Wow, what a turnout. Thank you. Okay. I am Pilgrim. I'm one of the founders of War Driving World, and we like to play with Wi-Fi. So I'm here today to talk to you about what it means to be a Wi-Fi ninja. The power of being a Wi-Fi ninja is an ancient tradition, and very ancient. It's passed on from generation to generation. The idea is to unleash the full potential of Wi-Fi communications in your home, in your office, and most importantly now in your community. So, the Wi-Fi ninja code. First, determine the needs and objectives of what you're trying... Basically you're walking in as a ninja into a situation. How do you solve the problem? Determine the needs and objectives. What are they trying to do? Are they trying to get Wi-Fi from one end of a house to another? Are they trying to bridge across the street? Are they trying to distribute it within a community? Next, never believe, never trust what the manufacturer says. You can always do a lot more with it, but you'll also probably get a little more noise than they expect, but there's a lot to be said for working it on your own. Next, decide what changes you're going to make to the existing setups, and you have to work within the limitations. That's important because sometimes you're working in Wi-Fi and you've got a free Wi-Fi hotspot, you're one mile down the road, but you don't have any control over the free Wi-Fi hotspot. All you have is control over your own client Wi-Fi side. Then the whole purpose being to spread Wi-Fi to be able to go longer distances with it and at greater speeds. When I say longer distances, yes, I know at a previous DEF CON they went out into the desert and they got about 120 miles out of Wi-Fi. We don't necessarily do that, but certainly we do several miles quite commonly. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about some of the technology that you can use to do that. The first is if you're a ninja is to say again, what is the situation? You need to find out can I control both at the router side and at the client side or the AP, or do I only have control over one of those entities? Once we know what we're trying to achieve, we can go off and say, what are we working with? Oh, no. Somehow we're not on the right slide. Oh, no. Thank you. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi are microwaves, and that's the important thing to remember because they behave like microwaves. Most Wi-Fi is at this point either 2.4 or 5.8 gigahertz. It's ideal for short range, point to point, and we can get a fair amount of bandwidth out of it. Unfortunately, it needs line of sight, or mostly line of sight, and that's important. That's what we're going to talk about a lot today. It prefers dry arid climates. We can get miles out of a small setup with a very little antenna in the Arizona or the Nevada desert. You take that into San Francisco and you'll barely get 50 feet out of the same setup. Moisture is a big issue for it. It doesn't like rain or snow. The other issue is that the spectrum is crowded. Frequently we have customers come to us and say, I bought a new antenna and it doesn't improve performance at all. Frequently it's interference that is a bigger issue. They have 2.4 gigahertz phones. They have 5.8 gigahertz phones. They have spy cameras that run at that, and numerous types of remotes. Not to mention other people who have routers that might or might not be performing at the right frequencies. Or crowding them out. That's a big problem. We need to try to work around that. The first thing you need to do is to say, how much power do we need? Power in Wi-Fi is measured in what we call DBM. DBM basically starts at 1 milliwatt. So 0 DBM is 1 milliwatt, and 30 DBMs is 1 watt full. That's the range within which you're working. Typically a Wi-Fi adapter, internal, runs somewhere between 30, 40, sometimes 50 milliwatts. The PCMCIA cards will go higher than that. Some of them will even go up to 300 milliwatts. I wouldn't put that in my laptop because I think it tends to draw too much heat, but some people do. And you can use USB Wi-Fi. They can go up to almost a half a watt. And that, pretty much, the question is... No, we're going too fast. Back up. Okay, stay there. Okay, now. So the question is, the first question is, if you could get the power out of it, why wouldn't you always use as much power as you can? One issue is that most of these Wi-Fi devices will back down to a lower power level if it's not needed. If you're running at a full 200 milliwatts off of a PCMCIA card, you're going to draw down your batteries pretty quickly. Certainly my gateway goes very quickly. Also, the more power that we're pushing out, the more noise we're going to have. So we may be pushing a lot of power out of there and getting some range, but we're getting noise, which means our throughput is dropping. The third issue is, if you're pushing out a lot of power, you're pushing out a signal that a lot of people can see. If you want to broadcast your signal to your entire neighborhood, one good way to do it is to boost your power. So you want to try to stay within the framework of the building or the community that you're trying to work within so that you don't, in a sense, waste the power. The fourth issue has to do with FCC regulations. This has to do with Part 15. Basically, unless you have a special license, and these are the types of things that people who are ham radio enthusiasts and others have, you're limited to doing effectively about one watt of transmission. It works out to about four watts of affected radiated power. And you say to yourself, well, I've only got a half watt maximum on the Wi-Fi without putting an amplifier on it. How am I going to get up there? Very quickly. You put an antenna on top of these things and you get that additional gain and you run right up against the limit. So you need to be conscious of these things. Some of us aren't so conscious of what we're doing with regard to the FCC, but if you're running up at four watts, you can start to interfere with other people. So just watch what you're doing. So the question is, how do you get there? Oh, well, this is a cartoon about what happens if you've got a lot of power coming out. I don't know if you can read it, but everybody can find a hotspot. Go ahead. So how are we going to get there? And that's the question. So one of the first things we need to know about are cables. Now I'm going to dwell on this not as much on antenna construction, which I'll get to at the end, as as much how you use these antennas to start with. And I did this because we've been selling, we sell a few hundred of the large antennas a month and we sell a lot more smaller antennas a month, the war-driving world and our other websites. And one of the most common problems we have is that people don't use the equipment properly. They'll get an antenna and they'll put a 40-foot cable on it, which has very high loss, and then they'll wonder why it didn't work. Or they'll pull off a cable off of their old satellite TV, which is the wrong impedance, and hook it up and tell us that it's a piece of crap, it doesn't work. So I'm going to dwell on that a little bit because I want to cover all the basics because getting a good card or a good router is not enough. It's getting each one of the pieces of equipment, matching them properly and using them properly. So first is the longer the cable, the greater the signal loss. So try to go as short runs as you can. Think out very carefully. The other is the antenna should be as straight as possible. I've seen people close it in the window and it goes like this. And then they wonder why the signal gets bad. You've got a shield around that cable, it gets compressed, it touches, that's it. So you should lay it as straight as possible. The other thing is Wi-Fi is 50-ohm impedance cable. That's very important. The variety of cables that people try to use on this is quite large. Use good cables. The other thing is some people want to crimp them at home. It's okay to crimp them at home but do a good job. So many times we have people who crimp the cables, they don't do it properly, they end up touching the contacts, and it doesn't work properly. So if you're not good at crimping cables, if you're not comfortable crimping cables, then you can get a professionally made one. They're not that expensive, but that's a big issue to have that crimp on the end that's secure. Okay. The next is there are many types of Wi-Fi cable. Okay. So again this becomes one, and the manufacturers have the problem just as well. Next slide. Okay. All right. So many different types of cable. LMR 100 is a very common cable. It's a very thin cable. It's the thinnest, it's the one on the left at the top. Okay. And there are other variations of it. I just chose three to talk about. Why do we use LMR 100? The little connectors that go into the end of Wi-Fi cards, the MMCXs, the MCs, the RPMMCXs, they will not accommodate a cable that is larger than that. So you have to start off at an LMR 100. I've had manufacturers from Taiwan ship us antennas with 10 or 12 feet of LMR 100 on it. And the antennas only about a 4 dB gain. Well, they've now lost 7 dB across the length of the cable, and they gained 4 dB. So again, don't necessarily trust the manufacturer, take a look at the cable, but be intelligent about which cables you're going to use. LMR 100 is a great little cable, and there are something called an RG 213. There are a number of variations of very similar cables, but they should only be used for very short runs. What we tend to do is to use a short run of LMR 100 and then quickly connect it to something like an RPSMA, which you can use. RG 58 is similar to LMR 200. I put RG 58 up there because it's a very common cable, and sometimes people have spools of it around. Yes, it will work. It's a little higher loss than the LMR 200, but it will work, and it's pretty effective. But again, the major advantage of this is you can now go to an RPSMA or an end connector and then go a distance. But again, no more than 20 feet or so. At the point at which you go 20 feet, you're losing 25 dB per 100 feet, and you're running right up there against the loss, which is significant. The LMR 200 is an ideal cable. Now you're running loss of about 17 dB per 100 feet. So that's nice. So you're not talking about 1.7 dB loss for 10 feet. That's something within the acceptable range. But again, you don't really want to run that more than 20 or 30 feet. The other issue is that that cable is thin. They make cables that are fit for platinum. I don't think they make an LMR 200 that's buried, but I've seen people bury it. But again, it's not as heavy duty a cable. I would use that inside. I wouldn't use it outside. And certainly, if you're running an antenna out on your roof, you're going to want some cable. Next. LMR 400 and the variations. This is a great cable. Yes, it's heavy. Yes, it's thick. Yes, it's not very flexible. It doesn't bend, but it's very low loss. Look at what we're talking about. We're talking about a 7 dB loss. So we're talking about a cable. From the first cable we looked at to this of something that's what, about a seventh of it. So that's something you can use for much longer runs. We sell a lot of marine Wi-Fi kits. And people will run this, you know, from the inside the boat up a mast of a sailboat, and they'll run it 25 or 30 meters. There's not a problem. Five minutes what? I'm sorry? I have five more minutes. Oh. Really? Oh. Okay. I had a 50 minute talk. I think you're mistaken. I have a 50 minute talk. Yeah. Okay. So. All right. Let's go on. Next slide. Use LMR 400. It's a great cable. Okay. All right. Here's my trivia question. And if somebody gets it right, I've got a 15 DBI panel antenna for you. So, does anybody know what RP-TNC stands for? I'm sorry? No. Well, you know the RP. The RP is reverse polarity. Anybody? No. Interesting. Okay. Next slide. All right. RP-TNC basically was named after the two gentlemen, one of whom actually invented the end connector. The other man invented the C connector. Together they invented something called a BNC. You're all familiar with a BNC. So the BNC then became threaded later and became known as a TNC. So they actually stand for something. But that's my trivia question. So I guess I get to keep the antenna. Okay. Next. Okay. Why are there so many different... Oh. We're going right into this. Okay. Since I don't know how much time I have, I think I'm going to flip into this. Okay. We have... No. How am I going to skip this one to this quick? Through the man. Through the man. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's hold at this. There's nobody after me. Okay. Good. All right. So we have many different connectors and people often ask me why do we have all these different connectors? Okay. One is it has to do with FCC rules. There was a time when FCC was very concerned about approving antennas and matching up with Wi-Fi devices. What they did in this case was to require that manufacturers have unique connectors. So somebody had a TNC, Cisco came up with an RPTNC, so that each one had a unique one. That rule I think is still on the FCC books, but it's been relaxed a lot. So at this point, there's interchangeability and there are a number of common connectors. Okay. So we've got the issue of power. We've also got the issue of receive sensitivity. It doesn't do any good for you to be able to transmit a signal if you can't then when it comes back from the router or the other access point that you're going to, receive it. So receive sensitivity becomes important. Receive sensitivity is measured in DBM, but it's measured in minus DBM. So basically a typical card may be about minus 89 DBM. Okay. If you find a card that is minus 91, minus 92 DBM, that's a better card in terms of receive sensitivity. Every three DBM is one power. So if you have a card which is a minus 89 DBM and then you have a card which is a minus 92 DBM, that is one power greater. Three more DBM and you're going two power greater. So that's something when you look at a Wi-Fi device, when you look at a router an access point, a card, it's not only important to look at the power. People often call me and say, I want a 300 watt card. It's not only about the power. You have to have both sides of the equation. So receive sensitivity becomes important. There are basically two types of antennas. There's your omnidirectional antennas and then your directional antennas. And basically all of the antennas fall into those two categories. So directivity basically is the ability to take your signal and put it in only one beam, one area. And how wide that beam is is how directional it is. And I explained that it has to do with increased gain in that area. Imagine if you have a regular incandescent light bulb. That's an omnidirectional antenna. The light goes out in all directions. But if you have a 100 watt bulb, really in any one direction you're only getting a fraction of that wattage. Maybe 30 or 40 watts in any one direction. That's an omnidirectional antenna. Having a floodlight where you're going in a focus or a spotlight, you're getting the same 100 watts but you're getting it in one place and it's much brighter. That's what a directional antenna is. So if let's say, you know, some of the antennas we sell at the booth are plus nine DBI. That's again three power. They're about 15 inch tall omnidirectionals. They're great antennas. But in any one direction you're only getting about four DBI. So if you have, we have another antenna that's eight and a half DBI's but in one direction in a 30 degree beam. That's a whole different cat and that will give you a lot longer range. So when you're going to look for an antenna decide what you're trying to do. Do you want an omnidirectional or directional? Most people take their routers and their access points and they put them up against an outside wall. And when you do that you're wasting the back of that antenna. So interesting question. How do you take an omnidirectional antenna and make it directional? This is an example of two. Basically, I sometimes tell people take a sheet of tinfoil and just tape it on the wall behind your router. You'll probably reflect 30 or 40 percent of the signal forward. And that's going to make a big difference. But the best thing is to make a parabola. I'm not going to go through the formulas for it because it also depends on the antenna but you can certainly Google it for different types of omnidirectionals. But a parabola works best and just a simple one like that can make a difference as much as 50 percent additional power. So here's one where they put it on a linksys router and they put two. And they've almost doubled the amount that's coming forward. The alternative is you can go buy yourself a directional antenna. But this is a way of taking tens on existing equipment and increasing the power. Okay. So PCMCIA versus USB. We didn't used to have very good USB Wi-Fi adapters. That's changed. So PCMCIA cards are great cards. It's a nice form factor. It fits inside the laptop. You don't have to take it out to put it in a case. It's very compact. But you are going to run into a few issues. It certainly draws the battery power. There's certainly an issue of heat there. And there's also some issue in terms of compatibility. Particularly today where we have machines using express cards. We have the Macintosh. And we have a variety of operating systems which may or may not work with these cards. People are starting to use USB. The other disadvantage of the small cards is is that they require a little teeny antenna connector. Remember we're talking about that LMR100 cable. So if you use a PCMCIA card it's great but you've got this little fragile connector on the end. And as much as we try they do break off. We get a few of them back every month that we have to take back and send back to the manufacturer. So the nice thing about a USB adapter is that you can work with an RPSMA connector. That's probably the most common connector used at this point. It's a standard on D-Link. And at this point, LinkSys is going over to it too. US Robotics, Netgear, so it's an excellent connector. So you've got that advantage and you've also got advantage in terms of compatibility. But again, what your application is is really going to say a lot about which one you choose. If what you want to do is to have a Wi-Fi card that's going to give you good sensitivity and additional range and occasionally you're going to plug in an antenna into it then a PCMCIA card is a great way to go.  So then you might just want to leave the USB there. You're going to get additional power and you're going to have a lot better connectivity because you've got that RPSMA connector. So again, there's no one solution which is better. It really depends on your application. But certainly now that we have USB devices which have an RPSMA built into it and there are several manufacturers Hawking, Linksys, Genius said have come out with them. That's really a good option to consider. Next. Okay, so... Oh, this is my comical one. So, what do you do? How to visit your neighbor's Wi-Fi? And that's really... So, I have basically... you have to take a look when you match up antennas at polarization. Okay, polarization is very important. Most of the rubber ducts, the typical dipole antennas are vertically polarized. Okay? And you have to match the polarization. That's important. Some people you come and you find them, they've got the two antennas of the Linksys like this. That's not going to work generally. You want them like this or, again... I missed the slide in the beginning because they rushed me, but a dipole basically, a rubber duct, a perfect antenna, it's called an isotropic, is a sphere. When you take it and you put additional gain and you put a simple dipole, you take that beach ball and you sit on it. Now it becomes almost like a donut. So by increasing the gain, you've lowered the height of the signal, but you've increased the width. And that's why when you have a dipole on the top of something like a router, you can change room to room. That is horizontal. But the more you increase the gain, the more someone's sitting on that beach ball, that donut, and squeezing it. So that's very important to think about in terms of the way an antenna operates. People go and they say, I want to go war-driving. Do you have an 18 DBI antenna I can put on top of the car? I don't have one close to it. But I say the problem you're going to run into with that is if you're war-driving in an urban area, you're not going to get above the first floor. Because the way that that signal has been squashed, you have a very narrow donut that goes long. On the other hand, you'll be able to receive something pretty far away, but you won't be able to get up to any signals that are on the second floor, or if you happen to be in a valley, you're not going to be able to get up to anything on the hill. So frequently when you're trying to get that additional vertical distance, instead of putting a high gain antenna, you'll put a low gain antenna. And that's a hard concept for some people to grasp but sometimes a lower gain antenna is a better solution. Let me go back to polarity. Polarity, you either have vertical polarity, you have horizontal polarity, and you also have circular polarity. It's very important to match the polarity. When you go and you put up a new router and you put in a laptop and you're not getting the correct signal, it's not strong enough, you need to do is to take the antenna and rotate it on its axis very slowly. You will eventually match the two in polarity. And that's important. Without matching the two, you're really going to have a much lower efficiency antenna. The other thing is, if you're using that dipole that I was talking about and you've got that squash donut, if what you're trying to achieve is not additional range, but you've got a two floor house, and that's quite a common problem, and that you want to go to the upstairs bedroom but you can't reach it, there's nothing wrong with putting the antenna so you'll end up pushing the signal up. You won't have as much range on a horizontal axis, but you'll have additional range on the vertical axis. So placement of antenna becomes a very important thing and you have to look and say, how am I using my antenna? When I take a look at putting an antenna out there, what do I consider? One, the distance required. How far am I trying to go? The position. Make sure that the two antennas are polarized in the same way. Then you have to look at the type of terrain and the foliage. Are there buildings between it? Are there walls? Are there fences? And then you have to look at the height of the antenna above ground level. The higher you put the antenna, the better performance you'll see. And then again, keep remembering about the length of the cable and the type of cable you're using. So always try different locations. Don't give up on an antenna. Frequently what you'll find is if you point it out one window, your signal is weak, you can elevate it three feet and you'll just get over that source of interference and get it. People just think that they can just put it out there. It's like a TV antenna is going to receive no. Wi-Fi is a lot more sensitive and a lot more directional. But if you can look at what you're going through and you say I'm going to go through a tree, you can go through a tree. You just have to have enough power. Once you lose about 2 dBi going through a sheet rock wall, you lose about 6 dBi trying to go through a brick wall, and you may lose a few dBi trying to go through some tree branches as long as it's not a big sequoia. So yes, we need line of sight, but you can also go through obstacles. That's when you need the additional power. So again, think about carefully what you're trying to do and you can choose the proper equipment. This is an interesting antenna. This is called the walk antenna. And I don't know if this was the first guy to do it in New Zealand, but they managed to get, I think in the end their final one was about 12 miles, and they did it from an island off the shore of New Zealand to the mainland. And what they basically were doing was a new technique, which is called a USB antenna, which is one of the advantages of USB. If you put an antenna directly on a device and you want to extend that antenna, you need to run an antenna cable. There's loss along that. If you have a USB Wi-Fi device, you can run a 15 or a 20-foot USB cable. Remember, there's no loss along the USB cable. They're not significant. The loss is along the antenna cable. So what they've done here is to run a USB cable up to the walk or what was a strainer, and then put a USB device in there. A strainer acted like a parabola. It does not have to be exact. I've done these with an old walk and you'll be amazed at the performance. And put it in there, but instead of having to run a cable with a loss, they simply run a USB extension cable. I won't dwell too much on this, but experiment. USB is really the direction these things are going for compatibility because you can use, these new adapters will run BSD, they'll run Linux, they'll run Mac, so it gives you a lot more compatibility, power, plus you're able to move that antenna 15 or 20 feet without any of these signal loss. Okay. We provide one of these. I'm not trying to sell them to say you should get them from us. You can make a cantana very easily. The commercial cantanas that are out there, I don't recommend. We used to sell them. We finally took one into a lab about six months ago, advertising that they were at about 12 DBI. We measured them and they were barely six to seven DBI, depending on which one we put in there. You can get a lot better performance by building your own. All you need is an end connector, an RPSMA connector, a TNC connector. You could probably even use a cork and a piece of copper wire. The important thing is the placement of the dipole and the length of the dipole. It's a very effective wave guide antenna. It's going directional and it's not hard to build an antenna like that that's going to get 10 or 12 DBI. Remember, 12 DBI, every three DBI is one power. Now you're going to improve the signal four times. That's a big significant difference.  It's a Wi-Fi device. BiQuad. BiQuads are a little on the newer side. All microwave antennas that we're using were all designed in the 50s when microwaves were big and the Air Force was using them and some of them were even designed earlier. But a BiQuad is basically two squares. It acts as a directional antenna. It's lower on the noise than the antenna. It's a very nice project to make. It takes about an hour to make some nice things you can do with this. One, it's a great antenna. Two, we have people that are taking you've got those old DISH TV, the old PrimeStar Dishes. Put it on the end. You've got an antenna which is probably doing about 8 dB. You're pushing it into that and you're all of a sudden up there at 30 or 40 DBI. Now we're talking about way over the FCC limit. With a nice adapter you're probably up there somewhere between four to six watts. Now, mind you, with one watt you're getting a mile without any problem. So when you're up there at four to six watts even in a place like San Francisco where the air is very humid you're still getting many miles. So you can really play with the Wi-Fi and with some very simple devices and get very extended range. This was the oldest war driving I could find. This guy actually in the 20s put in a radio setup. I wanted to put a radio setup in a car and built a radio car. Because I skipped over this, I kind of went out of range, but I want to talk about two more types of antennas. One is a Yaggy antenna. A Yaggy antenna is a series of elements that focuses. It's a very nice antenna. The only problem that we see with it these days is the size. For about a 12 dB I gain you're talking about something that's somewhere on the design between about 13 to 18 inches long. And it looks like a bazooka. And we traveled with one through an airport and it didn't make it. Yaggies are great antennas. I happen to like them if you're going to mount them on a roof. They work really well for point to point. That's what they were made for in Wi-Fi. Basically, people were using them instead of having the telephone company lay a piece of cable under a street to go from building to building. They put a Yaggy on each end.  So it's a nice antenna to consider. I think the trend these days is much more towards the panel antennas. Panel antennas have come a long way. These days some of the new ones are circularly polarized. When they're circularly polarized because of the way, without getting in too much theory, you have a lot less of a problem with moisture, and you don't have to worry about trying to match the polarity, whether it's vertical or horizontal. Panel antennas have really come down in price and there's something to consider. So those are two other types of antennas. Since I went all out of order, I'm just going to stop at this point if anybody wants to ask any questions and then I can talk for hours about this. Go ahead. You might be able to boil water for tea. No. It's not up against your ear. I'm sure it's not a very good idea to have three or four watts of microwaves very close to your head, but you know, I just wouldn't stand in front of it. Anybody else? I think you have too much of an invested body where we are. When 802.11G came out, people were telling me, they were dumping their inventory of 802.11B devices. I bought a lot of them up. A lot of people still using 802.11B. N came out. They said people would drop G. I mean, it's nice to have a faster system and certainly at some point, people transition over. But there are plenty of people satisfied with just being able to get Wi-Fi access at 802.11B. So at present, I don't see that much of a difference. Yes. It was up there. Put it up from there. Yes. Oh, okay. We put up the answers afterwards. Yes. Oh, okay. You get it. It's here. This is a 15 DBI panel. It's about a 30 degree beam. Go ahead in the orange. For maritime, what you want is just a very simple guide pole. You want to gain somewhere in the range of about 9 to 14 DBI and it's far away from the other antennas and the radar as you can. The reason you want it high up is there's too much salt spray generally down low and remember that Wi-Fi doesn't have a great thing. It has a real problem going through moist areas. Try to get above them. If you can't get above them, work with as much power as you can. I mean, you know, 12 to 15 DBI which you can get by getting a card and getting a reasonable antenna. And you can go through a tree or two. That's not a Sequoia. Because remember, by the time you get to the tree... Sorry. By the time you get to the tree, when you've got an antenna which has a 30 degree beam, that tree is only taking up maybe 5% or 10% of the beam. So you can certainly get through. You just have some resistance. The trouble is if the tree is right outside your window then that's a big problem. Any other? Yep. I really haven't gone for long distances. Certainly at about a mile, I kind of get bored. We start walking and come back, but certainly a mile is no problem. I mean, it depends. I'm down in Florida where it's very humid. If I were out in Arizona, I'm sure I would get much longer distances than that. We got Bluetooth at over a mile. So, yes. I'm not sure there's a table, but it's a good thought. It's not an easy one. Again, I don't try to push it. If you've got a local supplier that can get you the cables, I just want to push people to get professionally made cables because they're not that expensive at this point and it makes a big difference. Anybody else? Yes. Well, most of the antennas are tuned for Channel 6. That's generally going to be the highest performance, but it's also the most common one used. And that's one of the sources of interference. So, one of the first things I tell people when you're having problems, you put in a new antenna and you don't see any change is try changing the channel. Go to 2, go to 3. Most people take these routers out of the box and they just plug them in. Whatever the default channel is, they grab it. So, generally the antennas are peak at 6, but with the interference, you may be better off on another channel. Anybody else? No. I'm not saying I could break it, but I guess if I wanted to, I could break it at a few miles. The longer distance you go, certainly you have to worry much more about noise. But, as long as you've got a good Wi-Fi signal, that's not really much of an issue. Yes. We used to use, actually, we used to sell a lot of them. We used to sell a 500 mW amplifier either from Hyperlink or Hawking. It was a nice amp, and the noise level was reasonable. But we've tended now to go with the USB. At this point, there are USB devices that are 200, 300, 500 mW and they don't require external power. What they do require because they need more power is two USB connectors to get that additional power. But I find that most people don't want to be able to be dragging around an extra power cable. So, yes. Well, okay. We've been rushed, and they... Go ahead. To measure power. We have a friend with a lab in Miami. So we measure it in a special room. Outside, there's a little device which we use sometimes called Wi-Fi Spy. Have you seen it? The USB device. Try to measure noise with an ornaco. I mean, again, we're probably pretty much approximating it. Anybody else? I'm sorry, I can't see over there. Go ahead. Yes. It was two years ago at DEFCON and there were several young boys. As a matter of fact, their father had to drive them out there because none of them were old enough to drive.  And they used... They were putting out no more than 40 or 50 mW. But they were doing it across the desert. And the problem was someone then asked them when they came into the DEFCON thing, they said, how far in the desert in Nevada did you get? And they said, we didn't. People looked down. They said, no, no, no. We were in Arizona. Everybody expected that the last record set was 50-some-odd miles and they went 120 miles. So again, point-to-point in a very dry environment with a nice big antenna. You can start off with a little power or you can start off with, you know, a lot of power and a smaller antenna. They were... And they won a big prize. I think this was two years ago. If you go back on the DEFCON website, you'll find it. But that was pretty impressive, 120 miles. Yes. Yeah, well... Yeah. Anybody else? Any general questions about Wi-Fi? Go ahead. Out-of-the-box router, the best way to improve it is first decide, see if you can make it directional. If you're going to put it up against a wall, build a little reflector out of it or put a... or put a piece of tinfoil behind it on the wall and you'll project it forward and you'll probably see 40 or 50% increase. If that doesn't work or you need additional thing, replace those two antennas. It's not that expensive.  You know, people typically... they have Wi-Fi in its house. Build a can tenna, hook it up to your router and point it out there. You know, you can get a nice half mile for most routers without any problem. Yes. You can boost it and there's nothing wrong with boosting it. It depends how far you want to boost it. If you boost it, the WRT-54G all the way up to the top, you get a lot of noise. So, I mean, that's always a problem when you're boosting something.  Every little detail on the photograph, it suddenly becomes amplified. So, I haven't damaged one. You might be able to. I'm sure if you tried. I certainly, you know, added 30% or so to the power and it's been effective without too much noise. So, yes, I can't see. So, anybody else? I can't see. Yes, go ahead. A series of access points connected up by fiber or hard, you know, and putting one, I mean, hotels do this all the time and they're concrete. They simply run a piece of cat fiber fiber and they put one access point on each floor. You walk into a holiday and you try to connect to their free Wi-Fi and you get five of them. So, you don't want to go through multiple concrete walls with Wi-Fi if you don't have to. So, yes, anybody else? I can't see. Yes. You know, I haven't measured. I think it probably just gets scattered somewhat. I mean, anything coming directly back is reflecting for it.  I mean, but most people, I mean, so many people, I don't know how many of you have your router up against a wall, right? And do you need the router on the other side of the wall? Probably not. So, just when you go home, put a sheet of aluminum foil and tape it up against the wall and you'll always remember I helped you. So, great. Thank you very much.


Oh, the community, it's Pablo Vasquez. You know what's new in Blender today? It is two tools for modeling. These have been requested for years by the community. It's snapping support for Vertex and Edge Slide. Yes, so now while you're sliding, for example, if I want to slide this edge, I just press G twice. So G1, so then G again to start Edge Sliding. If I want to snap it or put it somewhere here, I would just do it by eye, but you can now snap it to, for example, this vertices over here for more precision. I can just go into the snapping options up here in the header, snap to Vertex, turn on snapping, and then just basically just start and snap it like maybe here or maybe down here. So yeah, it just works. It feels more like a backfix more than a new feature, but it's something that the community has been asking for ages and it's part of a bigger project regarding snapping. This also works for Vertex snapping. So for example, say I have here, I don't know, like a bunch of subdivisions and I want to have the, I don't know, I want to slide this vertex to exactly the point between these two vertices. How would I do it? Well, now you can just simply use, for example, snapping and I can turn on the snapping. And then while I'm edge sliding, I can go ahead and say, for example, okay, snap it to this point. I just press A to add a snap point and then A here again over this vertex to have another snap point. It's gonna choose the middle point. And you can see here it's exactly in the middle, I think. Let's make an edge here. Yes, exactly aligned. So isn't that great? This feature is gonna speed up a lot of work and it just was impossible to do otherwise before, except with add-ons, I guess. Now the snapping also works in object mode for the center of these objects, of the camera and the lights. So you can just, if you have snapping enabled, you can just simply snap to the center of a lamp. That wasn't possible before. So very, very welcome features. There is another feature for modelers. This one is regarding the bevel modifier. For example, if you go and add a bevel modifier, you're gonna see now in the new layout, you're gonna see that the dropdown for width type, you can choose offset with depth percent and absolute. This is the new one, absolute. Allows you to set in distance the bevel that you want that is gonna be absolute to that mesh. So if we go and see the commit logs, you can read more here. It's a bevel, add new absolute mode for interpreting the amount value. This mode is like percent, but measures absolute distance along edges and edges instead of a percentage. And that is really gonna come handy. I don't have an example right here, but if you use this modifier, you know what you are getting. Another feature while we are here, it's in the UI side of the bevel modifier would allow you to, if you use a custom here, a custom shape for your bevel, you're gonna see that now while you add a dot, you're gonna have these little points over here, these little icons over here. What does it mean? It means that you can control these points now like if they were curves, like the shear curves, like curve objects in the viewport. And that's awesome because you can also have this kind of points and you see, well, now I don't have enough segments, but if I add some, you can see now that you can see the effect in there while you're editing. It makes it so much easier to edit these lines and you can do things you couldn't do before except by adding a bunch of points. So very, very neat. This way of controlling the points of your custom bevel profiles. I hope you like this feature. It's been nice to split off these new features in little small videos. I'm gonna come up with more as the developers keep adding them. You're gonna find this on Blender 2.90, the alpha. So you can go to builder.blender.org or blender.org slash experimental. And there you can download the alpha that contains this new feature. Go enjoy, share, report a bug if you find it and have fun, happy blending, bye-bye.


It's really simple what I do. I've looked to all the interviews you guys have done. It's really strange because you had Jason Senong and Jason was one of these traders in the pit when they're shouting and screaming at each other. And I say, I started as billionaire mates in the basement and yet we both at the end do virtually the same thing. And it's all keep it simple. You don't need fancy indicators. And there's a saying in trading is you make the profit we paid to wait. And so the Bitcoin, I'd waited six months for Bitcoin. This week I had a trade. This week, three trades, one on the Euro pound and I am known for being spookily accurate for the entries. I pick them from hundreds of pips away, but it is not rocket science. I look at Fibonacci. I look at trend lines. I look at the trend. I look at the daily range. And I look where did it bounce last time? You don't need to make it over complicated. You don't need super sophisticated computer systems. I bought them all and I regularly get offered things. Will you promote this really? I hardly ever promote anything because most of it is not needed.


Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter and our guest today is King Carfagno, and this is smart business moves Yeah, it's awesome to see you here today Yeah, we're thinking that we would be seeing you here Monday, but I dropped the ball I dropped the ball and I didn't do some of the logistical stuff right and I had no idea I got a message for you guys You coming on the call I'm like I'm like, but I'm flexible. I'll be there when you need me Wednesday. I'm there We're super happy to have you. Oh, thank you for inviting me back I enjoyed being on a few times during the pandemic week. We had chance to chat. Yeah We were doing this a lot during the pandemic. We're doing this every day during the pandemic Hmm Felt like there wasn't much else to do did we we didn't do it on Friday. Did we We did it on Friday for a while and then we said, okay Well, let's drop Friday, but we started off. You made me do it five days a week I was like, I don't even know what I'm thinking. Of course. We were doing on Friday. That's when I almost died Was on a Friday you were the car Is there a story here? Is there a story here that needs to be told because I've never heard the almost dead story Her phone stopped working because it was so hot in the car it over the phone overheated. Oh gosh, really I was so hot But I was trying to fake it And I was like trying to dial 911 and trying to get first responders So it was like 166 degrees and you have like you're sweating below your neck, but you but since you're only on the video for here You look good. No, I didn't look good. I was hot It wasn't good. Hey, Linda. Oh Smoky They got a lot of fires out there now, don't they? Yeah, it seems Colorado right lots of smoke everywhere. Oh That is tough Hey, Linda, if you saw that we added you to Something called base camp base camp. I'll be talking to you about that later You got work to do girl So, what are we we're gonna be talking about today? This is the mystery box. I think we're all gonna find out in a minute This is leadership this week and I put what Ken was going to talk about Kind of into one little sentence. I'm gonna try and find it here. I sent it to you, Tom. It's like, oh, this is good I like it. Yeah Let's see Kind of like balance, right Balancing commitments in personal wellness and I said that's awesome. I'm going to be taking a lot of notes Me too Yeah Well, you know, you're kind of making a good point there Ken that One of the leadership habits is to always be learning, right and to be looking for opportunities for for More more learning more growth Yeah, I I think if you're are you kicking off the lead this is halfway through the leadership week. You've done a few other topics Yeah, yeah, I mean if you're going to talk about leadership and me start with leading yourself, right? So self leadership, and I think that's what this is because we all I Maybe it's just me but I run into a lot of cleaning owners that are completely frazzled and overwhelmed Because they have a plate that's too full. Do you ever hear like in the in the Mike McKelowits prophet first book? And you guys have read that right? Yeah So that he does the example of the plate sizes like why are so many people overweight now? That's a fantastic. It's so interesting like back a hundred years ago The average plate size was like nine inches and he does this in the book Yeah, and people will succumb to Parkinson's law They will consume whatever is given to them in time or money. Yeah me too, right? So they give them a nine a nine inch plate. They eat nine inches worth of food whatever that is, right? Yeah, but the average plate size from if I'm correct, I think from like the the fifties to like Lately in the past 10 20 years. It's like 13 inches now And so if you take a look at that increase in food, it perfectly correlates with the Yeah, right it perfectly correlates to the amount of Like the percentage you look at the obesity like charts. Yeah, I I think that we have like all this technology stuff I'm just gonna dive right in because I had a major breakthrough last month and so let's just see where this goes, okay? Okay, cool It's so think about like that plate size with like all the commitments We have to not just like eating because that's just that's just one place where many of us are probably You know wishing that we could do better like how are we taking care of ourself like personal wellness is a topic We're gonna talk about Well, I had it. I had this awesome opportunity to take one of my sons Up to the Adirondacks and go camping for the week at a really cool like Christian father's son camp and it's five days long He's eight years old I've gotten to take each of my sons there Family and balance. I mean family is the reason why I do anything in business And so I'm never going to let business overtake my why for why I'm even doing it and so but when I get up there Let's see where I have it. I got this thing lying around. Where is it? It's like this device Looks like this I don't know. Do you guys have is it just me? Is anyone else have one of these? I have one. I have one.  Or if you like kind of balance on one leg kind of like karate kid style You can kind of put your phone and get us get a get a bar I'm like, yeah, why would I do that? I'm with my son for the week We got so much stuff going on that I'm just gonna throw this thing on airplane mode and I and I at first I just feel like icky because this is like all these pressures Kind of still hitting me and then one by one because my phone I put my phone away One by one. They just started falling off And I and I felt like I was just I won't say a kid again But I just feel like I was just like I have no No responsibilities. I'm just hanging with my son at the lake There's no one trying to reach me Well, probably war but I couldn't answer it and I just didn't realize like how much Like these like these little things as they fell off like all that anxiety that I was carrying around all that burden I was just carrying around kind of like you're kind of like you're wearing a jacket with lead weights in it And as soon as I was on the airplane mode It's like one lead weight fell off and I just felt lighter and more alive And I'm just connecting with nature with my son like feet in the water feet on the sand We're in a boat and it's just like everything like everything Connective-wise like just connected to the environment me as a Christian just connected with God to a different level like everything with my son like nothing was impeding that and I and I left that week as soon as I got out of camp I'm like, okay. How am I gonna handle this phone thing? And so I'll just like turn it on in stages. It's like I'm like, no, no, but I left camp and this is maybe something we could just chat about with one word the world with simplicity How how can I just make my life simple like why do I why do why why do we? Take all this stuff on Why can't we just take eat like look at each of our areas of our life and say well, how do I simplify this area? Because God bless you. Somebody sneeze How do I simplify this area? So that I can do this more or how do I simplify this? I mean, I don't know if that hits you Maybe have you guys either of you experienced the time where you just unplugged to that kind of level recently. I Don't think so not not recently No, it's probably pre-covid Yeah, I help out with Boy Scouts and find myself sleeping in the woods from time to time and yeah Sometimes we're places and and truly if I could get bars. I probably would be on the phone You know, it's force but it is different It's a different mindset and there is a certain piece that comes with that. Oh, yeah Wow, this is kind of cool and it but it takes a minute to kind of okay Well, what am I gonna do with myself now and it's it's not You have to you have to kind of sink into it. Do you I mean, um, I Don't know ages and I'm not good at ages. I don't want to I don't want to guess But you guys each remember a time. I remember a time when I didn't have a cell phone I mean now the phone is yeah, because we're talking about self-leadership. We're talking about balance. There's a point to all this I really think this is all connected And that's the buzzword here is we're all connected, right? We're so connected that everything that we ever possibly do is Didn't you feel smarter without your smartphone David Kaiser? I even do that But like everything we ever need they can all reach us here wherever we are like in the bathroom They can get a hold of us. That's not that's not weird to you I think about me in the shower. Okay, Liz. You told me on a podcast interview that you've got water She has waterproof earbuds She can listen to podcasts and audiobooks in the shower, but if it's on your phone, someone could call you. Hi It's Liz. Hey, what's that sound in the background? Oh, just ignore that. I Mean, there's the visual, but I mean we there's a time Well, we didn't have these devices connected to us and you had to like actually wait until you've got to an office To answer people's requests, but now they can reach you wherever you at and I just think there's this there's a I I see that there's an uptake in so many Like like emotional and mental illnesses, I think they're attached to all this Yeah, so I don't know which direction you want to go from here But I just I want to share that story I'm not sure if anyone that's connecting that's listening and they want they have any questions on this But I just know when I took that phone on airplane move for five days I have never I have not felt that free that much peace that much connectivity To to myself to God to my environment to my son in Like it's web well before COVID and it and it it was like It's like when you can push the reset button in your phone And it clears off all the catch and all the things that are running in the background when you hit that reset and it reboots It's basically what I did I reset everything and then when I came out of that I'm thinking okay What am I going to intentionally allow back into my life because I looked at everything completely different And I I've been very careful. I'm like I don't want to go back to a place where I'm just Putting more weights on this on this vest. I'm wearing. I don't want to be So that's something that really impacted me So so how have you you know taken that and moved forward with it? I mean We've all been from time to time accidentally in some situation where we didn't have this we didn't have coverage Or the battery's dead or we left it someplace and we can't go get it right now but To do that with intention, you know, that's that's a that's a type of discipline Oh, you're not getting Yeah, you gotta work on that right If if I didn't work on it, I would have been right back to where I was like that I think you know the default for everything is the easy path path like tom you are electrical engineer, right? Yeah, yeah industrial and I'll put your electrical. Okay. Well, you know like with currents or with water or with heat flow Everything always goes from the point of of like highest resistance to lowest resistance And it's the same way. I mean The easy path is the easiest thing. I mean that just happens without you even trying But to to push uphill I mean, this is this is pushing uphill like you have to want this And so I don't know How everyone else can manage it. I mean, there's the whole 21 days for a habit. There's different thoughts on that I personally Have said airplane mode is really cool And so I've been doing every day like for the work week I just um when i'm done working every time that is i'm working myself back like maybe a five o'clock or five 30 Sometimes four and I airplane move my phone. I put it in my desk drawer and if they need to get hold of me They'll get me in the morning So I that's that's one thing i'm doing Well, I I can tell you can that uh, not everyone can do that. Yeah I keep my phone on silent And it is a frustration For many many people Because they want me to respond immediately and You know, I'm not good at that because I I have a I use time blocking. Hey, julie. I remember pager's too I use a time blocking model where my time is blocked for the week And I spend my time doing what i'm supposed to do during that time And you know other people want me to To work on their schedule And so it's not always Because then I have to manage that You know, I have to manage other people's frustration with not being able to get hold of me Uh, so I do have a couple of people That I allowed to come through But not not very many Like like three people and that that actually works really well I don't know. I think my first experience was being on a cruise I think I've been on seven cruises and when you're on a cruise, you don't have service You just don't it's just not a thing And so I quickly got used to it. I don't really feel the need to be Tethered to other people getting hold of me We were joking Recently tom about was it you that we don't answer the phone if somebody calls Nope Better send me a text warn me that you're going to call me because otherwise i'm not answering Yeah If you have to call our id if they're in your phone then you can make the decision But if you get a just like a number shows up on your phone, no, who answers that? Yeah Some people do some people answer their phone not as much now with cell phones for sure Right, but they're there More people are immune to the need to pick up the phone for a call So it's so many people now don't don't make phone calls. Don't even know what this is like No, uh, no, that's just bad I I wonder if anyone out there is like why are they talking about this? And I just want to if you're if you're thinking that I want to throw this right back If you're asking that question, I'm guessing you have an experience what I just experienced if if Dave what david say I always value whatever david says super smart guy leadership is Valuing yeah, david super smart leadership is valuing things that bring huge returns camping with my dad. Oh Oh, good stuff. Yeah, exactly. I mean Here's something that happened also at camp for me I have four boys five kids total and I'm there with my third son I I had been there with each of my first two sons my first one. I was there a decade ago I was in the same cabin. So it was kind of glamping in a way tom this particular one But I was in the same cabin as it was 10 years ago And while I was there, I have a very vivid memory like I I like a um, what would you call that? Photo photographic memory like that's me. I see I don't like times time stands still for me I can see images from my childhood Vividly and so I'm I'm in I'm in one corner of the cabin I'm looking at the other corner and I am seeing me and my Six-year-old son so clearly Me putting him up in his little bunk bed at camp me tucking him in reading him a story giving me kissing his forehead He's 16 right now, but I saw that that that memory of 10 years ago And I'm in that same cabin And I'm just thinking 10 years Was that 10 years was that And so what have I done in my life that is so important That I would miss my kids growing up in just little things and and when I thought about some of that Okay, what's going on with this with this phone? And I you know back 20 years ago and have a cell phone and like there's um If you imagine like the glass of water, you know, I saw this just last week at a conference like People have a certain amount of things they can kind of hold in their bucket And once the bucket, you know, once you put one drop too much That's a tipping point and they just lose it and they they can be they can go off and it's hard to get back And people are just putting drops or I use another analogy. Um, maybe like the old school scales You know, I'm thin in my video here about trying the old school scales are like, you know You put stuff up and they go up and down Imagine you put grains of rice on that scale just one grain boom boom boom No big deal every grain of rice is one other commitment. So we're talking about balancing commitments, right? let's say on one side is What you want to do with your life you're kind of keeping it balanced, but over here on the other side you're just You're allowing other people to put grains of rice on your scale and you keep letting them a grain of rice grain of rice Um more someone like okay, you got the phone.   It's called the tipping point you know, I think Michael and glad welfare the whole book on it and When people hit that tipping point if anyone out there has experienced that you just the overwhelm is so great That you can't function you're like pajamas in bed. Don't talk to me and some people need like some serious therapy and so the phone the much as much as we allow that phone to To just kind of own us and allow people to reach us at an real time Like do we want people to reach us real time as much as they do? In some cases, maybe we can't I don't know I'm not you whoever whoever's listening to this But I just I would just just urge you take a look at that because what if your phone What if that was contributing to 40 of the overwhelm you're feeling and if you could eliminate even half of it Then you would get so much more margin We all need margin In our life put put put Liz on there tom Because she says that she eliminated eliminated up to 60 of all her voice nails. Yeah, I mean that's awesome. That's awesome Having a strategy And how I really I really like your point can That you know at almost all entrepreneurs are operating at this so close to the tipping point level Just so close all the time somebody else throws a grain of Of rice on there and and my thinking is that it doesn't go like this It starts to go like this and then we throw more rice on the other side real quick Is like And then that's a good point. I gotta catch that too. I gotta catch it. I gotta catch it So this is constant state of i'm so busy. I'm so I've got so much to do the whole I've got to catch it. I gotta watch it. I got it this whole stress of managing that Is is really a A hard piece. I know for a lot of a lot of people and so I don't know. How do you how do you like Knock the the rice off How do you like okay done with your rice? It's a choice It it's all comes back to it's a choice and what you said tom. It's discipline You have it it always comes back to the why if you guys know me I'm always talking about the why and stuff like that I mean it comes back to the why and I I love what david said about You know the best values were born when he's camping and with his with his dad or with his son. I mean the the reason that Like what is the reason you exist like what's your purpose here? Is it to become the best cleaner to build the best team? Like that's that's awesome. I mean i'm i'm a yeah, and I to determine what that is And maybe allow you know what what is How much rice do you want to put on your most important area? And then learn to have a little more balance than the others for me. It's family. I'm family driven And so like I drew a diagram I guess I can it's somewhere here It's got a little I do I journal every day and it helps me a ton Actually, I like what julie just said I opening when you observe your children and now grandchildren on the phone or tablet Yeah, oh julie check this one out there's a story I heard from this dad and Ironically, he's running a platform to help to help dads and he said that He's on his couch and wanting to connect with his son And his son's like on this little plastic like computer looking thing and he's on it and he's on it and uh And he's like you know what you're doing. He's like he's like hold on. Hold on. He says to his dad. He's He's like working. What are you doing? He's like Hold on a second. Hold on. Hold on. He's like, what are you doing? Can't you see I'm working dad? This is what this is what you do, right? I was like, oh on the device and another another another heartbreaking Another heartbreaking one is when the little boy comes into the the dad's office or the mom's office and they say to him So, um, hey like uh dad, how much how much do you make?  Oh, yeah, you heard this one, right?  And dad's like, oh, I guess I make about $50 an hour or whatever he says $50 an hour and then the and then the boy goes, okay, I'll break back Goes up this piggy bank And gets as much money as he's got. Maybe he's like $15. He says daddy, I got $15. Can I buy about 20 minutes of your time? Right because I'm like ouch So I hear stuff like this and that hits my heart And so for me, it's not it's not hard. I I purposely want to have Have my commitments balanced I think I'm really hard hearted because if my kid came up to me with that I'm like, yeah, absolutely dude 25 minutes. I'll give you extra. You got a bonus. Good job thinking about the money right there Love it. I'm actually sending my Calendly link and say go ahead and schedule something, you know Like you're joking, but I do send my son Calendly links. I do send my kids. I send my grandbaby. Yeah Like hey, you guys set up some time with me. I really want to talk to you. Yeah, I Make sure the credit card doesn't bounce I I try not I try not to I you know We in my house, we have a hug rule, you know The kid anytime you want to hug dad doesn't matter what I'm doing. You can come hug dad. Whatever just come hug me That's the hug rule. They all know that and that's good. They can they can walk in My kids are more important than anyone else. Am I let my wife my kids and so I'm just wired this way That's how I am and so yeah, I I get to work from home You know most most of the week and I'm here today I I did some work that I went to the pool for like an hour or so and I may or may not be still in my bathing suit. I cannot confirm nor deny that um But I was diving off of diving board with my 13 year old daughter about 10 minutes before this call started So from here up I am business That's the whole point of these these calls, right? That's what I think everybody's got something like that going on these days except maybe tom. Yeah, it's always Tom do you have shorts on? Maybe He loves shorts and flip flops So I'm thinking Let's see Oh, look at that. He always wears those flip flops. I figured he was in those shorts and flip flops Oh, that's so good. That's so good. I won't show my jammies even though they're cute So I am technically Barefooted barefoot Because I went from the pool in my towel to the car home never even got my shoes on I am at home and I'm still barefoot. All right Is this part of the direction you want to go because I mean this is it's your call I'm just trying to think of things that have really connected with me personally And I'm hoping that it hits some of the hits some hearts that that are out there I think this is good and I think this is useful because you know, you're talking primarily to people who own and run their own businesses and Now there's a certain amount of you know, you develop habits and There's a certain amount of of intrinsic gratification of getting on that flywheel and this is you know That the rush and it's it's not necessarily good and you're probably Missing a lot of things that are important that you aren't even aware of and and just stopping for a minute And and reflecting I think that's uh, I think that's uh time well spent And I don't think anybody can argue that you are going to be your best leader When you are your best self How many of us can say that when we're under pressure, we're getting the best out of people I mean that is just not I know lives, right Yeah, that's okay because it's early here. We have lots more time. I saw that I saw that message anything Like ignoring the braggarts over there But I do think that people need to find So I don't really like the term Of like people talk about work life balance. I don't really like that term Because when I think of balance, I think of things as kind of being even and that isn't really how how Things work you have to Sometime it's not a matter of okay. I worked I worked for six hours So now I need to play with my kids for six hours and now I need to have the six hours of personal time It doesn't work that way You're cleaning the toilet. Yeah jobless I totally I totally agree. I mean I have some five kids and I see this Kind of in a micro sense here with my kids Some of them I need to give a lot of time for them to feel wow. I got my time with dad Others I can just like an hour of my time and they're like filled up So everyone's got like an additional like an emotion a different emotional tank The love love love languages and all the different things and so I have started to you know I don't want to say like I'm optimizing my life and but it's been away. I'm an engineer so I can I know that okay If I do you know one-on-one time with this child for an hour Or two hours, they're like totally filled up But this one needs four this one needs a whole like time out with dad or with mom and so I In that sense just from my own family. I think if you look at the areas of your life You know if you look at well, hey like so here's I was gonna say like I drew this picture Just like this wheel and I not to see not to see what's in it. I'm trying but in the center I write the word me Yeah, I wrote the word me Which and also my health is in there and then I put all the areas of my life That I believe are significant and I've got I've got church things. I got each of my family members in there I've got some extended family things I'm dealing with I've got health I've got Different business projects. I've got I've got like just it's all in there and For me to say, okay every single one of them gets You know, there's where there's eight of them eight of them here Everyone gets 12.5 of my time. It doesn't work that way But but some of them may hey I may need to push pause on this one for the next three months because these other ones Have a like I they really need my time and attention more like if you're at a heavy growth stage of your business You may really need to focus a lot more of that time right there But once you hit a a point where you can back off a bit You don't necessarily have to stay at that level. Hey if you don't if you matter of fact If you don't dial back and put time in other places That's where you start getting out of quote unquote balance Like that's when you start not sleeping well and you're not taking care of yourself Maybe you start gaining weight. You don't have the time with your family It maybe there's there's charitable or church organizations you Really need to be doing but you're not And so there's seasons that you can operate in and I don't know the answers But i'm navigating this with you guys. We're all in this path together Yeah, uh I I really like that idea of it's more like seasons Right because there is a a time for different things and I guess When i'm thinking about it, I like to think more in terms of like individual measures Like I have somebody in one of our groups that Really values similar to you can A family time and really values time with her children. So she Intentionally, which I love i'm so proud of her. She intentionally designed her life and her business around the idea that she Is going to not not work in that business Does she have to sometimes? Yes, absolutely. She does But for the most part she takes summers off to be with her kids And she spends the majority of her time doing what she loves and doing what she cares about Uh does did has her business grown as fast as some other people's Businesses that didn't have this priority. No, no, it didn't grow as fast But is it growing? Is it successful? Is she feeling balanced? She absolutely is because she needs that time Yeah, I mean it's we're talking about as quality of life And and how how do you measure your quality of life? Some people are absolutely wired for For building they are builders. They love to create build and they will exhaust every Every second to do that At what steve is the engineers that have a heart? Oh, man, there's not many of us I guess right, but we're we're all we're all wired differently Yeah, absolutely So one Go ahead. Ken. There is one thing I think I think we were gonna dive in a little bit of like personal accountability There there is an interesting tool that you've probably seen this and it's a great way to connect All of these different things in our life to an accountability Because it's like, okay, so self-leadership great that that's a word. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna you know frowns around like great I have self-leadership. What does that mean? Well, I'm balancing all these areas therefore I am able like I have been able to fill up my own bucket so that I can pour on other people Because if you if you can't fill up your own bucket if you don't take care of yourself Because a lot of cleaners tell me I just don't can't I don't have time for me time That's a problem. You don't have time for me time How is that going to get fill up? How are you going to help others if you can't fill up your you know yourself and there's And you know getting up early. There's so many books like The Miracle Morning is a great book You can do all kinds of like exercises in the morning get up 15 minutes earlier start journaling read read it I know Liz you're reading all the time. So you're you're not you don't count because you're the you're the anomaly Yeah, Tom too Liz reads like four books a week. I don't know how you do it.  I know but it's still you read so like just 15 minutes Find find a way to get something in the morning that's going to pour into you Before you just rush out the door with your coffee and go save the world because you need to Have some wellness over yourself and so this accountability that you can use not I don't have it in front of me But just going back to this illustration I had of like, you know, see these let's say you identified Five six things around your center and then you just kind of gave yourself. Well, here's the engineer, right? You kind of gave yourself a grade like okay in this area You know, you can say one two three four five and at the end of the week How did I do in this area? I got a five. How did I do in this area? I got a three I got a one I got a it's hard to do this backwards a five and then you connect all those lines You've probably seen this exercise before and it's called the wheel And let's say you wanted balance And you connect let's say you have all threes when you connect those lines you have a you have a circle You have a wheel and that wheel spins Now it rolls and it's not wobbly if you have a couple fives a bunch of ones You have this crazy-looking wheel and it's like fred flinstone like boom boom boom So it's it's not exactly going if you have all fives you're like this super achiever Just a bigger wheel and you're rolling faster if you're all ones You're rolling slower, but you're still rolling And so at the end of each week as a personal accountability tool You could pick four or five things like hey, how am I doing in a family? How am I doing in my health? How am I doing in working on me? How am I doing in my business? How am I doing in my? Relationships in my business whatever those things are that you genuinely want to have balance with put them on a wheel And the end of the week give yourself a grade And then that grade I mean you could absolutely incorporate this into your teams and promote and encourage personal wellness and balance throughout your teams I can't see it hurting I think it's good timing too right now ken People are your employees are nervous. They're You know, there's a lot of unrest and there there are A lot of people that are medicated and that are struggling and so The simple act of measuring things can give you control over my full focus planner I I do love I used to love my full focus planner until I got my Remarkable see ken you need a remarkable Yeah, you need one because you can draw in it and it takes everything and says it to type. All right. So off the remarkable Um, I shoot I forgot what I was saying got myself off track there. I'm sold. I want one It was probably lie. That's a good look. She's like, oh, I want one too They're so amazing you guys No, four $400 and they need to pay 200 bucks for the pen No, that's it all inclusive And they come Yeah, they come with they come with extras extra nymphs Extra nymphs very nice They do is that the technical term? Well, like if I google that is that what I'm I'm not gonna google that Don't google that. No, put put a filter on your search if you do Remarkable nymphs There you go guys Yeah, um, anyway Oh, I wanted to talk about Yes, they're so nice. Isaac get one I'm deleting facebook off my phone right now. It's a time-waster. You lie linda. You are not you have work to do Don't even start me off facebook. I had no facebook in those five days, too Oh my goodness. I love being off facebook and I'm I'm doing that more too So if you try to reach out to me, I don't get back too far because I am I am doing a digital detox of facebook That's that's the term for this digital digital detox digital detox. Yeah, uh, where we I did a program with Who is that guy? He was at convention not last year obviously but the year before He was live. Do you guys remember? Uh, darin darin hardy. I did of darin. Yeah His insane productivity program And one of the one of the the months is this digital detox thing And I I kind of took it to heart So I don't do a lot of I'm on facebook every day But that's just because I run My mma groups are on are on facebook Otherwise, I would not be on there and I did want to talk about accountability real quick Because you're remarkable with 600. I thought so I thought I thought was 600 Maybe I'm lying to myself. I could swear it was 400. You got to be at the west coast discount Tom you have one. How much did you spend? No, this is just uh, this goes with an ipad Oh with an ipad, okay, so uh All right, so I wanted to talk about accountability because accountability is kind of one of my Uh passion words a lot of times when people are thinking about accountability They're thinking about being accountable to someone else And that to me has never really made any sense You need to be accountable to yourself for what you want to do for yourself And and the whole the whole idea of being accountable is what good does it do to be accountable to someone else if you're Not accountable to yourself Now if you're using other people to help you Be more accountable more accountable to yourself that that makes really good sense to me But yeah, I don't really understand the idea of being accountable to someone else I I think I think the the the the latter version of your explanation is is exactly right We're we're not being accountable to someone else because that other person But they're like, oh great. I'm glad you got it done But by using someone else They are holding you accountable to what you want to get done I got some some interesting examples of okay wait before before we go office real quick Okay, I think the place where I see this get misused really often Is with employees We want to hold employees accountable By showing them what they've done wrong And making them do it the right way And that is completely against the idea of accountability because accountability is about holding yourself responsible And so and accountable So instead of holding other people accountable We need to teach them and hold themselves Yeah, support them in being accountable. All right, go ahead and accountability is not something that is forced on a person Accountability is chosen by the person And if I want If I want accountability then I ask for accountability And I ask another I I want to get these things done So hey, can you help me by checking in on me every day or Force me to send you an email every day or whatever that is But if if I say to someone I'm going to hold you accountable Well, they never asked for it. I mean that's that you're right. I don't think that's accountability being used properly That's like just forcing someone to do something comes dying to say so There's some other things that go along with the accountability though. Yeah, you know like consequences and and outcomes and you know Ultimately you have to be accountable for yourself, but if you aren't then there's consequences and yes and outcomes that are going to Manifest themselves that aren't necessarily going to to be to your liking. So it's ultimately your choice. So From from the employee standpoint for instance, it's like, you know, you've got to be accountable and if you aren't then At some point we're probably going to have to agree that we aren't going to continue to be working in this relationship Yeah, we're not going to be working together because there's still a requirement of the job And if you can't hold yourself To that standard then you you can't work here because I I can't hold you to the standards I I've got my own job to do and I'm holding myself to to my I'm holding myself accountable And that's a big enough job I I see like two different kind of boxes or two different versions just like the The minimum the minimum stuff like okay These are the requirements that as you're talking about and someone needs to take care of that themself and if they don't There's obviously consequences When I'm thinking of the accountability, I'm thinking like beyond that like in like concentric circles like this first one Yeah, these are things that like boundaries like you've got to do these things right to maintain your position in life But then like the next circle out this next this next incensure circle is It's like your dreams. So let's say these employees like there's an awesome book out there called the dream manager Have you ever have you guys ever read that book the dream manager? Ken you should check out my program. You can find it on cleaning profit builders.com Okay, and It is a dream manager program. Oh really? Yeah, and I Kathy gauge created it And I um implement it. It's a dream program somebody. Yeah, somebody just Um reached out to me yesterday. Uh, she had gone through the process. She's like, all right I'm doing this with all my employees list You know, I need to I need to get the program. How's it going so far? Are you getting tremendous feedback? Is it too new to tell everyone? No, everyone who does it loves it We did it at what was the event that we did it at? Do you remember Tom? A couple years ago, obviously before covet It was the one with yeah, it was the alumni event. It was week two of the foundation We go yeah, it was the alumni event. Yeah And so we did it with um, we walked everybody through it. These are great business owners smart women Uh, the woman that i'm talking about right now is Trisha like she's going to implement with all of her people anybody that knows Trisha know she's Yeah, she's she's a powerhouse and she is really a A giving kind of a boss really supportive Anyway, we everybody that has done it gone through the program really It feels impacted in a strong way by the program. It it's been around for a while. So yeah, yeah Since 2017. I think yeah a couple years Yeah, I mean then you should check it out. I think you'd love it. So the the book kathy was Doing this program prior to 2017, right? Yeah Yeah, oh, maybe it was before 2017 Do you know the program based on the book? Yeah, well not not based on the book, but because of the idea of the book Ironically the book was an ironically the um, the the case study in the book is a is a janitorial company Right, they had a story around them. The reason why i'm shifting away from that It's because anybody that knows the story that that janitorial company kind of failed And the actual company was around failed. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that Yeah, so that's why I'm like Steering everybody. Let's just let's just edit this part of the the call. Can never send that book Isaac has a question here in chat. He wants to know how do we reward or implement accountability From one of your extra creative employees Hmm, so You know, I'm I'm just kind of extrapolate, you know trying to figure out somebody's extra creative maybe wants to You know Assert their creativity in ways that times maybe that doesn't really fit policy procedure and the the the rules that were there I'm you know, I need the I need the latitude to to express myself and be creative. I'm I'm assuming that's Isaac He's saying reward Accountability He's posing in a in a good light like this is something he wants his people to do Okay, once okay, so this is what we're hearing Isaac You want your people to be creative and you want to be able to reward them for that for being accountable to themselves and with this creativity, but Not when it's going against what what we're all working toward It's kind of what I'm reading. So I mean it's initiative, right people to take an initiative of creativity It could it could it tie back to the you know kind of that Kathy's program we're talking about where if this employee They say You go and have a meeting with them.  Okay. Here's here's what you want and then as the as the Entrepreneur as the manager here's what you could do to get that that's absolutely an opportunity if you do the A, B and C, D that includes creativity that includes these different things you could do And now they're going after a specific goal or dream And being and so the reward is them hitting their goal or dream Right and so and the creativity is the method that would get them there But I think you'd go back and start with what do you want? Why do you want it and then let them Let them Make those decisions What do you think? Well, I'm not exactly sure About the question so it's in the context of an employee So I'm thinking that this would be in the work environment the being Doing their job and uh And tying the word accountability in there is making it seem like Rewarding accountability except that he's Except that he's saying reward for accountability. So another way of taking that is That I want somebody is being very accountable to their job And not only are they doing what they're supposed to do But they're being more creative and they're doing even more than what they're Supposed to they're they're going above and beyond and that you want to reward for that So if those above and beyond is is creating something better for your business Yeah, so so maybe give us a little clarity on what you want Isaac and we can probably tell you we all three run different our businesses in different ways So we can probably give you some some good ideas suggestions I'm sure we have people actually. I know we do have people on on the On the facebook live that also run strong businesses Linda actually is a really good example of somebody that runs a very employee concentric Business and does a lot for her employees. So she might have something really great for you as well I'm sorry that David had to leave you see he had a hip replacement Yeah I think that's the second one. I think he had one of those uh the ursso go as well Yeah Which I can give you I can give you my take on your question. Liz um suggestion boxes can be successful, but they have to be Executed in a very very specific way because if they're not they will just end up being one of two things A place to complain or A place of full cobwebs So one one of those two things if you're not careful So suggestion boxes anything that is anonymous is going to get you less stellar results So you didn't say anonymous, but a lot of times suggestion boxes are anonymous So you want to have people put a name on there Reward is great, but the the big reward from the suggestion box is that my idea gets action taken on it and you can't always take action on everything, but You can You or you can't always implement everything, but you can always take action on everybody's ideas So that that's sort of the key there You have to be careful with them Can can I bring up kind of a accountability topic here? I mean we're answering questions is something i'm thinking about You know, we're we're kind of going off the you know on the road here of accountability from employee to boss You know, maybe just like look at us all the entrepreneurs on here And when does accountability really work? well And what I have seen in my own life and with others that Just had the blessing to be around it's when When there's someone that you look up to you admire you respect them And that you want to perform for that person It could be In some cases a founding member it could be a usually a mentor It could be a Kind of a someone in a cohort that you're a running buddy and you're growing your business at the same time But you respect them you look up to them And you set a goal together. Hey, we're going to get to x amount of revenue We're going to get to whatever by this date And when you do that because that mutual respect and admiration for each other They're gonna every day they're gonna connect with a quick facebook message or a text. Hey, this is what I got done today How about you and every day that they're they're connecting they're building that relationship They're urging each other on And then you get that Clydesdale horse, you know that analogy right where like one horse pulls like 3 000 pounds But you put two together they pull like they pull 15 000 whatever the numbers are It's like a five or 10 times multiplier But when you put two people one person doing their work and chugging along But when you put accountability really effective accountability in place like two people running side by side They get so much more out of out of it. They go faster because they don't want to let the other person down They they they would rather Let them self down than let the other person down It's really an amazing accountability when it's working is incredible And there's so many ways to do accountability can be like I said like a side to side Where it's like running buddy. It could be from you to a mentor Hey, I was able to get this mentor's time. He's gonna hold me He's gonna allow me to to go after my goal and he says hey email me once a week. I want to hear your update I'm not gonna mess up and not get a good report to him every Friday because I respect and look up to him If it's something you don't respect in the mire, you don't care You're not gonna show up. You're not gonna do the accountability thing, but that's a really important piece I just wanted to toss that out there for anyone for you guys to kick around or for anyone That's just wondering how this can be especially Especially if you know you struggle to hold yourself accountable Then getting getting a buddy is a great way to do it. Have you guys heard of the 12 week year? Yeah, Ryan Moran out of that. Yeah So In that book they have they talk about that what they call wham meetings, right? So I think they're called wham meetings weekly accountability meetings wham not not no h no wham weekly accountability meetings and they're they're similar to we have what we call a monday check-in In our in our groups and they're all about you being accountable to yourself But we're there as witness So we're there for you to help shore you up And to make sure that the spotlight is shown On what you're doing so that you can get the props and the support if if you're not meeting your own Thing so that that buddy thing does work really well It does Yeah, it does, but rarely does it work long term if you're not doing it for yourself If you're doing it just for the other person You're You're well what we have found is people will begin to fudge On the truth and what they've done And they'll start You know, especially if there's no No way to prove or disprove whether or not they did it so I needed that I joined the Courtney wisely group. Yay. And does it help liz? Is that helping? I'm guessing I'm guessing so A lot of people really love that That support that an accountability group can can provide Yeah, I I feel like they don't need it, but I totally agree The fudging and because I've seen that too, but it goes back to where we started Is that? Oh, look at that. Oh, that is so nice of you to say that. Thank you liz um It does it does go back to Being having a personal accountability to you like integrity is an important word I think if you have two people with integrity that are self-motivated self-directed Having self-leadership that are caring go and tie this all back together. They're taking care of themselves They're they're balancing and they're doing all these things and then they put a goal out there and Both people are in that position and they're both going for this lofty goal Now you can get a really powerful accountability between the two because you've got Two high caliber self-motivated self-driven self-leading people And you you team up them that's arm and arm locking arms together and you're going to walk through brick I mean these people like this is powerful It's very powerful. I really agree with that statement as long as everybody's on the same page Everybody grows Right with with that shared accountability Well, tom we are at top of the hour In this Wednesday Yeah, this Wednesday. Yay. It was a great call Ken. Thank you so much So tell us about your podcast Ken for you know People who want to want to tune in how can they find you? Yes, smart cleaning school. Just go to smartcleaningschool.com Or you can find it on all the major podcast players. I was at a podcast conference last week matter of fact And I was around 2000 other podcasters Wow So I will just say if you want to hear an amazing podcast go listen to readers or leaders with liz trotter on the smart cleaning school she It was it was amazing. So on the show I I do um Some a bunch of solo episodes going through yeah, there you go and you can go right to the podcast tab Which is up top Up at the top on the right. Yep is a podcast tab first one in And that that'll bring you to the list Yeah, people are putting the links are in there, but I do some solo episodes just like a business mindset The stuff we're talking about I'll share updates on my own personal business And the thing I'm really enjoying doing are these uh interviews with visionaries in our industry. So Liz I've already had a chance to interview you Uh, maybe on the spot now that I have tom tom. I'd love to get you on the show sometime He can't say no. He's live Well, I'm I'm good man. Send me an email. Yeah, you want to jump on it? Yeah, I mean and we don't talk X's nose on cleaning. Do we lids we we dive into topics that are just He's he's um, he's a lot different person than people think he is I think he'll be a great guest. I think you will love having him. It'll be a well I think it'd be awesome. I'll listen to I've got a reputation. We can't Can't mess that up. Come on now Oh, that'll be it'll be a lot of it'll be a lot of fun And I never know what the titles are until I have to do the after do the show I mean years are so obvious. We talked about reading for about 40 minutes And it was so good and I've got so many so many people saying that I really like that interview with Liz Trotter I'm like, well, she's amazing. You should like that one All right. Well, good. I guess maybe I need to like tell people about it too You told me about it. You gave it to me. I listen to it. It's hard to listen to yourself though I never watched these either afterwards So, all right Past the top of the hour Ken, thank you. We very much appreciate you uh joining us today. Always fun. Thank you so much Thank you so much guys. I appreciate the opportunity to come on and talk to your people And um, you know hit me up with some times. I'd love to do your podcast All right, you said it you everyone heard him. Tom. Tom still will be on the smart cleaning school sometime in the year 2021 So don't forget about your daily joke Is it is it bad? Should I get off? Is it bad or is it good? I was thinking it was to you. Do we have a daily? We don't have a daily joke. Do we need one? I thought you might what's our daily joke was tell us about it Maybe we have one and we didn't know maybe we think we're being serious Too funny. It's a joke. Oh, Liz asked about daily joke. Yeah So we'll be we'll be back monday monday. That was funny. That was good eastern You guys, uh, have a good rest of your week. Thanks again, ken. We'll see you soon. Thanks ken. Bye


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