Hi and welcome to What's Up? Wilson. I'm your host Eric Wells. Town Meeting Day is now less than two weeks away, and this month on What's Up? Wilson, we're going to re-air a panel discussion Town Meeting TV had with myself, select board chair, Ted Kenney, and finance director, Shirley Goodell Lackey, that provides a preview of things upcoming on Town Meeting Day on the ballot. Hello, and welcome to ongoing Town Meeting Day coverage on Town Meeting TV. My name is Bobby Lucia. This program is one in a series of forums that we are hosting in advance of Town Meeting Day this year on Tuesday, March 5th, featuring municipal officials explaining what you'll see on your ballot, as well as candidates running for local office. On tonight's program, we're diving into the proposed budget and ballot questions for the town of Wilson, and we're joined by town manager Eric Wells, select board chair, Ted Kenney, and town finance director, Shirley Goodell Lackey. Thank you all so much for joining us. So before we get started, just a reminder that you can call in with a question during this program at<PHONE_NUMBER>. That's<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can give us a call and we will hear your question live on air in the studio. So with that, Ted, I will hand it over to you as we pull up the slides here and hear a bit about what residents of Wilson will see on their ballot and in their budget this year. Great. Well, thank you, first of all, and thank you very much for hosting us. It's outreach like this is absolutely critical, and so thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, let me start off again by introducing, we have with us Eric Wells, the town manager of Williston, and Shirley Goodell Lackey, the finance and HR director of the town of Williston. I'm Ted Kenney. I am the chair of the select board for the town. I just wanted to review a couple of things about the process here. First of all, if we could review the dates of the town meeting. Town meeting is going to be on Monday, March 4th, at 7 p.m. in the Williston Central School Auditorium. The voting on major issues is by Australian Ballot, and that is the next day on Tuesday, March 5th, and polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the armory on Williston Road, directly across from Williston Central School. Absentee and early voting is available in mid-February, and hopefully we'll get a good turnout and a lot of input through your vote as to where the town goes. The town budget is the main article for consideration this year. We also have two bond articles for improvement projects to municipal facilities. So I'm going to turn it over at this point to Eric and Shirley, and ask if you could tell us about the general fund budget this year, which is going to be article five on the ballot. Great. Thanks, Ted. So we'll hop into it and take kind of a global view first here. I always kind of say, what is a budget? So in municipality, a budget is a spending plan. This includes the services to be provided, the cost to provide those services, and then the revenue to pay for the services to balance the budget. We needed to deliver a balanced budget in a local government in Vermont. The budget is the best revenue and spending model with information available. We're trying to predict for fiscal year 2025, so fiscal year that will end on June 30th of 2025, about a year and a half from now. So we try to make our best estimates with using the knowledge that we have with how costs are going to trend in the future for it to put this budget together. Same on the revenue side. We try to make the best predictions we can for how revenue we'll play out. Certainly, sometimes reality doesn't match what we predict right now, but it's forming a budget and making that spending, that fiscal spending plan for the community. This process starts in August of September each year. Town department heads will draft a budget and deliver it to myself and Shirley to review through October, and we'll deliver a transmittal budget to the select board in late November, early December. The select board will then hold a series of public meetings to review the budget with departments and hold a public hearing for feedback in early January. Debates on the budget throughout January and then setting the warning for town meeting a couple weeks ago. That brings us to where we are today. So I'll go over the expense side of the budget. By the numbers here, it's a $15.35 million operating budget for the town. It's an increase of about $1.375 million from the fiscal year 2024 budget. That's about 9.84% percentage wise. The town's objective in developing this budget was twofold. First was to determine the cost to continue to provide the same level of municipal services that we provide today, and also identify possible service enhancements to add. So then we look at what's the story behind the budget this year and providing these town services. It's providing consistent services in a challenging labor market. It focuses on the primary objective of sustaining our municipal services amid these cost pressures. It's providing services to the community as made possible by our dedicated town staff. It's working to attract and retain staff in the current employment environment has proved to be a challenge. There's about a 2% unemployment rate in the state of Vermont and in Chittenden County, that's about 1.7% of the latest numbers from last November. Cities and towns around the state are facing these same challenges, competing for a limited number of a pool of staff. For example, in our police department, it's been very challenging to fill some open positions the last couple of years. For a number of reasons, it's hard to recruit and retain staff in the police department right now. Many towns are experiencing the same pressures. If we hire someone new that needs to go to the police academy, it can take up to 18 months from their date of hire to go into the academy to gain their experience off postgraduate experience on the road with our incumbent staff. So this budget contains cost of living and merit increases for staff continuing what the town's practice has been there. It includes collective bargaining agreements with our public safety union unionized staff, which affect us as well. We also see health insurance costs continue to increase. The town changes plan to soften this increase, but it's still an over 10% increase to provide health care to our staff. We've seen the inflation of recent years cooling a bit, but it's still affecting professional and contracted services, materials and supplies, everything from fuel to dump trucks to paper clips and everything in between, I'll say, some to more extent than others. So with that, I'll toss it over to Shirley for, oh, actually, I forgot a whole section here. We didn't talk about the service enhancements. The exciting stuff. So we talked about some service enhancements to the budget throughout the process and the select board made decisions to add two new staff positions to this proposal. They're effective partway through the fiscal year. The first is adding an 18th sworn police officer affected the January of 2025. By adding this 18th sworn officer, it allows us to then backfill a police detective position with an incumbent staff member. This was identified as a top priority for the police department. The town conducted its police service analysis report with consultant Jim Baker that he delivered to the select board last November. The select board accepted that report earlier this year and has tasked me in my role as town manager to draft a five-year implementation plan for the recommendations of that report. So starting in on the staffing side is looking to fill that police detective position as a top priority that's funded for halfway through this fiscal year. The other piece is adding a director of human resources that would be effective in October of this year and we had another analysis study looking at our HR systems by a consultant. This was identified as the top priority in that systems analysis as well. This would add an HR professional to support our staff of over 100 employees. The role is held by four staff members each having a piece of HR duties right now. We've identified this as a priority on our staffing and our central administration in the town. So all being said those budget enhancements cost about $140,000 in additional funds for the budget. This increase we spoke about of just over 1.375 million is really driven by maintaining the current services faced with these pressures to deliver them to the community. So then we have a visual here. We like to break this down by object. So these are all different ways in our general ledger where we code every department in town and this visual striking you can see the wages, benefits and training is a small part of that really make up almost two-thirds of the municipal budget here and then everything else stills in the rest of the of the pie in this in this visualization. Other high percentage numbers here contracted services could be assessments to Green Mountain Transit, Wooduski Valley Park District and other outside entities that the town funds for regional services. Maintenance costs as well. Think of things like public works with retreatment or paving. Then our capital projects, our debt service combined make up about another 10%. Everything else is smaller percentages in the overall make up of this budget. Then we take another look at it by department and it's 65% of the budget is to deliver police, fire, EMS and public work services to the community and 91% of the overall budget increase is to deliver services in these departments. These are departments with the most employees as well, unionized employees utilizing our collective bargaining agreements that we looked to build into our budget so that that's a driver of this as well as other ways to look at at the numbers here. So that was a lot I was going to leave out so I'm glad I had my notes and so now I'll toss it to you Shirley for a look at the revenue. So Eric has talked about the cost of the programs and the services of the town and I'll review the funding sources that pay for those expenditures. So if you want to bring the slide up Eric. So user fees, there are a variety of things but to give you some examples we have passport revenue, clerk recording fees, recreation fees, planning and zoning fees and ambulance service fees to name a few of the user fees that the town charges. State and federal grants, there's one state grant that is in our operating budget every year and that's funds from the Vermont Agency of Transportation for our class two and three road maintenance. Local options tax passed many years ago for the town. We collect 1%. The state does all the collecting of the taxes. They remit 70% to the town and 30% is maintained by the state as an administrative fee. Property taxes, we'll talk about that a little bit more in the next couple of slides but in this budget it includes eight million just roughly eight million raised in property taxes and then reserve and ARPA funds. So ARPA is the American Rescue Plan Act. Those funds came from the federal government almost a year and a half ago now that the town has been using them primarily for one time expenses and not ongoing expenses. In this budget we've included $75,000 to help reduce the tax rate and then we have just short of 700,000 for various capital expenditures. Reserves in this budget are being used 563,000 to also minimize the increase in the tax rate and 167,000 for capital expenditures. In this budget we always talk about the grand list because the tax rate is a factor of the grand list as well. We have made an assumption that our grand list currently at $2.1 billion is not going to change. We've had growth in the town but we've also been finding some changes in our commercial property valuations. For example Maple Tree Place in Williston just sold for $77 million and it had an $83 million appraised value. So we made an assumption with our contracted assessor to leave the grand list value unchanged for this budget. The next slide is just a visual representation of the pieces of the revenue and these percentages, so if you look at local options tax and property taxes and then all out, if you look at the chart on the right hand side property taxes, local options tax are the first two but all those other bullets make up about 18% of the revenue with local options tax about 25% and property taxes around 50% and again those have remained pretty consistent in the last several years. So next, the property taxes account for approximately 50% of the revenue we raise, so how does that impact you? And before I answer that question, during the budget process we do a lot of work analyzing and considering all other revenue sources in order to determine the amount that we need to raise in municipal property taxes, so the impact on the taxpayers is foremost in our mind when going through and creating the budget. So for this year we're looking at a property tax estimated increase of .0398 per hundred dollars of value and you say oh if it's a budget why are you saying estimated? That again is because the grand list isn't finalized and won't be finalized until the late spring and once that number is known then we will look at the tax rate again and typically changes. So in regards to our FY24, so our current year is fiscal year starting July 1 of 23 going through June 30th of 24. That tax rate is .3362. Our medium assessed home value in Williston is 300,000, so with that assessed value in the current tax rate the annual taxes, municipal taxes are a thousand ten dollars. Our tax year beginning July 124 through June 30th 25 we're looking at an estimated tax rate of .3760 and that would be calculated to be an annual tax of $1,128, so $94 as compared to $84 last year per month. So what we're looking at is $120 annual increase or $10 a month in the tax to be assessed and you'll hear me sort of say municipal property taxes because that's we're just talking about municipal property taxes separate from the school taxes although when it comes time to vote both of those things will be on our ballot. In the next slide just a couple quick points here but I think this table reflects that we continue to be physically responsible and the tax rate and how we look at our expenditures and revenues and that the local options tax again which is about 25 percent of our revenue helps to minimize our tax rate our municipal tax rate and I'm going to kick it back to Eric at this point. Thanks Shirley. So we'll highlight a couple other articles on the ballots two bond items. So article six is a town hall parking lot improvement bond project so that the question for the voters is to consider a bonded debt up to $700,000 for this project it's the select board has committed $200,000 of ARPA funds is about a $900,000 project overall we estimate. The town is also applying for grant assistance from Vermont downtown transportation funds if that grant were to be received and this bond was approved we wouldn't need to go to bond sale for as much money but we won't know that until after town meeting so we're planning to ask for for that amount to round out the project the $700,000 bond. This so the project itself would improve our parking lot behind town hall and the police station by adding about 40 new parking spaces it would improve some visuals here to help help locate where this is so it would also improve the drainage and lighting for staff and public safety the image on the right you can see there's this this heave in the middle throughout the year where we get a lot of water ponding and it creates a lot of ice in the winter we've had multiple people slip on that ice over the years we our staff does a great job of trying to keep up with salting it but it's something that we can fix by improving the drainage in the parking lot in addition there's no good lighting out here we put a light on a joining out building a couple years ago to help but especially winter time with public meetings with staff here late with members of the public they're late at town hall it's certainly a safety issue we're not having good lighting people going going to their vehicles to hit home so that those of this has been a capital project identified by the town for a number of years in our capital plan but as we were looking at this over the last couple of years and thinking about it if we're the town's going to consider really ripping up this parking lots and improving it for the future it's thinking about future-proofing it for needs as well and that's putting in electric conduit for electrification of the vehicle fleets so that adds a lot of cost to this project overall but it would lay that conduit so we could have publicly accessible charging stations for electric vehicles and we could also prepare to electrify our police cruisers at some point in the future just have that infrastructure in place because you know we certainly want to get there but I think it would be hard for us to spend a lot of money to improve this parking lot repave it and then then go back and rip up to put the conduit in a few years later so try to think of all those things when you're doing a project like this of the scope on this visual on the left-hand side the yellow dotted line is potentially showing where the project area would be and this the shed in the lower right-hand corner of the building of the the graphic here you can picture that with police cruisers parked around it instead in a different orientation the grass would be all filled in with additional parking here so it's certainly a significant project it would improve our municipal campus and also our village overall get a lot of overflow parking for events at the school at the library so this isn't investment in our municipal complex but also investment in our in our village and its vibrancy as well so I'll toss it back to Shirley for one other bond question that we have okay so last night there was a meeting of the old brick church committee and had to get to do with putting antennas in the top of the old brick church but the meeting was lively and it was really apparent that the community supports the historic nature of this building and therefore this article is a proposal for the town to borrow up to four hundred thousand dollars to install install a fire suppression system in the building so we were lucky back in 2007 when a lightning struck lightning struck hit the tower that our fire chief happened to be driving by and so there was really immediate response and it saved the building from being destroyed so since then it's been a long-term goal of the town to put a fire suppression system in the old brick church which is on the national historic register as well so it's a really an important project that we're bringing to the forefront this year and Ted time for you ambulance no no okay oh I'm sorry yeah I didn't think so so yeah I just wanted to reiterate for people the early and absentee voting elements to receive a ballot for earlier absentee voting you have to contact the town clerk and the number is on the screen but it's<PHONE_NUMBER> or you can email her it's sarah mason so the email is smason traditional spelling at willistonvt.org you can also visit mvp.vermont.gov to get the same result ballots will be available around mid-february so again if you can't make the town meeting please do get an absentee ballot and you would return your ballot in postal mail or you can use the dropbox behind the town hall which is very secure or at the armory on march 7th between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. so you could actually drop your ballot off while people are voting inside so a lot of options to get people to exercise their right to vote again in-person voting option is obviously available as well that begins on march 5th you can go to the town clerk's office as I understand it and get and vote there in person and just hand your ballot over and again just you know the the franchise of voting is absolutely critical so we're asking for a big turnout however you vote please do let your voice be heard and and and vote and thank you so I'm gonna kick it back over to Eric actually so we can learn more about the town meeting and the budget. Thanks Ted and I just noticed a type of I had in this last slide is recycled from last year but march 7th should be march 5th town meeting days march 5th so if you're going to get an absentee ballot and drop it off it needs to be back to the armory by 7 p.m. on march 5th so where to learn more we've got a lot of information on our town website town.wilson.vt.us forward slash town meeting we have a special town meeting page to put all the information on we've got these complete operating and capital budgets for review there we'll have a copy of the annual report up probably by next week a sample ballot and the town meeting warning will be up there we'll have a public information hearing on march 4th following town meeting at wilson central school we'll go through this information similar to tonight with with a little more detail as well and take questions from the community and the questions are always welcome and encouraged give me a call stop by town hall i'll next slide here i'm going to be holding some just drop-in sessions i'll first one tomorrow morning on january 31st i'll be a healthy living market i'm 129 market street in town your tap corners in the cafe with a cup of coffee come and join me and chat about anything that's on your mind about this budget or your local government in general i'll be there on 31st and then again the february 5th february 12th february 21st and february 26th then i'll be at the library for the similar um new at noontime for a couple different options here in the lobby um february 7th february 14th and february 28th so if you can make any of those feel free to give me a call um send me an email or stop by town hall if i'm free i'll be happy to chat with you that's the end of our formal presentation okay thank you all so much for sharing all that we have just a couple minutes left um if i could just ask and i'm not sure which one of you um could chime in on this but just the the tax increase this year could any of you share some context as to comparison to prior years tax increases you mentioned there are some big pressures on this year's budget particularly but can folks first of all is that what what what how big of an increase is this compared to past years and then um is this do we have any ability to predict whether this is a an increase a similar increase would be coming in years to come as well sure i can i can take that first so last year's increase was if we look at that median homeowner kind of monthly impact as as a as a benchmark here we're around ten dollars this year last year we're around nine dollars i think the year before that was eight fifth year nine dollars so kind of been a consistent integer each year of what that increase looks like uh the next year coming and it's always hard to predict because there's all these factors of what the expenses may be um i i'm somewhat optimistic thinking about a lot of this is tied to a cost of living that's tied to an inflation metric we take a 24 month look at that and that started to cool the last 12 to 16 months so i think our cost of living um will be lower for fy 26 that certainly has has an outlying effect on the bottom line and you did hold a couple of public hearings on this proposed budget did you any any you hear any input that resulted in any adjustments in in the budget or how have you heard any public input on this budget thus far well i can we we yes we had a couple of hearings on it and people did give us their their feedback on it we did increase the amount of money that was going to the fund that we use to buy property in town it is a as a way of preserving and conserving property um uh we also um but in general uh frankly a lot of these hearings are not particularly well attended um uh they are available actually on this channel uh in digital form now um and uh i do would encourage people to show up for those in the future but uh we had those hearings we're going to have more uh reach out with erik doing that and of course town meeting uh is is uh great time for people to stand up and come to the microphone and offer their uh offer their input and then of course there's the input of the vote so awesome well thank you all so much for joining us tonight so you'll have the town meeting itself on march 4th that's monday nine at seven p.m and then voting in williston by australian ballot on march 5th from seven a.m to seven p.m is that right yep awesome and then you can tune in to town meeting tv on march 5th at seven p.m just after the polls close and we will have the results from that uh that election on town meeting day as soon as we can get them to you so thank you so much for for joining us all of you and thank you for tuning in to town meeting tv's coverage of town meeting day 2024 you can find this forum and our other upcoming forums at cctv.org slash 2024 or on our town meeting tv youtube channel thanks for tuning in so long


How many of you are doing influencer marketing? Like for real, like how many of you are hitting up influencers and getting them to use your music or create content around your music? If you are not, then you are missing out on one of the most effective music marketing strategies that you can do. And one thing that I've noticed is that it seems like a lot of artists tend to shy away from influencer marketing either because they don't know how to properly reach out to influencers or you're afraid that you're going to get finesse. And don't get me wrong, those are all very valid concerns. But you cannot let those fears stop you from utilizing, once again, what's one of the most effective music marketing tools there is. So what I want to do in this video is give you tips on reaching out to influencers, how to audit, how to deal with them and how to best cover yourself so that you don't get finesse. Let's get into it. It's the mat work. What's going on? My name is Kory, music marketing and co-founder, country brand agency. And today, what I want to talk to you about is how to deal with influencers. Now, like I said earlier in the video, influencer marketing is really one of the best things that you can do to get your music out there. I will put it, maybe number two, next to pay advertising. And the only reason I put pay advertising first is because you don't have to deal with people, you know what I'm saying? That is what it is and you can control the data. But influencers are great because they exist in abundance on every single platform. You can find micro, mid-level and mega influencers on any social media platform that exists and there are influencers that speak to any niche and any target audience that you're looking to get yourself in front of. Couple that with the fact that influencers are basically modern-day celebrities and you can really have a powerful impact on your campaign if you figure out how to find them and use them the right way. And that's exactly what I want to cover in this video. But before we get into all of that, come and follow me on Instagram and TikTok. Links will be in the description below. Come talk to me, come engage with me, come give me some video ideas. All of that good stuff. Now, with that being said, let's get into it. So the first thing that I want to get into is outreach, right? Reaching out to the influencers properly. And I'm doing this assuming that you have already found an influencer that you like. You've seen one that you think speaks to your base. Maybe at a different point, I'll make a video about how to find influencers. But for now, this is assuming that you found the influencer that you like and you want to make a connection and get them on board with your music and your campaign. So the first thing you got to do is you got to reach out and communicate to the influencer and let them know what's going on. Now, I recommend reaching out to them via their preferred method. Usually it is saying that bio somewhere, hit me up in my DMs or email me here or send a message to this person. Please reach out to them through their preferred method. Do not try to circumvent it and go a different way. Or you will literally start your relationship off with a bad impression, you know what I'm saying? Nobody wants to have their business, their preferred business method, disrespected. And no one wants to do business with someone that they feel like disrespected, their preferred business method. But once you have found their preferred method of contact, you want to reach out in a super professional and super polite way. Once again, no one wants to deal with the impolite artist. It just immediately makes people turn their head down at you and just look away for whatever you're asking. Now, in this outreach email, I would suggest that you let the influencer know one, how you found them. Two, what about them makes you think that there would be a good fit for your campaign? And then three, what exactly is it that you're looking for them to do with the song or with the content? So for example, I may reach out to an influencer and say, hey, my name is Corey, I'm reaching out on behalf of such and such because I found you on TikTok and I think that you're a really dope creator. We're currently running this trend that is, I don't know, X, Y, Z, we're having people dance to it. And I think that you will be a good fit for it. Please hit me back at your earliest convenience, let me know what your rates are and how we can best move forward to work together. Boom, simple, short to the point. Now, of course, you wouldn't be reaching out on behalf of someone else, you would be reaching out on behalf of yourself if you're the artist or if you're a manager or something like that, I guess you would be reaching out on behalf of your artist. So you can tweak that part to fit whatever makes the most sense for you. But the big things, once again, that you wanna have in there is once again, let them know how you found them. Why do you think there would be a good fit for the campaign? And then let them know what the idea is if you have one and if you don't have an idea, let them know that as well. Just say something like, hey, I really just want you to be super creative or do your thing around my song. Let me know if you have any ideas. From there, the professional influencer will either hit you back with some type of price sheet or they're going to ask you for your budget and trust me, they're going to ask you for your budget. I've yet to meet an influencer that does it for free. Or let me say this, not never but not many, you know what I'm saying? Like most influencers aren't gonna do it for free. So most of the influencers are gonna hit you back with some type of price sheet or some type of price for the services. And now you can start to begin your audit process. What I recommend you do during the audit process is look at the influencer social platform that you're looking to get posted on and go and look at their last six to 10 posts. You want to gauge how well the engagement is performing by looking at the views, the comments, the likes and then you also want to go through it and look for any sketchy behavior. So if an influencer's last five posts has 500 comments, but 400 of those comments look like they're fake comments or bot comments, then you don't want to work with the influencer. Same for the views, same for the followers, same for any type of fake engagement boosting. If you see them boosting their engagement, then you don't want to use them. Or if you see little to no engagement and they're charging a high price, you don't want to work with them. Now I would preference and say this, there is no like bottom line rate for an influencer. There's no average. All influencers charge whatever they think they're worth. So if I as an influencer feel like my audience or tapping into my audience is worth $1,000, that's what I'm going to charge. Now you may not feel like it's worth $1,000. And once again, that's what this audience process comes in is it's up to you to make the decision and go, hey, this is what the influencer wants, but does it make sense for the results that I feel like I'm going to get out of this? Yes or no. And then from there, you can move based on that decision. So like I said, start with general engagement audience. That's the easiest place to start. Other than that, there may be some other variations into whether or not you think the post is worth it. For example, there are influencers and influencer pages that we use that in my opinion charge a little bit more than what their actual engagement is worth. But the social proofing from being shouted out by those influencers are being on those social pages far outweigh the actual engagement that the post itself forget. And there are lots of influencers and lots of posts out there that we use like that. So in that instance, their price may be worth it to me just to get the brand association. Pair that to a smaller influencer who say let's has 10,000 followers and only gets 2,000 views per video, but once $500, it's like no, you know what I'm saying? That's not worth it to me or may not be worth it to me at least and I'm going to go and try to find someone that better meets the criteria and the things that I'm looking for. So once again, there is no perfect way to audit, but I recommend looking at their last six to 10 posts doing the aggregate of their engagement and looking at that stuff. There's a really cool platform out there called Social Blade where you can track of influencers growth over the last 30 days or so. I use that tool religiously to look at an influencer engagement, which actually leads me to another point that I wasn't going to bring up in this video, but you can also look at their follower growth for the last couple of days. So if you see that an influencer is on an uptrend, then maybe they are worth a little bit pricey of a number because at some point their engagement may meet the price level and assuming that they never take the content down, you will reap the benefits of them growing. So if you use an influencer at 10,000 followers and they catch a viral moment and they get to a million followers and your content is still on that page, then that's a great look for you, right? Versus if you're paying an influencer and their followers have been going down for the last couple of days, this may signify that either they bought fake followers and ended up being purged or their followers are no longer engaged and they're leaving. And it could signify a lot of really bad things. It may make it to where you don't want to pay the influencer their price or may make their price not worth it. Like one thing I see this pretty common, especially with TikTok influencers who have caught a massively viral hit in the form of content, they'll still charge numbers or charge prices that made sense when they were at their peak that no longer make sense, none of that kind of falling off the good graces of the algorithm. You'll run into that a lot with influencers. So once again, it's up to you to audit them, audit their engagement, look at their followers, look at their engagement over the last 30 days over the last couple of six to 10 posts and make that assessment to decide whether or not the price that they've hit you with during your outreach phase makes sense for you or if you should just move on to another influencer and spend that money a little bit more wisely. So the last thing I want to get into is payment, right? Paying the influencer because once again, I have yet to come across too many influencers that would do it for free. Sometimes you will and it genuinely shocks me every single time that somebody hits me back and I'm like, no, I'll do it for free. All right, cool, let's do it. So when you're paying an influencer, I recommend you pay using some type of secure payment method like PayPal, not the friends and family option, but the services and goods option because you need protection for yourself in case the influencer doesn't complete the thing that you're asking to do or worst case scenario, they try to run off with your money. You need to make sure that you have a way to dispute that and get your money back. So for me, PayPal has been the best solution to this. And what we do when we go through this process of sending payment, one, once again, you never ever, ever want to send an influencer a friends and family payment unless you have already worked with their influencer and you trust them. If you trust them and you pay them like four or five times and yeah, send them to friends and family. Y'all are cool at this point. But if it's your first time ever working with an influencer, services and goods, know if ands and buts about it, you're just gonna have to pay the extra fee on top of it to make sure you're secure, what's four or five extra dollars to make sure that you don't get finesse for 200, 300, 400 dollars. So we always send it through service payment on PayPal.  We keep receipts, we screenshot the conversation between us reaching out to the influencer and asking them to do the challenge or whatever we're asking them to do. We screenshot the conversation of them, ask accepting it, we screenshot the payment, we screenshot everything. So that way, if it does come to a point to where we have to dispute, we have all this information to provide the PayPal to make sure that we can make sure things in favor will be for us. And nine to 10 out of 10 they do, I've only ever lost like maybe one or two influencer disputes on PayPal and that was because we didn't have enough information on our end to prove that certain things were said and had been done, which is once again why I now take screenshots of everything, like everything. Other payment platforms that you wanna avoid are Western Union, No Cash Up, No Zail, nothing that can't be traced or disputed if the influencer were to actually scam you. Once again, you only wanna stick to secured methods. And if anyone knows any other secured payment methods other than PayPal, I'd love to hear about them in the comment section below. Please drop them, I'm always looking for alternatives. If I can get out of PayPal and go to something else, I'm interested in it. But other than that, the other big thing that I do wanna say when it comes to paying influencers is if the price that they're charging you is more than $500, I will make them sign some type of contract. This can be an author independent contracting agreement, but I'm sure you could Google influencer contracts and something would come up, but I will make them sign a contract just for peace of mind. Now honestly, you're probably not gonna take someone to court over $500 or $600. Like most of the time you probably wouldn't wanna go through that effort, but it makes the influencer see that you're taking this seriously and that you view this as a job and that they should take it seriously. And if nothing else, it usually scares them into taking the role a lot more seriously, especially when you're talking about dealing with younger influencers who are in their teens to low 20s, seeing a contract scares people because it goes like, oh, shit, this is real. They may actually do something. You know you probably want, but I use it as a peace of mind. And if you ever find yourself in a PayPal dispute with an influencer who you pay the type of money to, then you have the contract as initial backup or extra backup on top of all the screenshots and other information that should provide the PayPal. And once again, that's usually how we want most of our PayPal disputes when it comes to the bigger influencers. We always get them to sign a contract. No if ands, buts about it. If they don't want to do it, then they don't want our money simplest plan as that. And I advise you to take the same strategy. If an influencer does not want to abide by these rules, if they are pushing you to send money through PayPal, even though you told them that you won't, if they're not down to sign a contract, or prove that they're going to do things the right way, then don't work with their influencer. They're literally thousands and thousands of influencers. They're not the only one your life and your world will not end if this particular influencer doesn't post. There are probably 20 other people that are just like them. And you have to remember that, you know, it's a thousand yous, it's only one of me. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, pay influencers and a secure method to better make sure that you don't just scam. If you're paying more than $500, make them sign a contract. If for nothing else for peace of mind and for proof if you have to dispute it and don't let them pressure you into sending money in any other unsecured method. Just don't let them do it. There it is. That's how you deal with influencers from the outreach process to the audit, to the payment process. Hopefully this helps a lot of you guys with your influencer outreach process. And I'd love to see a lot more of you utilizing influencers to market your music and promote your music. And like I said, I know this video didn't really address how to find influencers. It is once again, assuming that you've come across the influencer that you think would be good for your music or you've seen them. So if having a video about finding influencers is something that you guys are interested in, I can make that. Let me know in the comment section below. You know, if enough of you talk about it and I'll put something together over the next couple of weeks or so. But this should be enough to get a lot of you started in your actual outreach journey. Once again, influencer marketing is super important when it comes to my personal marketing for my clients and artists I work with. It's ads, it's influencers, and it's content marketing. You master those three things. You have a really solid marketing and advertising strategy for your music and for your content. Other than that, if you feel like you learned anything today, please like and share this video. Hit those post notifications as well as I wouldn't want you guys to miss anything. Once again, my name is Kory and I'll see y'all next time.


Welcome to the weather forecast for the week beginning Wednesday, December 28th 2022 I'm chief meteorologist John is worth for Longmont public media Thursday 29th. We have our first quarter moon in the evening sky is guys should clear out after this system on Wednesday and should look very nice in the south the Northern hemisphere of the Sun has some some spot activity going right now, but nothing else happening there Looking at drought conditions over the last couple weeks Things got a little better out on the eastern plains there was that additional moisture out there But not much else has changed which is pretty normal for winter looking nationally pretty similar except out here in the southeast a huge Region got rain and drought conditions of the lesson going back in the king of the west things got a little bit better in The west of California up into Nevada, and that's really going to change over the next few weeks Look in our snowpack. We've gone Right above mountain to 93 then 106 percent 108 percent and Back to 95 percent snowpack over kind of dancing back and forth around normal The next couple storm systems are gonna dump a lot in the mountains, so we should see this go into the 100 plus percent area pretty nicely And then on the 28th, we're right at a hundred percent so fantastic news there For the pre-Christmas snowstorm Longmont got around four to five six inches of snow Boulder did as it usually does really well with six to eight inches down here But we feel around five or six areas up above boulder got up to ten inches of snow Looking precipitation. There's the good amount of water content up to two to three inches in the yellows wide areas of a half inch to an inch So we just keep the hydrology going Very nicely. Hey turning to forecast looking into severe weather severe weather is non-existent, but there are some Thunderstorms that can occur in Northern Arizona four corners area As this system approaches, you know create a marginal risk East Texas up in the Arkansas area for Thursday, and then just chance of thunderstorms Friday This is not a very vigorous system like some of the earlier ones that created tornado outbreaks in December It is a big messy wet one though. We have a primary low And I've over Vegas on Wednesday morning got showers behind with the next system snow mountain snows rain snow mix in the purple all over the place for Wednesday going to Thursday becomes storm out in the plains and up on the Western slopes and then for Friday another heavy western slope storm that should allow us to warm up with some downslope on the silver mountains no Organized fires going on in the whole West no smoke issues at all Of the next 10 days our normal high temperature goes from 43 to 44 We are now starting to see a rise in the normal temperatures. We've hit the bottom 17 up to 18 for normal We've got Wednesday Thursday storm here very tight very short Duration system like 12 hours or so of rain and snow and then a little longer drawn out event January 1st 2nd, maybe even lasting some effects into the third Looking at Tuesday into Wednesday's Water vapor satellite imagery we see a lot of moisture come up from the tropics head of this low as it moves in Tuesday ahead of this system. We had downslope winds and a ridging overhead. We had temperatures over 20 Even 30 degrees above normal on the eastern plains is pretty Amazing there so the highlights in the pattern for the next week Start with the storm the day where I'm recording Wednesday with the deep trough moving in And snow the surface load down here and Oklahoma panhandle We have a ridge moving in over the weekend and so very nice conditions and then Upper level low almost goes right over the top of Denver lawnmot on Thursday the second We have another system right behind it, too So a pretty active pattern sitting up the east coast of the US will be very dry and abnormally warm Looking at the surface precipitation on the second. We have a good 12-18 hour period in which rain and snow are possible So the next 10 days we see the initial storm system coming in Right up over the ridge in the east The deep south component here we'll get Texas and those storms going down there the next storm system moves in here's January 1st new year 2023 Well goes right up and over and then there's the second load back here. It's interesting to watch I think it goes too far south as well to give us much on the third or fourth But it could lift a little further north and really draw out the precipitation sun Temperatures are just amazingly warm On the center of the nation and the eastern plains. We have this little bitty Front coming through right now. It's just not going to bring much cooler at all. Everything else up again And we have this Pacific flow coming in for the first and second none of the real purples Moving in like we have a lot of system. We may see that middle late January come again But yeah, there's Dakotas get some really cold there, but it's not too unusual for them looking at this surface system there goes our Wednesday Thursday storm at the beginning of the Forecast system here comes tremendous amount of rain and mountain snows for California, Oregon Washington, they're really gonna fill up some lakes out there and this system comes in and really cranks Over us for a day or two. There was that deep self-component with that second globe in the upper level pattern For the next five days, we might see Quarter inch 10th of an inch on the plains There's areas boulder to Denver that may see more three quarters of an inch But some of that may come down as rain at the beginning Miles have been kind of crazy as to how much snow is gonna hit Right west of Denver and then up to Boulder. This model is giving local areas five six inches I just don't know about it though the rather 52 80 folks and there's a formatting problem from PowerPoint They have about one to three inches for most of the areas from lawnmout down to Colorado Springs But if banding sets up then you could get three to six inches in some areas So just get this like training of Precipitation Mountains just do incredibly robbing get 12 18 inches down here 24 to 36 inches Near Silverton and tell your eye fantastic moments No, it's the next 10 days a lot of moisture one two three and a half inches of actual water content and down the plains you get maybe an inch on this side on the left side of Denver Half inch through quotes an inch up long I-25 There's some really good snows over that New Year's Storm. So here is five inches more This is in addition to whatever we get Wednesday Thursday So that's next system right at the beginning of the new year really needs to be watched and to huge areas of two foot Snow totals. This is using 10 to 1 snow ratios. Not the fluffier Ratios you get for cold weather So we start with a really good chance of precipitation on Wednesday things dry out very little chance of stuff even though there will be Precipitation hitting the western slopes. It's pretty unusual for it to push all the way over unless the winds really increase Sunday Monday storm coming in temperatures drop down not to extreme levels in 10 degrees at night This bus blows it gets but I'll give some good fluffy snow if it's still snowing at that time January early outlook has below normal temperatures north of us and above way out in the southeast equal chances of overblown normal and Same frequent chances of above a below normal precipitation as a north northern chair stays pretty wet I think it really should be west coast Above normal you're gonna see a lot of precipitation moving through that And if we do get that real cold shot mid-January Kind of a son of the cold shot. We got December then that would change everything One month later in Broomfield leader has lots of local news and frequent weather updates by me This has been chief meteorologist John Anzworth keep looking up


Now there's quite a few items hidden here too and because I'm going to upload a few videos to come following this video I wanted that actual place so I could redirect people too who are confused about this area and need certain grace points opened so they can obviously indicate to themselves and guide themselves to where this loot is I'm showcasing now this oh this area um I have made a guide on it already and how you get here even to come to this place here I'll link that video in the video description that's quite a quick little task you have to do here and then you gain access to this point and you end up what I'm at right now guys but because it's quite a big place like I said yeah there's quite a few grace points to actually unlock and because there's quite some decent loot here as well and the videos on that will be coming today uh following this obviously we'll use a lot of these grace points because I can't run from the top here guys every time I want to showcase some so yeah guys I hope this video helps somebody out I'm pretty sure it will if it does leaving a like really helps me out and hopefully people I will see you on that next one


This video is called adding polynomials. We know this is an addition problem because we have a polynomial here, a polynomial here separated by an addition sign. So it's this adding sign that lets you know it's an addition problem. And when you add polynomials you're looking for like terms. So you're looking for numbers that have the same ending. So for example the 4 has an x squared attached on Twitter multiplying to it. So does this 2. So they're considered like terms because the 4 and the 2 both have an x squared. So to combine them 4x squared plus 2x squared will be a 6x squared. We have another pair of like terms. We have a positive 6x and a negative 9x. We know they're like terms because the 6 has an x attached to it and so does the negative 9. Well 6 plus a negative 9 is negative 3. So when you combine those like terms you get a negative 3x. Lastly we have two constants, a plus 7 and a plus 1. 7 plus 1 is a plus 8. So I look, I've combined all my like terms and I have my answer in standard form because the exponents of 2 is the biggest, exponent of 1 ending with my constant. One more example. This one We again, we know it's an adding problem because we have a polynomial and a polynomial with an adding sign or an addition sign between them. So we need to combine like terms. The 12m squared and the 8m squared are like terms because both numbers have an m squared behind them. 12 plus 8 is 20.  This answer is in standard form because when you look at it from left to right the exponents start at their biggest and end with the constant.


It's real blue. Oh, that's not was not there last time I was here Good morning everyone. Welcome to vlog week day five. I need glasses Liz and I are downtown. We're going to get coffee guys. It is rainy Feels like we're in Well, we are in the city. I guess technically but we keep saying joking that we're in New York We're parking my Neiman's potentially well No, we're not Okay, well Neiman's had Christmas stuff in the window, so I wanted to cry So cute there is literally a lot Here we are This way. Yes. Oh my god. I'm literally the happiest I've ever been ever What do you want you tell me I'll take some of you I want I think I want outside I'm not really quite sure I want outside We're about to take some Instagram photos guys You would have done it. I can't believe I had to put my hair because it looks so bad earlier and it's literally pouring out It's cute But it's just look it's like orange special camera right now It's so it's so funny because I'm not shocked seeing you with what I know I think it would be a bigger deal like a bigger change than it was because I was so dark It's so dark, but it's really not it's because I've been in the process of it for so long now I think that's why because it's slowly gotten lighter It's like I feel like he went like a pretty dark brown like one pretty fast It has just been like keep in mind. I've been doing this since before like when I moved here Yeah, so like it had just been like kind of looked at I went dark once and then ever since then Yeah, because like it's not like I've seen it every day to where it would it would be yeah I literally saw you a background and now I'm not saying you like twice This I'm going like really long like all blonde and I texted Carlos a photo of Emma Chamberlain's blonde hair And I said how hard would it be to do this and he was like, oh no We can definitely do that.  I'm so sorry I know we should go okay, let's start in the morning off shopping in Dallas That's so cute Anyways record in the city. So it's super cute. I don't know why you want to go to the eye They actually have all places that you can go guys. I have a lot of questions. Well first off case abasos right there I'm a big fan The eye I just like have so many questions like I know it's art But like what like can someone explain? Anyways, sky blossoms up there case abasos right there Neemans is right there It's really cute. It is like I Don't I've never I've always wondered it's been there for years Yeah, we have to go here in the morning tomorrow There's a really good sushi place around the corner now We're big city girls, you know All right guys, I'm home.  Anyways, I need to add it yesterday's vlog and get to work I don't know what that banging is. Hopefully my contractor is coming today at noon We'll see all contractors do is ghost you then I have a call at one I need to actually get my Christmas tree today like I'm going to Hobby Lobby for sure today without a shadow of a doubt because I have to I've just been cleaning and I was playing with the dogs taking trash out all that stuff I'm waiting for this video to stop processing. I just put on Kylie Jenner's new YouTube video guys My contractor texted me and he is actually on it. I do have great news though guys. Let's just Look, it literally looks like I have a propeller hat on my contractor is on his way He's early and he's coming in normally contractors. Just like it's not even a meeting It's just in general don't show up or goes to you and I'm really excited We are going to get quotes or he's going to give me a quote on What it will be for the kitchen I want I'll show you guys what I want actually right now All new backsplash and I already have it my dad actually has leftovers which is really convenient for me I'm making pasta for lunch and I think it's ready. So Perfect, and then I also want you countertops and I have to give you countertops in order to do backsplash I essentially have to do both so originally I was going to do all of that when I was moving in But then it ended up just like piling up I couldn't decide what I wanted so I decided against it, but my dad has extra Backspash like nicer than I would even probably do before So I'm going to be able to use that and it's just like white glass whatever Ideally I would love to have like marble everything and I like the marble that Sorry guys my half neighbors are getting hardwood floor. I think like the marble that's like really deep I'm very picky with marble, but it's really expensive and I would love to just do the backsplash and counters the same I am gonna look into that, but I think that that would be like really expensive. So I don't think that that's what I'm gonna do I do have black handles that still have not been installed, which is ridiculous. So anyways, so I'm getting expand this I'm repeating the sceney to where there's a place for bar schools and Then during all this I also gonna do sink. So Okay, let me I like Okay, that's cool. What are the Pricing options and the chase houses and for a regular annual style guys I just opened my last college class ever I'm actually currently taking a quiz But and I have a meeting in 30 minutes and I wasn't thinking I didn't realize that this quiz was gonna be 60 questions So have to get on this but just had to document this moment because I am so Close to graduating. Okay. I just got off my last zoom meeting I took my first quiz of my last class ever not even just College I was thinking about this ever unless I like for some reason decided to get my master's at some point Which I don't know why I would do that, but I don't know weird things have happened Anyways, I am heading off to have a lobby To go pick up some things. I'm feeling a little crafty too. Maybe I'll get a puzzle I do have a puzzle on the way, but I kind of want to do in this weekend And I don't think that it'll be here in time. So maybe I'll get a puzzle. I'm honestly so tired Like I don't know why I'm so exhausted. So maybe I'll take a nap. It's just like a really cozy cold day And I'm just so happy. Let's see. I'm checking off what I need to do. Oh school Oh, I need to call the vet. That's what I'm gonna do before I leave and hopefully I will schedule Fits to get neutered. I also earlier today scheduled him this morning into dog training classes Which will just be quite a time. It's just a good day guys. I'm just in a great mood It's cold out, but I'm really tired. I just had a call with Jermidia and that was really great Okay, I got all of my boring To do things done. I'm gonna head out get my Christmas decor I am really exhausted. So and I might get lunch out I haven't decided all the taco sounds good. Not gonna lie. That does sound really good Maybe I'll order that later. I made the drive to Hobby Lobby. I am like really craving Taco Bell. Could not tell you why Here we are Okay, I kind of want a small tree for my office. These are all like on sale And they kind of make me want to do this, but I don't know This function light controller. I don't like the white, but It's like that's expensive for like just a small tree though Okay, this is the tree I'm getting It is so beautiful like literally so beautiful well Guys, I really want the UGG Stockings, but they keep going on stock. So if any of you guys see that they are back in stock somewhere Please let me know. So these are the exact trees. This is the bigger one that I'm getting And then this is the small one for my office. Got my Christmas tree So I got the big one for the living room area. It's going to go in front of my staircase It's going to be very tricky like it's going to block off basically my pantry and my Half bath downstairs That's the price for the pay when I bought this house. That was the one thing I literally I was like there's no place for my Christmas tree And I can't put it where the dog creates will be because it's not as big of an area for a tree And it will be the TV and it's just gonna be a whole thing So it's fine if we have to literally block off a part of the house to have this Christmas tree That's just like what we're gonna do. No, I was not willing to get a smaller Christmas tree. I wanted like the real deal I was never willing to potentially get a thinner one I was just set and also my mom literally my one's an interior designer and she actually is designing Christmas trees this year for Like the first time ever for other people so you guys live in the Dallas area and you guys Want someone else to design you a tree? I don't even know if they have any spots left because they're very popular now Follow her Instagram. I'm sure she's posting about it there, but anyways, I want to talk to the diner snow I don't I want velvet taco so bad. Hey guys time for a hobby lobby haul So I got these two well first off. I got the two Christmas trees. You guys saw those are in the den I'm not a monster. They'll be going up number first not for Halloween. No, don't worry Okay, these I got because I liked them I think that they're gonna end up going in my bedroom But just good to have and then I got myself a little holiday apron, okay? It's you know tied up and stuff, but I just felt like this is what I needed So I got it. I have velvet taco getting delivered right now I'm gonna have a door-dash link below if you guys use this link you guys get $10 off this weekend or 20 $10 to $20 towards food delivery whether it's covering the food or the delivery or whatever So it's basically a free meal as a libertarian or so have that link down below Oh, we're sitting on a box from J crew. Um, I'm going to open this first three things. I have our coats So I got just a classic black coat and then a classic cream color coat It's really my outer recollection is really something else. I have a lot Let's see. Oh my meal is a prize. I think this is like two weeks ago. Oh My gosh, I'm so excited. So I just like changed it to my pajamas now. I might I might need to Got this like nice purple set That I love and the pants. These are really soft. These are definitely softer than the H&M ones.  So it's fine guys So cute and then I also got a blue and white striped pair If you guys know me, you know that the key to my heart is a magic pajama set every single night I wear one and These are just the same but blue and white striped. I love this so much. Oh my gosh Wow, okay, I'm gonna be changing into this. I am done for the day so I was coming over tonight But I'm not leaving my house Honestly, I need to take like 30 minutes just to clean. I've changed I just cleaned up a little bit my velvet taco has arrived brought my Kindle done Oh, I forgot the lighter for candles. It's okay. I'm going to potentially start younger. I might read I need to add it some stuff on my computer. It is for And I'm like I want to give myself just the afternoon off But I do have some things I want to do so I'm just gonna get cozy on the couch I just cleaned up did Dyson everything I got a couch cleaner to where I can like clean my couch like in depth because with dogs I just feel like I don't know I just need to clean it all the time because I just feel like they just make it a mess. So That is what we're doing.  I'm think I'm gonna start younger I'm first gonna see if there's any YouTube videos I want to watch and then we will see I could see myself taking enough Like there's so many things I could do. Sorry that fits this drinking so obnoxiously in the background on my vlog Anyways, um Sav is coming to stay with me. She won't be getting her until like eight So I need to rest up. It's got my snack and I'm watching unsolved mysteries I accidentally just clicked out of it. I've been posting so much to Instagram Go follow me on Instagram if you guys are coming from this vlog and comment 11 11 I like actually creep on you guys all the time So comment 11 11 on this Instagram pic I'm posting if you guys are coming from the vlog in case anyone Is wondering how I edit my tiktoks you guys can see them on my tiktok concealed with hay But I literally pieced them together because it took me two seconds in final cut and then I record a voiceover You guys can see what I made this morning. It's so cute this morning I went to one of my favorite coffee shops downtown Dallas. It's called weekend coffee. It's in the jewel hotel It is so freaking good So I just got a hot matcha with oat milk and then a bacon at breakfast talk up It was so good and it's so cute Guys, this is kind of my The day of my dreams You are such a good dog. He is such a good dog. He's so well behaved. He's going to be very well trained soon You were just so sweet.  I don't know if you remember but in like June I made an order off me on Cowboys and they just been super backlogged because Covid and my cowboy hat Finally came More importantly guys Look what finally came in the mail. Here's my hat Wow, I just love it guys. This is just like such an exciting Time for me. I have been waiting for this for literally months I mean So it's going dark so like it was dark in here it would light up That is just incredible. Oh flashes incredible Flash is more and then it's turns off love So this is like my new blogging spot, but I got a package from a beauty counter I've been seeing beauty counter everywhere and I bought beauty counter was just a normal brand I love their look bosses because they're so moisturizing. Why they an MLM. I'm really confused But I've been seeing them all over Instagram It's like people who aren't like influencers posting about it and loving it Maybe it is an MLM. I wanted to try this cleansing bomb Everyone keeps talking about it and some of these it as a moisturizer as well Okay, I really wanted to try because people are like obsessed with this stuff. This is just a body butter and it smells good It's not in it's literally not open. I can smell how good it smells. Oh Body oil look conditioner. I know I got two of these just a half throughout the house Guys is literally 745 my house is dark Just took fits outside. I finally did leave watching Gilmore girls. This is kind of my dream I'm going to grab a bootchop. I have one more here. I just ordered. Oh, it's my favorite flavor, too This is my favorite bootchop flavor Very excited. I actually might just drink it from the can not even do the whole experience tonight Okay guys Saf has arrived fits just fully takes my side of the bed Anyways, just so my skincare it is not even 9 p.m. But I hope you guys enjoyed today's vlog with my Christmas decor If you guys haven't already subscribed but comment down below if you guys want another vlog week I'll see you soon. Bye


here's here's an experience that I had where I knew kitty cats understood salvia that would arm the realm anyway there was a time for a year to two years I had ads out in papers and flyers out all over Vancouver offering people to introduce them to salvia de venora I had a traveling salvia de venora pack with leaf extract 5 10 maybe 15 times as well and a traveling bomb right I had a pager this is back in 2000 2001 2001 2002 maybe 2003 2 but I think I stopped at the end of 2002 had a pager right they banned that as well of course of course phony and I left my pager number on there and flyers out everywhere right and add in common if you're in Vancouver common ground magazine I took an ad out salvia de venora journey shamanistic plan for a walk on Mexico if you want to have an experience give me a call and people called me and I would go to people's homes open up the suit open up the like a traveling suitcase not suitcase but traveling it was a it was a seat it was a what do you call it a cassette tape suitcase emptied out and put foam in there and had salvia de venora in there right beautiful dear love you from it a lots of love right back to Italy I've been there I love it lots of lots of Italian friends two hours and six minutes we're going to 230 at least at least and people called me up this one time this person called me up so I went went and met them at a cafe right we had a little talk and then we went to his house right and this was in the West end in Vancouver lots of gays there he was he was full on gay right then I have a great gay darm okay for me that I get along with everyone I get along with everyone I don't give a rat's ass man as long as you believe in freedom you're my brother or sister right and he realized I was a good guy thank you very much for the follow I can't even pronounce your name the Edo Edo salute right salvia shaman canonical this might be it so I opened up the suitcase and the guy talked with me a little bit and he was willing to go on a journey to try this out and it was amazing to me right because they didn't know me people didn't know me right I didn't know them but I was I can gauge people pretty well but they didn't know me and people opened their doors to me and they were willing to go on a serious journey with me right my pleasure Edo and I opened up this this briefcase I had with salvia the one arm I said listen I asked people questions right if they're very toxic then you would need the extract to be able to cross into the realm but this guy wasn't toxic it was very natural horrible I could tell that he didn't need extract right so I set up the bomb and I loaded him up with salvia the one arm leaf and contrary to what you might read I don't know what's around now but at that time people like don't smoke the leaf you need extract to cross into the realm bullshit bullshit bullshit right so I loaded him up with the leaf right and he sat on his couch and I sat on the chair now one thing I learned how to do was basically I was able to make myself my energy dissipate disappear right basically I tried to become invisible when people were going under when they were experiencing salvia when I was introducing them to salvia because I didn't want my energy to interfere with them right because it could be extremely serious so you have me too well I got stressful few weeks me too killing a thirty three hundred dollar computer and I'm to build a bookshelf setting up a new computer it was a lot of work so I set this guy up on his couch right I sat beside I want to chair I set up the bomb loaded him up with leaf right and you need a torch lighter I had this torch lighter not this brand anyway right because salvia burns heavy hot and gave him one bowl right I told him to take it all in he felt a little bit I said okay you need to hit it again loaded up one bore leaf lit up the bowl for him and I told him take it all in and you're gonna take in as much as you can your lungs are gonna burn right you're gonna have the desire to cough do not cough let let the smoke let that sensation of the burning that desire to cough dissipate hold the smoke it will dissipate it will disappear that that that desire to cough because coughing is gonna hurt you right so the guy did it he hit the bong took the bowl down lifted up did the exhaust took it in you could see him wanted to cough he didn't cough and then you could see the realm the freight train coming right and what I did was I just quietly sat back and put my head down I didn't even look at him right I could see him on my periphery he had relaxed and all of a sudden he sunk into the couch and one thing salvia does when you cross into the realm you sweat like fucking mad right and I could see him on the periphery I wasn't looking at him totally start sweating like sweating I knew he was having extremely extremely serious journey intense right in fucking tense right and then from it was an apartment right we were sitting in a living room from the hallway a little kitty cat cat came over looked at me I looked at him and the kitty cat went came and sat about five meters away from me and then within a second he got up and walked towards me and I put down my hand and I let him smell me right and he smelled me rubbed against my hand and stuff right and then he walked to the balcony and when it sat in a balcony the guy who was having this journey he just started laughing and that's one thing salvia does you can you can laugh you might start laughing like you've never ever laughed before in your life right he just started laughing and laughing and he was sweating like sweating like I've never seen anyone sweat this hard before not in the gym not doing ten miles thing like nothing his shirt was soaked he was sweat coming down his his forehead is cheesy just started laughing laughing laughing laughing laughing and I started laughing with him because it's very intoxicating and very contagious right and he did this for five minutes or so five ten minutes and then he's like he said a few things and then after about five ten minutes he came out of the peak he came down right salvia germany last anywhere between five to fifteen minutes max right so about ten minutes he came not came out but the journey dissipated right to a level where he could talk and he just came out of it he's like oh my god he was breathing he couldn't he was like I can't believe I'm like smoking and stuff and then later on when you could make sentences he turned to me and said my kitty cat hates everyone my kitty cat hates everyone and what happened to him was when the freight train had come and he crossed into the route he got extremely nervous as you would fear kicks in if it's your first time you're scared shitless like literally I was right he was so scared he was so scared and he didn't know who he was he didn't know who I was what the hell am I do was this person doing why is he smoking something like this that he's completely incapacitated like I could have done anything I wanted to right so he was very scared but then his kitty cat that hates everyone came over to me and said I'm okay I'm okay and then walked to the balcony and just chilled there and as soon as the kitty cat did that I put out my hand he was like oh man everything's good and that's when he started laughing that's when he started laughing and he told me this and I've had other experiences with kitty cats and salvia divinorum and kitty cats understand the realm of salvia divinorum doggos dogs do not do not understand salvia divinorum from my experience okay so it was extremely beautiful and this person had a profound moment he was like wow wow wow right it was very very powerful moment for both of us really for both of us so it was an amazing journey it was an amazing journey life gives you put in situations that you didn't expect and as long as you're able to let go of the fear and deal with the fear as doon frank Herbert says fear is the mind killer right and he didn't allow the fear to annihilate him right and his kitty cat was his vessel to allow him to understand that so it was beautiful it was a beautiful moment one of the most beautiful moments in my life really and in his as well and in the kitty cats