How to research Research, it's a turn that we often hear, but what does it really entail? At the end of the day research is simply about finding reliable answers to questions. It can be easy to stumble upon misinformation so it's important to enter research with a thoughtful and organized approach that includes figuring out what you're looking for, digging into the right places and piecing together the puzzle. Strong research skills are crucial in various aspects of life, education, and professional pursuits. Knowing where and how to search for information and having the capacity to evaluate the quality and relevance of the sources we encounter enables us to navigate an ever-evolving world with confidence and adaptability. Whether you're a student hunting for information for your latest assignment, a professional navigating industry trends, or you're simply a curious mind seeking a deeper understanding of a particular subject, research is your ticket to unlocking knowledge. As technology advances, the landscape of research has evolved, offering a plethora of digital resources and tools. The sheer amount of information available can become overwhelming and that's why in this video we'll explore the intricacies of effective research along with some helpful steps to guide your journey. No two research journeys will be identical, so think of these steps as guidelines to help keep you on the right path. Hopefully, once we're done, you'll be ready to navigate the world of research with confidence and skill. Define your research question or topic. The first step to successful research is to clearly define your topic. This will form the foundation of your research moving forward. A general rule of thumb is to begin by identifying your general area of interest within the boundaries of your assignment and then narrow it down by asking specific questions within that domain. Aim for a topic that's specific enough to delve into deeply, yet broad enough to find sufficient credible sources and make meaningful contributions to your project. This topic will help to give your research a clear direction and purpose. Background reading. Next you'll want to review existing literature to understand what is already known about your topic and where potential gaps may be. This will help you avoid duplication and allow you to build on existing knowledge. Examine existing scholarly works, articles, books, and other relevant sources to gain a foundational knowledge base. Identify key concepts and terms. Extract key concepts, themes, or terms related to your topic. This will help you refine your research and understand the vocabulary used in your field. Take detailed notes. Creating a conceptual map or outline to visualize the relationship between ideas. Refine your research queries based on the identified concepts and terms. This process sharpens search queries, helping you navigate databases more effectively and engage with scholarly discourse in a nuanced manner. Develop a research strategy. In developing a research strategy, it's crucial to carefully plan the types of sources that will best contribute to your understanding of the topic, whether they be scholarly books, articles, or primary documents. By defining the nature of the information that you seek, you stream on your search and ensure relevance to your research objectives. This strategy will also help the decision on the most appropriate databases, libraries, and archives available within your field of study, optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of your research process. Search for sources. The searching stage of your assignment can often take a long time, but putting in the time at this stage will reward you with relevant results that will make writing your assignment much easier. Utilize library catalogs, academic databases, and search engines to find various types of scholarly sources. Experiment with different search terms and combinations to broaden or narrow your results and find more relevant information. Evaluate sources. While collecting content from your library and from around the web, you should also be evaluating the information for quality. Keep in mind that not all information you find online is credible, reliable, or even appropriate for your topic. So it is important to take a closer look at what you're reading. Use evaluation checklists such as the crap test to evaluate the quality of your sources. Read and take notes. Engage deeply with the selected sources. Take comprehensive notes and record key information, arguments, and evidence. Comprehensive note-taking involves capturing not only key information, but also the nuances of the arguments and the evidence supporting them, ensuring a thorough understanding of the source's perspective. Synthesize information. Analyze and amalgamate the information gathered from different sources. Identify common themes, contradictions, or gaps in the existing literature. This process involves connecting the dots between various insights, weaving a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Ultimately, synthesizing information allows you to contribute meaningful insights, fostering a nuanced perspective within the broader discourse of your chosen field. Create an outline. Develop an outline for your research paper or project. Organize your ideas and evidence in a logical structure. At this stage, you transform the wealth of information you've researched into a structured framework. This structure ensures a seamless flow of arguments and prevents the haphazard arrangement of information. By defining the key points and supporting evidence, the outline acts as a blueprint, simplifying the development of a well-structured and persuasive research paper or project. Write and revise. Begin drafting your research paper, essay, or project. Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and well-supported by evidence. Revise and edit your work for coherence, clarity, and adherence to academic conventions. Make sure to follow any specific instructions that your instructor has outlined. Properly cite sources. Always use appropriate citation styles. For example, MLA, APA, and Chicago. To give credit to the sources you have so carefully curated. See the How to Cite module on the learning portal for more information on the importance of citing sources. Seek feedback. Share your work with peers, mentors, or advisors to receive constructive feedback. This can help you refine your argument and improve the overall quality of your research. Make any necessary revisions. Publish, share, or submit. Finally, you can share your finished paper or project with the world. If applicable, share your research findings through academic journals, conferences, presentations, or submit your assignment to your instructor. Conducting effective research is not just about gathering information. It's about transforming that knowledge into a powerful tool. Each step from defining your objectives, diving into your sources, critically evaluating information, to finally synthesizing findings contributes to your ability to make informed decisions, meaningful connections, and contribute to your area of interest. Remember, flexibility is key and these steps may overlap or require adjustments based on the nature of your research. Adapt the process to suit the specific requirements of your project. So, whether you're embarking on an academic endeavor, chasing professional insights, or just satisfying your curiosity, the ability to conduct effective research equips you with the tools to understand, interpret, and contribute to the ever-expanding landscape of human knowledge. Keep exploring, keep questioning, and happy researching.


The following is a production of New Mexico State University. High on a campus hill at the University of Texas El Paso is the fabulous Chihuahuan Desert Gardens. By rowing the paths here, you can see over 400 plant species of the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest collection of its type anywhere. And this represents 10% of the Chihuahuan Desert plants. I began my tour at the cool contemplative garden where I met botanic curator, Win Anderson. Win, this is really beautiful here. It looks like a real peaceful area. Well Curtis, I can't tell you how nice it is to have you all here at the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens. This is our contemplative garden, a little oasis zone and a good zero escape. And I want you to note the water feature. It's not wasting water, it's a very slow drip. And this does a lot to add humidity in this small and confined area. But water features do have an important place in a good landscape in the southwest. If you'll take a special care to cut down on evaporation, like the shade structure, and just as important is this wind-buffering wall. It keeps the wind off it so you don't have evaporation and it holds humidity around the plants. And you get the sound and I think you get a little bit better sound with the wall. In this circular area you get really good sound resonance. It's very interesting, you get to hear the splash of the water, it makes you feel good. There's a little humidity in the air but you're not wasting a lot of water. So let's go take a look at the habitat gardens. The sand garden, the aroya garden and the grass garden. Okay, sounds good. Let's go. Win, this is nice. What habitat is this? This is the aroya garden and this is a really neat plant. You may recognize it. This is why you leave. I know the name. Parthenium. Historically interesting from World War II looking for a rubber supply. It was grown as a potential substitute for imported rubber during World War II. Occasionally you still find somebody experimenting with it. They do so at the A&M Research Center here in West Texas as a matter of fact. It's a good plant for our landscapes. It's an excellent plant. For the low desert area. It's very drought tolerant. That's correct. It's not all that coal-hardy. When I see another plant here with blue leaves that looks good with the yule and this oak, it looks like it does well here. That's the Mexican blue oak. I see it making acorns. So it's happy here. Yes, it's a happy camper. So this is another good plant for the aroya or mountainside gardens. Well, it's a small oak which is nice and actually very fast growing.  This one's only three years old in terms of being in the ground. It's looking pretty good. You have other habitats here too. Yes, let's go take a look. Okay. Well, Wynn, what do we have here now? Well, this is the grass garden. We've got nine different species of grass in here including this alkali sacitone. Beautiful feathery-looking grass, good landscape grass. You might recognize the blue grammar. We've got giant sacitone. A lot of things in here. And this is a different growing area. So someone who lives on the mountainside may have difficulty growing this. Some of these grasses, yes, would not be appropriate for the mountainside, although we do have mulenbergia portarai which is really good for the mountainside. Bushmule is the common name because it is often found underneath shrubs in the desert. There's a good reason for that. That's right. It's so palatable as a forage grass. The cattle and horses will eat it down to nothing. But out in areas where grazing no longer takes place, it'll cover the ground. It's a wonderful, soft, feathery grass. Now this has been then the grass area. This is the habitat that would be sandy areas. Yeah, well let's go take a look at the sand garden right here. So this is the real sand. This is the sand garden here. These would be the plants that you would find in the sand dune areas on both sides of El Paso and actually all the way up to Albuquerque. Sandy areas, but they're not going to do well in a heavy soil. Nope, you've got to have very well-draining soil for this and for this plant right here. The famous purple sage songs. And it gets these beautiful purple flowers this time of the year for our monsoon rains are good.  Kind of a silky green though, even pretty when it's not flowering. But the important thing is it really loves sandy soil and a lot of people fight sandy soils in their garden when they could be using these plants. Use the ones that are adapted and beekeepers like this too. Oh, excellent bee plants. Just be aware of plants, what they like. Here we've looked at habitats. Things should be planted where they should be. We saw an arroyo habitat. We saw the grassland area. We see the sand. If people will plant those, or appropriate plants in those areas, they'll do a lot better. It's a matter of looking at the plants that grow in the area you want to garden in. And repeating those plants in your garden. We've seen only a little bit of the garden here and it's beautiful. Well, I'm sure glad that you were able to visit with us today and I hope you'll come back. We will. Thank you for sharing. Thank you.


That's it. OK, lad. Yeah. Just give you that. Yeah. You and me on your field. Yeah. Good much for you, sir. You there, right? Yeah. Have you got something to say? Have you not? Nice. What would you like? Theo, first of all, why Everton and why now? Everton, you know, after speaking to the gaffer and particularly Wayne as well, I felt like the club was, you know, on the up. I felt that with the manager seemed to get the best out of players, especially when first coming in. And just the plans for the future of the club, and I felt like I want to be part of that fantastic history. And I want to make that history present. I want this club to push on and, you know, try and reach those levels that, you know, I feel like it can with the players, particularly coming in.  And for me, that was, you know, main attraction and getting a chance to, you know, obviously have a brief spell with the manager, with England. And I just felt like I wanted more of that.  And this felt right. And so I'm so pleased, really pleased. How did that conversation go with Wayne then? What did he say to you? How did he persuade you? He said all the golf courses are great, so he should come up from there. A bit colder, though. Yeah. No, well, obviously I played a lot of football with Wayne. No, he's not great at golf. He said he was, but he's not. And I just wanted to get a structure of how the club worked and, you know, what the players are like. And because obviously when you're used to something for so long, it's a big, you know, decision to change things. But I felt it was right for me to do that. And I just got a sense from Wayne that, you know, he was hungry and the club was eager to push on. And that's why he wanted to join. Like, I'm sure he would have had, you know, other decisions to make. But he felt like this was the right place. And I totally agree with him. And I was, yeah, it was a long, long process, but we're in the end now, yeah. You say long process. Was it right that you were stood in the canteen and training gear, watching training on Wednesday? Yeah, yeah, that was right. I wanted to be part of it all. You know, I couldn't as yet. Things weren't properly signed off as yet. But, you know, I got to see how it all worked from there. And yeah, I just wanted to go out there and train. My first training session was on Monday, but it wasn't the last one. And I trained yesterday on my own. And today will be the first time I train with the team. And yeah, but I know quite a few of the players there. I'll settle in really fine. Yeah. In terms of the personal motivations in coming here as well, at times you feel that you don't necessarily get the credit you deserve. You look at last season, for instance, 19 goals, 29 starts. Yeah, I think, you know, I'll be judged on goals. And I was very pleased, obviously, last season with the goals that I scored, continued the minutes played as well. And that's, you know, that's what I want to bring into this team. I want to bring, you know, the goals and the system, that threat. And, you know, even that unselfish play when you can drag other players away, attract other players. But yeah, I was very pleased with, you know, that goal tally. Obviously, you know, just being behind, you know, Harry, obviously he's on a new level completely and obviously Deli as well. So being the third player there, I was, like I say, I can't ask for more. But yeah, I want to push on and, you know, still quite a long season ahead. I want to be part of, you know, pushing everything out that table because it's all about points in the end and anything I can contribute to the end of the season you know, I'm going to be pleased to, definitely. So I suppose that threat that Theo speaks about there is a big factor in your decision to bring in here as well. There's no doubt about that at all. I think that once you're the fresh start, I think that, you know, when you've got a player that has been at one club for a long period of time and decides that he wants to move on and forges way into a new career and you know him over many, many years and you look at his record and say to yourself if that's an opportunity for you to move forward then it would be very nice if he would consider joining Everton Football Club and that's always been very positive from when we first started negotiations. I think that for us, if he repeats what he did even this year with his short appearances he's got goals and last year's appearances is exceptionally good from a player from a wide position that may occasionally have played up front but for us that's a very important ingredient where we are short in terms of creating and scoring goals at the moment and it adds great firepower hopefully to our squad. A relatively good price in this transfer window. Time will tell, yeah, with every signing. I think every signing, you know, you have the key performance indicators which are very good, the experience of the Premier League, you know, at this league, unlike Cenk who's only just getting here which may be more difficult for him. There's a settling in period for everybody whether you move in this country or whether you move from abroad and hopefully settles very quickly and enjoys his time here and we're here to support him, all the staff are here to support him to achieve as much as he possibly can while he's with us.  I think that we would be more in the terms of where we are at the moment with moving players on. I think that the squad is too big. There's 33 players here at the moment and I think that from my point of view that means that reducing that squad, although squad numbers is important for me and the football club and the players that may leave, we don't know who they are because you're waiting for other clubs to come and show an interest but certainly I think moving a few players on now is the order for us. Keeping players fit then, keeping Seamus Coleman as close to coming back, he's back in training. I think that's another bonus for us and Michael Keane's back. So the squad is getting stronger, hopefully getting bigger and certainly we need to turn our results around starting Saturday and it would be interesting to see the reaction from the players after the poor 44 minutes they played in the second half at Tottenham. In terms of moving players on, we're hearing that Aaron Lennon's been linked with the likes of Newcastle and Burnley has there been anything in that? I don't know. We'll probably find out at some stage or other but obviously that lies in the hands of the chairman and Steve, the director of football and they handle all that side of it and all those negotiations if and when they go on. Theo, are you ready to start on Saturday? Do you know what the first thing I want to do is get to know my teammates today, train for the first time and I haven't been on the pitch for them yet and I'm excited to do that. I can't thank obviously enough the support I've had here, it's been so good everyone's been so good to me straight away and it's so nice and all the messages I've had from the Arsenal fans and it's particularly been there for 12 years it was massive for me it was quite emotional and the reception I've had from Everton fans and I'm really looking forward to going to Goodison Park it's got a lot of history, it's a great football club it's like I say, that's why I want to be part of it but first priority is first training session today for me Just on Arsenal though, I just wonder what kind of mistakes do you feel that you've left the club in? Well when I found that I was coming here I had to go there at night just to pick up all my stuff in all bin bags it was quite honestly so surreal As well before you did I've had a few of those Thanks for your service I'm sure I'll get some time to go down I've had so many messages to try and catch up with people and it's been very overwhelming but slowly but surely getting through those messages but I will at some point go back there and do my proper goodbyes because I feel like that would be the right way to do it but we do play in very soon as well which I'm looking forward to What kind of reception will you expect there then? I've always had so much time for the fans and they've been great to me from start to finish for all the ups and downs and I can't obviously thank them enough and I'm sure it was part of my family in Arsenal so now I'm here but I'm pretty sure it'll be fine How do you feel about Arsenal and Wenger now? Obviously I had a lot of nice things to say about yesterday but is that kind of the frustration of not getting as much game time as you wanted does that kind of affect the relationship between the two? No look I've always had so much respect for the manager there's always any player if you're not playing you're going to be upset but you need to try and dig deep and try and push to get into their position for whatever reason it didn't happen this year you know that's why obviously I've moved on but I want to just work hard for this team as simple as that you know I've got so much respect and you know I've known this since I was 16 and to bring the young player in and have belief in him I can say I can't thank him enough for that but now obviously I've got a new challenge and you know new manager I want to impress and get the ball rolling definitely. And have you left behind a club that's in difficulty? Do you want? You know what I'm like every week isn't it? So I've got a train at 11 o'clock you know what I mean? Just with the Sanchez situation I wonder what you make of that? Obviously I'm not being there at the moment so I'm not really going to it'll be unfair to me to comment on anything not knowing what's going on so yeah I'm sure Arsenal will get it all resolved I'm like say I'm an Everton player now so my main focus is today training and preparing properly for the first game which fun enough could be against Kieran Gibbs I've got to throw in there World Cup as a motivating factor as well Again it's one thing that's not on my concerns at the moment in time I feel like if I perform well for Everton that's just my main target that's what I want this club to push on I want them to win points and contribute that we're across that bridge when we come to it but I want to be here first that's my main target I don't want to look too far ahead I won't achieve anything if I do that We've had Mark's attack as the 1000th game of his managerial career It's a great achievement obviously and to be part of hopefully a winning team for that is something special for personally for the manager and I'm sure you can celebrate but it's going to be a tough job we need to work hard but I think if you're on the club it just needs to get into all the players and hopefully with like myself and Cenk coming in it's going to be a great reception and hopefully just give that extra boost Sam what does that milestone mean to you? Well obviously I wasn't thinking that we're going to get there like it being so I actually thought I was already there when I left Crystal Palace because if you counted Limerick I was well past those Limerick games were unfortunately there those Limerick games were not added because it wasn't a full-time professional football club so having to come back and now got the nod last week that this was going to be a 1000th game I'm absolutely delighted that I've hit that milestone of course and mainly all in the Premier League you know the ambition to play at the top level when you're a footballer which I managed to do but then to manage at the top level in the Premier League Experiencing so many different cultures so many different cultures has been a great journey for me and like I've said many many times I've never worked since I've left school so this is just another continuation of what's been for me a lovely way to spend my time and work in this industry so I look forward to the lads making sure we win tomorrow and and I can celebrate that a little bit more if we get those three points What's your advice to those starting out in management now? Those starting out in management survival it's the first thing on your mind and survival is about understanding what's needed at that football club with the players you have at your disposal you may have many theories and many thoughts about how you might want to play may want to consider your football but the biggest asset you can have is judging whether those players can play that way and if they can't quite play the way that you want they play to their strengths to get results results of what keeps you in a job and then results give you the experience results get you in the limelight and results allow you to move up the league and get a bigger job Has it changed you? Yeah, not the same person I was when I first started I've done many many things over the years to modify and adjust as a manager to stay ahead of the game it's always been one of my main priorities and what the next level is and where is it coming from and we want to not follow anybody else we want to be at the forefront of what it is and I think everybody is in that field now more than ever before so it's always very interesting what new ideas come along and implementing those ideas into your club and will they help and that is not for me it's always been outside of football a lot of the stuff I've implemented in the game has come outside of it's in the world of sport outside of football you know so I think we can all go around football clubs and see what they do and do this and we all do similar but somewhere outside of there in some other sport maybe something that can take you forward So obviously it's been a frustrating time for you so far this season but do you feel this is perhaps the right the right stage of your career and what are your ambitions? Yeah no it's like I said before it was obviously a very difficult decision at this moment in time I obviously have a young family as well and I need to take in the count but being still only 28 I feel fit as I ever have done and I just want to be playing football and working hard and making this club be where I think I believe it can be with the development of the stadium the plans, the players coming in I felt like I want to be part of something part of something that's going forward and like I said before I had a chance to work with the manager again I know I had that brief spell and I've really enjoyed it and I want to be part of that and that belief the manager had bringing me in made my decision very easy Do you feel that there's pressure on you but pressure in a good way that you might not have had to watch it at all? I feel like every day is pressure anyway it's just how you deal with it I'm sort of someone I like to be better than I was the day before I'm sure everyone believes that in any job they do and I feel like this place will get even more out of me and I'm just hunger to get going again because obviously like you say it's been frustrating but it is what it is and it's a new challenge for me and I'm ready to go and I just think there's no point dwelling on the past anymore it's all about looking forward and that's why I believe this club can push on like the manager said I know results, the last couple haven't been great but I believe that still the team can progress up the league and I can contribute to help Sam, this is your second attacking sign in the month of this year but that's clearly where you felt this was happening Well, it's easy to see that over the season what you need to achieve and the amount of goals that you need to score I think that mathematical equations tell us that if you look over the last five or six years if you're scoring this amount of goals you would finish around or can finish around in this position there's obviously a lot of other factors that have to be taken into consideration and how many goals you concede or how many clean sheets you keep but I think in the main we would fall behind goals scored to finish in ninth or eighth so we then have to improve our clean sheet record massively to then achieve that position like I mean so adding goal power and creativity is obviously very important not forgetting that we all have to defend when we lose the ball as well as create when we've got it so that's not a happy balance for us at the moment you know, having expanded a little bit on our creative opportunities which were obviously difficult to come by but we were still getting results having tried to create that we've slumped on the defensive side so I've still got to try and strike that balance up starting on Saturday hopefully I expect a very tough match I think that West Brom have been performing far greater than the results suggested even when we went down there to play them just a few weeks ago it was a really tough match for us to dig out with a 0-0 and excuse me, I'm not going to dig out a 0-0 and we had a little bit of luck to be honest with you so I think I'm expecting a really tough football match like every game at this level and particularly this time of the season once you've got through the Christmas period and coming out the other end it gets even more and more difficult mentally for the players as well as physically and those with the strongest mentally and physically come through in the end so hopefully we've built up our resilience and we're more determined and dogged to push on through to the end of the season now you've spoken about how difficult it was to leave Arsenal, I'm just wondering when did the realisation dawn on you that you probably had to leave you know since from this season when you look at the minutes that I've played considering obviously the season before scoring 19 goals it was a fact I wasn't part of it and it was just getting the timing right and when I could go like I say I had a young family I had to think about that as well but as a personal football career and decision I felt it was time now and yeah that's what it was really and it happened so quickly as well like I say the way it all sort of developed and not really been able to say my bubuys yet but I'm pleased it's all dealt with and I can just get to know teammates and get going really yeah just last one here Cyril I was mentioning in my programme notes of course and I think that I played against Cyril many times in my year of course but for me it was such a shock because I'd seen him in his wife at West Brom just a few weeks ago and he looked so well you know and obviously it was a great shock that I heard that he died and died so suddenly so obviously my sympathies go to his wife and all the family and all the relatives


And it's evil. Like I don't think we truly get how evil it is, how dark it is. Thomas Howard is getting a lot of backlash and this is like virtue signaling gone wrong. But the thing is, we all have that friend. And in some cases, we are that friend. Up everybody, this is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. So what I like to do is pull things from the YouTube community or pop culture to try to give you some context and teach you how you can improve your mental and emotional wellbeing. So if you're into that kind of stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring the notification bell because I make a ton of videos. So I made a Thomas Howard slash Jeffree Star video yesterday and I just gave a really brief statement about virtue signaling and I actually got quite a few comments about virtue signaling and they're like, hey, can you make a video or people wanted more of an explanation of it? And like, this is something that's actually a really important mental health topic. And it's something that I've had to work on over the years. So let's talk about what is virtue signaling? Thomas Howard, as well as some like real life examples of myself, what you might be doing and what we can do to improve our own mental health as well as our relationships. So I guess the first thing is what is virtue signaling? So virtue signaling is very subjective. I'll start off by saying that we all do it. We all do it in some way, shape or form. But in the society that we're in right now with like moral outrage and like mob mentality, we're like running rampant all over the internet. It's important that we talk about this. So what this is is when people are making statements, they're showing something to the public, basically saying what my little signback here says. Hey, everybody, look at me. I'm a good person. Look at me, look at me, look at me. Don't look over there. Do not look over there. I'm a good person. Look at me and the good things that I'm doing. So I'm gonna talk about something called self-seeking in a minute. But that's kind of the gist of what virtue signaling is.  But like I said, everybody is virtue signals in some way, shape or form. And we'll talk about the right ways to do it and the wrong ways to do it in a minute.  When you go out on your first date, there's certain things that you might discuss. And because you're getting to know each other, you might say like what your job is or what your passions are. In a way, those are virtue signaling. Like we have to let other people know where we stand on certain things or who we are as a person. So that can be considered virtue signaling. But the problem is that you have people who go way outside of the lines with this thing and it causes this huge mess. So with Thomas Halbert, for example, he made this video yesterday and like, yeah, like the whole time I'm watching it, I'm like, oh my God, this is just brutal. And I mentioned in my last video that I'm actually half African-American and I'm somebody who hasn't experienced much racism but I have and it's a really interesting story. I might make a video about it at some point. But anyways, a lot of my family has. Like my entire dad's side of the family is African-American. And like, so I see what's going on, you know, with racism and cultural divides and things like that. But anyways, like for Thomas Halbert to like make this entire post or this entire video, just like talking about like white privilege and being like, do you understand? Do you understand the history of that word? And the reason why this word is evil is because of the mindset it takes to even say the word. And I honestly don't think I would have ever known the full context and the full meaning behind this word if I hadn't talked to my friend, who was a black woman. Like he was like putting up like a back signal of virtue signaling. Now, don't get me wrong. Like I do believe that people who have a platform should try to, you know, talk about their beliefs and things like that. But like there's so much that goes into it. And like I think one of the issues that we have in the world today is that a lot of people, even though they might be well-intentioned, they don't have the right way to go about it. Now, those of you who are new to my channel, I am not a tea channel, all right? I try to take these and give you examples so you can learn from it. But I will say this, if you go look around on Twitter, there's a lot of people saying that like Thomas's actions do not line up with his words. And they're saying that he is somebody who has done some racist things in the past. So I'll just say that. But that's something that we need to talk about real quick. Your virtue signaling can backfire. I've seen it happen so many times. And that's why we need to talk about this in when it comes to mental health. Like I'm gonna make a video right after this about Jeffree Star and how we cause our own problems. Like Thomas going out there and waving this huge thing like look at me, look at me. I'm an ally, look at me, right? What happened was he got a ton of backlash. People are digging up things from his past and we see that happening. Like there was a story a few months ago that I saw on Philip DeFranco. But a young woman at her high school prom wore an Asian inspired dress, right?  But then because he threw out that virtue signal, people started digging through his old tweets and he's dropping n-bombs and things like that. So you see how this gets people into trouble? You know what I mean? So don't tell me that you don't get emotionally hurt when you do this virtue signaling and it backfires right in your face. Like think about the issues that Thomas Halbert is having right now because of that video that he decided to make. Now there are some other videos out there like he issued an apology, which was absolute BS by the way. He talks about how he wasn't trying to like out Jeffree Star and that I might do another video on. We'll see, but I might put that in my playlist of how to apologize, all right? So anyways, let's talk about self-seeking. So self-seeking is something that I learned about six years ago when I got clean and sober and started working on my mental health. And it's something that keeps me on the right path and greatly improves my mental health. So a lot of us know what selfishness and self-centeredness is, but self-seeking, what is self-seeking? Self-seeking is doing something, expecting something in return. Now, typically what that means for most people, like if you're watching this, how many things do we do trying to get something in return, like a feeling or an emotion or we're trying to get people to see us in a certain light? And the problem with this is our motives are never good, our motives are never pure. For example, back in my single days before I was dating my wonderfully beautiful girlfriend, I used to be very self-seeking when dating. I'd be a perfect gentleman, I'd pay for dinner and all this other stuff, but I was expecting something in return. Either something physical or maybe I just wanted them to like me. Or you know what I mean? I wasn't just being a gentleman to be a gentleman. Does that make sense? So a lot of people who are virtue signaling, there's something that we call slactivist as well.  To try to increase awareness and decrease the stigma. I see so many people who only care about mental health awareness on like mental health awareness day, right? And then they never talk about it again.   Oh, and this is a form of virtue signaling because they never do it. They don't show up to these events. They don't share my content. They don't have other people watch it. You know, and that used to really bug me because that in itself was virtue signaling. I hope that makes sense where people only care about something when it's convenient for them. And we call that slactivism because they're doing the bare minimum, bare minimum.  You know what I mean? Like that's just like not cool. So what's the cure for this? What's the answer for this? So something that I've had to work on quite a bit is checking my motives. I have to check my motives, check my motives, check my motives. Like, am I doing this because it's the right thing? Or am I doing this because I want attention, because I want love, because I want affection. Does that make sense? So like, I had to think about that all the time. And a great example of this, and I'll use one of my stories in a second, but I have a really good friend who I only hang out with every now and then. But anyways, he orders food from like DoorDash and you know, stuff like that, hashtag not sponsored. But anyways, we were hanging out and he says, you know, I got into this Reddit, I was on this Reddit post or this sub Reddit about delivery drivers, right? And I know like what really makes them mad because all these delivery drivers are complaining about stuff. And one of the things that irks them is how like people don't tip cash and how people don't, you know, come out to the car and they gotta carry all this food like upstairs, like my friend lives in an upstairs apartment. So my friend's told me this, so he's like, yeah, so two things I try to do now is I always meet them outside, I walk downstairs and meet them and I always tip them in cash. So that way they get the full tip and it doesn't, a cut of it doesn't go to the other place. And like, I know my buddy, my buddy and I, we talk and joke about virtue signaling and stuff. And I actually talked to him before making this video and I was giving him an example. I'm like, yeah, when you said this, like I knew you weren't virtue signaling.  He was just telling me a story, but in turn it actually inspired me. And I'm like, that's really cool. That's a really small thing you can do to help somebody else out. And those are the kind of things that inspire me. When I see people doing small acts of kindness. So like, we all have those friends who are on Facebook or Instagram, like, hey, look at me, I'm feeding a homeless person. Ha, ha, ha, right? Like, this is a form of virtue signaling. Like, would these people do the right thing if nobody was looking?  Like, see how many good deeds you can do over the next week and don't tell anybody. I think I mentioned this in an older video. Like, there's some times where I do a good deed and I just want to tell my girlfriend, I just want to text her and say, hey, I just give this homeless guy some money or I bought him some food. Right? Like, I want to do it so bad, but I stop, I pause and I check my motives behind it. Like, why am I telling her that? But anyways, here's a good example of some, you know, internal conflict I had. Like, am I being self-seeking or am I doing it for a different motive? So I live in the hood, not for long, my girlfriend and I are moving, but I live in the hood and every morning around like four or five o'clock, people would come and dig through the dumpsters and pick out, you know, cans and plastics so they can go recycle them. I drink a ton of rock stars. So what I started doing was I would save these and then when I would hear them rummaging in the dumpsters outside in the morning before I went to work, I would take that bag out to them, I'd be like, here you go, right? And I would do that and I did this for a couple of months and I remember one morning I was like sitting there, I'm like, man, this is such an easy thing that I'm doing. It's such a small, easy thing that I'm doing. They're really grateful that I'm doing it for them. I wanna like tell people about it. I wanna post this on Facebook, but I took a pause, I took a step back and I checked my motives, right? Like, was I posting it on Facebook so everybody would think I'm a good person? No, I wasn't. I asked myself that question and in all honesty, I was posting it on Facebook just to inspire people and say, hey, this is a very small thing that you can do to help out somebody in need. You see what I mean? So as long as you're checking your motives behind things, like you're in a good place. So like I was saying earlier, like virtue signaling is subjective. So just always be true to yourself. That's what it is. Know your motives, know your intentions behind doing things. Like I do not think, in my opinion, I do not think Thomas Halbert's motives were pure when he made that video, all right? And that's the issue that I have. But karma is a B word and now he's getting a ton of backlash about it. But anyways, let's do this down in the comments below. I would love if you guys share personal stories, but if you would like, share stories about someone you know who does this thing. The thing where they're always posting about the good deeds they did. Like, oh, I helped a homeless person. Oh, I helped an old lady across the street or they're always doing stuff like that. Like let's talk about it down below because I think this is an important subject. So we kind of see like, oh wait, do I do that too? You know what I mean? So anyways, that's all I got for you with this video. I'm making another video right after this. So make sure that you stay tuned, all right? So hit that subscribe button, ring that notification bell, all that kind of good stuff. And tomorrow I'll be making some Shane Dawson videos for the new episode, all right? And a huge thank you to all of the people supporting us over on Patreon. Look, there's some new names up there. So if you would like to help support me spread a message of hope about mental health, click or tap on that Patreon icon for as little as a dollar a month, baby. All right, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.


Hi there!  And it's named after, of course, the stamps that I'm using called Spring Bouquet from Studio Katia, which I haven't used before. And it has a Mother's Day and a Thank You sentiment. And I'll do the Thank You sentiment. I'm going to use some Distress Oxides, some Watercolor and my Misti. So if you're following along, you can get a couple Distress Oxide colors ready and your flower stamp. And I have some watercolor paper in there. And I'm going to start with my Pink Distress Oxide to paint my flowers with. If you wanted to do each flower in a different color, you could certainly do the same kind of a thing. What I'm going to do is wipe off the ink from the places where there's leaves. And I'm not being real careful with it, don't be religious about it. Just wipe off the worst of it. But you could do a couple different colors for the different flowers.    And I'm going to stamp the little bit of leaves. And again, I can stamp over top or ink over top of some of my flowers and then use my baby wipe to wipe it off because I can kind of see where the flower starts and stops. And if some color blades through to something else, it is not the end of the world because this is a really loose technique we're going to use anyway. The cool thing about the Distress Inks is that they do kind of melt away a little bit, not a ton, but a little bit with water. So you can actually paint with the Distress Oxide Inks if you want to. But I'm going to paint with my watercolors and mix them in. So use both mediums. And I'm going to start with each one of my flowers and go into some of the places where there's the darkest shadows on my flowers, which would be kind of the bottom or inside most parts of the flower and let the tips of the flowers be white. But I'm going to start by putting a little bit of that color right into those dark areas. And then I'm going to add some water in order to make that kind of blend into the white areas. Because of course, this looks a little silly as is. But I cleaned my brush and it has just a little bit of water on it. Not much. If you get it too wet, you're going to have just water gushing all over the place. So use just a little bit and you can wipe it off periodically. This is actually in real time. I don't do very many real time videos with watercolor because it takes so long to do things. And even with Copic and stuff because I don't do just a little bit. I do tend to do a whole lot of stuff. So end up speeding up things. But I'm just kind of joining some of the areas and I'm letting some of them remain white. You could wipe some of this off also with a baby wipe or a paper towel if you get too much ink on there. But look how those leaves are starting to actually turn into something that almost looks dimensional. Just by putting the color in the darkest area and then pulling some of that color just a little bit with your brush into the lighter area with that clean brush. And when we get to the outside petals, you want to put the color on the inside of the flower. So it sometimes feels backwards of what the inside flowers are but it's a whole science thing. I'm not worried about the light coming from the right or left necessarily. I'm just trying to make those petals pop and make them look like they're real. So the more you have a contrast between the dark in the shadow area and a white in the lightest area, the more dimension you're going to get. And if you're doing these flowers for the stamp set with another medium, just bear the same thing in mind. You want the darkest colors to be, you know, kind of nice and dark and that when they blend really nicely into a light color, they just start to look really dimensional and round. But this one is also a spring bouquet. So I think they're intended to be different flowers but since I'm doing them all as one, they look like they're in different directions. The flowers are facing different ways. So if they were roses or peonies or something they almost look like they're bouquet of the same flower facing different directions. And having different amounts like the one on the right has more petals that curl around the center and then the one on the left than doing right now is more of a spiral and kind of comes out from the middle a little bit. So the puddle of paint that I'm using is Quinacridone Pink. Works really well with the Pictor Hasberry. And I'm going to do just a couple colors on this, not very much in terms of massive color because I want to keep this one really soft and pretty and simple. All those petals at the bottom at the base of this flower, because the flowers pointing downwards, those are all going to be painted pink. And then they're going to slowly kind of work their way into the petals that are hanging down. And on this one I'm going to try to put some of the color on the petals that are hanging down so it looks like those are in shadow at the bottom of the bouquet. A few stripes almost to some of these petals so they feel like they're kind of that fluttery sort of, I don't know what you call it, sort of it's got folds in the leaves, if that makes sense, folds in the petals. And some of this didn't stamp really well. I left it in my Misti in case I needed to do any re-stamping though. And you can certainly do some re-stamping in any of these areas if you start adding too much water. Just wait for it to dry a little bit and re-stamp right over top of what you've got going on if you start losing that definition. And that will generally happen if you add too much water to it then that definition will disappear. I'm going to add some sap green now and mix up a puddle of that. And I want it to be really soft and have just a really, really soft edge to it and I don't want to complete necessarily the leaves. I want them to just be almost a frame for the rest of my flowers. I'm going to try to wipe some of that off because I got too much color on there and that was not wiping it off enough.  I'm going to work on these other leaves and notice that I don't have a line between where the flower stops and the leaf starts. So I have to kind of decide where I'm going to make that point. But when I leave that white area it looks like there's a white edge to that petal. So I'm going to finish these little stems on the buds but then I sort of felt like I needed something down on the left as well and at this point I can start adding more to it. I can add a background. I can add all kinds of crazy stuff. I can also add just a little bit of color for another leaf or two down there at the bottom and just a couple of strokes to finish it off. I just I wasn't sure where I was headed with it but I knew I wanted something a little bit more down at the bottom. I don't know whether I have this stamp turned around the wrong way because sometimes flowers when they design a stamp they meant for it to be turned in a particular direction and maybe that's why it felt like it needed a little something down there with the flower hanging down because that flower if you turn it another way could also be pointing upward as well as those buds. Now I wanted to add just a little bit of darkness to it but I wanted just a little more contrast so I put some Carvazole Violet into my quinacridone pink and I'm going to go into some of the very very very darkest areas not a lot of them. Don't don't overdo it because if you overdo it then you're taking the power away from the few areas where you're going to put these dark colors and I'm just dropping in just a tiny bit. Now most of this quinacridone pink is fairly dry so I'm almost painting over top of it but a little bit of it might start bleeding so I have to be extra careful if it's the color wants to move on its own I'm going to be careful not to put too much color down there so it'll start running all over the place so that's why I worked on my leaves first so I could kind of get a sense for where that was going but look how just adding that tiny bit of dark in the centers of those made a sudden difference in the depth. It really gave me some something to hang hang my hat on and sink my teeth into and look into those flowers you can almost feel the depth in the centers and then some of those petals down at the bottom just choosing a few areas to really add some of those deep dark colors underneath and a little bit more there on the bottom of the flowers to a little tiny bit on my buds. Buds tend usually to be darker than the flowers themselves but I'm going to add just a little tiny bit of that purpleish color there and I saw one more little spot there in the middle that might need a little separation so those two flowers kind of part ways from each other and for my finished card I trimmed it down added some layers of paper and popped that both layers from the top with some dimensional adhesive and added my sentiment and I matched the layering on the inside of the card as well. So there we go. If you would like to pin a still of this card you can certainly hop over to the blog and do that. Supplies are listed in the doobly-doo down below here on YouTube as well as over on the blog as they always are and I will see you guys next time. Have a really really wonderful day. Go make something beautiful. Bye bye.


What is up, you two? It's ya boy, Bern. Oh, I see, like, I know last time I said I'll remember it, but I'll be real, I can't remember it. Can y'all help me?  This is the look of the day. Oh, we got some tea, you know what I'm sayin'? Now, look, I haven't tested one of my crushes in a while, and we not gonna be tasting the cookies, we tasting the eggs, you know what I'm sayin'? You know how it's crazy, I realize I never used righteous in the living prank. Yeah, that's crazy to me. So, yeah, we gonna be tasting them.  I mean, you don't make the light, but you're booed, you know what I'm sayin'? So, in principle, you know what I'm sayin'? I'm following on Instagram, this is where I get suggestions that somebody told me I never did righteous, that's why we're doing righteous today. So, yeah, let's get straight to it.  Cause I haven't talked to this girl in a minute, bro. I don't even know if she's the leader of my number. So, we just gonna say what you're doin'. Just to see if she knows who me, you know what I'm sayin'? I'll be rappin', I'll be really rappin'.   When people say, boy, it kind of gives me racist vibes. Like, boy, like, I'm not a slave, all right, hold on. We gonna say, I know you miss me. And then I'm gonna say that lyric. Oh, I go to shoot, I'm feelin' righteous, yeah. Um, for some reason right here, the whole video got blocked, so I gotta put this in here, but this is the only time I'm gonna do this. I apologize. I know that the truth is hard to digest.  See, look, I know what I'm doin' here. Come on now, y'all. I've been doin' this for years. Boy, I don't miss you. I should've, yo! Boy, I don't miss you. I should've used you for club. Layman, whoa! I'm not, first of all, I'm not lame.  Second of all, she said, hey, look, I know a lot of y'all wanna be YouTubers. A lot of y'all wanna be some type of influencer. This is what you gotta watch out for. Girls like this are demons. They're state devils. Keep, bro, watch out, bro. We gon' sing the next lyric. Five or six pills, am I right, huh? You cold, you runnin' over all my lifestyle. You takin' pills? No, because we broke up.  You already got it messed up. I would never take nothin' because you not worth, bro. You just said you wanted to clout chase.  Come on now.  Oh my God, I feel like I look like a simp cause of these lyrics. I don't wanna do that. Okay, I'm gonna say, first, before that, I'm gonna say, not cause of you, just life. And then I'm gonna say that lyric. Take your medicine to fix all of the damage. My anxiety is the size of a planet. Well, I need, first of all, I'm not takin' no pills. Hey, don't do drugs. Matter of fact, since we're here, I want you all to put your hands in the comments. A hand emoji. A plunge. Say you're not doin' no drugs, you know what I'm sayin'? I need you all to say I'm serious. Like, I'm lookin' at, like, look, bro, do it. I'm waitin'. Do it. And I'm also gonna need you all to hit the like button if you just fell for that. You thought your internet was booty for a second. You thought we froze. I really got, bro, I'll be gimme y'all a day. Y'all just be lettin' me get y'all. Like the video if I got y'all, but let me know in the comments.  Well, listen, I'm not Justin Bieber. I don't know who you call him, baby. I'm not your, uh. The fact that she, look, out of everything she, there ain't nothin' she can say to face what she did. There ain't nothin' she can do to face what she did. She already said she went in the car chase.    Like, what? She really lucky I'm only tastin' her cause I gotta keep sittin' these lyrics.     The same way you got hos in your drawers.  Now look, I'm not upset about this chick at all, but to make the lyrics go along, I gotta act like I am.  I don't even wanna say that cause I don't feel that way. It's bad to lie, you know what I'm sayin'?   Oh, eyes, I'm freezing Beautiful eyes, deceiving Oh, damn, so I did leave you in pain? No, you didn't, but how do you wanna explain? I don't know, but what's the next lyric? We may die, this is inflating You're right, we could die any minute in the facts. Do you wanna hang? That kinda felt racist. I don't know if it's because I'm black. Do you wanna hang? I'm gonna let that slide. Do you wanna hang? Yes or no, boy. No, no, okay, no, son. Look, she's calling me boy. She's asking me, do I wanna hang? And she's saying, don't ignore me. I'm not racist and I don't think everything comes down to race, but this is a lot of coincidences coming into coincidence. You know what I'm sayin'? I don't know how Dr. O'Barr probably, this is what Dr. O'Barr was talking about. I tried to get with the benefit of the doubt, but she's taking the doubt from the benefit. What do you mean by that? And I'ma say the lyric. Like, hang out. Hang out where? Hang out in the middle of nowhere? Hang out on a freaking, on a bro? I don't know, like go get food or something. I don't think she, I think she know what she was doin'. I ain't goin' like, I ain't no way. Or maybe you can come to my place. Oh, I ain't goin' like, seems like a trap. And I'm perfectly aware of that.   This next lyric don't make sense, so I'ma say, you didn't fix the heat yet, did you? And then I'ma send this lyric. What heat, you hella confusing. Boy, talk.  Like why you call, I'm not a boy. I ain't my man, I ain't my man, I'm a man. You're confusing, you don't know what you want. Henry Yosanelli, you over my house, right now. Oh, okay, hold on. Let me think, you know the address already. She has a plushie, and she got a stuffed animal.  I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna send that. What are y'all talkin', I wasn't, I wasn't even gonna send that. What y'all talkin' about? Oops, the screening record turned off, randomly. Actually y'all, now that I think about it, what time is it? It's around five, bruh. The grocery store closes at like six, so I gotta go grocery shop so I can survive. You have to go grocery shop, you got it, you know what I'm sayin'? If y'all want anything, let me know in the comments below. If y'all want anything, you know what I'm sayin'? Chips, I'll make sure I'll bring it for y'all next video, I gotcha. I'll do that as a bring, I'm only choosing five people though. So, say something in the comments, I'll bring five people something, whatever y'all want.  Hate it, don't you? Learn y'all, subscribe, like and comment, we out. Oh, please help.


We are preparing our youngsters for jobs that we don't even know about. And so the big pieces that we're building are that perseverance and being able to problem solve and being able to work collaboratively in groups. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. We're very fortunate to have STEM schools and have that type of education here in our district because students have an ability to really delve in and learn through projects, real life application with STEM. And emphasis in really exploring things that they're curious about and asking questions and then discovering and constructing knowledge through different projects that they're working on. So STEM education provides those avenues for kids to explore and to understand the world around them. Some examples of things that kids can do through engineering is say working on bridges and trying to figure out what kind of bridge can hold the most weight. It would require kids to do some research to find out how do we construct bridges? What makes a bridge strong? What makes it sturdy? And then put those things into practice by designing it and taking that design into application and actually building it and testing it out and then having conversations about what worked and what didn't and then going back through the process again to make improvements. So that's a real life application at a model level so that kids really have an opportunity to dig in to engineering and pull those pieces together. And the veins in our body hold blood. Our blood. Blood but the veins in the cell are holding one. The water. The water, that's right. Isn't that cool? When we're looking at STEM at early childhood, a lot of that occurs through exploration. It really is about building foundational skills for children. So for the science, technology, engineering and math, it's not a matter of teachers standing in front of students trying to lecture to them but really giving them opportunities to explore and understand each of those disciplines. But because it hasn't done what in the last few days? Rain. Rain. Where do they go when there's no moisture? So I'll give you some examples. In this class, four-year-olds were exploring with their senses. They're learning about science and learning about their senses and how to use that to explore the world around us. We talked before about early childhood being about exploration. And one thing that students love to do is to explore technology. So in this video footage, we can see examples of students using iPads for reading, for math. STEM doesn't mean that you can't pull in reading, that you can't pull in writing. It's important to pull all of these pieces together for a deeper understanding of STEM and kids really growing the skills that they will need later on in school and eventually in their careers. One, two, three. Chevea, will you come and show us what happens first? Our early childhood students can build foundational skills in all areas of STEM. We can even accomplish that in engineering. Now you want him to turn right. No. But that's what you're going to program him to do, right? Remember, this is where we're trying to get, but we have to think of each step that it takes to get there, right? In this classroom, first-grade students are working on programming. So with their V-bots, they're able to put in a simple program and have the robots, in this case, go to the X. So you can see by trial and error and collaboration, kids are figuring out how to make the bot go where it needs to go and learning from their mistakes. So very much STEM education. This didn't quite work the way I wanted it to. How do I go back and correct it? In math, you see kids counting in a variety of ways, using dinosaurs, counting apples and placing those on the trees. Here, we see ten frames that have five and five. So in counting, the students are holding on to that concept and not having to count again. That's an important developmental milestone for children to be able to hold on to that number when counting. Awesome. Do you think you can do it, Michael? Here's another example of conservation of numbers. Notice the young boy is rolling the number cube and he's able to get to that number just by taking dinosaurs away. He didn't have to recount what was already there. He held on to the fact that there's two dinosaurs, I rolled a six, I'm going to add four more. Now, we can see in this example, he's doing quite well with conserving numbers. In contrast, here's a young lady. You can see that she's rolled three, but she's adding many more dinosaurs than three. So as a teacher, I would ask some questions and work with her a little bit more on conserving numbers and maybe even take a step back and make sure she understands the concept of one-to-one correspondence. Teachers do not have to have any type of special certification. They just have to have an open mind to realize they can pull in anything. Reading, writing, as I mentioned, research for bridges is an opportunity to read about it, to write down your thoughts so pulling all of those pieces in to make it real-life application for kids. Just because they're young doesn't mean that they cannot be exposed to and learn about STEM and STEM practices. These are skills that we start now and they will be vital to them as they grow throughout their time in school and eventually in whatever career they may choose. We've heard it time and time again. We are preparing our youngsters for jobs that we don't even know about. And so the big pieces that we're building are that perseverance and being able to problem-solve and being able to work collaboratively in groups. You might have noticed that all of our groups were working but really they were self-paced and independent. Our future workers need to know how to do that and we're starting at the earliest ages.


It's D.K. and I'm back, back, back again with Band Talk episode 6.  Come up below and let me know what else this is. Now, I do need you guys to make sure you smash the subscribe button, also give me a thumbs up on this video and make sure you put me on your big screen video. You guys had questions and I have answers so we're going to get to it. Ain't nothing to it but to do it. Let's go. Okay, question number one comes from At Off Topic and they say, thank you so much. They have been waiting for the video that you posted about the companies to find dedicated routes. They know it's not usually your expertise but do those types of companies usually require commercial insurance? So, you ain't been watching the videos, I already know. You haven't been watching the videos or know how I know? Because it was watching the videos and you would know that I've said previously that some of the companies that were on that list, they actually have their own insurance. You can go through them. You don't have to have commercial insurance so you can go under their insurance and they're just going to take out some money every week, two weeks or every month. I'm not sure exactly when it's going to be but some of those companies, for sure, I know for sure that T-Force has that. T-Force Suggestions for sure has a thing where you can actually go under their insurance and they're going to take it out to a check every week, every two weeks, every month. I'm not sure exactly when but guess what, go out and get them dividends and win. He also said, have you ever had to create your own bill of lading for freight that you needed to move? No, no, I've never had to create my own bill of lading. Usually they send me an e-mail, I get it that way, print it out with the little printer I got.   Somebody dogs jump over their fence. That joint is out here.  Printer, printer, chicken dinner. You are going to be a winner. He's right at your door. Look, look at this dog. He's just jumped over that, he's just jumped over that fence. You know you won't get in trouble. I don't even know why you did that doggie, doggie doggie. He's a good doggie doggie. Question number two comes from Atteam Run It Up. And they say, love your videos and your advice. Did you have a lot of money saved up before you started the cargo van business? And if you so, how much do you recommend for someone to have before they start their own business? That's a great question. I get this type of questions all the time. Honestly, I don't believe that, I mean, everybody has their own definition of a lot of money. A lot of money to somebody may be a thousand dollars. Some other people may be a 10,000. Some people may be 10 million. Some people may be 50 million, a billion. You know, it depends on the person you're asking about a lot of money. I will say that this is my personal opinion. I do think that you should definitely watch my guy, big CJ video. He actually has two videos on how he started his, well, his one year review on his cargo van business. It gives out a lot of great information. Me personally, I do think you should have at least six months reserve set aside so you can start the business. Now, you should have the vehicle already. That's my personal opinion. And then you should have at least six months of reserve set aside. So if anything is to happen, that you will be OK.  There are going to be some slow days where you're not going to make some money. Example, today. Today we went out. I got up in my regular time. They don't have stuff I need to do. Put in Ferrari orders. They can get them. And we literally made $0.00 today. Zero. This is the zero. So you have to have money set aside so you can be able to get past those days. And also, I do want to say this, if you don't have money set aside, if you don't have money saved up to start the business, and you just get your van, and then you have $1,000. What happens if something happened?  That's something you've got to think about.  This is what I think, in my personal opinion. I think that if you have $1,000, you're just going to be thirsty. You're going to go do stuff that you shouldn't be doing. And you're thinking you're making money, but you're really not making money. You're really losing money. You just see the month dollar sign. So you see the dollar sign saying that you should go 200 miles for $200. But in order for you to run your van, it costs you $1.50 to run it. And you can't run it now. But you did run it, but you ran it for $1. So now you really lost money.  So that's the way I think about it. Come up below and let me know what you guys think about it. Question number three comes from On the Road with Ram Rican. And he says, I got a question. What's the best approach to getting involved with medical supplies and carrier companies? He's looking to expand into doing loads this year with his van, and he wants to know your opinion on how to approach these jobs. Honestly, see, let me just explain to you guys something. There's a very big difference between it being an independent contractor and being a W-2 employer. It's not the same thing. When you go for these interviews and stuff, it's not really an interview. It's just pretty much them telling you what you're going to be doing. Like when we went to T-Force and just just to do that interview, it was more like an orientation. They say, this is what we're going to do. This is what you do. You got these other packages right here. You're going to get all these packages.  And then you're going to go that way. And then you just come back and do this and do that. So it's best pretty much how it goes. Now, as far as medical carrying goes, in my area, this is my area only. I want to speak for my area. I don't know about everybody else's area. But we do have a company called Spoke Logistics that I talked about in a previous video. And they actually have medical carrying stuff. Also medical supply stuff. Also, T-Force has had some medical supplies, too, as well. So I think that this is what I'm going to say. I think that you need to do some research, research, research. Go on Indeed. All of those five companies that I listed in that video, I actually found every single one of them on Indeed. You can go to Indeed. Also, I recommend that you go ahead and check out Mark the Mentor channel. He's talked about different dedicated routes and never dedicated loads and all that stuff, final mile stuff for box trucks and cargo vans. And how he thinks that you can make the most money in which each vehicle. He's done it for a while. He did it before. He had like 15 trucks and all that stuff. So he's very knowledgeable about all the information.   OK, question number four comes from at Darius Northern and he says, with the fluctuating pay we experience on gig apps in conjunction with driving loads that should be worth way more than we expect than we accept, especially on roadie. What is your take on the idea of a union amongst gig drivers and how could that idea come to life? I think that's actually a great idea. I have always said this since the beginning of time. If we have stuff, if we all stuck together, the parties will go up. There is no question. There's no infants and boys about it. But there's always going to be people who is not going to agree with it. They're going to say, I got to go feed my family. I got to go do this. I got to do that. It's just the same way as when people try to go on strike. If they try to go on strike without a union, then some people are going to sneak and go to work and then others are going to stay outside and all that stuff. So I do think that a union will help us out a lot in the situation. But another thing about the union is for the most part, those people who are in a union, they have to pay dues. They have to pay a certain amount of money towards a union. Now, is everybody going to want to do that? You know, some people, they want all their money. They don't want to play no games. They don't want to worry about a union. See, you know what would be crazy about people, right? Nobody wants to pay out for the union, but when something happens, then they wish they did. That's how it be. That's how it be in life. A lot of people, they say, I ain't been paying no money. I ain't been doing this. I ain't been doing that until something happened. I don't want to be a part of the union. Absolutely not. I do think that it is an excellent idea. And I also believe that we all stick together and we was on the same accord. We will be able to afford a lot more things. Can we be off there getting that green? Nothing in between. Now, as far as how that can come to life, I honestly have no idea. I just don't know. I don't know who will be the spokesman. I don't know what will happen, how will happen, when will happen. Maybe we have to vote, everybody voting to it, but it steals so many people across so many states that I don't know how it's going to be possible. How are we going to each reach every, how are we going to come together? I don't know how that will happen. I really don't know. That's just my honest to God truth. I really don't know, but I would definitely like it to happen, but I don't know how it would happen. Comment below and let me know, how do you guys think it would be possible to create us a union? Question number five comes from at CS, and they say, are you and your business partner still in the real estate game? And if so, is it residential or commercial real estate? We are absolutely still in the real estate game, and we do whatever you want to do. We could do commercial, residential, industrial, whatever you want to do, you want to farm, whatever you want, we could do it. We split the hot floor. We have sold some commercial buildings before. We have sold some residential buildings before. We actually sold a big gun shop here in our area, and they actually turned it into like a grocery store, a bakery and all that stuff. It was low-key exclusive, low-key exclusive. We still haven't been there since they redid and everything, but we definitely did sell that. That was early on too. We, hey look, I'ma say this, whatever you want to do, we can do it. We're in Illinois, we're licensed in Illinois and Wisconsin, so whichever state you choose, hey, you ain't gonna lose. It's fancy dealing with us. Hey, call Rome when you want to buy or sell your home. Question number six comes from at Ride Share Lisa, and she says, you do a lot of van work, but it seems like it has its issues. Have you thought about getting back into catering? It does pay really well. Shout out to Ride Share. Ride Share Lisa been here for a long, Ride Share Lisa has been with us for a very long time. Make sure you guys don't subscribe to her YouTube channel because she put in a lot of content over there. As far as the catering stuff, actually, hey Ride Share, Ride Share, I'ma tell you something. Look, we just had our second highest pen delivered order yesterday. That video dropped it soon. I don't know when it's gonna drop, but it dropped it soon. Monday. It's gonna drop Monday. Our second highest pen delivered order, well, they ain't got an order. So it was super sweet. So I definitely, me personally, I go wherever the money at. If it's delivered order or delivered at order, or any type of order that comes in, if it's good, I'm choosing that joint. I'm going out there to get busy. I don't care about where it's located and all that stuff. If it makes sense, it makes sense. So I go wherever the money go. I don't really care about the carry companies. I don't really care about the other apps. I don't care about nothing. I go wherever the money go. If the money go here, I go there with it. So, shout out to my girl, Ride Share Lisa and make sure you guys subscribe to her YouTube channel. Question number seven comes from At Responsibly Broke and they say, appreciate the videos and the information. Would you consider doing a challenge with other content creators in the cargo van space? They gave two examples, maybe like you in versus big CJ or Pat Gigtainment, and you do like a challenge or something, like seeing who can make the most money in three days and the other person's city or state. Oh, so he won't, he won't mean to go. They come to, we go to each other's state. Yes. I don't know how that would happen. She's dead. That's critical. So I had to go all the way down to Texas. I know it's hot as fish grease down there too. I got to go all the way down to Texas and then Pat Gigtainment, I think he may be in New Jersey or New York or somewhere out East. He out there on the East side, on the East side. But honestly, I don't think that's, I don't know, this is what I'm gonna say about the challenge. I don't think that anything is wrong with friendly competition, everybody you know competing with each other and all that stuff, but I would rather, instead of compete with each other, let's eat with each other because sometimes the supporters and a subscriber, they take things the wrong way and they might overdo things because sometimes you may have somebody, you got somebody, someone's gonna make no money to you. Someone's gonna do this, someone's gonna do that. You know, a lot of times some subscribers, they always got something to say negative about everybody and how they doing everything. So I don't want to create a division between any of us. All of us need to work together. All of us has our own separate lines. All of us do our own things separately. Like CJ do how he do it, Pat do how he do it, St. Mike, everybody giggies, everybody do how they do it. Everybody create content, how they create content. Everybody, I think that we should all group together and it would be greater in groups. This is what I think. I don't think nothing is wrong with the friendly competition but I don't want to send a wrong message out to the subscribers and the supporters and everything that you know it's a B for, we're going back and forth and some people do, some people love the drama though. Now get me wrong. Some people love the back and forth and all that stuff. They like that. I'm not really into that. I'm not here to do that. I'm here to help everybody make as much money as possible and then change as many lives as possible. That's why I'm here. And I'm here, I'm pretty sure that they're probably doing the same thing. I know for sure big CJ is on that. I'm not sure about Pat giggies. I'll actually talk to big CJ personally one-on-one type, you know, through emails and all that stuff, text messages and stuff. So that's what he's on. Everybody has their own line and they doing their own thing but guess what? Well, all that matters at the end of the day. So they out there getting their own chain. That's all that matters. You know what I'm talking about? But that was an excellent question. Huge shout out to you. Y'all already know what to do. Smash that like button. Question number eight comes from at Mike Finnelli and he says scenario time. You pick up a return order from Topgolf and bring it back to the courier warehouse. Before you go and pick up the return, the courier dispatchers ask you, can you bring two boxes down to Topgolf from the warehouse due to someone else for getting to deliver those two boxes down three days ago? This part of the order would be for free and the return part would still be paid. Would you be okay with that? So they want you to take boxes from the warehouse to the Topgolf and drop off the Topgolf stuff you were supposed to drop off or you got to go back and forth for. First off, let me just say that. I don't even really matter. Absolutely not. If you ain't paid me, I'm not doing it. I'm sorry. This is not a do me a favor time. I'm not doing no favors.   Even though you ain't coming in today, we're gonna pay you. They ain't gonna do that. Look, this is business, it's not personal. It doesn't have anything to do with their personality if they cool or not and none of that stuff. This is business. It's strictly financial. That's it, that's all. If they want you to do it, got to pay me.  I'm not going for the free ski. Because that wasn't my fault. That ain't got nothing to do with me. That ain't my fault. And once you, let me tell you this right now. Let me tell you, everybody who watches this video, once you start doing it, they ain't gonna want you to stop doing it.  So do not start it. If you don't start it, you ain't got to stop it. That's a saying my mom always said, if you don't start it, you ain't got to stop it. They need to stop it with the free stuff. If y'all want me to do this job, y'all need to pay me, baby. That's it, that's all. We trying to ball, not stall. He made sure to comment afterwards that he said no because he wasn't gonna get paid to bring those two boxes down, but he just wanted to your input. And I agree with you, I agree with you. Hey, we ain't, but hey, we can't be playing these games with these people, man.  And if they can get over 10 times, they're gonna get over 10 times out of 10 times. So we have to stick to our guns and do how we do it. I spit that out fluid. I thought y'all knew it. Question number nine comes from at Bob Church. And he says, McHenry Bob here, love your videos. This isn't an easy business to be in. What are your thoughts on getting into real estate doing flips? Oh my God, McHenry Bob. Shoot the sounds of my God, McHenry Bob. Actually, McHenry Bob, we have done a couple of things. We actually did two flips, but I wanna say this again, I'm, look, I'm saying this every time you reach out to me, McHenry Bob, whenever you wanna come out of retirement, we about a property. Look, how about this? I'm gonna make your offer, McHenry Bob. And we're still gonna pay you. The next time we gonna find us a property, we're gonna buy it. Me and my business probably gonna get the property and everything. And guess what? We can create a whole other channel or something like that. And you can come there and show us how to do everything. You're still gonna get paid.  I'm paying you to teach me. I'm gonna still pay you however much you charge. It gotta make sense though. It gotta make sense though. However much you charge. But my whole thing about this is to learn how to do this stuff. So I'm definitely down to do it. I'm into real estate. I love real estate. Why I don't love real estate? I love what make me money. I'ma say that. I love what make me money. And real estate happens to be one of those things. I definitely would love to flip some houses or even get a, you know, pretty beat up, not too bad, not find us just problems off. Pretty beat up. And hold on one way. Before I get into that, I wanna say this. This is the type of people y'all wanna talk to. Shout out to my guy McHenry Bob. I tell you guys, you need to conversate with different people. And I also wanna say this about YouTube in general. YouTube has opened doors up for me and it got me to talk to different people. People I would probably have never met if I didn't do YouTube. So me putting myself out there is gonna help people and also I can meet new people. Like my guy McHenry Bob. Now, not to mention my guy McHenry Bob. He is a carpenter. Well, he's a retired carpenter. He might come out of retirement. Me don't know yet. He's a retired carpenter. And I'm sure that he knows people that does all the different trades. Roofing, this, that. So guess what? That's a good person to know in my life. Especially because I'm in real estate. But, that's what I'm saying. So, what are my thoughts on doing where the state get into flips? That's what my guy McHenry Bob wanna know. I'm gonna tell you guys. Me personally right now, the interest rate high man. If you got straight cash, you got cash hundreds of thousands of dollars you could buy a property and do a do it like that. I would recommend you do it. It depends on how fast you wanna flip it. The interest rates are pretty high right now. So less people are buying. It's like a very low amount of percentage that people are buying right now. So, the deal just really have to make sense. If the deal makes sense and you can make money here, I think that it's a good, you can do it. But it's very sad that you're gonna find a good deal nowadays because everything is pretty much overpriced and the interest rates are high. So unless you find a killer of a deal, the only way I think you can find a killer of a deal if you meet a private owner and do it that way versus you going through a real estate agent and all that stuff, you might find a deal here and there but you ain't gonna find as many as you know somebody that know somebody and know they got this house, they about to move out of state. They're going to Florida or something. They wanna get rid of it. You can just deal directly with them. Y'all both can save money. You can save money from them having to pay the real estate agent because if they pay the real estate agent, you don't have to pay more money. Even though I'm a real estate agent, I'm just gonna tell you the truth about business. This business ain't personal. The reality of it is I think it's okay right now but I think it would be better when an interest rate come down somewhere because it's super high. But I definitely, I'm with it. Hey, make every buy. If you wanna do some deals, we can make it happen.  I do think that they're gonna have some foreclosures going on but I do also wanna say this guys, a lot of people don't be really knowing about foreclosure. They be hearing about what everybody else hear and they try to, you know, talk about foreclosures or talk about this, talk about that. They just hear a lot of stuff they hear on the internet and reality of the fact is for the most part with the foreclosure is the bank's owner property. After everything is foreclosed, they own property. And what is the bank's job? Y'all tell me, comment below and let me know. I'm gonna give y'all five seconds. Three, two, one, zero. The bank job is to make money. Now, you think you're gonna wanna get this foreclosure for way less than it's supposed to be, way less than it's supposed to be priced for and it's not gonna happen. You wanna know why?  So they're not gonna lose money on the house. They already look kinda, they not low-key gonna lose no money at all. They actually still gonna gain, it's gonna be a tax right off for them.  You can't fix it up and make it better and possibly make a profit but it's less likely than most people think. They, everybody, I'm gonna give me a foreclosure and I'm like, hey, it's the same thing. It's really a fixer-upper. That's really what it is. Sometimes the foreclosures are worse fixer-uppers because people are mad that they're getting kicked out so they literally start ripping everything out and take stuff with them. Porn, what they be pouring? Porn, concrete, and the toilet. I just don't know what type of stuff it's crazy stuff. My grandpa, you know my grandpa, he had, oh, grandpa, I think he had like five properties. I can't even remember how many he had. I don't really know, anyway. Look, he said people be pouring concrete in the toilet. So that joined hard and then you gotta get the whole pipes ran out and all pulled. Ooh, that was crazy. You gotta get the pipes cleaned out and everything. So with the foreclosures, you get what you get. Question number 10 comes from at Blazing Tundra and they say, I noticed you do some orders in Wisconsin. Where's the farthest you've gone in Wisconsin? I live in Waukesha, so if you ever need a hand, give me a shout and I'll help you out.  Actually, where is the farthest we went? We went to Oshkosh. Maybe we went to Oshkosh. We went to Oshkosh to do a freight order. Well, we've been in Waukesha a few times, like two or three times. We definitely, shoot a shoe, shout to you. Shoot, shout to everybody in Wisconsin. Now I know I used to live in Kenosha for a little bit. Man, I used to live in Kenosha. You know, I used to be in the keynote getting it in when I was in high school. You know, I graduated from Bradford High School. I was in Kenosha for like two and a half years. Like my sophomore, like yeah, like three years. To like the middle of my sophomore year, my junior year and my senior year. And I graduated from Bradford, Mary D. Bradford baby. So shoot, shout to everybody in Wisconsin. The farthest out, actually let me say this. If you're talking about with this van, the farthest we went, I think it's Oshkosh. No, we took it to Green Bay. We took it to Green Bay to see my cousin for his birthday. We took the van to Green Bay.  So we did go to Green Bay one time. Other than that, with the van, we really haven't went that far in Wisconsin. But I do want to say this. I have been a lot of different places in Wisconsin because I used to work for a place called Second Wing Exercise Equipment. I used to live in exercise equipment everywhere. Waukesha, Walsaw, Stevens Point. I'm talking about everywhere. We used to be going everywhere out there in Wisconsin, but thank you for the question. Huge shout out to you. Get this money is what we're trying to do. And last but not least, this comes from at Darius Northern. It's not really a question, more of a suggestion. And he says that he thinks that you're understanding the value of your brand and charisma. That triple C cars and cribs merchandise, hats, hoodies, safety vests, et cetera. Simple and clean merchandise can go a long way. He also says exclusive content with information with Patreon subscription, cargo van, gig driver essentials, and brand deals that you promote on YouTube. That is a great point. Look, look with the merch, man.  We have been trying for a while to do this merch. It's just we're very limited on time. Honestly, if we had like a company that can create the merch for us kind of sorta, I think that that will work out way better for us. Because the merch that I wear right now, like they redefined the brand merch, you see that merch right there, it merged up. That we actually created it ourselves. Like we got the stuff, we got the transfers, we put on the merch and everything. I mean, we put it on the hoodies, we put it on the t-shirts, the shorts. We had short sets, hoodies, t-shirts. We had all our hats, we had everything. And we pretty much did our, oh yeah, cologne and perfume, we had that too. It's huge how it's a rock. At least you know she was rocking that perfume. She knows what that perfume like. She knows what that perfume like. That perfume is righteous. But we definitely had that stuff. But all of that stuff we did it with our own two hands. So right now we really don't have as much time as we had before. So the plan is to probably find a company that can actually do this for us. Like it's kind of like more hands off. Like we create everything and then they just, y'all order it and they ship it out.  But with that being said, we also need the time to create the actual image of whatever we're gonna be putting on there. I kind of got some ideas of some of the stuff that I want. We got one that's almost kind of done, but we still, we don't got enough time, man. This is the honest truth. With doing the gig apps and the carrier company and then in YouTube channel stuff, it takes up a lot of your time. I don't know if you guys noticed that, but if you got a YouTube channel, you know what time it is. You already know. You already know it takes up a lot of time, especially editing videos. Like it takes hours on top of hours on top of hours to edit these videos. So that's why I'm asking y'all just like the video. That's it. Like the video and subscribe button if you're not subscribed. Also, for that comment, I do want to say if you have any pointers or anything or any information that you have, that can actually help me out.  Please email me at romshousereviews at gmail.com and let me know because I need to know as much information as possible, baby, because I'm trying to get to that next level. 2024, we gonna go out there and score all day. We ain't playing, it's a clap and bang, bang. But I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Again, if you are not subscribed, make sure to subscribe button. Also, give me a thumbs up and don't forget before we go. Throw them seeds up.