Check it out, we've got a big bird in our yard. Heh, we gotta go to the dump. Have a good day, birds! Bye, bless you. Filming here. Yes, I'm vlogging the dump. We're at the dump now. We're pulling in. We did have to go, we got our masks.  Guy charged us nothing because we buy it, that's where we buy or use tires from. So... I think I'm supposed to go over here, I don't know. That's where we went last time. Yeah, that's where I went last time. So I'm doing a little vlogging today. Hey, household garbage.  I'm a five bucks one. So yeah, this guy's cool. He uh, we borrow or use tires there, and uh, he says, that's all you need? I said yep, so they did it, took him like 10 minutes maybe. So then they... A little far, aren't I, sorry. That's a social distancing thing. Yeah. That's only six foot though. We like to be safe. So, but yeah, we, we was like, well, what do we have here, he said nothing. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you. And uh, so, he gave us the, he did that for us for nothing. He always treats us good though on tires and stuff. Yeah. So, whenever we need tires, we just get down there because we've never got a bad tire. They always treat us good, good bunch of guys work there, always got time for your questions. And so, we're here at the dump now. I don't like going out in places yet, but some things have to be done. You know, we got a lot of tries, had to be taken out. We was holding off because of, you know, not wanting to get out around people. And you know, the tire thing, having to put air in it every day kind of sucks.  So, we're going to get out here, um, that one's pineapple. Well, let's go to this one here. All right. You see trash in that one? This is old trash up through here. It's the yellow wall. They call it the yellow wall. Bruno. Hey, well, you got to stay in here. Yes, it's Bruno. No, you're not getting out. He's excited because he thinks he's gonna. What a goofball. You're not getting out. You're at the dump. You can't. Also, he's pretty excited. It's the venture. I got some soup beans and ham cooking at home. It's brewing. So we'll be back with you on the stump. I think it's just about where I need to be on it. So this deep, I'll have to fill it in, but there's a little bit right here, pretty much it. I'll just shovel. See, this is kind of hoovered up here. I know the camera can't pick it up, but it's kind of hoovered up a little bit. I'll shove that in there and that should fill it up. If I need any more, I can just go over here in the woods and get a bucket or something and fill it up there. So there's monkey. She's behind me.  So, come here, monkey. Are you coming out? Come here, monkey. He's already in there. How much shorter than me. So, what's going on this weekend? Nothing. Oh, okay. Why? What are we doing? I thought you knew what we were doing. No, I really don't. Oh. We talked, but I didn't know that was... We're not doing live stream on something. Are we? What are we doing live stream on? Hmm. I forget. Really? Yeah. A lot more? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yay. So, an update on that. Saturday. He beat his butt.  Just dead. I got everything ordered for the tractor, for the rebuild for her tractor. Except for the rings. Having a hard time finding them rings. I know there's some that'll cross over, but I may have to tear it down. See if there's a part number on the rings. Mike the boar. Mike the piston. I don't know yet. So, anyway, we got that taken care of. So that's all ordered except for the rings. So, like I said, I have to tear it down. Usually there's a number on the side of the rings. Not that many hours on it. I should be able to get a number off of it.  See if I can get him for you. He's noisy. See? He's huge. He goes in and holds and eats the bugs out of him. Also, we ordered. I mentioned the other day, we got a headlight out on this truck. Well, these headlights are $47 a piece just for the bulb that's inside there. And I'd mentioned these, the plastic clips, they get broke over time because of the heat. They'll come out okay, but when you get to put them back in, the clips will break. So that's what's going on with these two things. So anyway, we thought, well, we need to order some bulbs. So I did. We got the two bulbs coming. We got these. We got the whole headlight pieces for like 62 bucks. It ended up being like 80 with shipping and handling. So we got the whole, I'll be doing a video on that. We got this, this, this, and this with the bulbs for like 80 bucks altogether. So, and, you know, for one bulb, just for the regular bulb, not even an upgraded bulb was $47 at O'Reilly's. So, and I thought, well, I'm going to go ahead and check on the price of these while I'm at it. So I did. I checked on them first and I came up with the whole kit. So they'll be in Monday or Tuesday, right? Yay, no more tape. Yeah, no more tape. We'll get the tape off there. These was going to be, they were going to need cleaning anyway and rebuffed again, but not now, huh? Nope. So I hope it works out pretty good. What do you got there? Why is he always in my movies? Because he's so cute. Bruno, who's going to win the drag race Saturday? Mommy. See? Because there's one up. Mommy. Here's that dog barking down there. Look how serious he looks. So cute. We had right over here where you can't see the pole. There you can. Just pull right down. Right down there. Let me see. This morning, early this morning on, come on, focus. On that pole there, the transformer blew up. We heard it. It actually popped twice.  Bruno, Bruno was going nuts. She's like, you hear that? I'm like, yeah, what was it? Sounded like a gunshot. I said, you want me to go check it out? I'm like, no. I don't need to go check it out. Well, we have some crazy neighbors behind us. You never know what's up in there. Well, I knew it didn't come from behind us, so we was okay. So yeah, it was cold this morning, man. It's supposed to be like this all week. I mean, nice. But it was chilly because it had a cold breeze.  It just flew past me. It's that thing? Woodpecker. Woodpecker, come back. They were pecking earlier. Man, them guys are loud. I'll give you another shot of them. Yeah, I never knew they were that loud. That's his favorite place to go. So anyway, that's our vlog. It wasn't much of a vlog, but a couple updates, huh? Yeah. Oh, Bruno, he's growling, barking. Being a dog. Being a dog, yeah, all right. All right, settle. He's something else. What? So anyway, get over here. He's standing guard. Yeah, he's guard. There's a car coming. Yeah, he'll hear something and bark and run behind me and growl. Yeah. He does, man. Run behind me and then growl.  Like he's badass, but like, oh, I got your back. Yeah, way back. And then when the cranes come, oh no, he goes running. Yeah, he's scared of the cranes. There's three of them out here this morning. Oh, you've seen the one. In the yard. Yeah, in the yard. All right, we're going to call it a day. Just want to get something uploaded for you to let you know Saturday what time. I don't know. I have to make sure it's not raining, too. Oh no, we're doing this rain or shine. Hmm. Say four o'clock. Okay. Four o'clock Saturday. We're going to be doing the live drag race. Two out of three. I said, we're doing it two out of three. She said, yeah, unless I win. And then we're just going to do one. I'm like, no, that ain't how it works. So, yeah, well, I'm winning. I'm winning this one. You won the last ones. I think it's my turn. And I'm going to win this one. I'm Shaber. Whatever. I got a secret up my sleeve. There's no secrets. Now, he's got a van. She's a mechanic on that. So, you know, I'm barely able to drive the van. I just tuned your shed up and I'm going to be rebuilding it for you. Yeah, so that doesn't mean you have to win every time. It does if I got the best equipment. If it ain't red, leave it in the shed. Right, guys? I think any red is orange and it should be in the shed. So should yours? Yours smokes. Mine don't. Mine's still going. So is mine. Mine cuts grass. So does mine. Who's going to be cutting the grass? Well, yours is down. Mine. My free stuff. That's the tractor that Jerry gave me. The guy used to live right over there. Yeah. Yeah, so. I was thinking about selling it, but... No. No. Maybe you might need a backup one day. Yeah, and he gave it to me. Yeah. I wish I'd have got the other one. Yeah, he had another one. He had another one. A Sears Craftsman. One of my favorites. And just like one of the ones I had, I had a hundred of them. Yeah. Yeah, I see. He was going to give me that one, too, but... Come here. But it wasn't in the cards. So. All right, guys. Okay. I think it says she's over now. Saturday. I'm it. You're it. Yeah. Yeah. Saturday. I'm it. Four o'clock. We're doing this live. Mm-hmm. Okay. She's got work tomorrow, so I'm going to do a little work on my tractor while she's going. Really? No, that's not fair. I don't do no work on mine. No, you didn't. Who did? I did. I got it on video. Yeah, but you still have to do more work, yeah? Because you've got to go away for all these parts to come in. My needs a little work, too. I'm going to put your battery in my... It should be as is the way they are right now. That's it. All the way they are right now since I tuned yours up. It's not completely tuned. I don't have new parts on it yet. I'm not putting new parts on mine. There's other ways around it. Really? Shea Bear, the myth main legend, gone for now. Bye, guys. Monkey says she's out for now. And Bruno, he's already out, so we'll see you guys soon.  Mm-hmm. All right.  Help me do that. Leave it in the comments below what the wager should be. All right? Thanks for watching, guys. I appreciate it. Thanks for joining us today. I think you should be 10 feet back there and let me get ahead of you since I'm a woman. 10 feet on a lawnmower is like... Then in that was 500 going, well, give me 300 laps. No. Bye, guys. Bye. It's probably cozy in there or something. I got a good shot of him. I'm recording him. Oh, yeah? Yeah, he's in that hole. He looks like Woody the Woodpecker cartoon and sticks his head out of the hole. Yeah. That's funny. He's looking for that other one. I don't know. He can't see him, I don't think. They were fighting. The other one flew away over there. Oh, yeah. He's looking around. You see him? He's over here. No. You see this one? Yeah. Come here. Look. Look through the camera. You can really see him real good. See him? Yeah. Look at him. He's on the lookout. That's funny. Yeah. Hello, camera here, monkey. Yeah. Good thing I got it. Funny animals.


So we all know how difficult it is to be physically and socially distanced from our loved ones right now You know our friends and our family also just in general having to be six feet apart from the people around you feels very bizarre And so as we're learning new ways to stay connected I feel like I'm a zoom expert now. I know everything that there is to know I was wondering I wanted to open it up to all of you Do you have any recommendations or want to share any experiences about how you've been able to stay connected with friends? This past semester, but also in general and how you've been able to maintain community Maybe through orgs or committees that you're on or any other school school groups that you might be in Yeah, for me, I think social media was the I use social media the most to communicate with everyone on my friends Additionally, I am also part of the tennis team. So we did have our team get together at least twice a week and That way we were all It was it was our sense of community and We that was very helpful to stay in touch our coach was also there and even though we didn't have a season it was really good to stay in touch through zoom meetings and Workouts together also virtual workouts, but yeah FaceTime calls and being on zoom a whole lot with like everything like org meetings Just catching up with friends Yeah, and then since I was also on campus I did have some of my friends on campus as well. So we were able to Socially distance that like meet up and have like dinner or a breakfast or lunch together outside when the weather was so nice So that was good. I Think for me the best way was to set up like Weekly-timed calls with friends or something Because I think like once it was like in my calendar in my schedule Then it was like a part of my routine and then like no matter what I would be talking to friends or family And yeah, I think for me the whole thing was just setting up a routine and like scheduling my calls really helped I did the exact same thing with my friends I live by my Google calendar and I'm also very forgetful So like a couple weeks ago by and I'd realized I hadn't talked to a particular person and I'm like, oh, no And so we found a time that worked and so like a friend of And I had a weekly recurring lunch where we eat lunch together talk about life and everything which was really nice I agree with you Shweta like it social media was a game changer Maybe I'm just nosy, but I like being able to see what people are up to you and still feel connected and all of that kind of stuff For sure. I know that like I felt really isolated this past fall even though I was doing all these things just because You know, there's not that many Mount Holyoke people in Michigan where I'm at So I couldn't really do a social distance hangout and Even if I'm FaceTiming friends, there's still people that you miss and don't ever get a chance to like connect with so I think that was like one of the things I struggled with was feeling very removed from that Mount Holyoke community But I'm hoping in this spring to be able to incorporate it more into my schedule like I was saying that might help with that Did anyone else experience that type of isolation? Maybe maybe it's just me. I Forgot to add but Since I was also on campus. I did have friends and we were able to meet when the weather was Okay But when it got colder and we had to Take the meals inside. I feel like even though we were living on campus There were so many people there are so many students around us It could be a little isolating to have a meal by yourself every time But again, it was only the last I think the last half of the second month. So till then Definitely eating with friends socially distance outside was really good on campus Yeah, I've been using like Netflix party a lot where like I'll FaceTiming a friend and then we'll be watching the movie together or I can Like screen share through zoom and we can watch it at the same time if I share my audio and so that's been really fun and Hopeful in that way like figuring out how to navigate a remote environment to remove those feelings of isolation for sure. I Think you haven't lived the remote experience until you both are watching the same show on separate computers and have to like start and stop I Think that's pretty much summarizes me watching TV with my friends


The next topic of this session is HR analytics. We need to understand that all HR activities whether it is recruitment, selection, training and development, performance management system and so on and so forth whatever all we have discussed in the last 19 sessions in all the processes large number of data is generated. If there are mechanisms, if the data quality is good, if we know the interconnections of the different factors and if we are able to connect the success factors with the appropriate data, we can get large number of insights. We can get many insights about HR function and about the business success. So, data is the raw and unorganized information that is keep developing, keep getting generated in all HR systems and processes. The HR data which is about the employee attendance, employee performance, compensation, engagement and so on and so forth, we can use those for the analysis. So, HR metrics is finding the key performance indicators because these are the metrics that indicate the ingredient of the HR practices outcome. So, HR analytics is a evidence based approach for making better decisions on people side of the business. HR analytics consist of an array of tools and technologies ranging from simple reporting of HR metrics up to the predictive modeling. So, when HR data is properly collected and consciously used for some specific insight or insight about some specific process, we call this process HR analytics. There can be various types of data and these are, these can be broadly divided into the lagging indicators and leading indicators, descriptive HR metrics and prescriptive HR metrics. Descriptive HR metrics are those which are based on the past data and prescriptive HR metrics are those which also takes into account of the future projections of the data. So, manpower planning related data or recruitment related data or training and development related data or performance management and productivity management related data, these all can be different types of data pertaining to human resources. They can be of non-financial in nature as well as financial in nature. HR expenses that is the very first basic manpower planning metric or analytical ratio. What it says? It says about total cost involved for HR expenses for a particular fiscal year. What all is being spent on the HR processes? So, our HR department salary, the software package they might have purchased for the recruitment or the expenses they might have incurred in taking help of the third party agencies or third parties for the training and development or for recruitment. These are all expenses counted and that is the total cost involved for the HR. HR expenses per employee, we can look at the ratio of HR expenses and divide that by per employee of the organization, divide by the number of employees of the organization and that will give us the HR expenses per employee. We calculate these data and then we also do the benchmarking. Benchmarking with the companies within the industry as well as outside of the industry. And that gives us idea how we are doing it. Are the most successful companies having very high of these metrics or they are operating at much lower level of those metrics? These are the starting points of reflection. Then next level of reflection is that we might be spending more. We might be having a metrics which is suggesting that our expenses are more, but it is required because nature of job being done in our organization is of very different kind etcetera. So, we look at the situations, but first benchmarking is done with the comparable business organizations, comparable organizations or institutions. That gives us fair idea where how that data can be managed and how that can be maintained. There are so many metrics. I am not going to read all these. All these are been described. The paper which is from where this list is drawn is also referred here. Pillai and Shevathhanu's paper both are the Pune based academicians and they have collected various types of the HR ratios and they have given the precise definition of these ratios which help us to analyze the HR based data. So, they have given the recruitment related data which is about non-financial like yield ratio meaning efficiency of the each stage in the recruitment process or number of employee who appeared for the interview and selected recruitment channel resource effectiveness, combination of different resources, which combination is working best. Then there are recruitment related financial data which is recruitment cost, cost per hire, cost per recruitment sources. All these are the data points which can give us the efficiency and effectiveness of the HR function. Training in development related data that can also be of various type. You might remember we discussed kick Patrick model or ROI of the training and development function, training outsourcing cost, training cost per employee. All these data points are there. All these ratios are there which can be calculated if company collects data of their HR system HR process implementation on their employees. And that is the beginning of having a sound HR analytics. Next stage is analyzing that data. So, there is another set of data about performance management or productivity management. How the performance of the employees is showing up in the organizational data? Employee performance indicators like number of unit produced, number of parcels delivered, if company if it is a delivery company or a career company, number of calls if it is a per day or per unit of time. If that if the organization is call center like that these performance and productivity management data is are collected. Employer branding that can also be assessed through number of followers and social media, employee engagement index or number of applicant per rule. If more number of people are applying for the job in my organization I am support that organization is supposed to have a strong employer branding. You might recall the employer branding we discussed in the previous class like these so many indicators are there which can be very useful and insightful to look at the efficiency and effectiveness of HR function. Employee relations and employee wellness that can also be very important points of HR analytics. Then there are whole set of predictive HR metrics. So, predicting the number of men power we can look at the projected sales growth, we can look at the projected production growth and based on that we can predict the number of men power, predicted talent turnover, how my industry is shaping up, who are the likely competitors, who can give equally challenging job with equally or with with comparable salary or much more salary where our our people our organizational members would like to join all this this can be looked at when organization is calculating the predicted talent turnover. Similarly, financial metrics are there which is about predicted men power cost, predicted cost per hire, estimated employer productivity, predicted employee performance so on and so forth list you can see is almost limitless. We can have multiple types and we can apart from this exhaustive list we can still find the indicators in some organization is specific to its need is specific to its functioning. So, knowing this is very very important, but that is only the first step to use HR analytics in the right sense after knowing different types of data available or different types of data to be collected and how the combination of the data or association of certain data points will give us insight, will give us the ratio which can be very indicative of organizational group, department or individual performance when all this is understood the next step is which one we would like to follow. There is no point in doing all the types of analysis possible without knowing how we are going to use that analysis.


All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Joe, the founder of Dutch. Thanks for joining. Before we get into this, I want everyone to know we're using Riverside. Nick and I have been trying to figure out the best platform for doing these video teleconferences, podcasting, and we haven't found anything. We've been a fan of Riverside for a long time. And Joe, I'm happy to announce you're our first guest using Riverside. And I think, I think this is going to be the new platform we use moving forward when it comes to remote pods. But Joe, tell us what your company does. Sure. Thanks for having me on. So Dutch, Dutch.com, we are a leading veterinary health care platform. Basically, we make it super easy for pet parents to see a veterinarian right away. Most of the time people find us because their pet is having an emergency and we're there within an hour. You can talk to a vet about your pet's issues. And what made you want to start the company? What was like the problem you saw on the market? Maybe you have a pet yourself. What was the thing where you were like, OK, this is the time to do it and this is the way to do it? So prior to Dutch, I was co-founder of Hims & Hers, which is a direct to consumer company on the human side. And as a co-founder, I set up our operations pharmacy. Once the pandemic hit, so many Americans got a pandemic puppy. And as I started to go through the process, I realized that veterinary health care is completely behind human health care in ways I never imagined. And as I started to look further into it, just realized there is just not an easy telemedicine solution for pet parents at all. At least here in California, there's AB1399 that was passed, which probably unlocked a lot of things for you. But walk me through when you first had the idea and then you're pitching this maybe to some investors, obviously. And what are some of the main things you're getting? What are the questions, the concerns? I think everyone understands a couple of things. One, we know there's been a lot of people have gotten pets during the pandemic, so we know there's going to be a demand. What were some of the challenges that maybe an investor would have asked you as you were going through your journey around? Why now? Why this legislation? So when I first was fundraising, this was two years prior to California legislation changing. I definitely received a lot of rejections because anyone who started to look through the state by state law, and especially if they didn't have the surgical familiarity with how all this works, I think many of them did pass because they would have said, wait a minute, we've not human telemedicine advances and none of this caught up in vet care. Like, why is this guy going to do it? And then I think the other problem is also Dutch right now is doing things that have never been done before, and it's the largest player in the space. But up until we actually did it, most people looked and said, well, a bunch of people have tried, hasn't really worked. And so, yeah, the pet space might be big, but I'm just not sure that this is something that is going to be successful. So for sure, we had lots of rejection because of the ability to execute at the end of the day was a concern. Walk me through your, I guess, your first initial offering when you came on to the scene. What was the one thing you guys were specialized on? What problem were you solving? A lot of what I did was inspired from things I did at Hymns, which was a mistake, actually. The first couple areas we focused on were pet anxiety, so dogs who bark and go crazy, and then allergies. So that's when your cat or dog get a rash. So we really just had those two items as solutions. And similar to Hymns, we had an all-in pricing for pet anxiety and all-in pricing for pet allergy. And we actually realized that was not the right way to go to market at all, because in so many ways, pets are different than humans, but that was a go-to market in the first six months of Dutch. I was recently at a, this is going to sound crazy, but I was at a party and there was a farm, someone working in pharmaceuticals there in Germany. And she was telling me how they're working on specifically like a pill that pets can take that's almost like a flea tick collar, and it protects them for six months to a year. They're working on the efficacy of it, but they're pretty close. And so the way she, you know, this is sort of the other side of the sort of the problem you guys are solving, where everything is becoming more approachable. But it was interesting because she was like, this is something that is a real focus for huge, massive pharmaceutical companies, and they're going to partner with companies like yours in an effort to just in a simple way create, okay, this is the issue, maybe brand new puppy, great, let's get, this is the pill.  I think that a lot of times the beauty is pet parents love to talk, so we certainly learn a lot from them. And then we have pretty amazing advisors in each of the categories that we focus on. So we have behaviorists or certified allergy veterinarians. So I think we learn, you know, the greatest from them. I think one thing that's actually been interesting in this business is how much the pharmaceutical companies are extremely protective of brick and mortar veterinarian as a channel. It's not something I encountered in human healthcare at all. And frankly, it smells of protectionism and antitrust, but it's been really interesting to see how much the big pharma players are actually wanting to keep everything inside of a brick and mortar system. And it certainly doesn't follow, you know, our number one value, which is putting pets first, because in human healthcare, a doctor doesn't care where you get your medicine, you know, as long as you're taking care of. And that's been really a huge difference here that's been really surprising and eye-opening for me. Give people a window. So if people are listening and they're thinking, okay, I have a pet, you know, maybe I have pet insurance but I haven't dabbled into the world of telehealth, sort of walk them through how they sign up, where they find you, pricing, and then, yeah, tell them just like the customer journey that in your head is a perfect case. What have you seen success with? Interestingly enough, almost half of the folks who come to Dutch actually don't have a veterinarian at all or haven't seen one in many years. And what's happening, or even if they do, because it can take so long to see a veterinarian, the veterinarian may have told them to wait a week or two before coming in. And what'll happen is that rash went from not great to bad and the animal is, you know, kind of crying. And the pet parent is now deciding, do I go to urgent care where I'm gonna have to spend a thousand bucks or what else can I do? And they're on Google searching for stuff and that's where they find Dutch. We've invested a lot into SEO content that's reviewed by veterinarians. And so they are likely to find one of our articles and that's how they'll first discover Dutch. And so what they're able to do is that if they go to Dutch.com, they can sign up for a membership. Our membership, once people find us, it's probably like their best day ever, their biggest lottery ticket that they just found because it costs $11 a month for up to five pets.  So again, this is your best day ever.  So if you're in California, you'd see a California veterinarian and most of the veterinarians are available within 30 minutes to an hour.  And the beauty, you know, certainly besides the pet parent, they can actually talk to a real vet right away. But also, you know, the animal is in their home. So they're not having to be dragged into necessarily a vet's office, especially if they're, you know, hurting right now. And through video, you can sort of try to understand what's going on. And then from there, the vet could say, okay, you know, here's a first course of treatment to try and, you know, we have a partner pharmacy that can send medications or we can send a medication to your local drugstore pharmacy for you to pick up. So you're able to get in touch with someone right away. So that's kind of the magical experience of Dutch. I hadn't considered the part where you say the pet can stay at home. I mean, that's kind of amazing. I hadn't actually considered that.   Do you have a call center? Do you have to do it state by state? Because of the legislation, how does it work in terms of what people aren't seeing, the behind the scenes of the vets? You know, we have a pretty highly curated vet network where we go through a background check, like, you know, of course license check, but also a lot of training as well because this is kind of a new field for veterinarians. I should also say, you know, on the veterinarian side, this is a boon for them as well. One thing I didn't know is veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession in this country because it's a pretty stressful job. People who get into vet care love animals with a passion. And oftentimes you're having to make hard decisions. Veterinarians don't get paid that much according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you can believe it, the average vet makes $100,000 a year, which is crazy considering that they went through almost, you know, the same amount of medical school as a doctor and have typically hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And they are often in a world where people have to wait two weeks to see them. So by the time people show up, they're quite frustrated and angry. And so they're having to deal with that.  So the fact that we as a telemedicine company can provide veterinarians an opportunity to have a flexible schedule, work from the comfort and safety of their own home, I think many vets are extremely happy to have this as an option. And so behind the scenes, again, we have this, you know, curated network, but also we're making sure that because it's all digital, we can make sure that the vets are responding quickly, that the vets are available when we have demand. So demand planning can be done better and we get reviews from the customer of the vets' bedside banners. So it continues to help ensure that we're promoting the higher quality vets on our network. We'll continue to train them. All the videos are recorded so that again we can do further quality control that way. But it's been interesting. So California went live January 1st and already, you know, we brought on 15 veterinarians onto the platform. And it's been pretty cool to see the demand, not just from consumers, but from vets in California who wanna be part of this new wave of that telemedicine. I was gonna ask you. So, I mean, you're kinda seeing this in real time where it's almost like legislation changes and so you can get all these new customers per se. So how many vets have you treated just in California based on this new, I know it's early, I know we're still in January. Can you give us some numbers or some growth that excites you? So prior to, it's become in the, certainly in the first two weeks that it's been in operation, California has become our number one state, which is pretty crazy how quickly that happened. And we've been operating now for two years and we're in other states like New York and Florida, but this has become our number one state being anything else. So the growth has been pretty fast and big really quickly. I wanna ask you this just from someone who's fundraised before. And so you closed your series B last fall. Was the California legislation on like your pitch deck? Cause it's always tough to do that. I remember one time I was trying to start a biofuels company with a buddy of mine and at the time it was Obama and Mitt Romney. And Obama or sorry, Mitt Romney was very again or four biofuels. And so there was gonna be legislation that was in favor. And Obama was just silent. He hadn't said anything specifically. And so our pro-formal was like night and day based on the presidential election so timely. Obama ended up getting elected obviously. And so our project didn't work, but how much of it just to give the entrepreneurs on it be listening a window into, here you are pitching your series B, what does the legislation look like and was that part of it? So yes and no. I think at the end of the day, certainly the investors that we have on our cap table, one of the biggest reasons they invest is they believe in my and my team's ability to execute. And I think that's a fundamental question that an investor has to answer if they're gonna give you millions of dollars. And frankly, I think that was the dividing line even for the series A. One of the things we say in Dutch like our other big value is behavior not words. So anyone can talk but executing and doing what you're gonna say is what really matters. Results, that's what matters. And so I would say the series B investors ultimately believed in my ability to execute which is why when I would talk about California legislation and even at the time because passing a bill, you just never know there's 20 steps in each step could be a reason for failure. So there's a million things that can go wrong but I would say my investors have seen enough of my execution to believe that this will go through and to believe the things I say will happen. So I think that's kind of the difference. But yeah, for sure it would have massively hurt us this year if it didn't go through.  So I think we had a number of other contingency things we would do if California didn't go through this time. I wanna go back to your personal story.  Can you give us a window into what that was like for you? Yeah, so I came to America 10 years old as a refugee from the former Soviet Union. And when my parents and I left, it was still the USSR. I'll never forget this, I had one red suitcase full of clothes and we lived in this refugee camp in Italy for several months before ultimately getting political asylum status to come to the United States. And even when we came here, we lived in subsidized housing, we lived on welfare and food stamps. I think I would for sure say that these experiences massively prepared me for the role of an entrepreneur, which is to say I've lived the life where I have nothing to lose or I've been in a place where I had very little and I was okay. And I think that allows me to take big risks and it's given me pretty thick skin because I've just seen some shit and I had tools to, like I just said before, come up with a plan after plan after plan after plan to try to figure things out. It's not an experience I wish on anyone, but I definitely think it gives me an edge as an entrepreneur. So for me personally, my family moved here from Peru, political asylum also. And the way I describe it to people is when my mom moved here, she was a single parent with two kids having to learn the language and figure out the entire sort of US economic structure and finding a place and basically rebuilding a life. The way I look at it as an entrepreneur specifically is I'll never have that problem or foreseeably. And so because of that, it sort of frees me mentally to take these big risks or I guess they're not even really risks, they're just perceived risks because of what people think risks are and in that we're free and we're able to take these big swings because at the end of the day we have the safety and the freedom. It's kind of amazing. So I appreciate you sharing that, that's awesome. Awesome and not awesome, but the way it sort of it's molded you and your mindset is great. It's a great one for sure. Just to go back to Dutch, how big is your team now? How many people do you guys have? We're at 30 people full time and then we have our veterinarian network is about 120 veterinarians and that continues to grow.  And so 30 is starting to feel big ish. And then of course there's times when you talk to someone and they manage a small department of 30 people. So it's all, it's just interesting how obviously it's all relative but we try to be in general pretty efficient and make sure we're only working on the high priority projects as opposed to sometimes you end up doing less with more. As it relates to like new technologies and so during the Christmas week, I usually do this thing where I decide not to do any work and I try to learn new things. And so there's been a lot of AI I've been tracking for months and I think rapidly within six months a lot of the AI I was looking at has drastically improved. I mean really, really quickly as you think about your business telehealth it feels ripe and that could be totally wrong but at least feels ripe where AI can help facilitate a lot of things and sort of decrease the need for headcount and just allow your team to focus on what matters. How do you guys think about AI? Are you dabbling with it? Any exciting products that you like? There are so many wonderful and awesome uses for AI that we're already using. So one, I mentioned our videos with veterinarians are recorded. So those are opportunities to use AI to send summaries to the patient of what's discussed and save time for a veterinarian from having to type up notes which can be quite time consuming. And also it just speed matters so much. So that ensures that the pet parent gets a concise understanding of how that visit went. I think in the future there are further opportunities for AI as kind of an initial conversation to triage the pet parent of how serious and is there a specialist that they should talk to on our platform and who's the right for them to talk to. We also are using AI in a lot of our photography. I think, you know, prior really to this year we could easily spend $100,000 and two weeks of time on planning a photo shoot. And while I certainly think real photography matters for our business where we have to do so much to educate the consumer on the many different ways that our business works and who it's for. And the 20, you know, we cover 20 different conditions today. We would have to spend millions of dollars in photography just to get to a baseline. So in those early days when you're still testing what works I think AI photography has been magical for our business. And then I think the last part is being able to use AI for actual, you know, initial like chat back and forth as well as we get tons of images because in the prior to you seeing the vet we asked for photos of the vet and sometimes for videos of the vet. And so I think those are further opportunities to potentially catch things that, you know you may be here for anxiety but the photo or video catches a rash. So I think that's an exciting future use that we're looking at. When you think about that your company let's say in three to four years. So I know this is like a lot when it comes to technology but what does it look like? Like what is your grand vision for the firm, for the company? Obviously data is a play here just in terms of, you know what your company is collecting, being first to market winning all of that aside. When you think about all the new technology three to four you know, that is happening now what does Dutch look like in three or four years or at least ideally to you? To me in general one thing I, you know a lesson from him's it's, you know and the lesson from startup is figure out what you're good at and do that one thing really well don't try to do everything mediocre. So I still think at the end of the day the thing that we do well is telemedicine and all that comes with it but it all comes back to telemedicine. Now I think within telemedicine is that I think telemedicine is another tool in pet health care and the partnership that we can have with brick and mortar veterinarians is I think the long-term opportunity. So can we integrate with their medical records? Can we be their partner for off hours? There's almost a third of pets are adopted through shelters. So how can we better equip shelters who also don't have enough veterinarians to provide care to people? So I think kind of the bigger picture ultimately is also how are we integrated into the overall ecosystem of pet care as another tool that people use. And then I just think, I mean the other thing is we have yet to scratch the surface. There's almost 150 million pets in this country even if we're helping 10 million which would be a pun. There are so many pets who get zero care at all. So I think part of it is we have a lot of work to do of just getting basic care. Like you mentioned in the beginning, flea and tick, basic care to the millions of pets who are out there to begin with. I feel like we have yet to do that successfully. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, the flea and tick one got me. I was really, it's sort of an interesting thing where I was like, everybody needs this. And it's interesting that someone's doing it.   But for some reason, at least for me, it's just a different way of thinking about it. It doesn't come naturally because I don't have a pet today. Hopefully I'll get one soon. Yeah, you should get one. I can join your platform for 11 bucks. So you see outside of what kind of pets do you see on telehealth? Are you focusing on, this goes back to the focus, the planting, the flag. Is it cats and dogs? Is it horses? Yeah, it's mainly cats and dogs. You know, we talked about how hard it is to get a dog to a vet, getting a cat. I mean, there's a reason they say herd in cats. It's very hard to get a cat into a crate, into a vet's office and then back into your house and the cat is not happy to do that. So it's definitely cats and dogs. We have had some exotics like a bird and a reptile, but I think those are just, telemedicine is not necessarily the best for those animals because you really do need a specialist. Although rabbits, for example, get UTIs quite frequently. So again, there's sometimes something there, but if anything, a lot of times, no matter what kind of a pet parent you are, I think you're just looking for a human connection. And so that, again, the video call is something we provide that goes beyond you going on Dr. Google or some other question and answer platform to figure out what's going on. So at least a professional is pointing you in the right direction. Well, listen, as we wrap up, what can people expect for you in 2024? Tell people where they can sign up for Dutch, 11 bucks for up to five pets. That's crazy. Yeah, so fetch.com. That's the best place for you to go. And there's probably gonna be a lot more verticals that we're at. One of the biggest areas we're expanding into is pet nutrition. So that's gonna be an area of growth for us in 2024. Can you give us a window? What does that mean? So like if your dog is overweight or has an allergy, you can talk to one of our veterinarians about that. Joe, thank you for joining the podcast. I appreciate it. We look forward to sharing your story and continued success to you, Joe. Thank you. Cool. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share with your friends, your family, or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd greatly appreciate it. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people who can benefit from our discussions. The best way to stay connected with us and get the latest updates on future episodes is through our social media channels. You can find us at Startup and Storefront. We'll be back next Tuesday with another great episode. See you then.


Now, maybe you can hear me. How about now? How about now? There we go. So sorry, everybody. Getting a little technical difficulties here. We're getting on. We're getting moving on. There we go. All right. How are you doing? Happy Sunday? Very good. I'm going to put this up a little bit more. Jam to a little bit music on a Sunday. What are you guys doing on a Sunday morning? We're here to go through some products. We're going to play a match game. We're going to do a little match game.   Put an answer in the chat. All right. And get rid of that. Now, we're going to show you an example. So an example is after a hard day's work, Bob was so hungry he could eat a blank. So you would take your answer, put it in the chat, and then I would give you my answer. We'll see if we can match it up. Okay. So after a hard day's work, Bob was so hungry he could eat a blank. All right. The next, the first thing I have in the screen today, we're on Amazon and we're trying to sell some products. We're on Amazon, we're on YouTube, we're on Facebook. This is the wavelength. Okay. Now, let me come back down here and take a look at this thing. First of all, we get this off the screen so you don't have to look at a picture of it. I got it right here in the box. It's a Wi-Fi 60 tri-band adapter. And I think it gives you Wi-Fi if you don't have Wi-Fi and it also will give you Bluetooth if you don't have Bluetooth on your device, on your laptop or your computer, your PC. It comes with greater capacity and improved performance. The Wi-Fi 60 network card supports the latest technology such as blah, blah, blah, blah. It delivers high-speed data rate even in dense or congestive environments. It gives you an incredibly fast gaming experience but also low latency. Low latency, Bluetooth, high-gain antennas, magnetized base. All these things are magnetized based, so it will stick to stick like the side of stuff. Pretty cool compatibility with everything. It supports Starlink technology, Windows 10 and 11 Linux for PC. All the stuff you need for, and that's the Wavelink right there, sent to me for free to check out and review. I don't know if I'm going to have it. My PC is in the shop right now getting a whole bunch of new stuff. I'm thinking about having to put it in there because if it adds Bluetooth, I don't have Bluetooth in that model that I had. I had to use the plug-in for Bluetooth for the headphones and stuff. I'm hoping if I use this, it will solve that problem. Easy setup. Oh, it says Bluetooth 5.3, so that's probably what it is. That's the Wavelink. You know that if you need it, if you've got to have it, then this is the one you need. You already know you need it. You know what it does. There you go. So anyway, after a hard day's work, we said, Bob, poor Bob, Bob was so hungry, he could eat a blank. Of course it's going to be a horse. He was so hungry he could eat a horse. That's how we play match game. I'm going to put out a statement and you guys are going to go ahead and put your answer in the chat. Try to match it. We used to do a giveaway at the end. Amazon don't like giveaways anymore, so we're not doing giveaways anymore. But, oh, I didn't put the Wavelink in there. Anyway, that's the Wavelink. You've got the Wavelink right there. All right. We'll go to the next question and give you guys a chance to absorb that little doohickey. Whenever Jodi feels romantic, her blank starts to wiggle. Okay, now this can be a little racy, so don't get too crazy. Whenever Jodi feels romantic, her blank starts to wiggle. What do you think that could be? What do you think Jodi, what wiggles on Jodi when she has an issue? So now this is the USB-C docking station. This is a pretty cool device. I have it over here by Tomb Known. All right, docking station. It's got all your USB, all your HDMI cables for your monitors are back here. You put two monitors in here. Three USBs. It's got the landlines.  On this side, it's got your card, your memory cards, more USBs. And you put your stuff in here, and it's great for your laptop. It's like it's a docking station for your Mac, your iPad. It'll work on both. It'll work on iPad or regular laptops. It comes with all the stuff you need in there. This is the Tomb Known docking station. Don't understand. Can't wait to get that going. We're going to use that. They sent this to me to review, and we're going to check it out. I've got a lot of people that have these stations, and they need a place to charge their stuff. Right, and there you go. You put all that stuff right under there, and it fits under there just nice. And that's the tube. It doesn't really fit under there, and it's got to go this way. Then it fits nice. I always have problems putting things back in the box. Extra parts, just like Christmas. Always have extra parts. That's the Tomb Known. Follow me, Seamus. Seamus is the cameraman. Say hi to Seamus. Seamus is going to keep me in the center frame when I'm walking around trying to keep me sent the frame as much as he can. He's pretty good at it. And that's Seamus. So don't forget to say hi to Seamus in the chat. What's next? Okay, we said, what is Jodi? When Jodi feels romantic, right? When Jodi feels romantic, her blank starts to wiggle, and nobody gave me an answer in there. So we're going to give you the answer. The answer is her nose starts to wiggle.  Who knows what it would have wiggled. You know, that's what it is. And that's how we play match game. The Duvo High Quality Visibility Laser Level. This thing is high quality laser level. Where is it? It's over here. Oh, the Duvo Laser Level. It comes in a nice little case here. And real, real, real heavy-duty thick green line. And it comes with all your stuff. It comes with your level here. It comes with your stand. It comes with your charger. Your extra batteries. It comes with two batteries. It comes with your this stand here. Okay, so you can clamp it to the desk and whatnot. You can also put it on a tripod. The Duvo, this is the H3 360G. You know, do I want to turn it on? Let's turn it on. Wow, all right. So as you can see, it'll give you, it'll beep if you're not level and straight. Right? And I can spend the whole day looking at it on an angle trying to get it. But if I had it on a tripod, you know, and I try to put it straight and level, there it goes. It's kind of done. And I can make the lines disappear. I can make the horizontal line go over that way. I can make it go that way. And it goes up on the roof goes all the way around. I can add extra lines if I want to. This is great for all your projects, your tile work, your hanging pictures, you know, moldings, all that kind of stuff. Really good device. You never know when you need it. When you need it, you got to have it. Right? Professional grade, the Duvo H3 360G. Professional grade comes with your glasses. So the green glasses in the bright light, you can see the light, the green light a lot better with the green. I thought it was baloney, but it works. It works pretty good. And that's the Duvo laser level. You know, it's one of those tools that when you need it, you have to have it, right? You know, it's one of those things.   Instead of watching TV, she was watching the blank.  Instead of watching TV, she was watching the blank.  What do you think? What do you think?    Right? Remember that? Remember that?  All right. So we're going to go to the next thing in the stream, which is this here. I got to put it together yet. The universal lid for pots. Okay. What's really cool about it. It's not a frisbee, sir, but it's got all the different levels here for all different size of pots. So you can use this one pot and it comes with the lid, the handle right here on the lid. And you put that handle in there. And of course it comes with the steam hole right there. And I guess that comes from your spoon holder right there.  All different sized pots to the frying pan. They'll even cover the frying pan. Yeah. I think that's a pretty good little deal. It'll save dishes, right? It'll definitely save dishes instead of having four different pots and pot lids. You'll have just one pot lid, right? So that goes like that. And that goes like that. Sure. That goes like that. I don't think that goes on the inside. If that goes on the outside, I don't want to mess it up. Put it together wrong. Say, hey, there's only one piece. How can you put it together wrong? Well, Ambidextrous. I'm trying to do it left-handed. Maybe it's counter screwed. Hmm. I'm getting frustrated here. Well, it's something to stop. Something to screw here. Here it goes in. I'm just not doing it right. I'm not going to waste my time in there. You put the lid in there and you put the cover on there. Put the handle together and it'll fit all different universal size for all different sized pots. I don't know. What do you think of that? What do you think of that for solution for all the different sized pots when you're cooking? And you got all different sized pots and you don't want to have all different sized lids to wash, right? There you go. And that's universal lid. But I followed that in the stream. I don't know if I did. I have a hard time keeping up. Yeah, I did universal lid for pots and pans. Pretty good deal. So Dumb Dora.  Let's pop this up there. We didn't pop this, that up there. And we didn't pop that up there. So we're going to put that up there so people can see that. Dumb Dora was so dumb, so they're watching TV. She was watching the blank. What do you think she was watching? I said she was watching the window. Okay, she was watching the window. Fish tank would have been a good answer. Fish tank would have been a good answer, right? So we'll just, I'll put a little hello in there. Okay. If you're there out on TV land, say hello. Don't be afraid to say hello. Don't be afraid to say, uh-oh. We lost a camera. We lost a camera. Here we go. Come on over here. Come on, Seamus. Sometimes Seamus falls down on the job. It's not his fault. You know, it's not his fault. I don't know why that happened. Talk to the audience. Here we go. What? What do we do? She was talking, she was watching the window, right? Dumb Dora. Dumb Dora was watching the window. All right. This is the, the, the, the, the Suma, the Sima, the Sima, 4G, LTE, cellular camera, solar powered trail camera. I'm using it right now. I have it set up. I had it yesterday set up and I didn't have the memory card. It comes with a, it comes with a SIM card that I mistakenly thought was the memory card. I, I stuck that in there and I had it in there. So I, I was, when I was like away last night, I was watching the cameras, squirrels running around and everything. And it was, it was going on when the squirrels were coming around and pretty good. But when I got back, I had nothing safe because I didn't have the memory card in. So if the memory card in right now, and I got it pointing at my bird feeder and I got birds flying into it. It's picking up and I could pick it up on my phone and, uh, and you know, you download the app and now I can watch. Oh, let me see if I can pull it up for you now. Do-do-do-do-do. Well, that's it right there. Okay, that's the app. And if you want to zoom in, Shamish, maybe they can see better. And it's showing my bird feeder. And you can see the flag flapping in the wind there. Zoom out, Shamish. We're going to have a problem, Shamish. Zoom out. There we go. Sometimes he's not working. But that's a, you can't find good help these days. So anyway, let me see now. I got that going on. I got this going on. All right, my son is texting me too. That's the trail camera, right? Pretty good deal with the trail camera. We're liking it a lot. We're using it a lot. And I'm going to have a video on my Amazon storefront when I get the photo. So I put the memory card in, I got the SIM card in, I got the memory card in. And, uh, and so we'll see what happens. And you can, you know, you can pull it up live and watch it live. So, you know, obviously it, when it, when it sees motion, it records. And that's pretty cool deal. Right? And that's the 4G LTE cellular trail camera. It's solar panel powered and battery powered. You can charge it with a battery. I mean, charge it with a plug, a USB plug. And it'll, I did that and it lasted overnight. As a matter of fact, it's still going. I'm not sure. I think it's like 24 hours. It'll last, but, um, if you put the solar panel on it, which it comes with the solar panel and it can go forever. That's pretty good stuff. Right? Pretty good stuff. Cool. So let's see now. So nurse Betty told nurse Sally, I don't like the way that looks. I want to do that. I think the new surgeon used to be a cook. When the patient was brought in, he started to blank him. He started to blank him. So what would the surgeon do? What would the surgeon do if he was a cook? What would he do to the patient? What would he do to the patient? What do you think we could think about it? We could think about it. So this here is the mug view. Did I put that in? I'm so bad. I'm bouncing around. I need some help here. No, I didn't. I didn't put the shimu light camera in there. Right. So there you go. There that is. But this is the, uh, the mug view smart video doorbell. Okay. This one's really good. Also, you can download the app to your phone. I have it downloaded to my phone. Um, and you know, you'll get alerts when it picks up motion and it charges. It snaps out and you can charge it and you snap it back in. And of course it's got the charm. So when people push the button, the music or the bells go off. This is the bell J nine. Uh, I've used it. It works really well. Um, picks up motion. Like I said, you can talk through it to a, uh, audio. And it's got low light, low light. Pretty good little camera to K. No, it's 1080p. Full HD 1080p, a two way talk day or night. It's weatherproof motion sensor. And I didn't bring my glasses in here. And I don't know why I didn't. But that's the mug view smart video doorbell. We love the mug view brand.  Now we said nurse Betty said to nurse Sally, you know, the new surgeon used to be a cook before he started to what? What did he do to the, what did he do to him? Oh, he marinated him. Can you imagine? He marinated him. And he must have been a cook cause he married him. Yeah. That's the mug view. And we, I think I got to go back here and take care of this. All right. I'm bouncing around here. I worked in a mug view doorbell. So anyway, what do you think? What are you doing on Sunday? The mug view doorbell. We're also going to use the mug view or PTC camera that I use a lot. Um, this one here, and it's also on, it's incredibly low priced. Uh, this is a PTC camera. I use it to watch the pets, the dogs. We go out to dinner or whatnot. This, we use this to watch the doors. You can also speak through it and you can hear it. So it's two way, two way talk and listen. Um, it's a two cake camera. Notion detection, a night vision, panoramic view, Wi-Fi connection, your Wi-Fi, you download the app to your phone and you can watch the dogs. You can watch the elderly. You can watch your house. You can watch anything you want to watch. Uh, really good camera and you can't beat the price of this camera. It's crazy the price. Home security, baby care, elderly care, pet care. Put this in the baby's room. You can watch the baby. What's going on. Put that in the kids room, in the family room. So you know what they're going on in the family room. You know, put it anywhere you want to put it. And this is a great little camera.  At how good it was at the price. You know, you used to cameras being $100, $300, $700. Um, so this camera at this price was like, I can't be any good, but I was very impressed with it. Very, very happy with this camera. Very, very, very happy.  So that's crazy price right now. Uh, the mug view. Mug view is a great brand. I've got three cameras from mug view, uh, so far. And they're all really good cameras. We love mug view. We love mug view. All right, let's go to the next question in the stream. And that is little Billy said when I was born, I was left in an alley for years. I thought I was a blank. Oh, geez. What did little Billy thought he was? So he was left in an alley and he was raised by, I guess, whatever. So he, for years, he thought he was a blank. Wow. What was that? What was little Billy? What did little Billy think he was when he was raised as a, as a, as a, whatever he was raised in the alley, he was raised in the alley. All right. We're going to go to the next one. This is a dash cam. Okay. This one you sent me for free to review. I got this setup in my truck and we were driving around. And, uh, I put the video together, but it got, it got, it got denied on Amazon. I got to redo it because I had license plates. I figured it out because they don't like personal information in, in the, in the videos, right? So you can't have like addresses, labels, stuff like that. So, you know, I'm like, what, what's going on here? And I realized all the cars had license plates on them. And that's how you dash cam. The dash cam worked really well. Uh, it blew tooth to the, to the phone. I can watch it on the phone. I can download has came on a memory card. I was easy to hide the wire around and everything and plug it into the, into the jack in the car. Really good. We loved it. Did I pump that up there? And it's, uh, the E Yeager, the E Yeager, uh, dash cam also on sale. Okay. Great, great deal. Uh, you know, you need this for security. If you haven't, if you have an accident or whatever, and you know, someone's whatever wrong, you can prove it. You know, you can definitely prove it.  You know, so it's good safety thing to have. It's really good thing to have. Right. He said, what did little, little Billy, little Billy said he thought he was little Billy was left in an alley for years. And he thought he was a, he thought he was a cat, little Billy thought he was a cat for years. He thought he was a cat. You know, that's crazy cordless gray shears. Okay. We're going to go with these cordless gray shears. Now these are the lithium battery ones, multifunction scissors. Okay. Now also sent to me for free to review.  You can see that they've been used because they're all filthy dirty. You hold down, you hold down the safety here and it trims really good. It also comes with the hedge trimmer. Right. I used them both. You can see this nice and dirty. I've used them both very good. You can smell the oil on it from everything. Really good little deal for small jobs, right?  Put the safety on there. Right. Cordless gray shear mini hedge trimmer. And of course everybody needs these things. And you know, you want something battery operated. You want something small, compact, easy to move around. And this was it. The lithium battery multifunctional scissors. And I used it pretty, pretty good. We used them and they were pretty good. All right. I know. Sorry. I get carried away. So what's the next question?  Here we go again.    She thought a meatball was something you blanked. My gosh. My gosh.  She thought a meatball was something you blanked. What do you think that was? What do you think she thought a meatball was? My gosh.  Right. Meatball. What did she thought a meatball was? All right. We showed you the small gray shears. Now we're going to show you the hedge trimmer cordless hedge trimmer. Okay. Oh man. All right. This thing's pretty wild. Let me get it out of here. The in, what's it called? The indom. Indom, I think. Right. Pretty cool. All right. Now that's a hedge trimmer. That's a big jammer. That's a big way of a jammer. All right. Now it comes with a little guard here. So you put the guard up here. So you have something else to hold. All right. It also comes with the battery. All right. And the charger. We want to see you don't want to put the battery in and see if it works. I just got this. We got to take it out and check it out. All right. So the battery slides in like that. Right. Well, there's a safety button right there. And let's see. There you go. That works pretty well. And it's a 21 volt battery. So that's pretty good size battery. And of course over here it's got your buttons. Your lights. So you can see it's three buttons. Three lights. So as you know, it's fully charged. Right. Um, pretty good deal. So take the battery out. Right. So be safe. Put the battery back in. So that is the hedge trimmer by. Indom. Indom. Indom. 20 inch hedge trimmer. Okay. Pretty good little hedge trimmer. By Indom. Now I got a couple of him in them things. In the stream. I also got a little chainsaw coming up next. But it's not together yet. So we got to put it together. But. Oops. I'm going to try and put this thing away. It goes like this. So anyway.  She thought a meatball. What did she think a meatball was? Come on, get in there. It's. There we go. There we go.   She thought a meatball. Where is it? That's my Masi. She thought a meatball was something you bounced. Oh my God. She thought a meatball was something you balanced. I can't believe it. Oh, and extra pieces again, Christmas. Here we go. Extra pieces on Christmas. So she thought a meatball was something you bounced. Okay. Like a basketball. All right. There you go. Extra pieces. All right. There we go. That's the hedge trimmer by Indom. Right. Now we also got the mini chainsaw by Indom. Coming up next. That's a pretty good price on sale. Pretty good price. Indom. The hedge trimmer is an Amazon choice.  The chainsaw is an Amazon choice. But you know what? I haven't done this. We got to put that up there. Right. And then we got to put that up there. Because that's what we just did to Indom. Right. The hedge trimmer cordless hedge trimmer. And now we're going to use the chainsaw. Okay. The chainsaw. All right. By Indom as well. We'll hide that. We're going to go to the next question. While we're waiting for the chainsaw to come out. And then there's Monday with singles night at the Chuck E cheese. They removed the balls from the ball pit and replaced them with blank. All right. Why don't they replace the balls with a Chuck E cheese for singles night. The singles night. Here we go. This is the mini electric chainsaw. Four inch. All right. This is only a four inch 21 volt lithium ion up brushless. It's a two 21 volt batteries. Okay. Um, lubrication, brushless motor, lightweight, compact, out of the box. Friendly. Um, it won't live. Is it? It's a moment. I am all you. And a moment. So it's not a modem. It's a moment. It's an O. I am all you. And a moment. Let's take her out of the box. So it's all crazy stuff. Chainsaw. Right. In moment. In moment, I think that's how you say it in moment. In moment, they need to work on their graphics. Cause I thought that was a D. I'm like, I'm on in moments. It's just right there. In moment. In moment. Model D LJ. Oh, four four inch mini chainsaw. Come to your little tool pack. Right. right now we got a little chainsaw action here oh look at this it comes it's already assembled we don't have to put it together let's put a battery in there and see what we can chop up we can chop up the bodies before the fleece get here right all right so you put that battery in there 21 volt you got two of them right let's slap oh look at that oh the safety don't even work well that's gonna be a lot of fun and you put your oil up in here it comes with the oil all right um lock unlock unlock lock don't work well the lock is in the middle okay so it's locked in the middle all right there you go it's locked in the middle okay it's weight is 2.4 pounds 400 watts 25 amps all right um yeah 37 watt hours so it's gonna last a long time right got the guard that comes up like that and you slide that on there pretty cool little deal i got some branches we're gonna be cutting down on this thing that's the end of that let me go see what i did that just made me angry why not god damn it kind of really get you angry you know that that's gonna take some time to fix i don't know what happened the freaking battery went flying across the room knocked out a plug i'm assuming we're still live that might be a little better what happened to the battery though i'm not even sure if i'm still alive here let's see no i'm still alive we're gonna wait for that to come on we'll put this back together um balls to be clean if i had to i'd be king right what are you thinking about safety glasses and modem and modem oh i forgot to put this in modem okay everything is screwed up what a way and modem and modem let's try that all right try and get back on track here try and get back on track boom boom boom all right this is the original easy cap uh video capture card okay right here video capture card we got that going on in the stream um let's pop this up here all right if you need it you got to have it this will carry your uh your uh camcorder uh your video and be able to transform it to your your laptop or your uh your pc okay um Monday was signals night at the chucky cheese we went over this right and then what have they replaced the balls in the ball pit with what do you think oh i know it was jello shots okay they replaced the balls in the ball pit with jello shots for singles night at chucky cheese all right so this here's the usb 2.0 video capture card for pc and mac um pretty simple little device let's get out of here simple little thing here so i got the usb plug to your computer and then it's got your your your plugs for your for your camera okay and it'll turn your camera so you'll be able to capture your camera card for your gaming you know whatever you're doing right you can do that and if you need it you got to have it right that's when you know you know you need it when you know you have to have it that's when you need it and when you need one now you know where you get it easy cap the easy cap okay the tech weld we're gonna pull that out from the bottom here this thing is pretty wild okay if you ever wanted to i don't even know if this is on sale today pull it out that's what that's all it is is that's the little tech welder right it comes with the ac plug you plug this into the ac socket okay that's what's really cool about it it's got all your other attachments down here right your wire brush you know for the you need okay it comes with you know all your attachments for your grounding your material and your stick welding right it comes with your instruction booklet um for your hobbyist for your hobbyist and it's very ultra portable it's less than five pounds right very ultra portable reviews on this are excellent i'm not a welder myself i'm gonna i'm gonna try to use it uh because the next thing in the stream coming up they also sent me a helmet so i'm gonna be i'm gonna be playing around with it and seeing how much fun it is to create some welds okay you know you always come across things when you want to put two pieces of metal together a hinge or or or frame breaks or something like that it'd be nice to have right so that's the tick welder um for the hobbyist for the hobbyist welder okay pretty cool by tech weld all right and it's one of those things that you know you want you in your garage right it's one of those things you want in your garage for when you need it right fat fill went out of hospital to lose weight he got so hungry waiting he ate the blank what was it what do you what did he eat what did he eat fat fill all right of course now i got this in the stream because i just showed you to welder is the mason welding helmet light adjusting welding helmet these things are you know you need one if you're going to be welding and this is the light adjusting one by mason sent to me for free to review um let's get it out of there right comfortable right sleek looks nice right i don't want to peel it the thing off of there but there you go mason's it's got the flap up there so you can open her up it's got all your settings on the side here um shade grind cut weld right um pretty cool and uh you put that right on you drop her down pick her up right drop her down and you can do your welding and just i can see it's very very i can still see through it which is cool because i've had welding helmets where i clearly see nothing and uh so you can still see it's very very good for what it needs to be doing um uh yeah mason's okay perfect this is what you need and this is the one you want to have okay and it's on sale so get yourself this one by mason's okay um fat fill what did fat fill eat fat fill what was in the hospital to lose weight he got so hungry waiting he ate the wheelchair he ate the wheelchair fat fill got so hungry waiting he ate the wheelchair okay girl fat fill okay fat fill got so hungry waiting that he ate the wheelchair right crazy stuff that fat fill you know you never can tell you never can't tell all right so we'll go to the next one and that is in this year's world's strongest man contest the struggle of war the tug of war will not be with a rope it will be with a blank okay put your answer in the chat what do you think the answer is put your answer in the chat this next item i got in the stream is this little solar table lamp all right but i can't even say that name can you say that name see it can you it is uh hayoshi i guess hayoshi and it's a really cool little lamp i got it over here now i got it down here and it's a solar panel i had this charging right you can charge it with the solar panel you can also charge it with the usb it's got a usb over here so you can charge it and it's type that's a type c on there and it's got a little on button hold it on there you go all right and it's got four settings four light settings and of course it's going to charge with the with the solar panel on the top and you can leave that you know on a table on your desk outside or wherever you know when you were camping perfect little table lamp for you know whatever when you're playing games outside right all right it's got your little on off button down here for i'm not sure what that says down there you're gonna have to get glasses i don't have my glasses but yeah pretty cool little light for camping solar panel solar powered you can charge it with the solar panel or you can charge it with the usb and it's gonna it's gonna work just good for you for camping that's really awesome little little light right what do you think about that light okay this year's strongest man contest tug of war will not be with a rope it will be with twizzlers okay twizzlers and you can't you can't have you can't have here we go with the turn that down you can't have a tug of war with twizzlers what do you think of that all right anyway anyway that's still a lot what do you think we're almost done but after that lamp that was that was a pretty cool lamp right that's pretty cool lamp i'm gonna show you these next things that got in the screen uh is by hey oh shoo solar outdoor uh lamps really i really like them but i show this one on the screen i don't remember if i did yeah i did but we're gonna go right to this one which is these ones are nice it comes in a pack of four right i only brought two of them in i had them out on the stoop last night they were out charging and they're purple okay which is really cool i don't know if i can get them to go on if i cover up the solar panel there you go right you can see that it's pretty cool with the purple right it comes in a four pack right wait for halloween halloween's coming up right halloween's coming up i don't know if this one can we do it this one oh yeah so we can do both of them there you go you got both of them going on oh pretty cool little lights and they come in a set of four okay you can charge up with the solar panels on top and then they also come with these cool little clips so you can hang them up on something on a on a wire or whatever if you want on a on a post right pretty cool little lights we like them gonna be good for the halloween theme gonna be good for the halloween theme solar outdoor lanterns purple right now i'm not sure there's got an on off button here if i hit the button it'll be it'll go solid so it'll be a solid right then it's off that one or solid you can have it a solid purple or flaming purple which i like the flaming purple so i'm gonna leave it the flaming purple right pretty cool solar lights for the atmosphere for halloween might as well get them now halloween's coming right you're gonna want to get them we're gonna do one more question to call it a day and that is even though bob was 80 years old he's still like the blank what did bob like to do that old man what did he like to do let me tell you that bob even though he was 80 years old he's still like to dance okay that bob he's still like to dance okay and with that we're gonna do the dance party where is the dance party we're gonna do a little dance party over here and excellent how do you like that how do you like that how do you like that okay so that's if i got that's all i got maybe i might be going live on tuesday again so come by tuesday if you see me i'll be most most tuesdays eight o'clock we're going live on amazon sometimes i go live on youtube and facebook come check it out hang out with us thanks for coming by


Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. Narrated by Daniel Highland. Thomas Paine vs. Edmund Burke, Part 8. It is with good reason that my discussion of the ideas of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke has been more extensive than any other topic I have hitherto covered on Libertarianism.org. No direct confrontation in the history of political thought has dealt with so many fundamental issues, such as the nature of rights and their proper role in practical politics, the moral foundation of government, and the justification, if any, of resistance and revolution against an established government. In my last essay, I called attention to Paine's allegation in that the much ballyhoed English constitution was a myth. The elements of that supposed constitution, such as charters, legal precedents and acts of parliament, were the products of the government itself. Only the people, as represented by delegates elected to special conventions, could establish legitimate constitutions and no such thing had ever happened in English history. As Paine put it in Part 2 of Rights of Man, a constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government. And government without a constitution is power without a right. Thus did Paine call into question the moral legitimacy of the English government. This is the context in which Paine's references to the Norman conquest, 1066, should be understood. Conquest and tyranny transplanted themselves with William the Conqueror from Normandy into England, and the country is yet disfigured with the Marx. Never had the English people been able to participate in a constitutional convention to frame a government for themselves. The power of their government, rooted in conquest rather than in consent, was assumed rather than delegated. And all assumed power is usurpation. The English case stood in stark contrast to America, where the state and federal constitutions were authorized not by legislatures, but by special conventions whose delegates were elected by the people. For a discussion of this distinctively American use of the word convention, see Gordon Wood, the creation of the American Republic, 1776 to 1787, pages 306 to 43. Government, according to Paine, is a trust. A government possesses no legitimate powers except those that have been specifically delegated to it by the people. It is absurd to suppose that a government can delegate power to itself, yet that was the source of the authority claimed by defenders of the English Constitution. Various charters and declarations of rights in English history were nothing more than agreements among rulers as to how to divide and distribute illegitimate powers among themselves. Whatever else may be said about the so-called English Constitution, in the final analysis, it has undoubtedly been the most productive machine of taxation that was ever invented. Contrary to Burke's position, according to which the English Constitution was grounded in a type of irrevocable compact between the people and their government, Paine maintained that a proper Constitution is based on a social compact, or contract, among the people themselves, and that only after that agreement has been made do the people create a government, delegating certain powers to it in the form of a trust. The political implications of these conflicting views differed profoundly. In Burke's conception of a social compact, the essentials of which had a long provenance in Roman law and medieval political thought. A bilateral agreement between the people and their government may be dissolved only with the agreement of both parties, whereas in Paine's conception of a social compact, which was essentially Lockean, though it did not originate with Locke, the people themselves may decide to dissolve their current government and institute a new government in its place. Needless to say, Paine's version of the social compact made popular revolutions far easier to justify than anything found in Burke, for rare indeed is a government that will agree to its own extinction. We now come to how Paine applied his theory of the social compact to the French Revolution and how Burke criticized Paine's argument. In part one of Rights of Man, February 1791, Paine said the following about the French National Assembly. The present National Assembly of France is, strictly speaking, the personal social compact. The members of it are the delegates of the nation in its original character. Future assemblies will be the delegates of the nation in its organized character. The authority of the present assembly is different to what the authority of future assemblies will be. The authority of the present one is to form a constitution. The authority of future assemblies will be to legislate according to the principles and forms prescribed in that constitution. And if experience should hereafter show that alterations, amendments or additions are necessary, the constitution will point out the mode by which such things shall be done and not leave it to the discretionary power of the future government. Burke, in an appeal from the new to the old wigs, August 1791, attacked Paine's argument on two fronts. First, the National Assembly was never authorized by the people to frame a new constitution for France. Rather, that body began as deputies for the Third Estate, one of three orders along with the nobility and clergy, when Louis XVI convened an Estates General in May 1789. Those commoners who elected delegates to represent them in the Estates General never authorized their deputies to draft and ratify a new constitution. That power was assumed, not delegated, when the deputies for the Third Estate declared themselves the National Assembly on June 17th and assigned to themselves the task of framing a new constitution. According to Burke, this option was never even presented to the voters, much less approved by them. And few voters from the Third Estate would have sanctioned the overthrow of the old regime, even if they had been presented with that option. That body which christened itself the sovereign National Assembly was nothing more than a renegade faction of the Estates General, a faction that did not meet Paine's own standards for a legitimate constitutional convention. Without going into the historical complexities involved here, suffice it to say that Burke had a strong case. The second part of Burke's attack was theoretical and therefore broader in scope than his criticism of the National Assembly. Indeed, this aspect of Burke's critique cut to the heart of the Lockean notion of a social compact. Burke began by asking a fundamental question. What do we mean when we speak of the people? Although this term is frequently used to signify a majority that exercises supreme authority in civil society, this usage is based on a legal fiction. Specifically, it is based on the notion of individuals who have incorporated themselves into a single, unified political body. Burke wrote, In a state of rude nature, there is no such thing as a people. A number of men in themselves have no collective capacity. The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial and made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement was is collected from the form into which the particular society has been cast. Any other is not their covenant. When men, therefore, break up the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form and capacity to a state, they are no longer a people. They have no longer a corporate existence. They have no longer a legal, co-active force to bind within, nor a claim to be recognized abroad. They are a number of vague, loose individuals and nothing more. With them all is to begin again. Alas, they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass, which has a true, politic personality. If, as Payne argued, the people create a government through the mechanism of a constitution, then in accordance with the Lockean version of a social compact, they must first agree unanimously to incorporate themselves into a political body that is thereafter governed by majority rule. Without this foundation of unanimous consent, there can be no such thing as majority or minority, or power in any one person to bind another. As Locke himself conceded, no one may be compelled to abandon the state of nature and obey the will of the majority in political decision-making. Thus, according to Burke, no constitution ratified by a majority of the people may be deemed legitimate unless every individual under the jurisdiction of that constitution has previously agreed to become a member of that civil society called the people. Only this prior consent can morally obligate individuals to obey the will of the majority. Therefore, according to Burke, Payne's notion of a constitution based on the consent of the governed must be grounded on two assumptions. First, that of an incorporation produced by unanimity, and secondly, an unanimous agreement that the act of a mere majority, say of one, shall pass with them and with others as the act of the whole. Having taken Lockean social contract theorists at their word, Burke had no problem demonstrating that the Payne defenders of the French Revolution failed to fulfill their own criteria for a legitimate constitution. A revolution, by dissolving the current government, places individuals in a state of nature, a condition in which they may refuse to incorporate themselves once again into a civil society, and so have no moral obligation to obey the will of the majority. After a revolution, the process of incorporation that creates the people in a legal sense must begin anew, and a new civil society in the Lockean scheme requires the consent of every member who is to be governed by the majority. Thus, a constitution, even if it is directly ratified by a majority of the people, cannot bind individuals who never agreed to become members of that civil society in the first place. Of course, Burke intended his critical analysis of majority rule to apply to more than the French Revolution and its defenders. Burke's attack was meant to undermine the very foundation of Lockean social contract theory by showing that it is unable to rescue us from the anarchical state of nature. Like previous critics of political individualism, Burke maintained that those philosophers who begin with natural rights in a state of nature are forever doomed, theoretically speaking, to remain in that anarchistic condition because the requirement of unanimous consent has never been met whether in France, America, or any other country. By Lockean standards, therefore, no government in history was or is legitimate. Ironically, perhaps, Burke's argument bears an uncanny resemblance to the argument later presented by Lysander Spooner in No Treason, the Constitution of No Authority. But whereas Burke invoked the radical implications of consent theory as a reason to reject the theory, Spooner embraced both the theory and its radical implications. But that is a topic for another discussion. Thank you for listening to Excursions. To learn more about Libertarian philosophy and history, visit www.libertarianism.org.


registering for a BCEID and accessing the Student Transcript Service. The Student Transcript Service is an online application that allows current and former students to access their secondary school transcripts, certificates, scholarship information, course, assessment, and examination marks. Students can also order and electronically send transcripts to post-secondary institutions. This video will show students how to access the Student Transcript Service, also known as the STS, and help students navigate the dashboard. To get started, students must register for a BC government account called a BCEID before accessing the STS. For the purpose of this video, we will show the process for a current student. From the STS webpage, students will need to select Current Student and then click on Order, which is found on the top right corner or left tab on the page. Students will then click on Register to register for a basic BCEID. This BCEID allows you to sign in securely to many government services in British Columbia. It is very important that the students remember their reset password answers so that if they forget their password, they can get a confirmation code sent to their email address to reset it. Students will complete the registration by providing their personal education number, legal first name and last name, date of birth, and email address. This information must match the information that the school of record has on file for the student. If entered incorrectly three times, the student will be locked out of the system until Ministry of Education staff can clear the information. The student will receive an email from Student Transcript Service once the system has been unlocked and they could try to register again. Once the student has completed the registration, they will be sent an email with a confirmation to link the created BCEID to the student's STS account. This link must be activated within 24 hours of receiving the email, otherwise the registration will need to be completed again. Now the student will be able to log into the STS with their user ID and password and access the Student Transcript Service Dashboard. This dashboard shows the student the different options for accessing their information. As an example, a student can view their marks by selecting View Your Transcript, which provides the student with their marks that have been loaded. The transcript shown will have an unofficial transcript of grades title, which will become official when ordered through the system. Students can also view their current graduation assessment and provincial exam results by clicking on this link.


From VOA Learning English, this is the Economics Report in Special English. President Obama had little time to celebrate his re-election in early November. He now turns his attention to negotiations with congressional leaders. By law, the United States faces a combination of big spending cuts and tax increases next year to deal with its budget deficits. Together, these measures are being called a fiscal cliff, and economists say they could push the country back into a recession. The Congressional Budget Office says that if current policies continue, they will place the budget on an unsustainable path. But the CBO warned that deep cuts could hurt economic growth. That would reduce federal revenue from taxes. Democrats and Republicans are trying to reach a deal on deficit reductions valued at over $600 billion. Those policies are to take effect on January 1, 2013. They will happen unless the two main parties can reach agreement. The cuts would affect both the military spending that the Republican Party wants and the social programs supported by President Obama and his Democratic Party. The Democrats control the United States Senate, while Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives. One issue is whether to extend tax rate reductions that have been in place for years. Those tax cuts are set to disappear at the end of this year. The reduced tax rates apply to all Americans whatever they earn. Republican lawmakers say they continue to support all of the lower tax rates. But President Obama and Democratic Party leaders have been seeking to end the tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers. Both sides have signaled a willingness to compromise. But without agreement, painful budget measures are sure to take effect. For VOA Learning English, I'm Mario Ritter.