Hello and welcome to today's webinar. What is marketing and why do we need it? Today we will be discussing how the worlds of sales and marketing are changing and how you can learn to adapt in order to compete. So let's get started. I would now like to welcome our presenter for today, Peter Strohkob from Peter Strohkob Consulting. Peter is a hands-on sales and marketing professional with over 20 years sales and marketing management experience. He is the CEO of Peter Strohkob Consulting International, a business consulting firm specializing in lifting sales results in large organizations by working with their seed-level executives and sales and marketing leaders to help their teams work more effectively together. So we definitely have the expert here today and without any further ado I'd like to hand it over to lovely Peter. How are you? Good morning Sarah. Good morning everybody. Great to have you here and great to see people from Queensland and from Victoria coming in and hopefully throughout the session we'll get some more people from Sydney to join me as well. The thing I've been told I need to do in my webinars first thing is to have an agenda. I always thought people didn't want agendas because they're boring but I've been told I have to have one. So I'm going to talk a little bit about me, change this over time, what the problem looks like, what a solution could be, what's in it for you, next steps and then we'll have a special prize and then I'll say thank you and we'll have a bit of Q&A. So that was painlessness and I'll just move on to that. So a little bit about me. Now I've spent more than 15 years in either sales or marketing roles in some of the largest organizations on the planet so you can see Sony, CSC3M and Canon predominantly in the B2B space for me. And the thing that I've seen continuously is that sales and marketing teams don't really work as well together as they could and there's a wonderful phrase that a CEO of an Australian IT company gave me and he's allowed me to use it and that is there's a gap between sales and marketing, the larger the organization, the larger the gap. And that seems to be really true and that's kind of fired the passion of me to do something about it and I've developed something called the one team method. Now on the bottom right there you can see there's a book. I'm very happy to say that there'll be a book launch next Wednesday in Sydney and there'll be free drinks and food so if you happen to be in Sydney come and join me for the book launch. It'll be at the Park Royal in Sydney near Darling Harbour then. Now I also guest lecture at the Sydney Business School in the Executive MBA program there and in the MBA Masterclass at the University of Fulingong and a guest lecture in Sales and Marketing Collaboration and Alignment and I'm now finally allowed to say that for the first time, and I think this is an Australian first, for the first time we will have sales incorporated into the Executive MBA program in the Business School in Australia and this is starting with the intake this year. So exciting times because normally believe it or not sales has not featured in the MBA or the EMBA program at all. It was finance and marketing and strategy and all that sort of thing but the function that brings in the dollars was kind of overlooked somehow and we rectified that and it's a really good thing. I also have a LinkedIn group. It's called the Sales Plus Marketing Collaboration Community. You look it up on LinkedIn and feel free to join in. It's a really cool community. It's growing very quickly and we now have over 2,500 members I think at last count. I'm a speaker. I am C-conferences. So for example I'm speaking at the Custom Experience Management Forum in Sydney on Wednesday of next week and that's a three-day conference that I'm seeing as well I'm speaking at and I'm also an Executive Mentor on Coach. So if you need some mentoring or coaching come and talk to me afterwards. All right, so that's enough about me. Let's look at what the changes have been over the last 10 years in sales and marketing. Now anyone that's been buying stuff over the last 10 years will know or actually been selling stuff over the last 10 years will know that things have changed quite a bit and that increasing the boundaries between sales and marketing are blurring and that we're trying to fix the blurring and the new changes and the distinctions that we're making with technology. Now if you look at the three COGs that I've drawn up here we have a very strong preference for starting off with the people, getting the people to agree that they want to work together then getting them to agree how they want to work together now that they're actually talking to each other and then we support all that with technology. I just recently published a blog I think it was two or three weeks ago where I said is business technology and CRM in particular, customer relationship management software in particular, is that implemented the wrong way around? Do we start off with the technology and then hope that the people will use it or should we just really get the people involved to get them to agree that the technology is a good thing and that they will actually benefit from using it and then roll out the technology after they've agreed to it. At the moment it seems to me that we get fascinated with technology, we implement it and there's an edict on the implementation team to install it on time and on budget but there's no mention of realising the business benefits that the software or the technology is meant to be delivering to the organisation in the first place and then when it hits the end users the people that actually have to operate the software they find that they're not as accepting of it as one would hope and usually with these things there is an expectation on uptake and utilisation of the new technology and very often these expectations are disappointed because the people weren't on board when the technology came along so I'm a very strong believer that technology is a good thing, it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing but just the way that we go about implementing it and bringing it to the people is in my opinion not fantastic I think we can do a lot better so if you're interested go and have a look at my LinkedIn profile and all my publications there, that's where I do my blogging. So the point is that we still need people and we want the people to use the technology and we want them to agree on processes with each other and so we need a holistic approach that encompasses people, process and technology but in that order of priority and sequence. So the people first, processes second and the technology third. By the way if you disagree with me just feel free to type in and we'll have a little discussion about that. Alright, I want to come to something slightly related. Here's a Google report on how many searches have occurred over the last five years actually last ten years nearly in the terms advertising and marketing so how many times over the last ten years has the term advertising or marketing featured in Google searches and the thing that's quite obvious here is that the trend is going down the interesting thing is what happens if we put the word digital in front of advertising and marketing and you can see traditional marketing and advertising is slowing down but digital is booming. If you look at the blue graph here for digital marketing you can see that's really taking off even more so than content marketing which is the new kid on the block in terms of sales and marketing relationships is concerned. So the interesting thing is that digital is taking off and the old analog way is slowly dying out or not becoming as important as it was before. That is also reflected in digital marketing budgets so you can see over the last four years we've had the budgets going up quite a bit and they've almost tripled since 2009 and we haven't got the, obviously we haven't got the 2015 figure yet but we'll expect when that comes out it'll be closer to the 50% mark that 50% of the budget will be digital and it'll be on par with the analog marketing budget. Okay, now here is a bit of a consequence of all this change that's going on. This is a report from the Four Nays Marketing Group in the UK and they had simply asked CEOs how happy are you with the marketing people or with the marketing team and unfortunately they said 70% of the CEOs said that they were not happy with the marketers which is a phenomenal figure. If you say 30% you go okay well there might be some bad eggs there but 70% of marketers were not living up to the expectations of their CEOs. Now how can we interpret that? So either the marketers weren't doing what they meant to be doing or maybe the expectations of the CEOs are a bit unrealistic and if you look at the second paragraph there the CEOs were expecting more leads that are sales ready to be delivered to sales people from the marketing team. They wanted the sales people to be enabled to grow more market share and to grow the revenue. Now if you think about it really hard you'll find that none of these are really marketing outcomes because marketing is meant to be helping with the brand recognition and the profile and the thought leadership and the positioning in the marketplace and basically help the sales force to make a sale but it's not meant to really make the sale for the sales force. So I have a bit of a concern over this survey because if the CEOs really think that the marketing is there to create more revenue then I think we have a bit of a disconnect there in the first place. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that marketing is not there to help sales. It absolutely is but the marketing people are not selling so they can hardly be held accountable for revenue but there is a lot of debate at the moment about lead generation, lead management, lead nurturing and handing over to the point where we've got all these 3D algorithms now of marketing generated leads so MGLs and sales accepted leads, SALs and marketing qualified leads and QLs and so on. So there's a whole lot of technology in terms of marketing automation and sales force automation systems going in where marketing is meant to create the leads, distribute them to sales and then sales follow them up and there is an expectation of what those leads should look like and what the quality of those should be and that's a whole different subject again. Now when we talk about the disconnect between sales and marketing and we'll come to marketing soon I promise it's not just us talking about the disconnect. If you look at these 2 papers here, even way back in 2007 Gardner put out a paper saying that marketing and sales working together is a good thing and they wrote the whole paper on that and you can still look it up it's available online. The thing that really surprised me was there's a paper by the Harvard Business Review out which 3 prominent marketers have written and including Neil Rackham and Neil Rackham is pictured here is the founder of spin selling. So he invented spin selling methodology and the reason I've got him pictured here is he's a bit of a personal hero of mine because he actually went about finding out about spin or developing spin in a quieter scientific way. So he did a lot of work with very large organizations Fuji Xerox was one of them and he studied the behavior of the salespeople to find out why are the good ones good and the bad ones bad and he found some common traits amongst the good ones and that helped him to develop the spin selling methodology. So he's a bit of a legend in the sales game and for these three prominent experts to call their book or their paper ending the war between sales and marketing so they're not calling it a disconnect or a conflict or a gap they're calling it a war. There's hardly a stronger word you can use for a relationship between two groups of people so that really surprised me and made me think that there is probably something to it that it is worth looking into and so that helped me with my inspiration to develop the one team method to help them work together again as one team so sales and marketing elaborating. Now we're not alone in this because if you look at a study based from 2013 now they said in the coming years, so 2014, what initiatives will your company be undertaking to improve sales performance and there's a whole bunch of options given there and the one that got the most was enhancing lead generation so we've talked about that that more leads is good. I'm not quite a strong believer in saying more leads is good I'm a strong believer in saying better leads high-quality leads is good but that's a different discussion again but number two was aligning sales and marketing so what does that tell us? It tells us that sales and marketing are not aligned and that they need aligning and there's some special ways to go about it so it's a popular thing it's hot, it's a hot subject and there's a recognition that aligning sales and marketing brings business benefits so this is where you come in I'm going to ask you to just type in whether you're sales or marketing or something else I'll just give you a minute to do that can you please just type in sales or marketing or else? I think it seems to be quite an even split there but we also have some people in events as well Peter we also have people in events So this is great, Dominica you're else and sales and marketing, you're everything that's fantastic and Angela is the sales and marketing director and actually I'll talk about research in a minute but the thing that we found was really effective was that if sales and marketing reported to one head who then reported to the CEO was much more effective than having a separate head of sales marketing who then independently from each other reported to the CEO they were much more successful so this is great so we've got both sales and marketing well represented which means that we're all ready for the next question which is how well do you think your sales and marketing teams are working together so the question is a bit loaded by saying seamlessly but I'll change it slightly by could you just say yes, no, okay not really well, just give it your own spin I'll just give you a minute so it looks like I see a lot of room for improvement I guess that's not really a surprise because if everything was hunky-dory you wouldn't be in this webinar so that's probably a reflection of you being here as well so now let's have a look at why that is and why you're not alone here's a collection of statistics from around the world on sales and marketing collaboration and I'll be stepping just through them so CSO Insights is a US-based think tank and they did some research and it says that less than a third of a sales rep's time is spent on actual selling now I run an executive round table group in Sydney where we get senior executives from various industries together and we talk about the sales and marketing collaboration and how it's working in their organisation and what could be done the point is that they all tell me 35% is a very high number that they're selling in Sydney or certainly in Sydney if not in Australia it's less than 20% of the sales rep's time is actually spent selling and for this purpose of the exercise we define selling as actual communication with a prospect so whether that's online, on phone, on Skype or face-to-face doesn't matter but actual direct communication with a prospect we say it's less than 20% of their time is spent doing that and that's what we're talking about with sales reps can I just ask you if anybody disagrees with that figure in their organisation? So what would it mean if we could improve on that? What if we freed up their time from 30% and gave them an extra 15% and made it 50% so an extra 15% of selling time if we take a nice round figure and make it $100 million organisation then that extra 15% would translate into, you guessed it $15 million in revenue and let's say they have a 30% profit margin that would translate to another $4.5 million into the bottom line simply by freeing up the sales reps to be given more time of spending in front of a client now Julia is asking does this statistic include driving time? It does not the statistic is meant to convey actual time spent with the prospect like I said either face to face or online or on Skype or sending them an email direct client interaction, not driving, Julia That's a good question, thank you for that The next one is about content creation 42% according to Brandshark another US think tank say that 40% of sales reps say that marketing does not or very rarely involve them in the creation of content so it's very often the case that I have also seen and that is that at times marketing creates content and collateral and brochures and pamphlets and it kind of, I don't want to be unkind to the marketers but kind of throws it over the fence to sales and kind of says that's our job done now you guys go and use this and sell and the sales people kind of go well it's not really quite what I need and therefore maybe I might make my own and that creates a problem then that sales people are spending that time not doing selling but trying to do marketing and when marketing is really meant to be doing the marketing so what could we do to remedy that I'll talk about that in a minute but here's the statistic, this is from our own research this is 185 B2B organizations over a 2013-14 period and we asked the reps simply how much of your time do you spend either looking for or modifying marketing content and the numbers were quite surprising so you can see there that quite a few about a third say I spend less than 10% of my time doing that which is great because you want them to find the content quickly and you don't want them to muck around spending too much time modifying the content but well over a third say they spend between 10% and 20% of their time and almost another third said we spend 20 to 30% of our time looking for and modifying content if you take the two middle bars together that's half the sales force is spending between 10% and 30% of the time looking for or modifying marketing content so if you go back to how much of the time those sales have spent selling it could be an explanation why they're not spending more of the time selling so the corollary of that is that if we give them more time by helping to find the content that they need when they need it then that would be supporting them much better the other sad statistic this is from odc which is an international research house and consulting firm now they say only 25% of the sales leads and the collateral that marketing creates is ever used by sales teams I find it an incredible figure 25% that means that 75% does not get used and that's acceptable I just really find that weird but I might just give you a chance to type in here what do you think of that figure in your own organization so I think we're largely agreeing that it's a low figure and I think we need to qualify it a little bit by saying that there's a lot of content that marketing creates that's not meant to be used as a sales tool there's all the thought leadership pieces and there's all the information that goes up on the website and so it's probably not fair to say that 100% of the marketing collateral should be used in the sales process so I think we have to temper that figure with that knowledge as well but I agree with the majority of you that 25% does seem very low and it highlights to me that there's not a lot of feedback going back from the sales people to the marketing people saying how could your collateral be improved and how could it support me better so here's a hypothetical so if we say that we created a feedback loop between sales and marketing so that marketing could actually be informed by sales of not only what do they use but how could it be improved then marketing wouldn't need to guess what actually works for sales and they could make a much better informed decision in terms of how can they better support sales force and everybody would be happy because marketing could focus on marketing and sales could be focusing on selling and each of them would use their own competency to improve the other and it would be a wonderful thing and here's the bugbearer of every sales manager and CFR and CEO this is that two-thirds of sales reps do not achieve their personal sales quota now I have to say this is an American statistic I'm not sure that this applies to Australia as well but let's just say it's a large number that they do not and in the discussion round that I mentioned earlier with the executives we were actually talking about why is that the case and they largely agreed that a lot of reps don't make the number and it's for two reasons one is for probably more than two reasons but one is that it may be that the reps are not as proficient at selling as they could be but the flip side is also that maybe the numbers are not achievable and maybe they're not realistic and I have seen this in very large organisations that the budget is developed and is sent up from the regional head office to the global head office and the global head office says no, these numbers are not good enough do them again, come up with something better and this goes on a couple of times and then in the end the regional sales office so in our case the Australian sales office will put something up that they pretty much know is a big stretch and that gets passed on to the sales people so I kind of feel for the sales people that have these budgets imposed on them of course it must be very frustrating at times I'll just give me a moment to read the questions here Layla's asking a question and she says it's about how you communicate the feedback in a way that marketing would actually listen and apply so Layla if you hit the nail on the head it's got to be a two way thing so the feedback has to be given and the feedback has to be received and it has to be responded to and otherwise the feedback will stop very quickly so I'll come to that a bit further in the webinar so if we just look mathematically at the problem of sales reps not achieving their targets if we could get marketing to better support the sales reps so that they actually perform slightly better so for example if they are more competent at selling because they have subject matter expertise or they have a white paper that will give them a foot in the door to the C suite so the CEO, the CFO, the CMO of an organisation then they might be able to close more deals and they might be able to achieve more of their targets so if we just said that we'll say that 50% now achieve their targets then again for our $100 million apathetical organisation it would mean an additional $17 million in revenue and at 30% margin $4 million in profit so you can see they're not small numbers just for a small improvement in the support of the sales force by marketing so this is kind of what we're talking about when we come to marketing and I just want to mention the research that we did in 2014 and we're currently, sorry, that we published in 2014 and we're currently working on the 2015 edition of this paper it should come out probably in a couple of months probably in the May timeframe as well but I want to, and this paper is available free of charge on my website at terpitasdragupconsulting.com and I just want to show you one of the findings probably the key finding now don't worry that you can't read all this it's not really about the text, it's more about the image what we did here was we asked sales and marketing people separately about 14 different processes that should be in place so let me start again we recommend that there are 14 different processes in place between sales and marketing to help them be aligned and help them to collaborate we asked them, each one of these 14 we asked them, do you have this in place in your organisation? Yes or no and the way the graph can be interpreted is that the more the grey and the orange lines meet in the middle the more they are aligned and the more they agree that they have these things in place so the graph on the left shows the result for organisations whose revenue grew over the preceding 12 months period versus the one on the right where the revenue either stagnated or went backwards now you can see in pretty much one glance that the lines meet much more evenly in the middle for the growth organisations than for the non-growth organisations and that's kind of a key finding of the research namely that there's a direct relationship between sales and marketing alignment and collaboration and the financial success of an organisation I mentioned that we're currently working on the 2015 paper so here's a little glance at it, a preview if we analyse those figures further we find that you're actually twice as likely to be financially successful if your sales and marketing teams are aligned or if you flip it around it means that your risk doubles if they're not aligned your risk of financial performance not going forward not going being positive the risk doubles with less collaborative organisations so there's a strong case to be made for sales and marketing working together and becoming marketing so this is kind of saying the same thing that the poorer the collaboration or the worse the collaboration between sales and marketing the poorer the sales of revenue and profit performance of the organisation but the good news was that the more they work together the more successful the organisation was as well in terms of financial results so what do we say should happen if you look at this graph we have sales speaking to the customer in terms of their sales engagement and we have marketing talking to the customer through the website, collateral, board leadership pieces white papers, conferences, trade shows, etc but if the communication between sales and marketing is not as fantastic as it could be the risk is that the customer will hear two different things and if you know about the buyer's journey so the old sales cycle has given way to the buyer's journey and what it means is that a lot of buyers go online first these days inform themselves about what they can have where they can get it from and what price they should pay and only then are they ready to contact the sales rep so from the sales rep's perspective that means that by the time the buyer is contacting you they've already made up their mind and it's going to be pretty hard for the rep to go and change them, upsell them to something else or sell them something else or upsell them some additional bit because they've already done their research and know exactly what they want and know what they can buy it for and who do you get it from and that if you don't sell it to them then there's two or three others they can so the important thing in the buyer's journey is that we get sales and marketing having a consistent message to the customer so that when the buyer moves away from the buyer's journey into direct contact with the organisation and they actually want to talk to a rep that the messaging remains consistent there's nothing much scarier for a buyer than reading something online and being made to feel confident that the organisation is capable of supplying what I need and then contacting a rep and them telling them something different and because they have a choice to walk away they will walk away so it's absolutely important that we have sales and marketing talking to each other and singing from the same hymn sheet to the customer so what that means then is that we've got to come back to the three cogs that I talked about earlier that in order to get people to collaborate we've got to start with the people domain so we've got to get the people to agree that they want to work together and we do that through a range of assessments seminars, surveys and workshops and basically get them to understand firstly that they're different sales and marketing secondly how they're different and then we move on and say it's okay that you're different because you're both doing different things but if you just could work together it would be so much better for everybody else so the principle is that we want sales to be enabled to provide constructive feedback to marketing on the support that marketing is giving sales and we're talking about your sales leads your collateral, your content your thought leadership pieces, your white papers the website content and everything so we want sales to be empowered to speak out and say look this really works for us this doesn't work for us we don't use this stuff at all and we find this other stuff is really great but as I said earlier if the feedback was just one way and marketing wouldn't respond to the feedback then the feedback would pretty much stop very quickly and we would be back to square one so what absolutely must happen is that marketing responds to the feedback and says thank you very much sales for the feedback that you've given us good and bad, positive and negative and constructive and otherwise and we will respond to that and here's what we're going to do with it so the benefit for sales is that not only are they empowered to provide the feedback but they're also getting information back from marketing in terms of what's going to happen and they see that stuff happens and they feed the information back to marketing so we call this a collaborative cycle a cycle of collaboration a virtuous cycle of collaboration I got it now and basically whereby sales helps marketing so that marketing can help sales and everybody uses their own competency to achieve that objective now where does that leave the customer in all this so firstly if sales and marketing interact with each other and align their messaging then the message going back to the market is going to be consistent no matter whether they're going to be online or face to face with the sales rep so that's a great benefit but what we can also do is we can actually include the customer in that feedback mechanism and that's something that my firm does so we actually go and interview the customers about what do they marketing and sales effort of the organization perceived at the customer end and we come in kind of as Switzerland as a neutral entity and we anonymize everything so that means that they can tell us exactly what they think and they won't get into trouble and nobody will know who said what but the information, the very valuable information goes back to the vendor organization and they can actually make a much more informed decision next time about how they present to the market and what method they will use and what messaging they will do and I have to say the reaction from the customers is usually very positive and they often say to us things like oh, these guys really care about us, don't they? they engage you to find out what we really think and the reason that they would engage us to find out what they really think is because the customer would not tell the sales rep directly what they really think there's too much of a sake there and to do it in a confronting or face-to-face way is not something that everybody is comfortable with but if it's anonymized and it's generalized and it goes through a third party then it's kind of okay to say well, look, their service sucks and they could do this better or they could say I love this thing that they do for us that's really fantastic and I wish they'd do more so either way, it's good information for the vendor to have because then they can improve their ways with the client so the thing is that we can have collaboration between sales and marketing and with the customer as well alright so I promise I was going to talk about what's in it for you and here's some financial ideas that we have found work when you combine sales and marketing into marketing and we're talking about a big increase in revenue commensurate increase in gross profit the not just the lead generation but also the lead conversion rate and also if we have all the information that we need in one place where people can find what they need when they're needed and reduce the time a new rep takes to come up to full speed and that's something in dollar terms as well now we usually provide a financial modeling service for our clients so that they can actually put in their own numbers and we can model four or five different scenarios around it I'm not going to do that here today but what I am going to show you is just one sample calculation and this is based on a couple of people from the Harvard Business School in the 90s and they discovered this phenomenon that if you increase a sales person's productivity by just 5% you can increase the profitability by 20% so what they call it is they call it a four times profit lever now for those of you who think this is a bit extraordinary I'm going to show it to you so let's say we have an organization and we sell something for $100 the thing that we're selling for $100 costs us $60 so that leaves us with $40 gross profit then we have fixed cost and admin cost and direct selling expenses and other expenses in there so let's say the thing that we're selling for $100 is the profit of $10 before tax so we get 10% profit margin now let's look at three scenarios of what would happen if we started reducing the direct selling expenses by just 5% so we're talking about a very conservative figure we're not talking about 10, 20, 30% we're just talking about 5% so let's say we want to reduce or we want to improve the sales productivity by 5% or we want to raise prices by 5% so we've got three different scenarios here and for those of you who are detailed minded you can go through the individual lines but if we look at the bottom end result reducing the direct selling expenses by 5% brings only a 3% improvement in terms of profitability so all those sales people who are hounded by their sales managers of spending too much on a cup of coffee to take out your client show them this figure and it's not really worth arguing over whereas what they should be talking to you about is how can you increase your sales volume by 5% or sell 5% more or sell 5% faster or sell 5% higher margin because that brings you 30% improvement for a 5% improvement in productivity so here's your 4 times lever now also what this example shows in the far right column there is that if you increase your price by 5% you can increase your profitability by 50% and that might explain why your CFO or financial controller or whoever is the financial person in the organization will always say come on you can raise the price a bit more you can get asked a bit more from your client it does make a big difference to the bottom line but unfortunately it's not always realistic we live in a world that's hyper competitive and if you increase your price by 5% you may not make the 50% improvement you may actually make 0% improvement because you don't get the deal so personally I think raising the prices by 5% is probably not as realistic as increasing your sales productivity by 5% but that is highly dependent on the individual organization and I'm just hoping that this is helping you to understand that getting the sales productivity up by supporting the sales force better through the marketing activities actually makes a big difference to the organization or the marketers to put the hand up and say I want to help my sales counterpart to do better and are you on board with me and what that does is for the first time you won't be beaten up on the budget and on the what are you contributing to sales you're actually taking the bull by the horns and you're being proactive and showing the CEO some leadership and because it was your initiative and you said to the sales manager are you with me it means that they have to be on board with you but it's still your leadership showing through so it's kind of like a really good career move and it's a win-win scenario and it would actually help the organization if it comes through so I would encourage you to have a good look at these figures here and say wow I can really make a contribution to those and so there's your tip for the day there now if you want to see what this looks like for your own organization you can actually go to my website and there is something that's called the ROI check and you can put your own figures in and you'll find that it'll give you the result in terms of if I improve my productivity by 8% that you put in say 5% what would that look like for my organization and I think you'd be surprised at the results just one caveat there the Harvard Business Review formula works the other way around as well so if you don't achieve improvement in productivity or if the productivity actually goes backwards the numbers amplified the other way as well so you get a bigger loss in the same order of magnitude so it has a big negative impact if it goes backwards so it's best to be proactive and and try to improve the current status quo so I'm going to now open the floor to questions and and also what I would like you to do is to type in your questions and also to say what was good for you today and Sarah has very kindly put up a survey for you to fill in as well so there's plenty of stuff for you to do ask questions, tell me what you thought was good for you today and fill in the survey and I'll just be waiting for you to type things in I think we might go to Layla's question as well regarding what you were speaking about a few slides back so she said there is also the issue of timing sometimes by the time the changes have been made so I'm thinking about marketing material and collateral it is time for another change so how do we bridge the gap on timing yes thank you Layla I saw that question I didn't really have an opportunity to answer it to me it comes back to the quality of communication so the quality of communication means how well do we communicate it also means how quickly do we communicate and then how quickly do we respond so if everything goes well in marketing sales and marketing would be so aligned that they would not need to wait firstly they would not need to wait for a problem to occur before they talk about it but secondly is once they do talk about it they also have the ability to make a decision very quickly and to respond to it very quickly so if you improve the collaboration between sales and marketing and if that improves the level of communication and the quality of communication then you should be able to respond to these changes much more quickly and what's important much more quickly with a an agreed with an agreed set of steps with an agreed action and it comes back to communication the quality of it and the speed of response but if marketing works all this should be in place does that answer your question Leila? Great I can't see any more questions coming through but what you might do on the follow up email that will be sent out along with the recording and the PowerPoint presentation is it okay if we put your direct details on there Peter for people to contact you should they have any other questions about today? Yep absolutely now if you're still keen I'm interested to find out what part of the presentation was actually good for you so if you have any comments feel free to type those in as well otherwise we'll leave you to the survey Yep excellent and thank you for everyone completing that and thank you once again for everyone joining our business skills series and a huge thank you to you Peter for joining us today very very very inspirational insights there and I'm sure everyone learned a thing or two that they can take away and hopefully make a huge impact or even a small impact to the bottom line you never know so thank you everyone for joining thank you for completing the survey and we look forward to seeing you on future webinars thanks so much for your time and enjoy the rest of your day bye for now


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I've really enjoyed listening to the other speakers as I always do when I come to the Mises Institute. I've never failed to have a good time coming to visit here. I love the people who operate the Mises Institute, the people who are associated with it, the people who are interested in it, and of course the people whose support make it all possible. So let me add my gratitude to the thanks you've received from other speakers before me. I think you're helping to sustain some wonderful work and some work that has already been much more successful than I ever dreamed it would be when I first became associated with the Mises Institute about 20 years ago. I think some of us worried a little bit when Murray Rothbard died unexpectedly. He really was, while he was alive, the hardened soul of this operation and every program that we had here with Murray. Murray was the star and I still miss him very much and I know many others do too, but the beautiful thing is that the Mises Institute kept going without Murray and has given a wonderful account of itself since his death, which again, time flies, it's been 15 years now, but a lot of great work has been done and I think even greater work lies ahead with your support. So please, please if you can support the Mises Institute continue to do so and I certainly will appreciate it and I know Lou will as will the others.


Meditation for ESL. This is a guided meditation that you can use anytime. Sit comfortably. You can sit on the floor with your legs folded or sit in a chair with your feet on the ground. Gently place your hands on your knees or in your lap.  Begin to focus on your breath, breathing in and breathing out. Feel the air going in through your nose and out. If you start to think about something, that's okay. Go back to your breathing. If you hear a sound, that's okay. Go back to your breathing. You might feel pain or a different feeling in your body and that's okay. Continue to focus on your breathing. You will hear a chime at the end of five minutes. Take one more breath. Feel your body. Say thank you to yourself for taking the time to meditate. And when you're ready, open your eyes.


Welcome to Shebaugin County Government, working for you. This is our monthly TV show that tells you about the people working in Shebaugin, working for Shebaugin County and the services they provide. I'm the co-host, Dan Lemio, the County Board Chairman, along with Adam Payne, our administrative coordinator. And this month our guest is Dale Pauls, our director of our healthcare facilities. There's been a lot of activity the last... Well, there's been a lot of activity for every area of healthcare facilities, but especially the last year or so, Dale, and we'd like to talk a little bit today about the things that have been happening and the construction that's going on out there. But first, why don't you just start a little bit telling us about yourself and your roles and responsibilities at the healthcare facilities? Yes. It makes me reflect a little bit when you talk about myself. But I've been working in administrations and long-term care facilities for the last 29 years. When I think about that, it's gone quickly, which to me means that I've enjoyed it and I truly have. But in 1994, I came to Shebaugin County as the healthcare administrator at Rocky Knoll and was in that position until August of 2001 when I was named the healthcare director for the facilities. I continue to have the same responsibilities as Administrator Rocky Knoll, but in addition as the healthcare center's director, I'm responsible for the overall oversight supervision of the other two facilities. Of course, the major tasks there are planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the operations. I work closely with the healthcare committee and other liaison committees through meetings and through reports to them. So those are basically the main responsibilities that I have. There's a lot of things we could talk about with the healthcare facilities. We have a large group, one of our largest group of county employees working at these facilities, a fairly large budget. But the thing that's been in the media the most in the last years been the construction of our new addition to Rocky Knoll. Could you tell us a little bit about that construction and the status where we are in that construction? Well, I can tell you that the majority of it is nearing completion. The addition and the remodeling are virtually completed. And we are now just starting to refurbish the 1972 building. And the reason why that's starting right now is because we had residents occupying it until just recently. And that is projected to start on May 13th with a completion date near July 1st. We will have, when we're done, 195 licensed beds. There will be 37 beds in a new addition that will be for the developmentally disabled. We will have 158 skilled nursing beds. Of those, 99 will be strictly geriatric. Within those, even, we have a 16 bed dementia unit. And then the 59 additional beds will be for the severely and persistently mentally ill. We are looking to then relocate to within the next few months. That was going to be my next question. The main reason, the impetus for the construction of Rocky Knoll and the changes that we're making was, what do we do with Comprehensive Health Center? And this is part of our whole consolidation move. When exactly will that consolidation take place? We're planning to do that the week of July 15th through the 19th. Probably the Friday prior to that and the month of July 15th, we will be bringing equipment, furniture, and some of the personal belongings of the residents. And then on the 16th and 17th, we will relocate the residents to their new home. And how many residents are we talking about? These are the remaining residents at Comprehensive Health Center? Yes. How many are we talking about? Well, as of today, we have 88 residents. 88? Mm-hmm. And they will all be going to Rocky Knoll? Yes. Yes, they will. Again, divided up. You talked about the 37 bed unit. So obviously some are going to be in the new unit. Some are going to be in the original building. 34 will go to the new building and the 54 to the 1972 building. You said that the construction was nearly completion. We just had a meeting out there of the building committee basically ending up their work. Obviously some landscaping needs to be cleaned up yet and a few final touches put on. But the project was bigger than just Rocky Knoll and this new addition and the renovations you made in the original building. What about Sunny Ridge? We're going to be down to two campuses, the Rocky Knoll campus, the Sunny Ridge campus. Did part of this project involve Sunny Ridge also? Yes, it did. And we did a number of things with the physical plant as well as some residents transferring from comprehensive. With the physical plant we've tried to do some upgrading aesthetically as well as within the equipment areas. For example, we put new lighting in, we put new ceiling tile in. There's been air conditioning hopefully by the end of the year throughout Sunny Ridge. That project will be completed. There's a brand new courtyard on the east end of the building that is truly going to be nice for residents and families. They've done again some aesthetically fine things in the areas of their snack bar area with murals and paintings. Carper did the chapel area. So some of those things have certainly I think done a lot for the appearance of Sunny Ridge. But probably more importantly, as a part of the project as you were talking about, we have moved 14 residents from comprehensive over to the fifth floor. It's all part of integrating and providing a continuum of care that we want to achieve in the health care centers. Those people are with similar residents, with staff that are trained to provide services for those individuals. So we're really pleased with that transfer. And when did that transfer take place? They did that in March. The residents that you moved have been there for a month and a half, two months now. How is that working? The residents have adjusted very well. Well, it's a very nice location for them. There's an excellent activities area, dining room, and they have their own private rooms. We're talking to Julie Jollett's administrator of Sunny Ridge. They've gotten into the activities that are a part of that building. And so we're happy with how well they have adjusted as well as staff. Family members, pleased with that too? Yes, yes, much, very much so. Prior to their moving over, we had an opportunity to have them come and visit the area. And I know I had talked to people that, well, we're closer to where we live and we like what we see here as far as the facility where our family member will be living. We're talking about the consolidation and having two facilities now, Rockin' on Sunny Ridge, where we used to have three, consolidating downsizing, these are words that have been used. There's maybe a little concern that we're trying to get out of the business of nursing home care. And I realize this isn't one of the things that we had planned on talking about, but it just seems to me that because of the construction out at Rockin' all, the changes we're making at Sunny Ridge, that the immediate future, we're going to be there to provide care for the elderly. Yes, yes, I think we have a mission statement that we want to fulfill in the near future and that's to provide for Sheboyton County residents. How many beds will we still have, even though we're downsizing from the number that we had maybe 10 years ago? Can you tell me how many beds it's approximately that we will have in both facilities? We'll have 319 at Sunny Ridge and then 195 at Rockin' all. So 514. So we're still a fairly large presence in the nursing home field in Sheboyton County. Yes, we certainly are. Thank you. I think about how the chairman opened this program discussing all the activities out there. When I started this position in January of 1999, for weeks and months and perhaps a couple of years there, you couldn't pick up the newspaper without reading about the controversy and what was the county going to do? Were we going to consolidate? Were we going to build at Rockin' all? Were we going to build a free standing? Were we going to get out of the business? A tremendous amount of controversy and it's really gratifying to see things come together and it's happened with a great deal of public input and a lot of people being involved with the success of this project. Linda Martin was the Health Care Center's director when I started, again, three and a half years ago. Gene Larabee has been on this program two different occasions. He was involved with many of the decisions and providing recommendations to the county board on the ultimate compromise and it's refreshing to have Dale in this position now. He's been not only our administrator at Rockin' all, but has really, I think, Dale, you've really brought the skill of the teamwork approach in getting people involved with the consolidation, implementing the consolidation, the plan that the county board unanimously approved. What have you done? What steps have you taken to get families, the residents, your staff involved with implementing the consolidation plan? Well, I begin with a staff. I think shortly after we broke down and started construction, we formed a number of committees that we felt needed to deal with specific issues. For example, with residents, with staff, with furniture and equipment, with physicians, ancillary services. So we began to plan with them the different challenges that we knew we were going to have with those different areas for hopefully having a satisfactory consolidation. Those have been ongoing now and we continue to work with them. One of the things that helped us really in this was the transfer to a sunny ridge because it was sort of a trial. And we've learned from that, too. But those are going on as far as staff are concerned. Community communications is another area, particularly with staff. We had employees and assistants come in and talk about change relating to what was going to happen with our staff. So I believe we've seen successes from doing that with our staff. Residents, resident council is probably one of the big communication devices. We've tried to keep them updated, get input from them through those meetings. Those are held monthly. When we move residents, for example, to Sunny Ridge, there is a planning conference way in advance that we deal with the family and the residents so that they have input on that. We've had family meetings, again, to get them involved in suggestions and ideas. Going back to staff, more recently in the last month or two, we've had tours of the building. That's been very helpful because now people from comprehensive have had the opportunity to see it, made suggestions that we missed. So even volunteers, we had a volunteer recognition and band quit there for the comprehensive volunteers. They got a chance to see the building. We're very pleased with it and thought that the residents were going to truly enjoy the new home. So we've used all those avenues to get these different people involved. Well, I think about the role of the building committee. The county board, ultimately, came together with a compromise based on a great deal of public input and discussion and consultants in that process. Then we had to go about actually implementing it and developing the plan. We hired an architect. We had a construction manager and attending some of those building committee meetings to see your staff coming in and making suggestions along the way with the chapel at Rocky Knoll. The volunteers came in and some of the residents were concerned about a wall that went all the way through. I think there was a great appreciation from a standpoint of there was an opportunity to be heard and the building committee made adjustments. In fact, what did we learn? There were 300, 400 change orders along the way. Minor refinements here and there to further improve upon the plan. Again, we're talking about an $8.9 million investment. When the county board chairman mentioned earlier that are we going to be in this business, I think we are going to be in this business. The county board not only made the decision, but we're making an incredible investment in our operations. You touched on it and the chairman raised it as well when we first initially moved some people to Sonny Ridge and there was a real positive article that came out. How are people responding at this point? Do you feel there's a lot of enthusiasm and they're accepting that change is going to occur? What's the general tone? Overall, particularly with staff there is growing acceptance of that and I think it's helped with the tours. People knowing what their physical location is going to be and so I see positiveness coming from our staff. Residents that moved like within Rocky Knoll to the north building, they're adjusting quite well. Some of the comprehensive residents, particularly that are going to be in the ICE-FMR are, we're very excited to pick out my room. Overall, I think a very positive atmosphere. I think your decision to have the staff go with the residents to keep that continuity certainly has to help as well. I know they're involved with getting the room set up and decorated and that's got to provide more comfort in the transition. Meanwhile, while we're moving to the new, we still have the Comprehensive Health Care Center, the outdated facility that we're going to be vacating and the Health Care Center's committee appointed a subcommittee to look at the sale of that property or disposition. Thank you of that property. And where are we at with that? What's happening with the Comprehensive Health Care Center? Well, currently we have five parties that have showed an interest in either the partial property or the entire property. And at the Health Care's Committee meeting tonight, this subcommittee will be recommending that a letter will be sent to interested parties and inviting them to tour and then to request some formal offers that we would want back by June 3rd of this year. So yes, we have some interest. Very good. And in short, it's what, the acre grounds and number of buildings, what generally do we have for sale? What's out there? Yes, you're right. 65 acres, which approximately, I believe, 45 or tillable acres. And then the major complex, we've got some outlying farm buildings as well as an old laundry and some garages in the boiler room. So there's a number of buildings. And this you touched on earlier as well, to be aware of activities, keeping them not only aware of the consolidation and what the dedication is going to be, but also what's happening with comprehensive. What steps have you taken to make sure that we're keeping the public aware of what's going on? Well, you mentioned earlier, we've had excellent press coverage through news stories as things have been unfolding. But we also provide a, to this bi-monthly newsletter that we get out to clinics and other points in the community that we're able to let people know what's going on. Recently in the last couple of months, the Community Relations Director and myself have gone to a number of service organizations to let them know what's happening with the consolidation. In the health care committee meetings, we try to continue. And with the timetable of the overall consolidation and the budget to date, what's been your sense? Are we on track? Yes, we definitely are. The timetable is excellent. If we're done by July 1st, we're well within our target there. And when's the dedication going to be held? Dedication will be held on July 23rd, June 23rd, beginning at 1.30 in the afternoon. Following the dedication ceremony, we will have an open house. Tours will be available at that time. We're looking to start in the new reception area and conclude in the dining room of the ICE-FMR for refreshments. So June 23rd at Rocky Hill, and the public's invited? Yes, indeed. One of the things that the Health Care Centers Committee has done in the last couple of years is set up a foundation. Dale, could you tell us a little bit about the foundation and how it works and how it provides some financial aid to the facilities? It was originally set up to help supplement as far as with revenues, with our current revenues, there's some things that we just as able to do. And so it was set up to kind of deal with those type of things. By having it being a 501C3 status, it does act as a charitable organization with the contributions that we get directly, it is for directly benefiting the residents of our Health Care Centers.  We still have a couple vacancies on the board. There's a member of the Health Care Centers is on it. I'm a member of the board, Tim Finch, the finance director for the county is a member. It meets quarterly. What, and you still have some openings on this board? Yes. What type of person are you looking for? Well, we're looking for... we're looking at something to do with spare time. What type of person are you looking for? An individual that certainly does have the time to devote to it, but one that is community oriented, particularly interested in people in the health care facilities and trying to improve their lives. You mentioned the way the foundation is set up. If I would donate to that, is that money tax deductible? And if I donated, what would you use that money for? Yes. The foundation, as I said, is a 501 C3 organization. So as far as the law will permit, it's tax deductible. We've used them for a number of things, depending on if, as an individual, if you specified exactly what you wanted, it would be done. Just recently we had a resident pass away that was very much interested in music. So the family donated money for any type of musical item. It could be for decorating a hospice room, which we did at Sunny Ridge, or purchasing certain types of equipment, bathing equipment that is needed by a resident. And how do you I realize if I would donate to that, that would be a contribution to the foundation. Are there any other ways set up to promote the foundation and to raise funds? Anything planned in the near future? Well, one of the things I mentioned is communicating to the community about what was going on, the Salvation Project. We also took the opportunity to explain the foundation. We have brochures that we distribute to them. But we are planning a golf founding in the fall and then there's another calendar raffle that I believe the Community Relations Director said that we would be trying to do, so we would be there's a couple projects that we have in mind right now. And if our viewers are interested in those projects, how would they find out a little more about them? Or would they find out more about the foundation? Who would they get in contact with? Jennifer Holtzman is the Community Relations Director and she would be the person to contact at Rocky and Noel and her telephone numbers 467-6464 and she can explain to them how they can be donors if they're interested in being on the committee and give them a background about the foundation in general. Would that also be the person that, for example, if a civic group, you mentioned that you and Jennifer had been out to some different organizations promoting the healthcare facilities and the consolidation projects that they would contact if they're looking for a speaker to come to their event and talk to them? Yes. And you would be willing to... We're more interested, very much interested in being able to do that. We have a few minutes left yet. Do you think that you could just in more general terms, and we've been talking about the consolidation and what that means for the residents from the Conference of Health Center that will be moving to both Rockingall and Sunny Ridge, but just maybe for a minute or two, just an overall overview of our healthcare facilities and what type of residents that we're providing services to.  Is that the atmosphere we have now in our healthcare facilities? Or has that changed? It certainly has changed in the last 20 years. It isn't a retirement home anymore. And when we look at Rockingall campus, we're going to have probably five different distinct populations that we're going to be caring for. With the developmentally disabled, the chroniclementally ill, and then the geriatric population who, if it's not just general conditions, may have physical needs through Medicare, therapies that are eligible for. I mentioned earlier that we have now a dedicated dementia unit. So we have a broad number of residents that we're caring for. Can you say a dedicated dementia unit? Would that be the same thing as an Alzheimer's unit? Some places would call them. We have 16 beds that again will be so that as we know some of those people wander it'll have a security system to keep them safe. We're just completing some education for staff that were interested for that unit to work there. And we're real pleased with how that's going and how we'll be able to meet their needs a little more specifically than we have in the past. The other concern that people would have is that, well, there are two concerns. One is we have a lot of empty beds all over the county. Another concern is we're getting so small they won't have enough beds. What is the status in our facilities right now as far as availability of beds if somebody has a need to place a loved one in a nursing home? Right now, Rocky Knoll would be basically at capacity. But the we've come down to and will be at 99 licensed beds for the north building. Sunny Ridge has openings and I think because of the type of population we're talking about with Medicare people, the short term stays. We will be turning over and I still think that we will meet the needs of our residents of Sheboygan County. There may be a person having been on a waiting list for a little bit of time but I don't see that as anything of any length. Where do you get most of your referrals for new residents? Are they coming from hospitals or are they coming from doctors? They're not coming from the people that are retiring and selling their house anymore and looking for a retirement home so are you getting most of your referrals from the medical profession? Yes, we do. They may come directly from home but it's as a result of they've tried to maintain them as long as they can and then the doctor refers them. Most of them are coming through for referrals. Thank you Dale, it's been very interesting. I'm sure our viewers have a little bit better idea of the services that our health care centers are providing and what's going to happen with their consolidation and we look forward to seeing them on June 23rd Sunday afternoon. They can view the open house and the facility, the new facility and stay for some refreshments. Thank you. We're county government working for you show. We're going to have Jim Graff, the director of our child support department and we're going to learn a little bit more about the services that they provide and the way their office runs, the collections they perform and how they work with the state in providing this service. Thank you for watching and we hope to see you again next month in the county government working for you. Thank you.


my beloved brothers and sisters in islam whenever we go through financial difficulty or hardship we need to bear in mind that Allah سبحانہ و تعالیٰ is in absolute control and we need to bear in mind that Allah سبحانہ و تعالیٰ would not have left us without advice without guidance without instruction as to what to do in order to help ourselves لیکن مالو مالو اللہ و حیر پر حیر پر اللہ کیا ہے when you came onto the earth what did you have you did not even have your clothing your parents or someone else had to close you thereafter as you grew older what happened perhaps there were days when yourself or your parents or those a little bit earlier could not afford a pair of shoes perhaps they could not afford a motor vehicle or a car meaning or a house or even transport for that matter there were days that that has happened and when you leave you will leave with nothing whatever clothing you have on you shall be removed and replaced with a shroud whatever wealth you have already that which you spent your name will be written next to it that you spent this money that which you did not spend others will be owning it or if not owning it then they may even fight for it مالو سبحانہ و تعالیٰ not let that happen i mean so we know that at this moment in time in this country we are going through such a difficult financial time or should i say such difficult times whereas it's so tough to explain to someone who's not living it as to what is going on we agree you tell someone living in singapore for example that you know we have something called bond notes it might take you half an hour to explain and even after that they will not comprehend exactly what's happening we are taught number one by اللہ سبحانہ و تعالیٰ that when you are going through hardship difficulty one of the first things you should do is thank allah amazing how many of us knew that you have to be thankful how can you tell me i'm going through hardship i must say oh allah thank you how can you say that that is what allah says سبحان اللہ you want increase in goodness you have to thank him how can i thank allah i'm going through such a mess i owe this one i have to do this i cannot afford that i don't know where my food is going to come from i don't know where my clothing is going to come from i have no idea how i'm going to survive my brain is totally you know stressed out completely my whole system is struggling and suffering my health is deteriorating and you are telling me to thank allah the answer is yes that's what allah says اِنَّ عَظَابِ لَشَدِدْ if you are going to be thankful we will grant you increase in goodness and if you are going to be ungrateful and because you are going through certain problems and issues you forget the goodness that allah has bestowed upon you in that case our punishment is quite severe allah says we can punish we know may allah سبحانہ وتعالہ not do that to us so the way that the prophet ﷺ taught us to show gratitude is by looking at those who are suffering in a bigger way take a look at people across the globe suddenly they're driven out of their homes you know if we think we have a few potholes on the road because of the rain take a look at those who have lost their lives because of floods they've lost their property hundreds of thousands of people have lost so much across the globe you would not be able to even go through a little bit of that so allah says i'll let you get away with five potholes on your street and that also we complain allahu akbar so if you don't want the potholes okay we can fix up the road but what if we decide to send a flood that will destroy your home and kill a few people ستخفیر اللہ رہا تھنک اللہ to say yeah اللہ we are fortunate we still have a means to get through we still have five potholes other places they don't even have the road so this is the teaching of the prophet ﷺ remember my brothers and sisters we cannot stress it enough always look at those who are struggling more than you are spend time to sit in one place and to think about what's happening we read stories about people who've lost their homes whole cities like look at syria for example aleppo and so many other cities totally completely destroyed the hundreds of thousands and millions of people have no other means of survival besides thinking of jumping on to a makeshift boat to cross an ocean a few thousand kilometers have you ever even thought about that do you ever think subhanallah that your problem can be worse than that people with bombs raining all over them left right and center they don't know why they themselves have no understanding of why this is happening why me what did i do is it just because i am saying لا الہ الا اللہ is it because i'm a muslim is it because the land i am living in has oil or has diamonds or has gold or something valuable under our feet what is the reason we don't know that's what they will tell you سبحان اللہ but they are struggling when you look at they are struggling you will realize what we are going through is nothing you have a bond note they don't even have a note and they don't even have a bond may Allah سبحانہ وتعالہ forgive us so you have to you have no option one of the first steps of alleviating financial strife or struggle is to thank اللہ oh اللہ i have i have what do i have i have a lot you've given me clothing i've been used to buying new clothing every second year i don't need that i can have the same clothing for five years ten years what's wrong but when you start thinking that the lifestyle you've been living for such a while is no longer financially viable feasible and if that is your financial struggle then my brother my sister you need to revise your understanding there are لوگ who don't have clothing recently i was looking at the weather in some parts of the northern middle east siria and so on the amount of snow the amount of cold weather meaning the the the temperatures and people without clothing people who barely have socks and here we are with temperatures that are far higher than that and we have the best of clothing when i say best of clothing the worst from amongst us has the best clothing compared to them that's what it is may Allah grant us the ability to thank him the problem with us is we tend to just complain everything is a complaint everything is a problem we want to live such a lavish lifestyle that it is so high in terms of financial demand we cannot meet it but we are complaining that we cannot live to that level why this brings me to the second point my brothers and sisters in order to help yourselves and myself included going through this financial crisis we have to learn to downgrade our lifestyle whether you like it or not you don't need the latest and the best you don't need to eat out every day you don't need to have a meal until you're full remember this the sunnah is to only have one third of solid one third of liquid one third of air maybe your financial capacity might force you to adopt the sunnah my brothers and sisters it is a sunnah even if you had money you're not supposed to be wasting so downgrade your lifestyle i'm being serious many people are complaining out of fresh air i can't afford my son school fees well where do you send him well the fees is three thousand dollars a term my brother there is another school down the road where it is three hundred dollars you cannot collect zakats of the community in order to oil the fact that you would like to live up to the joneses not at all it's wrong and don't ever you dare complain about financial difficulty when you have not downgraded that no it's an embarrassment well if you think it's an embarrassment then suffer the consequences of not being human enough to lower your level lower it lower it you don't need to live on such a high level i know people may not agree wallahi it is fact you have to agree you have to downgrade there's no harm you have to downgrade if you are struggling financially take a look at the few dollars that you can save sit down and right where have i spent my money take a look this is unnecessary that is and you will be shocked at how much you can save and then you will see there are others who are really struggling they have nothing subhanallah and they are still thanking Allah they will be there what did you eat my brother i had one avocado allahu akbar i've heard this with my own ears and they are happy they're at salah in the same masjid you are sitting in subhanallah and they are so excited and another person is so upset and angry because he used to go out to eat five times a week and now he can only go out once a week and for him that is an issue and for this man with an avocado he's thanking Allah that he had one avocado where are we this is why going back the hadith says look at those who have less than you wallahi you will always find that you are way above most others way above most others we have such بیوٹی فول سویل that we can grow our own fruits a lot of us have our own fruits and veggies in our own garden's how can you complain you are lazy perhaps may Allah subhanahu واتحالہ not let that happen to us may we be from those who thank Allah and who downgrade who look at others and who realize how fortunate we are i do not have the time to go into specific examples but i've given you one or two and you need to look at people around you who are struggling listen to the news and you will see those who are in riches are today not even in rags they don't even know where they're going to go i met a brother in the uk who was from syria and he was one of the wealthy people he left on a boat subhanallah he left everything behind him he owned almost a street a whole street everything gone and his family was so divided that he did not know where members of his family were and we think we have problems lahu akbar we think we have problems may Allah subhanahu واتحالہ forgive us thank Allah i'm repeating again point number one when you have financial difficulty and any other difficulty the first point you do thank Allah many of us think you know what we would start but not with thanking Allah subhanahu واتحالہ then there after my brothers and sisters seek the forgiveness of Allah that is very important seek the forgiveness of Allah to ensure that what you're going through is not a punishment but rather it is part of the test of Allah life is a test you have to seek the forgiveness of Allah why because Allah says وَمَا کَانَ اللَّهُمْ عَذِبَ هُمْ وَهُمْ يَسْتَوْفِرُونَ اللہ will not punish them while they are seeking forgiveness so if you are seeking forgiveness even what was the punishment of Allah will be converted to a test seek the forgiveness of Allah look into where you have gone wrong if i am struggling i need to ask myself what did i do did i eat اندرسٹDid i usurp the wealth of someone Did i cheat and steal Did i harm someone Did i hurt someone's feelings Have i usurp the rights of someone Did i swear backbite What wrong did i do search yourself introspect You have to When you come to the ulama they will tell you no my brother don't worry It's a test from Allah Yes that is their duty to tell you but you need to know yourself search your life جو اپنان پر دنیدھائی ہے کہ اللہ کوتا بھی محکوم کریں لیکن ہم آگی ہونا چاہتے ہیں کہ جب آپ کو سوچ جانتے ہیں جب آپ نے سوچ جانتے ہیں اللہ کو سے عقلی نہیں ہے وہ just سوچ جانتے ہیں۔ اگر اپنے اپنے حادشپ پر بگیطہ ہوتا ہے اس میں کتھوں ہوسک چیٹتا ہے اللہ کیا یہاں تھا وہ ہوئی後 کرتا ہے کہ اسِ اللہ کے مطلب۔ Joey تو اپنے حادشپ پر بگیطہ ہوسک چیٹ کینے اللہ کے محکوم کریں کہ اس میں سے لئے ساالی valve ایک کوری کا ساتھ تک سے بہت بہت کیوڑا دائیہ ہے کہ ان کے لئے ان میں مطرح ساتھ ایک بہت ایکٹو بہت ڈو بہت ہوتا ہے لیکن یہ پر ملی ملی ملی پیروگوں کو گانے کے لئے جانسا کہ بنکریں گی تھی کہ آپ کے لئے ا 돼 کوئی بروگوں کو یہاں ک占ہ ہوتا ہے آپ اس کے لئے أیک مجھے کنے کیا لیکن آپ ہم کو شاہتے ہیں آپ کو مجھے لیکن آپ کو پہلے شاہتے ہیں کہ ہم جو میں بہت کرتے ہیں allowed me to meet but perhaps that can happen so Allah says don't say why you when you came on earth you're pressed you came here to be tested you attest is like an examination paper the questions on your paper were already set you cannot change them so stop saying why you these are your questions these are your questions answer them to the best of your ability then you shall die and get the result of your examination simple why don't we look at it as that we say as Muslims we have come to this world or to the earth in order touckles ہوتا تھe کے جانتےong کو کشرور طHE کھوڈ ی bangs ہوت کو werd ل divided کی بحazaہ کیم اس گہرتے ہیں پان ستناب Blind باق actually allows one more muss to be Service latent ایک اللاتھ حافظ بیان ایک بیان فرام مطالات مجھلے جانگہawkو کوسکط کھر دیاہایا ہے۔ آپ کو درام حہوماتی نہیں دارتے ہیں۔issement museum撿 کرے۔ آپ سب Dominican one of the reasons is you need that patience in order to pray as well셔 بھان اللہ you need patience to pray you need to restrain yourself from what other things you want to do at the time of prayer you have a big financial problem if you do not fulfil your Sa please don't complain probably your problem will start multiplying and probably you become depressed rather than becoming acceptable or a person who accepts the degree of اللہ Da differentiate اللہ کہا when you get close to me I don't promise you millions but I promise you will be content you'll be happy because you're with me I'm with you that's it amazing so what you have to do when you are going through a problem go to Salah کانہ رسول اللہ صلى اللہ علیہ وسلم اگه حذابہ هو امر فزی عائل الصلاة the Prophet صلى اللہ علیہ وسلم himself when something was overcoming when something was big a huge thing came وہ سلام Bem but طرح طرح کہا جا رہا ہے اور وہ شباہانے میں وقت Serve ملے رد ہوا اور وہ اللہ پر ہی کہا ہوں جانتے ہیں کے لئے اسی بلگی مثالاتیں ، ہمیچکا کرو گا اللہ کیا ، گزیدہ ہے ، ہم جانتے ہیں ، ملے اگر یہ بھی نπόν تجر کسی حلوہ جانتے ہیں ، شخصوں کو مطابق أنہائی رہے گا ، Your problem might not be resolved in 1 ای, 2 دنی وای, 2 سنی لی because اللہ ہی اگر آپ کو پاہنے کا رسلہ ملے رہے گا ، سلکتے ہیں ، کیونکہ آپ آپ کی تیارت پر سامنے کے لیوے لگے کیا لگا ہے ۔ آپ کو کو کوچ آپ کو جو مجھےی شرق ہوظہتے ہیں کہ آپ کو سائلے کا مجھے ہی سالے سے سجنے میں کھلتے ہیں کہ آپ کے لئے اکزا ہے söلکی کے بارے میں سکھےگا کہ آپ کے especially سبحان اللہ کہ آپ اس کے بارے میں سکھے گے特ور پر ، آپ سوچِ درماز کے بارے میں سکھیں اور آپ کو تل hay ماشا اللہ کے بارے میں سکھے گا سکھیں سبحان اللہ ہے سبحان اللہ کے بارے میں سکھیں سبھان اللہ کی لیکن now look i don't have a leg what's going to happen to me how am i going to walk what all those questions are there but can i tell you what a mo'min will do he doesn't have a leg now he goes he thanks allah at least i have one other leg he thanks allah at least i'm living he will go to seek some medication they might make him an artificial leg he starts walking until there comes a time when you will see him walking you won't even know this man don't have a leg subhan allah why he's thankful to allah he walks and he what did allah do for him as a result of his positive attitude and his gratitude to allah allah gave him contentment without the leg subhan allahi amazing but the same problem in another person who just continued to complain what will happen he becomes depressed he now needs medication for psychiatric assistance or you know solution and so on and he will not be happy up to the point of death the other man is working he's got a good job he's driving everything is happening this is the same with us when we have our problems your marital problem any other problem social problem financial problem today we are discussing financial problems because we're all going through it i don't think there is a single exception in our society and community so you have to thank allah for what allah has bestowed upon you you have to look at it positive keep on going one day you know you may think i'm never going to make this no with allah you can do it i promise you with allah you can do it get close to allah keep trying people may swear you they may say things to you you may go through the roughest patch trust me with allah you will come out of that trust me with allah you will come out of your problem but you need something so many times in the quran when allah speaks of major obstacles facing the mu'min in he says we will help you when you have sabr and taqwa you need to be patient when you are patient don't tell everyone i'm making sabr i've heard people say this i'm making sabr you know i'm making sort of why are you spoiling your face why are you telling the world you're making sabr keep quiet sabr is such that you should know you're making the sabr you don't need to tell the world you're making the sabr you just pretend like nothing is wrong such that when people see you they think wow this person's got the life that's what they think but only allah knows you know you're stuck


Mike Kaplan, producer of The Whales of August, is in Maine to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film, which was filmed on Cliff Island. Leslie had a chance to talk with Mike about the film and the celebration. So Mike, I've seen The Whales of August twice, once when it first came out and once a couple of years ago, a little more since I started spending a lot of time on Cliff Island. It's an interesting movie. I really like the movie. And it's not just because it was filmed in Maine. But what got you involved in it? Why did you decide this was a film you had to work on? Well, the genesis of it was really meeting Lillian Gish, and I had met her in 1968, and I think I always loved to work, although I wasn't always aware of it. And I met her, and she was the most amazing human being. She was just enchanting and intellectually stimulating and curious. And cute as a button. Cute as a button. And whenever I left having lunch with her, meeting with her, I always felt high. And I wanted her persona to be presented to a contemporary audience, because she hadn't really made a major sound film since Night of the Hunter. And so I kept on searching for a property. I talked to her about it, and she said, well, if there's something that comes along that works, you know what, I'll do it. And there were various projects that didn't take, and then I saw this play, The Whales of August, in Providence, at the Trinity Square Playhouse, where I'm from, visiting my parents. It was the last weekend. There was a little piece about it in the newspaper. I read it, went to see the play, and I said, this is it. I mean, this is the perfect role for her, and actually for Betty Davis as well. And even though it was a play, I could see how it could be visually beautiful because of me. And I met David Berry, the writer, who summited Peaks Island, and that's how it happened. And then, seven years later, I got the money, and from Alive, and we were able to make the film. And of course, it's set here in Casca Bay and on the coast. Now, the writer is from Peaks Island, so he knew of Casca Bay, and you decided Maine would be the place. Well, we went to the location where it was set. We did a location scout. We stayed over David's parents, how they had passed away on Peaks. Looked at Peaks. Peaks wasn't right because it was too crowded, and you needed enough of a surround to get it to be visually beautiful. And so we took a boat trip. We went to, I think, Shabig first, and then we were great diamond, and then we went around the islands, and we were coming up to Cliff. And I wanted the house in my mind to always be as distinctive. What I had in mind was a house in Giant. I don't know if people remember Giant, the great George Stevens movie. And the house pops to mind when you… Popped right out of the desert, making a film about that subject right now. And then I saw the house, and that's exactly what I thought of. And we went around to the Cove. I think Chester drove us to the house, and we met the Pitkins. And you knew this was the spot. And this was it. It's ideal. It is ideal. And it gives you that sense of isolation and remoteness that the people are different. This is going too fast, but how were you received by the island people? How did it change their lives? How did it change your life? Well, the movies changed my life because it's kind of like my childhood movie. And the people on the island were extremely receptive. I think they were a little wary in the beginning, even Carolyn Pitkin and Frank had told people about it. And he said, who's going to make a movie with Betty Davis and Lillian Gish now?  But Carolyn and I in particular had a lot of things in common. And there were books that we both knew about which were kind of a little esoteric. So we hit it off right away. And the people on the island were terrific. And I remember I came back. Everything was set. And they had to have one final vote in the town hall, which had flew in from New York and told them what was going to happen. And they all participated. And I wanted to bring the community into the movie. And so they were all invited to dailies. Whoever wanted to see the dailies every night could come to the town hall and see it, which is something that I learned from Robert Altman, who I worked with for many years. And who created a fantastic atmosphere. And every night was sort of a party after shooting, after the vigorous taxing days of shooting. You went to dailies and there was a spread out there and everyone could see their work. It's so cool. Well, I know that it's so important to the island that that movie was there. It did change many things. And Maine is now becoming more of a place to shoot films. Good. But back then it wasn't so. So for us it's a very important film, those of us in the state. And I wish you well with reintroducing it on the 25th anniversary to the rest of the world. All right, well, thank you. Well, maybe I'll tell us all the story next. Well, thank you for being here today. My pleasure.


Check it out. I stole it from the physics lab. What?  It's no big deal, like...  You stole a pineapple. No, I said it was just on the table and I... Hey, Sam. Check it out. I stole it from the physics lab.  I told you. I went in and I stole it from the physics lab. It was just there on the table, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you stole it.  Uh, a pineapple? Hey, Sam. Check it out. Bill, give me the pineapple. What's up with you? Just give it to me. Why are you so obsessed with this thing? You don't understand.  Don't know what I'm dealing with.  Check it out, Sam. I found this in the physics lab. Sam, you alright, man? Uh, the pineapple, Bill. Give me the pineapple. What? Give it to me. You're scaring me, man.  Am I scaring you now? Give me the pineapple. I wouldn't do that if I were you. You've been watching way too many movies, man. You don't understand what it can do. What it can do is a pineapple.  I thought you were my friend.  Just give it to me. No. Why are you so protective of it? Why are you so obsessed with it? You don't understand what the thing can do. It's just a pineapple. Hey, Sam. Check it out. I stole this one in the physics lab.


In hopes of acquiring a certificate of need for an ambulance service, a hearing was held between the City of Prestonsburg and state officials to dispute an objection from emergent care. Thursday we spoke with Prestonsburg Mayor Les Stapleton about the hearing. There's a shortage of personnel out there, there's a shortage of paramedics, there's a shortage of EMTs and we need to utilize the workforce that we currently have employed and try to fill that void for emergency calls. Now it doesn't just help the City of Prestonsburg, if we're able to answer the emergency calls from the City of Prestonsburg, that creates more ambulances ready to go out into the county to take care of other issues that are going to come available or that come in need of and we can, by us taking that off their plate it's going to offer up some room for them. Due to the lack of personnel Stapleton says getting to residents is difficult as their fire station is solely tasked with the duty. Stapleton says having an ambulance service will help.  That puts work in turn on that fire truck. For instance, taking one of our trucks that holds water out and if it says for a period of time as seen there's a chance that pumps could be damaged, gaskets could be damaged. It could effectively be able to use that in a fire when needed. By being able to respond in an ambulance we can relieve a lot of that concern. At Pikeville Medical Center we believe that together we can make a difference in the fight against cancer. We are proud to have patients who have experienced successful outcomes over many years. As always we believe in the power of faith. Pikeville Medical Center where cancer can be defeated. Lastly if the certificate is acquired Stapleton says they are ready to take on the role. I hope we get our CON application approved and we're able to move forward. We're ready to take steps as quickly as possible. I know the fire department is excited about being able to take on this new service for the city and for the citizens and you know it's all about the well-being of the people that pay their taxes. They pay their salaries. These people are out there and they deserve this and it's not the one, this is a need. The hearing will continue Friday at January 21st. A decision for the certificate will be made within 60 days. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Chorjol.