Let's say you really need to find reliable information about the best diet for high blood pressure or heart disease or diabetes. Where do you go? Do you go to a website sponsored by Big Pharma that wants to sell you pills to fix your problem? Or do you want to treat the cause? Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast with the latest peer-reviewed research on the best ways to eat healthy and live longer. The average adult uses nine personal care products a day, and each of these products can have hundreds of chemical ingredients. And don't get me started on mad cow disease intestines. Here's our first story. The Food and Drug Administration recently reopened comments about their policy of allowing some intestines, but not others, into the US food supply. In the first few cases of mad cow disease started popping up. The FDA's gut reaction was to ban all guts from food and personal care products, but in 2005, USDA and FDA amended their draft rule to permit the use of the entire small intestine for human food if the last 80 unquilled inches going to the colon was removed. Since then, those studies have shown that infectious mad cow preons can be found throughout all parts of the intestine, from the stomach down to the cow's colon, raising the question of whether all entrails should again be removed. The North American Meat Association says no, wanting to keep all cattle inside the food supply. Similar to what we heard from the CTFA, the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association, they protested that by banning from cosmetic downer and dead cattle, as well as brain skull eyes and spinal cord as well as intestines and tonsils, our nation's supply of cosmetics could be put in jeopardy. There could be a tallow shortage for soap, for example. The FDA may not realize that cosmetics and personal care products are a quarter trillion dollar industry worldwide. In the end, the FDA tentatively concluded that intestines should continue to be allowed in the food and cosmetic supply because only trace amounts of infectivity have been found throughout the bowels of cattle, a conclusion they have to make since otherwise all meat would have to be banned as well, because new research shows that mad cow infectivity is in the muscles too. And not just the atypical cases of BSE, like the last mad cow found in California, but now we know the typical BSE as well, a bovine spongiform cephalopathy, mad cow disease. Low levels of infectious prions found in the ribs, shoulder tenderloin, sirloin tips, and round cuts of meat. The latest estimates out of Britain suggest 15,000 people are currently incubating the human form of mad cow disease contracted through the consumption of infected meat. Fewer than 200 Brits have died so far of variant carciliacum disease, but the incubation period for this invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease can be decades, the time between eating the meat and one's brain filling up with holes. The fact that so many people are carrying it has important implications for the safety of blood transfusions. That's why many Americans who've lived in England are barred by the Red Cross from donating blood, as well as the safety of handling surgical instruments that may have cut into someone who's a carrier since it's so hard to sterilize anything once contaminated. Given these factors, it may be prudent to err on the side of caution when regulating which intestines are allowed on and in our mouths, but it's a balance as one meat company points out, guts are not just used for lipstick in testing its human food, providing us with a precious source of protein, which is evidently essential for our human population. In our next story, dozens of lipsticks and lip glosses are put to the test for lead contamination. Over the past years, the use of cosmetic products has evidently increased at an alarming rate due to unending pursuit for individual beautification. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, unless cosmetic products contain ingredients that may be linked to disease. Ingredients such as toxic heavy metals like lead. Lead has been found in a wide range of cosmetic products, from eye shadow, to skin cream, foundation, blush. I talked about henna before, but looking at the data, an important warning can be recognized. The presence of lead in lipsticks, because you end up inadvertently actually swallowing a little bit of it. It's been estimated that a woman may end up ingesting three pounds of lipstick over her lifetime. Moreover, lipsticks can be used by pregnant women or women of child-bearing age. Duh. Yes, lead is highly toxic, but how much lead can there be in lipstick? Surely it's a very minor source. Nonetheless, one should not exclude the fact that lead accumulates in the body over time, and so repetitive lead-containing lipstick application might lead to significant exposure, but you don't really know until you put it to the test. 32 lipsticks in lip glosses tested, and lead was detected in three-fourths of the products, suggesting public health concerns. But how much lead did they find? About half exceeded the FDA-recommended maximum level, a set for candy. Yeah, but come on, that limit is set for something kids may eat every day. Kids are not going to eat tubes of lipstick every day. Nevertheless, it's generally accepted that there's no safe level of lead intake. Ideally, we should get contaminant levels down to zero, and look, as a consumer group pointed out, a quarter of the lipsticks were lead-free. I mean, so we know it can be done. So maybe we should better regulate toxic metals and cosmetics to protect women's health in the United States, as it's already been done in Europe. Fair enough. The billion-dollar lipstick industry, however, wasn't happy. In an article that tried to downplay the risks, the scientists for a higher firm that once played villain in the real-life Aaron Brockovich case concluded that although lipstick may contain lead, the concentrations are so low that they would not be expected to pose any health risk to adults or children. Children's blood lead levels are influenced more by background lead exposure in the air-dust water food than by lipstick exposures. Okay, but just because our environment is so contaminated doesn't mean we need to add to the problem. In fact, because there's so much lead around anyway, maybe it's that much more reason to cut down on additional exposures. But they calculate that an adult would need to apply lipstick over 30 times a day to raise their blood lead level to even the most stringent limits and 695 times a day to get blood levels up to more concerning levels. Ah, but this was based on an assumption that lipstick would only have about one part per million lead, or at the extreme end, maybe two or three. But by 2016, about 10 times more lipsticks were tested and they averaged nearly 500 parts per million, with 10% over 1,000, all the way up to 10,000, with more than one out of five exceeding FDA and even Chinese safety limits on lead in cosmetics. Lip gloss was worse than lipstick, orange and pink and more lead than brown, red or purple, and all the really contaminated ones were the cheaper ones under 5 bucks. But wait a second, 10,185 milligrams, that's 10 grams per kilogram, which means the lipstick was 1% pure lead. That means a single application could expose a grown woman to perhaps 12 times the tall of bold daily intake. And if she's interested in having children, then that poses a particular concern as lead accumulates in your bones and may then be released into the bloodstream during pregnancy where it can slip through the placenta or into the breast milk. The good news is that the FDA is considering lowering the maximum allowable lead levels in lipstick from 20 down to 10, something Canada arrived at a decade ago, but without enforcement, I mean, doesn't matter. I mean, moving the legal limit from 20 down to 10 would just mean that instead of 23% of the lip products exceeding legal levels, 27% would be exceeding legal levels. Finally, today we ask, is there a risk of lead and PPD contamination of red and black henna? For recent decades, we started to recognize that some topically applied substances can penetrate into or even through human skin and end up circulating throughout our bodies. Take the toxic heavy metal lead, for example. To see if lead could be absorbed through the skin into the body, researchers applied lead to someone's left arm, and then they measured the lead in the sweat coming off their right arm over the next few days. There was a big spike proving nearly 30 years ago that lead can be absorbed through the skin and rapidly distributed throughout the body. This led to public health authorities to recommend parents avoid using cosmetics, at least on their children that could be contaminated. Which cosmetics might those be? Lead has been found in a wide range of cosmetic products because it's a natural constituent of many color pigments. The FDA has set an upper limit for lead at 20 parts per million, and though only some samples of henna exceeded that, because henna is used for temporary tattoos, these quantities of lead can remain on the skin for a long time and may not be safe. Because studies show that lead may have no identifiable safe exposure level, with even the lowest level shown to affect the brains of developing children, thus the use of henna, especially among children, may constitute a public health risk. So increasing awareness of henna's serious toxic implications may help end or at least reduce the use of such hazardous material, especially when children are involved. Now, traditionally henna was just the dried powdered leaves of some plant, but more recently other ingredients have been added to give it a stronger color, added ingredients such as lead. One of the most common and egregious additives in henna. But not as common as PPD, paraffiniline diamine. The red paste traditionally used, known as red henna, rarely produces adverse effects, but to achieve a darker pigment, known as black henna, various additives may be used, including animal urine, but better pee than PPD, a cold tar derivative that can cause nasty skin reactions such as blistering and scarring. PPD has added to speed up the process from as long as 12 hours down to less than 2 hours. So while the use of black henna is maybe tempting, it has the potential for both short and long-term side effects. How common are these reactions? The best estimate is about 2.5%, so 1 in 40 kids that gets a black henna tattoo may have an allergic reaction. Unfortunately, this practice has become fashionable, thanks a lot, Spice Girls. There's no such thing as natural black henna, so perhaps it would be best to respect the more traditional practices lest a temporary tattoo turn into a permanent scar. The problem is that PPD can be found in products labeled as red henna, too. So just because it's red doesn't mean it's not risky. Bad news for the $100 million dollar industry. Because henna of all colors is so often adulterated under FDA guidelines, henna shouldn't be applied to the skin at all. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials. We may share it on our social media to help inspire others. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, please go to the Nutrition Facts Podcast landing page. There you'll find all the detailed information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. For a timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics, you can order the e-book, audiobook, or hard copy of my last book, How to Survive a Pandemic. For recipes, check out my second to last book, My How Not to Diet Cookbook. It's beautifully designed with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious meals. And all the proceeds I receive from the sales of all my books goes to charity. NutritionFacts.org is a nonprofit science-based public service where you can sign up for free daily updates on the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos and articles. Everything on the website is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorship. It's strictly non-commercial. I'm not selling anything. I just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love, as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based.


All right, cyber traders, good afternoon and welcome on back here this Thursday, June 24th, shortly after 2.30 PM Eastern time. Welcome on back here for our afternoon meeting. Let's get a quick sound check.  Let me know if you can hear me loud and clear for all of us live inside the trading room. I believe we are good to go, including William Robert, Andrea. Well, we'll give him a quick shout in just a moment. Kathleen Peter, Debbie Norman, who had a fantastic morning himself here today. Great to see everybody, Michael as well. So let's hop right into it. I gotta make this meeting really quick to be honest with you. We don't have class lined up ahead and I'll be joining us for all of us live inside the trading room. I'll be back on the mic, at least later on today at 3.30. I got a UPS delivery coming up here and they said anywhere between 2.30 to 4.30 and if you're not at the door for this type of delivery, I think that they just send it to their main service center. Now I have to give Andrea a big shout out because he's actually the sender of this package. It's a nice package of Italian delicacies. I'm sure some biscotti in there, hopefully some of the chocolate hazelnut biscotti and Drea. Now enough about that because I wanna make sure I'm there for the package. So without further ado, OCGN. We're gonna put this on our watch list easily to begin. The stock ended up making like a nice trend up heading into the day. Ended up making this big pop over eight. So for what it's worth, this was one of the easier trades that we ended up catching throughout the entire day. I ended up just setting a stop limit order over eight. The second it broke over that level, I got filled and fortunately in this occasion, it ended up leading to a nice pop. So I ended up leaving a lot of money on the table too. I got out at like 8.13, 8.14, just for a quick trade, quick in and out. But for what it's worth, ended up pushing all the way up towards over 8.50. And for right now, it's trying to build the support. I ended up jumping in and out of this trade earlier also off of 8.17 practically where it's like trying to build that level now. So for right now, I'll put this on our list, the OCGN trade. It's a stock that we're all familiar with, stocks up eight plus percent. So hopefully there's a lot more life left to it, right? Now alongside that though, let's go over a couple of other stocks in the meantime and then we'll just jump right through the gainers and losers list here. So I'll just tell you folks just full transparency, a stock I'm in right now, I'm into not the OCGN, I wish I was, but the TRCH trade, I'm currently long right now right from 497. So just for right now, I was calling that out live inside our trading room, at least off the opening bell print. So it's getting a bit of a squeeze off of five right now, the opening bell print was 494. So I was calling that out earlier. I'll put this on the side list. Again, we're pretty familiar with this stock at this point. So of course I'm in it, I hope to see this run up 50, 60 cents, that'll be fantastic. But I'll come back to this at the end, although in it doesn't mean that we're gonna put it on the list. I mean, I hope it runs up, but we'll see if there's better opportunities even at this point. Then the last one here, the ORPH, this is the other stock I'm in, I'm still in and if I waste this profit, I'll be a little upset just for how long I've been in the trade. I've been in this stock since basically 1115 in the morning, whenever this drop was here towards 770, 775, my average price right now, I'm loaded up on shares a minute, 778 is my average. So for right now, I'm certainly hoping for this to hold a higher low from here, push back up over eight. If we get the pop over eight here, I'm really expecting a big move off that price. Stocks up five plus percent. It's like another stock we'll come back to by the end of the meeting. Certainly if it gets closer to eight, I'll put it on our main list because I still feel that's a really good setup to enter off of. I have a good entry off of yesterday's chart. We ended up seeing a lot of buying off of 775 in particular. If I'm not mistaken, I think either the opening bell or probably the closing bell print on the ORPH yesterday was right at 770. So you can see how well that level was holding throughout the morning and into the afternoon. So for right now, we'll come back to both of those trades, the torch and the ORPH trade, all right? This is a stock I have just on my other monitor right now. Again, this one will probably come back to at the end of it all. Express is at the high of the day and I got that from Benzingo right before we started.  So it looks good, smells good. We'll come back to it because otherwise it's not really moving as fast as we've seen it move before. So you would wanna see a nice move up with all of the other Reddit stocks in my opinion. AMC is getting a small push off 56. BB Blackberry, I think they have earnings after the bell today if I'm not mistaken. So they're probably just gonna be slow heading into the close. So I don't know, I just had it on my other screen. I'm not in Express, I'm in the other two, not in Express right now, but I'll tell you, Express looks the best out of the three really. So we'll come back to all three of those and then what we'll do right now is just go right from the top, folks. We'll just go across the gainers and losers list here. Sorry, I got a little like OCD. I got a, I don't know. You gotta bear with me there for a quick moment. Big OCD, so I just had to make sure that was all nice and even. All right, so start from the top, the MRIN trade up 62 plus percent. I don't know, choppy, choppy, choppy. Gonna pass on it right now. Ended up making a big move in pre-market and then it fell flat heading into the, you know, nine o'clock timeframe when Fausto started the meeting. So I wasn't really too keen on that leading into the market open and obviously dropped.  Ended up making a bit of a bounce. I wasn't there for that, but ended up dying off as you could see here. So yeah, I don't know, I'm just gonna pass on this. This GTT looked good at least going into two o'clock. I took my eyes off it. Ah, damn. It looked so good going into two o'clock exactly like I said. You know, nice level one stock. It was on our pre-market watch list. It was on our main morning watch list if I'm not mistaken. Stock was trending down going into the market open. So kind of like the MRIN trade, I was expecting a bit of consolidation at least before potential pop. And then just once the volume continued to die off after 9.30, I just kind of switched over to another trade. I didn't really follow this at all. So for what it's worth, it did make a really strong push, right? Bounced essentially off of 265, 260-ish, ran 65.70 cents up. And you know, right now perhaps it could build a higher or low. Perhaps this could build a support, right? Right off of 305 and spike back up. Again, I don't know. I'm very picky to put stocks on our main watch list. So we'll come back to this at the end, I feel. It's SEMR, if I was still called out after the market opened up. Ended up having a huge spread, right? Thin liquidity on the book, big spread on the matrix at least. X, Y, F, not much going on there. P, I, R, S. Now this looks pretty interesting, right? We caught this from pre-market early. It was pretty flat afterwards. So we didn't really follow it as much. Into the open. Then it caught our eye, of course. It did pop and then from there we called it out. So thankfully there was a lot left on this trade for us to capitalize on as it ended up breaking higher, popped over four. Made for an easy trade from there, to be honest. And right now it's still holding strong. So definitely the purest trade, P, I, R, S. We'll put this on our main list. Take this alongside the OCGN for right now. Those are the two on our main watch list for right now. MOXC, I gotta say. This stock is still pretty active. I'm not a fan of the liquidity on the book. Just big spread, fluctuating anywhere between what? Like 10 to 25 cents we could just shoot from the hips, hip from and say. So I'm not a fan of that, but the stock is making a bit of a balance right now. So perhaps there could be more of a run left to it. Oh, that's right. You know, I was wondering, I was like, why do I have this on a monthly chart here? You could see, says, you know, MOXC, MO, monthly. This is the reason why. I never had this on a monthly chart. And then for MOXC, as it was pushing up earlier into the afternoon, I was like, is this stock breaking all-time highs? And then you go to check the monthly chart here and obviously not. So let me just jump back to a daily chart for right now. See, it kind of fools you. All right, here's the stock we are familiar with. Rail, R-A-I-L, nice push right now. Getting a little choppy around seven. So perhaps seven 10 is the bigger level right off the high, essentially. Not much of an order showing on the ask just yet, but my assumption is that right off a seven 10, there's gonna be a bigger order showing. It's through the NASDAQ, so there should be a bigger order if it's gonna be through the NASDAQ. So it leaves me to believe it might be through a different exchange, maybe the ARCA book, the BATI book, but perhaps for right now, either way, Rail put on our main list, just still strong near the highs at this time of the day. All right, so we build up our list like this, right? I mean, then I'll come back to the stocks on the side and kind of cherry pick those, whatever of those look the best. I do see a call out right now from Norman if I'm not mistaken. I see it on Benzinga Pros. I have that right below this monitor that I'm sharing the screen from. And it's the A-H-T trade, right? Hospitality stock ended up pushing up pretty nicely earlier. I would have gotten to this anyway, but it kind of stars a lot in for me to just skip ahead and just jump to this stock. But yeah, pushing up really well here. So easily enough, we'll put this on our main list. I like this a lot more than the rail trade even, and rail is on our main list. This one not as choppy, making a stronger, more volatile push up off the previous high of the day from earlier, roughly a 495, and then obviously pushing up higher here. So let's just look out, oh, not even that. I was gonna say, look out for the stack of orders on the S10,000 shares, but right off the high of the day right now about 33,000 shares on the S32,000 shares at a 514. Really quick, I'm just catching this right now too. I wanna jump to YouTube for all of a sudden YouTube live right now. Cyrus asking here, have you went through the DBGI trade? So perhaps joining us a second or so late, no problem. So we'll jump back to DBGI fast. This stock just seems to be on its way down to fill the gap, perhaps maybe make the bounce off of five. But for a stock that ended up making such a big spike and pop and halt and move up after, I say it all the time. So I'll say it again here, when the volume dies off, so does the stock, right? It sound like a broken record player with that, right? But I don't say that to Cyrus in particular. I say that to everybody because if you get stuck trying to hold onto this stack off the highs or trying to expect a new bounce or run up later on and the volume dies off, it's easy to say here, but we talk about this each and every day right here in this meeting and Fausto talks about it in the morning. You know, just if it's not breaking higher, there's only one other way it's gonna go. I have probably three to four other lines that are just the same. Yeah, so for right now, this stock's gonna continue to dump off, I'd imagine. All right, ENG and nice bounce from earlier. It will pop first and then the bounce here roughly off of like 355, 360-ish and then pushing up for the meantime. So yeah, I would assume resistance off of four on the ask. There's not gonna be an order showing just yet, but I'd imagine for there to be one. And then also practically right off the high. I mean, you could just see that one there. 36 plus thousand share iceberg at 388. So yeah, for right now, ENG will put on our list and if it doesn't break higher, then hey, at least the stock is shortable. We can short this on the way down if this is just gonna top off here and pull back further. You know, that happens a lot. So should that situation happen, that could be something for us to capitalize on there. Now I'll tell you what really quick, one of the stocks I said I was gonna jump to afterwards, the torch trade, I'm in it right now from 497. I'm just clocking out. I got two cent profit.  So I'm not gonna put that stock in our main list at this point, but just out on that one. All right, so let's see what else we got. Not a whole lot happening really on that one trade at least torch. Vips, ooh, got a couple of other familiar names here. I'm sorry, before we hop over to the losers list here, UXIN, pop from earlier, still maybe pushing up here a bit. I feel like there's some better opportunities right now at this time, but you know, made a nice run from before.  So pretty flat as you could see since. So right now we're just gonna skip, scratch it from our list, put it on your side list for tomorrow, and then you won. So you won here a stock we are familiar with. We talked about this just over the last couple of weeks, but just basically this time last year, right? We first saw the stock pop. So again, you hope to see the stock make a fraction of the run that it made back a year ago. And we've seen that happen here, if not, well not more, but just as big of a move in my eyes. So for right now making a sharp push from earlier this afternoon, and yet ended up bouncing off of 10, perhaps building a higher low here and squeezing back up. I'll slip this on our list here, I guess. You know, we'll put it on the bottom. All right, so let's see what else we got. We'll hop over to the losers list. And folks for all of us on Facebook, YouTube Live, let me know if there's anything else that you would want me to check out for all of us live inside the trading room. Same thing. I hit this right A trade. Ended up dropping off of bad earnings if I'm not mistaken, right? So the stock just hasn't really done too much so far this afternoon, let alone throughout the whole morning. I guess the best move is off of 18 the short. If you're able to get in on that, you know, expecting a false breakout from 18, going short, then running it down. I don't know, just pretty flat right now. It's shortable, it's near the lows. So for all of those reasons, I like it. And rightly, we are familiar with the stock itself. It wouldn't hurt me to put this on our main list. But, oh, and look at that. All right, so you know what? I sold myself into doing it. But, you know, that's the main reason why I'm putting it on our list right now. Now we're seeing a bigger order at 1750, 25,000 share order. I was looking at that. I was like, there's only like 4,000 shares and say that out loud. But I was looking at that. I was like, I don't need to put it on our list. And then right there, 1750 proving itself to be a bit of a support coming up. So perhaps if this support breaks and we see more selling coming in below 1750, that could lead to a new drop. So I'll consider it. I'll put it on our list for right now. CLSD, we'll skip over here.  So those we're not really gonna really consider unless if they're down big enough for a dead cap balance. But not really seeing that here. You know what? I was wondering, I'm like, what's missing here? Got the S&P ETF, the spy I like to show. Sometimes the Dow, sometimes the spy. And yeah, spy right now at the high of the day. Whereas yesterday it was like as flat and dead as can be. You know, spy right now at least is making a bit of a triple top if not breaking higher right now. So we'll see if there's any stocks that could be moving with the market into the afternoon. The stock IHT, another hospitality stock, much like AHT, but I just saw this pop up on Benzinga Pro and I just wanna jump to it. This looks pretty good. It's up nine plus percent right now. So IHT will kind of tag on our list as well with AHT. From Lynette Vips and VZIO, Vips up nine plus percent at the highs, right? So that looks pretty good for as much as it dropped off even back from March of this year. Perhaps that could lead to a bigger run into the afternoon. So it's hard to not put that on our list. VZIO, if I'm gonna put one of the two on our list it'll probably be the Vips. Vips I like a little bit there. From RJF on YouTube asking about the ALF trade does that have one more push? So the other day I was wrong on that, right? You know it was breaking all time highs but it was trading God knows how many shares across the afternoon and it was pretty flat when we were watching it at the time that we were watching it. And then of course maybe like five minutes after I finished up the stream it ended up popping, right? So we ended up catching that move actually live inside our trading room that day two days ago. Yesterday it flopped and today although it popped after the market opened up, you know it could move up it might not, I don't know I'm not interested really in maybe, maybe not, right? If it does pop and if you're in it then God bless then you're gonna do really well given the typical volatility that we've seen the stock have you know over the last three days. You know this could easily make a 50 cent move if the stars align but for right now I don't know it's like coiling up so it can go one of two ways, right? For Michael SWBI at the high of the day, yeah that looks pretty interesting more as a swing trade than anything stocks been like a difficult day trade so it's a good call for Mike right here more on the swing side there I'd say this one we'll put on our list and this will wrap it up I think the SR&E so you know what for the GTT out there I don't think I'll be as keen to put that on our list at this point any of the other stocks I kind of said I'd jump back to I think at this point between the stocks that we've just kind of found out or looked at here I think that we have a pretty good list altogether so we got two, four, six, eight, 10 stocks in total right so we don't really need to put anything else on our watch list now.  All right I appreciate you folks for all of a sudden YouTube live ooh there we go RJF picking up 24 cents on ALF great job from RJF there for all of us on YouTube Facebook live feel free to join us live inside our trading room go right down to the link on the banner below just to get yourself started whoo for Michael L who I'm gonna be jumping into a coaching session with hopefully he'll be able to survive me and my stuttering heading into the afternoon I'll talk to you folks coming up at 3.30 take care.


What is up and welcome to Wednesday's live Q&A one of the most popular shows we have I got a special guest today the Duke That's what we're gonna call you. The name's Derek Duker. How long you've been on the team? Since October of last October. He's been a previous radio producer sports writer today He's a special guest on the show. He's the one that he's always on the show You just don't ever see him right behind the scenes you're answering the questions today. You are live with us, bro Welcome. Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. You got me. We got some good questions today or what?  You guys have been awesome So this show we do every Wednesday two o'clock central standard time you submit questions Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and We're wherever else on the line that you can do that Duke or ask them and I answer them live on camera. I want to remind you guys three quick things number one What kind of ticket you want to be wearing we had we had about a dozen tickets go yesterday You got to be an 8% nation with us also a new Cody's training program. It's only 37 bucks a month You can get access to it from Cody ask ins calm. We're doing a live Private training class with me for an hour. It's like a new agent struggling agent focused training class with professor Cody Every week and then also Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Hope you have a great Valentine's Day Will you be my Valentine whatever else 14% off of our leads tomorrow only for the 14th tomorrow only How about phone phenom last night and that was pop and we got a lot of comments on that one. That was crazy. I think we had 5060 plus people watching at once Pretty solid. We appreciate you guys without you the audience the studio audience Would we need a studio? No, and I would have no job. This is exactly right So, thank you that the Duke gets to keep his job The Duke of Leeds is giving you 14% off tomorrow only when you use Valentine when you call in and ask about the Valentine's Day Cell or when you enter the code and whatever special order form you have do let's get to the questions you guys ready Also, put your comments and questions in in in comments today live on Facebook and YouTube We got several joining. So thanks for being with us. Let's jump into some Q&A you guys Do these got some doozies you guys want to pay attention to watch today First question is there a benefit in staying a captive agent? Oh You know, I always try to avoid these types of questions. They always ask them anyway. Okay I'm gonna say that there are pros and cons to both and I think I surprised people being captive being independent I started out captive. I mean 117 grand. I think it was okay, right on a low comp level. I would say that Different people need more help more training more assistive manager Some people need the independent world, you know more commission more Leeds more access control. They own their business, you know, so At the end of the day Whether you're captive or independent 92% of you guys fell and we're here to change that so that's a good question way to start us off Also, I want to challenge you guys if you're not if we're not friends on Facebook I do a lot. I'm in the middle of a live show I do stories like this on Instagram and YouTube all the time all day And I want you guys on here with me. So add me on Facebook at Instagram at Kodiaskins. What's next, bro? I Have a lot of policy cancellations. How can I better keep my clients? Okay? So policy cancellations Comes down to a lot of it comes down to a couple things Some agents just oversell clients just because that's what some people do they just oversell them You know, if you're sitting in a trailer, you may not want to sell somebody a policy for $400 a month, you know Go figure and then the since that trailer didn't cost $100 a month And then the second thing is the relationship piece most people forget you guys forget Sales is a relationship game There's no need for a sell if a relationship isn't there Relationship is imperative relationship is super super super important. So that's what I think through whether I'm in whether I'm doing filled cells Whether I'm doing phone cells Relationship is what matters. It helps you short term to gain trust and earn the business It helps you long term so that when the next Joe Schmoe just runs down the street and tries to replace them for 38 Since less they don't do it because they've got a relationship with you So rather than speeding through the sales cycle, that's what that's why with our four-step appointment process We preach warm up and we preach cool down start off by warming them up Give them to know them and at the end we finish with cool down to where you're cooling down off of business You're continuing to build a relationship. You're asking them questions like hey, what are you doing the rest of the week? You got any big plans? How's the weather going to be you can hang out with grandkids? You know, what are you doing? And so that extra relationship piece is big it really how about give it up for Duke being on the show today Giving you guys another face to look at other than just mine all the freaking time I think another thing you said once about building a relationship is sending out those cards Yeah, you know birthday cards, whatever it does. It costs Little money and the Duke first show a spin game, dude. You're right. No say just forget about that little stuff That little stuff is huge man birthday cards, okay I thank you card when you write the business a Birthday card every year and we say a birthday card. You've heard this when we say birthday card This is in our University by the way our insurance wealth University 150 freaking videos and we preach about Even when you send a birthday card, don't say hey Betty, thank you for your business. This is Cody, right? Happy birthday. Like that's boring. That's what everybody does You want to be unique? You want to stand out? We do this stuff because we want to be unique. Am I right? So when you write that card you okay, you say what do you say put a dollar in it and say Betty Back when you were born in 1942 a dollar You know a coke was a can of soda was you know a nickel You know today It's about a box. So so have a coke on me. Have a great birthday. I appreciate you very much Cody I don't mention business. I don't mention that they're a customer or a client like no one wants to be a customer People don't get that so be unique. I'm glad you brought that up. Good point If I don't make contact on the first call, how long should I wait for my second and third drive for the day? Okay, a couple thoughts to add to that before I answer it calling from different numbers calling different times I'm gonna call a minimum of three times in the first 24 hours the first typically the first 12 hours first day I'm gonna call immediately.  They have a stack of leads just like this just a percent nation tags. They have a stack of leads It says Betty Smith. They call the lead three times in a row on the first call through then they go to the next one One dial two dials three dials back to back to back So I don't think there's ever a perfect way But just the fact that you do it and and go the extra mile and not be scared to be a premier Lead caller, you know what I mean? In the middle of a sales presentation a prospect asked can I cancel at any time? How should I handle that? Oh? Always agree, right? I preach that so in that case absolutely We don't hold we don't really hold anybody hostage my job, but also I want you to realize miss Betty that We're doing this today to protect your family in the event that when something does happen you're protected if you cancel They're no longer protected and you've wasted the money that you paid for the policy, right? So let's make sure that we put you in the right policy that we spend time together getting to know each other and that you're Comfortable with your decision. Would you agree? Yeah? Dude, that's I'm spitting we're spitting gold live on camera today That's a great question. That's really good any questions. Keep questions coming Facebook YouTube dookers over here watching these we're about to ask a couple I believe so yeah Maui Robinson asks Do final expense policies offer residual income? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, they do very varies by the the company, but yeah, there's some residual typically There's not always unlike term life insurance, but final expense. There's a little bit of residual. Yeah And then we got another one drone City, USA He asked us to excuse the account name He has a recently got his life and health license in the state of Florida. What are what is some of your best advice for new agents? joiner Watch all of our videos two things really Okay, three things the third one's the best because it's the value add You need to watch our university I don't know for you have training videos for new agents you need to join our Cody's coaching program at Cody askins calm I I train new agents and we do a new agent training class every week It's like it's like 30 bucks. It's for a month a whole 30 days It's crazy like a dollar a day and the third one is to have have a system like when I started as a new agent People struggle people fell because they don't get in front of enough people. So make it your goal to Either set 12 run 8 and sell 4 or or even better set 15 set 15 sit with 10 and sell 5 So have a system to get in front of people without leads are unemployed You need to learn so that's why I mentioned the first couple things the university in the training Cody's 20 training program But you gotta get in front of people 92% of agents fell which is why we have an 8% nation insurance wealth conference And why he's wearing that today and that because people fell and they don't get in front of people. So as a new agent activity is king Consistency is king leads are keen getting in front of people are keen instead of Well, I don't know what to do or when to do it. So I'm not gonna do anything like That's analysis paralysis. I'm throwing up on a mouth. Just thinking about it like go get in front somebody So that's a phenomenal question. I wish you the best. Florida's a great market. I know a ton of agents in Florida We're actually gonna be doing a that was drum to the USA, right? Yeah, which is probably not your name clearly, but That's a good cool name though. We're gonna do a We're probably gonna do a retreat a business retreat for new agents down in Florida in the next few months. So pay attention to that We're doing we're adding some new stuff to Cody askings calm a lot So make sure you guys pay attention to that kind of stuff. So thank you for the question Simon Carol asks what? What type of business card or magnet do you use to differentiate from the competition? Okay? That's a good point Two things real quick. Simon's in the UK. We're going global and yeah international. I like it second thing is okay Well, I have cards right now, and they're like they're like see-through aren't they? They're like a thick plastic or plastic see-through. It's cool. Yeah, super cool. You need exactly, okay? The other thing is when I was an agent I always put magnets on their fridge before I left I Could go back to some of my clients that I sold a deck almost a decade ago, and I guarantee you There's some places where my magnet is still on the fridge. So I'm a big believer in magnets I'm not a big believer in giving it to them. I'm a big believer in putting it on their fridge for them Like they may or may not put on the fridge. They may throw it away. Not if I put it on the fridge Maybe out of the reach of the kids would be a little higher, but but yeah that you I mean To answer most of those questions all about standing out about being unique. It's about the purpose of branding The purpose of branding is it when they think about a topic? They think about you When you think about insurance training Guess guess who comes to mind for about 10,000 agents across the country We do Same thing replies to insurance agents, so Tanner asks you if you could only call for a two-hour time slot during the week to get the most people What time would you choose Sunday from four to six? If I had to choose two hours, it would be Sundays from four to six try it try it It'll shock you most people will never call it Sundays like half, you know, you know what I Got a church It's the Lord's Day, but the dude He also wants me to eat and you better feed my family and pay for my mortgage So and people are home and they answer the phone So I don't think there's anything wrong with calling on Sundays I think it's actually better to call on Sundays and it's more right to call on Sundays because you're going to get a higher pickup Percentage so you might as well do it. That's a wonderful question. Who was that again Tanner Tanner 10 10s the man.   I like it. All right. We got it. We got a not to butcher. We got to try it All right, how would you go about working two-year-old direct mail leads? Two-year-old direct mail leads. Yeah, I would doorknock them. I Would doorknock them? Two-year-old direct mail leads I would doorknock about 20 as many as I could in the day And I would do that four to six days a week and the goal would be to Sit down with about a dozen people a week That'd be the goal from that. That's all awesome question by the way I mean, that's the stuff like unique stuff thinking outside the box. Yeah, you should try some secure agent leads You should also do some other stuff, too And then Luis Cisneros says first the university training is awesome. Come on man. That's Luis. Yeah, Luis I love you brother. Thanks. He's a part of our insurance wealth University. It's a couple hundred bucks It's got almost 150 training videos. Thank you, buddy He says how many leads per day should we be going through? Okay, so if they're fresh leads, I always think an agent needs about 30 a week and I think you should be calling them every couple times a day for the first week, so I Mean especially even with newly okay with with new leads you should never do any less than like 40 50 60 dollars a day For age leads you should never do less than like a hundred dollars a day And I'm talking at least three times a week minimum like like three schedules If I'd have a schedule of call times it would be Sunday from four to six Tuesday Tuesday nights And maybe another night maybe Saturday mornings if I had to pick like four times, you know Saturday Sunday Tuesday Thursday something right so That's all we got for right now. I love it Wednesdays live Q&A give it up for Duke in the comments for being a part of the show He watches you guys his comments add comments Facebook comments show comments Graphic comments YouTube comments. We get a lot of those The blog on secure agent leads calm that's all this dude. You're about to write a book for me, too Yeah, I think right. Yeah life in times of Cody ass You may not know enough for that yet Well, maybe so you watch a lot of videos and respond to a lot of comments right a lot of blogs So who knows man? That would be another thing I'd recommend to the new agents. I mean we get we put up a new blog post every day Educate. Yeah, I you know, I go and scour the Interwebs for all the the tips and things that I can find and go through your old videos So they don't have to go through all of those because there's what a thousand of them. There's only about a thousand Yeah, which is which is a lot. We're also really close to six thousand subscribers So it would mean a lot if you would share our content and get someone to subscribe to our YouTube channel Our Facebook's awesome, but we've got like twice the audience on YouTube. I think we've just been doing it longer I Share the video right? I mean if you want to do that, that'd be awesome We would appreciate it also.  We're kind of struggling with what to do, right? I mean right because when you we have do so much content that we wanted to be different and unique like Q&A Where you're asking the questions. That's unique. Pat phone phenom that went over really well last night So let us know what kind of content you want to see and we'll make sure to address it Thank you for the comments and questions every Wednesday live Q&A every Wednesday 2 o'clock since we're some time any other questions Yeah, we got a couple more. Okay. Keep them coming. Mr. Khan wants to know what are your three favorite final expense carriers and why? Some of them are vendors at our event If I had to pick three right now America's the top of the list for me. There's a big chance. There'll be a big sponsor at our event Good company. We do a lot of business with them Just a private help privately held company in Missouri, you know, I respect that there's also Name a couple of others There's a lot of good ones. There's there's Liberty Bankers. There's Foresters like there's there's several good carriers America's up on the list right now. They really really are I like I like I like a lot of them though So I don't want to like you know what I mean give anyone carrier I don't want to tick off any carriers. I need the carriers I need them to sell insurance, you know, and I need them to come have a booth at the event So really good question though and then Maria Greg asks I Normally work off warm marketing any suggestions Yeah, add something to that to two things with the warm market Bomb dinner show up skill go over to their house, whatever Be creative Don't just try to sell them Remember, it's a relationship piece and you already have the relationship. So play on that and then the other thing is You need you need leads Like warm market leads can only go so far I know there's companies that preach that hey you need to work your warm market And you know, you're you'll be amazing. You'll be a millionaire, but just work in your warm market Good luck. Yeah, don't put all your eggs in one basket exactly Also Go ahead coming out with us at 8% nation the statler in Dallas. We had about a dozen tickets go yesterday We're gonna have more in coming weeks. Also Cody's training program speaking in the third person now It's at Cody askins.com. It's like 37 dollars a month But we do a private training class for new and struggling agents every week with an for an hour with me Private training class. It's a group training class It's awesome and a big lead sell for Valentine's Day tomorrow Use the coupon who's the the code or the word whatever? heart for 14% off because you're gonna have some freaking hard for 14% off tomorrow of our leads makes you call into our office 833 40 agent to take advantage of that do occur any other thoughts Looks like that's all the comments we have. All right, you guys are awesome Thank you so much for being a part of Wednesday's live Q&A. Let us know what you love to see We love you hanging out with us and watching with us. Give it up for the Duke and the Dylan For spinning the records over there to produce the show. Thanks for watching. Appreciate you guys. You guys are awesome We'll definitely see you Friday as I'll be going to Florida for 8% club. Appreciate you guys. Have a great day