Hey guys, good afternoon. Tom Stewart here, and I'm with a plethora of people all Foundations alumni. This is the foundations alumni st. Patrick's day Celebration Yeah, got Laura Smith here Joe wash Trisha, is that Derek behind the Mask there. Yeah, I'm in an airport. So it's my hero academia. It's anime. Yeah, and We've got a whole bunch of people that's supposed to be here over the next next hour and we're just gonna be sharing stories from foundations over the years past Got Katie Trish Matt's with us and you guys know Laura. She's I mean Heather. Yeah, Heather Liz Liz is here all the time Right now, I know it does feel like that right so so Liz explain Liz, what are we going to be doing today? a few things that we're going to do so first I just want to say service coming and And There is going to be a contest around to the end and Whoever is the most blinged up and gets or best blinged up and gets the most boats is going to win Everybody look at Tom. He really wants to win. I Don't have a green hat. So I think I lose you guys all look green It looks like a green as Derek's shirt does that he was trying to fall off it. It's all We have a prize whoever gets voted on so how you will vote on who you want to win Prize is you'll go to chat and you will just type in bling and whoever you want to win So you might type bling Tom bling have it. Don't do Tom. I can't win even so Bling have a bling Laura whatever and that's how we're going to count up a vote.  Oh Whoops. No Oh Joe I would have thought you would have had your Whole attire going on here or you it wasn't ready for today Don't you have you have some genetic obligation to do this, don't you? Well, technically my genes are not very Irish. Oh, okay I just spent a year and a half living there and my last name is Irish, but okay Don't you have to wear? What's the deal if you're Irish? Are you supposed to wear orange? Oh really, I don't know Think it's green judgment or do you live I think You can Guinness and having corned beef dinner tonight Right there. There's a celebration going on right there All right, and then Additionally what we want to do today is hey there a case era. Don't turn on your little pictures We would just like to hear about What we've been doing since Foundation I have a few different questions that I'd like to hear Hey, Liz before we get too deep into this Matt has another commitment But he was gonna like drop him right at the beginning and we have a piece of the exciting news. We want to share I don't know ever since cove is started about once a month Matt would call me up with some Entrepreneurial idea, you know, it's like a start a paint company. Let's be one of the buyer restaurant Tia, you know, there's a list of things and I almost did buy a restaurant I had an offer on one so it could have been my life could have been very drastically different and I had to walk him off the edge on each one of those and We started talking a couple weeks ago about how may central's got to the point where I really need somebody knows what they're doing from a marketing and sales standpoint and Matt's joining us joining our team as the chief marketing officer for for for made central so He's going to be basically taking over that side and freeing up Resources for us to provide more support and build more cool tools and just make it a better platform Yeah, I see it as I see the you know beyond the marketing and just the sales at first It's helping the users be successful. So people that are on board I mean, I wasn't the first but I was the first to commit I got other people actually started before me but I was the first to to commit to come on to made central and so I feel like I have a lot of institutional knowledge and I know We're a lot of the software There's pieces that people aren't using that we they're good that we can improve upon and But I really I really am excited about getting more people on board to increase the awareness of the software and I Feel like we're at a tipping point where we just got out. We've got to grow We've got to get more people on so the software can keep getting better and better So I know a lot of you on the collar are on the software and you know just the more you use it the deeper you use each feature I feel like You know, that's that's you know, that's part of your implementation But it's part of you know marketing and sales too of just getting people to really use the software to their to their full Stability, so I'm excited. I think it's going to be a really great year And we're all going to benefit from more power users coming on more smart people in the community I feel like that's the biggest advantage of main central is just the network that we have with one another I mean just I mean me and Joe talk all the time off channel me and Tom talk off all the time off channel and You build your network of people and how do you do this? How do you do this? And I want to build that community. That's that's my biggest piece that excites me So we just wanted to take we wanted to take this opportunity to let Matt share that before he had to go do other things But if you guys have any quick questions, I can take those but otherwise I'm gonna bounce in about two or three minutes I've got another call That's a little congratulations on your new adventure Matt Yeah, that's a great setting. I'm excited for everybody because I know how much you contribute to the main central and Having this new role I can only imagine what you're gonna be doing. I'm so excited Yeah, Tom formalizes my my work, you know that I'm doing behind the scenes anyway So it's it's a little bit of a formalization of something Annie gets a little bit a few extra hours out of me So it's a it's a win-win for all of us. So I Appreciate Everyone that's on the software now if you're not on it yet, you know, it's maybe not related to you yet But I think y'all will be on it next year So New people coming on every day, I know we talked about that almost every day We're talking about something about main central the MMA groups And I can't even remember a day that we didn't bring up something, right? Don't you think Heather? So what's our format going to be today Liz you've got some questions for us Everybody Any questions that they want to talk about or any problems I saw that Sarah did An issue that she would love I hear it that she would love to see us chat about So and then we will do our contest in that that'll be it. So let's see It's a little bit after two and for right now. I just have a couple of questions my first question I'd love to hear from everybody I It's a little bit difficult because this New window takes a full all of the screen and I'm not used to working Just think how easy would be if you had two monitors Just think how easy would be if you were dressed like a green care bear Hey now Where are we sharing it right now? We are streaming on About six Facebook pages and a couple of YouTube channels Okay, so you'll have to let us know if there's comments that we don't see on stuff Yeah, we'll see we got Sam's here with us watching us on Facebook Denit's with us. Hey, Denit Linda Somewhere so they could join us. Hey y'all if you go to Maybe you could just drop it where you normally drop the comment. They can join us here for the Yeah, I can do that Okay, guys You're getting invited to the live so what I would like to start with is and maybe you can start before you go as Which foundation did you go to if you remember the number like that's 11 or 4 Well, no, I get I got one minute. So I think it was 2017. I was there with Who if anybody's here now? I mean Derek was obviously there Nina was there. I don't see Nina today Wasn't it or was that I was it was definitely 17. I'm just supposed to pick today. Yeah 2017 with Warren and Regina Ben and Ryan Ryan and then the jump. Yeah, the gentleman that started there is working with He's built they're kind of building their own franchise model I Linman Brian Brian Brian Wagers. So it was a good group. So really enjoyable, but I do have to jump guys. I've got another 415 I wish I could say through this. See you guys All right So just curious what what foundations class the rest of you were in and also if you could tell us and Also, if you could tell us one Takeaway one like one of your better takeaways or I don't want to say best I know that's so difficult, but one of your better takeaways from that foundations class So once we go Go ahead in foundation six, I think I Don't remember them. I'm pretty sure I was in six Joe because you taught at at some too Maybe I was in four and then taught at six and seven I can't remember You know, I can think of a Takeaway, I mean there were there were many but I think it was really getting a handle on the numbers of the business in terms of Performance performance indicators and how to measure Success in this business. So that was that was pretty big for me Joe, I remember we had like a workshop afterwards in Dallas one year and You were like just I mean We were all kind of working on stuff But like you got into the numbers and and you kind of just zoned out to like another world And nobody could keep up with you and you got a tremendous amount of work done in Dallas Kind of picking up on the work that we'd started earlier Yeah, I remember that I remember sitting in a hotel conference room with you Tom for like a couple of hours and pouring over financials and One of the big takeaways I got from foundations was how important it was to control your cost of goods sold Which is basically your labor costs and that was really huge and that kind of changed how I looked at the business Well, thanks Joe, Sarah. I think did you Did you say yes, yeah, so what but that you wanted to say what class you were in and oh, yeah Sorry, I have bad lighting. I'm driving. I'm looking at the road though.  I never knew anything about that So I actually cried when we were learning it So so for how we did I was I didn't know everyone was talking about and I believe I had been business that long And I didn't know how to track my numbers or how to measure anything So that was definitely a big moment for me and it's really cool to get the spreadsheets where I can track things and See my future predictions and all of that I'm not the only one crying at least one more person on this call today was also crying. I won't call anybody out KPIs is traumatizing for a lot of people but a lot of times people also are crying over release Hey at the end. They're like Finally So I do love that Heather, I think you had your hand raised So I went to nine and ten I went to foundations nine and had no idea of anything of this Calibri existed in the industry and I went to ten and I also did the alumni So I was fortunate to stay with them for two full weeks, which was insane So many big things to take away Can't even narrow it down to one, but I have to I'm going to say the biggest takeaway was me How I could control the narrative How how I took responsibility for everything that went right and for what went wrong And that was a really hard one took a long time to really understand that but I think that was probably my biggest one That was a good one. I remember my legs were sore from walking you up and down the beach Well about about that whole thing. So that was good. That was big. That was big Big breakthrough. Yeah, really really was I'm just gonna go down the line here. Hey, how about you Trisha?  So I don't remember years like that, but I was in 2018 and 2019 then so nine and ten. I believe that is And I Yeah, I learned so much like When we had already hit the one million dollar mark when I had went to foundations the first time And I thought I just kind of moved everything And then I went to foundations and I was like It wasn't even at foundations yet Just doing the pre homework and I was like Holy crap. I don't know anything And that was the part that like I was I was kind of overwhelmed by that But excited at the same time. And so then when I went into foundations like I really I was amazed at what I didn't know, you know, like I had created a successful company in my opinion But the whole time I had created it. I was just winning it I was You know, like everything would just work out perfectly, you know and profit and margins. Everything else was fine But ultimately I didn't know why I didn't know what I was doing, right? Or what I was doing wrong with anything And you know, that's just not scalable when it comes I want to be able to continue on, you know, and so um Just kind of seeing all the actual inner workings of of a company It really helped me to understand. Okay. So like I Luckily have been doing things really good. I didn't realize I was but now I go down this route And so forth and that pushed my company to be able to to be even better My other one is I think there's so many of them so so many of them But one that I can tell you like impacts me today is touring tom's facility Because I was so Amazed not with the one location But I was amazed that he had He was able to be able to have like this This system and this call center type facility Working with working at other, you know his other locations and I was like I had never once thought of to do that and um, you know, I thought about opening up more locations But I didn't know how to and so when I seen his It really like clicked something in my head, you know, and so then the following year, you know, I after I started really thinking about it and I was like I can totally open up a second location Like and we just streamed like everything and then now we have our third location And it's all still ran out of one office in Fargo nice sweet Tom what do you call that you talk about it a lot when people sort of luck their way into Yeah You can be successful and have it be an accident and that's awesome as long as it's working But when market conditions change things like You know wages go up and demand shifts and you know the the legal landscape changes If you don't understand why you're being successful You won't be able to adapt to that and plus you won't see the opportunities to grow your business The story that Trisha just shared after understanding why she was having the success she was having She understood how to leverage that and and take it to another level Then I was able to drill down and hit those areas hard Knowing what I was doing, right? And you know we used to be teams of three as an example And after foundations we started going to teams of two teams of one like everything to start making sense in my head That how it works together, you know to where um Yeah, we just we just winked before and it just happened to work But but now once I started diving into those things I started understanding things much differently You're making decisions with confidence rather than just doing it and keeping your fingers crossed Yeah Well, I remember you saying you didn't know what anything you were especially good at after meeting with you one on one I'm like teach these people what you do with facebook because you just did it so naturally. You didn't know that was special Yeah I had a lot of stuff like that actually take quite a few things like that I'm sad that we had the miss sherry. She had to run Her biggest takeaway besides friendships, and I think uh, everybody would probably agree that the friendships is a few keys Absolutely For me and kpi's to watch that's huge for some people Um, how about you laura and you can't say that garrick was your biggest takeaway? I he was bad He was joking me and chat that I was supposed to take away Um Now I think it was a couple of things um when I went to foundations I was already doing over two million dollars And um, I can't remember which one of you guys told me but one of you guys told me that I filled out my my like home More thoroughly than like almost anybody ever had. Um, so this was a little cocky when I got there, I guess um But two things that were really big for me one was I had hit a point where I didn't really know where I was going Or what I was going to do anymore And tom really took the time to walk me through the idea of buying them building Um, which was huge huge for me. Um having my own space Not only is huge for my company. It's going to be huge for my retirement Um, it's just it's a huge part of my plan that I honestly don't think I would have thought thought of if I had not gone there Um, but obviously the biggest piece for me is as most people know my daughter was diagnosed with cancer 16 months ago Um, and I had to basically quit. I called my general manager from the airport Um, when I got the call I was kind of to try I just landed in Detroit and I got a call of my daughter Was in the airport being diagnosed with cancer and I called my general manager. I was like I quit see him a couple years Don't know what to tell you And I feel like having gone foundations a year and a half before that was huge And getting us to a place where I could just walk away like that Um, because even though I was good at a lot of things and I had built a large company Um foundations is just so thorough. They go through every possible aspect of your business that it's It's just a really good way to start poking holes in Where are your weak points and I mean I have to give My general manager azure the majority of the credit for you know, getting us through the way she has I think that the work we did post foundations on poking at our weak spots Identifying what those were trying to strengthen those. I think that that made that possible Um, so I haven't been into work in 16 months now And we're still doing just fine and I think that foundations was a big part of that And then also I know that I I think you're doing a mma bonus for Foundations Is this 11 or 12? Okay. Um, so also that was another I think that's that's an incredible bonus because After I had to step out completely. I needed support from my general manager And so I actually put her in mma which is intended for owners But I mean it's been huge. It's been huge on her Having a community to get answers from a community really smart people to get answers from Um, you know when she runs into things that she doesn't know what to do with to just have that support um It's just been it's been Priceless, so you love having her too Of course, we love having her I think anybody at any size that can benefit from going through their business with fine cheese come on to do foundations Everybody's got stuff to work on Yeah, I totally agree. There's no no company that doesn't have stuff Um, Amy your situation is a little bit different. Tell us about it. Tell us about what you're up to well, um Like everybody else, I don't know if any of you guys are seeing your your facebook memories while the ocean shots and everything But I'm really loving those this week. Um, but uh, What foundations showed me and it was a great time and I learned so much and I was one of the friars. Oh my god But when it showed me and my kpis and my numbers was that My business was on life support and I had full club That's basically it Um, and it was hard But it was a super huge relief to me because I was just miserable and I couldn't make it work What I did and I just didn't have any other funding Thing to do with it.  So I really love that though, Amy because I don't think people really Understand what we mean when we say that like the course is individualized for you It's based on your company your needs Your situation It doesn't seem like that could really be the case. So you got all these people and in this one round Nations was the best money I ever spent even though I closed and maybe some people don't see it that way but you know like Sarah was saying that she just winged it and Trisha said she just winged it and I winged it for 12 years and All I was doing was throwing money into a bonfire Really and I didn't have to know how and I didn't have money to hire anybody to see me out of it You know, of course, there's a bunch of other things That just contributed to all of that but so I Always thought the cleaning would be my I don't know a lot of ticket And while it isn't in running a company and thank god, um, I'm not I can't tell you all how really they have to be out of it I'm I'm starting a cleaning course Some training stuff. So I'm trying to work on that and I'm also blogging and writing. So if you guys need a blogger Yeah, we're gonna talk about where what the next steps are that everybody's doing too So, um, keep get some contact info for us. I mean, all right. Um, let's see Derek. You're going to f11, right? Uh, whatever Whatever the one we're going to next year or the year after or some year I'm going to the next one. It's october Derek. So, you know, october. Yeah Yes And you are registered to go so Putting on your calendar Yeah, yeah, I've been registered for like a year and a half Thanks for digging it in there I'm looking forward to it. I got to come down and see, um, like a like, uh, was it a one day thing we did in south carolina? um What two summers ago What was that Tom was it? Um, was it behind was it behind the scenes? Something like that. It was like a one day crash thing that we and Diana came down for a weekend or something like that I remember exactly which table you guys were sitting at. I remember I I think it might have been behind the scenes Tom I was thinking somewhere Yeah, so that was my first I think uh, I guess vision for what I could see us growing into or Getting access to people that have done Um, amazing things in the industry. So I was like, I gotta I gotta learn more. I'm gonna get around these people. So I'm I've always I'm I guess in the industry. I'm fairly young. Um Still even though I don't feel to be young, but um, I've always valued getting around people that know more than I do And have accomplished more than I do. Um, I've failed out of three colleges. And so traditional Um Education is not really my strong suit, but I do I do like to follow successful patterns that people have done and Um, a lot of the details of running a business are not what my strong suit is. So um, I'm hoping to to really Learn a lot from it. I'm already a part of the MMA group. So I'm learning a lot from that obviously and Um, hopefully it'll just add on to it when I actually go to the the week long event I promise Um, I can see very tough to Joe Linda. You're in the MMA group, but I don't think you are alumni Are you know, but you're in the MMA group have been for about a year now. Is that right? September I started last September. Oh that seems so much longer. I know I file for you for all your growth.  You're a really really great job Um, all right, so chris Uh, what what class were you in and what's what? I'm a trisha. I don't remember what year that was But um, I think he was the last one didn't you I think that was You guys drank a lot and that's why you don't remember It was nine It was nine. No specifically remember you guys saying that we didn't drink very much Oh, really? Okay, that could be true now We were the ones that ate all the junk food because the last people on the first were the health nuts Don't all the groups drink a lot need a lot of junk food I think I did really pass out on the couch. Um, next to john during class one day Yeah, there was there was a lot of productivity for the record Oh man, I was so stressed. I was like, I think we lost my whole staff while I was out there Yeah I remember that and you were like sitting in the corner with smiling. I'm like, why are you smiling still you're like I don't know. I'll just It's fine. It's fine Yeah, that was um You know what I really took away though is yeah, I'm meeting everybody.  Poke around your business. That was huge. Um And really planning is the one thing that I took away when we had to fill out a one-year plan I was like you could plan for a year I didn't even know that Like a whole year out you can go even further like it's that he does that Would you actually do it? I'm at a quarter now. So we're a quarter out So you are in the anime group you are setting at least your annual goals and you you started to think in terms like that But you're breaking it down into quarters still We're I'm getting there right and it's it's it's gonna be a process and it took me a year to plan at all Right, I think like the whole year after it took a long time to sink in And that whole year after foundations I was still scattered and then trying everything that I possibly could and I think a year after we started planning At least a quarter and you're right. We're we're at a year Now and and still improving it. So that that was my huge thing Yeah, that's good All right. Well, thanks you guys for sharing that I was going to um I have to keep switching over and I keep switching thing Because I get interested in listening and then I Forget to go do my job Sound familiar Ah It's the it's the monitor thing I know it is the monitor thing. I'm thinking that I really do. Do we have any comments or anything? Any questions? No one here Pam says she loves hearing out everyone's success stories and experiences So it is fun to hear how other people are doing and so You know, we really wanted to have a chance to talk to you guys because we don't get a chance to talk to you about how things have gone Um, and I'm glad other people are interested. I know I love to listen to what other successful people are doing What has worked and you know, how they're taking advantage of different Another thing that I would love to have you guys talk about Is how you are feeling about your 2021 prospects? So what do you what do you got planned for this year because there's The time now, right? I think we are different. So I'm just curious what Y'all have going on. Anybody want to share that? I can sir. Um, so We're just excited to be hitting hard. So um COVID hurt us bad Bad bad we Our sales dropped to like, I think 30 or 40 percent multiple months. Um student staffing issues um, and so We now have a year to make up for because if anybody knows me knows I'm very competitive with myself and anyone in That was a mild radius And so I'm competing against myself on where I should have been so last year We should have hit the over the two million dollar mark and we didn't Oh, we actually dropped sales from the year before which was like a heart crusher for me And so now this year we're on point. Um, we just talked about our senior management team this morning Our goal is to be over the 2.5 is our goal this year Yeah, so we opened up our third location. Um, this September we did and that's going phenomenal. Um, we have a really great group of staff up there and um And we're growing really great. Um So yeah, we're excited here. Hey, that's awesome. Yeah Uh, laura, I saw you were ready to share. Thank you. Um, I am so excited about 2021 I feel like 2020 it was it was hard for us. I mean, I think it was hard for everybody Um, I was really surprised how well we did through COVID though We were completely shut down for about five or six weeks when we very first to open back up I think we only had about 65 of our clients come back initially Um, but we were able to kind of backfill with A lot of new people. Um It just it it changed people's it changed the conversation around cleaning You know, some people were afraid to have people in their homes Whereas other people felt like cleaning was so much more important than they never thought about before Um, so we actually did pretty well through 2020 Um, surprisingly, especially concerns there the entire time. Um, we were down just a little bit from the previous year but not by much Um, but we were still consistently. I mean, we had a lot of down months because we track You know month by month. Um, we did have a lot of down months. Um But we used as an opportunity to regroup we switched from teams to solas Which has been much more profitable for us. We went through all of our clients. Um, thanks to me and central We were able to go through all our clients one by one and Um adjust prices and we wouldn't take anybody back who was under price Um, so it was like kind of our year to fix everything Well, things were a little Different and slower and people were already by the idea of massive change Um, and so now we're just feeling like we're going into this year so strong We have been blowing up for the last three months I think when I was there the last time I went off was I think was like march Fourth and we were already plus 30 points for the month. Um for anybody who used the points system. So, I mean, it's just been wild start to the year and um, you know, I think we're turning the corner of covid I think things are beginning more normal by summer and I just I'm really actually kind of thankful for 2020 And that we had the time to tear apart and put it back together like that. I'm I'm super excited for this year Yeah, that is exciting Um, who else wants to show what they're doing this year? Are you going on? What heather heathers got a lot of fun stuff that's here What am I what am I going on all your cool accounts you got? Um, well, I will have to say that um from foundations was another big takeaway was my relationships We had I think 20 people attend foundations that first year and I was able to bit a job It was a very large job and who do I call up to get um the sound coaching from is this uh, Trisha Lake over here And she helped me secure that a job I think was like 200 3000 and then we landed another one. So now we're like 385 thousand dollar gigs per year Off of that bid. So that was huge. Had I never kind of foundations I would never have known um, how to do it And I think I won it because he was impressed with how I knew my numbers like I would ask him so many questions about his numbers He wouldn't even give him any answers So knowing your numbers was huge huge. Um, what are we doing? I mean same thing right on with with what Laura said You know, we got hit hard like I didn't know if you were gonna have an office I knew we would still survive How it would look did we have cars to get to go solo as we had no idea But we were able to do a lot of fast moving around money and securing things that we were able to just kind of power through And when we saw a lot of our competition, they didn't survive um I don't know what we're doing We're just growing like crazy down here people just want to have their houses clean Then even though we're masked up people are still going about and living their lives And you know, I'm gonna ride this wave for as long as I can My ops manager left us. We're doing about 1.5. I think right now and I'm doing without an ops manager.  She would at least smile at once Um All right, how about uh, joe, what do you what do you got going on? What are you working on right now? Well, I can echo a lot of what uh others have said here. I mean like trisha. We were We were poised to hit We would have hit like almost two and a half million last year If it weren't for covid we were right on track to do that. I'm confident we would have so Uh, it's so we took a big hit because of covid and really what it had to do with was staffing We closed for six weeks like a lot of other people. Um, you know We're closed. Um, I think I was one of the first ones to close. Amy and I closed early Before others did But you know, anyway, um, we just Staffing has been a huge issue. I'm in a really competitive market staffing wise and that we really haven't been able to recover In fact, um, the mid eights franchise and our market actually closed and went out of business because of staffing They couldn't plow up So I'm actually happy that we're still here and we're starting to be able to recruit people again Um And so what we're focusing on this year is just kind of trying to get us back to where we were At the end of 2019 which when you say it that way Like discouraging but really we're doing great and honestly Um, we changed a lot of things like a lot of other people. We went to all solos We were teams before teams or two and three we went to all solos Which is more profitable and we've changed our scheduling protocol Which is like stabilize the business and I'm looking forward to Returning to focusing on some kpis that I've been focusing on before the pandemic kit which was to focus on employee turnover and unplanned absence rate And in some safety kpis because the unplanned absence rate and the employee turnover Were really where there was a lot of values that we could a lot more value than you know the business if we got those metrics right So we're we're getting back to that um and getting back to focusing on that So actually this week for the first time since the pandemic our unplanned absence rate is below 4 And for you know someone who's been following that metric for a long time 4 below 4 your life as um as an owner is much different Everything's a lot more stable and you're not scrambling around trying to cover cleaning So I'm looking forward to getting everybody vaccinated and getting back to focusing on stability so I love that. I think that that is a kpi that a lot of people don't look at too. So that's I like that you illustrated something that We we experience a lot in foundations is And a lot of people have said it here today I thought I knew it all There comes somebody and they're like what you did what And it's just this whole new shift and being able to get a deep dive into why that's important What this person's doing that right? I love that Well, I you know, I should also say that I've been having a lot of fun focusing on Bottom line and profitability rather than necessarily top line and just growth I had been in growth mode for a long time including when I went through foundations and after and My business did more than double in size at the foundations I think I was around just under a million when I went into foundations and I topped out at a annualized run rate of around two and a half million So, you know, we grew a lot After but then, you know, I've been having a lot of fun focusing on the the bottom line and there was a lot of value to extract there and The other thing that's always been important to me for those of you that don't Don't know me as well as quality of life And I really look at my ability to not be at the business and to Not have to work 12 hour days and and things like that. So I've made vast improvement in that as well. So that's also been really great Yeah, we really get it at I mean maintaining your focus and deciding what you were going to go after and protecting that sarah Sarah does the same thing. It's really good at protecting that Time puts a lot of focus there. What are what are you working on for 2021 sarah? Well, we ended up growing through 2020 so it was a little bit different I think our location really helped Arizona as it really was a really good place to be So we ended up growing 20 in 2020 Um, and this year we're just like on fire. We're up like We're up 20 just from February to March. So we're trying to just um Add to our teams and train and figure out how to maintain our quality as we're in this massive growth mode Um, and then I also am really big on the work life balance because I have young kids I prefer to spend time with instead of in my business I'd rather pay people to work on my business than pay people watch my kids. So Um, it's been going pretty good I feel a lot less stress than in previous years where I couldn't find the balance and we seem to be just growing naturally and um So this year we'll cross the the million dollar mark, which I've been chasing after for a long time. Um And I'm hopefully opening a second location. I'm working on the details of that. So um, that's what I've got going on Super and I'm glad that you're finally growing again sarah because you had that one month I was plateaued for two months and I was like in tears because I thought it was just so horrible that we were plateaued And then we then the next month We're up 16,000 the next month. So I think we're We we have a question pan clad has a question that uh, I'm sure that somebody here can help her with She wants to know how you run things when you're gone for the week for foundations She's got seven cleaners and one professional organizer doesn't really have an office manager and just wants to know How you guys keep the business running when you're at foundations for a week and that's not I think uh, it's about that size when I went I remember emailing you guys and saying Hey, uh, what was that pre upfront coaching on how to leave your business for this for this four-day trip and you guys emailed me back What are you talking about? It's a it's an eight-day trip Even worse, right Man, I just put somebody in charge I think I ran it for myself on to be honest with you. I didn't have anything in the office Um, and we just didn't we need to do during breaks or call people back or whatever Yeah, I will say I mean by the time I went to foundations.  So Um, that wasn't a concern but back when I was still smaller enough that I only had one person in my office with me And I used to take the conventions and stuff with me all the time. So there was nobody there with the phones and my sister Who also was in the same foundations class as me? Um has not had an office person a really long time She handles everything and she goes to like I mean before my daughter was diagnosed We're gonna like rush in and handle on and all over the place Um, and she just I mean Sometimes you have to balance whether what you're getting is worth what you might lose Which is really not a lot. We just we would change the voicemail Staying, you know, we're out of office at the moment calls will be returned um, put on an email responder and then just You know first thing in the morning. I got lunch break at the end of the day Go through return what has to be returned. It's You're really going to be surprised if if you've gone for a week You're cleaning up most half of your clients at most once So even if you somehow miss a whole bunch of them, they're probably not going to fire you for it So the trade-off is worth it Do what you gotta do Okay, no team that I'll go ahead let's Oh, I'm sorry. I was just saying it's a good perspective because when you're in that when you're in it and it you're like Yeah, but I can't yeah on the other side of it.  But afterwards I think afterwards too. I was able to leave for like now. I don't I don't have that stress anymore, right? Is that that one week did it? Hey, I think I think what we did is we did a test We haven't gone to foundations yet for the week But we've done a test where we went to like the qds conference for like two days And saw how our team did and we took a vacation like a You know two-day vacation during the middle of the week instead of on weekends And put people in charge and kind of saw how things went and then we also didn't put any complicated Cleaning on those days that could potentially be fires to put out Just try to make them all recurring indigaling cleaning I want to second what Derek's saying. That's what I would do And that's what I used to do when I used to go to the arcsi conferences when in fact when I had, you know Four five six seven eight people and I didn't really have anyone helping me in the office Um, I did just what Derek did. That's a great great advice Test do test runs before you go and start with one day Then try two days then try three days And you know what actually you might even enjoy yourself. You might even get Surprise yeah Yeah, we weren't able to take our first like week-long vacation about uh months ago We actually went out to colorado. I went through your business floor. I don't know if you knew it or not But um, I met up with azha Katie did a quick tour But we went on a ski trip and for the days I was like, we're not available.  So be sure to help We want the people want to step up though, too I think that if you have people that you know, they want to show you that they can do a good job We're not around And giving them that power to be able to do that the freedom It's a great way to test your staff In general, it's that One one mindset that I used to always have is that if I'm not doing it It's not going to be done correctly And that truthfully is just so wrong and I was so obsessed with like me being the one to do it all Then I slowed myself down. I slowed my growth down massively and when I started to kind of start giving off those You know those duties and those tests and stuff like that I was actually really amazed with my staff or something's better than me at a lot of different areas Because they're not juggling a thousand things like I was trying to do all the time So in order for you to get past that point to where you can take those vacations and tend to take that time You need to pause and With like eating oak or week. You might lose some clients. You might have some failure to happen or whatever But once you go past foundation's class, you're gonna have all the knowledge and information To actually get you off that hump to whether it's not going to be your main focus Like you can leave for a month of time two months at a time if you want to But if I don't know I think that if you if you're scared to leave your business for one week How are you what happens? Let's say something happens to your kiddo or something like that. What are you gonna do? You know, and so while you're small Take that advantage of that and just simply just do it You know, don't think about just do it jump into it and then reap all the little words after you've learned out of knowledge Yeah I just wanted to pay back on what Trisha said though and say like I never in a million years Would have thought that what happened to my family would have happened my family I think no one ever thinks that that's going to happen and I think God for all star every day because if it hadn't been in the position where it was where I could just Leave to take care of my kid.  And so I think that Laying that foundation to be able to be gone Well, nothing is going on is the difference between I mean, I haven't been to work in 16 months now and I'm still getting paid and like I'm so thankful for that I I could have lost everything Um, so I think that's the most important thing that business owners need to realize is whether it feels like you can leave or not You need to start leaving you need to figure that out Make that happen. I don't know. Cece. Can you hear us yet? Maybe not I'm driving so it's It's okay. We just wanted to say hi forever Foundations, how much do you do for us, right? Like door mom exactly For for for those of you who don't know Cece was uh, very important part of our team like figuring out what foundations was going to be and helping us put the program together and the logistics of of you know, doing this this program over the years We honestly we probably wouldn't be sitting here having this discussion or talking about foundations if it wasn't for Cece and I was messaging her, you know, when we started and she's stuck on 95 somewhere I guess between dc and fredexburg. I'm glad you were able to uh to join us here She did all the grocery shopping too, didn't she? I thought that was brilliant Yeah, every day, right and you guys always give her a new list every day Like spoiled kids That's part of the fun of it too, right? So we did have um a couple things. Amy, stick in chat your contact information Anybody that's looking for like blogs or um, if you're wanting to talk about training, maybe you might be somebody to talk about Talk to about that. Um, we're Quickly running out of time Tom, uh, can you also please put the link for people who want to find out more about foundations and they want to read about it um, you can send them over to that page and then I'm really picky Sarah had a problem that she would love for us to address um And you're just hiding So before we get to Sarah's question is I want you guys to also vote for the winner of the bling contest And there's not a whole lot of people in here. There's lora. There's heather. There's linda. I guess Derek With his fake green over there um One of those three people just put type in the chat Celebrating properly And the prize is going to be there are three presentations that you will receive Um, okay, uh, so let's hit sarah's question real quick Go ahead Hit us real quick. Okay. I'll come back Okay, well, I was just throwing stuff out there because you guys were asking for information So, um, I was wondering if any of you guys, especially the bigger businesses have any advice On how to grow and scale with your training and hiring when You grow really fast like we weren't expecting such fast growth We have about a hundred more jobs this month than last month, which is a lot for us and I don't want to turn people away But I don't want to start losing our quality either because we can't hire and train fast enough So I don't know if there's a secret sauce, but if you got it, let me know I would love to touch on this if I can Please Trisha So, um, I am so excited that we hired an HR manager. So if you want to rework his manager The very end of 2020 I think now and he's amazing He has a master's in business And a certification in shrm like the whole thing But um having somebody dedicated to employees only was such a game changer for a company Like his job is to nurture them His job is to like take care of every problem every red flag like hiring acquiring like onboarding like all of it working with benefits like 401k is like all of our stuff um That was such an awesome part for us to be able to do and so I understand if they're your company might not be to the point where you could have an HR manager But you could certainly still have someone like that that's in charge of those things um, you know and uh Like their whole goal is to make you grow and we know that how how we make those is grow right We grow by advertising and we grow by increasing our employee numbers Well, it's increasing employee numbers are super important because you have all these leads coming in Having somebody that's dedicated to higher higher higher is going to be really what takes you to the next level That's great advice trisha. Thank you But he also has something how about training because that's always a big thing for sarah. Yeah, go ahead Yeah, I would just like to second what trish just said. I couldn't agree more We I actually groomed my own HR person from within which I think is a pretty Difficult to do so I might hire from the outside but that like an HR person is like Changed my life and really it's not an uncommon combo either to have someone who's HR and an admin So like they do They sort of like can do accounts receivable accounts payable That sort of stuff do the payroll and do HR that is a combination that is you can just hire from the labor market For that and there are a lot of great people out there who can help with that And it's the the onboarding and and all of that stuff and in our business We're in the business of selling labor. So that is a really critical position If I had it to do old way again, I would have hired an HR admin person when I was your size sarah Yeah, me too. That that would Allow us to have grown a lot faster And I don't think I think it can they can also help with training too, but You know in terms of training It probably would have been something I would have focused on with a good operations manager or a field supervisor That might have been something I would have focused on with them There are whoever you have for your trainers. Is it possible for them to be promoted up to that HR position and be an exclusive trainer? Possibly I'll have to I'll have to think on this because I do have two Managers in my office and once more sales once more like Scheduling all things operation, but I might be able to shape her into more of a HR position But you're you're wanting the actual training so that the cleaning that's actually being done is good, right? Yeah Okay, I might be able to help you out with that. Um, call my number. Let's chat. Okay. Awesome Okay, I can basically Laura. Yeah, go ahead. Um, so we did a couple of things. We had sort of the same problem. Um A lot of people remember ocean 13 we fired 13 people one day. We had a re staff on a lot of people at once Um, so that was when we really started figuring out doing bulk hiring and training. Um, so the things that we do that I think Um, work the best for us is we have a field manager who is very similar to our HR person She's the point person for all of the field staff. Um, and she's the Person who is in charge of our quality assurance person Um, so the field manager holds regular trainer meetings So it gets them all in the same place and reviews things with them. We also have a trainer only Um channel and slack that we talk a lot and we kind of seek those conversations so that everybody is on the same page with things Um, and then our qa person goes out and if we graduate out of training She'll go out and start checking them and be the field manager is the one who's doing the onboarding So she does all the orientation everything and so she tells everybody right up front all the trainers will tell them too You're gonna get to know brandy really well when you first get out training She's not coming to see what you're doing wrong. She's coming to help and make sure that you're comfortable with everything. Um So I think it's a combination of getting because we have a four or five trainer And so getting them all on the same page through those regular meetings regular You know communication that they're all involved in they all see and then having um, my field manager's assistant Go do the checks on the people who've graduated and she's a flex position. So sometimes she's full time Doing quality checks. Sometimes she's full-time cleaning. It just depends on how many people we have coming out So awesome. Thanks And we do the exact same as laura, um where we have the trainers to see the video chat So we have all that stuff. So we do quarterly meetings um So from like it's like a six hour meeting actually So like every quarter we have a train train the trainers class And in order for them to continue to be a trainer or company, they have to attend every single one of those So every three months what we tend to find is that when we're renewing and re-uploading that sort of that sort of It with us They're re-engaging themselves into our company. But what we notice is that we don't do it every three months They fall off the bandwagon Like and it really re-engages them when we continue to do it every three months Um, and then in foundations foundations actually gives us a train the trainers program Um, right list. Yep. We know that's where I got mine. And so what we did is we um, We took that annual and then we kind of reinvented it a little bit to make it work with our company And things that were really important for us, but it sets all the found all the ground things and um We have we have five trainers and they're phenomenal. So like once our training program really got like awesome um, and and having someone to charge our hr like We can we can hire 10 people in a week and be fine. Wow, that's amazing Well, we are a little past the top of the hour This is a lot of fun and really awesome and appreciate everybody's help here Today, Liz, do we have a winner for our contest? We do it looks like it's Heather So thanks everybody for um coming It was really good to see everybody hear what everybody's doing I'm super excited to hear that everybody's doing well Any thanks for sharing your information and how people can contact you Sarah, if you didn't have a chance yet to look at the chat, please check out Joe's information Because It's very similar to what Trisha said as well that if you could instead of hiring from within However from without gets me that is a professional on their own right a lot of people would do that They have to go over again. Yeah All right And the other thing too with that is that when you're hiring within They already know your staff and already friends with your staff and so if somebody that's um not on that friend With them is really important as well Okay Okay, guys. Well take care. Liz. We're going to be back here tomorrow. We're doing something fun, right? Tomorrow, I'm doing a presentation Tom. Oh, that's right. That it's not going to be it's not going to be fun Liz is doing a presentation. It will be fun We'll be talking about training tomorrow Oh We have Take care


Hey, we're recording. It's August 26th, 2021. This is the DevSync for the micro-built team. Okay, so we're going to kick it off with Derek. We're working on a little promo video and we're putting together, well, we're actually taking a look at the state of the software as it pertains to getting some good footage of the Mark II in action for the video. Yeah, so that is to shoot with the latest, but most of the skills actually had some stuff that wasn't in the latest yet, so Chris helped me get mine up to date via Git. So I've got all the, you know, not latest, but most recent contributions on it. And so that's what you see in the video. And I went through all, I went through our demo script that we typically have been doing in the past and filmed that it's up on YouTube. That is private for the time being. In fact, I don't think we can even make it public for the community, unfortunately, because at least with that demo, when we did Pandora, we use a copyright song. So I could do one in the future that doesn't do Pandora, and we could share that publicly. But well, if you ended the video with and now music and you launched Pandora and then faded the black, that would be fine. Yeah, I mean, I could edit the Pandora part out, but I just can't, like as is YouTube won't let us, they'll flag it for copyright infringement. Yeah, I didn't do any editing, I just threw it up there. So anyway, yeah, take a look. I think we all saw the things that stood out to us. I mean, there's some kind of funky GUI interactions where some of the GUIs are kind of persistent when they should be cleared. But this is all stuff we kind of knew about. It was going to be addressed in the sprint. The thing that I think concerns me the most is the stop behavior. And I don't think we can just say necessarily that it's specifically to like, I was seeing a lot of news, but then I saw Pandora, you know, Giz mentioned it could actually be present in, you know, a lot of other skills too. It's just maybe coincidence that I'm seeing it, you know, in some cases. But I think that's the biggest thing that sticks out to me. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the progress. So yeah, and then, you know, the thing we're talking about is, you know, the person we're partnering with create these promo videos is it would be an ongoing partnership. So there's definitely some parts missing.  We can send him a device, and he can film some of that stuff again when we get it in place. But the other stuff is just me getting a Mark II that's going to be photograph ready. So that's actually, honestly, the more time consuming part. But that's what I'm going to do. But yeah, I like this process now that we've got a place, you know, we should just keep this going where we create this video every week and upload it. Okay, cool. Did you want to keep doing that, you know, outside of the DevSync? Just do like a... Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think it would be good. It would be good if everybody, you know, if we did this like every Thursday, you know, and I try and get it uploaded like at least an hour before the DevSync and everybody takes time. I mean, that's going to be five to 10 minutes. You know, everybody takes time to watch it before the DevSync. That would be great. So I can commit to that. That sounds great. Did you come up with a list of bugs that you need fixed for building purposes? I think I can work around everything at this point. The stop stuff doesn't... It's inconsistent. It's not every time. So we can work around it. And then, you know, I guess he was going to try and get the news gooey in there if I wanted it. But like Chris mentioned, it's going to be inconsistent because Pandora is just not going to happen. So, yeah, I mean, if it's not a lot of effort, you may throw it in there for me. But... Well, remember, you don't have to say play Pandora. You can subscribe to a channel and just say play the channel name or just play in general something. And then nobody would know what you were actually using to play in your video. Oh, yeah. But I think I was just talking about the fact that we're not going to have any gooey for music playback, although we could for news playback because it's, you know, there's kind of some work already been done there that could quickly be... Right. Okay. But that's a nice to have. Nice to have when we get the news gooey. But I think at this point, that's the only thing I'm going to need. Right. Okay. Well, I'll leave that between you and get us to figure out if you want to get the latest and greatest news gooey up there. Oh, the other thing, Chris was going to add the latest home screen changes that he's been working on that would just add the weather icon, the current weather. And after I set an alarm in the demo, the alarm icon will pop up on the home screen. Cool. It might also... I don't know this, but it may clean up some of those weird gooey interactions that you're having too. Because now it won't... Well, that's because during the demo, I stack things pretty quickly. So like I'm doing the skills right after each other. Sure. You know, stuff...  So something's happening there where the things are getting stacked up. Of course, when we shoot the video, I don't have to do it that way, right? You know, I can... Yeah. I can work on tricks or whatever. But so, you know, you'll see it like so, you'll see it in the demo, but if you keep watching, like it goes back to one of the weather forecasts, it should clear out. Okay. That sounds like that's a bug report on a gooey stacking up like that, because you should be able to interrupt a gooey and, you know, interrupt the audio. Why can't we interrupt the gooey and have it replaced with a new screen? Well, it does get replaced. It's just when that interaction ends, it goes back to the... Right. Which is a bug. Yeah. Well, yeah. It was put in there intentionally. But the way that it... The way that it is appearing at the moment is a bug, but like... But the functionality of stacking screens is a feature. Yeah. I mean, it should only return to a previously interrupted skill if that skill is like a persistent skill, right? Like, so if you interrupt the music to do something, sure, overlay your new screen on top of it.  The music keeps playing, the gooey comes back. You know, that kind of makes sense. We'll get into that in the next screen. Yeah. Yeah. I thought this was going to get resolved in the gooey interaction, or the skills interaction. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's fine then. Okay, great. So you're going to get a little bit more help to put some other updates on there, but it looks like you're pretty good to go. Yeah. I'll meet with Chris again tomorrow to get the... You know, should go real quick to get his home screen stuff on there. Okay. Great. And then I'll just be back in the shop, painting up the Mark II and getting it looking good. Cool. Do you literally paint it? What are you painting it with? Just spray paint. Okay. Yeah.  It looks pretty good. All right. So we spent a good chunk of yesterday going over miscellaneous important agenda items. So I want to get back to going through the status of the sprint and the skills but before we do that, a couple, just a quick update, I think. Let's see. Nope. No, I don't have anything. Okay. Yeah. We can just go through the sprint status. Throw it up here. My name is October 20th to 30th, cast in stone yet because Sarah asked me to hold off, but longer I hold off, the more chance it's going to be, I'm not going to be able to get my booking. Oh, contact her about that because I think she was booking plane tickets a couple of days ago. She was what? She was booking plane tickets a couple of days ago.  But somehow that turned into, well, I'll just do it and then they'll reimburse me, which is fine, but she said hold off until I have, you know, the exact dates and I thought it was definitely the 20th to the 30th. When was that? That was yesterday. Well, I'm confused because if they're booking plane tickets, we have to know the dates. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, I'll follow up. Yeah. And CC me on it, please. Okay. Thanks. Okay, so I'm going to show a window over there. Okay. So here is our Sprint 21 status board. How are we doing on the home screen? Chris, you're muted. All right. We're getting there. There's ancillary PRs and other skills that have been submitted. The home screen skill itself still needs a little bit of work. Not much though. And I did not work on it today pretty much at all because I was dealing with PRs for other things and helping Derrick out. So today was not a very productive day as far as home screen skill goes. But I will probably spend some time on it this afternoon. Still have to get it done tomorrow, but nothing else comes up. And now you're muted, Michael. That's clever. So, okay. So on the timer skill, this is a known issue. We need to get Marketplace Approval. I've been doing the testing for 20.2.1. Okay. I just got the parker off to go. And then, so I should be able to release that today. Yeah. That's the blocker, really. Once that's out, we can move forward with getting the Dr. Container ready and getting some desktrum. Yeah. So once I release, then Chris is going to update the Docker stuff and then we should be able to merge the skill. Great. That's awesome. Okay. Due to due, we moved that into the next sprints, future sprints. So really, we're down to just two things now. That's great. Okay. Well, we can stop looking at this time. Chris, have you had a look at the new skill, Payaya? I have not. I was hoping to get my own screen skill done first, but again, I'm not spending time on it today. So I will look at it. Cool. It's a bigger PR. So that's why I'm kind of putting it off until I have time to really sink my teeth into it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I skipped the news improperly. I was looking at the future sprint for the GUI, not the audio. Okay. Well, so for the GUI, there's all the blank cells that we haven't looked at yet. Yeah. That's this upcoming sprint. For the next sprint. Yeah. Yeah. So anything that's blank is basically for the next sprint. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Those notes must be there for some other reason because we had, I don't know, maybe we had a different status in there at some point and I replaced it with that. Anyway. Oh, well, I think the music skills, they're going to have to wait for the music sprint. Right. Yeah. So that's the future sprint. They're not in the GUI sprint. Right. Same as, and the news too, because they'll write the news and music are all going to use common play. So yeah. Yeah. Date, time and home screen are also kind of bundled together. Once the home screen's done, there's going to be a, have to be a small effort. Well, I'm not small, but there's going to be an effort to, you know, move skills around a little bit to make the time scale work and the old date time scale network, at least on the Mark II. Gotcha. But we're not like deleting the date time skill from the marketplace. No, but we do need to, we do need to have a think about how we make sure that it's not, that we don't have the date skill, the time skill and the date time skill all on the same device. We should, we should probably deprecate the date times our market has deprecated somehow. Yeah. There's really no reason to have all three of them on the marketplace, but yeah, you should probably say maybe, maybe 2202, it'll go away or something like that. Yeah. Okay. Let me write that down. All right.  Yes. Do I get you while you're yawning? Yes. Yeah. So I've been doing testing for the core release. Got a new stable image out for the Mark II, which resolves the, the, the, the boot issue that we had with secure boot. The one thing I noticed the other day, yesterday, maybe, is that Panicor are making some progress on support for the 510 kernel. So that will be very, that is something that would be very great for us. So I'm reaching out to them to, to have a chat about when we might be able to make that jump because that adds things like GPU support, which we currently don't have on the Mark II image. And so that causes problems when you're trying to do like video at higher resolution and things like that. So, yes, that'll be awesome. So just thought I'd throw that out there. All right. Well, that's cool. Let's see. All right. Well, let's go to Chris. Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, I spent most of my day doing things other than I was supposed to Chris made, guys only made a good comment on a change I made to the Mark II skill that is probably not implemented, clearly wanted to. So I've been looking, I spent some time today looking into that. It happens to work for the home screen skill because the only thing that home screen skill does is do an idle screen. But yeah, it could potentially break further things. So I'm looking into that because that is going to be a prerequisite. One of the prerequisites to having the home screen skill done. Either that, I just renamed the QML files, which I could do as well. I just, you know, the hard coding in the Mark II skills was bugging me. And yeah, worked with, you know, spend some time looking at all the different skills and what state they were in so I could help Derek with his getting his device set up with the right, whatever the most recent SAR. So just a little bit of this, a little bit of that today. All right. Sounds good. Ken. So I refactored the Cal Confidence routine. But the issue really is, and I guess this is a guess question.  They're basically like pronouns and verbs. Um, where do I store those outside of the common query framework so they will be translated? It's not a skill. It's in the common query framework. And so the question is in core, when we have words that need to be translated, where do they live? Okay. No, no, no, no, it's not that that's what was in the duck duck going wikis. And that's going to happen because of triple nested loop. But I've chosen to, since I'm just looking for word count frequency matches, I've converted the lists to sets and subtract them. And part of the reason for that is touching upon the next topic, which is I also wanted to understand why it takes so long. Right. As you guys saw yesterday, it takes between five and six seconds for the common query framework to finally resolve when it's gotten a response who to dish it off to before something actually starts playing. And I know why a portion of that is, and it has to do with going through every skill in the active skills array that's in there. And it could be volumous because they tend to linger. So that serialized right call his converse wait for a response call his converse in a loop. I can't do anything about that with this architecture. But what I can do is I can take the calculation query that is being done in common query, and I can optimize that. And so that's what I was doing with sets. And then the other thing is I'll also, I started looking at trying to fix the common query time out. And that that's a known bug that it's mistaken a value that it thinks is in seconds, but really is in milliseconds. So once I find that again, I've already fixed that once before. So once I find that again, I'll fix that and commit that as well, which is why it keeps timing out, even when it gets responses. And it's been given the true flag that they're being worked on. So that I'll get around to as well. I have. I have. Yeah. Again, I suspect the lion's share of the slowness is in serialized converse invocations. And I can't do anything about that. And then, yeah, I don't know, I have mixed emotions. I looked at it for the use cases these targeting, I think it's fine. It's not clear to me, it's not going to be problematic in other use cases, but I haven't had a chance to actually flesh those out beyond just thinking from a high level, how's that going to work? So I haven't gotten into that yet. I will try. There was also a boot issue that my mark two hit, which Michael believes might be due to Google speech to text. But I don't think it's that because once it boots speech to text is working, I believe something has changed down in the Google connection code during startup to determine whether we have Wi-Fi or not. But I don't know that. And that's what I worked on today. I'm only working on tomorrow. Okay. So you're going to be continuing to work on optimizing and the common query stuff. Yeah, the only thing that's really holding me up because I got it all refactored and working is I just needed to know where to put those words because they really need to be in a file somewhere. So that we have a half a chance of people translating them. And then now that I know where to put them, I'll go ahead and put in the code to bring them in as a list and parsing it instantiation so it doesn't get done every time. That could also be a little bit slow because it goes through them and everything every time. So I'll get all that. But I should have this all wrapped up by tomorrow. Okay, great. Let's see. Well, I guess that's it, right? Derek, you have to say. Hi, I don't have anything to do.


I'm your host Calvin Griffin, and I always, always start out the program with this little intro as far as the, for those of you who may not seen the program before, here we talk about a number of issues that concern our active and also our veterans community, and we try to bring people on that will give you insightful information to what's happening and some of the things that's on the horizon. Today my special guest is Mr. Steve Kelly, he's been a guest before, and he's going to give us some updated information on a lot of things that's going on on the legal side. But before we begin that, just like to share, yesterday I was able to go to Hickam to witness the repatriation of 64 sets of remains from the Korean War. These were Korean soldiers, I think originally what they said, the remains were co-mingled with American remains, and with the technologies that have been developed, they were able to narrow down and be able to return these remains to the Korean families. Here a couple of months ago we talked about the MIA and POW issue, had Mr. Hansen was on the program, and this is an issue that still hasn't been fully resolved as far as the families of the missing individuals. In the future we're going to bring on individuals from the government who will give a better clarification on this issue. We have the different holidays or different commemorative events that honor those Vietnam vets who are still alive, and also a number of other events also. But still these families need closure, and we are trying to go ahead and get that information so we can see what's being done to allow this to happen. But at this moment what I'd like to do is I'm going to do Steve, Steve, how you doing there? In dealing with the POWs and the MIAs, one of the things that brought in my mind is saying that when they were captured or come missing, they were employees of the federal government. So if they're employees to the federal government, do they stop compensation going to them which would go, should go to their families until they find that they're dead or find their remains, and then they give them the survival benefits. But until they retrieve the bodies and stuff and dealing with the issue, they should, don't know if they are discharged from the service, and they should not be discharged from the service because then they were captured or missing in a line of duty. So thereby they should have some type of compensation going to the family based on that. I think when they're in MIA status, they still, up to a certain point, they are, they still, the families still receive the benefits or whatever, to what extent and how long that's going to be a story. Because right now we have, it was a couple months ago, I had, it was a punch bowl and it was a ceremony for a World War II soldier who they just recently identified. And even though the immediate family had passed away, they had the other generations that cheered up. And even for them, it was very emotional as far as having closure, even though like say the immediate family whose brothers and sisters weren't there to acknowledge his return, but this is something that's extremely important to a lot of families. I mean, not knowing where your loved one is, I mean, you know that they're deceased, but the thing is you want to have the opportunity in some form or fashion, a closure to know what's going on. And I think in some cases our government has been a little bit remiss as far as dealing with that. And that's why, as I meant to refer to the program we did a couple months ago, as far as with the POWs in Vietnam, what happened with them afterwards. Because not all of them were brought back. It's nice to think that we can live up to the phrase that no man left behind. But unfortunately, in this case, I don't think that's the case. And I think there's definitely enough information that cooperates on that information. So this still needs to be addressed. And I hope that sometime in the future, we will be able to get some on the program that we'll be able to go ahead and give a better clarification of the situation, how it's being rectified, if the information is going to be released by the government on anything and everything concerning any POWs, MIAs that are still in the books. You know, and it goes, unfortunately, this is not anything new to this generation or past generation, even though in World War Two, there were tens of thousands of POWs and POWs that weren't returned, that went to Russia and went to other places. But again, that's another story. But, you know, as far as getting into, I'll touch on it briefly, but as far as the hard facts, figures, things that are in nature, I want to make sure we're completely accurate when we talk about this issue. So that's what I'll be doing in the future about that. Well, one of the things it kind of bothers me in a sense of, since they were on active duty at the time that they were POWs and MIAs. So did they, the pay stop or what happens to that? When you look at the law, look at the rules and say that their income doesn't come back to them until they come back to the United States. So I think that's wrong. In a sense, if they were POWs or MIAs in the line of duty, they should compensation for the salary and promotion they should have had until they get the body concrete saying that they are no longer living. I agree with you on that one. The thing is, again, at this point, we would assume that our government is doing the right thing when they do go into that status. But from what information is coming out, that may not totally be the case. So again, not to make it disparaging remarks against the government or what they're trying to do as far as the compensation. But there are certain things that need to be cleared up because I think it's very important because if you have young people coming into the military right now and they serve, they want to be assured, at least that they're going to be brought home or whatever effort is going to be made to identify them. Right, exactly. So that's the one point I want to touch on as far as that's concerned. Anyhow, like I say, in the future, we will have people like say, we'll give that definitive information and encourage anybody that's out there. One other thing also I'd like to bring up. Unfortunately, we still have a number of POWs or people are missing as MIA. Let me make that distinction between POW and MIA. As far as MIA, if unfortunately you have a loved one or you know, someone that has one, someone in that status and no matter how long it's been, the Joint Accounting Agency, they have a program set up where you can provide DNA. And some people say, you know, if you really want to know, get in touch with them. I don't have the number right now, but I will pass it on to you. But you can go to the Joint POW MIA up at Hickam. They will give you the you can get the information from them anyhow. But if you do have someone in that status, you know, someone, please donate your DNA. Get a sample of the DNA to them. And it may help them to identify someone like say that a loved one in your family, you know, that no matter how long it's been with the technologies, they are able to go ahead and give you a pretty accurate assessment of, you know, the genetic background, you know, to help bring closure to the families. And even though there's a lot of things that you've been working on in the past, anyhow, just to recap on some of the things you've done, you mentioned, of course, that you, as far as with the legal part of it, there's a lot of things in the legal status. Like say people are not aware of even active duty people and veterans that they may be missing out on certain benefits that are their entitled to their status as a veteran. Can you give us a clarification or point out something that, you know? Well, for the last five years, I've been trying to get the agencies to allow us to be having a status of an employee. So one of the things that I've discovered is that we are outside of being a government employee because they give us the status of saying that we are members of the armed forces. With that title, you're not an employee of the government. So thereby what it does is give the armed forces complete control of what happens to you. So you don't have constitutional rights with the means of that title of being a member of the armed forces. But but Congress made us employees 1948 and 1935, but they don't use. Why did they use that designation as being an employee?  What does that mean? Or is that means you get not only you get compensation for hurt on the job, if you there's a means of Department of Labor is saying if you get hurt for a federal employee, if you get hurt on the job, they're supposed to report to the Department of Labor under OWCP on a form between up to six days, saying you got hurt on the job. OK, so that's for all employees. Since we're not classified as employees, the military departments don't have to do that. And thereby you have a problem getting all your benefits because they don't report your work related injury. To OWCP. OK, but people would say veterans have benefits. So therefore, the status that you're talking about being a veteran status is different from having a status as an employee because the status of a veteran is after employment, meaning that you belong into a sense of an organization. This the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stipulated that veterans do not have constitutional rights because it's an organization that doesn't belong to the individual. So when I got that from the Ninth Circuit, I had to go do some research. OK, to put that in lead terms for the average individual like myself. I mean, this when you talk in certain legal terms, it goes over my head, you know, and I watched the number of episodes of LA law, but still, I still don't know a lot of things. Anyhow, OK, what I'm saying as far as in lay terms, like say, again, as far as OK, you have the veterans, veterans benefits, as you're saying, right? Veterans benefits are separate from from the other one from being an employee. OK, if an individual out there wants to know as far as their status, that you say as an employee of the government, you will get that. OK, what is the reason why they wouldn't get it? And like say, why would there still be that classification on the books as being an employee because there is not being enforced? There are certain laws that are out there to stipulate that they are members of the armed forces. That's a category entitled to the law. But the other laws to stipulate that you were classified in 1948 as a employee of the government. All the military is an employee, but they don't use that in their modern sense of identifying your status. You're not having that status as an employee of the government. So when you have the status of an employee, it is the matter of duty that you perform, meaning that although you have the rank in grade of the military, that doesn't mean that you're performing duties that are specifically one just to the military. You have two occupations that are being done. One, you have a military obligation. Then you have a civil service classification that you don't even know you have. And in that, they don't separate you as an employee of the federal government. They separate you from the military. OK, if all this is on the books, why aren't. Isn't it forced or why isn't it recognized by there? A lot of people out there say that we want to take care of the veterans, things of that nature. If this is on the books, I know what it's about and it can benefit those who earn this, whatever they're entitled to. All right. Why isn't it being enforced? Because like a lot of things you mentioned go back as far as free World War two, in fact, right after World War one, that you say are in the books that are not being utilized. If they're not being utilized or enforced, OK, why? Why? Because in the sense of in 1916, Congress wrote a statute that stipulated if you get hurt on the job, you have the same status as a civilian. OK, thereby you are a civilian once you get hurt on the job. So they still want to maintain you as being military so they could control money in a sense of thereby you are allowed in Congress, allotted you to be at the lowest compensation of being an employee of the government is a GS 15. OK. They don't want to give that. All right. We'll get, you know, we'll get into that a little bit more. But we're going to take a short break. Anyhow, and we'll come back later, we'll go ahead and follow up on this and see if we get a better clarification. So for those again who were out there that don't fully understand what's going on, some of the terminologies or statutes, we're going to try to clarify that. I think it should break. And again, this is Hawaii in uniform and please stay tuned. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary. So I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff. So I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime at noon on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place.  Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Anna all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. OK, you're back with Hawaii Uniform. Again, I'm your host Calvin Griffin and my special guest today is Mr. Steve Kelly. And again, we're going to continue our conversation about getting the clarification of being an employee. If you've served in the military, whether you're a employee or a veteran or a combination of both or, you know, and what some of the things that you may be entitled to that haven't been enforced by that's on the books, but maybe not have not been enforced for whatever reasons. And Steve, you wanted to expand on that. There's a statue which I want to read to you. This is Title 5, Section 61A, whose subsequent to May 1st, 1940, shall have entered upon duty of naval service and the land of naval forces of the United States may voluntary entitlement or enlistment and otherwise shall be entitled to receive in addition to their military pay compensation in their civilian position. Now, we don't know that we're doing this. And why is it being enforced? Because it's not being enforced. The question I would have also, and I think some people may ask, all right, we still have veterans who are alive from very few from World War Two, but they're still alive. Right. All right. Korea, Vietnam. And when we had the draft status, OK, even though they were drafted, where they still consider they still consider they go on active duty. So once you become an employee, you should have benefits as such, because there's a law that says it doesn't matter how short or how long you've been employed, just as long as you sign that dotted line and become an employee of the government, you are having the right to all benefits which Congress didn't outline for you to have. OK. What is some of the ways that, OK, they have that status. Now, there's things that they're entitled to. What form or where would they, what agency would they contact to find out how and, again, or if they qualify under that statute of being a federal employee? You're not going to just the statute then as the attorney general in the letter, which you have in front of you, stipulate that you must apply to the EEOC, which means the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is based on race, color and sex. And the other is Department of Labor, which gives you saying that there's a law that stipulates when you leave the service, they're supposed to put you back to work as a civilian. There's a statute that says it and they don't do that. So what I did was file for my right to go back to work, not being military, but being a civilian. So I haven't heard back from that because the letter from the Attorney General on June 2 of this year stipulated that retaliation, if you got anything that's wrong with you. And one of the things that we didn't have under the AMA, the American Medical Association, did not put in the DSM, which we're a diagnostic medical manual, is racial problems and then having adjustment, having to deal with stress, having to deal with the racism. There's a medical term and medical action, which they did not allow doctors to evaluate. Racial anxiety was not allowed doctors in the military to write that as a diagnosis when you complain about a problem. OK, that even is up to, I guess, to the current times. Right, exactly. Because we all know that, like I said, as far as the system has not been equitable in the one cases, even in the military, we want to believe that we have a good melting pot, if you want to call it, like I say, a cross-section of people that represent the society. But in the past, there have been certain disparities in how certain ethnic groups have been treated in the World War Two, like, say, for example, recently like that, with some of the black veterans that came back, like, say, they weren't given the benefits that other non-blacks were given. That's the opportunities, education, things of that nature. That doesn't, not blanket, but it wasn't extensive as it was in a lot of cases. All right, so what you're saying now is even now with the, if you had a veteran that went to the EEOC or to the Department of Labor, they would have to find them a job or how does that work? In the sense of the agencies themselves are supposed to have within their peripheral vision of saying, once you are discharged, they're supposed to put you on a priority placement list. And in this, they don't put a lot of veterans on the priority placement list because they don't consider you as being displaced. So here now, if you have a disability, you are displaced because you can't go to work. OK, if, again, if you go back, if you, again, if a veteran lives listening now and they go, like, say to these different agencies, the veteran, you guys need to find me a job because that's part of the statute and everything else. And they say, well, I don't care. I never heard of it. We're not going to force it. Then right now they have a program that helps the modern sense of the people who get out of service. So the people from deserts, not from the last conflict, they have this in place for them. But anybody prior to that doesn't get it in a sense of saying, so here when I got out of service in 1978, I did not have the right not only to file an EEO complaint with the EEOC. You can't file a complaint about your discrimination that you're feeling in the racial anxiety because the agency has their own EEO people who don't deal with that. They just deal with the plain race, color, sexism, and that's it. If disability was not on the market line, thereby, you couldn't go in complain about the fact that you did not get adequate treatment, you did not get. Rehabilitation and you did not have the opportunity to go back to work. So now there's a 1970 law that they cannot do that to you. They can't take anything away from you once you go into the hospital. And there's a law that says if you come from the hospital, they got to give you a job. OK, because a job release from the hospital saying that you're OK to go back to work. Well, when I went to court and they said that I was qualified, I didn't know that meant that I could then then go back to the agency and ask for a job. OK, a lot of people ask you have all this information. You've done all the different steps as far as you do diligence, as far as the statutes, legal precedence and everything else. Personally, how has that affected you? How has anything positive come out? Like say, were you able to go and use those statutes, use these different regulations in your favor? Are you still are you still being stonewalled? Or how's it going? Well, with that letter from the Attorney General's office from the Department of Justice, stipulating under the statutes, he's saying what's unconstitutional. Right. So being unconstitutional meaning they took indirect measures to stop you from doing something. OK, again, the question I have is how has it benefited you directly? So actually, you're the one. I mean, I know you for a number of years now. I know your efforts that you've been putting out there. Again, anything positive has come out for you because like say a lot of people like say, well, that's that question. If you're putting the information out, then even like say, there's a lot of stopgaps in the system or whatever it is.  Or, you know, and the thing is what can be done. But how? Yeah. So what I did was I applied for compensation. OK, I applied for my right that I should have gotten. So that's what that letter stipulates. They retaliated against me. So even in dealing with filing your complaints, even in writing Congress, they didn't do anything. So he is saying that I can go back and take care of this in a sense of saying that long as I follow his direction, go back and apply, go back and apply on a complaint form and outline all the things that were wrong that they I didn't get. So long that I didn't get it. I know a lot of other people didn't get it also. OK. So again, it gets out.   Yeah. But see, there's a law that stipulates they can't do that. There's a statute that says that they can't do that. There's it's something again. But we don't we don't know it's on the books that they're saying that they can't make that threat to you. And if that's intimidation, so they're not supposed to do that. There's I have the statute here, you know, now not going to fight. But I can show it to you if you want to if they make a means to saying that we're not going to give you the benefits. It's like that, well, if you got retired from the service, you can't have the benefits, total benefits from the VA. The law that was run and passed by Congress saying they can't do that. They have to give you the full benefit of each one of those laws. Right. And they turn around and make their own rules to say that, OK, we don't want to give these certain people certain benefits. OK. So that's not so thereby they have a CFR, which they follow. But the law that didn't outlines that doesn't allow them to do that. OK, there's a lot more we can get into right now. Like say, I like say this personally, I appreciate what you do. I know you're trying to get the word out there and like say, I know that there's a number of rule blocks you've been running into. Because if you were able to be successful with this, this will have a far reaching effect within veterans and military community. Right. So I understand the way we get down to the wire on this one in the aisle. But we're going to do a follow up on this. And again, I appreciate what you're doing. I keep up the good work. That's the only thing I can say. I hope everything works out all right. But I think we've got about 15 seconds left. But I want to thank you for coming on the program. And real quick, what's your number if you got one to give out? Yeah, people want to get into touch with me. In touch with me, my number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Steve Kelly. Great. Okay, Steve, thanks a lot for coming on the program again. No problem. Again, keep up the good work. I want to thank the viewers for your staying tuned to the program. If you have any questions, of course, give us a call or email us. Let us know. We always want feedback. Thank you. God bless. And until that time.


My dad is sort of my image of an ideal father. He was able to come into an area where he knew no one and to a community where he had no allies and create a home for his family. The way he's been able to do that at least in part is thanks to Purdue University. This is a National Science Foundation Future of Manufacturing project that started almost two years ago. It involves Purdue University as the lead and partners at Harvard, Tuskegee University and Ivy Tech Community College. The main goal of the project is to bring artificial intelligence and the latest advances in data analytics to small and medium manufacturers. For this summer we identified some new projects and they became the basis of Natantab's summer internship. The subset of project that I'm focusing on is the utilization of current sensors or IOT devices, which is just Internet of Things. Essentially the goal of this is to optimize and observe the program that any system is running while not having to physically be there monitoring the system and the operations itself. I was offered about six different research opportunities, but being able to have a one-to-one connection with my professor, my mentors, graduate students here and just individuals that I see who have excelled in their field and I simply just want to follow their path. I feel like this was the best choice to spend my summer. At the end of the day, what I want to provide for myself, for my family and my community is the trust and care that if they have problems, I can solve them. In my eyes, that's just about the ideal role of someone with my experience and perspective. In my eyes, engineering is that solution.