I think everyone should be back in the main meeting room. So before we start with the next lecture, I'd like to say a few reminder about the information about the school. So please remind to check frequently the program on the ICTP website, especially the program of next week is changing rapidly. And next week, beyond other lectures, we are going to also have round tables with discussions among speakers that can also be participated by you. And the other point I wanted to make is that next Thursday, the 16th, there is going to be a colloquium, an ICTP colloquium by Professor Ned Wingring, which will be live streamed on YouTube and can be followed on Zoom. But for that, if you want to follow on Zoom and ask question, since it's a separate event, you have to register. So you find all the information on the ICTP website. Great. So the next slot is a Q&A session, like the one we had earlier. And in this respect, it's my pleasure to introduce the next lecturer, James O'Dwyer. James is a professor in the plant biology department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And his research is focused on modeling and analyzing complex ecological community, combining data and the theory. So he pre-recorded two lectures on cooperation, stability, and resilience. So what I'm going to do now is to leave the floor to James and leave the floor to you as well to ask questions. So please, if you have any question about the pre-recorded lectures, don't hesitate to type it in the chat or raise hand. OK. So we have a question by Washington, please. Yeah. Hi, James. I enjoyed your lectures quite a bit. Very interesting stuff. I got a bunch of questions. I'll just throw a couple of questions at you that were things you commented on that I wasn't sure I fully understood what you meant. One was you said that in your models, you weren't really depending on or it didn't really matter whether you chose a random distribution for the interactions.  Yeah. Yeah. So the first question is, can you say a little bit more about whether you use random interactions or what you use there? And I'll just ask the second question you can. And the second question is, you made a comment about being able to integrate out the resources and get a generalized luck of Volterra model with some extra terms for the other things. And the second is whether the resources actually have independent trajectories. So those would be like hidden variables and some time dependencies or whether it's something simpler than that. Yeah. Super interesting questions. Thank you very much for the questions, Washington. So let me, the first one, as you probably know, and I know other lecturers have talked about it, many of those classic luck of Volterra results do rely on results for the eigenvalue spectra of random matrices. So that I'm not disputing. My comment there was, but it's a restriction, right? Because that may not, it's certainly not telling you about every possible luck of Volterra system, right? That's for sure. If you fine tune the interactions, you could get not any spectrum you want, but you could certainly violate those general rules for stability. So my comment was about the consumer resource models in contrast to that. And so there are matrices obviously involved there that you saw in the lectures. Like, in that, I think with the additional layer of mechanism, there comes more choices to make. So there's many different versions of those consumer resource models, which is one issue. But in the version I showed in the lecture where you have substitutable resources with some preferences for those resources and you have some production or returning of resources to the common pool, there are two matrices there, right? The C matrix and the P matrix as I was telling them. And our results about stability, there are definitely some assumptions along the way to get the strongest analytical results. We have to assume things like equal abundances for the different taxa. But we can still get a range of results weakening those kinds of assumptions. But what we don't ever have to assume is that the C and P matrices are typical of a random draw. So they can be literally anything you want so that for the results that we can prove. So the C matrix could be just diagonal, which is one of the cases I looked at in slightly more detail. So you'd specialize on one resource or it could be random. It could be some mixture of specialism and then some off-diagonal elements might be random. So you have some additional ability to use other resources. But it really doesn't matter for the results that we looked at. So what I was trying to say was that, it's not the whole story and there are some things that we don't have a handle on in that consumer resource framework. But one nice thing is that we don't have to make that assumption about the random matrices to get to the results. The results about understanding the structure of the whole spectrum would be another question. We don't know that, but just saying whether it's stable or not, we can say without making those kinds of assumptions. So just to clarify, nothing is true for every possible C and P set of matrices, right? Every possible set of C and P matrices within some, so there are some constraints, like for example, that'd be positive, the P matrix, the way I formulated that model was such that the diagonal was zero. So you weren't recycling into, well, in the case of the specialist matrix, I actually think maybe what generally, even the diagonal could be non-zero, but there are some constraints on the P and C matrix for it to make biological sense. Other than that, no. I see, very interesting. So you're saying it's a very general result, independent? Yeah, in that respect, yes. Now, I won't sort of say there aren't a lot of assumptions going in there because even building the structure of that model is making, if you like, more assumptions than Locke-Volterra. And I can give you one flavor of where even though, exactly as you say, the results I presented are nicely very general. I'll give you an example of a flavor of something which is sort of not exactly covered up, but something that's not maybe immediately obvious. So one assumption I made, and I did state it in the lecture, but the benefit I derive from a resource in the model I showed you is proportional to the rate at which I deplete that same resource. So if I'm eating something, I'm growing in proportion to that. But of course, that doesn't have to be the case. I could degrade resources without caring about them. So I could take up resources and just dump them in some form, which was unusable to me or anyone else without my population growing. And that's not implausible in the sense that, there are examples of cases in real ecological systems where that is to some extent the case, maybe not as extreme as that. And it also makes intuitive sense in that I could gain a competitive advantage if I just degrade the resource you use. It doesn't necessarily matter to me that I can grow with it. So making that generalization, you have a different set of results. That's something we haven't published yet, but I'm working on with Theo, who's one of the grad students I mentioned and an undergrad in my lab. But yeah, so I guess what I'm trying to add, the nuance I'm trying to add is that with the consumer resource models, there are a lot of choices to make before you even get to those equations. Once you get there, let's see in PB, whatever you want, as long as they are interpretable biologically. The second question was about integrating out, right? Integrating out resources. So that's a great question. And it has sort of bugged me for quite a long time as I started to think about ecological questions many years ago, because you had things like, well, you had these two kind of parallel frameworks, right, thinking about competition or interactions more generally, Locke-Volterra and then adding that layer of mechanism. And yeah, it's certainly seen, and I learned more about it as I went on, seeing the statement that those two frameworks can be made equivalent by integrating out these additional degrees of freedom, the resources. So, but there are some subtleties there. So I wrote another paper a couple of years ago, which I didn't talk about in this talk, but trying to get at when can that be done exactly without, as you said, I think in your earlier formation of the question, the resources having their own independent trajectories or being independent degrees of freedom. And there are some cases where that's true. And you could probably guess that in those cases, there's got to be some kind of conserved quantity. And that, so the dynamics of something involving the consumers and something involving the resources turns out to have no time derivative. And so in some models, that is the case. And so the simplest one, the very simplest case would be one consumer and one resource. So think of the resource as space. I like there's some finite space I can occupy and I'm trying to, as I reproduce, my population is growing and filling out that space. So then you could divide up that space into a space which is filled by individuals in my population and then empty space that I'm able to expand into. And you could think of the empty space as an available resource, right? That's sort of something I can take advantage of, access to light, you could think about it literally as a vector resource. But there's something conserved, right? Which is the total amount of space is fixed if I'm not expanding it in some way. And so you could write down a consumer resource model for one consumer and the available space. But then write down that the total occupied space, which would be the consumer population density, roughly your population size, plus the available space, the resource always is fixed. Integrate out the resource that way and you end up with logistic growth. So you could start with something which looks like it's linear growth for the consumer, but multiplied by the amount of available resource that's left, because you're gonna grow more slowly if there are less patches left that you can go into. It looks linear, but you integrate out the resource because there is this conserved quantity, total space isn't changing, you get logistic growth where you saturate up to the total, the size of the field, right? Whatever it is. So that's a simple case where there's a conserved quantity you can exactly integrate out the resource. Then there are, you could write down multi-variable consumer models and multiple resources, but it's certainly not trivial that there's going to be anything like that, any kind of conserved quantity. But there are cases where that's true. And in those cases, you exactly can integrate out the resources. You have an exact description in terms of the consumer population sizes. I mean, it will not in general be local Volterra, but it'll be something. So that's possible. If you have as many algebraic equations as you have resources, you can basically solve for the resources and just eliminate them from the equation. Exactly, exactly. But that's rare. So that system is integrable in some respect, but that's not typical. But the cases which are more talked about or at least when I first started reading about an ecology, the kind of canonical way of thinking about it would be, okay, that's probably not always gonna be the case, typically, that there's some exactly conserved, some number of exactly conserved quantities. But there is a thought that may be resources would be like fast moving, would approach their equilibrium values quickly. And so in those, if you buy that idea, then the approach would be basically to set. The all of the DR by BTs on the left-hand sides of the resource equations equal to zero and solve the other sides algebraically. That's not gonna be an exact, that's not gonna be exactly, that won't match the true numerical solutions, say, of those ODEs. It may match it certainly close to the equilibrium if you linearize the system and say, there is a group of eigenvalues, which is very large and negative, and then a group which is very small and negative, so you'll have some slow and fast directions. And then the full generalization of that result, I guess, would be something that is very hard to get a handle on, at least, I mean, it's certainly not obvious how to get a handle on it, but you might think about the full dynamical system more generally. So you've got some space of consumers and resources, so like living in R to the two N, I guess if there's N consumers and N resources, suppose you're at some arbitrary point in this space, so you're not near equilibrium, and you wanna know, could I approximate this by just a model of consumers? I think that's very much in general not gonna be true, but what you could imagine is quite plausible is that maybe quite quickly the dynamics relax to a slow manifold and then kinda cruise in on that lower dimensional manifold to the equilibrium. Now, that manifold is in general gonna be some non-linear shape, presumably, because you're not linearized, obviously, near, and even if you were linearizing the equilibrium, it could still be a linear combination of consumers and resources, just so happens that for the typical models, people write down most of the fast eigenvalues tend to be overlapping the resource eigenvectors or sorry, the eigenvectors corresponding to the fast eigenvalues tend to overlap the resource vectors, if you like, the resource directions, but they don't have to. And certainly, I think as you get further away from the equilibrium, it's not obvious that slow manifold is just going to be well-described by trajectory of the consumers alone, but I think there's some interesting open scope there to understand, yeah, what happens far away from equilibrium where you simply can't just set dr by dt equal to zero. So yeah, so three ways to answer your question, one is rarely you might have enough algebraic equations to eliminate resources. In that case, and there's one at least very simple example where that's true and plausible with one consumer, but gonna be rarer in general. Two, you can kinda say if you're near equilibrium and the spectrum looks the right way, you can more or less ignore the resource dynamics. If you're further away from equilibrium, I think it's plausible that there may be still separations in time scales, but it much harder to get a handle on exactly who is undergoing the interesting slower dynamics. Does that answer your question? Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much and thanks again for the nice talk. All right, no problem. Great, there is a question from Ankit. Hi Ankit. Yeah, hi. A very interesting set of lectures. So like based on this, what I could gather was that like in such bacterial communities, since you also have this additional goods production so to say, that sort of like brings down the competition. And like in general, a lot of all that we usually think of interaction matrices and like we directly write down competition terms for like between species, but here like there's no direct sense of competition. Like it's through like mediated through resources and goods production. But like, is there any way of like looking at different levels of competition, like maybe as a mixture of resources and goods production, which could give you like some limits to the stability of the system? Yeah, that's a good question. So yeah, you're absolutely right. That I went from a picture where the interactions were pair-wise, i.e. Locke-Volterra, whether it was competition or you could write down mutualistic interactions by just changing the signs, right? In the inter-specific interactions. And I went from there directly to a system where it was consumption and production of resources. But so a couple of points about that I would make. One is if you go back, I mean, and not that it's not intuitive anyway, but it's certainly if you even go back to the Locke-Volterra papers on competition, the interpretation was often written down in terms of resources, right? That these competition coefficients would be large if there was a substantial overlap in the kinds of resources that two species use. So I think, so what I'm getting at is, yeah, the competition becomes indirect. There's no direct competition anymore in the consumer resource models. And there's no direct pair-wise mutualistic interact. It's mediated by I'm producing something that you can use. So it is indirect, but that interpretation was probably always underlying even those pair-wise models. So from a certain point of view, people probably thought about those pair-wise models and still do as an approximation to a more indirect process. That would be one interpretation. But let me answer your question in a different way as well. And that is at least in principle and probably you can identify cases in practice where competition, well, when I teach competition in a class, you do have different kinds of competition. And some, and so the classically, you might separate out into some which look more like resource overlap and some which do look more like direct interactions between individuals, right? Could be a territorial interaction or something like this. So now ultimately, those are probably for competition for resource. So territory would be an example, right? But nevertheless, it could play out in terms of more direct pair-wise interactions between individuals. So in other words, there is a difference potentially in the dynamics of we're in the same location and I happen to get forage for something before you do, there's a difference between that and me kind of pushing you out, right? So I think it's a great question that you could easily imagine layering on top of the consumer resource models that I wrote down and other people obviously work on as well. You could layer on top of that a direct interaction. There'll be no reason not to. And you're right also that it would like, it would certainly change the dynamics and very probably the stability properties. So I think there's no reason not to do that. And there are probably many situations where species are competing both indirectly for resources and maybe directly in terms of direct pair-wise interactions. So I guess what I'm saying is one interpretation lock of ulterior competition really is just an approximation to resource acquisition but another interpretation as well, it may be really accounts for those direct pair-wise cases where two individuals really are interacting directly with each other. And I don't think there's any reason not to put the two together. I have not done that but it would be kind of interesting to see what the outcome would be. Interesting, thanks. Great, there is a question from Pablo, please. Hi Pablo. Hello James, thank you for your lectures. They were really interesting. So my question is related to the one that Washington had. I'm working with the Mars land model which you probably are familiar with. And random matrix theory is really interesting but it has one problem that if you're not able to analytically find the equilibrium you can't do anything. And this is the problem with the Mars land model. Even if I do timescale separation and I assume that research dynamics are fast I'm not able to find a stable solution for the resources and therefore I'm not able to find an analytical solution for the equilibrium of the populations. So I was wondering if you have faced this problem because I see that you've done random matrix theory with consumer resources model where you have cross-feeding. And what are the type of assumptions if you can detail that that you do in order for you to get analytical equilibrium or if you have faced this problem in this particular model do you have any idea of how to tackle it? Yeah, well, first of all, yeah. Thanks for the question Pablo, a couple of points. So to the extent I use random matrix theory in these models related to Washington's question it's to provide examples rather than a necessary element. In other words, just to give a numerical examples in some cases we chose that consumer preferences were drawn from a random distribution drawn from a distribution. But now let me also point out that a couple of things. One is, so the Marsland and collaborators of course that the model that they have developed which is in, it's sort of very similar to the most general model I wrote down of production in one of my slides and then I simplified to a different model which is maybe a little bit easier to analyze in some respects but the more general model allows for the production of resources by me to depend on the resources that are available to me and that's very plausible and it's probably the right way to, well I'm giving myself a lot of parentheses here to get back to. Let me just say for production of resources as a byproduct of metabolism to depend on the resources around me makes total sense, right? Because if I eat burgers maybe my byproducts are different than if I eat apples and pears, right? So that makes total sense but it adds an extra layer of difficulty in analyzing those models. So the way that we formulated production of resources probably more easily interpreted as a kind of recycling process. So following mortality that there's some characteristic composition of a cell of each taxon and some of it is returned to the common pool. So there are differences. I guess that's my main point in saying that describing those details of Rob Marsland's model and what I talked about in detail but I also totally buy that allowing production to be more generally dependent on the resources around me makes sense. So in terms of analytical solutions of the model I presented they're relatively straightforward just involve kind of matrix inversions and nothing overly complicated. That may become more complicated that they're more involved you make the production term for sure so that there's no guarantee, right? There's no guarantee that you're going to always be held to even. I mean, you have algebraic equations, right? If you're looking for equilibria so they're certainly simpler than solve the dynamics but there's no guarantee you'll have a nice form or even and certainly there's no guarantee of having a stable equilibrium. So I wonder, I don't know this for sure but certainly in the models that we have looked at and that I talked about there are certainly regimes in which you won't find the resources settling to an equilibrium these are precisely the cases where there are instabilities, right? So I don't know if that is related to what you're saying and the stability properties that the Marsland model are different in some respect so it depends on the details of how you're implementing that but certainly what we find is that there are regimes of resource inflow and obviously depending on the structure of the consumer preferences and the production of resources there are regimes where there won't be a stable positive equilibrium and so if you were to solve those equations numerically which we did just to show what it looks like you get some kind of limit cycle and it's not, yeah, that's something which I don't understand fully the properties of what does happen to the dynamics when those equilibria become unstable but yeah, in our models what seems to be key is the level of resource inflow for determining that and so there are some regimes of resource inflow in coupled to the structure of the preferences and the production matrix there are some regimes where you won't find stable solutions in some way you will. So I don't know if that's what's maybe happening in the solutions you're looking at that there actually isn't a positive stable equilibrium it could be that or maybe it's just hard to put to find your solution in a nice form and one other point I wanted to make was in the second lecture of mine that is part of the school I talked about what we called metabolically informed community dynamics and there, what I was really trying to get at I was played with Mario Mascarella who was in my lab at the time what we were trying to get at was okay we do know that the production of resources is going to often depend on the resources I take up the point I make about the Mars and model being a bit different from what I talked about in lecture one but what should that look like? You know I think there's a bit of guesswork involved in formulating these consumer resource models and that goes back also to point them up in response to Washington's question you have many more choices to make there are these different flavors of consumer resource and production models and so what I wanted to get at in that second lecture was okay can we narrow down the possibilities? Can we understand whether there are you know what is what are the most plausible ways for production of resources that depend on the resources I'm taking up you know because you could write down you know you could write down more and less plausible functions but I mean there's nothing really stopping you from running out some arbitrary horrible function of resources and and different metabolic pathways and that could be very plausible even if it's horrific right and so that was the idea of that second talk and that paper was to begin to think about what are the most plausible can we from something like first principles derive what those production matrices should look like or could look like or constrain what they could look like so yeah maybe part of what you're seeing is just that there's many ways to formulate these resource consumption and production models they're not all guaranteed to have nice closed form solutions for sure for the equilibria they're not all guaranteed in any of the ones we've looked at to have stable positive equilibria and to cap it all you know we don't really know exactly what the right formulation of these models is so there's a lot of question marks there so I'm really answering your question with a bunch of questions but hopefully that's at least adjacent to what you're thinking about thank you I think it was a very nice set of questions as an answer there is a question by Martina Hi Martina Hello James so I have a question that is related to what you were seeing just three seconds ago so how do you think you so these metabolic informed models how do you think they scale when you add more resources that you produce and whether you can I don't know make the what you produce changing in time depending on whether you are in the exponential phase the lag phase so I mean yeah basically does it yeah I think I get the question but if I didn't re-ask it again if I'm answering totally the wrong thing so that metabolic informed model it's a really simple model of what's happening inside of cell right that's that's kind of I think what you're getting at it's just two I guess three resources involved basically in each intracellular process so two things coming in an interaction between them and something comes out at the end and then that's excreted by themselves so how does that scale when you have more resources involved and so let me say back to you how I'm understanding the question and maybe I'll give you a chance just to say if I'm on the right lines so I think you're asking well in any real cell the the processes are more complicated they they will involve discreet changes like maybe processes being switched on and switched off in response to what cells are sensing externally and so they could be you know these it could be a lag phase or something like this or yeah as a cell switches between resources there could also be many different well there will be many different resources and other molecules involved in these processes inside the cell I think you're asking how much of what we see in that really simplified model could possibly carry over in that more general picture is that a fair summary yeah actually I was thinking more about what happens in the cell which is related to what happens in the cell but is so you start from glucose but you produce 30 other metabolites and more or less the cell excretes I don't know 20 of them because you have the metabolic overflow or you have all these molecules are can diffuse passively outside the membrane so the question was okay if I start from glucose do you think you can scale your processes to account for I don't know more metabolites that are produced um yeah I don't know maybe yeah that's that's a great question and that's an easy question to answer because the answer is yes I think that that that side of things is much easier to scale right that that um that they you know that there may be different obviously ratios or proportions of those metabolites produced but the functional forms will be pretty similar so scaling on that side is pretty nice if there's many many outputs and they can diffuse passively across the cell wall and then are put into the common pool that that works nicely in that same framework and will look very similar I mean but like you say I know this is relevant to your work as well the uh that that will make a big difference to the community genetics for sure and you're right and and of course to make the full contact with what I talked about in the first lecture where you have many consumers and many resources that's certainly one way to get there one plausible way to get there with the metabolic inform model is to have these multiple metabolites produced and that could lead to a really rich set of community dynamics and we didn't really get there in that in that first paper with Mario you know that's an interesting there's scope for interesting development there for example to say if you have uh those maybe um you keep the input that the essential resources relatively simple for each taxon but you have a wide range of outputs but following the kinds of functional forms that we talked about uh I it'll be really interesting to understand what that changes about the dynamics and the stability and the equilibria and so on I think that would be really interesting as a comparison with all the stuff in the first lecture we haven't just haven't got there yet it's you know 20-20 happened basically but uh yeah I think that's a really interesting question and it is easier to tackle the other way around now the other way around would be if there are many kind of like essential resources that get involved in some you know some way in the overall set of pathways that lead to those many metabolites I think that's that's not an impossible question to answer that's the scaling up of that side but it's but it at least is harder and a question to me I don't really have a good handle on is how to systematically pair down the you know the true complexity of that metabolism and to a point where you can say these results are robust I don't think it's implausible that I mean look ecologists have been looking at these relatively simplified dynamics this whole time right over decades so we've been had this guesswork about how the internals of not just single celled organisms but more but multi-celled more complex organisms how the internals affect ecological dynamics right behavior it would be you know maybe underexplored in terms of its impact on population and community dynamics but certainly is something people think about a lot so guess what I'm saying it's not implausible to me that those internal dynamics can boil down to something manageable but also we have not at all proved that in in that paper but the other way around producing many outputs I think it is is much more doable and not at all uninteresting it would be very interesting to see how that affects stability and dynamics for larger communities one more thing I wanted to say sorry if I'm just taking opportunity to ramble but your question is interesting and it's about again additional layer of mechanism inside the cell and I think it's just a super interesting question because it's not just about throwing more resources in and having more resources come out I think it's also about you know what is that there may be other elements of the set of rules but obviously there are other elements to the set of rules by which cells are operating and how do we pair those down to the you know to at least a simple enough model that we can extract robust results for the community dynamics so I think so I've seen a few other few other approaches to thinking about that you know there's like there's papers from Terry Huar's group which go back many years looking at apportionment of resources inside the cell to different categories of process that's an in my mind it's it's conceptually similar it's a way of you know a simplified model of the internals of the cell which then can give rise to different community dynamics at the you know at this larger scale and the cell wall of course kind of provides you this somewhat a natural separation of scales which is interesting so yeah I think it's just an the answer to your question is I think some of it can be scaled up the more general answer in my mind is is another question which is how do we systematically show what kinds of community dynamics are robust or the most likely outcomes of whatever is going on in the cell and that's that's a that's a harder question but I think it's super interesting thank you thanks for the answer so is there any other question I don't see any and raised in the in the list but please we have time for more question and answers or if you want don't want to talk you can type it in the chat so it has been pretty intense so far so ah there is another question from Washington yeah if no one else is asking questions I'll ask another one so have you were when you think about resources I gather you're primarily thinking about like physiological resources like material resources like phosphate and things like that have you thought about how energy as a resource fits into that or do you are you aware of other work where people have looked at sort of energy flow and systems like this yeah good question um yeah there are there are papers an approach is to think about communities or maybe more ecosystem dynamics in terms of energy flows and yeah thermodynamic properties more generally of ecological communities there is a whole you know not not field but like approach of thinking about I don't know if you're familiar with the in non-equilibrium system mechanics but people have proposed maximizing entropy as a principle not proven but just as a maybe as a guideline so there's there's definitely people thinking about whether ecological systems change over time in order to maximize entropy production and so you know obviously that's not just the energy but it's sort of thinking about the system more thermodynamically maybe which is along maybe along the lines of what you're you're wondering I don't know if I mean for the kinds of things we're looking at here I mean the resources I guess that I can't think of a way they would not have an energetic value as such I think all the things we're thinking about whether that's light capture or it's you know eating glucose and kind of using that to derive energy I mean they're all energy I think is inevitably involved obviously but good you're saying some of the resources being passed include energy as a component and others contain other crucial nutrients and things so it's it's it's in some sense implicit in some sense implicit in what you're doing that energy would be one of the features involved but that's right that's right and I'm just wondering you know I like the the work I just reference you know just thinking about these sort of if you like coarser grained pictures of how ecosystems are working and flows of energy and other thermodynamic properties so I'm not saying I don't like that stuff and I'm interested in it but it will be you know part of what we're thinking about here is what happens as a level of for example as so you could imagine that the substituted resources may be all forms of organic carbon you know and so there are some other you know resources which are less energetically useful which may be essential but we could sort of ignore those and just say well carbon is sort of the limiting resource in a given context maybe and so then you know what we're interested in here comes down to more exactly looking at the differences between those different forms of energy if you like so calling those collapsing down that matrix to to just energy could be kind of reductive right because you wouldn't so for example not many but several of the talks in the school I've thought about and mine too in a way think about coexistence right of many different kinds of species so not that entirely relies on differentiation of resource use but it can do right and so you'd sort of lose that you know which is fine for depending on the question right because you actually maybe you want to lump all heterotrophs into a category right and then you're thinking about a much bigger cycle of just you know autotrophs heterotrophs decomposes or something like something like this and in that case those kind of coarser flows of energy might be the right language to use but maybe maybe the right way to answer your question is it probably just depends on the question of interest then if your question of interest is understanding communities of many different species doing slightly different things you know but kind of at the large scale kind of maybe they're doing slightly different things in sort of boring boringly right they're not vastly different then you know the language of these kinds of resources probably the right language but if you're interested in those sort of larger scale flows of energy and you know you might think about just flows of nutrients like c and n and p rather than specific forms of them yeah then that will be a sort of different language to use maybe for different kinds of questions cool thanks great thanks a lot James so we have space for more questions if anyone wants to ask really good questions by the way thanks everyone for the for watching the lectures and for the great questions yeah yeah yeah I totally agree I mean it was very very interesting so if there are no more questions what I would say is that we can move to the breakout rooms and James can stay let's say another 15 minutes with us and you're free to chat informally in the breakout rooms I just as a technical reminder if you have a Zoom version that is


Hi everybody it's Sam here and I'm really excited to share my first Christmas papercraft society box. So this is the third box that I've designed for the papercraft society but my first Christmas box and I cannot wait to share it with you. Now this is a sample box so unfortunately the papercraft society wording on the front here should be much much more vibrant and it will all be in white when you receive yours so yours will look much much better than mine. As you can see this wonderful design can any of you guess what the theme of this box is? You've got your gingerbread, you've got candy canes so let's get into the box. So it says here at the top, make pop-up cards, decorations, gift boxes and more. This box has it all. Enjoy Sam. So this kit will allow you to make a pop-up house. Now the house can be a house for a new home card or it can be a pop-up gingerbread house which explains the thing. However you can also take that pop-up piece and you can turn it into a little gift box, a tree decoration, you could probably put a little handle on it and make it into a gift bag if you wanted to. So there's a lot you can do with this and I'm again really pleased with how it's all come together. So you've got your envelope and your tissue paper so we'll have a look inside the envelope first. So you have this lovely print on the front with my logo and then open this one up you've got a lovely candy cane pattern throughout and again everything that you see is all indications of the papers. So you've got your three pockets here so we'll start with the actually we'll start with the stamps and then I will explain the coordinating dies that work with it. So okay so you'll see you've got this mug and you've got some cream that you can pop on the top there and then inside you could have home sweet home, you could have from our home to yours. You then have tis the season, thank you for being so sweet. These little stamps will go inside these here which will form a signpost. You've then got fest Christmas and you've got in your new home, you've got babies, you've got together and then you've got have the sweetest Christmas and some little decorative pieces here to frame your sentiment. So you can have have the sweetest Christmas in your new home. You can have a baby's fest Christmas, fest Christmas together. So there's quite a few different sentiments that you can make and then you've got your different sweets here. So you've got your lollipop, little hard sweets here, you've got candy cane, you've got another decorative kind of border here. This here is a little wreath which will go on the door and you'll see that in a moment, it's so cute. This is some snow or you can have it some icicles if you want and then you've got other little sweets here. These here are all for you to kind of colour and decorate your gingerbread house.   You have bow tie and buttons here. You've got another bow which you can stamp here and these here will cut the detail to go over these because this will emboss and then you can pop these in to fill the space. You've got candy cane here, here you've got your door, you've got windows, all different ones there. This is your path and then there's the sign that I mentioned. These could be the mummy and daddy and then these are the babies. These also make nice little charms to go on the gift box. You've got snowflake, you've got pretzel. This here will turn the box into hanging decorations.  These here make really nice looking kind of cookies. So again great to decorate the house and then this here will shape your edge of your roof and it will also create snow effect on the top as well. So that's all of the dies so they great you know they work really nicely on their own or I missed the little tree there as well. I don't think I mentioned that one. So they work great on their own. Obviously they coordinate perfectly with everything else that I'm going to show you. You also get an embossing folder so if you want you can emboss the side of the house. So you have this print on there. You can do some nice effects with that using your ink pads and then your papers. So you've got two of each. You've got that wonderful design there which is just really really fun. Love this one. This is the same as the packaging. Again you can see your two there and this is the outside of the packaging. A lovely stripe and then you've got some other candy cane patterns there and then these here will make really nice gift tags. You can cut these out and you can have them hanging from the little house. So if you turn it into a gift box alternatively you might just want to use them on your other Christmas presents that you're wrapping. It's entirely up to you. You've got a lovely little recipe here as well which says recipe for a merry Christmas. A dash of joy mixed with a touch of peace. Add a pinch of magic and stir with hope. You've got merry Christmas baked with love, holly jolly and then happy holidays. So you've got one of those and then you have three sheets of the craft card because this is what we thought most people are going to use to cut their pop-up house. So you've got plenty of different pattern papers and your card stock there and then let's have a little look inside the tissue. So yours will actually be wrapped with a sticker on top but inside lots of goodies. So first of all we have some pom pom trim. This looks so cute around the roof kind of hanging down to just stick around all of the edges or just along the top of the pop-up but you can use it on lots of other things as well. You have these adorable little, I think they're made of polymer clay and they're little candy canes. Now yours again will be in proper packaging with the branding and everything on but aren't those so sweet. Absolutely love those. You also get this adorable little cookie cutter so the idea with this is to have it maybe hanging off of the gift box and inside you'd have the ingredients for someone to be able to make their own cookies. You can also make the cookies and put them in the gift box. We just thought it was just a nice little addition to add into this Christmas box and then here is the stencil to make the pop-up. So we decided to go with the stencil because if we done the dies, the dies were just too big and we wouldn't have been able to have added all those lovely things. So we've gone for this design instead. Again yours will be in a much nicer presentation than mine but you'll see here you have your four pieces if I just move this along here so you can see them. All of the instructions on how to use these will be in the booklet. This is the front and back. These are the sides. This is the base and this is the roof. Okay and yeah it's very very easy to use so that will make your box hanging decoration or pop-up house in the card. Then you also get your glitter card stock so this is lovely for the snow effect on the top of the house really nice thick. It's probably about a 350 gsm. It's beautiful non-shred so it's not going to go everywhere. Really nice and then here you have your cardstock so there's more so it's not just the cardstock you saw there you could have a pink gingerbread house. I mean think of Hansel and Gretel's house it's that kind of you know kind of themes you have covered in sweets so colorful ones is probably where I'm going to go with it but you get two of my favorite hot pink color you get two of the red here look at that green oh it's the same as the tissue paper it's just so bright and gorgeous which again is very much my style and then you've got this orange color again looks really nice for the gingerbread house. If you want to do it in the craft card or this color and then just do everything on the front all in white all of your sweets everything so it looks more like a you know a traditional style so you get that gingerbread effect and then there's a sheet of wrapping paper this is so nice I'm going to be wrapping a very special present will have to be for for me to use this or I might actually make a little mini album maybe a Christmas mini album and this will be what I use to cover the front you can see it's got some little polka dots kind of sparkly polka dots there but you can imagine wrapping a gift you could even then use your pom pom trim around that as well so that was just a little extra that we popped in there for you so I'll just show you how the card will look so this is a sample so this is actually going to be photographs that's why there's no decoration on the front but the main part is all inside so you open up the card and you have your pop-up house so this one here is a Christmas card from our home to yours you can see the gingerbread we've got the lights got some snow coming down there on the side and then the back here you've got space to write your message or you could pop it on the very back if you want and I've added acetate just thought that was a nice little touch you can see I put some glossy accents on the pretzels there and the glittery card on the path and you've got your gingerbread man there very very sweet and then it all folds up into a six by six size and then this is another version so again nothing on the front because you're going to see the photos of this in the booklet that is another one here so this is home sweet home isn't that gorgeous I loved colouring this one doing all the decoration on there and on that side as well you can see all the glossy accents and again you've got space here to be able to write your message or you could write it on the back and the path there and then I just want to share with you a couple of 3d projects so this is a little gift box so you've just got your velcro top here and you can pop treats inside I think this would make a lovely table favour really really sweet you've got the little sign there love these little candy canes so that's the gift box and then this one I've turned into a little hanging decoration so hanging tree deck you can see you've got your little kind of piece there to attach you've got a tag that I've added and then again it's got the velcro there but you can pop a tea light in this one as well and it will you know the light will come through the windows and the door there you can see all the glossy accents on the sweets and everything very very cute just love to put these together these embellishments are from my own stash but as crafters we have so many of these embellishments so you can pop any colours on there but I just thought it was another way just to show you how to use those things that you might already have in your stash so if you'd like to get your hands on this kit then just follow the links in the description box below and they will take you to the papercraft society you can choose your subscriptions you can do month to month you can do quarterly six monthly or for the whole year so lots of people you know they take out different subscriptions and yeah I hope you enjoy it I can't wait to start sharing more fun makes with this so once everybody has theirs I'll be doing craft belongs and all that good stuff so as always thank you for watching and I'll be back again very soon bye


From the people and government of Australia to the people and government of the Philippines Congratulations on your Independence Day Mabuhay Many Filipinos will be celebrating today the 12th of June by proudly displaying the Philippine flag I'm sure that across Australia Filipinos will be celebrating Independence Day with you today The Philippines and Australia are both young nations. We have a shared history of democracy General Emilio Aguinaldo declared your independence in 1898 While Australia's Federation was achieved in 1901 And we have a shared aspiration for peace for freedom and cooperation across our region From the late 1890s onward Filipino migrants have done so much to strengthen Australia as a multicultural nation Back then around the time of the Philippine Revolution Filipinos came to northern Australia as pearl divers Today Australia's Filipino community is over 200,000 strong and Filipinos are in Australia's as doctors nurses accountants and engineers and are contributing strongly to many other walks of life These working professionals in the Philippines and overseas are the Philippines modern heroes. I Believe Jose Rizal and Emilio Aguinaldo would be very proud indeed of your successes We also congratulate the Philippines on the reforms you have undertaken under the administration of his Excellency President of Benigno Simeon Aquino the third The Aquino administration has achieved balanced budgets and judicial reform It has passed legislation extending basic education and reproductive health rights And it has negotiated a framework peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front The success of these reforms can be measured by your recent economic growth Last year in Sydney, Australia a new statue of Jose Rizal was unveiled We were honored that President Aquino himself was able to unveil that statue during his state visit to Australia. I was privileged to be among those present Earlier in 2012 Australia's Governor-General, Her Excellency Quentin Bryce had visited the Philippines Governor-General Bryce met with President Aquino With beneficiaries of the Aquino administration's conditional cash transfer program and visited a flood-prone community into Geek City Following these visits we look forward to building on our close relationship with the Philippines over the years ahead Australia and the Philippines have now enjoyed close relations for nearly 70 years Over time those relations have grown closer and closer Through trade, aid and security cooperation, Australia contributes where we can to the prosperity and stability of the Philippines Australia's development assistance to the Philippines has increased substantially over the past decade Australia is now among the top three donors to the Philippines with development assistance worth around 5.3 billion pesos per year In fields such as basic education and governance, Australia strives to help our Philippine partners to improve the standard of service delivered to the Philippine people I'm particularly proud that Australia has been in a position to provide assistance to the Philippines following Typhoon Pablo and other recent disasters We have worked closely with Philippine and UN agencies in the modern spirit of Bayanihan for no country in the modern era can stand alone So congratulations to the Philippines on your day of independence Australia, its government and people look forward to continuing our close relations in the years ahead Mabuhay


Welcome to Wednesday's live Q&A with you and me and some of the dudes, Duker, Dylan, Bailey, and Matt. We're all hanging out in the marketing room waiting for our new studio to eventually be finished as some of the sales guys get back from lunch in the parking lot. Today we're going to be answering your questions as we do every Wednesday at 2 o'clock whether they were previous questions on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, emails, comments, whatever. But now not only can we answer those previous questions but I want you to put a comment or a question in Facebook or YouTube as we go live and talk to you right now, answer your questions live now. We have a ton of fun that YouTube is always popping off during live Q&A. Facebook's actually getting crazier today than YouTube to start but I'm sure YouTube will catch up pretty soon. We got a bunch of questions today guys. We got several good ones. I like it. We've been having a bunch of you guys been putting a lot of awesome questions in. We see those. Duker's always asking me the answers to a lot of them. I typically see them or I hear about them or I get notification on my phone when they come in. Constantly we appreciate the questions. So thanks for asking them and today I'm back from Vegas and I was in Vegas and Miami and one weekend just pretty crazy and pretty rare. Yeah, I'm tired. I'm getting less and less tired but we're back from a big conference in Vegas and then the 10x growth con with Cardone in Miami and now we got Duker about to ask some questions so let's do it. Some good ones though bro. Good ones. You guys want good questions right? Top show. Difference between an insurance agent and an insurance broker. I don't think of there being a difference. Obviously a broker is like independent. He doesn't have one option. He's got 170 options.  Here's some tips you have for maintaining consistency. Tips. This is the number one reason why agents fail. I have a lot of number one reasons though. It seems like every day I've got a new number one reason why you're failing. I would say consistency is a big thing. Not only because most agents are inconsistent but I think back whether I'm consistent now or whether I was consistent then. It all came back down to focus. I think the only reason we aren't consistent is because we aren't focused. How do we remain focused? Focus comes from writing my goals down every single morning. Focus comes from having passion for what I'm doing. Consistency comes from getting up and doing the same thing every week. A lot of people fly by to see their pants. The successful agents have a system that produces certain results weekend and week out. How do we remain consistent weekend and week out to get the exact same similar results as we did last week? Most agents never do because when I'm talking about a system I'm talking about a lead system. I'm talking about a set-sell system that's predictable and similar weekend and week out. Most agents are way too inconsistent. It's a lack of focus and a lack of system. This one comes off a YouTube. He says I'm 17 and I'm not allowed to take my licensing exam but could I still get some sort of experience at an agency? Yeah. I think I may have been 17 when I was an intern at an insurance office. Calling the freaking phone book for a veteran agent. You can still be around it. You can still be an intern. You can still scan applications for people. You can still make calls. You can still take out the trash. Whatever. Yes, you can still get experience just from being around it. I mean, it's helped me. Whether I like to believe it or not, it's helped me that my dad's been in the business almost 30 years and that I've been extremely exposed to it. It's definitely helped. I like that though. 17 years old, man. That's a bright future if you jump into this business and if you pay attention to this business, best business on the planet, as Bailey always says, there's more millionaires in the insurance industry than any other industry in the world, man. I love it. How can I better show value of higher premium policies? Actually, I did a training call with a big agency this morning and it was all about how to have larger sales. This exact question. And it came down to three things.  Whether we like it or not, you have to build a relationship with people. Value. Most people rush through the benefits. They rush through the value. They rush through all the things that you need to cover instead of taking their time and building the value. I love going over five benefits before I give quotes. And the last thing is most agents are selling with their wallet or they're not showing big enough options. The reason why some agents average $40 a month, others average $60 or others even average $80 or $100 a month comes down to relationship, value, and they're not afraid to show higher quotes. So instead of showing low quotes, 30, 40, 50, 60 bucks a month, show something over $100. Show larger quotes and show quotes based on what the prospect needs, not based on what they can afford. Big difference. You don't know what they can afford. You shouldn't know what they can afford because you shouldn't talk price. You shouldn't ask what they can afford. You shouldn't worry about budget at all. You should show them what they need.  Show them bigger options based on what they need. 80% of the time they'll choose the one in the middle. Don't think about what you can afford. Think about what they need and then show them big options. Once the relationship and the value are there, then show them bigger options than what you're used to showing. And believe it or not, voila, you'll start making a little bigger sales just because you're trying, because you're showing a little larger options than what you're used to showing. Kind of funny how that works, man. You start to do something or show someone more and then sometimes people buy more. It's kind of funny how that works, right? Why should I buy leads when I can just cold call? Well, why should I buy leads when I can just cold call? I did a lot of cold calling my first year, but the reason why you should buy leads instead of cold call is simply because it's easier. It's more efficient.  And if you want to consistently see, if you're not friends with me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram, I'm putting up stories all day every day. You need to go do that. Add me on Facebook right now if you're watching this. It's more efficient. People that are successful, the agents I know that make 100,000, quarter of a million, half a million, three quarters of a million, even seven figures, they don't cold call. They don't cold call. They try to be efficient. They invest in their business and they want to scale up by sitting with 10, 15, 20 people a week. And it's so much easier to consistently do that each and every week when you buy leads. And to add to that point, the people that aren't successful with leads, dooker, they're normally not good agents. They're normally, their sales skills normally lack luster. They normally suck. Like I have success with leads. Crappy agents don't have success with leads. We have agents that'll say, hey, your leads are in the same, I can survey a couple of agents. One may say that we're the greatest lead vendor on the planet and they love us to death and that happens all the time. Another may say, hey, I tried them and they didn't work for me. But then I can call their leads after they already called them and screwed them up and pissed the clients off and it still didn't work for them. But I'll set appointments. It's funny how that works too. Why do you recommend branded promo items? Why do you recommend branded promo items? Either you believe in yourself or you don't. Any promotional anything is all about keeping you top of mind.  For instance, I didn't plan on doing this today, but since you brought it up, I will. I have some seller be sold socks on. Those are Grant Cardone socks, right? I got to hike my leg way up there. You guys are making me, making me stretch today. Seller be sold. I've got seller be sold socks on today. Those are promo material. They're sell socks, so I love wearing them. They're not mine. They're Grant Cardones. I thought about them. I said them out loud and now you're thinking about them. Do you still think promo materials work? I didn't even know this question was coming up today. Totally random. But I bet they work now because we're talking about it. And because they're fun, man. There's people that like wearing fun socks and when they do, they're not only wearing them, but they like talking about them. They like showing them off. They like having cooler socks on than these dudes wear. They can't compete with my sock game today with Bailey's original black socks over here. Facebook's popping off. I guess they got a little jilted at your stab at them earlier. What did I do? Oh, you said YouTube. Oh, dude. All right. Welcome back. Facebook, man. We've been missing you guys. Doug Engel asks, what differentiates your leads from other companies? What differentiates your leads from other companies? I would immediately say, I put a picture on my Instagram and Facebook story. When was it? A couple of days ago? Monday, I think. And we had almost 100 lead orders on Sunday alone. Don't tell anyone. I think the biggest thing that makes us unique, anyone can produce a lead. I'm the best in the world at service. Like we just are. I preach service. We preached it in the freaking team meeting. Right or wrong, Duker? That's right. We preached it in the team meeting this morning, man. We preach service constantly. And because I've got tons of insurance experience and I've had success in the insurance business, I know what works and what doesn't. I know how to build a lead and I know what for you to say when you call someone and I know how you can have success with your leads because I know about it. I believe in it. I'm sold on it. And I believe that service is the number one piece to this whole puzzle. Like I can have success with most leads, not all, but most. But I'm going to go back based on service and based on the relationship that I have with them. That's it. And I get that question a lot. Like, hey, why do agents buy your leads over all these other new vendors that are just popping up? Well, I don't know. Maybe it's because I've been doing it longer. Maybe it's because we do 40,000 of them a month. Maybe it's because we've spent $2.5 million the last couple of years. I don't know. Or maybe it's because of service. I don't know. I just know that it's important. Brian Francis asks, what's a great script for cold door knocking? Oh, I like that. So normally what I always do when I cold door knock, I'll knock on the door. If I don't know their name, hey, hey, ma'am, how are you doing today? Hey, my name's Cody. I have been able to help several of your neighbors in this area with their final expenses. Can I come in for a quick second? Did I even tell them anything at all? If they say, well, what's this about? Well, I've got some information that I need to go over with you real quick that a lot of your neighbors have loved that helps with burial and all the burial programs. So can I come in for a quick second? Just super brief. I mean, because cold calling is a like our cold door knocking that the enthusiasm, they're probably going to let me in the door because I'm smiling. I'm cool. They look like you can trust me, right? And because I'm asking to come in. And most people don't have success because two reasons. There's not enough quantity of knocks, knock more, and or we don't ask to come in. You're more likely to receive if you ask, right? If you ask, you shall receive. More likely to ask if you receive if you ask. Most people never ask. Most people never, the goal like most people door knock and they don't have a goal. No matter what you do, there should be a goal. If you're trying to set an appointment when you call, ask for the appointment. If you're trying to get in the house when you door knock, ask to come in. It's kind of funny how that works. Ken Krimsner wonders, do you recommend email blasts and what would you use? No, not as an insurance agent. I really don't. Unless you've got a ton of leads that you just want to like create as a appointment or something, then you may be, maybe you have a, maybe you have, okay, say maybe you have 10,000 leads, older leads that are just in your CRM that you want to blast with an email and create some interest. In that case, hey, John, hey, we've got some, we've got some new state approved final expense information that we need to go over with you. When's a good time for us to reach out to you? Which is better. We're scheduled in calls. We're about to fill up. Thursdays or Fridays normally better. Do something small or get them to put their phone number if you don't have it. We send out a lot of emails to our followers and I ask for phone numbers and people are more likely to send a phone number back than they are to call in or they are to take action or then they are to click on a link and buy. Now I just have people give their phone numbers and give them the sales team and that actually works a lot better. Just with emails, get them to move in your direction just a little bit. Tate wonders, do you always use this? Did you say Tate pre-core? You know it is. Come on, bro. He wants to know if you always use a script when calling customers about life insurance or Medicare? If I am not phenomenal on the phone, yeah, no matter what, yes, I've got a mental script. Like when I regurgitate a script and I puke it on you guys, it's the same script. If you aren't phenomenal on the phone, you don't have hundreds of thousands of calls of experience and you don't have some mental script that you can roll through, then have it in front of you and follow it. Tony G on YouTube wants to know. I met Tony G in Vegas. What's your number one rule to scale an agency fast? Ooh, number one rule to scale an agency fast. I'm going to answer it in two ways. If we're talking about selling insurance, then more leads equals more appointments. More appointments equals more sales. If the second or the second piece is if you're wanting to recruit and grow your agency, then one thing you could immediately do is I think bragging about your success on social media, you'll get friends and family in one market that want to join, that want to be a part of you. I would say you need traffic. If you're trying to sell insurance policies, you need leads. If you're trying to grow your agency, you need resumes and interest, which is why we use various ways. Indeed, LinkedIn, zip recruiter, ads, you need traffic. In both cases, you got to spend some dough and you got to talk to some people. Most people just don't talk to enough people. If you want to scale an agency, find a way to have a hunt. If you need my help, like book a coaching session or whatever, and I'll show you how to have 100 people interested in joining your team every week. That's no problem at all. That's easy peasy cover girl. Right, Duker? That's what I use every morning. Tanner wants to know, he's purchased some of our leads and keeps getting the objection that they didn't realize a person was coming out to see them. How do you handle that objection? Yeah, okay. Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that. The main reason we do is that we need to make sure that you are who you say you are. We've got to verify some information with you and we want to make sure that you know that you're not working with someone that could possibly scam you, which is why you're working with a local field underwriter that drops off information in person. We're old school, so I'll be out there. I'm the local dude. I'm sure, you know what, once we meet, you'll really appreciate me. Should I drop off the information in the morning or in the afternoon? What's a common theme? Anytime someone gives me an objection. What's the last thing I do? Ask a question, baby. Every single time. It's got, Tate came in with another question. Tate wants to know our thoughts about sending marketing letters to PNC customers regarding life insurance. Sure, sure. I mean, you know what, I would text them, call them. Hey, you know what? On Fridays, we give out free life insurance quotes to see if we can save our customers some money. I'm assuming you would like one. How much coverage do you currently have? Like, don't ask, can I give you one?  Just assume they want to give you, that they want you to give them a quote.  Simon Carroll asks. Dude, the UK man. Yeah. He just gave us a review on our five stars on our insurance wealth university. Simon Carroll from the UK just gave us a review this morning on my insurance wealth university, 145 plus videos that Dylan and Bailey slayed away to make sure that you guys had access to it, said that our interest wealth university was top notch five stars, and that other agents, if they haven't tried it yet, at Kodiaskins.com, that they need to check it out. That's what Simon said. That's not my words, that's his. Thank you, bro. As Simon wants to know, what do you do when you book an appointment with the lead, you turn up, but they don't answer the door, but you do think someone's in there? Do you still walk away? After I've door knocked, at least on two separate occasions, after I've sat in the car for a few minutes, after I've called, after I've texted, and after I've exhausted every opportunity to get in. I mean, you can't force it. Like when I went out with GVH to a couple of local appointments that you guys saw on that little vlog video or whatever. The first one, we thought the person was home, but we couldn't get them to the door. The second person we sold them. So it's just, that's a quantity play. Like if an agent is, that's the only thing they're thinking about if they're really worried about that, then they don't have enough appointments. Yeah, you want to get them to the door, but you can't make them come to the door. Yeah, I can try a lot of different ways. Call text, door knock on two separate occasions, leave and drive back by. Like, yeah, there's some old school methods, but don't mean you're, you're guaranteed success to get in. That's 17 year old we were talking about earlier. His name is Louise. Louise. He wants to know, is it possible for him to go take the final exam at that at 17? I think you have to be 18 to take your test. You can start studying though for when you are 18. You can also move to Springfield, Missouri and hang out with us and get to know the business a little bit. But I believe that you have to be 18 to take it, but you can, you can at least start to study and prepare and make cold calls and be an intern. And Joshua wants to know, how many appointments do I need to have to do, to be able to do this part time and make 3k a week? 3k a week part time. I don't know too many people doing that, but, but if I had to pick, if I had to choose, I had to pull a Cody on my, on Cody, I would say you need to, you need to run, you need to run eight. You need to run eight. You need to sit with eight. If you probably say to set 12, sit with eight, sell four. If your math is better and you're closing more than fantastic, but in average scenario, 12, 8, 4, an average of about 60, 70 bucks a month of premium, you're going to, you're going to do about 33 to 3600 in premium. So 12, 8, 4, worst case scenario, you should be getting three grand a week out of that, of premium for sure. That's a good one. I like the numbers questions. I love breaking that. I like that. That's the exciting question. I think you should stop being part time and fix that, but. Brian Francis wants to know, he's, he wants to start doing Facebook live for marketing. And do you have any tips on how to start that? Open your phone and click live video and then start.  I mean, I literally will pull it out all the time. I'll put it up, you know, eye level and I'll turn it horizontal and I'll, you know, I'll talk to people, you know?  Who am I addressing and how am I going to help them? When I first started doing videos three years, three and three years and a month and a half ago, I was December 20th, 2015. I was putting up videos like, Hey, I made a grand this week and here's how I did it. And if you're just real and transparent, people will like start to relate to you. You'll be, you'll be more relatable, but just be honest. Like, you got to start somewhere. You'll probably be awful on video. I was awful on video. 2000 videos later, you know, you begin to get a little better at it. And so it takes time, repetition, just like it being an insurance agent. I mean, you're not going to be the greatest insurance agent in the world day one. You're not going to be the greatest at marketing and videos day one, but a year down the road, you'll be happy. You actually picked up the phone and got started. So I love that. That's a really, really cool question. I think that's it. That is it man. Oh, 25 minutes. That's pretty good. Tate has his ticket to 8% nation as well. I love it. We just released Michael Irvin just released Michael Irvin on Monday, right guys? On Monday, Hall of Fame wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, AKA Playmaker. Michael Irvin will be speaking at 8%. We got a special deal for you guys for Michael Irvin being a part of the event. GA is normally 500 bucks. VIP is normally 1250. And it's like 288, right? Dude, thank Michael because if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be doing this. He asked us to do that, I guess. Aprilnation.com to get your seat. Come hang out with us at the Statler five star hotel in Dallas, Texas. Grand Ballroom. There'll be about 1100 insurance agents there in the room trying to become better at their craft, trying to be one of those six or seven figure or eight figure earners in the insurance business. It's all about learning the specific techniques, the specific training, the specific things that you need to know for you to be successful. And if you aren't, if you think that you can be more successful and that you have more potential than this conference is for you, if you've maxed yourself out, then it's not for you. Don't attend. But if you think you've got a little more in the tank, you think you can go a little farther, you think you can be a little better, think you can make a little more money, think you can help a lot more people, then Aprilnation is exactly for you. If you or your company wants to be a sponsor or vendor or speaker at the event, let me know. Make sure they shoot an email to events at Aprilnation.com to make sure that we talk to them about getting you involved. I want you guys there. Like I want you at this event. I want to be hanging out with you no matter what it takes. I'll get you there. Anything else? But what Michael Irvin do, man? One last question. He would freaking be passionate. I know that. What's the process for selling over the phone versus in person? Yeah, it's, most people think I can sell over the phone because it's just easier. Most people jump to the point too soon. Like I don't even give quotes in the first 40 minutes of being on the phone. It's a relationship process. It's a value process. You've got to be good at relating to people. People have to feel like they can trust you. You've got to get to know them. Like I love selling over the phone. I'm as fairly good at it. And most people struggle with it. But it's, you know what? I did too when I first started it. It took time. 100,000 calls later. You'll figure it out. So just start. Just try to be good at it. Just pick it up. Try it. When you fail, listen to your recording. Realize why you weren't any good at it and then do it again. And then eventually, you'll be great at it. You just will. You're just part of it. I love that though. I mean, we've got a whole coaching program, don't we? Bailey at Kodiaskins.com called the Elite Package. It's like 97 a month. And it's all about telecells. We've got like four different coaching programs from a grand a month to only 37 bucks a month. A lot of different stuff. Focus, focus to help you guys. Most people don't even know about all the stuff that we have to offer. We're coming out with new stuff. We're revamping old stuff. I'm about to meet with Matt about 8% and sponsors and vendors and tickets. We're almost sold out of all three front rows. Premier front row, GA front row and VIP front row. If you don't have your seat yet and you want to be front row in any section, you have to buy it this week. We always have a lot of fun with you guys, man. 29 minutes and counting, rocking and rolling. Be sure to be on the lookout for karaoke Thursdays with Matt and Bailey coming soon. And then dancing with Dylan and Duke are next on next Tuesday. That's actually got a better ring than that. That's got that alliteration in there. That's right. That's got the alliteration rolling. I like it. You guys are amazing. Make sure you share this thing out. Let an insurance agent know about us. Make sure that they are aware that somebody does content daily to help insurance agents succeed.  About 92% of insurance agents fail. Yes, I said it right. About 92% of insurance agents fail.  It's horrible. It's way too big. And you and I, guess what? We're going to change that together. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching. Thanks for the questions. Any other questions before we rock it out? All right. Thanks for watching. You guys have an incredible night. Awesome rest of your week. We'll see you Friday for 8% club.


There's so much fear around trans people.  Yes, and a lot of people are afraid of it, but they're more afraid of being penalized for discussing it wrong. They're afraid of saying it wrong. They're afraid of saying the wrong. I didn't say cisgender. I'll never say cisgender. It's a made up thing. So it's the same length as transgender cisgender, and it's like you're losing people by doing that. People who are otherwise reasonable. Yes, would are inclined to agree with you, and then they go, well, come talk to us about it.  It is, and it's not effective, and it's also bullshit. It's the least persuasive movement I can think of. Yeah, because it's built on, look, a lot of trans women have been beaten and killed.  So I understand wanting to be treated with respect and wanting the same rights, but when it comes down to, if you think some trucker in Ohio is gonna call himself a cisgender male, all he's gonna do is resent you for expecting you to tell him to how identify himself now. Right, and it's brand new. It's brand new. Couldn't do metric. Yeah, we couldn't do metric.  It's like, I have sisters who I still call by their maiden name. I don't know. And I don't think it makes, we just like what we like and the synapses are what they are. So yeah, the fact that they, I'm glad you're doing that, because it, yeah, of course, I literally respect everybody who, but I don't, this thing of like, dictating the terms is just like, dude, this is a bad policy. It doesn't, and it does, it just doesn't work.   I'm not going down that rabbit hole. I'm not afraid of saying it wrong.  And maybe other groups do this as well. I don't think it's just trans people, but it's where here's the ideology. And if you disagree with one point in the handbook, you're an enemy. You're not an ally. You're an enemy. You're immoral.   Yes. That's another part where, where a lot of groups have gone wrong.  People are sick. It's boring to be scolded. It's not effective. You're not breaking me by scolding me. I'm not gonna cower and go, you're right, I'm sorry. And a lot of people aren't. And the pushback against it, I thought the Bud Light pushback was silly. You care who's on a beer can is silly. It was fake. I don't care who's on a beverage that I enjoy. Right. You know, I'm happy for Shane that he got it. Good for Shane. But the idea of people getting mad, even if you say, hey, I don't like Dylan Mulvaney, because they recast it with Shane. Yeah. Yeah. And Shane is probably a better guy to do it. He's more like Bud Light's brand. He, yes, they never should have not had Shane. But the fact that they people got so mad saying they're force feeding us ideology, it's like, no, they're also just advertising to a new group of people.  Yes. I'd love Diet Coke.  Who's associated with Diet Coke? Bill Clinton. Good for Bill Clinton. God bless, I wouldn't care. Epstein, it doesn't matter to me who drinks Diet Coke and who's pictures on the can. I have zero attachment to it. Diet Coke's job is to do one thing, make the beverage I like. And if they don't, I stop. Mark has a joke about Budweiser, it's like. Budweiser got greedy. They just, they sacrificed their core demo to make .0001% more money. They were in a board meeting like, OK, OK, OK. How do we, how do we, how do we make more money? How do we sell more Bud Light? OK, women don't drink Bud Light. But trans women used to be dudes, so. Maybe we can get them to drink Bud Light. That's an on-time demo. How much of a market do you need? Right. It's just greed.  Yeah, I mean, but I don't mind them, I don't mind them reaching out to. No, I don't either. But it's like, I don't know, some, you have to get every single market or. Yeah. How many people do you need to drink your product? Yeah. Hey, did you like that? Did you like that? Yeah, did you like it though? You want more? Don't want to work? Would rather watch videos of me grab acid with people?  This is like when the weatherman says there's a high pressure system coming in below. I'm not really used to the green screen.


Cave paintings and petroglyphs are undoubtedly some of the oldest and most interesting artworks found anywhere on Earth. Some of these artworks, found within the unforgiving terrain of the Great Outback within Australia, for example, have been dated at well over 10,000 years old. Illustrations in ochre that show many of the animals are distant ancestors loved or hunted along with many other forms of artistic recreation, like a time capsule allowing us to travel back to peek into the minds of ancient man. Although these ancient artworks are undoubtedly important to our understanding of ancient man, there exists a number of other petroglyphs that are considerably different to these primitive achievements. Found within the White Mountain of Wyoming, there are a number of petroglyphic carvings that were seemingly made with nothing else than our ancestors' hands. These deep-set handprints were somehow left within solid sandstone, as if created by softening the rocks with their minds, hands, or perhaps voices alone. How did an ancient people manage to create these mocks? Would our ancient ancestors somehow figure out how to soften stone? There are many sites all around the world which possess similarly enigmatic marks. Were they left by individuals capable of softening stone, or perhaps left upon the stones while not fully formed? To melt or soften stone requires immense heat, that which is usually only found within the center of the Earth, or indeed the lava flows which spew forth from its core. One interesting theory regarding the possible softening of stones, created far back within antiquity, was initially discovered still been surviving within the minds of locals who surround the ancient sites of Peru, most notably, Saxe Huaman. A theory put forth to explain the shaping of stones within the fortress, regarded as a local legend by the first explorers of these sites. Percy Fawcett, as well as Hiram Bingham, who actually rediscovered Machu Picchu, noted that it was a liquid derived from plants which was apparently known to the ancients to turn stone soft. In fact, in 1983, a Catholic priest attested to using the technique, actually achieving the softening of solid stones, although he was apparently unable to return the resulting flurry back to solid stone. Furthermore, according to other researchers, Jan Peter de Jong, Christopher Jordan, and Haces Gamera, among others, ancient walls within Cusco show evidence that ancient cultures used very high temperatures to shape them. This unknown process vitrified the surface of the blocks, turning them to glass. Based on these observations, Jong, Jordan, and Gamera speculated that ancient man possessed an advanced device which somehow allowed them to melt stone blocks. And although the petroglyphs of the white mountains are yet to be fully studied by anyone, we feel they are probably the strongest piece of evidence of this lost process. Hi guys, have you ever heard of Dendera Temple? Known as the sixth gnome of Upper Egypt, it is one of the best preserved ancient temple complexes on earth, and it bears the scars of what must have been the most frightening and destructive of events. An event that is ignored by the majority of modern academia. The complex spans some 40,000 square feet, and within the temple is some of the most well preserved ancient artworks of anywhere in Egypt. Along with preserving the exquisite art and decorations, the temple also preserved evidence of something we were not taught about in history class. One of the granite steps which still lead to the temple's roof, in direct alignment with a small window cut into the thick stone wall, is evidence of severe melting. At one time in the temple's long life, the steps within were turned into liquid magma. What catastrophic event could lead to the melting of granite steps through a small window in the wall? Were such events commonplace, or was it the result of an accident? Is this why the ancient structures were built with such huge blocks of stone? Many have speculated that the Dendora Temple is built upon an even older site. Are the steps surviving remnants of this much earlier complex? Were they part of a structure that once witnessed a solar flare, perhaps? Or maybe a localized supernova? Many who have examined the steps and the surrounding area have speculated that nuclear blasts may have been detonated within ancient Egypt, or even before. The ancient site in India for example, 10 miles west of Jodhpur, with radiation that was so intense, the area is still highly dangerous. An ancient layer of radioactive ash was discovered that covers a 3 square mile area. Scientists investigating the site where a housing development was being built established that there was a very high rate of illnesses in the area. The levels of radiation were so high the Indian government eventually cordoned off the entire area. They later unearthed an ancient city which shows strong evidence of an atomic blast dating back some 12,000 years, which destroyed most of the buildings and killed an estimated half a million people. Did nuclear war occur in our distant past? Were these ancient structures which have stood the test of time actually built as bunkers? With melted steps and irradiated ancient cities found throughout the world, the evidence is certainly compelling. As always, thanks for watching guys, until next time, take care. Rambo Machai is an ancient site located within Peru that, like so many others within this remarkable landscape, clearly demonstrates a level of sophistication within its stonework, unquestionably far out of the reaches of those who are academically claimed to have been the builders of these remarkable sites. It is a site that not only possesses the same mind-boggling methods of polygonal masonry as that of Machu Picchu and Saxe Huaman among many others, but also exhibits an excellent example of the levels of refinement that also went into the building of the irrigation systems throughout the area, systems that, although unimaginably old, still functioned perfectly to this day. Furthermore, and perhaps most intriguing regarding this area, even eclipsing these astonishing feats of ancient engineering, is an area in particular which exhibits some of the most perplexing peculiar feature to be found anywhere in ancient Peru. This area of stone is not merely vitrified, but was at some point within the distant past turned to lava. With the limited investigations available, predictably none of which undertaken by funded academics, it has been revealed that this mysterious event did not occur as one would have presumed from a heating from above, but from beneath, or perhaps from within the center of the stonework, successfully melting the stone wall in its entirety into a pool of liquid magma. And although largely overlooked by tourists and indeed academics alike, the evidence of the stone having once turned to liquid is undeniable. The question then, what turned this stone to liquid? Was it some form of weapon? Or perhaps is this evidence to suggest how polygonal walls were once built? Perhaps these as yet unexplained polygonal walls were constructed with such precision due to a past ability of its builders able to melt and shape these stones prior to placement. Or perhaps, could this melted stone be evidence of a war? One that occurred between the inhabitants of these ancient ruins and an unknown entity, ultimately resulting in their demise. Perhaps being the reason why these highly advanced, highly capable ancient people from these civilizations not only mysteriously disappeared but left many a quarry amid ancient stonework seemingly abandoned, left where we find them today. In another area of the world, far away from Peru, there also exists compelling evidence of such a war, having actually once taken place with a possible entity from above. Irrelay, this site is claimed as the remnants of a battle with God, specifically surrounding the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sulphur balls embedded among the landscape at this specific site is undoubtedly compelling evidence to support these accounts of war, a holy war undertaken at this specific location that regardless of holy scripture, was fought with a foe of considerable ability.  The sulfur found at these sites has also, intriguingly, been tested from 93% to as high as 98% pure sulfur, with trace metals such as magnesium found within that would have produced astounding heat easily capable of melting stainless steel and indeed the stones within Peru. Furthermore, the brimstone found is significantly different to sulfur found elsewhere, almost as if this brimstone was specifically designed. For example, sulfur from within natural geothermal regions is yellow in crystal form. In the past, we have covered many ancient anomalies, out-of-place artifacts, and unexplainable features, all hinting at an ancient high technology which ancient man once possessed. An ability to create tremendous heat, and thus advanced metallurgy, and in some cases, seemingly turning stone to magma, a knowledge and technology which at some point within history became lost.  Discovered in 2019 on Melbourne Beach off the coast of Florida, a total of 7 artifacts, including the ancient Peruvian death mask, were found. After detailed analysis, the composition of metals used in the manufacture of the artifacts have baffled scientists. Created using copper, gold, and silver, yet what stunned those investigating the items was the presence of iridium. Not only is iridium incredibly rare on earth, with most found within meteorites, but its melting point is also yet another mystery. For as how the Inca apparently created them, if indeed the Inca were responsible in the first place is yet to be explained. Dated at over 12,000 years ago, some of the artifacts clearly depict known Incan gods, one of which being Veracacha. Whether these beliefs were merely adopted, like the many unexplainable ruins we regularly cover, and claim were merely re-inhabited, is unknown. But what we do know is that the melting point of iridium, 2,446 degrees celsius, thus any artifact dated to these tremendous ages, yet created with such tremendous temperatures, furnaces and metallurgies claimed as undiscovered during or prior to their claimed eras or ages of construction, mean that they simply shouldn't exist, yet they do. The question is how. How did the Inca acquire such rare elements? How did they manage to accomplish such temperatures and work the metals at such an early age within known history? We find their possible true origins highly compelling.