The following is a presentation of TFNN. Trade what you see with Larry Pezzavento. Call now toll free at 1-877-927-6648 or internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Now Larry Pezzavento. Okay, looking good, Billy Ray feeling good, Louis. We've put the charts up for the FTSE and also for the German DAX, the German DAX. Much, much weaker as you can imagine. More economically sensitive, I would guess. There's going to be a guest at our half hour break. He's going to be another than the Wolf Trading himself, Shane Smollion. He did a two hour webinar over the weekend on Saturday, folks, explaining what was going to happen today. And I think he did an admirable job of that. He's going to share some of that with us when we come up here. This is that people have asked me this morning, is this the crash? No, boys and girls, this is not a crash. And under no stretch of the imagination isn't a crash. Let me just explain to you why. Here is, let me just show you what we're looking at right here this morning. And I'll give you my two cents worth. And believe me, if you pay more than that, you're probably overpaid. Here's the ABCD up there at 4804. You notice that the BC swing, do you see the B swing that's there? Now, one thing that we talk about here is that once markets do one thing, they have a high probability of doing another thing, don't they? So all we're going to do now is we're just going to take this and we're going to move, clone that line and we're going to move it over to the where we think it's going to go. And you can see these are equal moves. In other words, the move between the 17th and the 20th is equal to what we've had here. But between the 8th and the 10th. So well, it's more than that, it's five days. So that would be back to me, but the 3rd. So those are equal.  They're right down to where they should support. Now, if they break that support and if they break that support, then that's going to be something. But right now, they have not done that. Another thing that may or may not mean anything, and I'll bring this to your attention, I was watching it this morning because I would imagine someone was going to ask me the question and this is what I was watching and that was, if you'll look at what the AI was telling me. And remember, this is going back and preparing similar days to see where the time sequence could be. And remember, this is all time-sensitive, folks. Now, you'll notice here, the time sequence we have here was coming in right before the show started around 11 o'clock. And you'll notice on the far right-hand corner over there at 15,180, that was the number that they were probably assuming that that may or may not get to. Now, that may or may not mean anything, but that happened to be pretty close to the low. I think it was within about 20 points of that low. Now, if we start going below that, then there's going to be some serious things going on. But we've had a tip-off that something's been wrong with this market for a long time, folks. I mean, well over four or five days without any trouble. Let me give you an example of last night. Okay, this was Sunday night. I'm going to bring this up here, let you take a look at it. Now, this is part of my very secret oscillating oscillator. I haven't shared this with anybody before, but you can see that red line there. That's my secret oscillating oscillator. And that came in for the high at 15,660. The high was 15,663. And you'll notice how we started to go down. You can see the ABCD down there at 161. We went through that by 100 points. So that's just the fact that the market exceedingly weak as it goes down. And remember, the NASDAQ has been the leader on the way down. And so that's the same thing. Now, you'll say, well, that might have been a mystery. Well, mysteries, they tend to repeat over and over again. But let's take a look at this one here. Hold on one second. Because I talked about this last week. And it may mean something to you folks. But let's just go back here and look. If you'll remember, back here on Friday, we were talking about this. There was the oscillating oscillator number up there at 15,900. The high was 15,895, within five points of the exact oscillating oscillator, which if you're not watching this show, it's nothing more than the 382 of the previous high. Now, look what happened last night, folks. There it is right there from the high on Friday to the high we made overnight last night was 15,662. And look where we went. We just kept going down, down, down, down, down. Now, we've been as low as 15,155 now, which went way below the 61% retracement. So that's what this is. You're starting to see fear. But I do not believe this is not a crash, boys and girls. It could be a crash later today if we start going below 15,100 in the NASDAQ. There could be a crash. But remember, in 1987, the crash was the greatest buying opportunity of the 1980s. So remind ourselves of that. I'm looking for trading opportunities. That's all I'm looking for. And I send the videos out. For instance, last night, we had a beautiful 382 retracement in gold, at 1792. That made $1,000 at one time. And then it went back down to 17. You can't give $1,000 back after you've made $1,000. I can't. I just don't think that's very, very smart. That's the main thing. Another one we had, it was just a really nice trade. And we'll get this up here to show you. This was a crude oil last night. We put this out Sunday morning. I put this out. If you get the brakes, sell the first 382 retracement. We had well over $1,300 in it. So that's all that is. I mean, we're seeing the repetition, trying to profit from it. And the way you do that is you know that if it goes beyond these numbers, then it's something different. But that's really, I believe that we have started a major bear market here. That much, I believe. But this is not the crash. When you ask me for the crash, the words are going to be... Oh my God, it's the crash. You'll know it yourself. Don't rely on me. Come on, give me a break. I don't care. Here's the YM. You'll notice here the same thing here. Sorry to be a little... But no, there's nothing in the wind here. We're going to have some great swings for sure. I mean, you can see how these things are starting to move now, which is really, really spectacular. Now, let me spend just a moment here, because there's a market that we've been following, not trading, but following for quite a while, and that is the cryptocurrency blockchain. We'll be able to look at it. What is that on the wall on the screen behind me? That is my... I think are you talking about the painting or the Indians? It's probably the Indians, isn't it? Yeah. Well, if it's on the wall, one has the Indian of the nine Indians, and then the other one is the... Yeah, those are the nine Indians. I got that as a gift from one of my students many years ago. It was done by one of the tribal members of the Cherokee tribe here in Tucson. And it is really... Yeah, it's Native Americans. It was done by the Cherokees out in the Chericoval Mountains outside of Tucson, about 200 miles heading towards Texas. It's a spiritual thing. I don't know anything about it, but it's a sculpture of copper is what it is. So thank you for asking. You know, Ruby, you're the only person that's ever asked me that. So let's move on here. Let's take a look here. This is the Bitcoin. Do you remember back here in 2000, January 2018, when Bitcoin was 20,000? That was the bubble. It went all the way down to 3,100. All right, let's take a break here.<PHONE_NUMBER>. 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TFNN airs live financial content streamed live on TFNN.com and TFNN's YouTube channel with Tiger TV, live every market day from 8.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. Eastern. For free, each host is an experienced trader and gives their take on the market while taking calls and questions live from around the world. From the moment the market opens until the closing bell sounds, Tiger TV has eight different shows with expert hosts to help you make the right moves with your money. Get online at TFNN.com or on TFNN's YouTube channel and become the investor you were born to be, TFNN. Educating investors. Call now. Toll free at 1-877-927-6648. Internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. All right, folks, we're back, and I wanted to talk about this Bitcoin chart. We were talking about the high that it made in January. At 20,000, we broke down to 3100. You can see the start of the first ABCD pattern there in the summer of 2020. Then you'll notice the market went up. Again, it pulled right back to the 382, went up and made an ABCD pattern. And then we made the final ABCD pattern here back in late to August, early September, up there at 67,000. We broke hard, came down, and went right up to a 382 retracement. And that was the key level right there. We talked about this many times in the newsletter, and we talked about it on the air. I have never put a trade-on in the service here. I mean, we talked about buying Cordano at 6 cents, but that was during the live trading session we did in September a year and a half ago. But now we've made that 382. Now, the ABCD structure on this, folks, measures down here to just a little below 20,600, but I think we'll probably come close to touching that old hide around 20,000 would be my guess. So that's what we're watching today. I think we're kicking below 40,000, so we're moving rather quickly, but this is a buying opportunity, folks. This is not going to be anything. It could be the major bear market, but looking at the technical picture of this, we've seen it too many times that it follows very, very nicely, and so you want to remember that. Now, I wanted to show you one of the ones which was the easy trade today. I sent a video out on this last Sunday morning. This has a lot of symmetry, folks. This is nothing more than the largest commodity market that we have, which is the Treasury notes. And the whole world is bearish on them. I even heard a rumor that Elvis Presley was on the show here on Friday talking about if you continue to be long the bonds, you're going to lose your dough. Well, look at this pattern that we have here starting in October. We have 13 days down. You have a really strong rally. Then in November, you have 13 days down. You have a really strong rally. And look where we are now. 13 days down, and we're setting it exactly a 1.27 expansion of the whole move. And you see the little red box on the right there says 1.27, 1.27 and a half. That was the low today, folks. It's almost a full handle higher. The bonds were doing the same thing. We did the same thing with the picture and the bonds. Let me try to get this up here to show you because this is what these patterns are good for. Hold on one second. It's got to be here somewhere. I know it will be. Well, I shouldn't say, yep, there they are. We're okay. And we'll get this one up here in the Treasury bonds, and you'll get up here to take a look at it. And one second. We'll get it right here. There we go. All right. That same thing. Now the bonds didn't quite take out the number at 154.14. It got to 154.19. It took out the previous days low by quite a bit, but then it's been able to hold that level. And to excuse me, it did take out the low from, this is the Sunday chart, folks. So this morning, Sunday night, this did take out that low by one tick. And then it's reversed quite a bit. So I'm just looking at that as an idea of showing you how some of these patterns come together and how we get a setup of how much we have to risk. Because as I mentioned, if you go more than six ticks, which is basically about $100 in the Treasury notes, you're probably going to be wrong. But now that's moved substantially in your favor. So you've got a pretty good opportunity. Maybe this could be a really strong bottom because we're down 13 days. We should get a three to five-day rally off of that. It's what I would be ready to see here. Okay. Well, the auction. I don't know much about the auctions, Ruby, but they come and they go as they say in the trade. Now, let me get up here for just a second here. Hold on just a minute. What was the other one I wanted to cover?  Well, the main thing was this was the real key here into crude oil. Review your charts here, folks, for the newsletter because these are really, I think they're important because they had perfect numbers on Friday and in crude oil, gasoline, and crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil all hit exact numbers. Now, the heating oil number was amazing. It actually went up a buck and a half Sunday night to hit the exact number up there at 251, and then it just came unglued. So these numbers, they don't always work, but did the heating oil chart?  I think it did. Yeah, we're okay. All right. Anyway, our guest will be at the break here, will be Shane Smollion. He's got some really interesting stuff today, folks. He was doing this webinar on Saturday and it was really very informative. I've watched the whole thing and I hardly ever do anything like that, but it was extremely important to me to watch it. Now, where do we go from here? Well, if the bottom is coming in today, this is a Monday, okay? And we're very oversold now. We've reached major levels. We've rallied well over 120 points now in the NASDAQ and well over 200 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since we were on the air here. So that tells us that this may be the bouncing section. Now, should we go below those levels now? That would be below 35,500 in the Dow Jones E-mini and below on the NASDAQ. It would have to go below. Well, the low we were looking for was 15,174 and the low on the day was 15,000. Where is it here? 15,152. So it was 20 points away, which is 400 bucks. Anyway, we'll just watch that. So the next thing you want to do is since both of those swings came in pretty much where they should have, you want to watch what the next retracements are going to be. And that's the whole key to trying to figure out what you're going to try to do with some of these things. We got the bounce now. The low was at 15,19. We've rallied a little more than $500 on the thing. Now, the crude oil had a really good move here. We went from, well, we got all the way down to 77,80 and then we rallied back up. Here again, you hit the 78% retracement just now at 78,72. But it's still acting pretty well. It's coming back. Even though you bang it up, it still comes up. Now, I don't have time to do anything in the grains, but boy, we've had some wild action folks to get ready to spend more for eggs and tofu and stuff because the soybean meal market is on fire. There's a big drought going on, a lack of rain and hot weather down in South America. And that is going to affect this stuff into the spring. So we got a weather market there that we're looking for entry point in. But right now it's been a little too volatile for me. So it's a volatile enough in the stock market, but we did okay. We covered our shorts this morning, just as I thought we would. Didn't make as much as we could, but we made more than we expected. So that's basically all you can ask for. Now, one of the questions someone's asking me now is about the foreign currencies. Folks, we are in that really tight trading range in the Euro. If all you have to, let's just, I can bring it up here and I can show it to you easy enough. I think it would be the simplest way to do it. So hold on one second. I will be able to do that right here and you'll be able to see here is where we are. And we've got higher bottoms in here, but what we want to be watching for is we've got to get a move above 114. When we get a move above 114, then we've got a chance that, yep, this could be the major one where the dollar will start to weaken. IE, gold will most get ready to move a whole lot higher. We're extremely bullish gold folks. We bought it today at $17.92. It will be right back.<PHONE_NUMBER>. Are you having fun trading the markets but having trouble finding like-minded individuals to discuss your trading and investment ideas with? 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Using this first-of-its-kind program The Art of Timing the Trade Chart allows you to scan thousands of stocks for Fibonacci formation setups including guardleafs, ABCs, butterflies and much more. The Art of Timing the Trade Chart is designed to help you when scouring the markets for stocks just beginning to form the trading patterns that many investors spend days, weeks or even months searching to find. At only $79 a month, we are so confident that you're going to love this new charting software that will even give you a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee. Don't miss out on this incredible new piece of software. Get your copy of The Art of Timing the Trade Chart today by visiting tfnn.com This segment is brought to you by Think or Swim. For more information, just click the Think or Swim banner on the front page of tfnn.com Okay, we're back folks. We have Shane Smollion thewolftrader.com on the air and Shane, you have the mic my friend and why don't you tell the folks what you're looking at today. Good afternoon Larry. Is this Duke and Duke? You got it baby. 100 South Broad Street, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, we're in business. Billy Ray Valentine, Capricorn. Capricorn, that's right and this is Capricorn season. Alright so today we have something new. We're going to talk about a new topic today and Larry this actually comes from the charts that you were sending me so we're going to talk about Planetary Steeliums if I have time we'll talk about the S&P towards the end we have a lot of slides to get through but Planetary Steeliums is an interesting concept. I never thought about this as an actual tradeable phenomenon or an indicator until Larry kept sending me these charts. Larry you kept sending me all these dates all the time so for the viewers out there Larry will Skype me and he can say can you run this chart for this date and I kept sending him these charts and I'm thinking what is he looking at on these charts what am I missing here and they all correlated with very specific highs and lows in the markets and I'm not talking about short term highs or lows I'm talking about massive highs like 1987 high massive lows like March of 2009 low so what I realized was that Larry was looking at Planetary Steeliums and Planetary Steeliums are clusters of planets and this is a conjunction so when the planets are all together this is a new astrological tool in the sense that I put this into an index I built an index around it to show when it's strengthening and weakening these tend to be positive market events so when you get these plants together whether it's at the top or it's at a low if it's at a top it tends to be the end of the rally if it's at the bottom it can stop the downturn it's really amazing it shows up over and over again there can be a little bit of a delay after a Steelium sometimes it's like the air coming out of a balloon slowly so in 1987 it happened at a market high in March of 2009 should say 2009 it happened at the bottom right at those March lows and I'm going to get into that if we can get to that much more research needs to be done on this I'm just starting research on this I want to look at different harmonics I'm going to look at the first harmonic today which is just clustering but there's many harmonics to look at I started looking at third harmonic fourth and twelfth harmonics but we'll get into this so let's talk about a brief history of Steeliums so I have Dow Jones here now a lot of times I don't like to go back to beyond the pre-fed era but this is different this is just looking at a singular event and so I think it's relevant because especially back before the Fed was really strong the markets really followed the astro information that we would see so I'm going to show you a chart here this is 1917 and what these peaks represent here these represent periods where they're very close together so you see these peaks I've made it so it's an index where it can show where it starts to rise and fall but you'll see here number one it shows it at a market high and then also when there's a low it stops the market from going down so over here in 1917 in July you see another Steelium here and it happens right before the big decline so sometimes when these Steeliums come it's like it's a rolling high and then when the Steelium is over it's like all of the energy is released and the market starts to fall I was very surprised when I went back and looked to the history on this because it just shows up over and over again this is what this particular Steelium looked like this was just this one was the peak here on March 27, 1917 I just picked this one here because it was the highest on the chart but this is what it actually looks like now it doesn't look that impressive it's only four planets but they're very they're in a very tight orb and as we get through these charts you'll see that a lot of these planets get much much tighter in their orbs so that's the first example so again it shows up at these peaks it also can stop a decline and it can show up near lows so the next one is going to be January 18, 1917 sorry July 18, 1917 and so this one is going to look a little bit to the right now so we're going to look to the right of those three peaks so I'm looking now at this one and this was really the important Steelium here because this is the one that happened right before you got that really strong downdraft here so we would expect this to be a much tighter Steelium here because this was really like the release of the energy before the markets collapsed here and so I'm going to show you what this looks like on the chart here you can see this chart you can see how tight these planets are now now this one is a much more looking much more impressive looking Steelium because you got Venus the moon Mercury you got Neptune you got Saturn and you got the Sun here one of the things I've noticed too in my research is that I'm still just starting to look at this but when you have a Steelium a lot of times when the Sun starts to translate across these okay so you have July you have August so this is in 26th of cancer once the Sun passes across it seems like that that triggers the release of the energy and it's a pattern that shows up over and over and over and over again when you go through time so not only is the Steelium important but it's important what the Sun is doing and in astrology we talk about the Sun as being really important because that's for something to show up in the day like to see it in the world you need two things you need the Sun and you need the Aries point to show up in a chart and it seems like when the Sun gets involved in this and it moves across that's when these Steeliums kind of releases the energy and the markets fall so that's that example the next one is going to be August the 12th 1946 so we're going back to World War II era here obviously we were before World War I in the last few charts in that period and so this is 1946 so this one I'm going to show you what this Steelium looks like this is a pretty impressive Steelium because you have all of these planets here in Leo and then you have all of these planets here in Libra so you had kind of a double Steelium here this is first harmonic which means that we're just looking at traditional conjunctions so if you went up in the sky and you look you would see them lined up underneath each other sometimes this created the appearance of a bright star at the end of COVID when we had that triple conjunction with Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto and so that's what this is like I said there's other harmonics to look at but when we look at the next chart here in 1946 again you see the same pattern you see that the markets tend to cluster up here when you get these big Steeliums up here and so it seems like there's a release of energy once the Steelium peaks the market starts to follow lower and so it's good to look at market snapshots but the cool thing about this index is you can see it rolling through time you can actually see the planets break up here and start to release and then the market falls and notice here again the two concepts we're looking for here is we're at a top and it's releasing the energy and we're at a bottom here where that Steelium can stop it from going further and we saw this in March of 2009 but when that Steelium shows up again it stops to decline and it pretty much follows the rolls and the peaks of these planets and I had to build this indicator it didn't exist I had to kind of conceptualize what was going on we'll talk about 1957 after the break I can't miss from the price you should be paying per square foot in certain up and coming areas to the type of cash flow investment properties are capable of creating Tiger Real Estate can help you make the best decision when it comes to all areas of the market before you make one of the biggest decisions of your financial future call Tiger Real Estate LLC today at<PHONE_NUMBER> or email us at tiger at tfnn.com that's<PHONE_NUMBER> call us today the technology around us is changing every day with so much happening it can seem impossible to keep up with all the information David White's investment newsletter the technology insider is designed to give you all the information you need to understand the technology that shapes today's markets and tomorrow's future David White has made his living staying on the cutting edge of technology his weekly newsletter will give you specific recommendations for value tech stocks as well as entry prices target prices and stops to set for each trade Dave delivers his weekly newsletters every Friday with updates throughout the week you can get the technology insider at tfnn.com for only $37.50 sign up for David's newsletter the technology insider and get an inside look at everything the technology sector has to offer try it risk free today with our 30-day money back guarantee tfnn educating investors are China A shares hot or not? if you trade China A shares now may be time to take a closer look trade CHAU or CHAD directions daily CSI 300 China A share bull and bear ETFs China A shares in either direction visit directioninvestments.com today an investor should consider the investment objectives risks charges and expenses of the direction shares carefully before investing the prospectus and summary prospectus contain this and other information about direction shares to obtain a prospectus or summary prospectus please contact direction shares at<PHONE_NUMBER> the prospectus or summary prospectus should be read carefully before investing an investment in the funds is subject to risk including the possible loss of principal the funds are designed to be utilized only by sophisticated investors such as traders and active investors distributor for side fund services, LLC don't forget TfNN live on your mobile device 24 hours per day go to TfNN.com then hit watch Tiger TV that's TfNN.com then hit watch Tiger TV okay we're back folks we're talking with Shane Smollin WolfTrader.com could you continue please absolutely Larry now I have so many charts here I feel like we'd be here for 5 hours if I went through them all so I'm going to kind of speed this up I'll do a webinar on this later on and go into detail for people that want to see this I'm going to start with Larry Larry this was one that I think a lot of astrologers definitely noticed this steelium it was in the summer August 20th of 1987 I don't know if you remember that time August 25th harmonic convergence okay so I was wearing aluminum foil to keep the ET's off of me that works man didn't you see okay all right I'm going on right now so I picked this day 820 because that's kind of where it peaked in terms of this chart but it was right around that time so you can see into here this is the actual steelium into here and you can see this tight convergence into here and it represented a very very tight conjunction you can see they're all within about a degree or a degree and a half into here and again this is first harmonic you look up in the sky and they're longitudinally aligned you don't have to get into the Iranian stuff or we get into this fourth harmonic but this is this is what it looked like this is the high here notice you had this top into here this is 1987 so it took a while notice the air takes a while to come out of the balloon and then it collapses here also notice at the bottom it stopped the market from going down again so when you got this when this shows up again we want to look at this for market lows also not just market highs so that's really important and I just have so many charts here I guess we'll go forward to let's go to 2007 I did overkill here but this is 2007 so this is a steelium now this was the the global financial meltdown there was a series of steeliums and so the first one was here this was December 20th 2007 and this one it doesn't look as impressive here but there's still a steelium nonetheless they're within the two degree orb and you can see here on this December 20th this is the decline now notice every single time there's a kind of a pause in the selling here it's coming with a steelium so here's the steelium here this is the first release of energy here then it comes down there's another little bump up with this steelium here there's another bump up here with this August steelium which I'm going to get into next and that one was more impressive and then again we would expect a stronger release of energy when it's tighter like that so here's a top here and so that steelium on the August which I'm going to show you next was a much tighter chart and so Larry this is what you're noticing when you're sending me these charts when you're sending me these dates to look at this is what you're noticing now I want you to notice here too here's the pattern again here's the steelium and here's the sun the sun is at 22 of Leo the sun comes across translates through the steelium triggers it again same exact pattern so here's your steelium and the sun comes across for things to show up in the world we need the sun and the Aries point to be involved and then here we go again so look at the chart look back at the chart here that was the biggest decline here that was the after the August September this was the whole Lehman situation into here so here we go again so here's your steelium and then this is the one where the sun comes across and triggers the steelium so again we're starting to see patterns show up here as we would expect this is how that's taught the sun and the Aries point have to be involved and with with covid it was the Aries point when we saw the Neptune the Neptune Hades midpoint passing over the Aries point that was the world the world had covid and it and all of those peaks coincided with each wave of covid again this is more of a uranium concept about you we are more interested in exact midpoints and exact triggers more than traditional astrologers now Larry this is the low now you know you were pick this low this is the three five 2009 I want you to notice here that at this low in 2009 there is a huge steelium spike here you see the spike here in fact that was the strongest steelium spike there that we would see in the market and so this now you show this chart to me all the time this is this is the March 2009 low look at how impressive this steelium is here look at this one and so once again what do we see here guys well here's the sun making its way through the steelium again the same concept same exact concept again so again there's your steelium the sun has to show up for to show up in the world or the Aries point has to be triggered Aries point is a combination of something like the sun in this and an ascendant but for the world but that's important now one more thing too I this is so poetic in terms of astrology right because look this stuff it has to play out as it's supposed to play out and it is I want to show you something here now astrologers know that and I'm not going to get too much into this but Jupiter is dealing with expansion and Saturn is dealing with contractions so we have Saturn we're dealing and these are opposite I wrote about this in the last month's newsletter that the three opposites of Saturn one of them is Jupiter but Saturn's the low okay so we expect Saturn to show up when we have a low and I want you to see something here so not only do we have a steelium but on March the 8th on March the 8th okay 2009 what do we have here the sun passes through the steelium and what is it doing it's hitting Saturn exactly in the second harmonic making an opposition guys it doesn't get any more poetic than this this is perfection in terms of astrology and this is the exact low and Saturn is known otherwise known as Chronos with a C not Chronos with a K which we talk about in Uranian astrology but Chronos is known Saturn is known to be an exacting planet okay it's exacting in many of the ways that Virgo is but when you're talking about exact time stops and exact time stamps Saturn is involved and look at this it's exactly hitting Saturn at the low as it passes through the steelium here guys this is astrology at its best if you want to talk about perfect alignments this is it and so I just found this amazing to go through this Larry and if you wouldn't have sent me these charts I wouldn't have done this I wouldn't have gone in this direction and try to look at this I mean I look at the Saturn and I understand how the the dial works on the Uranian and the midpoints but this is a whole another level of hey look I think people can get behind this people can see hey look there's six planets here conjunct hey look every time that happens it's a major lower major high so I just found that to be interesting if you want to go through more of this I will do it in another show or I'll do it in a webinar but I just found this to be amazing this stuff always amazes me but this Larry this was a whole new level this is a whole new indicator we have now it has nothing to do with transits it has nothing to do with planetary speed this is just a whole new way to look at the markets in terms of how the planets interact well like my grandma said I was a poet and I once know it so let's see if we can keep this going I really enjoy this this is very important now what we should be able to do then if we're looking at Saturn as being as low I'll have you keep a watch on this because find out when their next major low will be in the stock market and then that might be to help to the folks absolutely and I think that I think that putting it with the steelium I mean it makes it it just it's it puts all the pieces together here we can see it so I'll move into some other stocks here I don't know how we're doing on time here but don't worry we got plenty of time not to worry we got another two minutes okay two minutes right so we got more time just keep going especially we want to see what you think of it oh we got to take a break you did you got two more minutes my friend okay can you stay with us you got it great stuff today thank you very much Shane I really really enjoy it sharpening your skills as an investor is like getting better at playing a musical instrument you have to practice sure but you also need excellent instruction from experts at TFNN you'll get advice and guidance from the authority and technical market analysis and it's not just dry tedious text either TFNN airs live financial content streamed live on TFNN.com and TFNN's YouTube channel with Tiger TV live every market day from 8 30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern for free each host is an experienced trader and gives their take on the market while taking calls and questions live from around the world from the moment the market opens until the closing bell sounds Tiger TV has eight different shows with expert hosts to help you make the right moves with your money watch online at TFNN.com or on TFNN's YouTube channel and become the investor you were born to be TFNN educating investors you might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market you're going to need a crystal ball after all it's impossible to predict the future right like any endeavor in life before you decide it's impossible get some advice from the experts you might find that it's not so impossible after all for daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices selective stocks and commodities subscribe to the opening call newsletter at TFNN.com the opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman wave the Chapman wave up down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns finding the peaks and valleys and stock prices get the opening call newsletter by Basil Chapman your inbox every day first time subscribers also get a 30-day money back guarantee if you're not satisfied let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up TFNN.com educating investors the Tiger First mortgage program pays 7% per year paid monthly on secured, high value buildable properties in St. Petersburg, Florida the investment is for 4 years paying 7% per year or $7,000 per 100,000 invested your investment is secured by high value real estate in St. Petersburg, Florida your investment can be anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 do you want to make 1,000 per year on 100,000 invested or 7,000 per year on a secured Tiger First mortgage the Tiger First mortgage program may be just the program for you the Tiger First mortgage program pays 7% per year paid monthly for more information you can call<PHONE_NUMBER> that's<PHONE_NUMBER> okay we're back folks and we're talking with Shane Smolian wolftrader.com Shane I am very interested in this topic and I I know you know I know very little about it but you know I've been keeping my eye on it for a long time because that's about the only thing I can understand as far as simplicity but I would really like to see a webinar on this after you finish some of your research because this can't be by accident I mean these things are lining up too close there's some exceptions to this when you look at major highs it's always there um let me someone brought up in the chat about Kathy Wood let me talk about this since we're talking about astrology is that the art girl yeah she runs at art cases so let me talk about this this is super interesting so she so she's the sheep right this is the Chinese zodiac she's a sign of the sheep this is her opposite year of the ox now I'm ox this is my year right this is my year but she's the sheep now in a Chinese astrology you have year you have the year but you have months right so it's the year of the ox and it's the month of the ox so going by that she should be at a low right now and put someone pointed out that all of her ETFs are running at these 52 week lows that's not an accident either she's having it like a double opposition she's having peak opposition right now she's very smart I love listening to her I always learn something when I listen to her but she's just facing a lot of astrological opposition right now and the Chinese zodiac is much more unforgiving with the oppositions I think the the western astrology a little bit more but can be balanced out but um I thought I would point that out since we're talking about astrology today and the unforgiving part believe me yeah yeah yeah so um anyway but uh yeah so Bitcoin we've been talking about this decline since late October November S&P we've got this big sell-off going now with the taper so things are pretty much going as we expected once we got past those seasonals I think things just um you know the truth is coming out now essentially so uh you know if we have more time we could talk more about this S&P and the Fed and all that stuff but uh it's accelerating everything's accelerating as we expected it hey listen thank you for joining us today my friend we'll have you on again and keep up the good work and uh certainly enjoyed it today Shane's William folks wolftrader.com we'll see you on the flip side tomorrow with a special mystery guest tomorrow may God bless thank you bye bye


to our host, Susan Barger from the FAAIC, go. Hi everyone, how we go. Because there have been so many disasters, I just want to remind you about the National Heritage Responders Hotline. It's available today, seven days a week. And if you have questions, you can post them. Okay, Mike is going to take over. Sorry, yeah, this is Mike here. So we were having some issues with audio with Susan a little while ago, and we thought maybe they'd be rectified, maybe they wouldn't. Obviously they aren't. And so at this point, I'll take over and just quickly go through this. If you have any questions or need any answers from anybody in the C2C world, please use the question in the C2C Care online community discussion forums. And one of the experts will get back to you. There's a link at the bottom of your screen. As well, you can keep up with the C2CC community, either on Facebook or you can follow them in their, or follow along with their Twitter handle. And there's also the listserv for C2CC Announce. It only comes out or gets sent out about once or twice a month, not very often. So by joining it, you will not be spammed. And you can feel free to contact not me, but Susan any time. That is her email address there. And she will respond as quickly as she can. Coming up, we're going to be having another webinar on October 17th with what is this Solving Problems found in Collection. And that will be at our regular time. As well in November, there's going to be imaging and metadata and NAGPRA issues coming up and followed by December issues with Ivory. So keep your eyes peeled on the C2CC website and you'll receive notifications when the registrations are open for those webinars. So without further delay, it is my pleasure to pass the audio off to our presenter today, Sherry Cook, Senior Program Manager with the AASLH. Sherry, go ahead. Thanks Mike so much. I'm very pleased to be here with all of you this afternoon. As Mike said, I am with the American Association for State and Local History. We are headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm actually speaking to you from Jefferson City, Missouri where I telework from. My weather today is absolutely beautiful. I hope yours is too. I look forward to talking with you about the steps program which I coordinate for AASLH. So I want to start today by saying that I'm going to begin by describing kind of the nuts and bolts of the steps program. And then I have some what I think are very interesting examples of how steps is helping organizations make meaningful improvements to them. Things that are changing not only the way that they operate but how they engage with their communities and how they serve their visitors. So as I said we'll start with the nuts and bolts. Feel free to post comments and questions in the chat box and either Susan or Mike will serve as moderator for those questions. Some of them they may ask during the presentation and others they may hold until the final Q&A session towards the end. But I plan to leave plenty of time for questions. So be thinking about anything you want to ask or exchange comments with your colleagues in the chat box. There's lots of things we can learn from each other in these sessions. So let's talk about steps. Steps actually stands for the Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations. And it is a program that's offered by AASLH. And steps is a self-study program. And it is open to any museum, historical society, historic house, or related organization. We have libraries enrolled in steps. We have universities. So we don't turn anyone away if they want to enroll in the program. The only entities we do turn away is we don't allow individuals to enroll in steps. It is a program for institutions, organizations, or agencies. So it is an entry level program that is intended for small and mid-sized organizations including all volunteer organizations. Especially those that may not feel ready for other assessment programs. Now larger museums and organizations will also find the program helpful. So as I said, everyone's invited to enroll in the program. Unlike other assessment programs, steps does not have an application period and there are no eligibility requirements. So I like to tell people that steps is very flexible, especially for time constraints that small museums and sites have. And in a few minutes I'll discuss some options for how you can approach the program to make it suit your needs. So the development of steps was a grassroots effort by people in the field and a lot of enthusiasm and passion was exhibited throughout the four and a half years that we developed steps. Many volunteers, 135 people, many of them very passionate about wanting to help, especially small institutions, be able to take part in some type of assessment program. So there were 47 pilot sites and those ranged everywhere from Maine to Alaska, California to Maryland and Mississippi all the way up to Minnesota. So we had a very wide range of people from 37 states who took part in developing the steps program. Now steps is part of what we call the continuum of excellence. And if some of you took part in last week's webinar with the map and the cap folks, you probably saw this image also. And you can see in the center of the screen where it says maps, steps, cap, and SMAA. These are all different programs that are available to you to help you with assessing your policies and practices. And so steps is right there in the middle. And most of these programs you can do at any time. As I mentioned earlier, you can enroll in steps at any time. So I wanted to take a quick poll, or actually two polls. The first poll that I want to ask everyone is have you, either at your current position or institution or a previous one, have you participated in one of the continuum of excellence assessment programs? Okay, so about a third of you have, and two thirds have not. That's a good range. So we have some folks who will be familiar with the material today or know about cap and map and other programs. And for some of you these may be opportunities you'll want to take part in very soon. Thank you for answering that poll. So the second poll that I want to ask very quickly is do we have any organizations represented today that are currently enrolled in steps? Not yet? Several of you are considering it? Okay, we have several who are enrolled, wonderful, and several that are not. Great. Okay, thank you. So you can see from the map that's up on the screen we have organizations enrolled in steps all across the country in Canada. And I believe right now there's about 940 organizations enrolled. So that's a fair number of organizations. The program was first introduced to the field in 2009. So it's been around for a few years, but still considered fairly new and something that the field really has wanted for a long time. Now just a few things about enrollment in steps, because I know that's probably one thing that people are always wondering, well how much does this program cost? And I mentioned that steps does not have any eligibility requirements or an application. And you can enroll online, you can do it by phone or mail. There is a one-time fee of $75 to enroll in the program. And that once you're enrolled that one-time fee you're in it for as long as you want to be in it. You do have to be an AASLH institutional member for at least the first year. Now of course we hope that you will continue your membership in AASLH because the publications that you receive as part of your membership and the webinars you have the opportunity to take part in will help you with your work in steps. But the requirement is at least for the first year. So with that steps enrollment fee, you receive a copy of the workbook, you receive opportunities to earn certificates, and you receive access to the steps website. So each of those three things I'm going to talk about in detail one after the other so you can learn a little bit more about them.  So $175 one time fee. I want to talk first about the steps workbook. It really is the core of the steps program. It is an easy to use spiral bound book and you write in it and hopefully it will stay at your organization even through the transition of staff and volunteers so that there is a record of what your organization has done in the program. You can see on the cover of the book there are six sections to the workbook. You can address those sections in any order that you want. A lot of people I've talked to they recommend that you start with the first one because it tends to lay groundwork for the other sections but you don't have to and it's one of the things about this program that is very flexible. Each of those sections can stand on its own. Some organizations don't have any historic structures and landscapes and so they may not have to address the fifth section down there on your screen and that's fine. We've even had one organization that didn't have any collections. They were a historical society that published books and articles and so they were able to skip the collections section. Most organizations however address all six sections. But as I mentioned the book is, it's valuable to have as a record of your work in the program to pass along when there's transitions in staff and volunteers. There are also electronic copies of the workbook that you can access through the website which I'll talk about in just a minute. But let's look at the table of contents for just a minute. You can see that the first section after the introduction and the forward there is a section on how to use the workbook. We're going to talk a little bit about that in a few minutes. And then it goes into each of those six sections. And each of those sections has a case study. It's a fictional story about the Middletown Historical Society and things that they come up against, how they solve problems, perhaps how they aren't able to solve problems. The case study is in each section so that your organization if it chooses to can use it for discussion. It's a great way to discuss perhaps hot button issues, things that your organization has faced that perhaps people have differences of opinion on. It's a great way to kind of bring some topics to the surface that perhaps need to be discussed. And then the section goes into the list of standards and then some unacceptable practices. And then it gets into the self-assessment questions and what we call the performance indicators. And I'll talk a little bit about those in just a moment. Each section then ends with a list of sample projects that you can do, things that will help you to meet the performance indicators like having a policy perhaps on let's say rental of your facility. Or it might suggest a project on coming up with better key control of collection storage. There's also bibliographies of resources and then the final part of each section are the certificate forms that you complete when you are able to check off enough boxes and we'll talk about those certificate forms in just a moment. So here's a page from the workbook showing starting on the left with the standards. So this is MVG stands for Mission, Vision, and Governance. That's the first section of the workbook. And so you have the standard is on the left, in the left column and then you move over to the center column and that's the self- assessment question. And then the column on the right these are the performance indicators or recommendations if you will. So an institution can begin to ask these self-assessment questions and then check off the boxes for those things that it is already doing. So these performance indicators that are over on the left you'll notice that there's a three tier format, basic, good, and better. And the great thing about these performance indicators is that first of all the field has never had anything like this before. So STEPPS is the first program to have performance indicators. And they help to answer the question for your organization how do we know when we're meeting a national standard like the standard that's over on the left side of the screen. It's difficult sometimes to know are we meeting a standard are we doing what we're supposed to be doing. So these performance indicators help you to measure or benchmark where you are in meeting a standard. So the boxes that you can't check off yet, those are opportunities for improvement. On the right side of the page which you can't see on the screen, the right side of the spiral bound book there are columns and lots of blank space where you can write in projects that perhaps will help you to meet one of the performance indicators that you're not able to check off yet. So for example the good box here where it says the mission statement is easily accessible etc. If you're not able to check that off you would go across the page to the right side and perhaps you would write in something that you can do that will enable you to then check off the box. And what this does is when you're able to make those lists on the right side of your workbook you can then easily move those projects into a long range plan, a strategic plan, perhaps your organization just has an annual set of goals, but you're able to then identify things that your organization needs to work on. So as I said it's a great way to begin to identify things that will help you to better meet national standards. Now certainly AASLH understands that not every organization is going to make it to the better level throughout the whole workbook. And that's okay. There are many organizations perhaps that do not have the capacity level whether it's funding or space or maybe they're in a historic building that they're not able to do some things and that's totally understandable. So we often see organizations where they might be at the basic level in one section, perhaps they're at the good level in another section, and even there may be a section like audience or something that they've reached the better level. So it's very common for organizations to pretty much be all over the board with where they are. We expect that most organizations will be in steps at least five years and there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's a great program to use as a refresher or a checklist and to continue to work on it. And we understand that many small organizations perhaps have to set the program aside for a while when they have school tour season or they're doing a large fundraiser. So the program is flexible and it is a self-paced program that you can work on when you're able to. Now of course that's a double-edged sword. It's also easy to put the program down and not pick it back up. So you have to think about that also and we'll talk about that in a few minutes. So the most important thing that I tell organizations when they enroll is that to put things into perspective and to know that even if you're only able to reach the basic level in the beginning, that shouldn't stop you from trying to move up to the next levels. But the most important thing is that at least you know where your organization stands in terms of what the expectations are and at least your organization knows that it is doing everything it can to meet national standards. So it's kind of like you at least know where you stand and there's no longer a question or a thing of we don't know anything about national standards, we don't really know what we're supposed to be doing. Now you know and it really helps for planning and for everyone to understand where the organization is going, where it would like to go. So steps just kind of shines a light on how you can improve your policies and your practices in order to be the kind of organization that you envision you want it to be in the future. So there's a couple of different ways you can approach the workbook and I want to talk about that right now. The first way is kind of the traditional way that I talked about earlier where you can choose a section and work through it. So we call that the vertical method where you choose perhaps like on the screen you see the collection standard number two. So this is the collections section. So you say okay we're going to work on collections and you start going down through the pages and looking at each of the performance indicators, checking off boxes, things like that. And so you may decide that you want a group of folks from your institution to do this. Maybe it's made up of volunteers and staff. If you have paid staff perhaps you have unpaid staff and volunteers or board members. So perhaps a group of people sit down and begin to answer the questions. We occasionally have organizations where just one person within the organization uses the workbook to answer questions. You can do it either way. I think that having a group address the questions presents an opportunity for more people within your organization to learn about policies and practices and what you can do. But it's up to your organization. But this vertical method means that you take one section at a time or if you have enough staff and volunteers you can do more than one section. But really I think most organizations address one section at a time. So it's pretty basic you go through that way. Now there's a second way that you can go through steps and that is what we call the horizontal method.  And once you're finished doing that and checking off boxes then you're going to go back and look at the middle level, the good performance indicators through all six sections. Now I personally like this method better for several reasons. First of all it can quickly elevate your organization up to the basic level. So you've kind of met the basic entry point in all six sections. And many of the performance indicators in the basic level are about awareness of things.  That doesn't mean that it has achieved it, it just means that it's aware. So the basic level is fairly easy to achieve. And what that does is it gives your organization early success. It helps to motivate people within your organization to want to keep going in the program. And it also helps you to set that foundation for the next level, the good and better level. And for example, let's say your organization perhaps it doesn't have a collections management policy by seeing in the basic level that you need a collections management policy, that's going to set the foundation then for other places in the workbook that might ask about that same policy. This horizontal option also means that if you don't have a collections management policy, for example, and let's say you didn't get to the collections section for some time, perhaps a year or two, you would be without that policy, or you might see it crop up in the workbook in other places, but you wouldn't have had the opportunity to address it in the collections section yet. So by looking at just the basic indicators across all six sections, you're able to raise your organization to the point where you have those core documents like a mission statement and a collections management policy. You have those early on in your steps participation, and so your organization isn't waiting several years before it says, oh my gosh, we need to have a collections management policy. So that's why I like this method better than the vertical method, but again as I said, it's up to you whichever way you want to do it. Now this year we are embarking on a review of the workbook, and I want to just mention this to you. The workbook was published in 2009, so it is a couple of years old, and there are things that have changed in our field. So we are starting a review process. We've just started it this year, and I do want to just say that even though at some point, probably around 2019, we will have a new version, a second edition of the workbook. I want to reassure those organizations that are already enrolled, and those that are considering enrolling, that I don't want you to worry about, oh my gosh, are we going to have to go back and start over again? Are they going to make us reapply for certificates? This seems to be the most common question I get when we talk about this enhancement project that's going to take place. And I just want to reassure everyone that when the new copy of the new version of the workbook is ready, you will not be told that you have to go back and reapply for certificates, or go back and cover material that's new. We will use both the old and the new versions of the workbook for at least 18 months. So that takes you into almost 2022, because we know that so many organizations are using the first edition, they will have their choice whether they want to move over to the second edition up until about 2022 is when we will go to just the brand, the new version, and we'll set aside the old one. But until then, you have plenty of time to work on the current workbook and then continue to work in the current workbook, as I said, for at least 18 months after the new one's published. So I don't want anyone to think that there's going to be big changes made and that they're going to have to all of a sudden move over to the new workbook. But we are trying to stay in tune with new things. Digital collections, that's a huge topic and environmental sustainability, fraud prevention, we've got to begin to incorporate those topics into the steps program. So I want to talk now about the steps website. This is, if you remember from that enrollment slide, this is another benefit you receive from the steps fee that you pay. This is a website that's only open to those organizations enrolled in steps. So you receive unlimited access to the website. That means that your board members, volunteers, paid and unpaid staff can all create their own username and password for the site and have access to it. And you can see up along the top toolbar, there are different sections, there are discussion groups, they're not real active but we hope that they will become more active. There's one for every state and there's a Steps Commons for everyone in the group. There are announcements and news, free webinar recordings that you can listen to, and then in the resources section there are lots of different sample policies, sample forms, manuals, links to helpful information and these resources are divided by the same sections as the workbook. So if you're looking for, I see on the screen, acquisition policy, there's a sample there from the Shiloh Museum if you're looking for a code of ethics example, it's there. There's lots of different resources that you can access through this website. So let's talk for just a minute about the certificates. I mentioned earlier that at the back of each section of the workbook are the forms that you fill out. So once your organization is meeting all of the basic indicators in the management section, for example, you would complete the form at the end of the section and mail it to AASLH and we will send you a bronze certificate. And the same thing goes for the silver and gold. Now the certificates are earned on the honor system. And so we don't ask you or require that you mail in copies of documents or policies or anything like that. Frankly, we just don't have the staff to be able to review all of those things. So the certificates are earned on the honor system. Again, this is a self-study program and so you self-report what your organization has done and the certificates that it has earned. You are required to have your board president or some other authorizing official sign those certificate forms and send those into us. But these are a great way for your organization to be able to let visitors, board members, your community know that you are taking part in a national program and that you have made progress towards meeting national standards. They also work really well for as leverage when you are requesting funds applying for grants, justifying why you need X number of dollars for equipment or new exhibits, collection storage materials, whatever it is. So the certificates are really helpful and they can be a great motivator for your organization and for your board to be able to celebrate earning certificates and then putting them up on the wall to display in your facility. Now organizations that earn all six gold certificates or five if you don't have historic structures or landscapes once you are able to graduate from the steps program with all golds you are invited to our leadership awards program that we have each September as part of our annual meeting and you get to walk across the stage and be recognized for graduating from the steps program. I do want to mention the difference between the certificates either the bronze, silver, and gold or the graduation certificate that there is a difference in the steps program between a certificate and certification and it's a distinction that I think is important to point out. When you receive the certificates in steps they are for making progress in the steps program. It is not certification, it is not an endorsement, it's not a seal of approval, it's like a correspondence course. And so sometimes I'll see a news article come across my desk where someone has said that they've been certified by AASLH or they've received certification but there is a big difference between a certificate and certification. So these are progress certificates, it's not certification it's not accreditation like AAM does. One of the things that we learned when we piloted the steps program with those 47 sites across the country is that many of those pilot sites like to work within a group as they're going through the steps program. And so we encourage you to consider working within a group if you enroll in steps or if you're already enrolled in steps to look around and see if there's a group in your area if there's not considered joining up with a nearby historical society or other museum either in your same city, your county, region perhaps you're a railroad museum and you can find other railroad museums across the country to talk with. It's that support group or community of practice model that offers some really helpful benefits like accountability, self-study programs, it's easy as I mentioned earlier you start procrastinating and you put it down and you don't come back to it. So that accountability mechanism knowing that hey my group's going to get together in two months we better get going on this. There's also that wonderful benefit of shared learning and networking and camaraderie we really believe that participation in some type of steps community of practice offers the best opportunity for organizations to make meaningful progress in steps and other self-study programs. A couple of examples of steps groups that are out there in Tennessee several years ago AASLH received funding from the Middle Tennessee Community Foundation and we started a steps group of five organizations and we were with them, worked with them for two years and then the funding ran out but the group has continued to meet and they get together a couple of times a year and go to each other's museums and talk about their work and steps and so that's kind of what I consider an informal type group. They don't have any funding they each pay for their own way to their meetings and things like that so it's a kind of an informal structure for a group there are other groups like that around the country and I know Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area in the Kansas and Missouri area, they're starting a group like that there's kind of been a group in Illinois Patricia Miller with the Illinois Heritage Association has tried to get a group together and still she keeps in contact with them but that's another example of a very informal group without any funding. Now when you there's some other examples of organizations that perhaps are a little bit more structured in Ohio, the Ohio History Connection, they have received AmeriCorps funding and so they have, I believe it's eight out of the ten regions in Ohio have an AmeriCorps partner working with several museums to go through steps so that's an interesting model to look at in terms of AmeriCorps funding to help and so we like to watch and see how Ohio is doing this and see if perhaps it might be replicated across the country. There was another group in the state of Washington, in the Seattle area the Four Culture Organization provided funding I'm not sure if they're still doing it but there was funding for organizations in King County to get together and attend some workshops and I think Four Culture at one point paid for their enrollment in steps so that's another possibility. Probably the longest running and the most structured steps community of practice is sponsored by the Connecticut Humanities, the Connecticut League of History Organizations in partnership with the Connecticut Historical Society and so their project is called, or their group is called, Steps Connecticut and they actually offer professional development opportunities meetings, mentors and then those organizations that stick with the project for two years they're eligible for special funding through Connecticut Humanities to help them accomplish some projects that they've identified as priorities and so they really are the model for a highly structured steps group. They've had great success and you can look them up online if you'd like, Steps Connecticut, look it up to Connecticut Humanities and see what they're doing but I do want you to consider the benefits that you receive from time spent at conferences or workshops or webinars where you actually have the opportunity to gather with people from other museums and historical societies. I always tell people that I never underestimate the value of time spent with colleagues and the learning that can go on from each other so many of us work at sites that are isolated from each other either you're the loan staff person or there's only a handful of unpaid or paid folks or maybe you're just tied to your site because of the visitation or what you have on your plate and it's very helpful to be able to get together with others and talk about issues that are common to your organizations, concerns, solutions and so I encourage you if you're already enrolled in Steps or you're considering it look around, see if there are others in your area that are enrolled in Steps and consider starting or joining a Steps group. So whether your organization works on Steps within a group or alone it can make significant progress without spending a lot of money. Sometimes people tell me that they don't want to enroll in Steps because their organization doesn't have any money and I tell them that many of the performance indicators in the program don't have anything to do with money. They have to do more with communication and consensus building than they do money. Things that you can see up on the screen, a facility rental policy emergency plan, collections policy, board orientation manual, those cost only the paper that they're printed on. It's the time and the sitting down and talking with other people that's what takes time in this program but it is well worth the time spent doing that. I do see where someone's asking, Kathleen asks how do we find out who else is completing the Steps program. You can email me or call me and I can let you know if you have a field service office in your state either with your state historical society or another agency. They can also contact AASLH and find out but I'm happy to let you know and give you some pointers on who might be in your area. So as I said meaningful progress without spending a lot of money it's easy to do in Steps. There's just lots of things that don't cost a lot of money. Now certainly you'll see that here's an example of what I'm talking about up on the screen. You can see it's asking about the self-assessment question asked are there written procedures for acquiring borrowing and lending collection items. Again you can see over from the performance indicators. This is all has to do with paperwork, policies procedures not spending money. Now certainly there are things recommended in Steps that do take some money. Things like acid free collection supplies, software things like that but each organization has to make the determination whether they're able to move up to the good or better level if they need to spend funding but this is a great way to be able to justify if you have a grant program or if you need to request if you work for an agency where you submit budget requests each year this is how you can justify those budget requests or local granting foundations when you're able to leverage Steps and your participation in Steps with your funding request it justifies why you need the money. So the work that we all do at museums and historic sites and historic houses it really is endless and I know you all know that too. It's like it's never done but our energy and our resources are not unlimited and so assessment programs like Steps are valuable tools for moving an organization forward because Steps provides the structure that helps everyone within an organization move in the same direction toward a set of common goals and so by connecting your organization's planning and decision making and fundraising to an assessment program whether it's Steps or MAP or CAP by connecting them to a program and a national museum standards you're able to gain credibility and as I said justify why you're making decisions, why you're asking for funds, why you're doing what you do. Funders like to know that our long range plans are based on something other than just what we want to do and that they can be assured through those performance indicators that Steps offers. And in turn we have a much easier time articulating our goals and our successes.  It helps your community to not only understand what is involved in museum operations but to know that you're making success and you are achieving goals that other museums around the country are also striving for. But it's not uncommon as I'm sure some of you know for an organization to find itself in a rut and sometimes for many many years and funding or lack of it, people, lack of help and the biggie, lack of time the one that we all seem to be so stretched for these days. Longing for these things can keep an organization in a rut for many years. And no doubt the vast majority of museums and historical societies need all three of these. But I believe if we're willing to look a little bit deeper and take an honest look at how we operate on a day to day basis, we might be able to find some solutions to at least help us somewhat with those things, those elusive things that we find really difficult to find more of. So I have a poll that I want to ask Mike to bring across on the screen. Just something to think about if you think, if you believe that your organization is in a rut, do you think it is due primarily to one of these things? Mike, can you expand the poll? I think it goes down further. There we go. Hope everybody can see all of those things now. So is it one of these? Lack of clear priorities, or do you have too many cooks spoiling the broth? Too much putting out little fires every day to really look at the big picture. Any of these things resonate with anyone? You can put your comments in the chat box if you want, if you think some of these are right on the mark. I think sometimes it's interesting if we just look a little bit below the surface and begin to think about if we don't have time to do anything is there a way to find more time? Do we need to really make sure we've got clear priorities? Or create a calendar where we block out time so we're not just reacting to everything that comes through the front door, but that we're actually working on big picture projects? Think about how an assessment program like STEPPS might be able to help you refocus and climb out of a rut. I see assessment programs that they're like roadmaps. They help us figure out where we are going. Okay, you can pull that poll across Mike. I want to take a look at some organizations where they have been able to they've found STEPPS to be really helpful either in helping them get out of a rut or to identify some things that they really want to do. I see where Sharon has posted a comment, those in charge are in denial that the society is in a rut and a downhill trend. So true that that does happen, Sharon. It's unfortunate that we hear about those situations and hopefully that will change for you. But yes, that does happen. So let's look at a couple of organizations that have been able to use STEPPS to make some big changes. Helping a board of directors learn more about museum operations and to focus their energies is one of the most valuable accomplishments we hear from participants like the Black Heritage Society of Washington State. I believe strongly that it is one of the best benefits of the program. That it helps board of directors, folks who come with great intentions but they may not always have a lot of information about how an organization like a historic site is run. So this helps them to learn. Learn more about it. It can help everyone within an organization learn more about it. We are hearing more and more like Black Heritage Society about organizations using STEPPS as leverage for funding requests and grant proposals. The new London Public Museum in Wisconsin again another one board of directors has a better understanding and this was one of their main goals for joining STEPPS. We often also hear that strategic planning is more meaningful. That's a big one. And I like how I remember talking with the director of this museum and she told me that she tried to have at least some part of STEPPS included in every board meeting whether they would go through just a few self-assessment questions or they would talk about a section. She brought the board into the process. But then as she said on the bullet point number four here for the interpretation section she used that with her staff and they took a day long retreat and went through the interpretation section figuring out how what they needed to do and how they could use the recommendations and interpretation section to change the exhibits and other programming within their museum. Grasmere Farm at the Nashville Zoo where you are affiliated with a larger entity like Grasmere is your site can benefit from those folks in administration at like the zoo for them to gain a better understanding of how museums operate. And also Grasmere reports that they were able to use STEPPS to help them justify supplies and other resources they needed in order to properly care for their collections and manage them. And so they were able to request and be able to budget for past perfect software shelving acid free storage supplies. And as she says in bullet number two they quickly learned the importance of having a collections policy which they didn't have any of the documents like Dita gift forms. And so those were very quickly revelations to them that they needed to work on those things. A county historical society again county officials learned more about operating museum and those of you who are affiliated with city, county or state government you know that they often have benchmarks and requirements that they want museums to meet. And that can be difficult and in the past it was very difficult because there wasn't anything we didn't have anything that you could take to your county administrators and say okay these are the requirements and here's what we're going to work on. But now with STEPPS we have that and so you're able to satisfy those requirements that governmental entities have that non-profit museums don't have. And so as Rob Orison said from Brentsville courthouse that they were able to do that with their county government. And then as he also mentions county maintenance staff learned why they should and shouldn't do some things when they were working on the site the Brentsville courthouse site that would be different from maintenance that they would do at other places that the county maintained. And so this was a way to help train those maintenance staff. And some not all certainly but there are some museums and sites that are interested in moving from STEPPS to other assessment programs like accreditation. And Darnell's Chance House in Maryland this was one of the reasons why they enrolled in STEPPS was they wanted to use it as preparation for moving on to the accreditation program. All of the programs in the Continuum of Excellence they are aligned to make that transition from one program to another easier. And so we all use pretty much the same standards one program is not more prescriptive than the other and so they all work really well together. I want to finish up with this last one the Essex Historical Society in Connecticut they use STEPPS to tackle some fundamental issues and how many of us can say with confidence that our mission and vision statements in our bylaws are current, are relevant, and meaningful enough to guide our organizations. And this is something that they are very proud of that they know that those documents are as they say the backbone for how they run their organization. And I think that's a great accomplishment. And then you combine it with bullet point number two where they now have a strategic plan and I think that's just wonderful. And then again bullet point number three address thorny issues like deferred maintenance and land use. Go on to a couple of other things. One of the big things that they had that they accepted the challenge, and I love this about them, they accepted the challenge addressing what they call thorny issues. I remember reading where they said that they would come to board meetings and when the topic of space allocation arose they just stared at each other across the table. They didn't even know how to begin the discussion because I assume it was a hot button issue or they just weren't even really sure what to do. As I said up on the screen you can see where it says they had an empty first floor and another unused area but they were renting off-site storage and they realized that that was just a little bit ridiculous. And so steps provided them with the vehicle for starting that discussion about how to rectify that situation. And then finally more space allocation issues. I recall also where they talked about the decision to make major changes to the interpretation of the historic house on their property and as they said steps gave them the opportunity to think creatively and permission to experiment and I just love that statement because that is important to be able to decide that you're going to use steps to think outside the box to come up with new ideas to try things and as I said some of the rooms in their historic house they've removed a lot of the things the exhibits that were in there for years and years and they're now interpreting the design and the architecture of those rooms what they call the bare bones and as I said we're trying it we can always undo it if we decide that that's not what we want to do but it's a new way to look at interpreting their historic site. And I do want to say that Essex it's one of the organizations in Connecticut that was part of the Steps Connecticut group so they have made a lot of progress. They had help from a mentor and benefits from being in the Steps Connecticut group like workshops and perhaps most importantly that accountability factor they knew that they had to keep going and to make progress. At last check I saw where they had earned six bronze certificates in the Steps program so they are well on their way to using steps to really I think themselves forward and create a future for their site that is ever changing that will keep visitors engaged and keep them plugged into the possibilities of the future for that site. So that's all I have in terms of my presentation. I'd love to take questions now that you have about Steps either nuts and bolts or anything else comments that you have. Thank you Sherry. We had a couple of comments from Holly from Hawaii had put in the comment at the beginning referring to the map that indicated all the various location and I think that that was a sort of a response or comment on the earlier question about finding out who in their particular area was participating in the program. But we do have a question here from Melanie in Oyster Bay and her institution's landmark owned by the town of Oyster Bay, Long Island and are there any other town owned or state owned institutions that have done Steps? That's a great question and yes there are lots and lots of town or state owned institutions and you're asking do the officials need to be involved in Steps and no they do not. Now what you will find when you do have some type of governmental entity that's affiliated with your museum or that governs your museum some things may be different and this question comes up a lot. So sometimes there will be a question in the workbook that will say does your organization do this or that and so people call me and they say well but that's really something that our administrators at our town hall do. We are not in charge of that or we don't have permission to do that and as I tell people and that's fine. That's okay. What you can do in the workbook is if the person who's in charge of making that decision or has that responsibility is not the person for your situation just cross it out in the workbook and put whoever it is so long as you don't change the intent of the question or the performance indicator you're fine. If it's not a board president who does something but it's a town administrator there is someone in your situation who has responsibility for that and so you can like I said you can just cross it out and write in who does. This is one of the things that we're going to be looking at closely in the steps enhancement project that I mentioned earlier the review. This is one thing that people have asked us about and we are going to be including some content and material about being part of a larger governmental entity. But no Melanie the officials do not have to be involved. You can choose to involve them to whatever extent you want to be. Great question. Fantastic. Thank you Sherry. Yes Susan has indicated to our participants if you could please go ahead and complete the evaluation. The link is in the center of your screen you can go ahead and open that up. She does appreciate that and Ashley what I'll do is I'm just going to move the link up to the top left of the screen over the FAIC logo that way it's not going to cover up Sherry's contact information and Michael from Atlanta is asking or commenting that the same is true for corporate museums where your department and you do not have separate governance like a traditional museum board. Yes you're right Michael absolutely same thing with corporate museums a lot of things are different but again most of the time the intent of the question can still be answered but you know there's certainly going to be times in the steps workbook where there will be something that does not apply especially to like a corporate museum and so again because it's a self-study program you can you know you have that freedom to be able to cross that out in all good conscience and say this does not apply to us. We see the same thing with university museums sometimes they come to us and they say well we're not allowed to create our own code of ethics we have to abide by the university's ethics code and we say you know that's fine although it may not have everything in it that ethics codes typically have in it but at least it's a start and you can begin that conversation on your campus with university officials about some things that might need to be added for your museum. So yes there are different governance models and that's one of the reasons why in the workbook we don't say we don't use the term board of directors we use governance authority it's the term we use because there are different models and we've tried to make one size fits all doesn't always work but we'll see if we can't make some changes in the review of the enhancement project. I have put my contact information on the screen if anyone has questions or would like to talk with me please feel free to give me a call or email me I'm always happy to chat with you and talk with you about your organization situation. And yes if anybody has any additional questions please feel free to add them in the questions comments box we'll give it another another minute or so but otherwise everything else is put in so Mindy is asking are there any comments you may have about exceptions regarding participation for a small museum that documents a religious congregation. That's a good question Mindy comments I have about exceptions I can't think of any off the top of my head there may be some and again you would be certainly free to cross through something in your workbook that says you know this doesn't apply to us but I would think that much of the collection section would apply management section deals with safety and security and risk management and things all things that I'm sure that would apply depending on whether you have visitors coming in for the museum certainly I think that the workbook the majority of the material applies to most situations. Okay Mindy is currently typing so we'll give her a moment to get her thoughts down. Susan's reminding everyone please make sure to join us next month for the found in collections webinar information and the date for the event and the registration or sign up form on the website and so Mindy has elaborated there for you Sherry Oh great yes if you Mindy if you want to send me an email I will look up and see if I can give you any other organizations that are in your area I'll look and see I'd love to talk with you about steps. Okay perfect that's great well if there are no other questions what we'll do is just again lastly one last time we'll remind everyone to please go ahead and complete the evaluation and I'd like to thank Sherry Cook from the ASLH for presenting on the steps program and I'd like to thank everybody for joining us and we will see you all again online in the near future so thank you very much everybody and this webinar is now adjourned