There are four ways to make money, only four. If you take none of those four risks, you make no return. Since the early days of his career, hedge fund manager Mark Yusko invested in the technologies that would revolutionize commerce and media. Today, Yusko is convinced that those innovations were only the prologue of a much larger revolution that will disrupt the financial system. The Internet of value will be bigger than the Internet, will be bigger than the mobile net. Why? As Newton said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. But as history has already shown, the more disruptive the innovation, the bigger the forces opposing it. The incumbents really don't want the disruptors to win, so they will fight really hard. They'll throw up regulatory barriers, they'll try to buy up the companies and shelve the technology. In the struggle between innovators and conservative forces, which side will prevail? And what are the assets that will define the future financial system? Find out in another exclusive Cointelegraph interview. First of all, I would like to know a little bit more of your background. So as many Bitcoin supporters, you have a past as a skeptic. So how did you transition from being a Bitcoin skeptic to a Bitcoin believer? Yeah, you know, it's actually really interesting in that, had I been less skeptical, I'd be a lot wealthier, but that's okay. So look, my history goes way back, you know, I came out of school, business school, went to work for an insurance company, managed bonds, and worked for an equity firm. Then I kind of went back to my alma mater, worked in the endowment world, and the endowment model really taught me all about investing in private investments, particularly venture capital. And I had this aha moment in 1996, we invested a little bit of money in this little company called Google, half a million dollars turned into 200 million, I joke there should be a quad at Notre Dame called the Google Quad. And essentially what that did is it made me realize that infrastructure around these technological innovation waves really matter. So fast forward to 2013, I had invested with a friend, Dan Moorhead, in his macro fund when he spun out a tiger.   And I'm going to spend the rest of my career focused on Bitcoin and blockchain. And I looked, I wasn't running drugs on Silk Road. I was not a cartography student. I didn't know what Bitcoin was in 2013. Unfortunately, I joke, you know, the Winklevoss twins and I were introduced to Bitcoin about the exact same time. They're multi-billionaires. I'm not Soviet. Now I also defend myself saying I didn't have half a billion dollars to put into it, but I had something, but I didn't do it. Because even though Dan had conviction about it, I was skeptical. I didn't really understand. Now what I did understand was infrastructure. So investing in his early funds has been great. Those funds are up 11, 12X, I think now more with the FTX deal. But that pales in comparison to the Bitcoin fund, which is up 350 times best performing hedge fund in the history of hedge funds. So the short version of a very long tail. A lot of people have heard it already is about nine months later, I wrote one paragraph in a letter to investors, 40 pages. One paragraph saying Bitcoin might be an interesting special situation. You know, maybe throw a few basis points in prices, 500 bucks. I got hate Giovanni. I got hate from my clients.     So now what's interesting about that, the skepticism was quote unquote proven right in that the price fell over the next few months. The price went from 500 bucks all the way down to 185 bucks. And of course, I said, oh, see, everyone was right. Well, no, they weren't right.  Stole that from John Burbank. And the value kept decreasing. The value kept going up. So that was 2015, 2016. I finally got over the skepticism. Why? Because it did the work. I actually spent a year diving deeply into the technology, reading the white papers, really looking and talking to other people. And I had this aha moment. I mean, I couldn't make this up. I was literally behind the wheel of an RV in Eureka, California. And it hit me that this is simply an operating system. The blockchain technology is an operating system for the internet of value. And the internet of value will be bigger than the internet, will be bigger than the mobile net. And Bitcoin and other things are going to power that. Other cryptocurrencies are going to power that.   I would like to point out the fact that you have always been keen on non-traditional investments, which is the endowment model of investing, which is something that you have been promoting for most of your investment career as a strategy of investment. Maybe can you guide us through the key points of this investment model? And what role do digital assets play in it? Yep. So you think about the endowment model and it's a little bit misnamed. It really should be the multi-generational model because multi-generational families have been following the same model for centuries as have pension funds and other big asset owners. And it's really pretty simple. It focuses on a handful of core concepts. One is a value discipline. You want to buy things that are cheap and hold them for long periods of time where price catches up to the value. Second is you have to be global. You can't, all the smart people don't live where you live. People in America think all the smart people live in America. People in China think all the smart people live in China. People in the UK think all the smart people live in the UK. It's just not true. And in fact, if you look at investment styles, people in America have more US investments. People in China have more Chinese investments. People in the UK have more UK investments. That makes no sense, right? It makes absolutely no sense. You should have a global portfolio. Third is you have to have a diversified portfolio. If you take cash and you add bonds, bonds are riskier, meaning they have credit risk, right?  It goes down. When you add equities which have default risk, I mean, default risk have bankruptcy risk, your portfolio risk doesn't go up. It goes down. And so that construct means uncorrelated assets that you add to a portfolio add incredible value. Last piece is that there are four ways to make money, only four, right? Take no risk, you get the risk free rate. So you have to choose one of four risks or all four risks. You can take credit risk by bonds. You can take equity risk by equities. You can take illiquidity risk by private investments, private equity, private real estate, private energy, private debt, and you can use structure, which is just a fancy term for leverage. So if you take none of those four risks, you make no return. So you have to choose which risk. Well, the best risk to take, in my mind, is the illiquidity risk. So if you look at the best investors in the world, they are constantly overweight private investments, particularly innovation-oriented investments like venture capital. Yale's at 23%. You look at Jeremy Grantham, his private foundations at 40%, 4-0, and they are the best performing large portfolios around. And so why is that? Well, it's because innovation is an asset class. Innovation creates the businesses that create the stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities. So without innovation, we can't generate new wealth. Printing money does not create wealth. Never has, never will, bad idea. So where does Bitcoin fit into this whole construct? Well, it's the perfect uncorrelated asset. All of these alternative asset classes over the years, whether it was international stocks, they're gonna diversify your portfolio, but they're 70 plus percent correlated. Hedge funds are gonna diversify your portfolio, but they're 40 to 50% correlated. Bonds will diversify your portfolio. They're still 30% correlated. Bitcoin is 0.15 correlated to stocks and 0% correlated to bonds. It's the perfect diversifier. So if you add it to a portfolio, your risk goes down and your return goes up. It's the perfect diversifying asset because it has a symmetry of upside versus downside. So it's a great asset. The second reason, it's the ultimate innovation, right? Bitcoin is an innovation in money, right? Gold is the only money in the world, right? Everything else is just credit. And every other currency in the world has an associated liability, government debt. Gold is the only asset that has no liability associated with it. That's why for 5,000 years an ounce has bought a fine person suit, right? Suit of armor, suit suit, fine man suit on Savaro today, fine woman suit, okay? It is the ultimate store of value, but it's not very portable and it's not very divisible. It's really hard to break a bar of gold so I can give you half of it. So Bitcoin is better and it's digital. And as we move from the analog world from the electronic world to the digital world, it is the perfect money. So for all those reasons, innovation and a diversifier, you have to have it in your portfolio and that's why I have the hashtag getoffzero. Cool, but just to make sure about your position regarding all this crypto space. When you talk about Bitcoin, you talk about the leading example of an overall innovation movement that is happening in the world of digital currencies or you are truly a Bitcoin maximalist that thinks that the only value is in Bitcoin. Yeah, no, thank you. So look, I am not a Bitcoin maximalist. I think Bitcoin is a fantastic asset. I think it is hard money, the better form of money, but I think tons of other protocols are gonna be great. I think we're gonna have a protocol stack for web three, the same way we have a protocol stack for web two. You know, today we have TCP IP, which you and I are using right now to communicate. Then we have SMTP for email, HTTP for websites, FTP for files, then we have www.thecannotieseverythingtogether. That's a beautiful protocol stack in the future. I think Bitcoin is kind of the base layer. I think on top of that, we got Filecoin to do the file stuff. Now in the middle, right? We have Solana and Polkadot and Cosmos kind of vying for those middle, maybe one of those will win or two of those will win.  So I think you're gonna have huge opportunities in Bitcoin, not as huge as they were five years ago, but still huge. I will talk about that, I'm sure. Then I think you have bigger opportunities in Ethereum because it's a toolkit and more things will be built on that. And the nice thing about Ethereum is there's a business model where you can actually share in the revenues. One of the challenges of a store value asset is it generates no income, right? It's just there to store value.  I mean, people just don't understand what tokens are. So what the internet did to information, commerce, now blockchain and crypto does to financial services and to value. And so we have tokens today, very small number. In the future, we'll have billions, maybe even trillions of tokens that will represent digital ownership of every asset, every stock, every bond, every currency, every commodity, every piece of real estate, every piece of art, every, everything, it will be trillions. Everything will be tokenized. I totally agree with your non-maximalistic position. I think that it's having like an open mind about these all developing environment is the best strategy, is the best mindset. I'm also very excited to see if all these bets are going to be proven right, because that would mean that you were one of the early investors in both these two technological revolutions that happened in the last 20 years, which is the internet and this new blockchain revolution. So like it means you get right two revolutions out of two, so that would be great. I don't mean to, I don't mean this in a braggadocious way, but there's another one, right? It's a 14 year cycle. And so there was one in the middle, right? 96, we had the internet in 2010, we had the mobile net and the mobile net was bigger than the internet, right? When this got introduced in 2007, it started a wave of connectivity where we actually made way more money Giovanni on the mobile net than we did the internet, right? We invested early in things like Alibaba and Uber and Lyft and all of these businesses, Netflix, Tesla, all these things that helped people be connected, but now this new revolution starts in 2024, right? We haven't even started the trust net, as I call it, and it's going to be so big, like orders of magnitude bigger, why? Because as Newton said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. The internet made everything better, but the mobile net made that even better and it didn't make it better linearly. It made it better exponentially. Exponential growth matters and that's why networks are so valuable. That's why this evolution of technology is going to create more wealth than any of the previous by orders of magnitude. Yeah, and actually now I would like to talk about the value, the actual exponential increase in value that this technology can spark. So as far as I remember, one of your most famous price prediction for Bitcoin was $250,000 within the next five years. So can you maybe explain us how do you think that Bitcoin is going to reach that value within this timeframe? Yep, so that actually is kind of a pairing back of my original comment, which was Bitcoin gold equivalence. So if I believe that Bitcoin is digital gold, which I do, digital money, then gold's total market cap is about $8 trillion. $8 trillion divided by the number of Bitcoin gives you a price of around $500,000 a coin. But a couple months ago, I guess nine months ago or so, someone asked me the question. I said, well, they said, what's the short-term view? I said, well, if you think about it, all the gold really doesn't make sense because about half the gold is jewelry and chalices and stuff that doesn't get really traded very often. The monetary value of gold is about $4 trillion. That's for sure where Bitcoin's going. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that we're going there. And that's about a 10-bagger from here. So at, you know, or actually it was a 10-bagger from back then, so about five-bagger from here. So that is, you know, from $50,000 right around to $250,000. And I said about a three to a five-year period. And the challenge is the price has euphoria and fear. And so you have the line of value and the price goes up and down above and below it. And so how quickly we get to that price? I think there are a whole bunch of people this year. Like, if you looked at the core model, it basically said the value of the network around now would be around $100,000. Okay, and I still believe that. Yeah, but actually I wanted to explore a little bit more your prediction for the next few years because you seem to think that we are going to face another big crash in the next few years. Specifically, I saw an interview where you were mentioning 2024 as the year where we are going to experience a bubble which is comparable to the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s. So I always thought that that dot-com bubble was more comparable to the crash that we already experienced back in 2017. But you seem to see it differently. No, we're so early, right? So if you think about the internet, right? Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, that's a lot of wealth, right? That is the x-axis. Or if you think about the internet, right? Web one is parallel to the x-axis. Web two is the knee of the parabolic curve and web three is parallel to the y-axis. So if you think of the area under the curve as the value, the area under the web one, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, that's a decent amount of wealth but it barely looks like anything because it's parallel to the x-axis. Web two, Alibaba, Netflix, Google, Amazon, way more wealth, like orders of magnitude more, first trillion dollar companies, that's the knee of the curve, right? We haven't even gotten to the parabolic growth part of web three, which is gonna create untold wealth. And so, but every time there's a bust in between, right? We couldn't have the applications formed unless we had the failure in 2000, people said it's over, right? And so the other problem you have, and we'll probably talk about this, is that the incumbents really don't want the disruptors to win. So they will fight really hard. They'll throw up regulatory barriers, they'll try to buy up the companies and shelve the technology. I mean, people forget, right? This is a long time. People forget that in 1903, the largest car company in America was the American Electric Vehicle Corp. We had electric cars in 1903. That was going to be the future until Henry Ford, okay?  So now we have internal combustion engines. So for a hundred plus years, we used inferior technology because commerce wins that way. And so the same thing's gonna happen here. So we'll have a bust. It'll probably be around regulatory friction. It'll probably be around fear. It'll probably be around, you know, the transition from infrastructure to applications. But on the other side, massive. Okay, that's very interesting because you mentioned the incumbents. So I have the feeling that in the previous cycles, when we were talking about the first development of the internet, the rise of these tech giants that like embodied the second stage of this whole process of development of the internet, we didn't have the threat that cryptocurrencies and digital assets in general seem to pose on centralized actors like banks, like financial intermediaries. So it seems that this time, there are gonna be a lot more odds to face in order to succeed in this revolution because the opposing forces have much more incentive to prevent this revolution from happening. I think they have the same incentive. It's just different actors. Innovation always wins, but the incumbents will fight back. And there's no question that you're right that look financial services is far bigger than information and media and commerce, right? Those are big industries. Media industry is big industry.  And what Amazon did to mom and pop or Walmart, okay? That's big. I mean, people tried to put up barriers to Amazon and you weren't allowed to buy more than this and you could always spend so many hours on the internet, all kinds of things to try to slow down the growth of the things related to the internet. Same thing's gonna happen in financial service. The problem is financial service is just bigger. I mean, money, we're talking $86 trillion globally. That's a big number. So when you mention the fact that there will be this correction and probably it's going to be related to regulatory hurdles, it seems to actually connect with my next question, which is related to something that Ray Dalio recently said at the SALT conference. He said, he was talking about the future of Bitcoin and he was saying that if Bitcoin becomes really successful regulators will try to kill it. So it seems that he was foreseeing this scenario that you were talking about. But I guess that for you, this is just a temporary hurdle and then the curve will continue growing after it. Yeah, look, I mean, Ray's exactly right. But it, well, I should say he's approximately right. It's not the regulators that are trying to kill it. It's the incumbents that are trying to kill it by using the regulators. And that's been happening forever and ever and ever. When the horse's carriage was being replaced, I mean, when the horse's carriage was replacing horse-drawn carriages, what did these street sweepers and the buggy whip manufacturers do? They lobbied, fancy word for corruption. They paid regulators to throw up barriers to make cars illegal in New York City. They tried that. What did the train companies do when airplanes came out? They tried to erect barriers to make it harder for the innovators to thrive. What did the cable companies do when streaming started to happen? They tried to net neutrality or the phone companies when wireless happened. But it's not the regulators. The regulators are not evil. It's the incumbents trying to unlevel the playing field to preserve their gravy train. And that's normal. That's natural, right? They're economic actors. They have families to feed and I get that. Great, so to wrap up things, I would like to ask you a price prediction for the end of 2021. So what is your view? How much Bitcoin will be worth by the end of the year? So look, a good economist says what or when, never together. So I think that we will head higher. The problem is short-term prices are notoriously difficult because they really don't depend on value. They depend on sentiment. And there's so many variables over the next three and a half months that could impact that. I'm probably in the camp that says we hover between kind of where we are and where we were in February that I think we're unlikely to have that big parabolic blow off top that a lot of people are hoping for. I just don't see that. It's certainly possible. I mean, and that thing about, it's like George Soros says it best, right? You should never think in point estimates. That's not the way the world works. There's a range of outcomes and is not always normally distributed. It's skewed one way or the other. And so I think the likelihood, right? The more likely scenarios, you have to think in scenarios are that there is no major blow-up in the world and that Bitcoin hovers somewhere in that 45 to $65,000 range. There is a right-tail scenario that says, look, things roll over, growth is bad, central banks start hitting, money printer goes burr, and we get another spike and we approach that 100K value. That was Mark Yusko, CIO and founder at Morgan Creek Capital. Thanks everyone for watching. I'm Giovanni, your host. As always, if you enjoyed the interview, don't forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel.


Welcome to Hinesville and Dixon Farm. We're here with two of our achievement award finalists James and Ashton Dixon and achievement award finalists is pretty good thing to say. Pretty good thing to hear isn't it? That's awesome. Very proud of him and all his hard work. Well you all have worked hard because let me tell you something you've only been in this particular location which makes their story very unusual for a short period of time. Yep. Yes. Only two months. Two or so months. Two months of solid. Ashton started her job in the end of January February and I was back and forth until March for about two months. Well chicken houses is what they have here on Dixon Farm but your history of chicken houses didn't start just a little while ago it started a while back in another location in Magnolia. Yeah I bought my first farm in 2013 in Magnolia as a five-house farm and had it for eight eight years before we signed the contract on this one and moved here but before that I grew up around it my grandparents they've been in the chicken business for probably 50 years they're in their early 80s and they still have chicken houses now. Give me an idea of the scope of the operation. We have six 46 by 520 foot houses each house fits 28,100 birds will raise them 51 days you want them to weigh seven and a half pounds and then they'll come bring them to the processing plant and process them for me we'll do that five times a year and we'll be out about 18 to 21 days between each flock so we raise five flocks a year. His work ethic really amazes you that I can tell. It does I'm super proud of him and my dad actually used to say well you're never gonna find somebody with the same work ethic that you have it's just it's just not gonna happen and so I'm really blessed that I did so sometimes he works through the night honestly. That makes me sound crazy but I have pulled all nighters. I try to keep up you know because if I don't know then I wake up and I'm like is he hurt you know where is he. Especially when we're going through all the closing and stuff at eight to five my phone was ringing insurance guy whatever and then it'd be five o'clock I didn't get nothing done I'm like if I go to sleep I just wake up stressed out I'm like I'm just gonna stay up and I didn't do that the only time I stayed up back home was when I caught out when you have to stay up but when we moved here there was just so much to do but it paid off and we got number one in the first block. Ashton starting to feel like home here? It really is and it's cliche or corny to say but really wherever James is and wherever our dogs are and our future children that's home. We definitely love Arkansas and don't foresee leaving but it was different to pick up roots and leave everything that we've ever known and I don't think either one of us would have done that on our own. Go so far from home and take such a big leap of faith but that's kind of how we compliment each other and we're kind of jumped in both feet you know together and whatever life brings we've got each other's back so


Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. My goodness, a warm welcome like that. You must have gotten here too late to read the morning papers. Hey, they have not any special story. They just have a tone to them. But, well, I welcome you to the White House, and I want to, incidentally, I try to stay out of sight coming down the hall there. I'm too visible here, and I don't know what I interrupted. You were probably making a good point. I should have. I'm going to find a way to sneak in. But I want to thank Trent Lott and Mike Oxley for making this possible and for inviting you all to be here. I thank them for that, but I'm grateful for more than that, because I'm grateful to the two of them for the stalwart help they've been in what we've been trying to do here in these last couple of years. And I don't know what we'd do without them. So you just make a promise in your heart right now that they'll be around a long time. I know that you've had a lot of speeches, and I'd probably be plowing the same ground if I tried to say anything. And maybe some of the tone has been about the improving economic situation in the country. I am most optimistic and confident in view of all of the economic indicators that we are on the road back. I think I've just come back from being out in the countryside myself, and I think there's a whole tone of optimism out there in the country. But I think one of the most obvious signs and indicators of recovery is the fact that up on the Hill, our critics aren't calling it Reaganomics anymore. That was their word. They coined it for our economic program when they didn't think it was good to work. And they decided and said already they were pronouncing that it hadn't worked, and I hadn't signed the bill yet to put it into effect. But now the very fact that they're not using that anymore, I don't know what name they'll come up with, or they'll try to find a way. But I wouldn't just, I know I've only got a few minutes here because they schedule me. That's the only thing I haven't discovered in these two and a half years. Who puts that paper on my desk every morning that tells me what I'm going to be doing every 15 minutes. But back in that other life of mine, we once had a study with regard to the motion picture business that revealed that in spite of our trailers and spite of our billboards and all the advertising that the picture business did, the single greatest factor in the success of a movie was word of mouth. Neighbors talking to neighbors, somebody saying what they had seen the night before and so forth. And I'd like to talk to you for just a second about word of mouth. There are an awful lot of distortions. I was kind of joking on the level here at the beginning. There are a lot of distortions about what's going on in Washington, what we're doing. Probably one of the most obvious is in all of our efforts to reduce government spending. So far, all we've been doing is reducing the increase in spending. And about 70% of that, as your host here, Mike Oxley and Trent Lott, know, is built in by previous legislation and pattern into the government. And yet, we keep hearing from special interest groups about our budget cuts and how terrible things are getting to be because of the cuts that we have made. A budget in just about everything is bigger now than it was before. Only it isn't as much bigger as it would have been if they had stuck around in charge. Last night, the reason I mention this is last night, I got frustrated watching one of the network news accounts. And they were going on about hunger in the land and food stamps and so forth. And they were citing the difficulty of people now no mention of the fact that inflation, which when we came here, was 12.4% for the last six months, has been running at less than one half of 1%. And that's the lowest six month period of inflation in 22 years. So they must be a little better off in that regard. But this going on and harking back to a documentary that the same network had done several years ago on hunger in this country and which turned out, and later was revealed, there were some phony items in that particular documentary. The food stamps was their target last night. And they were indicating how the food stamps, even to the person getting the maximum amount, couldn't possibly buy the food they needed. They didn't add that those food stamps were only a supplement to other government benefits that people eligible for food stamps were receiving. And then they kept referring to it was our budget cuts that we had reduced. And now we wanted to reduce a billion dollars more. Well, the plain truth of the matter is that almost 4 million more people are getting food stamps than we're getting them in 1980. And we're spending almost $4 billion more for food stamps than we were spending in 1980. And the billion dollar cut they are talking about is simply a reduction in further increase in food stamp spending for the coming years, not a reduction below the present level or the previous levels. And the reason I mentioned that first part about word of mouth, I know you want to help or you wouldn't be here. And I know that you want the same things I think that we're all trying to achieve here. Don't forget the value of word of mouth, whether it's in the locker room after the 18th hole or whether it's just at a dinner with friends or at business or on the street or something in discussions. I hope you'll keep informed of what we're trying to do here, what some of the accomplishments have been, and by word of mouth refute these ridiculous charges that are drummed up either by the bureaucracies that administer some of the programs or by the special interests that benefit from them. You know, when the war was declared on poverty some years ago, I think the only poverty that that war eliminated was it created a permanent structure of upper middle class bureaucrats who will continue to live well only as long as they can convince the public that the problems of poverty still exist. And since they define poverty themselves, why they're sure that it'll always exist. It may exist with a couple of cars in the driveway, but it'll exist. And you can be confident of one thing, with regard to real need, with regard to real nutrition needs of people who otherwise couldn't afford it. No, we have not reduced those. Our government is buying 95 million meals a day in the United States. And we're providing subsidies for housing to some 10 million people. And the things that need doing, and particularly in these tough economic times, we're doing. And we believe that everyone in America does want to help where help is really needed.  The proof of that is one of the things that we started when we first came here was I had a great belief in the private sector. And the private sector in this country, going clear back to the days when farmers built a barn for someone, if their barn burned down, and helped in harvesting their crop if there was illness on the part of a neighbor. All the old-fashioned things that we did and thought were just our neighborly duties. And it began to disappear as people more and more said, well, that's government's job. And began turning it over to government. What we created, as you know, a task force for private initiative, help. And for a year this task force was working. And it is unbelievable what has taken place at the private sector. And we have here in the White House now a computer. And in that computer are more than 3,000 programs where people at the community or state level have found a way, or even just individuals banding together, or businesses and industries, to solve some of the problems that we previously thought only government could solve. And we have, with those programs and the description of them, the names and the phone numbers of the people in charge, and thus any community or anyone with a community problem wants to find out if there is some solution to that. And contact us. And we're circulating the news about this. And we can put them in touch with the individuals who will tell them how this is done. There's a thing in Midland, Texas that's called Christmas in April. It's a tradition there. And every April 1st, people of all professions, volunteers, hundreds and hundreds of them, companies volunteer the building supplies that they need. And they then go out, and in that month of April, refurbish and repair, rebuild the homes of people that are either elderly or disabled or too poor, reinstall plumbing, rewire the houses, paint, do all the things that need doing. And just the other day on television so that I can give them credit for saying a nice thing too, I saw on a local news program here in Washington, they've heard about what's going on. And in Washington DC, there was a Christmas in April. And on the TV, there were judges, doctors and lawyers, businessmen, corporate executives, wives of the same, children of the same, in homes, dilapidated homes here in Washington, doing all those things. And they have adopted the name itself Christmas in April. The other day, some people from the medical profession called on me here, and before they left, I had to have a report and a list that long of small writing, because I write small, of all over the country, the county medical associations and separate individual medical groups, the ophthalmologists, so forth, who have organized programs of providing medical care free to those people who because of layoff, unemployment and so forth are no longer covered by company health insurance plans. And so their needs are being met at the private level by these people volunteering their services, these professionals. You name it, there's a program for it. And I just wanted you to know about that also because you can be very proud of what our people are doing. And along that line, you can be proud of something else. When we came here and then I'll quit. When we came here, as you know, we felt that the defense of our country, our national security, had been badly neglected. We weren't prepared for how badly neglected it had been. We found a lack of morale, a low quality in much of the people who were in our volunteer forces. That has been turned around. We have the highest level of high school graduates in this volunteer military now that we've ever had in the history of our military forces. We have, at average or above, intelligence, the highest percentage that we have ever had before. We have the highest re-enlistment rate that we have ever had. And the other day, I received a letter signed by about 100 Marines stationed in Italy. And they wrote me to tell me that if it would help the country for them not to have a cost of living pay raise or to go without a pay raise, they wanted me to know they were willing to do that and would be happy to cooperate if it would be of help, as I say, to their country. That's the kind of spirit that we now have there. And I can't think of anything more to tell you. But if you need any more information through Mike and Trent, you just ask for it, and we'll keep informed of what it is, and go and spread the word. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you so much for coming.


I'm Jeff Sachs, Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and I am also celebrating the day of research in Europe. We need the technology breakthroughs. We need sustainable technologies, renewable energy, educational quality that's going to reach into the classrooms, a networked society that works for human well-being. I know that Europe's researchers are going to make this happen, so I really congratulate the champion of research in Europe.


Being deployed overseas isn't just about operating forward. An important part of duty outside of the United States is being a positive presence in our host nations. Today's event was pretty much a give back to the community. We were volunteer cross guards for the children. It's our way to give back. It's our community relations project. We see the children pretty much every morning, even every afternoon when we leave work. It was great. I was so excited. Seeing the happy faces of the children, that brightened up my day and I hope we brightened up their day. By emphasizing a safe walk to school for local children, the sailors of Naval Beach Unit 7 underscore training and safety, two elements of their command philosophy. Seaman Michael Sanchez, Fleet Activities, Sasebo, Japan.


At this point in time, I think we know a lot more about women in migration than we did in the past. Thanks very much to the work that has been done by the UN Statistics Division and the UN DESA. So now we know about the numbers, the volume and the levels of female migration, which is very important and that is very basic information. But we also know that that is not the complete story. So in some ways, some work needs to be done also to know a lot more about the gender dimensions of migration at different parts and different aspects of different faces of the migration story.  So in other words, to know the complete story, we need to know a lot more beyond just numbers and beyond the share of women among the migrant population. Actually, I think the story is different for developing countries and developed countries. In the case of developed countries, there could be a lot more gender-disaggregated data on migration, but in the case of developing countries, there might be some limitations on the availability of gender-disaggregated data. And one reason for that is because it's possible that data is actually collected on gender, but then it is not processed. And a very practical reason for this may have something to do with cost. Another reason may be because for some countries and for some governments, perhaps what's more important is knowing the numbers and not having probably as much sensitivity or appreciation for the need for gender-disaggregated data. I think one very important thing and a very basic thing to do is to convince policy makers that it's important to have gender-disaggregated data on migration. I mean, if we relate data on migration with sustainable development goals and gender equality is one of them, then for gender equality to happen, we need gender-disaggregated data. And in addition, I think governments also need to invest in quality data in general and also invest in gender-disaggregated data.


Good evening and welcome I'm Diane Meyerhoff host for tonight's school budget presentation with y'all obang the superintendent of the Burlington School District tonight show is being aired live. We welcome your comments and questions Please join the conversation at 8 6 2 3 9 6 6. Thank you y'all so much for coming out tonight Thank you for having me happy to be here pleasure. It's a pleasure to have you So you're gonna tell us about the budget and what voters need to know for town meeting. Yes, absolutely I mean I've got a bit of a slide slide deck. I'm gonna pass to you and we've shared at the board Through the board process and it's also found on our website. So people want to go to a website They can go through that because I'll try to sort of expedite the process instead of spending 90 minutes Conversations in between so I'll do some highlights and get through some things and And tell us what is the website if folks want to look up the School district and do a search all right fantastic good. So tell us what we need to know. All right, so let me start by Talking about every year, you know our process and if you can see the slides here We we start with a input process consultation with our Community members and we had about four public Open forums and people came out and I bet they came out people do come out Yes, people do come out and they have lost to say lots of contribute good We do ask them some challenging questions as well because we just don't want the the wants We were also talking about the needs and some of the things that will push us forward But some of the things we did differently this year is we targeted some groups that we felt the voices weren't heard in the past So we looked at we had some sessions for a special ed in particular special ed parents and we looked at ELL groups Which you should say what that is EL English language learners, right? The new language is EL as opposed to ELL Okay, thank you And then of course we spend some time with our staff in our strategic plan with nine Priority teams and asked them what do they think is needed in their priority areas in order to move us forward And of course our principals and staff that we've had input from and also people can always go on to the website and Do an online submission if they haven't had an opportunity to attend one of those or go to their local school and just put something on Paper or or that sort to a little get back to you that all gets back and I'm going to talk a little bit about that So just quickly. I'm going to go through this slide quickly So one of the things we do is we synthesize some of the materials that we're hearing and you can see on this slide There's a number of themes that come through and some of these themes are pretty consistent Every year people talk about energy efficiency, which is which is a good thing They talk about increased supports for social services and some of our social needs and of course things that will help our Academic achievement, right? So that's pretty consistent in terms of some of the themes You can see a list of things that came through the conversations anything unusual or surprising for you Actually, nothing surprising to be honest with you. I think everything good Everything that we we heard that people would think of Pretty came through. Yeah, right. I think we can support pretty significant list Yeah, so and if my slide to the next list, you'll see we tried to whoops a little too far We tried to do a little bit of analysis on this To look at Based on the input that we have yeah, what people are saying, okay What would that cost us if we actually add all those things and it was over not six million dollars worth of What how much is the school budget to give us a sense of what the school budget is under 85 million over the entire budget Okay, and people get confused because there's two different sections There is the the education fund section, which taxpayers actually vote on and there's the school budget the entire budget When you see the entire budget, it's inclusive of grants and other things that we get so sometimes they see that Hey, your budget is going down. We're asking for more But what that just means is we're not be able to capture more grants So actually six million is not that bad on 85 million Six million on top of the the education side that we need to add That's quite significant. So last year we The it came up to about five actually really if you look at this It's probably a little bit more based on what staff said actually more than that last year with the request around five million And we're able to add one point five million and we still had a considerable tax increase So six million would make a huge huge. So we won't be doing all those things We will not be doing all those things But it's good for us to kind of reflect on that and understand that these are things that people are saying that Would help us contribute the thing that we have to consider when we go through this and we talk with our board and community members about is The budget pressures. So what's putting pressure on our on our budget for this current year? We have some capital infrastructure challenges and fortunately last year people supported a bond to look at all our schools But we still have some challenges at the high school and things that we have to look at of course salaries and benefits We have eight bargaining units, you know, people sort of often talk about the teachers But we have seven other units that we do that don't really get a lot of publicity around the actions, but all those contracts have to be integrated into The next year's budget in terms of the increases and then health care was a big big conversation this year So there was a challenge about health care where the state put in some legislation that took money away from us, right? So over about five hundred thousand dollars away from us, which we couldn't capture But yet we still have to make up those costs. So that's you know challenges for us in terms of trying to find those pieces and then Lastly on this slide the legislative Environment due to this fifty million dollar fifty million deficit in the education fund for the whole state That has to be made up somehow and that usually means at the local level, right? How taxpayers have to find a way so we consider those things in terms of doing an analysis of What we can actually establish and I'll skip through some of this quickly but you know some of the other things around retirement funds and things we pay to the city for Propensions and universal preschool investments that have to come in and The other supports that we identified that we sort of must do And I think we hear this from at least from all the superintendents that come in and I've spoken with same very similar pressures Everyone has that same list. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The challenge the thing for us in terms of some of the Social-emotional pieces is that we find that in Burlington We do have agencies that support some of these so we attract People who come here for services and therefore Students get into our systems and parents. So then we end up Picking up a lot of that and we we welcome that opportunity But we know initially always have the resources to to support them Here's a good example of What happens in in the grants because one of the things we're trying to do is explain the budget process to our community In terms of the differences for us as Burlington and differences for the rest of Vermont, right? So in special education, we do receive a special education block grant and if you look at this slide You can see BSD. We average 34 point five seven FTEs those are like teacher positions for special ed and the the wage that we pay the average wage is about 72,000 Now the average across the state for that same position is 63,000 So there's a difference for us of about $9,000 So when we pay our staff for those positions, we have a $9,000 cost to it But the state only gives us the average which is 63 So at the end of the day, you see we end up with a difference of 327,000 So we still have to make up that difference now some districts They may have a lower cost in terms of paying those staff So they could actually make some money on receiving those grants or break even but we don't break even Based on our wage calculations there. So those are some of the things sometimes people say well, we get grants for that Yeah, we do But doesn't cover everything sure right so Some of the things that when we start in the budget there are strategic priorities that we look at so Investing in our strategic goals and priorities. We spend a lot of time looking at what we need to focus on We can't do everything and do it well. We have to focus on a few things. We've established three main goals Inclusive sustainable finance and facilities equitable climate culture and inclusive teaching and learning are big big rocks We call them or things that we want to focus on We also invest on some of the strategic priorities around students staff and program and capital facilities things And of course sustaining the supports that we already have we want to sustain We don't want to go backwards. We want to be able to make sure we're a budget that sustains and then look Forward to move forward. We're using data to inform of some of our decisions, right? I think in the past sometimes we've just sort of like said, hey, that might be a good idea Let's just do that. Let's do this this so we're trying to use the data in the metrics to say this worked really well because A B and C so therefore we didn't need to invest in this and this we don't know if it worked Well, so maybe we should try something else or stop doing that and reallocate dollars and things that we know are effective And at the end of the day, we also want to use an equity lens around how we allocate staffing and things like that because we do have Some demographics there are different in different parts of the city and also in terms of the staff allocation We have to make sure that we do that So we've added what's called an equity index to reallocation to make sure that we give our schools what they need Not necessary an equal distribution, but an equity distribution And I'll skip this slide because it just just talks about our development one of the things I wanted I would do want to talk about though is the central office Reductions because often when we start the budget process and we ask people, okay, what do you think we can save dollars? Consistently everyone says Central office administration, that's pretty consistent. You know what I and to be fair, that's not just unique to Burlington I think that's everywhere. Yeah, every district I've been to they've always said cut the fat at the top, right and One of the things they know and I came here a couple years ago I think we we wanted to lead with that because we knew people would be wanted to see that and we started you can see that We had about 450,000 in reductions The first year and then the next year we went to 150,000 So so we've asked our central office staff to do the best they can in Houston And they're trying to manage with what they have But I think we have to set that example if we're gonna look at other areas in terms of reductions So I wanted to make sure that people knew that yes We we're aware that we need to look at that area as well as the other areas as well, too I'll glance through this slide because it just speaks to more around some of the things we're required to spend which adds pressure Sure on our on our budgets in terms of having to meet and then so we need to focus as to allocation of our budget and so we Decided on these areas in terms of allocation one we want to make sure that we meet the AOE equitable stand standards Quality standards, especially for class sizes and things. There's a lot of conversations around teacher ratios and class ratios from the state this year And we wanted to make sure we stay true to the standards that we have established in terms of our allocations Other areas are our increased social emotional supports So I know you've heard from other districts in terms of that's a huge challenge That's a challenge for us as well, too I mean you can't get to learning if you can't take of sort of the masses hierarchy of needs, right people's owns students Self self-belonging and their sense of wellness to start their learning One of the things we wanted to ensure we keep is the our multi-lingual asons so they're sort of our cultural ambassadors in our schools and The funding from for this actually comes from the federal level and there's been Evacuum from the federal grants in the last year So they've taken away dollars and these are dollars that we had and we need this resource So we can't get it so we decided that was a priority that we wanted to shift some dollars We can ensure that we maintain it and of course our Priority goals set by our our board is around closely achieving gap and reason the bar So we want to make sure we allocate resources to that and restorative practices and that goes with the achievement Got and sort of the sense of wellness for our students in terms of being at the problem solve and create environments that they're able to To inspire to you, right? I know I'm going quickly here, but I've got a 90-minute presentation. I'm trying to get it No, you're doing great. We're doing great when I when I start to look that quizzical you'll know that I'll do this quickly the one of the things I wanted to talk about this year was around enrollment, right numbers So lots of conversations people look at different data sets and they'll say well, we're increasing our numbers We should be getting more and this and that but Burlington. We actually haven't Increased soon. We haven't you see decrease slightly if you looked at a chart a graph of ours We'd be looked like this we go down up down up down up down up but kind of plateauing a little bit and slightly down But nothing huge, but we're not growing right as opposed to I know my counterparts in South Burlington They had a bit of a spike this year. They were doing like what we were doing But they had and we're new ski right so one of the things that Has cost us to go down a little bit is in the past. We've received Numbers of students from refugees and we haven't had the same influx And that and that was you know about 200 kids or so that was the difference from us always spiking up And what do you think that's about you have a sense that is it housing costs? No, we just haven't we just haven't been sent here Because of you know federal kind of you know, so they haven't been sent here Well, that's what's happened in the past Right, so we were always predictive of having that a certain amount of influx. It could come back Right, but you never know right so but we were kind of pretty much stayed the same if you look at this chart here an FY 17 We budgeted for 986 students at the high school, but we actually had 946 Right in the following year. We kept the budget at 986, but we actually had 937 Yeah, and then for next year with that number 986 we're at 964. So We're actually been under and you know, I know we've had some challenges from people saying that oh this I see a lot of kids But these are the numbers right these numbers and we've budgeted for more than we have so we should be able to accommodate more than Then we have there fortunately. We do have a Bubble in grade nine this year. We have a good cohort. So hopefully that trend continues Yeah, we'll be able to maintain at a higher level. So I'll skip the K to 8 stuff and And this was the equity index I was talking about this is a simplistic sort of view for people where they can see there's an example of Two schools, right both have projected enrollment at 414 or 450 pretty much the same Yeah, but at the end of the end of the day you can see at the last block there There's a share allocation of 39% and 61% and that's the factors are because of the number of IEP's The poverty count that we have and the EL count, right? So you can see the different numbers in there That gives you the share. So then we decide, okay, we need to add This many more resources to that school because they have a 60% share rather than 39% right? So it's not equal. It's not like everyone gets one right based on your needs because some some areas have more Things to challenge So that's a basic sort of look at that All right, so now we get to the good stuff this is the stuff I like Facilities well well not just facilities, but we do need facilities But because that it's going to have to learn as well too But these are our goals our big goals that we want to achieve So the first goal is round sustainable finance and fields that's one of the goals anyways And there's we have good rash now around there We know there's lots of literature that you know if you have good spaces then you have good learning, right? And we tend to have older schools. Is that fair? We have all our schools need work Yeah, and we publish a document last year you can find out on our site as well too in terms of some of the needs we have In our schools and you know what it's pretty much systemic across the country when Districts and boards are looking at saving money. They have to make a choice sometimes, right? It's between either people or you can not repair that ceiling Where they usually go to these you'd not repair the ceiling and then what happens to the ceiling? It opens across the people right and then eventually at some point you go Oh, we didn't put enough money to right and we have to go back and do some it's hard That's that's I think we all have that in our own homes. We have a situation Exactly home planning so you can see on the bottom here that we're still we're starting that you we're in year one of our Capital plan right of renewing the buildings and doing what so that's so that's a good thing and then we added some minor pieces here that fall under this goal around we need some bus drivers for special ed buses and Looking at developing an international program nice in Burlington Which is going to be great culturally in terms of bringing in immigrant students from other countries but these are students that actually might be a little different than the traditional we have because they come with the Different different sets different set of assets, right? So they'll be coming with families that kind of can maybe afford to send them away for a year and come back And looking to go into post-graduate here at the same time because of the cultural exchange is going to be great for our kids It's also revenue generator. So we'll be able to generate some dollars that we can put back into the system. So looking forward to expanding on that Initiative there. So it's just a minor investment there to get that and then the other big rock that we have is Equitable climate and culture and this is sort of the the belly the foundation that we talked about some around some of the real social emotional And behavioral challenges that we we have that we need to set our students up before They can actually be prepared for learning and you can see a list of some of the things and this is you know I wish we could add much more But you know, we have to balance between what we believe the public can afford and willing to support and What we what's critical in terms of our needs? And so we do quite a bit of analysis with our staff when we've got it And then we have to make some decisions and then finally to the board to say hey, this is what we can do with can we can we Can we add more? Yes, we would love to but you know, right that's be reasonable and you can see a range of things We talked about the multilingual is on special education supports We definitely that social workers in our schools and in light of some of the things that happened in Florida and things Like that that we need to the mental wellness for our kids and being able to identify and support students before they get into Tragic stages that we need to stay ahead of that curve The board has put forward an equity recruitment hiring initiative Want us to look at diversifying our workforce and of course we need strategies and resources to do that and number of the things around summer schools Keeping learning for students all year round when we hold our summer schools Which is an excellent program by the way where students get an opportunity to get some academics they get some recreational they get some arts base and It's all free, right? Yeah, and we have waiting lists every year So it's hard to accommodate everyone so this will allow us to accommodate more students and Resist that summer slide that happens, right? Although it sounds kind of good You know what if you ever would go to the summer kids the kids are having a good time The balance of fun and It's kind of neat to have that kind of program and then finally this is this is the big part This is a big part of our of our work in terms of the academic achievement piece right around inclusive teaching and learning so work with our curriculum departments and Looking at what we need to do in terms of improving achievement for our students And do you know we've sweet we've identified the achievement gap as a goal Closing the gap and raising the bar and I'll take a moment to talk about that just quickly Because one of the things that people sometimes will assume that if we're working on achievement gap that we're only focused on Certain cohort students who are under achieving but we're talking about closing the gap while raising the bar So that means that the students at the top we expect them to keep pushing up So the strategies we're looking for are universal strategies that help all students and then hopefully will have fewer students to do the intervention pieces and The literature out there and research out there and schools that have found success Can show in their data that they closed the gap and the kids at the top and continue to move up So we're hoping it's challenging. Oh, it's It's a national crisis really in terms of trying to manage that but we're up for the challenge And we've got a good team together and we're and we're making some good plans and and I'm looking forward to Gradual process this happens happen overnight, of course, but we're gonna put the wheels in motion so we can get there a Lot of other supports around ELL staffing middle schools. We have some challenges there Looking at professional development for our para educators. It's something that they've asked for they want to be included And we think they should be and so we have to find time and resources in order to support them to to be included So We've got about five minutes I want to make sure you get to the punch line. I'll get the punch line Well, let me just say that I showed you the slide previously around the reductions to central office. Yes, and this year We've actually Done it again done it again About close to about four and fifty forty thousand dollars Okay, we've been able to reduce to put into the pop because our central office had the things that we're going after and really important And they're willing to try to find ways to work differently in order to support our students So kudos to our staff because you know partly because they did it because I asked them to But you know a lot of them really believe in what we're doing Let me slide forward to the tax impact because that's I know what people would want to be voting on, right? Let me find a good slide for you Don't forget we love your calls. Do you have a couple of minutes eight six two three nine six six Here we are. These are the variables that impact our taxes, right? So we have an education spending Right. So this is the education part that I talked about like there's two that the eighty four million But then there's a sixty one million But we're our budget is actually increasing less than 1% so that's really marginal and now equalize people Which is in the calculations is declining as I said, we're declining but not significantly So and then our homestead dollar rate that's the that's the yield that we get for each dollar that's spent Which is also declining. So all these numbers are working against us But the one that's really hitting us hard right now is our CLA which the common level appraisal, which is 79.2 when it's under 80 The city must kind of do a review and they've started to do that barely under it. Oh, we are under it Yeah, yeah, so they're doing a review, but I'll tell you I think Bronson's like 95 Yeah, and the new skis like 93 so they are the difference between it's been a long time since we've done that, right? Yeah, so that's a factor for us as well, too so if I think I can get to the Tax impact. Whoops. Sorry. So you can go on to the site. You can see we have an average home here What would that what that what would that mean? Yeah, that's people like those numbers. Can you just give us that one? Actually, sure. Yeah, let's do that one. I always do that That's one of my one of my things. So here it is. Here's the tax impact. Okay, so This is the tooth on a 250 homestead. Okay, and that's that's assessed value from the city. Yep, right So the difference Yeah, so it would be three hundred fifty eight dollars and if you're doing income Sensitivity it comes to about twenty four dollars. Oh, okay. Okay, so that's right depending on the income Yep, okay, all right. You can see that I'll go back to one slide because I think that's where it has some more of the tax So here are the numbers You can see the total budget the education spending and the spending we're actually going to be doing and the property tax impact is Seven seven point nine which is which is high considering it's only less than one percent But that's because of the variable numbers that I did I don't because of the the cum level appraisal We kind of got hit on that if we had the same we did the same increase we had the same numbers We had last year. Yeah, we would actually be looking at a tax decrease So that's what happens and So those numbers change the numbers will even change from now until June Wow, so even after people vote on the Yeah, if you look at the The trends from years past you've seen that some of the numbers have changed afterwards So people vote on one number and it's so that's one of the things that frustrates me around the Process we have in Vermont. It's like we start our budget in October, right? You vote on in March, but really by June is what you see what really happens Three-quarters of a year. Yeah, it's kind of awkward. Yeah, this is it But then people pay something different sometimes it could be less sometimes could be a little more hopefully this year It will be more especially with the CLA that changes a bit That's going to be less for taxpayers and we'll still be able to get the investments that we need That's a quick snapshot. I know I skipped through a lot But hopefully it gives people Analysis of how we've tried to balance our needs with taxpayers needs as well too and still supporting our students Wow, well, thank you. That was that was a lot of information But I guess I you know, this is kind of the takeaway at this point anyway What you're looking at in terms of and how it'll affect an individual homeowner And and really a big difference between those who pay help me out with the right words Who pay the full amount versus the income sense income sensitivity amount? I'm not sure if that's the right way to say it, but that's pretty dramatic I didn't realize it'd be that much of a difference. So that's a yeah, that's good I mean from 358 to 24 dollars. That's that's an annual number, too I was like trying to remind folks of that Sometimes people don't realize we pay them in quarters or something So and I think the some of the proposals out there around the state level is to look at Restructuring that in some way. Okay, so we'll see what happens. There's lots of conversations and lots of dialogue around What needs to happen, but at the same time, hope they come up with something that actually puts money into education just Right, there's there is sort of talk of moving the pie around a little bit I hope it's yeah, because I might just you might end up paying the same but in different ways Right well, which is a lot of what taxes do is sometimes I think but so the other day, you know We have to invest in education at some point So we're just gonna find the best way to do it Yeah, and it's also interesting because Burlington is sort of an outlier as opposed to many of the other communities and statewide at least and Burlington County probably So sometimes things affect us differently as you showed us then it does another and that's that's something that Happens along with that when they're mixing up that that's right that pot right and it's nothing wrong being different just in these can cases You don't want you wish you're gonna be different on the high side Yeah, absolutely well, thank you again y'all obeying superintendent of Burlington schools Thanks so much for coming out and remember the information is available on the website and All the budget information and where to vote and all those things are all available on and on town meeting Tuesday, March 6th, don't forget to vote you don't have to vote that day as I'm constantly reminded you can go down to City Hall and vote any Time with early voting, so we hope you'll take advantage of that and stay tuned to channel 17 for more town meeting coverage Thank you and good night


Aloha and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts live every Thursday at 2 o'clock from 2 to 2.30. We have guests that talk a little bit about their successes in Hawaii and how they made it work both as a business and individual. There are challenges, we all know that, but there are people who have overcome those challenges and made it work for themselves. We also have organizations that help support those efforts and today we have one of the better organizations in the state of Hawaii. It's the Maui Chamber of Commerce. We have the CEO and president and she's been there for quite a while. Pam, welcome to the show. Aloha Reg, great to be with you today. So glad you could make it from Maui. Yes, my pleasure. And you brought a guest with you. I did. Sherri Reeve, I guess she's got one of the more popular successful galleries over on Maui. She absolutely does and has been a great chamber member. Right, Sherri, welcome to the show. You've been doing that for quite a while on Maui, have you not? 26 years. 26 years.  That's great. But Pam, you've been running the chamber now for a while over there. It is going on 11 years in April. Congratulations. Thank you so much. And tell us a little bit about Maui. We have an idea of what chambers are, but what does the Maui Chamber do? How do they support their members? We support our members in a number of different ways. One of the key things that we do is legislative advocacy. And we do legislative advocacy on both the Maui County level, as we've always done, as well as the state level at the state legislature. And I've seen you over there before. You haven't. And we've done the walk around the Capitol together, it's been a lot of fun. So we do that. Of course at the chamber we hold monthly business after hours and networking opportunities, helping people connect and find new resources. And those are usually very well attended because I've been a few of those too. You have.  We miss you. You're going to come back. I know. So we did those. Our upcoming one is November 22nd at Feed My Sheep. So I'll do a quick shout out to Feed My Sheep on Maui who feeds the hungry across the island. Okay. So Feed My Sheep, the sheep of the hungry people. The sheep are those who are in need of food and services. And we don't call them clients, we call them friends. And so every year on November, our business after hours is geared towards Feed My Sheep, which we take in instead of charging people to attend the business after hours, we ask them for food donations. Oh, wow. It's a great party and it's a great way to serve, especially around the holiday time. That's great. And from the ones that I've been to before, you usually have, what, a hundred people show up? We do. We get large crowds and we have a blast. It's also, it's about networking. We play games and we have fun as well and there's prizes. So and we find that often those who donate the prizes also seem to win other prizes. Oh, imagine how that works. You know, service works when you give, you receive. So it's kind of a funny trend, but it actually turns out to be true each month. So we do business networking. We also have training and education programs that we do for our members. What people also don't realize with the Chamber of Commerce is where their leverage team, when they have an issue that they're dealing with, they can call the Chamber of Commerce and we help them solve problems or connect them to the resources they need to get those challenges solved.  We are. And we do that for all of our members. We also do marketing and promotion. We have great advertising avenues and promotional opportunities for our members. So lots of ways to connect with the community and abroad. And in Maui, you know, and actually in Hawaii, we have a visitors bureau. Our visitor industry is just so strong that we have visitors' bureaus on each of the neighbor islands. But what many don't understand is that on the mainland and internationally, often your local Chamber of Commerce is your visitors' bureau.  Well, you know, and the promotional advantages of being a member of the Chamber are significant because you have opportunities to maybe sponsor one of these business after hours or one of the events or one of the training. I mean, there are ways of getting the name out and getting, you know, some recognition for this. Absolutely. And people who understand what Chambers do also studies have been done to show that when you've got that Chamber emblem on your business and you promote that to the public or your website or wherever you're doing business, that shows that you stand for the local community. You stand for ethics and integrity because that's what Chambers are all about. And it gives you an automatic advantage. Right. It's instant credibility. It is. And it's a great brand to have as part of what you're trying to accomplish. And I guess Sherry's a member and you've been a member of the Maui Chamber for a while, right? About three years. Three years. Yeah. Okay. So have you been able to experience some of these benefits?  She's such a wealth of information and, you know, I'm just so grateful to the Chamber and to Pam, who is the Chamber, but yeah, we get a tremendous amount of local traffic through the Chamber where I'm 99% tourism. It's really good for me to try and figure out ways to get the local business to me as well. Sure. Tell us a little bit about your business. So you're 99% visitor industry, but what is your business? Tell us a little bit about it. So about 20 years ago, I opened a gallery in the town of Mokowal on the island of Maui. And I'm an art gallery, but I also do products. I do a lot of greeting cards, mugs, t-shirts, all kinds of products with my art. So there's something for $5 in my store, up to $10,000 in my store, so wide range. And I use local businesses, Pacific Island Art is a company I use to do my products with. And I use a company out of Minnesota. My t-shirts are all U.S. made, called Lake Shirts. And so we sell mostly to tourism, but it's a local community, so I get a wide range of people. Sure. And I guess being a member of the chamber and getting some exposure from them establishes a little bit that local connection that brings that in. Yeah, I beg them to let me have after hours. They have to stagger me, but I try to get right before Mother's Day to have my afters hours event because I get so much business from them and then for the weeks to follow. Very good. I would imagine you also have a website so people can kind of check in and see what you have? Well, yes I do. It's sreve.com. S-R-E-E-V-E.com. S-R-E-E-V-E.com. S-R-E-E-V-E.com. And we have our entire store online. Really? Yep. So whatever you have in the store, you can buy through the website. You can buy online, yeah. Absolutely. Very good. And if I was over in Toronto or Florida or something, you'd ship to me? Yep. Within 24 hours of your order, you should get your order in the mail. Very good. Yeah. That's great marketing. Yeah. But you also have a lot. You said 99% are visitor industry. So this comes from Asia, it comes from mainland, it comes from all over? Yeah, all over. Mostly California, Canada, Florida, all U.S. but we've been doing it for so long. The store 20 years but six years prior to that I would do kiosks and malls. I would do any sort of a craft fair that they were having because I didn't have a location. So I built up my clientele from 26 years ago and right around then that's when the internet was coming to be and so I was able to open a store. That's when Jecle printing came to be. It just sort of grew. I've never taken out loans. I've always just built my business as I could afford to grow. Wow. I know. You're one of those unique ones. So access to capital has never been an issue. Never. I'm Maui. Were you born there? I was raised on Oahu from the age of three and then moved to Boston for three years and I did the New York Art Expo which is what gave me the exposure to get products done. You have to, as an artist, you need to get out there and have other people that can spend money on you when you have none. I have to learn how to do that. Well, it makes you very attractive to galleries down the road because if they can see that other people have invested money into you, like Island Heritage took me on back in the late 80s, early 90s and they did a whole line of greeting cards for me. So that put my greeting cards in every 24-hour photo booth in Hawaii. Wow. So when I came back to try and get into galleries, they say, hey, aren't you that artist that had those cards in that photo place? I'm like, yeah, and they took me in. So it helps to have local publishing companies take you on to help with that exposure even though you may not make a ton of money doing that, it all works for you. Having that recognition and that brand, if you will, that's out there, it does open some doors for you. Oh, sure. Absolutely. And I think that's where the Chamber can also play a part in this is through their network that they have on Maui and throughout the state for that matter, you can provide some good introductions and networking opportunities. We certainly do and we love it when Sherry hosts her annual May. At least the annual because she'd like to do it twice a year, but we leave room or three times. She's doing three times in the background. But she also does such an amazing thing, which we certainly promote and we have a program where members can offer discounts to other members. And if they do a special member-to-member discount promotion where they do something more than they give the general public, then we will promote them for free. And Sherry every year gives us a great discount during that business after hours just in time for Mother's Day. So we do that. And she recently participated in our Maiden Maui County Festival and was one of the phenomenal vendors there. And let me just follow up on that Mother's Day discount. Is this available online as well? Can people come online and get advantage of that? But they have to be chamber members, right? They have to be a chamber member, yeah. All of my prices are a comma and I just really try to keep my prices down low.  All right. So that begs the question, how do you become a member of the chamber? Oh, that's easy. I'm going to give you our website. It's www.mauichamber.com or you can simply call<PHONE_NUMBER>. And we as a neighbor island chamber really promote that if you're doing business on Maui, then real or if you're thinking of doing business on Maui, getting connected with the local chamber is really important. And we encourage people to be a member of the chamber in every island that they do business on. Well, that doesn't make sense. I mean, if you're going to be looking to do business there and getting to know the community, I mean, what better way to do that? Absolutely. Yeah. So they go on and how does the, don't mind me asking a question, how much does it cost to join a Maui chamber? Our base rate is $3.29 a year and that's for five or fewer employees. And then for each additional full-time equivalent, so two part time would be one full-time equivalent. It's an additional $10 after that. It's called our fair share investment. And what we really want to get out is that when you're a member of our chamber and under this fair share investment, it's not just the owners or the top managers that are members. All of the employees can come to our programs at the chamber membership rate. So the employees can come to business after hours and network your sales, your marketing team, your HR team. Everybody can come out. Or get a benefit of discount at the, uh... And get the Mother's Day discount as well as the other member-to-member discounts. Right. Yes. And that could be quite valuable. Very valuable. My goodness. I'm advertising. It's so expensive and a wonderful thing to do, but this is a great venue. Very good. Advertising. And I guess some of the member-to-member benefits, um, and I'm being a little selfish here, but does it include some of the nice resorts on Maui? Not yet. We're working on that because, of course, they also have comma-ina, just they all have great comma-ina specials, so not yet. But we do have many companies that offer the member-to-member discount. And then in addition to that, we have a lot of national affiliate programs that we're associated with. And there's many other discounts that members can access on the website in our specific member zone. So, and maybe we can come back to this in a minute. We got a little break coming up, but one thought would be to go through that member-to-member discount. And I'm sure you could probably come up with enough discount to more than pay for that membership. Absolutely. Absolutely. But we need to take a quick break here and we'll be right back. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're talking with the Maui Chamber of Commerce and one of their top members, the Sherry Reeves at Galleries. So we'll be back in about one minute. Thank you. Aloha. How are you doing? Welcome to Ubachi Talk. Gordo detects our here. We're here every Friday from one o'clock till about 1.45 when we talk tech with many, many great guests. I got Andrew, the security guy who helps me co-host, and I got Poppy Chulow who comes in once in a while to help us through the show. So please come join Ubachi Talk every Friday. Angus will be here too. So remember, like we say at the end of every show, how are you doing? Aloha and welcome to The Savvy Chick Show on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm the weekly host at 11 a.m. Honolulu time. Very excited for the next six weeks. We have the Aspire series, which is all about the coolest careers I could find and interviewing and getting insights from these amazing people who want to share it with you and help you live your dreams. Look forward to seeing you on the show. Aloha. Aloha and welcome back to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're here today chatting with the Chamber of Commerce of Maui and one of their top members, the Sherry Reeves Gallery. And we're just getting into some of the more finer details of the member-to-member program and how that can really, if you take advantage of these discounts that are available, more than pay for your membership. So Pam, can you just give us a little bit more flavor of some of the different types of member-to-member discounts that might be available? We have, I mean, they kind of run the gamut. We've got anywhere from companies who build out office furniture and customize office spaces. Those can be big ticket items. Those can be big ticket items to, again, discounts on bento lunches and things like that. I mean, it really runs the gamut because at the Chamber we represent every industry across the island. But when you pair those local shopping discounts and, again, or business expense discounts, and then you pair them with things like the OfficeMax discount, which again can be used for your major supplies or office furniture, the Dell computer, the constant contact, a lot of the new web services and things that people use, it adds up very quickly. So you can, as you said, you can easily offset the cost of your Chamber membership with the Discounts alone. Well, and some of these are products and services that you would use all the time. Absolutely. I mean, for example, IT support, do you have Chamber members? We do have Chamber members who offer IT support, website design and development. Yeah. So we have a lot of things that everybody can use every day. That's very good. Yeah. That's exciting because if you're joining and you're paying $300 or $400, you should be getting at least two or three times that value in return. Absolutely. And in addition to the Discounts, you know, what we know about Chamber members is there are some people who just renew their membership year after year as a good thing to do. And sometimes they forget to go look at the, we emailed them every week. We have an e-bust each week to keep them updated on legislative and community activities and Chamber activities. But some people renew every year and just want to be a part of the Chamber and recognize it as a good thing to do. But then there's those who are actively involved. And the more involved and you know this with your Chamber participation, the more involved and engaged you are in the Chamber, the greater your return on the investment. Yeah. The more involved and you've got different committees and you've got different events that are going on and there's a variety of ways for a member to get involved and get even more value out of the Chamber. Absolutely. Because through all these different opportunities, you have so many different avenues to connect, either to connect with government and government leaders, to connect with top business leaders, to connect with social services and community action and economic development projects. So there's many different realms in which people can get involved. And when they do, they build a network that is exceptional and everybody benefits. Sherry, not to put you on the spot, but have you gotten involved in some of these different committees and different events that are going on? I've gotten involved to the extent that if you are a Chamber member and you come into my store, you get 10% off. And even if you don't buy something, I give them a free luggage tag, which is exclusive to my gallery, so you can't get them anywhere else. They have to tell me they're a Chamber member. Well, she's also forgetting to mention that whenever we've needed auction items or things, Sherry is always there helping with making donations and contributing to other events that help with the fundraising. That's a great promotion. Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, Pam, I've been involved in different chambers over the years and I've chaired different committees and done different things. And the network that you can really build and the connections that you can make in that process are very, very valuable. They are. In my early 20s, I was the government action committee... That wasn't that long ago. It won't last you. I'm taking you with me everywhere, just to say that. Yeah. In my early 20s, I was the government action committee chair for the Maui Chamber of Commerce. I never dreamed, of course, back then that I would ever work for the Chamber. I was always a supporter. I also sat on the marketing committee. So I served in many different capacities with the Maui Chamber of Commerce long before I ever knew I was going to get a call to talk to them. It must have been a positive experience for you now because now you're running the chamber. Oh, it's always been a positive experience because it is what my passion is, supporting businesses. And the majority of our businesses are small businesses. But we support, of course, all businesses. But I support those who are good people, who care about our community and the environment and work hard to support others and take good care of their employees. And they always, our members always are passionate and they inspire me and I love helping them. It's great to be involved in an organization like that. It is. It's so rewarding. We are approaching a holiday season, believe it or not. Fast. Fast. It's only a couple more weeks and it's Thanksgiving. But any end of the year events going on or promotions or anything that's going on, do you want to announce? In Makawa, we have a third Friday event where they close the street down and local artisans and vendors come and participate in an evening art show. And that's really fun. Live music. Like a block party? It's a block party. Exactly. Yeah. Very good. And you participate in this? I do. I keep my store open. And all the stores stay open. Most of them stay open. And it's just a nice way to bring the locals in because usually Makawa, at least the town of Makawa closes down at 5.30, 6 o'clock. This stays open until 8.30 so people that get off work can come and go eat food on the streets. So there's food vendors, there's live music, there's merchants, there's all kinds of fun things to do. People are dancing around in the streets a little bit. That's exactly right. Yes, it's just, you know, it's a lot of fun. And I'm sure they're going to have Santa Claus and carolers and all sorts of things in December. But the third Friday for this coming one is November, the end of November. So it'll be fun. Very good. Yeah. And what does the chamber got in there? Well, actually this Saturday is our construction industry of Maui. That's the day after tomorrow. That would be the day after tomorrow. We've got, they're having their holiday party. The construction industry of Maui is a new trade council that we've brought in under the chamber to help them continue to have a voice in the community. And so they've been doing a great job building as a trade council under the chamber umbrella. So they didn't have to have their own staff and their own team, but had an industry representation on them. So they're having their big holiday party. The chamber is working on our holiday party. We're finalizing the details because we're trying to do something different and special. I hope you got the rule preserved. We have two rules that we're working on right now, because we're trying to see who will allow us to do the special activity that we're wanting to do. But we do have the November 22nd feed my sheep. And if I can give a shout out to Kailea Moikeja, who works for me because while Cheri said Pam is the chamber, actually I couldn't do it without Kailea, who's at the office manning the Ford and Amber Kutos who's on vacation this week, but we have a great team at the chamber. We're a small chamber. And of course we have an amazing board of directors. So I want to give a shout out to all of our board of directors. And that board is great. I mean, I know the staff is really good, but I've had more opportunity to meet some of the board members and they're very engaged and they're very involved in the community. It's a great board. And as you know, it takes a dynamic board to really make any non-profit successful. And sometimes people forget as a chamber of commerce, because we're all about business, they sometimes forget that we operate as non-profits in this community. Well, and you know, also it's a lot of small business too. There are big business members, but I have found from my personal experience that it's a lot of times it's the smaller chamber of members that really get in there and do the heavy lifting and make it all work. Very often it's absolutely. It's a great group of people to know. All right. So you've got those end of the year events coming up. Believe it or not, it's going to be 2017. Sherry, any holiday sales or any holiday activities that you've got going on? We have a new product and we have these beautiful Christmas ornaments with my art on them and I only do a thousand of each. And so those will be blown out by the end of the year. And so you can come in. When you buy four or more, you get discounts and all sorts of things that way. But we try to do something new and exclusive every year. So the ornaments are kind of fun for holiday giving. If you buy like 10 of them, they go down almost a third because you're going to be giving them as gifts for your office, I hope. Is that something that's also going to be available on the website or do they actually have to come in? No, on the website. Everything. All the discounts are available. The whole store is on the website. Yeah, she doesn't pick and choose. If she gives a discount, except there's something she does just for chamber members that's an incentive for the chamber. We're 99% tourism. So all of my internet sales are from people that have already been in my store. That's how I get my internet going so well. That's great. And we're going to be entering into the last three or four minutes of the show. And so I just wanted to touch on something. It's all been very fun and positive and great. But we all know that there's been some challenges here and there along the ways. I think all companies experience that at some point. We've had some economic slowdowns and start-ups and that kind of stuff. Pam, what do you think is probably one of the most common challenges that businesses will experience? The biggest challenge and I know you well know this.  And particularly on Maui, we saw that we're trying to have Kaiser come in and take care of our Maui Memorial Medical Center. And that's been delayed unfortunately until next July. So that's a big issue for our community overall. Between now and then, nobody gets sick, right? That would be wishful thinking. So it's a huge challenge and our community is working on that and we're working as a chamber on our other legislative priorities. But just in general, healthcare costs have really soared for companies of late. And so that's been a big issue that we're working on. And things are getting better so access to capital has been a problem. It's starting to loosen up a little bit as companies are starting to recover and do much better. So that's a rising interest rate. Some companies like Sherry haven't needed to borrow, but many of our small businesses do need to borrow to close that gap or to expand. And we've just come out of the Made in Maui County Festival where they need to expand because they're getting orders from buyers, wholesalers and distributors. And to that point, some of the sales are cyclical. And so sometimes people have to go out and buy the inventory every year. And sometimes they need that access to capital to make that happen. And that's why they call it Black Friday. It's when a lot of companies actually turn to corners and start making some decent profit. That's exactly right, because that's the biggest sales of the period and Sherry knows this because she brings in a lot of different inventory. To get the best pricing for her customers, she has to pony up to larger volumes so that she can pass on better pricing because that's what every business would like to give their customers the best possible pricing they can. So inventory management and timing that in such a way that you can move it and not have a lot of your capital tied up is really important. Sherry, you've been very fortunate to not have to deal too much about the access to capital issue, but are there any other issues that you have had to address now? We've got about 45 seconds. Yeah. When we could feel the economy was doing some shifting, we shifted with our products and took, you know, when my average product was $70, it's now $20 so that we can sell a whole range of... We didn't lose customers. We gained customers because we could reach across different prices. That's an interesting process you went through.  Yeah, absolutely. You have to and you have to do it with the economy and even though the economy is great for us, we're going to keep all those products going because it's really nice to offer everyone something they can afford. Now what I'd like you to do is box this up and I'm going to sell it to Blockbuster. Whatever you need, there's a commission involved, right? We'll talk about that. Anyways, I appreciate you both very much for being on the show today. I had a good time. It's great to have the Maui Chamber and the gallery over here. Let's come back in another few months and we'll do this again. We'd love to. Thanks for having us on the show. And this is Reg Baker. I'm the host of Business in Hawaii. We broadcast live every Thursday at 2 o'clock from 2 to 2.30 and we highlight successful companies and organizations that support those companies. Thank you.