What's up everybody? Welcome back to another interview on the Zero to Diamond show. I'm Ricky Carruth. Good to have you. Today we have a special guest, John Siebre. He's the CEO of Missouri Realtors. What's up John? Hey Ricky, it's great to be with you today. Absolutely man. So where is the Missouri Realtors office at Missouri? I'm in the Heartland. I am in the very center of the state of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. I also have an office in Jefferson City, just outside the Capitol building for all the advocacy work, but we're right here in the middle, exactly halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. That's not really the middle John. You know the middle is Marshall, Missouri. You know that's true. That is the middle of the state. The reason I know that's because I went to Missouri Valley College for a semester. Did you? Wow, that's awesome. I had a football scholarship from Foley, Alabama High School to Missouri Valley and I went up there for a semester and it was like an 18 hour drive there and back and I was 18 years old. I came back for Thanksgiving. I went back for finals. I came back for Christmas and I didn't go back after New Year's. Well, I know that drive because I moved here from Tallahassee, Florida. Yeah, so I basically did that exact drive. Yeah, so yeah, that's the middle of the state, but we did go to Columbia. It's Columbia, right? Yes, Columbia. Yeah, we went there because that's where that's where Mizzou is, right? Mizzou's here. The world revolves around it. Yeah, we went to down there and partied at Mizzou and then we played. There was a football. There was somewhere, another team somewhere down there. We went down there and played. But anyway, man, so John reached out to me. He wanted to come on and just kind of chat, share with you guys. He is the CEO of Missouri Realtors, which serves over 20,000 real estate agents up there in Missouri. So it's going to be really interesting to get your perspective on a lot of things going on with the industry right now. Sure. Yeah, I'm glad to do it. So tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe a three-minute Cliff Notes version of kind of how you got to be where you're at. Sure. I grew up in Kentucky and right after college moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the U.S. House of Representatives, and it was during the savings and loan crisis, which all of our members who've been in the business for a while certainly know about. And the Realtors were lobbying us. And after only two years on Capitol Hill, the National Association of Realtors offered me a job to come work for them as a lobbyist. And I did that for 13 years. During that time, I handled Alabama, among other states, working with the congressional delegations. And then after those 13 years, Florida Realtors came to me and said, we want you to come run our lobbying operation. So for 11 years, I was in Tallahassee running the statewide Realtor Association lobbying operation. And then just four and a half years ago, Missouri Realtors came calling saying, we've got an opening for our CEO. We love your experience. We think it's time you hang up the lobbying cape and start being a statewide CEO. So I've been in Missouri now almost five years. Right. Okay. So as the CEO of the Missouri Realtors, you represent the National Association of Realtors in Missouri? Or how does that work? Well, I represent we're a separate entity. So when you as a Realtor join the association, you join at the local level, they keep their dues, send the balance to the state, we keep our portion and send the balance to national. So you're a member of all three. But we at the state association handle only state issues. We help our locals a lot. We have over 30 local boards of Realtors. In fact, I've met with them the last two days at a workshop down at Lake of the Ozarks. And we try to do everything we can to supplement the work that the local association is doing. But I would say at the state association, we're probably best known for the advocacy work that we do at the Capitol. But we also have a legal line that every Realtor in the state of Missouri can call when they've got issue, you know, the deal going sideways. So we get, you know, thousands of legal line calls, we have three attorneys handling those and so many other things as well, networking opportunities for our members, education classes and that kind of thing. Okay, man. So look, I want to dive into some issues here. I would love to dive into some some really good questions. I don't know how comfortable it will or won't be, but I want to dive into some of these issues that I'm hearing from other agents through my network. You know, just to kind of get your take on different things, right? I want to talk about the Amazon thing, kind of get your take there. I want to talk about DNC, right?  But there's a lot of agents sitting here saying, okay, you got these companies that are trying to take over the industry, you got Zillow, you got, you know, all these different entities out there saying that they're not trying to replace agents, but on the back side, you know that if they saw an opportunity or some way they could do it, you know, they do it in a heartbeat. A lot of agents think that our association kind of sold us out kind of deal through giving that data, giving that MLS data to these companies. What are your thoughts there? How do you feel about it? You know, there are a couple of things. One, the first thing that I hear is that before you even sold the data, you sold realtor.com basically. Yeah. That NAR doesn't own realtor.com. So first of all, NAR does own the URL realtor.com. They just have an agreement with Move to run it. And I think from the work that I've been doing and things that I've been seeing, realtor.com has definitely had a wake-up call. And, you know, the Zillows of the world came along and realtor.com would probably admit they were asleep at the wheel. So there's that. But I think it's our individual members that have chosen to give their data away. It certainly isn't the association. Now MLSs that our members are on the boards of have made the determination how they're going to handle their data feeds. But then we've got realtors that pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to Zillow and then complain to us. So I don't know. There is a disconnect there. I think the realtor has to determine, you know, where is your bread buttered? And if you have issues, you need to take it up with your MLS. But I think your colleagues, your volunteer colleagues chose at some point to give that data away. And, you know, it's tough when that genie's out of the bottle. Yeah. What do you mean they chose to give it away? The MLS has agreements with Zillow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not us as agents. No, not us, you know, the board. Yeah. Well, the MLS, which is separate from the board in most Yeah. Well, like like our like our Baldwin County Association of realtors, you know, the board of realtors in Baldwin County, they run the MLS. So it's not, I guess it's two different things, but it's ran by the same group or power. In most instances, they have separate board of directors, a separate corporation. I've seen a few here in Missouri where it may be a committee of the board, but that's pretty unusual these days. What we see more are large regional MLSs. And I think that's driven by brokers who are tired of being members of seven MLSs and five boards of realtors. They say, come on, we're always going to be passed up if we don't, you know, get with the program and start working in a smarter way. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm the king of free and given out information. You know, I'm the first completely free coach. I got the fastest growing coaching program out there. And the way I see it is, is that, you know, we've given, we're given, you know, the Zillows of the world the data to put in front of the customers. Now Zillow has the attention. Let's just say call it, let's Zillow is all the Zillows out there. You know, they've got all the in consumers attention, all the eyeballs, they're getting millions of views a day on their website. To me, so far up to this point, it's done nothing but help us as agents because now the consumer, the customers, our clients, our prospects are more informed. They're more educated on these properties, on closed sales, what's out there. They know what it looks like. And they literally come to me and say, I want to see this, this and this.  It takes a lot of the work out of it for me, but they still need an agent to guide them through that negotiation process, the contract, the inspection, the, all the little odds and ends, the delicate parts of the, of the deal. And my commission hasn't come down at all. Yeah. I was getting five or six when I started, I'm getting five or six now. Will it change? Who knows? Nobody knows the future. You know, there's a lot of people out there trying to say they know what's going to happen. You know, oh, Amazon's going to take over and they're going to unlock the door for a buyer and let a buyer walk through a seller's house. Seller's going to watch the showing on their mobile phone and agents aren't going to be needed anymore. But see the thing is, is no one knows if that's going to happen. You know, like the people are saying, we know that's going to happen. No, you don't know that's going to happen because if it were me and I'm a seller, I'm not going to let any just buyer off the street walk into my house and look at, look at my house while I'm not there watching him from a phone. I mean, if I'm watching him from a phone and I'll watch him still something or hit something or kick my dog or drink some milk out of the refrigerator, I'm still going to be just as mad. You know, so I think people that try to predict and say they know what's going to happen, you know, I think that's where those those kind of people kind of they're putting themselves in a situation up to now. Nothing has changed. It's only gotten better. And I think it's just going to continue to get better. If you ask me, you know, I love that way of thinking. And we started something called the emerging issues forum at our business conferences. We have three business conferences a year. And we started it in January. And in advance of that, I, we surveyed our members who were coming to the conference and said, what keeps you up at night? We're going to deal with these issues. So we had Zillow at our January business conference on stage, taking the tough questions, because we can choose to stick our head in the sand and ignore this and just believe what we're told, or we can ask them to their face and try to get the right answers. So we didn't have them at our April business conference, but they're coming back for our September business conference. And we have realtor.com on the stage with them. Zillow is there. And we're, we're asking the tough questions. And our members can ask them directly, you know, do you want my business? And they, they tend to get a better answer when it's coming straight from Zillow than what we assume Zillow would say. So do you remember back when that happened and Zillow was there on stage and all that stuff? Do you remember what the best or the most controversial or the, the most interesting question and answer was? Oh my goodness. You know, I think at the time there was talk out West, and I don't know if you have the instant offers and things happening in your market. And we don't have a lot of that here either. It was more like test markets, Arizona and that kind of thing. And members were reading about it and getting really nervous. So there were a lot of questions about that at the time. But, you know, realtor Zillow did not shy away from any questions at all. They were, they were happy to answer anything. And you know, I'm sure they'll be the same this time around.  I think the biggest play out there right now for those companies, I think the biggest play what everybody's really fighting for is the data.  Well, what do you think about this? I mean, you know, no, you don't know a lot about it. We really, we don't know a lot about the Amazon realty deal to be honest with you. We don't know what we really don't know. And you guys comment below if you think you know, or if you've heard or if there's a rumor. But we don't really know what the financial deal is between Amazon and realty, right? We don't. In fact, I just yesterday, as a matter of fact, talked to the director of the division of real estate here in Missouri to get his initial comments on it. And he said, obviously, I've read about it like you. But until we see how they act, how they do a deal, you know, we need to know, is there a real estate agent involved? Are there inducements? Is someone doing unlicensed practicing unlicensed activity? You know, those are all things we have to find out. And so his feeling was we see what the first couple of transactions look like if there are some in Missouri or somewhere else, and then go from there put their attorneys on it to figure out how different is this, then what should be happening? Or is it just fine? Is it a new business model that works? Is there are they opening up in Missouri? No, we don't think so. Yeah. But we would probably see what they've done in another market first. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see. I'm just kind of sitting back and want to just watch it. It's like a reality show to me to watch all these companies try to do their thing. You know, Red Finn, Purple Bricks just left the U.S. It's just interesting. And then Red Finn partnered with Open Door and their iBuyer business. And a lot of things happening. And I feel like these companies are kind of squirming around because they got all this venture capital and they went towards this one idea. And they're finding out that, wait a minute, what's happening is they have way more expenses than a normal brokerage because they're paying people by the hour. And then their income is way less because they're charging such less fees.   And so that's what I'm seeing out there. There's so much liability. There's so much work. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, I don't know. I mean, who's going to take on liability and work by the hour handling these delicate real estate transactions? Yeah, you've got to be in it full. You've got to jump in with both feet really to do it right. I know the people watching are probably tired of the part-time agent or the person that isn't in it for the long haul because that's where you see a lot of problems. What's that now? If something you said made me think about, the person who knows the transaction best is someone who does this every day. Not someone who gets paid by the hour to do this or that or someone who's in the business part-time. Yeah, yeah. And keep up with changing rules and regulations and all of that if you're not in it full-time. To me, this is why real estate agents will always be needed because the market changes so fast. I mean, just like prices change so fast. And then when you add the layer of rules and regulations and ethics and everything else, there's so much involved that's changing every day, every month, every year. And to even add another layer to that, it's like if I'm one of the top agents where I am, but if I go an hour away from here, I'm oblivious to the market. And so I would need an agent to help me through a transaction an hour away to make sure I'm doing this right and the paperwork's going to be different and the price, what's the price and what's the trend? And there's just so many variables that if, I mean, even me, as I've been in the business for 17 years, if I go two hours away, man, I'm lost.  And I mean, it's got to be one of the most scariest things, you know, the most stressful, one of the most stressful situations you could be in. And that's what they need us for to take that stress off of them, handle the deal, we're professional, you know, get on the best situation, make it go smooth. And, you know, I think that's just, I don't, I don't see a path where agents will not be needed. You know, you know, I totally agree with you. And in almost every state, I'm assuming Alabama is the same. There are almost twice as many real estate licensees in the state as there are real tours. And the way I've always looked at that is the real tour is someone who really is in it more full time. This is their livelihood. They're following every new thing that's happening, keeping up with the market. They know their market where that real estate licensee maybe, you know, got their license on the side, but they're not really practicing. But when a friend needs a place or when they want to sell their own, maybe they use it. But, you know, they can't really know the market that well. So you're telling me, and this is in Missouri? This is in every state. When I was in Florida, there were twice as many licensees as there were real tours, licensees with the state of Florida. The same was true when I got here. We have 23,000 real tours, but there are 47,000 real estate licensees licensed by the state. So, so just for everybody watching the licensee, they're not, they're not part of the board of real tours. They're not part of that association and they don't have MLS access, correct? That's correct. Okay. And so they're working for one of these boutique companies more than likely. And they're just kind of floating in the wind. They don't really have access to the information. But I guess in today's world, hey, they can just go on Zillow and find out what's for sale and what's going on. I would argue from a residential perspective, that person probably isn't selling more than a couple of things a year, if that. And maybe they have it more as a hobby for themselves. The difference would be a commercial practitioner. A lot of times commercial real estate agents don't feel like they need to be a member of a local board because it's just their, their deals are different. And so it depends on where they are, unless they can be a member of a commercial overlay board, for example, or some other commercial specific board. In many instances, they won't be a real tour. Mm-hmm. That's just crazy. I mean, but that's kind of, that kind of goes along with the role, you know, there's probably, would you say the role of, you know, 10% of the agents is probably doing a bulk of the business? Oh, I would say so, definitely. Yes. What do you think the number really is? Is it high percent or 15%? I would say 10% is probably pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then do you think the statistic that always gets thrown out there about 87% of agents fail in the first five years is still a pretty solid number? I do. In fact, this isn't as scientific, but we just did an all member survey. And it was a benchmark survey to one that was done five years ago, right before I got here. And 50% more than 50% of the people that did the survey were not in the business five years ago. So it's a, it's a new brand new crop of agents that are new to real estate and new to the association getting involved. And the beauty of that for me is they have very different needs. And so I like to look at what does a new agent starting out today need from their association? If we're the association of your grandparents era, we're probably not meeting your needs today, which is why I focus on emerging issues and things that are really going to help that real tour be successful in their business and be more professional. So, so as the CEO of the, of the Missouri real tours, what is it that you do to provide that to the agents? Is it just events they come to and listen to speakers talk or is there more involved? Is there online courses they can take? Is there, do you guys offer, you know, CRMs and different, you know, training on how to create sales and stuff? Or what exactly do you guys offer?  And, you know, we obviously have lots of networking events where they can come in person, speakers. We want to get people to our conferences. So we give scholarships for those who've never attended our conference to pay for their hotel rooms and things get, get there and see what you're missing. But we do other things as well. I think I've been a little different than others. And I learned this when I was not far from you, when I was in Tallahassee, when I got there, I've told this story before, but Jeb Bush was the governor of Florida when I got there from Washington. And he had been a commercial realtor in Miami, had to give up his realtor membership to be governor. And he said to me, the first thing he said was the realtors need to be more engaged in economic development, because I make these trade missions to sell our state. Every governor does it. Your governor's doing it as well. Maybe it's because you've got great automotive industry manufacturing and they go to auto shows and they do these things to promote the state. He said, we need realtors on these trade missions because no economic deal happens without a real estate component. And he said, I'm going to Germany. I've been there before and there'll be executives wanting to sell their widgets or have someone produce their widgets or come back and sell their widgets and figure out how to produce them. And he said there's never anybody with a real estate background that can talk about quality of life for those workers and executives, cost of living or something as basic as how much per square foot is the facility out by the airport or the one that has rail access. And he really got me engaged on that. And I went to Germany with him and it was successful. So I went on every other trade mission Jeb Bush ever took and the governor after him and the governor after him. So I get to Missouri and I think they don't think that way. They're not looking big picture at the role our members can play in economic development. Because if you are a realtor, focus on jobs, get involved with your chamber or whoever else is doing these things. And if you're not, if you're seen as someone other than the person looking for a commission on a deal, but you're seen as the person that is looking to make your community better by creating more jobs, the real estate sales will follow. And that's what I've seen. I was just in France twice already this year. I was with the governor on his trade mission to the Paris air show because Missouri has over 100 aeronautics manufacturing companies and an amazing aeronautics history. And so that made sense for him to go. But I was there with them to talk to these companies about the real estate component. And I think that's something that's missing sometimes. We don't think big picture enough at the role we can play, whether it's a small community or a big region or statewide. But as realtors, there's a role to be played there. That is so interesting, man. I never really thought about it like that, how real estate is really and even the real estate agents as a community could play such a huge role in economics of I mean, I've seen it. I've noticed it, you know, on a surface level, but this is going deeper. This is so deep. Yes. Yeah, this is think this is thinking so much bigger than I've ever really even thought about the role real estate agents play in all this all the way down to jobs. And, you know, I mean, that's I go to the south of France every March to what's called MIPM. It's the largest commercial real estate expo in Europe. I don't go there with a portfolio of properties that are for sale in Missouri. I go there looking at it as an economic development opportunity, looking for investors to come to Missouri. And we've been incredibly successful. We take our state economic development agency staff with us. We pay for them to go. And if someone walks up to us and they see a Missouri booth and, you know, maybe they know St. Louis or they know Kansas City or Branson because they vacationed there or Lake of the Ozarks, we've got pictures on our booth and it draws them in. And whether they're healthcare or aeronautics or automotive or plant sciences, we've got an expert there that can talk about that and it's bringing business to our state. And so when a realtor questions, why would you go to the south of France? That sounds like a junket and a vacation. We're bringing back hundreds of jobs every time. That is amazing, man. And then when you think about the ripple effect through the economy of creating those jobs, not only the commercial space, the least space, the residences that are going to come from that, from high paying jobs. It's really, it's a great story. That gives me chills, man, thinking about that. So let's switch gears a little bit here. Let's talk about, I want to talk about what you think from where you are, looking at the industry as a whole. What do you think are, why do you think so many agents fail? What do you think the problem is and what do you think that we can do to remedy it? Or is it just the way it is? And this business is just set up where only a small fraction of people are willing to do what it takes to make it happen.  Maybe you meet them at the softball field or a church or somewhere and they think what you do is probably easy, maybe because you make it look easy.  And I think they're, they don't realize just what a commitment it is and most people have never lived on commissions. You know, they've had a paycheck so they could, they could get by. But you really have to be, you know, you have to be willing to do what it takes and knock on doors and, you know, go back to basics and figure out how you're going to be successful. And, you know, usually when I'm working with realtors, they're beyond that stage. By the time they meet the state CEO, they've been a little more involved and I'm trying to get them to maybe go to the next level and maybe be an advocacy superhero with state legislators or something.  You know, real estate has it all. We've got people from every, every different. I've interviewed NFL, I've interviewed X NFL players, you know, movie stars, you know, people from all kinds of walks of life. So I will say to them, what made you a successful teacher? How did you stand out as a teacher? How did you stand out as a fill in the blank? Use what made you special there and apply that to real estate. There's a place for it. Maybe you were in communications and you write the best newsletters. Don't just write one for you, but volunteer to do that for your local board because then you become a resource and you find new ways to, you know, meet new people and increase your sphere of influence or better yet to increase your business, use that skill with that softball team or that other community thing. What made you successful before then you become indispensable to that group at church or softball or school and then they look to you as their realtor. I just did a video. It's coming out in a week or two about networking with other agents and how important it is because that's something we kind of overlook. We're so focused on the clients, the prospects trying to get the listings, find the buyers, so on and so forth. And a lot of times we kind of overlook the fact that some of our best relationships, best business relationships are with the other agents in our community who are selling our listings and representing the seller, you know, against our buyers and that we work with on a daily basis. And a lot of times we don't put enough energy into those relationships. So I like what you're saying about if you're really good at writing letters, you know, write letters for some of the people at the board or other agents or, you know, lend a helping hand and further those relationships and go deeper with all that. I like that a lot. I'm sorry. I was just going to say it's one of the things that's probably most fascinating to, so I'm a non realtor. I've never been a realtor coming through the National Association of Realtors staff ranks as I did. We were discouraged from being a realtor because we work for you. So I didn't need a congressman using me as their realtor because I was the one giving them a pack check or something. They saw me as their supporter. That would have made me your competitor. So I've never been a realtor. I just help realtors. But to me it would be so fascinating to have someone come to one of our meetings and as an outsider and see these relationships that realtors who are competitors in real life, the relationships that they have, they are best friends at our meetings, closer than the people they work with in the office. A lot of times because they know what each other is going through and they work together to solve problems at the local level and the state level and the national level. I can't imagine another industry that's quite like ours that way. It's truly fascinating to me. It's so unique to have an industry that your closest, toughest competition is literally the person you're working with day in and day out almost. It's so fascinating. I've always thought about how unique real estate is in that manner. And to go back a little bit, like working as an agent with your local board and authorities to help try to put things in place to better the economics and create more jobs and stuff. I just find that so fascinating, man. It keeps going over and over in my head here. The different doors that it could open up. You know, I was on a panel in Washington DC in May and someone asked, how do I go about this? And I said, it's probably the opposite of what you would think. Don't go in there talking about how you can sell real estate. Talk about how you can help them create jobs and be that resource. And again, the real estate will follow. And I had the same experience in Florida when I first started working with the US Department of Commerce on some of these trade missions. They have what's called the commercial service that helps businesses set up meetings overseas. They didn't have any interest in helping realtors because their mindset was, oh, well, that's all those individuals that want to promote themselves. And I said, no, I'm here not as an individual. I'm here representing hundreds of thousands of those individuals and the difference we can make if you work for us. Forget about the picture on the business card. That was their mindset. Think about how we can help you achieve these big goals. And they started thinking differently. Yeah. No, that's incredible. And what you're talking about is personal brand. That's what you're really talking about here, because if you think about what you're doing, you're going into these situations, not talking about real estate, not talking about sales. We're offering to help them for nothing without expecting anything in return. Okay. We're helping them for free, which is my biggest strategy. My biggest strategy for for sale by owners with agents is to go help them for free. Literally go help them put it on flatfee.com to get it on MLS, remarks, pictures, price, give them your entire playbook for nothing. Right. And then the real estate will follow. They'll list it in three weeks. They're tired of trying to sell it on their own. If they sell it, they're going to buy another one. Who are they going to buy with you? It's the same concept. You're using the fact that you're trying to help them create jobs to get their attention to say, hey, this guy wants to help us. He really wants to help us. We like this guy. And the next thing you know, you're doing real estate deals. Sure. It's so incredible how today's world works. Right. You know, one more international thing. When I started working with Germany, the, the realtors there or the real estate licensees there kept every listing close to the vest. We can't have an MLS. We can't share. That's my listing. They're the same way in Manhattan, by the way, in New York City. They, you know, this is my listing. You have to call me to see this listing. Well, once realtors in America figured out the more eyeballs on my listing what you said early on, the more successful I'm going to be, you know, we hit the ground running. But in other places where they have this mindset of that's my listing, I'm the only one that can show it, you know, put it out there, get it, get eyeballs on it and you're going to sell it, but you're also going to get more business. I went to Brazil. I was the keynote speaker at R4 a couple of months ago in May and they have zero MLS. Yes. They don't even have comps. The buyers don't know what, if they're, if this is a good deal or not, the agents that sell the properties won't tell any of the other agents what they sold it for because that's their comp to help their clients. You know, it's a different world down there. So I know exactly what you're talking about. I spent a week down there with them and man, I had no idea. You know, I just had no idea that they, they could be so much more successful and there's agents down there that are very nice people. They understand what I'm saying with this MLS thing and they would more than welcome it, but you have this whole other group that want nothing to do with it. They like it the way it is, but as a country, their real estate industry would boom if they would put an MLS in place and, uh, but you know, there's, there's some states down there. You don't even have to have a real estate license. And so it's like the wild, wild West and everything. But yeah, I know exactly what you mean. And you know, it's a shame because I think that mentality of holding everything close to the chest is kind of like maybe 30 or 40 years behind where we are now, you know, in America. So yes, you know, if they would fast forward and open their mind up to the possibilities of more volume, you know, sure, you won't get the full 6%. You're going to split it with someone, but we're, you're going to do 10 to one, right? You know, which, which means in essence, you helped 10 people. You know, that's why I look at it. We're helping people, you know, and so every deal is another family that you helped or an investor or whatever the case may be. Let's move over, man. I want to, I want to get your thoughts on the DNC. It's such a hot topic. My thing is circle prospecting. You know, I believe in cold calling owners asking them what we can do to help them, not necessarily if they want to sell, you know, the old scripts are, you know, do you want to sell? Have you thought about selling? You've considered selling? Who do you know? And I think all those scripts are designed to figure out what the client can do for the agent. And the clients are running away. The prospects are running away from that language because, you know, they don't even know the agent. The agent, you know, I don't know you, but will you sell your house so I can make a commission? Will you help me by selling your house, basically? And I want to, I'm reversing that. That's the movement I'm creating. I want to reverse that into what we can do as an agent to help the prospect.  Well, I'm not selling my house. And I'm like, good, that's not why I'm calling. You know, I don't want to know what I can't do for you. I want to know what I want to know what I can do for you.  You know, and I just want to help you. If you don't have an agent, I would love to be your agent in the future. I want to stay in touch. Let's do some business down the road. And I'll run into people that want to do deals today. And I'll build my business full of people that want to do deals in the future. So I'm building my business for now and later at the same time. It's an incredible way. It's a way I've built mine all the way up to the top. And but now we've got this DNC thing. And I call the DNC. I know you're probably XNA on the DNC name there, but I call them because I'm there to offer help. I'm not trying to necessarily, I know my business, I'm soliciting so on and so forth, but I'm not asking them to sell their house. I'm asking them what I can do to help them. And if nothing, I'd love to stay in touch with you. And I think I think the people that are on the DNC, they're there because of the robo calls and all the BS calls out there. When you call and you're a human being and you're there and you sound like a friend or family there to help them, it's a whole different ball game. So just give me from your perspective, this DNC thing, there's a lawsuit going on in California. I haven't found anyone who has ever been fine for the DNC. I've scoured the internet. I've asked anybody to please send me anything on anybody getting fine calling DNC and I can't find it. So I would love to hear your thoughts. You know, as a person like everyone else that gets all those robo calls, it is incredibly frustrating. And when I accidentally answer one, like most realtors probably have to answer because it could be a client calling.  So you're already there with all these people. You're just the nice guy that's helping everyone, not talking about real estate all the time, but telling a story about how if they did this little thing to their house, you know, it would increase the value this much and just keep that in mind. If you're ever, you know, just let a morsel slide every now and then, you know, then they're going to be thinking of you. So it's a little different tactic. Maybe just put yourself out there. I think sometimes realtors get so busy. They think, well, I don't have time to volunteer. I don't have time to do this or I don't have time to do that. Well, someone else is volunteering. They are, you know, so think about, you know, if you're, maybe you don't consider it volunteering because you have to be at gymnastics for your daughter, but and don't make it work either, but find this way to make it a neutral ground that people pick up on the fact that, wow, he's a good guy that I want to be in touch with if I need to sell a house. He's not one of those hard sell people that that's all he talks about, you know. So that's more where I think versus what's legally accepted. And, you know, I haven't heard of anyone being fined either. I would love to, you hear about new ways of blocking callers, but I haven't found that those seem to work either.  Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't even block that. I can pretty much tell if it's a spam call and I won't answer, but everyone see they're, they're starting to figure it out because I'll get calls and it'll look like it's a local number like my friend or something. And it's a, it's a automatic, you know, message to somebody trying to sell me some insurance or something. Was your friend's number? Yeah, no, it has. It has. It has. It's like they have somehow figured out who my friend, like it's nuts. I've had like two or three calls where it is my friend's number and it's a robo call trying to get me to buy some insurance or something or healthcare or, you know, a business loan or something like that. And would you really do business with those people? No, not at all. How do they think that's even, you know, it, it has to be a scam. So. I get, I guess somehow it's working or they wouldn't be still doing it. Yeah. I don't know.  I don't know. I don't know. It's crazy. I've never heard of anybody getting sold on one of those. So, I don't know that I helped you on D and C or not, but. That's okay, man. That's okay. No, that was great because you get, you gave us a different, you gave us a different angle there. It's like, okay, you know, here's my take on it.  And so, and I love what you said about low pressure and because that's my entire game. I don't want you to buy or sell something. I just want to know, because to me, they're going to buy or sell at some point. And if I'm the person sitting here saying, look, it doesn't matter to me. I just want to help you, right? Do you need me to come tell you what it's worth? Do you want to go look at some properties? I don't care if you buy, we can just go look. Do you want me to, you know, give you advice on, you know, paint colors or whatever the case may be. I'm just here to help you do those things and whenever you get ready, I'll be glad to help you kind of deal with your mindset of giving things away for free and things. One other thing that's been a pet peeve for me over the years is I have friends all over the country and they're moving to Washington where I was or they're moving to Florida and they call and say, hey, I'm moving so and so. Can you connect me with someone to help? And, you know, maybe they still haven't sold their house back home and they want to rent for the first six months and they call the person that I suggested and that person has no interest helping a renter because that's just a rental. Well, what kind of mindset is that? If you really help this person that needs transitional housing, they're going to buy a big house from you in six months or a year. It's a small investment on your part, but they were totally turned off by your attitude that, sorry, I don't deal with those. My entire tagline is relationships over transactions. Yes. You value the relationship over the transaction in every single situation. We're so transactional, we're just trying to convert, convert, convert and if we would actually listen to people and just help them do what they're trying to do and we create this, when you help someone rent a property, okay? And you make pennies, pennies on that. You just help them with a tough situation. They're never going to forget that as long as you do what you're supposed to do on the back end, which is stay in touch with them forever. You got to have some kind of system in place. I've done a weekly email every Wednesday since 2007, a weekly email every Wednesday, 2007. It's literally the reason why, because I retain so many clients. I retain them because they get the email or if I showed property five years ago, they didn't buy, now they're getting the email, now they're ready to buy. But if I didn't do the email or if I didn't have something on the back end, staying in touch with them, then I wouldn't retain so much business. It doesn't matter if all they want to do is rent. The thing people are missing, John, they may rent, they may never buy, but their mom has a $3 million house they need to sell and they want to know what realtor Susie thinks is the best. Now they're calling Ricky and now you got to deal out of nowhere. Why? Because you're a good person and you put that relationship over the transaction and now you get the $3 million deal. It's basic stuff. Good stuff, man. This has been an incredible interview so far. For me too. I look forward to following you on all the great things you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Watch me on Instagram and here I've got over 600 videos here and I travel the country speaking. I got Dallas, Vegas, Atlanta, DC, and Birmingham for the rest of the year and booking more stuff. So I'd love to come up there to Missouri. Yeah, we'll get you out here. What's out? We'll get you out here. Yeah, I'd love to do that. So just let me know dates and what I can do to help because I'd love to come up there and just spread the relationships over a transaction message and try to help some of those people. There's a comment here. It sounds like those robocalls, I guess they're getting to the elderly people, which is really sad. Yeah, it is sad and that's what I was thinking when I said what I said. I think they capture that one person who answered the phone and was bored and gets sucked in. My grandma is like that. She gets messages or calls and she's just like they called and they said they needed this day and they needed my credit card right then or they're going to cut my password off or something. So this is an interesting question here and you may or may not know the answer to this and this is kind of going back to the Amazon thing because Amazon is giving up to $5,000 worth of fire stick, echoes, painting, moving, stuff like that. And this person asked about the lenders and this is something I was wondering too. What will the lenders say about buyers getting back some kind of high-tech credit from a third party in the transaction because the third party picked their agent for them? Right and whether that is a respa violation. That's what I mean. Yeah, that was one of the things I brought up yesterday to the director of the division of real estate about inducements and unlicensed activity and not meeting respa regulations and you know again I don't know because we haven't seen the first one work yet but it does definitely raise questions to us. It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. Just kind of scroll through the comments to see if there's any more questions or anything. So what would you like to say? What would you like all my viewers? This will probably get a couple thousand views. What would you like them? What can we do for you, John? You know the busy real tour oftentimes doesn't think they have time for their local board or their state association and they think that's left to the people that aren't as busy as them but there are pretty significant decisions being made there such as you know how we started with giving you the data to Zillow. You know if you weren't there at the table you can't really complain a whole lot so I would encourage people to take a little bit of time and maybe it is the thing that you're really good at. Volunteer with your local board. You have a wonderful board there in Baldwin County. They're winning national awards for the things that they're doing so and other boards are doing great things as well but if you have big ideas you know we want to hear them because you pay my salary. The real tours are paying me to do these things for them and if only a handful are taking advantage of this we're all we're all missing out and and I think we all share this desire to see a more professional industry because it's the bad apple that gives us all a bad name and you can help with that at the local board too insist that we enforce the code of ethics and professional standards and no one likes being called before a group of their peers and if a local board is doing it right you know it's a great stick to keep people from being bad actors. What's something right now out there that that you feel needs to change? You know I had a huge conversation on this yesterday coming soon is seen you know in every state can be different the regulations can be different but there's very little instance where coming soon really meets state regulations in Missouri and if you're trying to do what we were saying that the Germans and the South Americans were doing and keep your listing so only you see it is that really good for your client um so I think we need to think more about these types of things that that aren't good for camaraderie among agents you know and especially if it's not good for a client. So basically just so I can clarify for people watching what you're saying is is agents are getting listing signed and then they're putting their listing on comingsoon.com or coming soon or coming soon in their MLS I think there's an I think there's an option in my MLS for coming soon um and so they're and so they're saying it's coming soon because in in in theory the owner is still trying to fix up the property or trying to get it ready or they're trying to do this or that but what you're saying is is you think that that is an avenue for people to abuse the timeframe because isn't the rule that once you once it's listed it has to be an MLS within five days. Every MLS has their own rule summits four. Three or four or five. Five here in Baldwin County but you have so many days to put an MLS and so this is kind of given people an avenue to hold the listing tight to their chest to try to sell it their self or whatever the case may be which isn't good for the seller. No by the way it's not that's not good for the client because if it's not getting exposed correctly um then they could be losing out on possible deals and if the agent's trying to hold it you know and it's not exposed to the entire market then they may not get as high of a price as they would have if it would have been exposed so I see your point. And there is a place where it is the right thing you know like you said we have a signed listing agreement and the seller has said please don't you know you can't show this until Sunday a week from now because we're having new stairs put in and this and that there is a place where it's legal and it works but my concern was that it may be as you said being used in a way that isn't really fair to the system. Yeah yeah it gives us all a bad name so. I like that man well I appreciate your time today and I'm sure everybody got a lot out of this so. Good Ricky. Yeah for sure okay guys we'll see you guys on the next show tomorrow we're doing live calls um I've got an agent up in Montana I believe it is we're going to do live calls right here 4 p.m. central then we're going to have Brandon Glass who is a student of mine that's really crushing it he was on a blog by follow-up boss a couple weeks ago doing incredible things so he's going to come on and and tell us all his secrets and everything so tune in for all that let me know what in the world I can do for you guys and we'll talk to you soon.


What's up guys and welcome back to part seven of Hades Probably I don't know but I guess I'll give you something Surprise hypnos, I got you this Weed don't know what that does, but yeah, I have a thing Let's go with that Nick's is the knight itself. Yeah, she pleases isn't that correct father. Mm-hmm think I asked you get involved in all this business You boy have already dragged this entire household not to mention my full relatives into this mess What you've created would you dare call business? I really dislike Hades is portrayal in this game It's not because he's evil. He's just and it took in this dick Dipshit waiting Nick's do you know anything about a softly-spoken gentle being under the guise of chaos? They approached me recently.  Mm-hmm indeed. I know them. Well They must have taken interest in your quest. I would advise that you beware their offerings Don't know that chaos must a trickster is not a deceiver. I Personally have to like absolutely the fact that they referred to cast as they because chaos is chaos I think chaos has no gender Cousin Very much for his grim work. Let's me continue mine. I trust that one day you shall settle your dispute Are you sure war exists without my dad? We're going with that one. You're good with that Eventually, I will log and fill this up enough that I can use all four I want to see what areas is because I don't know if they all do a different thing Or if they all do like the same thing just with different and I don't totally need it at this point I'm a lot more helpful, you know with more enemies, but they apparently don't stack between chambers These bastards. Oh my god I'm kidding No ordinary weapon prone to fits of savagery quite unbecoming of a well-drained warrior Then watch yourself and throw not caution to the wind. I'll do what I want Well, thank you for the let's go with this.  I know you to me Okay, and my keep The power of the sea Yep, maybe my whip might make you reconsider whatever it is that you are attempting here Me your whips not been all that persuasive in the past. Yep Maybe persistence will pay off for both of us Hey, maybe I can do more to you this time.    I'm gonna die Come here. Well, isn't she one time?  I don't suppose you'll let me have myself a look lots for me to rummage through I'm sure You know I do just about anything to aid you lad But my ability to do so hinges on me sticking to my post though If I do catch wind of anything back there requiring attention you shall know you are not to aid him in these matters nicks His foolishness is to be scorned and reprimanded not indulged We have an understanding He's your own son after all and therefore your responsibility I intern have my commitments to this realm and to this house You have aided me in them. So I remain as ever in your debt. It is not necessary to remind me Surely all those who wants to find my brothers and myself would much prefer a post within my house Overturn to you within the lowest depths of Tartarus Not the darkness there would trouble you say Skelly Don't suppose you'd care to tell me how the infamous twin-fisted Malfon came to be right here in this very courtyard Would you I don't know what that was not any of my business pal Which is to say I didn't see a thing and even if I did it isn't what I'm paid to do Don't you have someone in your fancy house there paid to keep watch over stuff like that, and I guess I don't know All right, maybe I will By that next the night goddess is that correct nephew now? I suppose she's closest to a queen as your Lord father's like to find down there I tried to bash him up with some more wholesome types, but no and here we are he could not Persephone That's like a defining trait of it. That's the way the weapons like disappear.  I don't understand why all the gods in this game are British I don't know if it was made by British beauty or what not, but wow that's way too many enemies These almost calls my kill.  Oh, I'm sure he'd welcome all this feedback from you Meg Or maybe you're just pining for my father's job. Hey I have no envy for the father's position Besides, I happen to enjoy my own responsibilities.   She's always threatening me with whenever I try to talk to her I trust that the mirror in your bed chamber has proved satisfactory to your child Yeah Better than I could have possibly imagined next You mentioned there was something more that it could do once I had grandma accustomed Hello I think I'm ready for that now I think you are as well Then it shall be as you wish Thank you Show me something new My power grows Hey, I know the feeling You just keep at it though You're getting tougher, getting smarter Between the two of those, I'm thinking you'll pull through soon enough I will kick Meg's ass Appreciate it, Skelly Drop something That makes so much fun of these fists Wow, we're stuck up strong Do I want to give a chaos now?  Okay I think I just got out Oh, no, I don't want to do that What?


Secnav spoke to the fleet live from the Defense Media Activity Studios during an all-hands call Tuesday. He answered questions from sailors and marines around the world about the budget, deployment schedules and pay in retirement. Congress has got a commission looking at retirement. They're going to report, I think it's early next year. But the notion that everybody has, everybody in leadership is that whatever retirement system you joined under, that's a retirement system you'll retire under. So that if any changes are made to retirement, it'll be for people who joined after those changes are made. If you missed the live all-hands call, you can still watch it on Navy.mil. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Andrew Johnson.


The narcissist will act like it never happened. The narcissist will often do things that people generally won't approve of. Things that are illegal or morally wrong. Or they will be aware of something that happened. And they will just sweep it under the carpet. They will hide their problems. Or try to keep it a secret. Instead of dealing with it. They will ignore, deny or conceal from public view or knowledge. Something that is embarrassing and appealing. Or damaging to their image or reputation. Because they are ashamed of what they did. They are shame based individuals. Doing everything they can to avoid reflecting on their shame. They don't want to deal with it. They don't want to accept that they made a fault and mistake. Because that would mean that they are less imperfect. And narcissists have to display an image of perfection. If anything went wrong. It has to be blamed on the victim or scapegoat child. Or they will just deny it. They will gaslight the victim. And deny it to anyone who questions or confronts them. Because they don't want to deal with the shame of what they did. Deep down they know that what they did was wrong. They know that they are fully responsible. And that is why they will do whatever it takes to hide it. And act like it never happened. They also don't want to deal with the consequences of their actions. They don't want to deal with the result or effect of what they did. Because it is likely to be unwelcome or unpleasant. It is likely to be something that they don't want to happen. And that is why the narcissists will act like it never happened. That is why they will gaslight you. And do whatever it takes to convince people that it isn't true. They will even make themselves believe their own lies. They think that if they tell themselves it never happened. Then maybe no one else will realise that it did. They think it will be more believable. And once they get other people to believe it. It makes it more believable for them. Until it becomes very difficult to decipher what is actually true or not. Because they've mixed up so many lies and distorted interpretations. In an attempt to conceal their immoral behaviours. And in many situations people do not believe the victims. Because the narcissist presents this false image of being a humanitarian. Someone who is generous and compassionate. Someone who is only there to help.  Especially since what the narcissist is hiding. It's often so damaging and destructive. That it would be difficult for anyone to believe. Narcissists have some of the worst past secrets imaginable. They have done some horrible things. To people who didn't deserve it. So they really have no choice to hide what they've done. Because they know that they're at fault. And they know that anything that happened after that. Is only the result or effect of their behaviours. Or lack of action. Which is why they have no choice but to hide it. Which is why they have no choice but to act like it never happened. Because the only other option. Is for them to accept the blame. And to deal with the consequences. They'd rather just sweep it under the carpet.  Even though the easiest thing to do. Would be to come clean and admit what they've done.  Because they just can't deal with the shame. They can't deal with the damage that it would cause to their false image. The narcissist will act like it never happened.  The flying monkeys act as their enablers. They make it possible for the narcissist to continue doing what they're doing. They enable the abuse. And encourage the destructive behaviour. Together they keep a code of silence. They withhold vital or important information. Because they don't want anyone to know what they've done. And they know how people would look at them. If the truth was to be revealed. So they act like it never happened. Even though they may be discussing it behind the scenes.  And deny it to anyone who questions or confronts them. Because they're trying to dodge the shame. They know that what they've done is wrong. That's why they're trying to hide it. If they really believe that what they did was acceptable. Or justifiable. They wouldn't feel any need to hide it. They're hiding it. Because they know what they did was wrong. Or they know that they should have handled the situation differently. But they think they can just lie about it. And act like it never happened. They think that will make their problems go away. But the shame continues to eat away at them. It is the reason why they're so miserable. And it affects every aspect of their lives. The narcissist will act like it never happened. But you need to trust your own intuition. Remember the evidence and facts.  Use critical thinking skills of analysis and evaluation. Until you arrive at your conclusion. If you are certain that the narcissist is hiding something. You need to recognise that you cannot trust this person. You cannot expect them to be responsible around anything of significant value. You cannot expect them to tell you the truth about anything else. And you cannot trust anyone that they surround themselves with. Anyone who agrees with them. When a person acts like something never happened. It means that they're not going to hold themselves accountable for their actions. And a person who isn't going to hold themselves accountable. Is likely to do the same thing again. They're not going to come clean. Because they don't want it to end. They want to continue doing what they're doing. And they know that if they were to be open and honest with you. It would have to stop. They wouldn't be able to continue engaging in that behaviour. If you have evaluated the situation. And you believe that they are lying about something they've done. Or something that happened in the past. Just know that it could happen again. And if it did. They would only deny it again. They would pretend like it never happened. Just as they have with other things. You cannot trust the narcissist or their fly monkeys. They are not credible sources of information. They will always lie to you. They will always withhold vital or important information. But you shouldn't need to seek their validation. To know what is right or wrong. Trust your own memory and perception. Trust your conscious reasoning. And trust your own intuition. Thank you for watching. I hope this video resonated with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. Click the bell icon to receive notifications. For my future videos. Check out the new Narc Survival website. At www.narcsurvival.uk Where you can read my blog posts, bug coaching sessions. And join a support forum. If you would like to donate. My PayPal link is in the video description. Coaching inquiries. You can email me at coaching at narcsurvival.uk Thank you for watching. And I'll talk to you soon.


So today guys we take a look at another new shield to the game which arrives at the new DLC of Guns Love and Tentacles. This shield is called the Torch and today we check this thing out. How's it going guys my name is DPJ and today I bring you another BR3 video. If you guys enjoy leaving a like really helps me out and subscribe if you do want to see more. So this new shield, the Torch is a world drop as long as you want this new DLC, DLC2. If you do own it this can fall anywhere on Xylurgus. I got mine from a Mac upon Curse Haven who is a great rare bus farm for all new legendos this DLC offers.  Inflammable means flammable. Shoots fires around a player on depletion that deal 10,195 damage each and in reality guys that's the speciality of this thing. Now I know there are the odd builds this intent would benefit but because it's so generic I don't think this will be a shield we see used very often. I mean yes it's part of trick is good but what I found out using this yesterday was if an enemy is close enough to you to melee you. If that melee takes off your shield and these fireballs spawn if they hit that said enemy that meleeed you they can indeed end up hurting yourself while they are at it. You can see these fireballs in action now. Now this would benefit a zame build where the infiltrator class mud comes into play where activating your action skills depletes your shields. So now yours are like this I feel worked best with this one but other than that guys it's nothing to write home about. For me this probably won't ever be used and it will probably just take its place in my bank or on my wall. So yeah guys my force and this new shield the torch are part of the guns love and tentacles TLC. It's an okay shield it's lacking that capacity and while it offers is definitely not unique enough for many people to take this into account. But on that note guys we have come to the end of the video just a short but sweet one and something not to write home about. If you guys enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out if you're new around here and want to see more borderlands be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video upload a can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button. But guys thanks as always for stopping by hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next. One.


Suosittelijä, joka on mahdollisimman, on erilainen suosittelijä, jossa on markkustelua tai erilainen suosittelijä ja seuraavat, että suosittelijä on seuraavaa ja seuraavat, että suosittelijä on seuraavaa, niin suosittelijä on, että miten seuraavat suosittelijä ja suosittelijä on suosittelijä. Tämä videon olen tullut uusia praktaista, että se on vähän hienoa ja miten tämä maailmangelma pitäisi olla ympäristössä. Lopulta ensimmäinen esimerkki. Tämä ei ole aina hienoa, koska siellä on muutamia ympäristöjä, joita tehtävät markkaisuja, ja sitten tehtävät ensimmäinen esimerkki. Siksi markkaisuja ovat käyttäneet sen, että markkaisuja ovat käyttäneet, ja se on se. Mutta mitä tämä pitäisi hienoa esimerkki on, on se, miten esim. nämä tehtävät markkaisuja tehtävät markkaisuja. Joten ympäristöjä, joka on suurin optimaalinen, on tehdä ympäristöjä. Ensimmäinen, kun tehtävät markkaisuja ja ympäristöjä, sitten tehtävät ensimmäinen esimerkki, joka ei ole ympäristöjä, ja sitten tehtävät, että ei ole mitään. Tämä on ympäristöjä, joten se on ympäristöjä, koska en tiedä, jos ne ei ole ympäristöjä, eivät ole tärkeää ympäristöjä, koska ei ole niin paljon kuvaa. Se on mahdollista, että se on ympäristöjä, mutta tehtävät ympäristöjä on tehtävää. Tämä on tärkeää ympäristöjä, joten ympäristöjä. Mutta sitten, kun tehtävät ympäristöjä on ympäristöjä, niin joten meidät ympäristöjä vaikka tehtävää ja katsoa ympäristöjä, joten tehtävät ympäristöjä ja ympäristöjä hyödyvät tokorot, että se on ympäristöjä, joten ympäristöjä, joka ei ole ympäristöjä, hiukan että se on sitten esim. Ja se on sitten tommosien näkökulmesta, ...actual indicators. And what is the magnitude of method variance in the indicators? So you should look at that and then also look at how are the correlations with the items affected or regressions... sorry, the latent variables. So you look at is there method variance and if there is, does the method variance cause bias. If so, how much? Just looking at whether relationships stay significant or not is insufficient. For example, if you have a regression coefficient of 0.5 and that coefficient goes down to 0.2 when you're at a matter factor, that would be something that the reader should know, even if both of those effects remain significant. There's also, there are conceptual issues as well so this is unfortunately a common practice and the issues, additional issues in this model are that they are using hierarchical factor models here. En näy mitään metodologiosta, joka on jäänyt järjestelmää, jossa on usein semmoinen modelon, jota on tullut metodokasioon. Lisäksi, se näyttää, että heidän on yksi pari modelissa, jotka on koko tarpeeksi. Yksi on metodokasioon, joka ei ole. Semmoinen modelon on yksi tärkeää, ja en ole ymmärränyt mitään metodologiosta, joka on ymmärrä. Tämä maalokonpäristöä ei ole todella mielenkiintoisesta, mutta se on tärkeintä, ja se, miten suunnitelmat ovat ympäristölle. Joten, miten suunnitelmat pitävät ympäristölle? Mennään esimerkiksi, tai mennään olemme olemme olleet paremmat rikaportit. Joten, siellä on kaksi asioita, joita pitäisi katsoa. Tämä ovat keskustaneet esimerkiksi spektros-papua. first is to what degree is the method variance in the items and the second question is to what degree the method variance in the items causes method bias in the rigorous and coefficient of interest it's possible that you have method variance but it's that does not cause bias for example if you have let's say innovativeness measures there might be a lot of social disaster bias in those measures but if your performance measure is not affected by the same source of bias then the method bias method variance would not cause bias to regression coefficients at least to not any serious bias of course if you have measurement error in the explanatory variable there is some bias but that's a lot less severe than if the same source of method variance affects both the dependent variable and the independent variable so you need to instead of looking at whether something fits better than other you should be looking at what degree so what are they actually what's the magnitude of estimates what are the magnitude of the factor loadings of the method factor compared to the main factors and how much do the regression coefficients between the factors change when you take away the method factor monofit various nesting model comparisons are useful for understanding the how the method factor affects the items and Williamson's 2010 article talks about different modeling strategies and make sure that all models have the same variables so in a model where you assume that the method factor does not have an effect you should still have the marker variables in the model and have a factor for those marker variables simply allow that factor to be correlate with beyond correlate with all the factors and not load on the item so that should be your comparison model William 2010 talks about this comparison parameter estimates you look at method factor loadings and you compare factor correlation or regression with and without method factor this is not very common and I couldn't find any articles that would actually show a table side by side but many articles do report they compare these two regressors important to report there are marker variables or measures of method variance in detail and this is important because generally as a simmering article here points out markers we don't know much about markers so people use markers but we don't have much evidence and they actually work so we don't how well they capture different sources of method variance one reason for this is that methods these marker variables tend to be not reported in as much detail as the interesting variables like control variables these markers should always be reported with the same level of rigor and same level of explanation and justification that you give for the main study variables so there is like no excuse of not reporting let's take a look at two examples of proper reporting of marker value the first example comes from Rafferty and Griffin in 2004 and this applies their modeling approach by Larry Williams that involves comparing different nested models and what makes these good practices that they first do the series of model comparisons and they actually present the decrease of freedoms on chi-squares so we can see how well the model fits model speed they first try a model without the method factor then they try a model with method factor that is freely loading on all indicators and then they try a model where the method factor is loading on all the indicators but the loadings are constrained to be equal they identify or conclude that the model where the method factor affects each item differently fits the data the best and then they go with that model so this is a good example of on the level of detail that you should report the model comparisons if you use the Williams 2010 technique that was available at that time as well but he just hadn't published the paper another nice thing about this article is that it reports this factor loading so we can actually take a look at how much the method variance affects each item and how much these actual variables that of interest affect each item what's interesting here is is uh to beyond comparing that these method factor loadings are fairly small they are they are substantial but fairly small compared to these uh actual loadings the interesting thing is to know that these bureaucracy items load very highly on the same on the bureaucracy factor or the market variable factor and the reason for these high loadings is that this factor this final factor actually combines the marker and the method so it assumes that the method and bureaucracy are the same so this model is actually perhaps slightly mis-specified a more realistic model would have had two load had another minor factor for the bureaucracy items and then one general factor for the method and that would avoid the problem of mis-specification here that this assumes that the method and bureaucracy are the same so that bureaucracy affects these items not only the method i'll talk about this modeling problem more in another video and then there is my paper one of my early papers i i did analysis for this paper after taking the first course in structural ecosystem modeling and we report also on loadings for the model and for the method factor and we actually do this right so we allow the marker variables to be freely correlated so we are we are saying that the markers can measure something else beyond method but the marker variables and the interesting study variables are only correlated because of the method it's not reported in the article but that that's actually how we did it and if you check the decrease of freedom you can see you can see that our decrease of freedom reveals that there were some other parameters estimated that are not reported in the model so that's what we did and to make this even better we should have a cfa model without the method factor so we can see how much the method variance affects the correlations importantly in both of these two examples that are just demonstrated the decision or the explanation of of method variance or the diagnostic of method variance is is not a yes or no question so neither of these examples do something with method variance declare it's not a problem and then continue without modeling method variance method variance is always a problem that occurs to a degree and it's useful to instead of trying to answer a yes or no question more useful approach is to include the method factor in the final model to see what is the effect of modeling method variance on the results and this is what would we do and this is what the previous example did so both of these articles actually present the final results including the method factor then we can be confident that if the method factor was modeled appropriately which we wouldn't know based on these results then the result will be correct of course whether you model all the sources of method variance correctly that's easier said than done as i discussed in another video about marker variables


In some cases, it might be useful to describe the pressure difference caused by a number of fluids. You would step through these with individual power equations. We could figure out the pressure difference between the atmospheric pressure and the interface between fluid 1 and figure 2. We could figure out the pressure difference between atmospheric pressure and the pressure at the interface between fluid 1 and fluid 2 by using the density of fluid 1 times gravity times h1. And then we could figure out the pressure difference between fluid 1 and fluid 2 and fluid 2 and fluid 3 by using the density of fluid 2 times gravity times h2. By stepping one fluid at a time, you can work your way from atmospheric pressure all the way down. Let's try an example of that.


So, as I promised you, the first three speakers were powerhouses, visionaries, futurists, and they gave us the big picture of open education, and they gave us a lot of mixed metaphors for how to conceptualize what open education is. It's definitely an ecology. Rich has his favorite examples, which surprisingly are all about physics and artificial intelligence and stuff that has not much to do with foreign languages. So we wanted to shift things a little bit in the afternoon and start talking about how this applies to foreign languages. Our sessions then today will be a quick or very quick review of three projects from Coral, three foreign language projects, that implement open in different ways. Open access or open textbooks as we've heard. Open source, software, and then our third presentation is, I just learned a new buzzword from Rich and that's about, what was it even, in reach, right, we were doing in reach and we didn't even know it. We've been doing outreach, but the idea is to create a community, a heterogeneous community of different kinds of people creating content together. So that's it in that show. So let me start by introducing Karen Kelton. There are four of us representing Coral, Karen, Rachel, Natalie, okay. And Karen's going to talk to you about our open, open textbooks, François Interlictif and Deutsche Imblik. So I'd like to start by inviting you to take a textbook. We had some extra Fipsi grant money. So we have textbooks for as many as you can carry back with you, please. We will put them out on the table. So we've got Europa, Deutsche Imblik, François Interlictif. So please help yourselves, take one for your colleagues. We encourage you. And again, we benefit from feedback. François Interlictif is in its third edition and we are still finding typos. We are still finding things that need to be changed. Not as many as we used to, but anyway, that's the outsourcing is very valuable. I wanted to start with Europa. We have the author, Tola Mosodomi, in the audience. And she is featured in our newsletter, too. So take a look at that. One of the things that we're most excited about this is the use of QR codes within the textbook.  There's no color. It came from Word documents that Natalie formatted. It's just beautiful with line drawings. And if you look on page 27, you see a dialogue. I'm not going to illustrate the QR code, but I did this yesterday. So listen. Isn't that cool? Every student has one of these. And the QR codes, this is so high tech, it's on your tablet. So this is a QR code in the right hand corner, upper right hand corner. It automatically downloads content then to an iPhone or a smart phone or, right. Audio or video. And it really works. If you'd like a demonstration, let me know. I've got my iPod. This book, how much do you think it costs? Putting QR codes on tombstones. We haven't done that yet. Okay, so this is a textbook of Yoruba. It's a less commonly taught language. How much do you think this costs? One dollar, one dollar. $22.80. And that's with a four dollar royalty fee that comes back to Coral. So these are affordable and they are good. This was published in May. So it's first been being used this fall. The German program, Deutsche Oblique, was just hot off the press in August, just in time for students to order in September. So this is a first edition and we're still working with it. You can see it's much thicker. How much do you think this is? This is a complete first year program. $16. Right. $17.32. I have to check, $31.02. And that does include, we upped the royalties on the German and the French so that we could get some money back, $10. That includes the $10 royalty fee per book. So $10 per book. It comes directly back to Coral and we can use it for anything we want, including food, by the way. So what do these open textbooks look like? The German is much thicker than the French and I'll show you why in a moment. Gabby, no, no, no. So the Deutsche Oblique, if we go to chapter two, you can see it does have the QR codes too within it. You can see at the end there's a whole bunch of QR codes so it accesses all of the media. But this German program piggybacks on the UT study abroad program in Wurzburg. So the author, Zsuzanna Abrams, did a lot of filming in Germany at Wurzburg and her students act as virtual guides. Carl's done a lot of research on the use of non-native speakers and teaching identity. The way this motivates our students, they get a virtual trip to Germany or to France. So here, could we play, we have videos of both native speakers and non-native speakers. If you look at chapter two, that's Studium, pardon my German, minus Studium, Eva, Eva. I study English and Geographie on Lehramt Gymnasium, where do you study? I study in Wurzburg, a small town, relatively small. Okay, so you get the idea. That's our native speaker. Now we have the same with one of our non-native speakers, Sarah. Was Studierst du? Ich studiere Geographie, das ist mein Hauptwahl, und ich studiere auch Deutsch und Französisch als Fräumsprachen. Warum Studierst du Fräumsprachen? Ich liebe Fräumsprachen. Okay, not only do they, or they interviewed, but they also give tours of their houses. And here we see Sarah's kitchen, you see down under this rocking context. Sarah's kitchen. Yeah. So she's going to give the students a tour. She's living in Wurzburg for the summer. So this is her tour. So jetzt sind wir in meine Küche und wir haben ein Tisch und vier Stühle und Gläser. This is chapter two. So basically still it's just lists and vocabulary.  All of the media has activities in the textbook, but not only do they have activities for the activities, there is also grammar, vocabulary, web quests, and let's, here's a web quest. So again, the idea of authentic documents, this came up earlier. The way to keep authentic documents authentic is to put them on the web, not in the textbook. Because we can still, we can keep those up to date. The grammar is done with a pedagogical grammar with grim fairy tales. So we have links into here the days of the week with audio. Die Tage der Woche, Montag, etc., etc., and it's peopled by grim fairy tale characters. So this is a first edition, the first edition that we're sending out to everyone. So we expect to be getting a lot of feedback and it will go through an iterative process as we tested in the classroom. If we can go on to Fonsi Anteacti, this one you can see is much thinner. This one is, it costs $29 instead of $31. Again, we've added the $10 royalty fee. But the difference between $30 and $200 for a normal text is quite substantial. One of the reasons that it's much thinner is that we've gone to what Rich Berenick calls his Lego theory, building box. It's very modular. We took every single activity that dealt with the media, an audio or a video, and put those on the web. So the classroom textbook is just classroom activities. And we took out a lot of the photos because photos are, you know, the students are not buying these in color. I mean, some of them do. But the ones that aren't, the photos are, you know, we can pull them up in the classroom and use the photos in the classroom. They don't need to be in the textbook. So if we look at chapter three, please. Again, you see it's very similar. We don't have the QR codes yet, right Natalie? But we will get those sometime. But you can see it's very, very similar. But at the top of every one of those native speakers, you have interview les Français à Austin. If we click on just one of those, it doesn't matter, Le Weekend. Franck, these are our native speakers. And these are all... So, and then if you click above that in the interviews, les Français, right there, right on that, up comes a PDF. So basically we have the workbook on the web in PDF format. So there are no tear-out pages. The students print them out and turn them in. And UT is very happy about that. They, because we don't have, we don't, we aren't copying anything. The students are doing all the copying. So we also have Activité Internet and Chanson. Of course, what do we use but the SNCF to, to have the students take a virtual trip to France. And Chanson, we have Malouisian. And one of the things that we've implemented with Franck's Activité 2 is this is a Drupal site. So that means for the content developer, I can go in and upload and change PDFs without having to bother Natalie. Another thing that we've worked on was building a community of teachers. So if we go under teachers, you can see that we have different things. Pages explain the pedagogy. We have some classroom videos of our, our graduate students teaching how they, they teach. And that, that's on that page. Well, we also have a, right there, Scripps. Scripps. Under Scripps, going down to Scripps. We have various, again, a whole bunch of teacher resources that teachers can access. We have now about 300 teachers who have registered. But if you click down to the bottom, Carl, and let me, I'm going to put in my username. It takes two of us to do this. We can also upload sample exams. So now if you scroll all the way down, Carl, you'll see sample exams and sample exam videos. So if you click on the very last video at the bottom. This one. Yes. This is the exam video that my students are going to be doing. So this is what they're going to be using tomorrow. So we can create these little MP4s and for every exam put them on the web.  We experimented with a forum. If you click on the forum under teachers, you'll see. This is not one of our success stories. Yeah, right. If we can see. Teachers, they just want us to give them material. They don't always want to contribute except for George Dettebo. And he will be speaking later this afternoon. George is our Francais Interactive Facebook moderator. So we have 300 teachers. Guess how many likes we have on Facebook? Yeah. And it's been up since May. And George has been working with it. He's been brilliant. But this is a completely different audience. These are not teachers. I mean, we do have a handful of teachers. These are independent learners. These are not students in classes. These are people who are just learning French on their own. And they ask, they share. Maybe George can spend some time talking about that. Because this is a whole new world. We are going to be starting a Facebook page for German within the next month. And we hope it will be as successful as this one. Do any of you have any questions at this point? Again, these are works in progress. Quick questions. Plus a cast of thousands. Well, hundreds. We use graduate students. What a wonderful segue into our next project. We're coming to that. We're going to answer that question. Yeah, right. We're coming. We're going there. Yes, another question. Esther. The holding goes to UT. More specifically to Coral to promote. Because we were talking about sustainability earlier. So there has to be money in the system somewhere. You need to generate money. Once you launch this, we still need to need to curate it. We need to have people who are act as moderators of this network. We need to pace the server guy because then it becomes maintenance. So yeah, you need to have some money to keep it going. So that's where the royalties are focused right now. So if you're doing, you're not going to get rich if you're going to work with Coral. Because these are nonprofit products. No, but you really won't get rich, right? They are paid as part of their Coral project directors. We give them, say, a summer salary or not even that now with our budget cuts. It's lean times, but yeah, they're paid a small fee. So they're doing this for the common good. That's very much because it's very hard, especially to hire graduate students and know if they're going to produce anything.  Yeah, that's good. So let me move on. David. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. We talk among ourselves about royalties because one thing we didn't show you is our print on demand company, which is coop.com. I think Rich mentioned it. There are many different print on demand companies now. This is the one that actually came through the lens of Rich Baranik.org. And so they use the term royalties. And when it gives us a spreadsheet of how much money is being generated, we just think of the terms that they've given us. But you're right. It's not the same thing as royalties. Okay, let me quickly then talk about our second. See if I can drive and talk at the same time. I think I'm good. Okay, so if you want to talk to you now about open source software, which is another form of openness. These were open access materials. We put them on the web for anybody who has access then to download them. Again, they can use all the materials for free, but we're following a premium model. There's a premium. We give stuff for free, and then they get hooked, and then they may want to buy the textbook. So that's an important distinction. Now, the idea of open source has to do with open source code. Sorry, I'm having trouble here. And I wanted to talk really briefly about an open project for textual annotation. And real briefly, this was started a couple years ago in the Department of English here at UT Austin, and it was the brainchild of Sam Baker, who was a 19th century British literature professor, and his amazing graduate student Travis, who is a very interesting profile. He's a computational linguist slash British literature specialist slash corpus linguist. He can really do it all. Very unusual. But they wanted to come up, develop software that would actually help people go through a literary text together and mark it up. So it's just basic markup software, annotation software. Now, there are a lot of proprietary softwares that are available, but they cost a lot of money. And the other thing, they noticed that, you know, those of us who use word processing systems, sometimes there's a point of diminishing return with software. It gets so powerful and it has all the bells and whistles. And we only want to use two or three functions. So they developed what they call e-comma, which stands for the e-commentary machine. And I think one of the things why this works so beautifully is it's so simple. And we have done a couple installations here at UT at different levels and different foreign language classes, as well as Cornell, we did first year French. We've also done it in ESL. We've done it with different kinds of readers. For example, we had legal scholars in the law school get online and read a legal draft and then debate each other. So anybody can mark up anything. It's not for a literary text. And of course, I saw a presentation of Sam's, the original presentation, and he was talking about, I can't remember if it was Coleridge or whatever the poem was. And I thought we could use that. We could really use that for the foreign language classroom. So last semester, this is an example of a fourth semester, a fourth semester French class that I taught using this poem by Éluard, Liberté. And so you see right here, so we have uploaded this text and over here it gives us a word cloud, right? So it shows us very easily then properties. We can click on it and see properties of the text. So in every stanza, it starts the last line, so the last verse starts with j'écris ton nom, I write your name. So the person is writing the name of Liberté again and again and again. But there are only two functions here. The blue, here we have tags. So here we've already marked it up.  I had all kinds of people. I had Carla Bruni in my class. I had Nicolas Sarkozy. I had all these famous French people in my class. So and they tagged, this is repetition. So it's over here. So repetition is one of those. So you can start to look at how different members in the class make these associations, how they tag the poem. So that's tag clouds. This is an important point in that they're reading each other's readings. They're reading each other's interpretations and that's the notion of kind of this community of readers. The other function is then to write a commentary, something a little bit longer. So if you wanted to click on this word, I'll blend it gives, then the pop up. And I'll just show you a little bit about how this works. They write comments. Okay. And here is Christa who says, I want to know whose name. So she has highlighted here. J'écrit ton nom, right? That's the refrain. I write your name. I want to know whose name he's writing over and over again, a lover perhaps. That's the first stanza. So that's not a bad. I mean, that was her first association. And then somebody writes, no, I thought the name he was writing was Liberté as you know, personification. But maybe I'm wrong. And then somebody writes back. No, that's correct.  So the point is they get into a discussion. We've tried, so that's it. They tag and they comment. And this gives them a way to do that. You can do it asynchronously. You can do it synchronously. And we have been, this is now porting this into Drupal. Kieran just mentioned Drupal, which is an open content management system. So the idea is we could give this to all the institutions.  And you can then play with this. Not only can you just use it right out of the box, but again, the idea is that you can add on to it. And we had, for example, when I gave a demonstration of this last year at Cornell, I had a professor teaching Spanish translation class. And she had in her mind, as she was thinking about this, she wanted lots of different changes to the interface, as well as embedding a bilingual dictionary. I said, well, you could do that. And in fact, when we give it to you, you can do that. So that's the idea of open source. So now, come on down. Do you want to come on down? And yeah, the last, the last project, I think represents a little bit different, this notion of openness. And I'll set it up as they come on down here so they can talk about it. Jacqueline Toribio and Barbara Bullock. Jacqueline is in Spanish linguistics and Barbara is in French linguistics. Both of them study bilingualism and multilingualism. And they have a project called Spanish in Texas. And Rich set this up perfectly for us. I don't know whether you remember, but Rich used the word as an in-reach, outreach and in-reach. So where I think this is really exciting and open is creating an open community of people collaborating around this concept of, and he actually said it himself, building collaborative Spanish language materials. So if we can tap into the community and they've tapped into it in many different ways. Okay, she's going to drive first. All right, yeah. So we have tapped quite a few people to do this. The idea behind this site is pretty much to let Spanish-speaking Texans speak for themselves. And we envision this site as a series of socio-linguistic interviews. We trained, so we've involved, we've in-reached to the university, so the videos that you'll see here were done by our undergraduate students. And they were all Spanish-speaking Texans themselves. And we trained them, actually Daniel trained them very nicely, to go out in the field and do these interviews. And we basically used, I don't know if Carl spoke about this, we basically used the StoryCorps interview format. And we were lucky enough that StoryCorps has a list of Spanish questions. So the students went to their hometowns and interviewed their friends and families. Everything here has been IRB'd. So everyone that you'll see has signed off the talent form and also a research form. They understand they'll be on the web, et cetera. The reason we did that is we also envisioned that this corpus we're developing will be an open research corpus. So this will be, I think, maybe the first time that there's a socio-linguistic corpus that'll be available for anybody to use. So we don't have the full videos here yet. Rachel will eventually figure out a great interface for that. But we're still working on it. So we've let our students go and talk to people around. Do you want to say a little more about the rest of it? You want to?  So we envisioned this site as really engaging the attention of many different types of people. So from parents to teachers to just regular laypersons who are interested in Spanish and Texas, we think that they would benefit from what we have here, but we're also inviting everyone to contribute. So we've got some information on here that doesn't necessarily relate to the Spanish language, but also to some myths about Spanish speakers in the U.S. and in Texas. All right, so we've got a nice one. We also have, and this is what we're inviting, asking people to also contribute to. We have what we call the linguistic landscape. These are just images where Spanish and English are used. You find these all over Texas. The nice thing about this is that it allows teachers to talk about Spanish use and Spanish structure. So for instance, if we go down here, go to the next one. This is a sign that we took in Walgreen. If you know Spanish, this is a really interesting sign because it's just full of mistakes, actually. So no se, instead of no loitering, no se means I don't know. So anyway, it allows teachers to, and people to say, what does this sign mean? What can I tell us about the relationship between language and pronunciation, et cetera? We've already gotten people sending us pictures, so this is good. One way in which people can contribute. Yeah, one way, okay. But the videos. So these are the videos. We have a brief comment about the types of features that you'll see, and what we like to focus on is the fact that this is normal speech. So I'll say, like many other Spanish speakers, these people will use English. We're also focusing on variations. So for instance, Spanish speakers from El Paso don't speak the same as they do in the valley. And so you'll hear different things, like if you can hear somebody say Mushro, we know if they're from El Paso. And we point this out in the videos so that people can have their attention directed. Go ahead. Which one? Whatever one. Let's do one that code switches. Everybody's not bored. Okay, so even those of you who don't speak Spanish will understand about half of this. So... What did you do? On September 2, 1967, in El Paso, Texas, in a hospital called Newark, in the second neighborhood, downtown. But when we were in the school, it was accepted that they were giving them spankings. Okay. So right now the full videos are actually being piloted by people who work in bilingual education and teach bilingual teachers. We also are getting a lot of people who work in the valley and teach people at universities where there's 90% Spanish speakers, for instance, bilinguals. So if you go down to Brownsville, Texas, University of Texas at Brownsville, for instance, has like 95% bilingual student population. So they teach these students all the time and they teach them Spanish because these students aren't necessarily literate. They speak Spanish, but they're not literate. So most of the time, they're thrown into the basic Spanish program where they actually don't belong. And so they're going to be using these videos to create materials for their students. And in turn, they're going to be sending us the materials. So we're not the materials developers. We're using people who know far more about that than we do. You would not want us to be developing your materials. And so we've got people from all over the University of Texas system working with us, and also from Texas A&M. So that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, so we also have a graduate student with interest in computational linguistics who will be tagging all of the transcripts. So if you're interested in looking for particular structures, if you're looking for say the frequency of particular loan words, or innovations in the way some of the vocabulary is used, you'll be able to do that as well. So again, the point of this was just to show you some concrete examples that weren't about artificial intelligence. And we're trying to implement the ideas that he's talking about, our three speakers this morning about open. All of these are open in different ways, but I think they all have collaboration at the center of them. So they just mentioned the notion of creating a collaborative team of researchers and pedagogical staff and, of course, technical staff.