the justice department controls it, but I don't know what individual gave the orders. It could have been Carlson, I believe. He's had the prisons, but it wasn't an unhealthy place. I know one time I broke out of the rash and I thought I may have been poisoned or something and I finally got a blood test and tried to find out what that was and later on about five years later when we got a habus corpus and we tried to get to all these blood tests and things and they said the sheriff ordered all the records destroyed. You couldn't find these tests? No. The sheriff ordered to destroy the test for some reason. That's all on record in 1974, habus corpus ring. What would be the motive in your mind, James? Was it an attempt to just wear you down physically and mentally to get you to a point where you'd plead guilty? Do you think that was part of it? Yeah, I think that's what they do. They just wear you down gradually and you get in the space of your attorney. Of attorneys on your side it's difficult for them to wear you down but if they get control of the defense then they can more or less maneuver you into a position where you've got to go along with them at least temporarily. What happened? I think the most the incident getting more leeway was after Haynes got off the case, author Haynes the first attorney and the trial judge told me at that time that it would be no further change of console. So once I got Percy Foreman I couldn't fire him if I would have fired him I went to trial with a public defender because he got the public defender in on a case shortly after he got in on it. Did you have any feelings toward Dr. King at all before this happened? No, that's why I'm going to take this polygraph test. It's my contention that I've never Of course you can might mention President's name or something but if you had really strong feelings about that you remember. So I'm going to take the polygraph test and if I ever mention King's name or Kennedy's president I think that's the two names I've been mentioning. Up until I got arrested for the charge after I got arrested I mentioned her names then but up until then the question would be if I ever had any recollection of mentioning her names and of course if you don't I think that should indicate something. So this was King's activity and he himself was like another world you just really had no strong feelings apparently one way or the other. I think the state contention is well not state but time incorporated I used to see these various political figures on TV in Missouri and get worked up but they didn't have TV in Missouri so that's fictions. Why do you think he was killed? Have you given that any thought about the motive? Well not too much. I don't read too much you really can't get too good of information anyway of course the thing might be misleading but I had an article there somewhere where in March of 1968 I believe he changed his philosophy rather than the integration he was interested in getting economic consideration. Of course there's a lot of difference between wanting money and wanting to go on a restaurant or something like that. Do you think he might have made some of his own people angry at him for the stance change then? I mean wanting to emphasize economic I couldn't answer that you'd have to see these tapes and things like that. But you don't have a real good theory about why he was killed then? No I'm more concerned about I've heard all kinds of theories about it but I don't pay much attention to them most of them are ridiculous anyway. It took a long time to get fingerprints of you I think 17 days do you think they had him and weren't telling you they had him or do you have any idea why that was? This is a continuation of part three it took a long time to identify your fingerprints 17 days do you feel that some were lifted or some were planted or do you have any thoughts about that? I'm not I couldn't be certain Jim McKinley the playboy editor he says they can't lift them the only thing would make me suspicious of something being lifted I think there was two prints found on a beer can beer and I sell them if I ever drank beer unless it's one of the taverns by one this is because I'm in there but it did take quite a while to match the prints up I suppose they have computers I think they can match them up in a few hours and I think they took 13 or 14 days and the Missouri Pan certainly had him didn't they? Yeah but they had their own prints on a car or something I think there was some confusion I think so yes there's witnesses now that say that you were at that filling station Second and Linden you were there is that your story you were at this gas station getting a tire change or repair? Yes I had a flat tire the night before that and one time I mentioned Percy Foreman trying to get the tires evidence he never did do anything after he got the ghillie play they gave the tire to him kept the car giving the tire and the floor mats and certain items I guess I think possibly certain things would have helped substantiate my testimony So you heard the news on the radio was it the way you were? So you were driving you left that gas station in Second and Linden what about six or? I don't have any way to know about that time but I don't even know if it's Linden I know the approximate area it is I've seen the map on the inquirer And you were going back to pick up this man that you say is Raul No I just waved the car back Now the way I've recollected I've seen some police cars and people down there and I turned off the other way Now there is placements he says he's seen me and told me to get my car so out of the area I don't have no recollection of that but that could have been so bad I don't remember anything like that You were aware that you had somebody an associate at that rooming house that what they call a flop house but you weren't going back to pick him up necessarily you were just going to leave the car there I'm going to go to a movie or something Well I suppose so yes there's two movies right down the street but you know I really don't it doesn't take a whole lot of police around to get me to go somewhere else to find out what's going on especially if the police is after me to begin with So you heard all this confusion turning flipped on the radio they said Dr. Kingsman shot Did you think you were set up at that point? No I was headed towards New Orleans when I had the radio and I used to keep the radio on I think I didn't have too strong feelings about the shooting but I think 15 or 20 minutes later they mentioned the Mustang and instead of going towards New Orleans and making the phone calls I just turned left and went towards Alabama Well but you had a buddy back there didn't you know about picking him up again or didn't that cross your mind? No I didn't cross my mind yourself but you went toward Atlanta then Yes Why Atlanta? What was in Atlanta?  Yes So you were going back to pick up some of that stuff then? Yes And then you made a call to they said you had a number for an answering service in New Orleans is it? I had one yes I didn't make any call I didn't intend to make the call after seeing these commotion in the street there but I never did make the call because I didn't see any phones along the road and I heard all these reports and I forgot about telephone calls Yeah Did you feel your buddy was involved in all this police activity or did you Well he wasn't my buddy anyway there was no buddy just a financial arrangement This is the man that would give you money? Yes This is the man that you knew as Raul?  Canada And you just met in a saloon or It was a saloon in a waterfront area of Montreal You never became good friends then? No I wasn't good friends Just business These were all aliases I assume And you don't think Raul was a real name at all then? No I've got some freedom of information papers in their centers Raul, San Diego or something New Orleans supposed to be a him but I don't have the FBI that's material from the FBI if I was but I don't have no way to But this guy, this man Raul was the contact between you and the money I mean that's where the money came from I mean he paid you He paid you what like a $100 bills or? He just gave you 20s A new $20 bill I don't think it's always new I didn't pay that much attention but See at that time I thought there was no amount of money because most of my offenses were not quite Of course people are a narcotics trader or anything that's really a small time Is that what you think of as Raul's prime interest as narcotics? And some gun smuggling on the side? Well that's what I think of course the investigators think other things but I'm just talking about it and he seemed to be working out of New Orleans is that seemed to be like his home base So you went down to New Orleans a number of times? The only trip I ever made well I've been through there a couple of times picking up or meeting someone the only time I ever made a long trip I had to do it in December of 67 I drove around a trip there 36 hours trip I ever made And you get down there and did he live like in a roaming house? I never did meet anyone in any type of private establishment you may have got that out of some depositions of Percy Forman wherever I met a person would be in a tavern or public place I never did go to any of the roaming houses So like okay okay that is that is just the mob that's the mafia's way of paying is in 20's that's what they always use that's why I was curious pay everything on $20 bills okay when you get to New Orleans would you make a call and say Raul I'm here do you want to meet me someplace No I never did call him I think someone else used the answer to the phone I see Raul or something and they'd say meet him in a tavern or something I give William Bradford to you in the name of the tavern and he went down there but I don't know what would become of the best Who usually have the same tavern then Yes And so you'd go there after making the call and you'd sit there and wait and then he'd walk in We just met this tavern once it's on Canal Street but there was no series of meetings I think I just went down there two times excuse me two times on any type of business December and 67 and about three months later March of 68 So you had only been there twice but you met Raul both times No one time he'd he'd went somewhere else or something and you got to go to Birmingham I think it was the last time Well how did you and Raul get into Memphis did you come up together No We met at a motel or a new rebel I think it was and I left Atlanta Birmingham on about this thing's been so long I live Birmingham I think it's about March of 29th to 28th slowly up to Memphis and now the FBI contends I didn't do that I went back to Atlanta and after I heard Martin Luther King was going to Memphis I went from Atlanta to Memphis after I heard on Radio Atlanta but that's incorrect and I think the FBI has all my motel records from March of 29th until March of 3rd between Birmingham and Memphis But you knew that you were supposed to meet Raul and Memphis on a certain day and you did that in the morning I know it was nighttime the night before and did you spend the evening did you go out and have dinner did you what happened No that's not it got rid of the rifle that was that would have been March April 3rd did you ever sit down with authorities and make a I guess what they call a composite you know what I'm talking about were police artists or something and could make a picture of what Raul might look like did you ever do that with the police or with anybody did you ever sit down with a someone that could make a sketch or put together a picture I've never talked to you police or FBI anything I really don't tend to but I have talked to the committee and they've never suggested any composite but I showed them a picture and described the picture where the alteration should be made but I don't like to discuss too much that I told the committee because I think they're operating in sort of a private manner and I don't think I should be going into too much Well I would think that here in some a lot of this is dimmed in your memory as it would in anybody's but when this thing was hot back in the early days when you could recall Raul and see him on the street you'd know him you never did a sketch you never had a composite made back in those days they really wasn't interested I think one of my main problems in this case is they've got a circumstantial case against me it's weak when they extradited me from London and they extradited me for first degree murder and doing all the shooting and everything and nationally now they don't want to they don't want to alter that because they can't under the treaty in other words they can't try me for aiding and abetting or anything like that so they're more or less stuck with their own testimony in England Do you think their mind was made up when they got you? Well it had to be made up they couldn't well I don't know if there's any penalty for extraditing someone fraudulently or not but I think I can see their legal point where they've got to stick with their story And you stuck with your story your story hasn't changed at all No I except sometimes I'll mislead someone's I mean that's on the record when I do that Bradford Hewitt or someone like that But I I wrote everything down on paper usually when I first got arrested and get the various attorneys and Haynes and Percy Forman and I wrote a lot more for Percy Forman but he claims that he lost his file somewhere he gifted John Jay Hooker at the Nashville, Tennessee attorney and the attorney lost his file but I can't see it lawyers losing their files like that but now when he goes in court his word is taking above mine more credibility so I still have what files I had and he just built a recollection What a black in there Trying to learn a little bit more about what kind of a guy Raul might have been Was he a talkative person? Did he talk a lot or was he quiet? No there was not much talking Of course I don't talk too much either on the outside So there was not a lot of chatter or rumors, he didn't tell you jokes there was nothing like that Was it very serious business when you were with Raul? A lot of times people were on narcotics pills or something, they were kind of quiet So he might have been a user as well as maybe a pusher So he just didn't run off of the mouth much and when you got with him it was business and a lot of that had to do with the money I was pretty impressed with this money My main concern not only with him but with all the other associations was trying to get passport I was more concerned with the passport than with the money because I wanted to get out of the country and out of Canada This was before the shooting? Yes You wanted to leave this country, huh? Well I wouldn't leave Canada this country and I was I wanted to get it out of the way in Canada Australia And you thought Raul was a man that could do that could pull the strings, get the passport? Yes, I was promised passport the first trip across the border and nothing ever would come of that Do you have a lot of confidence in Raul's ability even if it wasn't an underworld sense? No, not too much after you misled a couple of times I was trying in various other ways to get passports and travel documents It wasn't just in one source In fact that's why I had plastic surgery one time I was trying to get emergency papers in California through the Coast Guard for a picture It wasn't just one relying on one one source Did Raul let you down from time to time? We just on the passports only problems But generally his word was pretty good And if he said something you usually got it Well would you take a hundred less or anything like that? Bang it was there He had it and he brought it out Playboy has quoted the Percy Forman as saying that you invented Raul to feed conspiracy theories What do you say to it? I know Percy Forman He's been What was it? Well no I won't say he's my friend He was attorney of allegedly attorney of my attorney for a while but Percy Forman he's been involved in a lot of unorthodox things when he's been attorney I think he was died here about two years ago for the Hunt family He got some documents I think he tried to bribe a witness to take a fall for something similar to what he did to me I wouldn't give Mr. Forman too much credibility for two reasons I don't want him to cause his involvement in these unorthodox legal operations but now he's lost the file and I'm positive he didn't lose it I think he's he gave the William Bradford Huey somewhere and when we had to hape his corpus here in 1974 we couldn't subpoena him because he's more than 100 miles from Memphis and that was a member of our subpoena but we invited him there to testify on a roth and he refused to show up so I really can't see how he can say things in newspapers and when comes time to talk on a roth why he will come up with some story You didn't invent Raul? No I didn't Raul was a real human being at least he was at that time he didn't know where he was from he didn't have any idea but excuse me come on in now a lot of what you hope might be beneficial to you was wrapped up in this name, Rosenson and determined that it was Randolph Irwin Rosenson and we've provided a picture of him does he ring any bells is he Raul could you tell by the picture? No not that but I really shouldn't talk about that because I think the committee asked me about that I'll give committee descriptions I can mention before I don't want to go too much about what I told the committee but I haven't given descriptions and draw maps upon the things of that nature would you feel that Rosenson might be a key in this somewhere? I wouldn't I wouldn't say that I think if I were Rosenson I'd sue Playboy for slander if something was false they used his name he's out in there didn't he? of course I'd have to get counsel advice but I wish he'd sue me so we might sue the FBI there was a report wasn't there of Rosenson being in Knoxville at the time of your escape? I read in Knoxville paper you don't know whether that's true or not though no I wouldn't you've had no contact with him now you're talking to the committee you apparently have some faith in this committee you don't view them as a threat necessarily necessarily yes necessarily I mean you think they might be on your side? well they've got a mandate to resolve these cases and I don't I think that would be on my side but I mean I don't think they're going out of their way to do me any favor of course you're at a point I guess well you don't know who to trust you don't know really I'm not concerned about trusting anyone I can tell anyone anything because I'm ready to go to trial today if we could we had a trial if this committee came in and said okay we found Raul here he is come look at him and you say yeah that's him that's the guy that was with me down there would would you be a state's witness? no I don't tend to be a state's witness but see there's certain unresolved things with the committee now Mr. Lane here well I have to discuss them with him but I don't want to speak as my own lawyer but I guess something would be worked out with the committee but I don't tend to be a state's witness and I don't think anyone could be prosecuted just like that anyway because they've done the government's done committed their case to the extradition hearing in London so I don't see how they can switch around now and say it was some other way well there's no you know statute of limitations or anything on murder I mean if Raul's the killer and they find Raul he'll still be trying they've done cues me of it so I don't know how they could switch around and cue someone else and you would be the main witness you would have to be the main witness wouldn't you? I'm going to be a witness for myself I'm not worried about the prosecution witness so you wouldn't come out and talk about Raul no I there's nothing that I can tell I mean I can tell anything that's my own witness that could for a state witness and I'm just not interested in being a state witness


So there are a team IAT which stands for I am talented. Initially, they are kind of awkward to introduce themselves because they'll be asking, oh, what team are you? I am talented. Like, you're bragging like that. So then we realized that, come on over, then we realized that this team always go out to eat, like in the middle of a session they'll just disappear, all of them, because they went for a snack.  Take it away. A very good evening to everyone. I'm so happy to see that there's such a great turnout for tech ladies graduation party. I'm sure all of you are eager to find out what I am talented has developed with the boot camp, and we are very excited to share our learning journey with all of you. Okay, sorry. Thank you. Okay, so a quick introduction to myself and the team. My name is Xia Min and over here we have Yuhan and also Li Ling, and our coach is Lawrence who has been very helpful. And also another big thank you to Elisha for organizing this amazing boot camp and as well as all of the great mentors who were very very helpful and supportive. As much as I would like to name all of them, I wouldn't want to deprive the audience of the amazing things that I am talented has done. And yes, even though we're known as the EAT team, we have a lot of things to show you. Unfortunately, no. So a quick introduction to I Am Talented. I Am Talented is a social empowerment initiative that helps students who are not doing very well in their studies and helping them with finding their passions through non-academic pathways and how I Am Talented does this is by conducting workshops. And some of the workshops include journalism, programming, fashion design, robotics, and many others. And normally these workshops would be conducted over two consecutive Saturdays and would have a turnout of about 300 students. So on the first Saturday, the students will be going through three taster workshops and the first session of a deep dive workshop. And on the second Saturday, they'll be continuing with their deep dive workshop as well as showcasing their work. As it is very important that the students are genuinely interested in the workshops that they're doing, I Am Talented has given them the opportunity to choose the workshops that they would like to attend. So typically there will be about 15 workshops that the students can choose from and out of the 15 workshops, the students will have to choose five workshops that they're interested in and I Am Talented will assign them to three taster workshops and after the students try out the three taster workshops, they would again have to choose two workshops that they're interested and then they will continue with their deep dive workshop. Because there are so many students and some workshops will be more popular than others and bearing in mind that there's a maximum workshop size of about 20 students, the process of assigning the students to the different workshops can be a hassle and since I Am Talented, it's a ground-up initiative with a core group of six people. It is important to automate and streamline the assignment process as much as possible, which is basically what my team has accomplished through the development of their web application. And now Leilin will take over to expand on how we develop I Am Talented's web application with a focus on streamlining the assignment process. Okay, so we call our application the sorting hat, which is a magical thing that helps NGOs. I Am Talented to sort students into the appropriate classes that they should be located. So we have a few stages that we went through in these 10 weeks. So we started off with doing simple stuff such as doing the sign-up form, doing the locking form, we create tables, we create a landing page and after that we move on to work on the importing of spreadsheet and reading and exporting of spreadsheet. We spend quite a bit of time in sorting because that's the stage where actually we have a few attempts to come up with a sorting algorithm that will kind of make sure that the sorting process is optimized. So in our app, this is how a user will experience our app. So the user will come to our homepage and depending on whether it's a new user or the existing user, the person will either sign up or log in and the user will then be brought to a welcome page where he or she can choose to go to either phase one or phase two. So what happens at phase one or phase two are basically similar. The user can import a spreadsheet. The data will be pulled out as a phase one preview. The user can then generate the phase one result, which is the allocated result and then export the spreadsheet and from there the user can log out. So you can go from phase one to phase two or from the welcome page. You can go into phase two directly. So here we are going to do a live demo of our app. So here we are. This is the sign out page that we are talking about. So Yuhan is going to sign out as a return user. So she's logging in. As you log in, you are being brought to the home page of I am talented the sorting app. Sorting app function. Let's go to phase one. So here at phase one, you see the tables being set up and we can add new Excel spreadsheet to this phase. So we will choose an Excel spreadsheet in Portleg and then you see that all five choices will be captured. So this is what you see on the spreadsheet and we're just printing it out on the screen for you. Once you click phase one result or generate result, either button will do. You see that the choices are being reduced to three. So from five, we go down to three. So this is where our sorting algorithm is working to make sure that the results are reduced. Phase two can achieve the same effect as well. So when we go to phase two, the same thing can happen. We can add a new spreadsheet, printing out what is already available in the spreadsheet and generate results. So you see that from two, we reduce the result to one. So this is basically how our app looks like. And from there, you can import a spreadsheet into a CSV file and the organizer can take it out from there to maybe distribute the Excel spreadsheet to the schools or the students. This is how our CSV file looks like. So I've worked you through the app. So now Yuhang will work us through the bad end of this application. Okay, so we would like to share with you guys what is happening behind our project. So this is the registration form that the organization is using. So basically we have to import and read the spreadsheet. Okay, so for this part, we use the simple spreadsheet jam. And we had so much difficulty figuring out how to use this jam at first because there's just so limited resources online that we can actually understand. So in the end, our mentor Lawrence had to teach us how to use it. And here, we learned how to use an array to organize a collection of data and use puts for debugging. So we can check the output of our codes anywhere in between our codes. Next, we also created a function to export the generated results into a spreadsheet. So this is the sorting part, which is actually the brain of our project and also the reason why we actually need to do this application. Okay, so as explained by Jia Min and Li Ling earlier, the sorting is divided into two phases. In phase one, the participants choose five workshops and then the system will automatically allocate three taster workshops to each participant. And in phase two, the participants will choose two workshops out of the three taster workshops that they actually tried. And then the system will allocate the final selection to each participant automatically as well. And so what makes the sorting so tedious on the Excel spreadsheet is actually the limited number of slots for each workshop, the constraint. And so how do we allocate the workshops to each participant? The most obvious way to ask initially was to check each participant's choices row by row and allocate the workshop to the participants if it fulfilled two criteria. So the first one is if the workshop chosen has not exceeded its maximum capacity and if the workshop is not allocated previously, we will allocate it to the corresponding participant. So it actually worked, but we realized that it's not the most efficient way to actually do the sorting. And so we decided to optimize the sorting by allocating the workshop with the least number of participants first. So as seen in the example above, it shows the five workshops that the participant A actually chose and also the workshop sizes of each of the chosen workshops. And okay, so basically we allocate the workshops that have the least number of participants currently. So as you can see, website building have the least current workshop size. And so taster one would be allocated as website building. Website building would be allocated as taster one. And similarly, the next least current workshop size is actually robotics and so taster two is allocated as robotics. And thereafter, taster three, journalism. So I'll pass the time over to Lili to share what we actually learned during the project. So in these 10 weeks, actually the three of us learned a lot of things. And I think it has been quite a long period of discovery for us as well. As we learn in a group. And the thing about the three of us is that we have very, very different approaches to the same problem. And our approaches taken is very reflective of our background and experiences. So for instance, Jianmin has background in mathematics. So when she approaches questions, she thinks about numbers, formula, equation, which are totally not the things that I would think about. Yuhan uses a lot of Excel at work. So for her, the approach is usually from the perspective of an Excel spreadsheet like roles, columns and tabs. Myself, I did history in university. So to me, coding needs to be storytelling. I need to tell myself what to do first, what to do next and last. And I will need to tell myself the story as I code. So it's like, no, like talking to oneself as you. So it's a bit like talking to yourself when you are working, which is a bit strange. So learning as a group actually really opens up to allow us to discover what we learn the best, which way we learn the best. And it's actually true learning as a group. We actually see our own strengths and see each other's strengths as well. And another thing that we pick out in this tag ladies program is that we learn a lot from teaching each other, precisely because our approaches are so different. So we really need to go down to the specific details of our approaches and to make sure that our communication is very clear. And we understand the concepts very well. And of course, in this journey of 10 weeks, we have a lot of moments of self-doubt and questioning. Like for example, when we are looking at the spreadsheet, we have no idea how to do it because there's just so limited documentation online. And for instance, when we are doing sorting, we didn't even know what algorithm works, how it works in the first place. So we have a lot. There are a lot of instances we felt that we can't do it. But eventually, we spend a lot of time.  So our team would like to leave all of you guys here with a line that we truly believe in, which is everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer. Thank you. Hang on. Let me give you a mic. Girls, in your algorithm, what happens if several workshops have the same amount of participants already allocated? What happens then? Because you showed the example where it's like three, four, five, six, seven. What happens if there are three with five participants already? How do you choose which one? Is it alphabetical or...? It's not my meaning. Now they are using the three approaches to solving that question. It might take a while. So basically, it depends on the choice they actually... how the workshops are actually ranked on the Excel sheet. So basically, if the participants on top, it will actually get the top priority. And the workshops there on the closer rows will actually also get the first priority. Because we just sought by row and... Yeah, by color of their row. Yeah. The Excel approach. So first row. Okay, I think I saw... Okay, at the back. Okay, I'll get the lady in the yellow dress and I'll come back to you. Hi. Thank you for the presentation. It was very good. Can I just check with you regarding the sorting algorithm, right? Does it mean that you actually prize users who are... so first come, first serve? In the first place, how do you even sort the Excel file? Because it seems like... Okay, for example, if there's a limited number of workshops, right? Space for the popular workshops. It means that the users who are at the top will always get the best workshops for all three choices. Then the people at the bottom, if you sort it by alphabetical area, right? The people at the bottom will always get the worst choices because like... you allocate the best choices to the top three, to all their three choices already, right? Then after that, the bottom, they only get the loudest of all. Yeah, that's true. So I was wondering whether the better way to structure that would be like rank it. So one, two, three, like for example, you have a first choice, second choice, third choice. So everybody will get one choice of the workshop that they like. Then you allocate choice by choice. So actually, everybody will still be quite fair unless you are saying it's a life. So I thought maybe one other way is actually having a life form. So users when they key in, I mean, it doesn't discount them. For example, if I submitted the same time as her. But then the thing is her name is A. My name is Zach. So even though she has submitted her form, we have submitted it together, right? She gets the best workshop I get the worst. Yeah. Actually, this wouldn't happen. Yeah. Because our Excel sheet is not ranked by alphabetical order. It's actually first come first serve. And according to our NGO and also our back door. So if you are late, that's your problem. Okay. Okay. For some context. So this, this NGO is called I am talented. Part of the organizing committee for that NGO is also the coach. So he's also, he's the coach and our client. Do you want to just finish? So he, she was really listening to you while you are teaching her stuff, right? Okay. I think there's another, the, is there a lady in black? Was it you who want to ask a question somewhere around this area? Yeah. Behind you. Hi. Thank you. I actually want to ask why you discarded the first option instead of the, and use the second option instead. Okay. Because our second option is actually more efficient. Because throughout the sorting process, it actually allocates the workshop more evenly. So the workshops actually get filled out more evenly because he's always allocated to the class with the least participants at that point of time. Oh, okay. But for the first one is actually, because actually the students don't actually rank their workshops in the Excel sheet. So as the process goes, like as the sorting process goes through, so the front, the, what do you call it? The workshops that are ranked earlier on the earlier rows actually get the priority. Yeah. So you have a lot of classes at the back that's not filled up as fast. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Let's run applause for IAT.