This is Startup to Storefront, and today we're celebrating our one year anniversary. This is a moment that we are immensely proud of. One of our goals was to hit 50 episodes in the first year, and I'm happy to say that this is our 62nd episode. We've had honest conversations with our guests about the mental fortitude and delusion it takes to start a company, as well as the imposter syndrome that can accompany it. The irony is not lost on us that we interview entrepreneurs about the very trials and tribulations that we ourselves are experiencing in producing this podcast. But it has been an incredibly rewarding journey thus far, and one we're looking forward to continuing for a very long time. So no matter if this is your first episode or your 62nd, we thank you for tuning in and listening. We do this as a labor of love, and we hope it inspires and educates you as it does us. So without any further ado, today's guest is Orlando Soria, the designer, author, and the host of HGTV's Build Me Up. Build Me Up is feel-good television at its finest, as the show features Orlando renovating homes for people going through major life changes. Some of the episodes also feature our very own Natalia Capilini. The show stands out for Orlando's ability to listen and add his expertise to his clients' tastes and suggestions, taking their trepidation and uncertainty of the next chapter in their life and giving them an inspired new home that ushers them forward while still paying homage to where they've come from. So listen in as we cover everything from what it was like to grow up inside of USMD National Park, why he hires partners and not employees, and we give him perhaps his greatest challenge of all, redesigning my bedroom. Now, back to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We have HGTV's Orlando Soria. Orlando, thanks so much for joining. Thank you. All right, thanks for having me. You're changing people's lives. I watched the last episode. It was an hour long, super beautiful, very touching. But before we get into the show, I wanted to ask you something magical that I think Natalia put me on to, which is you actually grew up in Yosemite. I did. Yeah, I grew up in Yosemite National Park very close to Yosemite Falls. So outside my bedroom window was the tallest waterfall in North America, and it was very wild and something that I didn't appreciate until I left and missed it a lot. Do a lot of people live there? How many people live there? There's about 800 to 1200 people. I think there's more in the summertime like college kids come and work there. But it's a very tiny community where everybody kind of like knows your stuff all the time. So it's interesting. I don't think most people appreciate where they're from until they leave. So it's definitely the most beautiful place in the world to me. And I'm very thankful that I grew up there. But it is a very odd thing. But yeah, so I grew up in a little cabin basically owned by the federal government. And probably some of my design interest comes from that because we weren't really allowed to obviously renovate it or do much to it because it was a rental cabin. So we were always painting and changing things around. But I think that I love like renovation and sort of home design so much because I like grew up in this place where we weren't fully allowed to do everything that we wanted to our house. That makes a lot of sense. Were your parents working? Were they were they associated in some way with the park? Yeah, so my dad was the dentist for the park. There's like a little medical clinic up there. And then my mom was home at your primary school. You know, I don't know that they like set out for their whole lives to live there. They always loved it. And an opportunity came up to to move there. They kind of jumped at it. So it's super weird. I don't know like many other people that grow up inside a national park. So I don't really know what to compare it to. You're the first. Yeah, literally the first. And so what made you at some point, right? You get this interest in design.  Let me go somewhere maybe far away. Obviously you went to Cornell. And so what was that process like for you where you really said, okay, let me go and Natalia will share her story and how she got to architecture. But from your perspective, you know, what was the thing that really drove you into into the design world? So basically, like I never really knew I wanted to be a designer. But from a very young age, I've been designing spaces, like constantly painting my room, rearranging stuff with my mom, playing around with my college dorm room and making that really nice. But I never really like put two and two together, that that's what I wanted to do professionally. Like in high school, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I think because that sounded like a sort of successful thing to do. And I was ambitious. At Cornell, I studied government, which is basically like political science. And I studied art because I used my art to like get into college. And I liked both of those things. And then I like went to grad school to become an art professor and realize that was not for me. So I had a really meandering career where I wasn't super directed. And it took me kind of a while to get where I've gotten. But I don't think that I would have the kind of like voice and empathy and understanding. I also graduated into a recession. So that wasn't great. And then now we're going through it again. Like art can really have the easiest go of trying to go once in a lifetime, economic downturns. Yeah. So those things slowed me down a little bit, but also like I have varying interests. And I think sometimes when you have a lot of different interests, it can be really hard to figure out what you want to do. And I know a lot of people struggle with that. Definitely. It's really hard. And then from there, what was your first step? Was it that you moved to LA right away? Did you get what was your first like job out of college? So yeah, after grad school, I moved to LA because I was sick of the East Coast. I moved away when I was 18. And I was like ready to be back in California. And I got a job as a graphic designer. And then that was like the year that things were starting to turn down. So like I was laid off from that job and then had a really hard time getting a job. And at that time I was like, I'm in LA. I think I want to do like entertainment industry things because like that's always been something that fascinated me and it looks like fun. So I got into production design and set design and did that for a number of years. And that was like really interesting and also really grueling. I don't know if either of you have worked in production, aside from like art show, it's hard. Like especially for the art department because those people are not before everybody else and they are leaving after everybody else. And it's like you often get treated like the housekeeper on set. It's like somebody dropped a soda like art department, come clean this up and that can be really frustrating. So yeah. And I think it's also like very hard to make a big name for yourself as like a production designer or an art director. It's just a rough field. So I was starting to kind of like get bored with that. And then I was cast to be an assistant on an HGTV show about 10 years ago with Emily Henderson. And that's kind of like the first like quote unquote interior design job I had. And that's amazing. I love her. I followed her for many years. What was it like working with her? It was fun. Like so Emily didn't know me before that show and she had wanted her best friend to get the role that I got. And so at first she wasn't fully on board, but we like became kindred spirits immediately. Like the first reveal of that show, we were in a house the full night before the reveal because something had gone wrong with the installation of the tile on the fireplace. And we were still like working on everything trying to get it ready for the show. So we ended up basically like sleeping in the master bedroom of that house for like hours before the reveal the next day and became like very close friends after that. So she was a little bit hesitant at first, but then we became super close. And she's somebody that I still hold really dear to me. So it's not that I like fell into interior design.  And I like never placed that that's what I should do until I started doing it professionally on camera. And then you like that I imagined. So that's 10 years ago, we're talking about 10 years ago, you get your first little, I guess, taste of what it's like. And then does the show keep running and you and you so it's like it goes on for many seasons, or was there a period where you're switching to a different show or a different a different avenue starting your own thing. So that show lasted for two seasons, which it took about a year to shoot those. Okay. And what I learned from doing that, which has been a really valuable lesson is that TV is not something to rely on. It's a nice little infusion of publicity, and it's great for business, but it is not something you should be like, I'm going to have a TV show, and then I'll have another one. And then it'll keep going. Reliant on things that are fully out of your control, you can make a great TV show that does not a get picked up or be continued. And things just go in and out.  Those have been really fun to make. And I think they've been great for brand building and for reaching people and telling a story. But for me, TV is never something that you should be like, I'm going to do this again, because you never know. I think that's so smart. I mean, one of the things when we first moved to LA, which is about three years ago, my friend immediately put it because we film everything we do. And the reason we film all of the projects we do is not for TV. So when I was in tech, you would always give your investors a PDF every month. And that was like the investor update. Now, nobody read it. And it would always really upset me because you're talking about a lot of executives working hard on this thing that nobody reads. And so I was like, I was really upset. And then I thought maybe it's the medium, right? Maybe PDFs are boring. And if they're an investor in 20 companies, then obviously that's even more boring and a lot of pressure for the investor. And so as soon as we moved to real estate, I said, instead of doing a PDF, why don't we just film it? And if we can get like a pretty cool producer, some really good production value, then it becomes like the HGTV kind of this episodic journey of showcasing everything of transparency.   And they were like, oh, you guys should enter a television show. And then my friend put me in touch with a lawyer, like a talent lawyer. And she was like, let me give you the reality of this industry. She's like, you might be on TV. You're gonna get 400 bucks, maybe. And you have to be really, really clear. Like if you get to the Joanna Chip Gaines, right, they were like, you got to be really clear on specifying the seats you want on the airplane. Otherwise, they'll put you in the middle seat. You got to specify the class of hotel. Otherwise, they're gonna put you in Motel Sixes. And it opened up this world of like, oh, really?  And they're like, oh, yeah, you don't make any money on those unless you have it in your contract. And so that's what she as the lawyer would really help these people figure out. And that was my first view into, oh, this is way more complicated than I thought. And then when we spoke to Sophia Bush, I was like, what was it like, you're on one tree hill, amazing show. She's like, we were all terrified because the production companies would tell us that it might not air next season. And they wouldn't tell them that they had a hit show on their hands so that they wouldn't ask for more money. And I was like, oh, this is so, it's so terrible. It's really interesting. And so that your advice is super sound in the sense of, you know, it's great for exposure. Like you said, obviously it connects you too. I mean, the storytelling and build me up I think is, it's really well done. Especially now it's just like the world needs that kind of a heartfelt reality TV. It's such a different take.  What a great time to be able to showcase those kinds of stories. I just, I think it's very timely. I think that's why it's resonating with people so much right now. And it's interesting because I did a former variation of the show that was called on spouse my house, which is a different show, but it's very, very similar. And just the name change has brought such a different energy to this show. Like people are like really living for it, which is so interesting to me. Yeah, it's very positive. What's your favorite part about about like the design process? Is it is it redoing spaces? Is it really having an impact on someone's life? What's like, what is the thing that you really, really resonates with you? Yeah, I mean, that is a great question. I mean, that you can answer that question sort of like in a philosophical way or in like a practical way. I'd say like, practically my favorite part of the design process is like, when it's over and people can enjoy their home. But in terms of like, you know, a theoretical favorite part, I would say getting people to be able to see their space in a new way or be able to enjoy it more or just to like kind of be able to take care of themselves better because they have the space to do that. That's kind of the whole purpose of the show is like showing people like, hey, taking care of your house is like a way of taking care of yourself and showing self love and showing care to other people who enter your house. So just kind of like seeing people enjoy their spaces and seeing them be excited about them is like the whole point of what we do. What do you think's next?  Super fortunate in one way where you're literally filming almost right to the point of COVID. Yeah, during COVID. And thankfully is able to air right now when people can tune in and they're not competing with sports necessarily or there's really like there's a kind of a drought as it relates to Netflix and other things. What do you like? What do you envision as as the next thing? You know, do you view another season of this or, you know, where are you thinking about the future for yourself? I don't know. So yeah, we did really luck out because we were basically done when COVID happened. We have one episode that the one that aired last week where you can kind of tell we're like, you know, the crew had to be far apart from each other. There could be like kind of a skeleton on a skeleton crew on set. Everybody had to like be outside during like lunch and breaks and stuff. I've been on a few sets since like during COVID and they felt pretty safe to me. So I think people are like starting back up. It's very ambiguous. I feel like everybody's kind of like, you know, like everybody else in society like looking around going like what do we do? And the same on design shows. But I think everybody, you know, people are ready to go back to work and they kind of figured it out. Like everybody in a mask, everybody outside when they're not necessary. Like when you're on camera, you can take your mask off, but you're far away from each other. So it just feels like for the next year or so we're going to be like working in this kind of like odd space where we're like not fully sure how everything is going to work. So, you know, our show is has only been on for three weeks. So I have no idea whether or not we're going to shoot more. What's really odd is that you get like a lot of emails from people being like, Hey, like, mostly basically like telling you their story and like, can you cast me? And like for me, I don't really have tons of control over the casting process. And B, I never know if I'm going to have more episodes. So it's like always a weird thing when your show is on casting happened 10 months ago. So like, you're not casting people while the show is on usually, but that's when you're getting people reaching out to you being like, Hey, this is what happened. Can I ban your show? And you're like, I love you. I'm so sorry. I don't, you know, there's nothing I can really do at this point. So I have no idea if there'll be more episodes. I always think that like, I'm just happy that I got this story that I wanted to tell told and every sort of little block of episodes of doing that is as a gift. So right now I'm working with a lot of private clients. I basically like pivoted this year from doing a lot of like sponsorships and brand partnerships to like making and selling products. So that's been something that I've been developing. And they're gorgeous. Thank you.  The way that people like that tend to make money is through partnerships and like working with brands, those completely disappeared when COVID happened. So I had to like in a month be like, all right, how am I going to figure out how to make money this year? Which was returning to working with design clients, which I have loved doing, but just haven't had the time for over the past few years because of like my book and the TV shows. And then, you know, making and selling product, which is another thing that I've been wanting to do for a long time. And I'm developing more and more. That's been really interesting just because of the learning curve and the logistics that goes into every single one of those. But that's been really fun because it's just like a problem solving thing. And it's been really enjoying it. So I'm just I'm thankful that I'm not homeless, basically, because March came I was like, Oh my God, like, what am I going to do this year? It's a wild time. Let's let's tell everybody about what you're working on. So you're you're what are you you're working on some merch and furniture? What are you working on? Yeah, so right now I'm finishing up a project with the Olympics gear Gus Kenworthy. So we're shooting that and we're shooting that as like a HGTV digital series too. So that will be out at some point. And that project is really cool. It's a big condo of the street for me here in West Hollywood. And it's like very like modern and clean and he had like lots of really interesting art and interesting furniture that he was into. So that was a really fun project to do. Other than that, I'm working with a few private clients, both like in the LA area, and I'm experimenting with working with a partner to do sort of e design so I can have clients kind of anywhere. What I've developed this year is a strategy for basically trying to figure out how to diversify income streams because when March came and like, I was like, Oh, I was making all of my money in partnerships. I realized a, you know, getting paid to Instagram something is like fine, but that's not like my life passion. Right. Even though it can lead to like really fun content. And I have a few that are in the works that I think are going to be really funny. And like B, I've had all these other ideas for such a long time that I wanted to do that I didn't make time for. So that's really what this year has been about. But in doing all of these things, I'm trying to grow in a way that is more strategic. And so like for my LA design clients, I have a woman that I partner with who basically like does all of the logistics of the design process. We are in collaboration about how the home is designed and I'll be like, I like this, I want to do that. I want to do this. And I, you know, incorporate her vision and her idea because I found her because I loved her work. And so that's allowed me to have a high end in person design business without what was happening before, which was that I would be basically like ripped away to film something. And then this person would be like, there's nothing going on on my project. And I'm like, yes, but when I'm like filming something, it's actually impossible for me to be like doing two things at the same time. And you'll always gravitate towards the, you know, the project that's either making you more money or that's going to lead to more marketing or whatever. You're going to automatically get taken away to do that other thing. So being able to have that support. I mean, that's amazing. You can almost like add more to your play or, you know, pick different things and not have all of your time be sequestered between one thing or the other. That's really nice. I mean, I think that the hard thing about like being on TV or being somebody with a big social media following as a designer is that you find a lot of clients, but then the act of what you're doing that is getting their attention is actually something that takes a lot of time. So like content for Instagram takes time. Producing a TV show takes time. Like all of these things kind of in a weird way negate the thing that you're marketing because you don't have time to do the thing because you're doing the marketing for the thing. Right. So bringing on people to help you sort of carry out your design is really crucial. And for me, I've seen multiple friends of mine bring on huge teams and then they go through these cycles of, Oh my God, my overhead is so high. I have to get rid of people. And then three months later, they're like, Oh my God, I have so many projects I need to hire more people. And so I've been trying to find partners instead of employees, meaning like I have, I'm collaborating with people, but I'm not like, you're on my payroll. So it's like, just, you know, practically speaking, instead of me being like, here's your salary. I'm like, well, you're making this percentage and I'm making this percentage and the percentage is, is fair enough that they're going to be motivated to want to work, you know, and they still have other things to work on when it's, when it's lower. So for my design clients, the people who work for me, quote unquote, make more of the design fee than I do, because they're doing more of the logistical work. And the reason that that can work for me is that I'm doing multiple things at the same time. I want somebody who's established enough to not be my employee, and they deserve more of the money because they're doing more of the work. So that's kind of been my strategy this year of like, all right, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this. And these things are going to be self sustaining because I'm paying people a living wage to do them. And I still get to have to create a freedom of being involved, but I'm not sort of tasked with the day to day minutia, which is what sort of always ends up making my brain feel torn in a million directions. I think that's really smart. If, if Orlando Soria was on, build me up as the client, what would be the dream thing that you would build for yourself? Oh, that's a good question. And you might already have it, you know, it might already be in the home you're in. Right. It might be your dream project that you've done yourself already. I don't know. Like I can think of like dream houses. I'm trying to think of like dream projects.  Yeah, I love that. Me too. Is there, as it relates to being on TV, do you see the future as HGTV evolving in a meaningful way? Like do you, you get to talk to maybe the production companies and obviously you've been doing it for 10 years. And so there's, there's obviously progress, but what do you think the future of HGTV holds? Do you think it's more digital series? Do you think the content changes? I mean, I, to me, you know, as a consumer, Flipper Flop has been or Fixer Upper has been done a number of times in different ways. And obviously the recipe works, but is there any innovation that you might see coming in that space that that they're currently working on or maybe testing? Well, I think something that I'd noticed even just in terms of like as a viewer of HGTV is people are more and more interested about having a story be involved with what's going on. I think why like our show is resonating with so many people too is there is that personal hook to get you interested in like why this person wants to do what they want to their house. And I like that because I think of design as like a very personal, very psychological process. So I see them incorporating more types of programming that has those sort of like family relationships or that has that human element to it that get you more excited about it. Yeah, they are going to be I think probably all of the networks at some point are going to have that the streaming side of them. So like we have like ECOC for NBC, like HBO Max, etc. And I think that they'll probably end up going like that route as well. I don't know what that that will mean if anything for the type of content that they're making, but just generally I'm noticing that people want things to be a little bit more interesting and a little bit more laced with with human stories and stories about families and stories about struggling and overcoming. So yeah, to me that's that's a lot more interesting than just a straight up like we made this house bigger and now it's worth more money. Right. And so traps my mom has this house where she had this wall in the middle and so during Christmas, you could only be in one room. And so if you and we obviously were traveling back to Massachusetts to see our family and it's like if I'm in the living room, I can't see anyone in the kitchen. If I'm in the dining room, I can't see anyone in the other two rooms. And this thing would upset me to the point where I'm like, I want to demo this wall right now, right now. And finally, I think two years ago, we just decided to fly to Massachusetts with our crew and just finish this thing rented couple trucks for a week. And to your point, like that was the point wasn't the renovation. The point was, I selfishly when I'm visiting my family, which doesn't happen often because we live in California and they're in Massachusetts, just wanted to be able to see everybody in the same room. And oh, now it's amazing. My mom loves it. And obviously she loves it. Obviously it's she's such a fan. And it was it's totally right. Like design needs to be purposeful in that way. There needs to be a story. Have you done other projects for your family? We're planning another one. We did a bathroom renovation and part of like a part of their wet bar and now we're doing their basement before the before next summer. It was supposed to be before this summer, but then COVID happened and my crew wasn't flying. So we didn't go back and we weren't flying. So we didn't go back. But now it'll be before next summer.  We're going to do a little wine cellar and then another living room to have more space and then a guest bedroom. Are they easy clients? Yes, yes. They all they trust us or not. I shouldn't say us Natalia. They trust Natalia. And so they're just like, whatever you say we'll do. And so my sister also has a home that she's a new mother of two little boys. And so obviously the house changes when you have boys or kids in general. And so she's like, I need, I need to optimize for storage. And so there's some projects that we're honestly waiting for COVID. And so we can get back on some planes and bring our, bring our guys and do some quick stuff that we think is just super, super fun. And impactful. Yeah. But again, to your point with the storyline, right? It's like the story leads the design, not vice versa. We're not just renovating to renovate. Right. We're not like, let's flip this home, which is fine too, but it's just not for me. It's not that exciting. So with that, we're going to, we're going to bring Nick in. We have a design challenge for you. Nick is our fellow co-host of the startup to storefront podcast. Nick is actually shooting a commercial again. So this is actually his first project in Cupertino. Hey guys. Hey, hello everyone. Here is. So now I'm going to paint a picture for you. Okay. So Nick Conrad is a single man. Since COVID, we're obviously all at home doing zoom meetings. And the challenge with this is sometimes this is the backdrop of his, of our podcast. And, and Natalia obviously knows something a little bit about design and she absolutely dislikes this baby blue. I mean, like, dude, it's like you're eight years old again. And so we said, how great would it be to ask, what would Orlando do to this room? Just to make it one, obviously it's the new work space, right? This is your backdrop. And we just want to give him the bachelor pad of his dreams. So what is up for grabs? Like what is, what can be changed? Anything. I'm glad that they're speaking for me because clearly they've rendered my input pretty much meaningless just based on the room color itself. Did you choose that color? So it was lavender when I first got in there to that space. And so it was, it was, it was my choice. And I basically just chose a color that I like. I like blue. And so I threw it up on the wall and didn't really give it any second thought whatsoever until I met them and had had them over and they like took one look at my room and instantly like that was the first thing that they picked up on and just have not let me have a moment's rest ever since then. I mean, in your defense, I am wearing that color on my body, basically. I'm wearing like a light blue shirt. So I think it can work well in certain applications. That's something that I kind of like realized at an early age is that sometimes things that you love in terms of color aren't things that belong on your wall. I actually don't know if I dislike the color of the wall. I think maybe if there was some sort of like on molding on it and the floor was like a hardwood floor and, you know, the furniture felt more considered, you might read that blue in a different way than you're reading it now. And blue is really hard to because the specific hue can take it from like pretty and warm kind of like Tamara's bedroom. Remember that or that was a very similar color to this, but that one had a little bit more yellow in it and was a little bit more like a Robin's egg.  Anyway, I actually don't think it's a terrible color. I think it contrasting with the rug because the rug is a similar sort of level of saturation is not really providing a lot of contrast. So if this were my room, I would, you know, I'd want to change out the flooring if I could. If I could, and I'd want to add some sort of like flat woven rug probably like in an ivory that just brightened up the floor. I think something that would be really nice for this style maybe is like one of those like leather headboards that mounts to the wall just to give the bed some structure. And then you could even like have a light fixture that hangs down just a little bit more because it does look like it's over the bed. It's not quite, it's over the foot of the bed. Okay, so I guess that semi-flesh is not bad either. Another thing obviously is like storage in a room like that. Like I don't think you necessarily like need to be looking at your shoes. So finding some sort of closed storage piece for that or reorganizing the closet so it could be in there.  That's always my first concern. Yeah, that's what I mean. There are like cool, this sounds really like lame, but like things that are like tapestries are things that are made out of like a textile that could kind of solve that issue. Or if it's lightweight enough, I'm always like, all right, this is like over my bed, but it's not like glass. So it won't like cut me in half or wood solid wood. Yeah. I mean, and I'm sure that standing desk is probably super practical and healthy, but maybe in terms of like styling it up a little bit, you could add some like shelving above it. So it was a little bit like cleaner and more streamlined. Most of the time, like adding cool art, getting everything super organized and changing out a few things, like either changing the flooring or adding a rug is going to make the room feel a lot cooler. Maybe adding like a bench at the end of the bed too, just to make it a little bit more welcoming. All good things. Awesome wood flooring for him for free because you made him do this. Yep. I got you. Put my room on blast. I think I've got some extra for my last project, so you're good. Yeah, I'm sure my landlord would be okay with that. Oh yeah. It's an upgrade. For sure. I don't know why I chose that carpet in the first place. Carpet is like easy to replace and it's cheap. So I like totally, and actually like it can be very nice, but like you never really feel like it's nice if it's like been somebody else's before you. Yeah, I totally get that from a landlord perspective. And it's good for soundproofing. There's a lot of great things about it, but it gets a bad rap because we're used to seeing like the cheap gross kind of landlords put in just to like do the bare minimum. Well, thank you. Nick, how do you feel? How do you feel about those recommendations? I actually think I might implement, be able to implement quite a few of them. So that's really helpful actually. Good. This is like a mini little episode. This is so great. And Nick, we're actually going to hold you to this. So we're going to hold you to this and see if it actually does it. We're going to do it while you're in Cupertino. We'll force it, we'll force it. Great. You know, I have to say I have to jump right now, but Orlando, I am looking forward to seeing this entire interview as I'm editing it. And yeah, looking forward to it very much. Thank you. Good to meet you. Very nice to meet you too. Bye guys. See you Nick. See you later. Thanks for being a good sport. Absolutely. Thanks, Orlando. That was fun. Listen, before we wrap, just tell everyone where they can find you. And your products. Find me and my products at Orlandosoria.com. And follow me at Atnistor Orlandosoria on Instagram and Pinterest. And I don't really do like Twitter or whatever, but that is also my Twitter handle. I do you guys like Twitter?  I deleted it. I definitely liked looking at it. So I just, my stuff like it's rebroadcast to it. So sometimes it'll be like blah, blah, blah, follows you on Twitter and I'm like, why? I don't do it. No. And of course, check it out. Build me up Wednesdays at 9, right? 6 or 9? Yeah, 9. 9 p.m. on HGTV. Thanks, Orlando. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello everyone, today I'm going to be showing you how to make two face coverings using one small t-shirt.   This is a size small, so any size t-shirt should work. Just remember that if you are going to be wearing this in uniform for any branch of service that it abides by your uniform regulations. So first step I'm going to be measuring now a 15 by 15 inch square in the middle of my t-shirt and I'm using my pencil to draw guidelines. Once I have my square drawn I will use my scissors to cut through both the front and the back of the t-shirt at the same time. Just go slow and remember it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. After you're done cutting you should end up with two beautifully cut squares. Go ahead and set one aside and with the other we are going to begin our folds. Start by bringing two opposite corners together to create a triangle and I like to give it a little shake to help even it out. Now I tried the method where you fold it into a rectangle and then tuck one side into the other, but it kept falling apart when I put it on because it wasn't long enough, so this method allows you to use a smaller piece of fabric and create two face coverings that adjust to your face size. Once you have a nice flat triangle we're going to fold it into thirds so bring that top point to about the center and then fold that same side down to line up with the bottom. Now for this next step you're going to take your hair ties or your rubber bands and you're going to roll the end corners around the hair ties. So first I place the hair tie over the corner and I'm just going to roll the fabric around the tie. You don't want it to be too tight where it will twist up the hair tie, but not too loose where it will just unroll. It helps to stretch out the bands every now and then as you're rolling so that way it doesn't get too bunched up and the hair tie doesn't get too twisted up inside. Remember you can always unroll or roll up more later to get the perfect fit for your personal face size. At the end you'll want to end up with a loop on the outside. Once you're finished with one side go ahead and turn it around into the same thing on the other side. Again first I place the band on top of the corner and then roll the fabric around the tie stretching it along the way to help make it easier and neater. After you've rolled up both sides you will have completed one face covering. Just repeat these steps with the other square to create a second if you so choose. Thanks for watching and I hope this video helps and I hope you all stay safe and healthy out there.


There is between 500 to 1,000 kilograms of waste coffee grounds produced per week from all the cafes on campus. I'm a senior tutor in biology and I coordinate the 102 botany course. The material that the lab fungi grow on before was just an agar gel in a plastic petri dish. The technicians would produce around four or five hundred of these things for that one experiment and then they just throw the plastic away. So I just wanted to have a look at another way that we could teach fungi to the students in stage rumbotany. So I chose coffee grounds and with the help of the supplier of the spawn I designed an experiment and I trialled it out. I'm holding here in my hands the fruiting bodies of the oyster mushroom. These are actually dry. I decided to put them into the old aquarium downstairs in my lab area and grew them up. So two weeks later I had quite a few flushes of oyster mushrooms. The coffee ground mixture that the students use is about a kilogram of coffee grounds, 100 grams of mushroom spawn and about 100 grams of water. Using the coffee grounds does make them think about waste. And especially waste around the university as well. We need to look at it and I think that the students really do get on board with that. They're actually taking a waste product and have the potential to grow a food source from it. We had planned as a group to have a little mushroom party. We could make some pizzas and stuff like that but no such joy. Not yet. As it progressed I did really enjoy the fact that the students got into it. I thought it was cool that we used coffee grounds from the university cafes. It was kind of a cool way to use some of the five products of our campus. It's like the most efficient way of recycling because not only do you get money but you get rid of all the waste and everyone's happy. And you get a food. Even though it started out as an experiment just to replace the boring, fungly lab that we had prior to that, it's grown and the students have really gone into it. It was more engaging because we got to take them home. And you got to see how it grew. It was at home you had to say it. You couldn't smell it.


Today's show will be reviewing the recent national elections, and we may explore how the results can influence the next two years, how the Trump administration will function, how general government will support him. My guest expert today is the professor of international relations and a director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies at UH Manoa, Jarris Grove. I have been fortunate to take several political science classes from him, and he has broadened my political understanding in so many ways. I can say I'm honestly a much more responsible citizen than I have ever been. Welcome, Jarris, and thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me on, Martha. It's always a pleasure to have you in the back of the room. There you go. It's fun to be in the back of your room, as it were. So before we look at the elections, your title director of future studies might be something people don't understand. And by the way, that is Futures with an S. What is future studies? What is being a teacher of the futures? What is it you do? Sure. And how does that influence America? I mean, I think generally speaking, futures is an attempt to fold in techniques of foresight or an understanding of how you think the world will be in an effort to try to do more to prepare for the world now. What we do at Hawaii, though, is called alternative futures. And the reason why we call it that is because we don't believe that there is a future you can predict. We think that there are multiple futures on the horizon, and you have to account for those multiple futures so you don't get caught off guard. And so rather than trying to predict for one future or the other, our goal is to use the image of the future to put more pressure on us in the present to think about how we govern ourselves, what kinds of lives we want to live, what kind of future we want under the assumption that you don't have a future that's fate, you participate in hopefully making a preferred future, a future we want, because we all participate in making the future. And so the idea is, how do we participate in better? Right. And in this case, we're not just talking about participating in the government and the system we have now, but also we extrapolate the ways in which that system might be evolved or changed to suit situations which simply could not have been envisioned either in the present or in the past when these laws were initiated, yeah? Of course, and not just in governance. I mean, the future gets made in education. It gets made at the movies. The future gets made in conversations around dinner tables, right? So, I mean, part of what we want to look at is how we build new kinds of cultures which are attentive to the kinds of disruptive futures in particular we're likely to face. So, everything from climate change to artificial intelligence to a world without work to new kinds of war, right? We look at all of these kinds of questions. OK, so considering that, what can you tell us about how the recent elections might be influencing the next few years to come in America, especially the next two, or how the entire past two years will be affecting America? Specifically, I have deep concerns about how Mitch McConnell has and the Republican parties have influenced the courts and their tendency to try to undermine investigations into the possibilities of criminal or otherwise inappropriate actions by the president and his election team. That's a lot of questions. Yeah, well, I'll give you, now you run with it. I'll start with two things. The first is that I think it's a little early yet to say what the outcome of the midterms are, not just because there are actually some races that are still undecided, but because it's actually hard to tell what the consequences will be for change. Although I will say that the leadership elections that took place in the Senate suggests not a big change, right? We see more or less the same faces. You know, it'll be exciting after Thanksgiving to find out what the leadership looks like for the Democrats in the House. But I think there's a strong possibility. Nancy Pelosi will still be at the front of the line. But there are some things I think we can still sort of think about with the midterms. One, which is that I think what it confirms is not either a blue wave or not enough of a blue wave, but it confirms what 2016 also showed us, which is we're a deeply, deeply divided country. And while it's true that there was significantly more democratic turnout, so we saw much higher turnout rates in the midterm election, it only confirms that, right? It only confirms that still we're fighting races that are, I mean, the Beto cruise race, I think is a great example, within a percentage point, right? Exactly. And my guess would be that unlike other races that we could maybe historically think about where we're within a percentage point because it seemed like there was so much overlap between the candidates. Right. I think we were within a percentage point and you would have a lot of trouble finding an overlapping series of interests between the two groups. So I think we don't have a lot of good news if we're thinking about kind of long-term partisanship. The second thing I want to say though is because I think we have a tendency to want to personalize politics in all cases. And I know why you want to think about Mitch McConnell. But my warning would be that name could change very quickly. And my guess is politics wouldn't change very much, right? So I think we should be wary of making politics about particular personalities because I think, and this is something that a futures approach we tend to focus on. Structure matters a lot more, I think, than personality does. Right. And there are a lot of structural reasons why Republicans are likely to continue down the same path that they're on right now and that Democrats are likely to go down the same path that they're on right now and that isn't likely to change a lot, even if the faces and names change a great deal. I suppose the reason I bring it up is because until the Trump election, and Mitch McConnell, the head of the Senate, even if they were Republican-dominated Senate, never took some of the extraordinary actions that Mr. McConnell has taken in the last terms of office for Obama, absolutely refusing to even give his nomination for the Supreme Court a chance to even be discussed. He has taken almost a dictatorial stand of making sure that his and his conservative Republican agenda goes forward regardless of anything. He doesn't even, to my knowledge, criticize almost anything that Donald Trump has done, even when some of his fellow Republicans have done so. Now, I understand that they may vote to support their agenda regardless of how they personally feel. But I do think that Mr. McConnell has taken actions that other leadership might not have taken because of the feeling that if I do this, when the other side wins, they will do the same things to us. And I've always felt that most of the balance comes in terms of, well, if we do it to them, they might do it to us. So let's not upset the balance too much because they might come back at us at some point. I don't see Mr. McConnell being concerned about any retaliatory action by a controlled Senate by the Democrats. That's why I mentioned him specifically. But you seem to think that's not the case. I think that any party head who thought they could get away with that probably would have taken those actions. So my guess is if we were to do a kind of counterfactual and some other member of the Republican Party had taken Mitch McConnell's position, if they thought that they had either the support in terms of electoral support or that they had the committee power to say, for instance, forestall a Supreme Court justice getting onto the court, they would have done it. I mean, I think it's not unique to McConnell's personality. I'm not saying it doesn't play a role. But I think that the Republican Party has gained a tremendous amount of ground since really probably the first Reagan administration by precisely, sabotage may be too strong a word, but interfering with process. And I think that it's not as if other like the Democratic Party may not have tried to do that, but they have gained a tremendous amount of support by doing it. So this is one of the things that Dick Packer and Peterson say in Winner Take All Politics, which is an excellent book I'd recommend to anyone, tries to track the way that Republicans were able to, for instance, really create a kind of consensus in America that, for instance, taxation was bad. That what we really struggled from was that taxes were too high, even though that they were actually comparatively much lower, that we got great benefits off of them. And a lot of it was through this kind of slow war of attrition, where you interrupt process and undermine the process such that it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want to show that things don't work well, the best way to say undermine, hud, the housing and urban development, is to slowly choke off funds, in which you can, so that they do a bad job. And then if it's a facto, they are a terrible organization because they do a bad job, and no one ever has a discussion that they do a bad job because they don't have enough funds. So I don't think that's a new strategy by Republicans. And I do think structurally, given we have a two-party system, whatever party is in the insurgency, trying to undo a particular form of government, is going to make use of those kinds of sabotage strategies. So if you think about the United States as a country that built a quasi-welfare state that tried to minimize everything from poverty to a lack of education, to a lack of housing, and that was a kind of consensus that developed. And we developed the institutions to fulfill those, to a greater and lesser extent, but nonetheless, to fulfill them. And then you think about the Republican Party as an alternative to that. Then it's not surprising that, given that their majority platform was, how do we take those institutions and those entitlements and that approach to government apart, that they used sabotage as the way to do it. So for me, this seems more like an extension of what, from their perspective, is a very tried-and-true success plan. This strategy works for them. Until it doesn't, I think they'll keep doing it. All right, so one of the things that I noticed is in the past, the convention has been that if you get a large voter turnout, the Democratic Party will come to the fore, because there used to be a far greater percentage of the population that went in that direction. Most recently, in these recent elections, we've certainly discovered that, at least in certain states, Trump's individual magnetism, regardless of everything he does, and no matter what you put out there to show that there are contradictions in what he's saying, he seems to be able to win people over. And we have seen these close elections that you've mentioned, where we're dealing with sometimes one percentage point or less in the difference between who's being elected. Now, to me, this is a change in the entire American climate. Compared to, I must admit, my youth, where there was a definite move towards caring about other people for one thing, but also a tendency to look at the facts, research them, and act on the basis of that, as opposed to, oh, gee, he's so cool. Now, it's great if your leadership is cool or sexy or attractive, but that is a strange situation. So this election revealed to us that a good percentage of this country really is supporting an agenda, which is really contrary to many of the ideals that has made America work in the past. So where are we going? Is that going to continue? Is that all about Trump, or is it something else? Well, the first thing I would say is that we don't really know what the American people think. It's very hard, and I think it's dangerous, to kind of psychologize a vote, because a vote is an either or question. You either vote for someone or you vote for another person. And so there can be all kinds of reasons why people do that. And I think that's the first thing to remember. The second thing to remember, and this is actually very important, Trump didn't win by a majority. Trump won because of the way the electoral college system works. True. And one of the things about the way the electoral college system works is that it actually still very much reflects a deep division in this country that, if you look at it on a map, still looks like the Mason-Dixon line. We still have serious problems in this country which follow sectionalist divisions, which have flipped parties with realignment, but still very much exist. And the third, and this one I think is one of the most important, is we've always been a country that's moved by personality. The Nixon-Kennedy debates were decided because Kennedy knew how to function on television. And Kissinger looked like a hot mess. He was sweaty. He refused to wear makeup. He didn't know what he was doing. I think any skilled debater would tell you, on the substance, Nixon won that debate. And anyone who watched it would say that JFK just cleaned up. And so I think we've always been moved by personality. We've always been moved by something. But I think what Trump tapped into is a deep dissatisfaction with what government could provide. And he was able to do what seems impossible, run as a third-party candidate within the Republican Party. True. And I think it's more accurate to say that Trump's one of the first third-party candidate victories than to say that we saw this major Republican reversal. Right, OK. I'm going to go to break now. And then we will come back and continue with Dr. Jaris Grove from UH Manoa, professor of political science and director of the futures research. It's so complicated. Let's go to break. Obviously, I need one. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me, where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Ana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff. But I really like energy stuff. So I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. Hi, this is Martha Randolph. My show is The Will of the People. And my guest today is Dr. Professor Jaris Grove from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He is a professor of political science and the director of research for future studies here in Hawaii. You'll have to go back and watch the first part of the show if you want to find out about that. Now, I am going to continue with a very important question, which I think a lot of people don't really realize. What is it that now that we have a house where the majority is Democratic, what can they do, if anything, to really mitigate or balance anything that the president is doing or that the Senate will or will not do? And particularly in regards to the investigation into pre-election actions by Donald Trump which may or may not have been legal or allowed. And could you please explain really what an impeachment is? Because a lot of people think that impeachment means he gets knocked out the window. But apparently that's not the case. Great. Well, let's start with what the House can do.  I mean, my sort of warning label would be something like, think about all the things that Trump's done that you've liked the least and then ask yourself how many of those required congressional action. And that's a short list. The travel ban was not a congressional action. The reinterpretation of asylum seeking at the border which resulted also in family separations, not a congressional action. So it's great if you're a Democrat that Trump won't be able to get potentially his legislative agenda through, but the reality is that most of things that have been outside of what we consider sort of traditional Republican policies. So the kind of more racist, the more nationalist policies have mostly been executive actions, right? There's not a lot that the House can do about that. But I do think that being in the majority means that they can undermine it in ways that the Republican House was unwilling. So I think one of the things that's very dangerous about the kinds of rhetoric that Trump uses when it comes to things like immigration or how he feels about our cooperation with Europe or with Japan is that when he said the most outlandish things he said, the Republican House was very slow to contradict him, if at all. That party loyalty meant that oftentimes, even when we knew that there were real differences, there was a kind of grudging acceptance of Trump's endorsement of violence or his sort of neo-isolationism. Now the Democrats can speak in particular ways against that kind of move and hopefully undermine the perception by our allies and also the people who feel vulnerable in this country, that the whole country is against them. I think the House can provide a kind of balance to that. And they can negotiate, they're in a position to negotiate with the Senate if a bill is put through and it passes in the House and the Senate, being Republican-dominated, decides not to pass it. There's this reconcilable situation where they have to negotiate. I would be surprised if there was a lot of reconciliation. I know, I didn't think there would be, but is there something the Senate might want that they would have to negotiate and say, yeah, well, we'll give you this if you give us that? We'll see. I mean, that's most likely to happen with the budget. But other things I think probably unlikely. But to move on to the other question, because I think this is on a lot of people's mind, on what impeachment is. So impeachment does not mean that a president's found guilty. Filing articles of impeachment means that the president will be under investigation to determine their guilt. So the House representatives could initiate and begin that process of impeachment. And the House of representatives has investigative authority, which means that they could do a great deal of looking into financial records, reviewing what Mueller has found. They could really open up how much we know about those investigations. And I think that even if by the time it gets to the Senate and the Senate actually has to make a determination of guilt or innocence doesn't result in actually removing Trump from power, a lot of things could come out of that were quite good. We could find out a lot more about how much interference there actually was in our democratic institutions. My guess is we'll find out there were a lot of things we didn't know. And we'll also find out a lot of things we thought weren't true. And I think that just as a beginning could be very important for rebuilding faith and the electoral system and also protecting the electoral system. I also think that a greater deal of transparency would really change what kind of campaign Trump can run in 2020, as well as what kind of campaign those House and Senate members who want to connect themselves to the Trump train can say with credibility. So there's certainly, I think, a rightful fear that somehow Trump broke the truth, that the truth will never come back because fake news and being able to call out fake news is sort of the order of the day. But the reality is that while facts don't matter in and of themselves, you can make facts matter. And I think the actual tax returns, actual information about traffic back and forth between the Trump campaign and potentially Russian interference, those will change those debates in ways that simply making an accusation can't. So I think there's a lot that the House can do. But I think if people think that the House is going to somehow undo the changes that Trump has made, I think that's improbable. OK, so and which means let's say Robert Mueller's report is received. The House will want to read it. Is there anything that the Senate or president can do can to keep that report private? Can it? Is it going to be public? Or is it up to the individual legislative branches to decide? Because we have seen his chosen few release information that was supposed to be kept private because it was of advantage and refusing to release information, which we thought might actually tell us something. Well, I mean, for anyone hoping that Mueller's full investigation is going to somehow be put up on the internet so we can all look through it ourselves, that's not going to happen. And my guess is we will have to fight in all the ways. I mean, probably the closest comparison would be something like the Hamilton Baker 9-11 report where because portions of it may have active intelligence significance. So for instance, it may have information about US operatives or it may have information about Russian operatives, which are still current and not intended. Then what will happen is a debate over whether or not national security protections are being used rightfully. Meaning to protect people and to protect interests. Or whether or not they're being used opportunistically as a kind of political tool to prevent embarrassing the president or embarrassing his campaign staff or maybe members of his family going to jail, et cetera, et cetera. So I think we're likely to see a long and protracted fight over what can be made public, what can't be made public, what was rightfully and legally obtained versus what maybe wasn't legally obtained. I mean, a big part of the Trump narrative has been about what he thinks of as illegal surveillance while he was actually campaigning when he was still a candidate. So it wouldn't surprise me if major portions of the report find their way to the Supreme Court, where we have to have new debates and new decisions about what constitutes executive privilege, national security, what can and can't remain confidential. And the Democrats are going to have to make really smart decisions about which of those fights are worth having and which of those fights actually kind of wear the public out. I mean, I think one of the things that happened with the Clinton impeachment is by the end of it, a lot of people were just sick of the impeachment. And I think that worked ultimately to the Republicans' disadvantage. That could happen again. Well, they're certainly driving that thought. Right. I think it is premature to believe that that's the case. So I mean, one of the reasons why I think we shouldn't overly push that parallel is that there was one incident with Clinton that we were trying to determine the fact over. Well, and also it was a personal sexual incident. It had nothing to do with governing of the nation. There are several different layers to the Mueller question, which range from everything from internal corruption to international intrigue to fundamentally how elections get run. And so I mean, if Democrats are able to make this kind of national discussion on what we want democratic institutions to be, then I think they could actually get quite a bit out of the investigation, even if they don't get a conviction. So I don't think we should think about impeachment or the investigation just in terms of, well, is Trump going to be removed from office or not? Is he going to seek re-election or not? I think it's a question of whether or not we can really have an honest discussion about how the election happened, how the sausage got made. All right. I have just a couple of minutes and so just quickly, are there rulings that the Supreme Court can make on any given issue that can or cannot be overturned by a majority vote in Congress? Now, we don't have that right now. But I seem to remember that the Supreme Court can make a ruling, but there is another balance to that, which is that the House and or Senate can override that ruling. Is that true? And is that only for certain things that involve constitutional law? Or I only have one minute. So it's a whole range of things. It depends on what the decision was. So a decision on whether or not something was constitutional is a little bit different than a decision on whether or not something was statutorily acceptable. So for instance, the court doesn't just interpret the. The president that we were just talking. But the court doesn't just interpret the Constitution. It also interprets existing laws. So if the court is interpreting an existing law or an executive order, then there is more jurisdiction for the legislative branch or the president even to clarify that law or change that law such that the objection no longer exists. So generally what they're trying to evaluate is whether or not the law is in contradiction with itself or whether or not it's in contradiction with the Constitution. If they were to make a finding that something was in contradiction to the Constitution, then Congress would have to amend the Constitution in order to get around it. Which is a whole different process. Very, very different process. When it comes to things like executive privilege, national secrecy, and actually large portions of executive power, these are not in the Constitution. So these fights are likely to be a lot messier. The separation of powers are sort of going to be more interpretive and more political. And most of the law regarding those powers and those practices are mostly created during the 20th century and mostly after World War II. OK, so obviously there is a lot more to discuss in this, but we are out of time. And I hope Dr. Grove will come back and we can follow through on this. For anyone who's interested, do whatever you can to take a class with this man. It is stunning what you will learn. And this is Martha Randolph, signing off on the will of the people. Thank you, thank the staff. Thank you, Dr. Grove. Thank you, Martha. This is thinktecawaii.com. Please tune in again in a couple of weeks to this show. I don't know who's gonna be here, but it should be fun. Thank you.


step-by-step guide to legally teaching English in South Korea. South Korea is one of the most attractive locations for teaching English as a foreign language. The country has been welcoming foreign teachers for decades with lucrative salary and benefit packages, as well as the government-funded EPIC program that places qualified teachers into public schools across the country. South Korea is a great place to work, whether you are a new teacher or if you have some experience in the field. However, it is important that you understand the local job market and regulations before heading off on your adventure. Step one, understanding the visa situation. Currently, only citizens from the following countries qualify for a teacher-work visa. United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Therefore, non-native English speakers from other countries won't be able to work in South Korea under the E2 teaching visa. However, there are teachers from non-English speaking countries that teach in Korea under other visas, such as the F6 spouse visa or the F2 long-term residency visa. In these situations, it is up to the individual employer if they choose to hire a non-native English teacher. Other requirements for the E2 visa application for teaching English in South Korea University Bachelor Degree The University Degree or Copy Off must first be notarized and then apostilled. Three sealed university transcripts Criminal background check Passport photo copy Resume Signed copy of the school contract Four passport-sized photos Two letters of recommendation Step two, get your TEFL certification. A TEFL certification is not a requirement to obtain an E2 visa for teaching English in South Korea as of now. However, due to the competitive EFL market in South Korea, employers will usually only hire teachers who are TEFL qualified. If you want to live and work in South Korea as an English teacher, we recommend that you start your TEFL or TESOL course at least one year before your desired start date in South Korea. If you choose an in-class TEFL or TESOL course, you will receive your certificate within around four weeks. On the other hand, an online course can take anywhere between two and six months. This depends on how much time you have and how quickly you work through the course units. Also keep in mind that while in-class courses were much preferred in the early days of EFL teaching, online TEFL courses are now just as valued. Join our combined TEFL course option in Seoul for a head start in teaching English in South Korea. We recommend the following course options, 120-hour TEFL or TESOL course, 220-hour master package, 470-hour professional package. Step 3. Do your homework and research. If you want to head to South Korea to teach English abroad, do as much research about the local culture and job market as you can. Teachers are either employed by public schools through the government-funded EPIC program or they work for private language academies. They are pros and cons to both options and it's really up to you whichever route you want to go down. Teachers working at a public school are likely to get a few more vacation days and work fewer hours, but private language academies tend to pay higher salaries and have smaller classes. Also read the best government programs for teaching English abroad. Step 4. Be patient, persistent and flexible. Usually, most teachers choose to settle in and around Seoul, but competition for the best jobs is fierce. However, there are plenty of other exciting cities and smaller towns that offer a unique cultural experience that will make your stay in South Korea truly memorable. Also remember that South Korea is a rather small country, allowing you to visit Seoul and other cities in a matter of hours via the express bus and high-speed train systems. Step 5. Apply for jobs. Once you have your TEFL certificate in hand and understand the local job market, you are ready to start your job search. All enrolled ITTT students and alumni have access to our lifetime job assistance, including our job boards. We have an extensive network of recruiters and schools in South Korea to allow you to choose the job offer that suits your needs. We work with a range of renowned recruiters who specialize in the Korean market and we would love to connect you with them. Besides our own connections and the ITTT job board, you can also search for recruiters in South Korea via an online search.  You can state your location and school preferences and the recruiter will set up interviews with suitable schools. Also read The 8 Best Countries in Asia for Teaching English Abroad. Are you ready for your South Korea adventure? Apply now for your TEFL or TSOL certification course and start teaching in a matter of months. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll-free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.