Well thank you very much Margaret and it's really a great honour to be able to speak at your own very prestigious institute here in Dublin. I have never visited Ireland in my life until yesterday when I arrived and that's a bit shameful because even though I'm called Alastair Murray McLean which suggests that I have only Scottish heritage. My mother's family was Irish so I still have a fondness for both parts of these islands and I really have only very recently taken on this role as a non-president fellow of the Lowy Institute which in its 11 years of history has indeed established a very good reputation for its concentration on international issues particularly on Asia. But when I was a member of the Australian Foreign Service for 42 years from 1970 through to 2012 when I retired from active salary employment with the government I somewhat unusually I think would be the way to put it concentrated or found my career concentrated in its entirety actually on Asia and that was even the three and a half years I had in Washington DC where we have a huge embassy. My beach was Asia Pacific and Great Power Relations at the time in the mid 80s so apart from that one excursion outside Asia all my postings have been in Asia with three in China where I spent 15 years. I speak Mandarin Chinese but I ended up as ambassador for seven years in Japan as well as the other plants you mentioned so I feel very comfortable about talking about Asia. In the 1970 years Australia was already well and truly oriented to Asia but we have undergone a huge evolution our own approach to the broad Asia and that's actually what I will speak about in the context of my concentrating I suppose particularly on the current growth and expanding influence of China in the region. For Australia perhaps I can state it's a statement of the obvious but the reason that we are that I was so privileged to be able to spend so much time working on Asia consistently is that for Australia increasingly more than ever before it's our major focus in foreign policy and we our top three trading partners by miles are China which is about 25 percent of our total trade Japan which had hitherto been as much as 25 and is now about 15 to 18 percent of our total trade and South Korea are our three major trading partners not the United States. The United States is by far the biggest investor in Australia followed by the UK but then Japan is the next biggest investor again four or five times more investment in Australia than from China even though if you read the newspapers in Australia the only reports are about all of China's growing buying out of Australia's resources and all the rest well it's actually not the case the there is a lot of new investment from China in Australia but it is actually matched by new investment from Japan the same level so we as a country in Australia we have interests throughout Asia and that's I suppose the first point I want to make before getting into the real subject matter of my discussion today is that while I'm talking about focusing my remarks later on about China Australia as a country with a future set by geography and part must concentrate on Asia it is not about a relationship with one country namely China it's about having a multifaceted set of relationships with those countries where it is terribly important for us to give full value to our those relationships to broaden marriage to to give full satisfaction to our interests with these countries we have probably the broadest or comprehensive relationship amongst Asian countries with Japan of any other country because with Japan we are both we share one particular thing in common and that is well number of things in common and that is that Australia and Japan are both allies of the United States and we are also of course flourishing democracies with a lot of shared values such as exercise of rule of law and a strong interest in preservation of world regional and world peace so there are a lot of symmetries which have led towards lead us towards over the last five or six years to an increased scope of security cooperation which has was further advanced during talks between our foreign and defence ministers respectively and two plus two talks only last week I'm not going to go through each of the relationships but it's terribly important that Australia get right its relationships not only with Japan but with China with Indonesia which of course is the nearest large country of Asia to us the fourth largest by population in the world the largest is Islamic country in the world and of huge importance in Southeast Asia generally and it will take off and is beginning to take off over time so it's terribly important that that is managed very well and then of course there's India which so much so that now policy makers in Australia are talking about not so much necessarily Asia Pacific but as the Indo Pacific to ensure that India is included in the same level priorities as Japan China in Indonesia and all of the other smaller but nonetheless important countries so that's why we have such a great deal of interest in in Asia and that's really the background from where I'll address the remain of my my primary remarks as Margaret said in the introduction we were discussing over lunch some of the aspects of the current situation and which prevails currently in in East Asia I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that in the years in the 40 years since the end of the Vietnam war and the Indo-Chinese wars involving Cambodia and whatnot let's say from 1980 onwards that the current situation in East Asia is more uncertain than ever before and that is because as Margaret said there is now a constant spring of incidents and disputes that are bubbling up involving disputes over sovereignty territorial sea and involving multiple countries and that includes obviously the claims that China has to a vast part of the South China Sea which overlaps claims of several of the states literal states of of that South China Sea such as Vietnam Malaysia and the Philippines in particular and then there's also the somewhat complicated issue of the fact that Taiwan is also a factor there that may not always necessarily share precisely the same claims as China although in many senses it does so all of those are factors there that are there and then on top of that you have of course the tensions if that's not too strong a term I think it's correct to say that between China and Japan that relates primarily or is focused primarily on the island chain which the Japanese call Senkakus and the Chinese call the Daiyu Tai group the Japanese position on that is that there is no dispute that it is Japanese sovereignty under Japanese sovereignty the Chinese say at the very least there is dispute because it is Chinese sovereignty that is exercised over them and so we've had a very worrying spiralling up of tension involving incidents involving naval boats coast card boats and military aircraft around those islands so much so that there was one last week involving planes allegedly 30 meters apart only that comes on top of the visceral dislike which the Chinese have of Japan and I'd have to say is reciprocated by the Japanese I'm speaking as a non-official now of course I can say that and it isn't helped by actions sometimes taken for domestic political purposes by each of the two countries concerned so we have a situation where we've got the two by far biggest economies in the East China area the second the world's second and third largest economies who trade and invest in each other very significantly very heavily as well basically shaping up but maybe it's because I've had 42 years of being a diplomat I am convinced that neither Japan nor China wants to go beyond the state of shaping up it is totally against the interests of either side to end up with even a limited state of conflict between the two of them and of course this is where Australia again comes into it and in fact all countries of the world come into it really that trade with these two huge economies it is certainly not in the interests of either of the rest of the world that it were to deteriorate into such a state and while it's not a logical conclusion immediately to say therefore it won't I am pretty confident it won't unless there are some further developments that I can't predict and if we were to turn them to the other disputes that China has with Southeast Asia Asian countries particularly Vietnam and the Philippines but also Malaysia I think this is somewhat different story it's about the fact that for reasons that are not entirely clear and I'll explain what I mean by that in a second for reasons that aren't entirely clear that China has decided to take on really quite intrusive actions such as setting up an oil rig near the Paracel Islands or as they would call them the I forgot which one what the Chinese call them now but anyway it's the Paracel Islands are generally accepted term in English parlance and that's where we've had 136 Chinese boats protecting this rig some of probably none of them marked as such as naval boats I think but probably with naval connections and you've had 70 or so Vietnamese boats and you've had clashes and you've had reactions in Vietnam where Chinese interests such as factories and individuals being trashed or attacked or demonstrated against pretty serious stuff one of the periods I spent when I was had a period in Canberra in 1978-79 was writing analysis of the so-called Chinese counter-attack in self-defense against Vietnam which took place when China decided to punish Vietnam for border provocations alleged in their border and what we're seeing at the moment I think is probably the most serious sort of development between those two countries since then and this all comes at a time when Vietnam is obviously doing extremely well as an economy it's so terribly much smaller than China but it's a very vibrant economy it's got a significant amount of investment from outside Japan, Taiwan and also of course China so that is very disruptive as it were then you've got the Philippines, the Philippines has been through difficult times over the last decades but there's nothing like something like this to bring the nation together and very interestingly while the disputes haven't been quite of the nature of severity as the ones with Vietnam that you have a very standoff between the two and the diplomatic relationship is not very comfortable at the moment what's very interesting is that the Philippines have decided to seek arbitration over the disputed islands that they have been with China and it's too early to know whether they're even going to arbitration but I think some commentators have mentioned that the case that the Philippines have is by no means one that can be easily dismissed all of this points to a rather tense and disrupted zone or at least area and one may well ask the question why is this the case since China has said since they began their reforms in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping that they need for the next century or whatever I don't think I've mentioned the timeframe but certainly for a long time a peaceful and stable environment because that is the best assurance of their being able to concentrate on economic growth and development why then are these has this pressure been ratcheted up in such a way why are there is there so much uncertainty and tension good question is it about China simply reasserting itself now that is very confident of its position as a major world economy the second world economy perhaps very soon in some statistical ways the biggest economy is it about still trying to write what it sees as the wrongs of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century when China was heavily affected by colonial experiences from the European powers and the first 10 years of the Chinese Communist rule where they were subject subject to Soviet dominance it could be all of that it could also be about the fact that in 1945 they were one of the victors of the war in the Pacific but somehow or other in their terms they turned out to be a loser whereas Japan which was the loser of the Pacific war through the American occupation and huge American support quickly became a victor after the war these are all questions but whatever we are faced with at the moment is a situation that has conflicting interests amongst the major powers in the region we have the United States that in some people's eyes is somewhat ambivalent about its long-term future in the region although I think if you scratch the Americans they would say for sure we are committed and we've indeed cast a new pivot of activity in Asia to bolster the peace and security of the region and that is true to a certain extent but we have in we've always had in North Asia the interaction of major powers if you look back in the immediate post war decades you had the Soviet Union China Japan and the United States all all mixing it as it were their interests all intersecting in that region we're seeing that in ever more than before with rather a stronger China that of course than before a somewhat weaker Russia but are still very strong United States and are still pretty strong Japan plus the interests of South Korea and Southeast Asia and indeed Australia will be as well so that's why I open my remarks by saying it's a very uncertain time and it might make it it might be rather more difficult in the future it's not going to go away anytime soon so that's my opinion remarks thank you


inside the hang space of VMware, VMworld 2012. VMware 2012 is getting late in the early in the day-day. So. 20 day two, John. We are Marathon coverage, Wall to Wall coverage, Siliconangle.com's exclusive and continuous coverage, three days of Wall to Wall VMware, VMworld 2012 coverage. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Siliconangle.com and I'm joined by co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org and we're here with Cynthia Stoddard, who's the CIO of NetApp. Cynthia, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you. We first met in June. You were relatively new to NetApp at that time or at an analyst event. And you were talking to a number of us and we had a great conversation and I wonder if we could explore some of those things here. But first of all, we're here at VMworld. What do you think? I think it's great. It's just a wonderful place to be. Virtualization is a real building block future for IT. So seeing all the excitement, all the products, wonderful. NetApp won the demo. That was big news, right? Dave hits, you know. Dave is wonderful. He's great. He definitely helps the ballot box and yeah, so tell us a little bit about NetApp's IT operations and what you're doing and where you're taking it. Yeah, operations, IT operations, the IT organization at NetApp, I view as being very strategic. You know, we look a lot to add value to the organization and one of the key ways that an organization can do that is really to position themselves to be agile. And you hear a lot about agile these days and I think it's a word that can be used in a lot of different ways, different elements and you hear about agile development which we've been doing. I mean, we looked at our Salesforce implementation and we did that in agile format. So we had scrum teams and all this other stuff but the important thing to consider when you look at an agile organization is it only can be as agile as your weakest link.  If you set up your infrastructure in an agile format so that it can expand, contract, you have the efficiencies, then you're gonna enable your development organization, you're gonna enable your business users to do things a lot quicker which means you're delivering that value to the business quicker and you can respond to market demands in a better manner. So it's like a caravan, going down the road, the slowest truck is what slows the whole convoy down. Right, so if you think about it, you have these wonderful scrum teams who are doing all this work but if you can't spin up an environment in a quick enough manner, they're gonna stall and have to wait or if you need to do some testing in a special manner and you need some special equipment or something or a virtualized environment and you can't do it, you have to wait a traditional way to do it, it's gonna slow things down. So the quicker that you can enable your infrastructure to handle those sorts of situations, you're gonna enable the whole organization to deliver the value quicker. So how do you deal with that? I mean, you don't get free infrastructure, I don't even know you're an infrastructure company, you still got a capital budget and you have to deal with that. So how do you resolve that? How do you go from point A to point B without ripping and replacing your old stuff? Well, you're absolutely right, we don't get free infrastructure. So we have budgets and everything just like all the other IT organizations. We make use of our products very extensively. We've actually have implemented what we call a program NetApp on NetApp which really highlights the use of our products internally and also another program that we call customer one where we are the first user of our products internally. So they kind of work hand in hand. One is really to demonstrate the long-term use of our product and the other one is to be that first user of the product. On the long-term use we use the products in order to make quick replicas of our environment. So if you think about, or I can give you a few examples of what we've done is an environment that if you look at our business intelligence environment, we needed really to have a series of about eight different environments in order to really do the work at the pace that we needed to support the business. Using our technology, we were able to really have two physical environments and then up to 24 virtual environments. So we already originally had a goal to say, hey, eight would suffice, but when we started to expand and use our own technology and adjust our processes, we found that we could really expand and support the business that much quicker. So there's a lot of benefits that come out from looking at your infrastructure and making sure that it is agile and can support your development.  We talked in June about what you're doing with data analytics. Why don't you share with our audience some of the things that you're doing and we'll get into it a little bit. Sure, we are doing a lot with big data. Actually, we have a implementation that we've been doing with our own technology, the E2600 and Hadoop. And what we have is we have a tremendous amount of data that is generated by our product. And this data that comes in on a cycle, it tells us alerts, it tells us different statistics about what is actually going on within the NetApp environments. It's called our auto support. You can call it a home phone feature, but it's actually much richer with the statistics and the information that it passes back to us. It's much richer than a home phone. So what we do is all this information comes back in. If the customer has it turned down, it comes back in. It's all metadata. It's all metadata. It comes back in. It populates the Hadoop data structure. And then we can use it to create analytics, predictive analytics. So we can look at different types of trends and issues that might be going on or different ways that people are using some of the features of our product and be able to package that up internally for use so that we can better support our customers. And then also we have the ability to package it up for the customers so they can understand what systems they might have at risk, where they can make better use of some of our techniques and tools and features and where they might not be as storage efficient as they could be in certain areas. And this is all packaged up and you can take our big data concept and take it all the way to mobility because it's all packaged up and it's used internally on our website and we even have mobile applications where you as a customer can look at my ASAP, my auto support and get that information right at your fingertips. Okay, so you're not just shipping PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets to people and your partners can take advantage of this as well? The partners, yes, absolutely. So you set up a portal? We have a portal, you can actually download the mobile app, yes. When did you go live with this? When did we go live? Maybe about six months ago? So, talk about it. Six months ago on some of the mobile app but the Hadoop journey has been iterative. So, again, employing some of the agile techniques. We actually started that maybe about nine months ago and we've had about three releases this year. So how has it affected the business? Your customers' businesses or your partners' businesses? What are some of the learnings and impacts that you could share with us? Well, the impact is, I think is huge. If you can think about, before you had to analyze a subset of information because perhaps you didn't have the processing power to analyze the whole population, whereas now we're capturing much more and we can take that whole population and analyze it, your result is going to be that much richer. So you're not constraining your result by the size of what you're analyzing. Yeah, so I have to ask you, do you virtualize the Hadoop application? Do you know? Portions of it, yes, are virtualized, yeah. I saw VMware putting a big emphasis on bringing that Hadoop silo into the virtual platform. There's always some concern about doing that with analytics, you know? Yes, yes, yeah. Some of the application heads don't want to do that, so it's a practitioner. Well, you know, that's an interesting point that you make about application heads not wanting to do that because I think there's a little bit of a fear that if you mix different types of workloads that your particular workload that you're responsible for may suffer. So I think that that's part of the education process that both infrastructure people and the education that happens at conferences like this where that people can get comfortable that you can coexist in a virtualized environment. Yeah, that's not in my backyard syndrome. That's right, that's right. That's right, you can do it but not me. So how aggressively are you? I mean, NetApps bet the farm on virtualization generally and VMware specifically.  We are very aggressively virtualizing our applications overall as an organization. We're about, I would say, 70% rough numbers virtualized. If you look at our dev test versus our production environment, our dev test is actually virtualized more than the production. And the reason for that is, is we have actually built a new data center up in Hillsborough, Oregon and we're gonna be taking our production applications from our two data centers in California moving them up to Oregon. We will expand our production virtualization footprint while we do that. Actually, we've called our Oregon data center the home of the agile data infrastructure. So we'll be deploying our cluster mode and FlexPod and ensuring that whatever we put into that data center is built to a certain set of standards. We're actually also viewing it as kind of a blueprint in a case study so that when we work with our customers to move to cluster mode in an agile data infrastructure, we can take them through the learnings and the practices that we have encountered as we move our production applications up to Oregon. I wonder if I could ask you about the CIO's role. It's always an interesting topic that I'd like to discuss with particular, where are we today? Where do we come from? Obviously, the lead technology officer is not typically a geek, you know? I mean, I mean that in a good way. It's all you geeks out there. But seriously, you're not. I mean, maybe you've got some folks with programming backgrounds, but generally speaking, your CIO today is a business person. And that's not always been the case, but I guess in the last five, 10 years, that is the case. Where do you see that role today and where do you see it going? Yeah, I think that the CIO role today is very much business focus and I would expand the business focus to say that the business focus is really to enable the internal business to operate efficiently, with really the goal of driving those efficiencies to the external customer. Also, when you look at the external role, making sure that you understand what the customer pain is, so that you can structure your processes and your products and everything to fit that external need. So I see it really as a CIO role today is really in three different components. The first is meeting the needs of the business and being that business person, bringing solutions to the table and saying, okay, here are ways that you can apply technology or change what you're doing on the business process side. Also being an advocate for the external customer, whatever business that you're in, whether you're in high tech as we are and being the advocate for customers using NetApp product, but if you're in retail, actually being the advocate for those customers either using your website or shopping in your stores or whatever. The third component is really being that internal visionary and leader to the IT organization. So really splitting it into those three components because the IT organization needs that leader and vision of where's the roadmap, where are we going? How do we support the business? The business needs the CIO to really be that partner and bring ideas to the table and then the external world really needs the CIO to be an advocate for them so the technology fits. And as the CIO and a technology company, you've got another role. You've got demands on your time.  And we have a great sales force. Some points and so that pulls into time. And I suppose, I don't know, I guess the CIO of FedEx probably goes and visits a lot of customers too, but is it different in the role of a technology company, a technology driven business where you're selling technology? Is it more demand on your time and how do you manage all that? You know, I came out of the logistics business. So actually you talk about the CIO of FedEx calling on customers, yeah, he probably would. Actually I did when I was in my old role and I would say that from that perspective, it's similar. I think there's a slight difference and I would say that in the logistics world, you're really crafting solutions for the supply chain where in the technology world, you're really sharing best practices and how you use the product, right, and you're sharing best practices and other components of IT. You might have a conversation about big data, but you also might have a conversation about how are you rolling out agile infrastructure or how do you set up an enterprise architecture group where it has credibility in the organization. So you get into a lot of different topics being in a technology company that are really just top of mind and best practice. And more of a catalyst in some cases as well for a knowledge transfer. Exactly. Cynthia Stoddard, thank you very much for coming inside theCUBE. Great story, steady hand at the helm of NetApp's technology business. Really appreciate you coming on. Thank you, it's great to see you again. All right, keep it right there. We'll be right back. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE.TV's continuous coverage of VMworld 2012 from San Francisco. We'll be right back.


Chief Warrant Officer to Lucas Penel loves to fly. It's something that I have a passion for. It's something he's done his entire life. I grew up flying my family's been flying and my dad's a flight instructor so it kind of was I guess in my blood first say. He doesn't just pilot any old aircraft though He flies the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. The type of support CW-2 Penel provides keeps the enemy at bay and soldiers safe. Our job is to provide quick and lethal decisive fires of all requests from the commandant as well as a presence in the area for any patrols or any operations. It's been a pleasure to be able to provide aerial security during convoy missions as well as close combat attacks during engagements that we're not forced to ban with the insertion. Senior Armand Evan Mills, Ford Operating Base 2 News, Afghanistan.


Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Esoteric Atlanta. Of course, my name is Bryce, and this is our weekly look at the Octurian anthology, which is a work that was channeled by Tom Kenyon. Now, today we're going to be looking at Mary Magdalene. People know as Mary Magdalene, of course, on this channel we know that she was just Magdalene, and I have not read ahead. But I just wanted to take a moment to remind everybody that when somebody is channeling information, the channeled information is coming through the knowledge and the perception of the channeler. And so when we get to things like Magdalene or Yasua, there might be some contradicting stuff like the crucifixion that we now know didn't happen. And a lot of that, it doesn't mean that Tom Kenyon was trying to fool anyone or anything like that.   And so I just wanted to remind everybody of that in case it does come up in Magdalene or Yasua's channeling sessions. Now, I also want to, again, apologize if you hear any screaming or banging. If you are new to the channel, I've got a high rise being built literally less than 10 feet from the window in the room that I am in right now. There's nothing I can do about it. I do live right in the middle of Atlanta, Georgia. So it just, it is what it is. And I apologize if that becomes annoying. I'm sorry. There's nothing I can really do about that. All right. And before we get into the reading, a quick word from our sponsors. My uncle Dan used to talk about QTR. QTR meant for him quality time remaining. My uncle Dan was a very active cyclist and a very avid hiker. And after he retired after a long career, he decided that he really wanted to make the most of the years he had left where there was quality to his life before the aging process really limited his ability to enjoy things like cycling and hiking. Unfortunately, my uncle Dan did lose his battle to cancer back in 2019. 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But from my perspective and from all of the perspectives and experiences I've read from you guys, this product has done nothing but enhance every single person's life, every single person's quality time remaining, whether that be 50 years or 10 years. We see a lot of people talk about med beds, this idea of med beds, everybody's waiting for a med bed. But what if I told you, in my opinion, the med bed is already here. With the SIA, what it comes with each liquid, it's a liquid, each liquid comes with its own shot glass. The shot glass is about two ounces. Each person is instructed to take between four and eight ounces a day. You take a little shot of the SIA, you swish it around for 30 to 60 seconds, so that you allow the saliva to carry the redox where it wants to carry it, and then you swallow the rest. The redox is so genius and the creators of this product are so genius that in my opinion, they really, really honored and respected God's design. 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I've been using the gel on my thighs and on my boobs because yes friends, I am 40 years old and as the aging process does occur, the body starts to droop a little bit. And no, I've never had children, so my boobs aren't as droopy as they could be if I had to use them to feed a child, but they still are. You know, I got boobs and they're starting to sink a little bit.  So I've been taking the gel and putting them on my chest. And not only have I noticed a difference, but my boyfriend has also noticed a different difference as well. My boyfriend has been putting the gel on his head. As he is in his fifties now, he has started to notice thinning of the hair, as most men do around that age in their lives. And he is starting to grow his hair back, which is quite incredible. In fact, I find myself now when I walk past him putting my hand in his hair just to feel all the hair that's growing back on his head. You see my friends, your body doesn't want to fail you. It wants to keep you going. It wants to keep you healthy. That is how God designed it. And this product is basically the controllers of this world's worst nightmare. Now, once again, I can't make any medical claims because this product is just a supplement. But from everything I have researched about this product from all of the people using this product, you really can't go wrong with this product. And because this product uses the intelligence of your body, each individual person is going to start to notice different things occurring with this product. If you are interested in learning more about this product or purchasing this product or even becoming a part of the business of Asiya, please text Bryce Info to<PHONE_NUMBER>. Again, that's Bryce Info to<PHONE_NUMBER>. And Jay or Hillis will get back to you as soon as possible. If you are texting from a country outside of the United States, please make sure that you add plus one.<PHONE_NUMBER> plus one is our country code. And in your text on top of texting Bryce Info, just make sure you let Jay or Hillis know that you are texting from a country outside the United States so they can arrange a call with you on WhatsApp or Signal or Zoom, any application that's not going to charge you. With that being said, another amazing thing about the Asiya company is that they do offer a 30-day money back guarantee. So if this product doesn't work for you or isn't what you expected after the first 30 days, they will refund you. All right, back to our show. So again, this is the section in the Octurian anthology of Mary Magdalene, or as we know her name just to be Magdalene, and this is page 103 if you are following a walk. I find it in almost certainty that some individuals reading this may find it difficult to believe that biblical figures could have alien origins. But I assure you that many biblical characters had their origins in other worlds. And even the gods described were advanced alien intelligence misperceived. So if you're new to all of this stuff, I will be putting a playlist where this other readings can be found down in the description box below. It's the playlist called Understanding the Magdalene. And yes, we know that a lot of these religions were founded based upon really extraterrestrials, not necessarily gods, but because they seem to have more advanced abilities, human beings thought that they were gods. We also know from past channelings that the Anunnaki did alter our DNA to make us be more, have the propensity to want to be enslaved, to follow a leader, which is really easy to see. We see people trying to follow a leader all the time. And there is a difference between having like a teacher or a mentor and following a leader. Following a leader can lead to enslavement, whereas a teacher or a mentor can lead to liberation. A teacher's job is to eventually not be needed. A leader's job is to always be needed. And so yes, if you missed all of that, it again, it's down in the description box below under show notes, under the playlist Understanding the Magdalene.  What I wish to address here is the story of how I came to understand my octurion roots, my octurion emanation, and how I recognize in Yahshua the same, meaning his octurion emanation and how in the joining of the two, he and I created a mission. Now again, we know Magdalene is also Lyran. So you can be many things. I know that I am Lyran, I am Octurion, and I am Bladium with some other stuff as well. We see that from the Sophia code as she was able to shapeshift into a lion and the Lyrans were the holders of the Christ consciousness. They had kind of a golden hue to them and their job, literally a Lyran's ability, one of their abilities is to fight demons. And so we see that back in the Sophia code. And so I wanted to acknowledge that you could be one of many, many origins. Just like, I mean, think about it, your natural state as, especially for the Americans, like what we're told, right? We don't know if any of this is really true, but you know, Americans are mutts. They have a little bit of everything in their DNA. It's the same with the Galactics. When I was born, I knew that I was different, and so did my mother, God bless her, or I should say goddess bless her. It was a recognition of my difference that led her to take me to the temple of Isis, where I was trained in the mysteries of the great goddess, the cosmic mother. This training involved long hours of what she would call meditation.  So we see this reference a little bit again in past channeling. So it could be that it was her mother's wishes for her to be trained in the temple. We know that Magdalene's mother was completely taken out of the Bible, and that is something I'm very curious about because we see no reference to her mother, but apparently there are Gospels that were written by her mother before Magdalene was born. Going back to where she talks about how Yeshua and her prayed the mission, that goes back to the original prophecy. We were told, especially growing up Christian, that the original Jewish prophecy was that a Messiah was going to come, and then was going to come back again. That wasn't the prophecy, that was the changed prophecy, that's because a good narcissistic psychopath always rewrites history, right? The original prophecy was that one person wasn't coming twice, but that two people would come once, and they would change the cosmic and conscious understanding of the Christ consciousness, a feminine and a masculine. Magdalene, Yeshua, nothing about them coming back, only them being here once, to basically push the domino in a different direction, all right? And again, the root word of Messiah means a phallical pillar, and if we look at Yeshua and Magdalene, if we see, nowadays we see the fish symbol being the sign of the Christian faith, but that's actually the Visicapai seats. So that was the original symbol of these Christian Gnostic schools that were started by Magdalene and Yeshua and their students. The Visicapai seats is the representation of Magdalene, the feminine, whereas the Messiah, the phallical pillar, is Yeshua the masculine. Yeshua is not your Messiah. Yeshua is Magdalene's Messiah, and if you remember, return of the Divine Sophia, the other Sophia book we went through, she showed all the research where in marriage, when they would do high priest and priestess' marriages, it would say Messiah and Visicapai seats. So Visicapai seat was the wife, the high priestess, where the Messiah was the priest, the joining of the two, divine, feminine, divine, masculine. And so what if we look at the Visicapai seats being the fish symbol we see nowadays for Christians, it shows you historically just how important Magdalene was to this mission, equally as important as Yeshua. Now, why did they turn her into a prostitute and why did they try to make her not his wife? Well, that's simple. It's because the divine feminine represents the intuition. And so as above, so below, as without, so within, as with the micro, as with the macro, as with the micro, right? So by desecrating Magdalene's name, it also intuitively, it's a spellcasting, you start to desecrate your own intuitive arts, your own intuition, your own gut feeling, and move more into the masculine energy, which is the practical thought, right? And so very fascinating, very, very fascinating. Some of these were, some of these, these meditations she's talking about in the temple, and that's it too. Yeshua and Magdalene were not Jewish. They were Egyptian. They had Jewish students, but they were Egyptian. They were of the priest and priesthood of Isis. That's what the Essenes, Isis, the spelling of Isis back then, Eses, Esen, they were the priests and priests of Isis. They were Egyptian, right? Why do you think the controllers of the world want to make Isis so bad now? Because that's the actual, it's all inverted. Everything's inverted. All right, so let's go back. Some of these were done to the sounds of drums and hearts and other instruments, and we were moved in stylized manners to produce altered states of mind. And through these movements and sound inner doors would open, and I was free from the constraints of the physical world. I would travel through the cosmos on the wings of Isis, and it was during this period of my training that I often found myself on Octurius, carried there, there on the wings of Isis through a wormhole, a channel between the worlds, so far apart yet so close in consciousness. I was trained to attune my minds that I could enter these other worlds by my own volition. It was at some point in this cycle of training and service to the temple that I discovered my animation, my Octurian root, and I lived a very strange paradox for a while, experiencing myself as a human woman in training to be a priestess, and at the same time possessing an identity as an Octurian. It was a strange mismatch between a human and an amination. But as I began to more fully understand my amination, I began to fully appreciate its gifts as well as its, what shall I call it, challenges. I'm coming forward to speak in this material for the benefit of others who possess Octurian emanations and for those who possess emanations from other worlds as well. Yours is a unique challenge to live the life as a human being knowing that there is more of you, and yet how do you bring the unique gifts of your animations into your human life without drawing too much of the wrong attention to yourself? Make no mistake about it. As a collective, human beings mistrust the emanations from other worlds. For some of you, it is as if you are bringing great treasures, but no one recognizes it.  I'm sure a lot of people that resonates with. These quandaries must be dealt with by all those who carry emanations, and my story is no better than yours. Yet, I hope in my recounting of this story, you may better understand your own predicament, and it is my hope that you will find a path through yourself whereby you can appreciate and love your emanations for what it is. In this simplest form, an animation is an energetic that possesses its own intelligence. In my case, it was an Octurian animation, and thus I carried with it my nature as energetic response to situations that was Octurian, not human. And the intelligence I used at times to solve problems was Octurian and not human. To my fellow humans, this just seemed odd and strange. But to those who were psychic, it was clear that I was operating with an animation as part of my nature, thus animations in part to the individual ways of being and ways of acting in the world that are different from and sometimes contrary to the human nature of the individual. Let me now turn our attention back to the Temple of Isis. I was most fortunate in that the High Priestess recognized not only my potential, but also my emanation. She was well prepared to deal with such a being as me. It was no easy task, for I was headstrong. This was a result of my animation, for we Octurians are action-oriented and ready to face any conflict without a second glance. My teacher trained me in patience, and she unveiled for me my emanation through deep meditations which we did together in the inner sanctum of the Temple. It was after almost a year that she said to me that my training would take a new course. I was to be trained in the sex magic of Isis and the deep mysteries of the alchemies of Horus. As I recounted this story, I am brought to tears by my love and respect for this teacher of mine. And those carefree days in the temple before my work in the world began. The sex magic of Isis was considered a most sacred path. It involved the use of sexual energy to transform personal consciousness to arouse the serpent Lys Dormit at the base of the spine of the Jed, the sacred pathway of the chakras into the higher brain centers, thereby opening doorways into other worlds and to unify personal consciousness through the sacred marriage that occurs within the interim sanctum of the brain. And we talked about this with the Magdalen manuscript, which is also in the same playlist. In Sanskrit, the Jed, as most of you have heard me say, is Shashuna. It is the channel of energy that runs up the spine and runs through the chakras, right? It's like the chakras or the spinning wheel and the Jed or Shashuna is kind of that tube of energy that runs through them. This is what the obelisk is. A lot of people in our world think the obelisk is Osiris' penis. That's not true. That's part of junk conspiracy. That's part of misleading you. The Jed, which you see from the Egyptians, was used as an antenna the same as your spine is. So again, as with the macro, so with the micro, as above, so below, as with your inner world, so with the outer world. So the same way that the Shashuna, the Jed, the spine, the tube on the spine works as an antenna for your own energy, these obelisk we see around the world are also harnessing energy, right? So we don't necessarily want to take them all down. Remember, darkness can't create anything. If you think darkness can create something, then you are giving the darkness way too much power and you're very uneducated when it comes to science. Darkness can't, with the absence of light, there can be no creation because light is the creation. So everything that the dark ones, the bad guys, the controllers have used in this world to hurt us is an inversion of something that was created for good. And so if we were to try to take down everything in this world that has been used to hurt us, we would have nothing left, right? Because everything was originally created for the good. No, our job is to course correct. Remember, Lucifer is the God of destruction and chaos. Our God is the God of healing and mercy. Our job is to heal and to take back what was ours. So I just wanted to remind you guys of that. I did not know it then, but I understood it when I first met Yeshua. What I was referring to here is why my teacher changed the course of my training. I thought I was being trained to become a high priestess myself. Never did it occur to me that I would become a priestess of high sexuality or that I would use this knowledge in union with a male that would become my husband. I thought I had entered a celibate life.  I thought this was the path I was entering and so it became quite surprised to me when my teacher said I would be training in the mysteries of the sex magic of ISIS. And so I want to point something out here else as well. And she talks about this in the Magdalen manuscript. Magdalen manuscript, when you think about the sex magic of ISIS, a lot of people misunderstand this. They're thinking about sex parties of orgies or whatever. No. Magdalen only had one partner. That was Yeshua. Yeshua only had one partner. That was Magdalen. And so when we look at this in its purest form, it is you with your counterpart.  I mean, that's what you want to do. Do you boo? But there's a karmic exchange. It's you with your other half. That's it. That's where the term making love comes from. After I completed my training in the arts and sciences of sexual transformation and the alchemies of forest, it was determined by my teachers that I was well prepared for the task. After my final initiation, marking me as a high priestess of sex magic of ISIS, my main teacher took me into the inner sanctum and handed me a snake bracelet. This was the symbol and a marked me to those who knew as a high initiate and master of the sex magic of ISIS. So the cuffs you see women wear, that was the marking them as a high priestess in this type of alchemy of making love. Again, it didn't mean that they were out there having sex with everybody. No, they were using their own partner to achieve this type of consciousness and awakening. And the serpent, again, I'm going to remind you guys, darkness can't create anything. Lucifer did not create the freaking serpent. God did. It was always created by God first.  Give God more credit than that, right? The Satan can't create anything. So it's an inversion because that's the serpent represents the rising of the Christ consciousness. That's the Kundalini. And so of course the dark ones, of course the bad ones, we're going to try to invert the serpent and make people terrified of the serpent because the rising of the Christ consciousness is what frees us and liberates us. And the day that I had met Yahshua by the well, I was wearing this bracelet and his mother, also initiate of ISIS, recognized my bracelet. And in that moment, when I looked into his eyes and into her eyes, I understood why my teacher in the temple had changed my course of destiny. The animation within me dormant for all those years was now entering a mission that had been planned long before my embodiment as a human of woman. And this story involved the Holy Trinity of Yahshua, his mother and myself. And I laugh at the irony of those words. I have a different view on the Holy Trinity from what we learned from the return of the Divine Sophia, the Holy Trinity is you.  It's you in your relationship with your spirit and God. The central feature of an emanation I wish to discuss is the amnesia that surrounds it. I knew that I was different from others. How many does that resonate with? I knew that I was different from others. I didn't know why exactly, but I knew. My mother knew it as well. And when she took me to the temple of Isis, the high priestess saw it. And when I was passed from the care of my mother into the care of the high priestess, I entered a new chapter in my life. But even then I did not understand my emanation. Even when I found myself flung through the portal to Arcturius through altered states of mind, I did not understand my emanation. As my teacher took me under her wing and unveiled more and more of my emanation to me, I began to slightly understand it. But I find it curious to this day that I did not fully understand it until I looked into the eyes of Yeshua. My mind was shattered by the recognition. And my heart was shattered by my love for him. And through the pieces of myself, I looked into the eyes of his mother, who recognized me. And I knew in a flash the full breadth of my animation and the purpose of my mission. All of it revealed to me by an instance by that well, how ironic and how typical. So for those who say they don't believe in love at first sight, I absolutely do believe in love at first sight. And I think that's because there is a recognition in people's eyes. When you meet people's eyes, you see, even though we go through amnesia, she's saying you see the imprint of an agreement that you previously made with another person, especially when it's your other half. As Yeshua and I began to discover more about each other, it was clear that both of us were on a mission together. He would be the one presented to the world and I would be in the shadows. I had no problem with this and I still have no problem with this. She was the main teacher, guys. We know that from other stuff. She was the main teacher. I think again, this is the confirmation bias coming from Tom Kenyon because of how we were all raised, right? The truth we were told to believe. It was part of the mission and part of the mission involved me transferring to Yeshua the cosmic powers that I had accepted through the mysteries of ISIS. So yes, again, I think that's Tom Kenyon's own bias because of course, how in our modern world could a woman, a woman possibly be the main teacher? How could she be? Of course, Tom Kenyon, I don't think he's a chauvinist, but we are programmed to believe that the man is the dominant one. And I'm not saying that men and women are, you know, I had a great teacher in high school that would say men and women are not, they need to be equal but not identical. They're obviously different. The feminine, divine, feminine, divine, masculine energies are very different, but they have served equal purposes. So for her to have to transfer everything over to him for him to do his job, in my opinion, is part of Tom Kenyon's confirmation bias into the world we were born into that it has to be a man that does things. No, because we know from other works, she was literally like, she was the main, the main one. She was the main. That's why the viscopicis is still around today for the Christians. They call it the fish. It's the viscopicis. It's the female. It's literally a vagina. Like it's the female that, that, that is, is the representation of the Christian, the symbol of Christianity to this day. All right. And in our love making, we would enter high tantra together. And there were many times when we would find ourselves in two places at once. Our bodies would be entwined in sexual embrace and ecstasy. While at the same time, we experienced ourselves on octurus, undergoing rituals of empowerment. And at times we would both enter into regeneration chambers using octurion technology to strengthen our human selves. Regeneration is the Asiya guys. And they talked about that at the beginning of this book, the liquid that you have to drink. That's the Asiya. When two persons, each possessing a similar emanation, join together, great power and creativity can be accessed. While we were together alone, we shared static states of body and mind that I could never describe with words. We flew together into the highest realms. And it was the most fulfilling time of my life. Those times when I was alone with Yahshua away from the world. But we were on a mission that involved the world. And there is much I could say about this. But it is not the focus of my discussion at this time. In this material, Yahshua came forward briefly to discuss his quandary of the mission versus the need of the heart. We still discuss this between us in our realm of consciousness where we are joined together in the ninth dimension. As a woman, as a human woman, I understood the needs of the heart. And I am pleased that the octurion civilization is finally turning its attention to this paradox. How it will turn out, I cannot say. But since the solution will come from the octurion civilization itself, I trust that the resolution will be intelligent and highly creative. And now I return to my primary reason for speaking in this material. There are many reading these words who carry emanations from other worlds. There are many beings entering embodiments as human beings at this time who also carry emanations from other worlds. This is how humanity is most often affected from off-planet intelligence. The pressure between being a human and an emanation can be immense. Yet this pressure is like the pressure that turns coal into diamonds. If you can bear the pressure, you will extract something from your life of great value. And having been through a human experience as an octurion emanation, I can say that it is worth the price and I have no intention of returning. I wish those of you who carry emanations from other worlds both graciousness and great serendipity into your life upon this most interesting and yet still primitive planet. May your emanations be a blessing to humanity and may your experience on this earth be a blessing to you.


The Linux shell is the environment in which you work and it's used to interface with the rest of the operating system as well as to execute commands. Now Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the bash shell by default, but users are free to change their shells. The bash shell, however, is a good place for newcomers to start. Now, here are a couple of things that you need to know. When you look at the prompt, you should see a dollar sign if you are logged in as a normal user. This is your visual cue that you're logged in as a normal user as opposed to, and I'm going to switch tabs right now, you can see that I've got a hash sign in my prefix. As opposed to this tab over here, where you can see that I've got a hash sign in my prompt. And this is indicative that I am logged in as an administrative user. The administrative user in Linux is called root. And again, this is important information because when you are reading documentation, if a command is prefixed with a dollar symbol, it means that you don't have to type in the dollar symbol and in fact means that the command is meant to be executed as a normal user. As opposed to having a command prefixed with a hash sign, it means that the command is meant to be executed as a root user. Now, talking about executing commands, very often we make use of commands with options, which influence how the command is executed and also arguments. Arguments are very often the objects that the command works against. Your Linux system has a number of amazing documentation references. Chief amongst those would be your manual pages or man pages for short. Now, what you're looking at right now is the man page for a command called LS. And you can see over here that it's used to list directory contents. Having a look at the synopsis, it gives us more information about how you would go about executing this command. So we have the LS command and then we have options. Now, anything that is enclosed in square brackets, those would be optional entities. So what this is telling us right now is that you could execute the LS command without any options. However, the ellipses afterwards outside of the square brackets over there tells us that you can make use of multiple options. Similarly, you could see that the LS command may be executed against an object and that object would be a file as opposed to something like a username, for example. So the object or the argument would be a file. And again, it's optional. You don't have to specify a file. However, should you want to specify multiple files, you can. And again, it's as a result of that ellipses afterwards. So when it comes to documentation in Linux, the notation or the synopsis is very important. And again, looking at this, brackets, things are optional, ellipses, you can make use of multiples. Now, further below, you could see that we have the options and their meanings. And you can see that one of the options that we have is dash A and you can also make use of dash dash all. They both mean the same thing. And again, what's happening over here is that the A tells us that we are going to show all files, even those files that begin with a period, typically files that begin with a period are hidden from normal view. Now, the single dash in front of it tells us that the option is an abbreviated form as opposed to a double dash, which typically means that the option is meant to be interpreted as an entire word. Now, let's have a look at the following. I'm going to do a directory listing right now and I'm not going to specify an option. I'm not going to specify any arguments. And you can see that I have a result. You can see that I have directory A and I have file one. Now, let's go and make use of an option. So again, I'm going to use ls dash A. And you can see over here that it now shows me those files that begin with a dot, that begin with a period. And again, those would typically be hidden from your normal view.  Now, what's really important to remember over here is that I'm making use of three different options. A is going to be the one option and I'm using the L option twice. So again, it's got a completely different meaning as opposed to if I had to run ls dash dash ALL. Now, in this particular case, we are interpreting the entire word. In other words, all the characters that make up the option as one option. And you can see that we have a very different result. Now, next, I'm going to show you how to make use of the ls command with an option against an argument. And again, using multiple arguments. So let's go and do an ls, a directory listing, using an option called dash L. We're going to do a long listing right now and we're going to do it against file one. So ls would be the command, the dash L would be the option. And then we have file one, which would be an example of the argument. So let's go and have a look at that result. Now, a command may also be constructed in the following way. In which case, I'm running the ls command using one option against two arguments. The two arguments would be file one and file a. And I'm not breaking any rules over here because if we go back to the man page, which tells us more about how to make use of the ls command, in the synopsis it says, well, you can make use of multiple options and you're allowed to make use of multiple arguments. So let's go and have a look at the output of that command and you can see that it works perfectly. So guys, if you want to access man pages on a Linux system, you can make use of the command man. And then very often, you could refer to a command or a configuration file, for example. So let's go and have a look at one more over here. I'm going to show you the man page for a tool called crontab. And you can see that the purpose of crontab is to maintain crontab files for individual users. Now look at the synopsis over here. You can see that it could get quite complex and the interpretation thereof is very important. So looking at running the crontab command, you can run it against a file. So in this particular case, using this notation over here, you would use an argument. Further to that, the use of a user or the use of the dash u option is optional. Again, it's enclosed in square brackets. Now looking at the notation slightly below that, we have crontab and again, the dash u and then the reference to the user as the argument would be optional. However, this is very interesting notation that we have over here. You see, when you have options that are separated by a pipe, it means that you can only make use of one of them at a time. So you could make use of crontab dash l or you can make use of crontab dash r or you can make use of crontab dash e. You wouldn't be able to make use of those options in one particular command. And then the use of the dash i and the dash s, those would be completely optional. Now looking at the next example that we have over here, you could say crontab and then you would specify dash n. And if you are gonna make use of dash n, you could optionally specify a host name. And then we have a couple of other examples of how you could execute crontab. Now the question that I very often ask my students is, can I run the crontab command on its own without specifying any options and without specifying any arguments? And the answer is, yes you can. And here's why. When you look at that second example of the synopsis over here, you could see that every item over here is in square brackets. And that means that we can run the crontab command without any options and without any arguments. Something important that you all to know about right now is how to get out of a man page that I showed you how to access a man page to get out. Simply hit Q on your keyboard. Now most production servers don't have a keyboard, mouse and monitor connected to them. And they're located in icy cold server rooms anyway. So a popular way to send commands would be to use a remote shell. So for that, we have the SSH protocol. And SSH stands for secure shell and is a protocol for providing you with just that. So let's can have a look at this tab over here. I've got the command queued up already. You can see that the command is SSH and we are wanting to make a connection to a remote server as the user, student and the server that we are connecting to is called server a. So in this particular case, guys, you could see that I was logged into a computer called demo as a user called kiosk. And right now my prompt reveals that I'm logged in as a user called student at a server called server a. So with that guys, that's some basic information about the shell. I will see you in the next video.


Hello, this is LaptopMedia, and today, we will show you how to open the Lenovo ThinkPad L13 Yoga G2 and what's inside of it. There are 9 captive Philips head screws that hold this device's bottom panel in place. Before you pry it up though, remove the stylus from its slot. Please remember, it would be of great help to us if you just hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. That would motivate us to make even more and better videos for you. Here, the battery pack has a capacity of 46 watt hours. Unfortunately, the memory of this notebook is soldered to the motherboard. There are configurations with 4, 8, and 16 GB of RAM, with the latter two options working in dual channel mode. On the other hand, you get 1 M.2 PCI-EX4 storage slot. As for the cooling, it is nothing more than one heat pipe, a heat sink, and a medium-sized fan. If you'd like to see more disassembly videos of the latest notebooks we would highly appreciate if you hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.


I ain't really just too much bothered by it So I just like feel like something wrong like that day like I can eat like Any go back to like a couple days before that Now I thought about girl put a private a best gator bill So I just kept seeing seeing the same cause I was like, hey man If you got somebody follow me or y'all find me let me know now because I'm finna jump out of the car I'm finna shoot this bitch up


Welcome to the Columbia Economic Development Rethink Business Podcast. I'm very excited. Today we have a special guest with us. Her name is Starlett Miller and she is an accountant and business consultant and the owner of Star Accounting and Business Solutions and I was going to talk to her a little bit about her professional journey and her path into entrepreneurship. So good morning. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having us. And so I was kind of checking out your LinkedIn page a little bit this morning and reading about your background and how you have worked for some other companies and have now recently I guess in the past year and a half branched off on your own and started your own business. So I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about your background, what got you started kind of in the accounting and consulting field and why you decided to start your own business after seven years working in that field. Sure. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here and it's always nice when you get an opportunity to share your story. It's just a journey so I'm still in it. In the field of accounting I initiated that field purely for the sake of numbers. When I knew it was time to get my degree business was a no-brainer. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. My mom is still an entrepreneur but was when I was a young child so I was working within a small business from a very young age so that birthed that within me. But when it was time to get my degree I was trying to find the best industry that would convert to money at the end of the day because I had to pay for college. I wasn't blessed to have a full-ride scholarship or parents paying for schooling so I checked BLS.gov to find out which industries paid the most and accounting was it and aligned with my skill set. Turns out philosophy degrees won't get you very far. So it was really that's where I initiated accounting for me and I've always been a working student since I graduated high school I had a full-time job at a bank and went to school during the day so it was really about the grind of making ends meet right away as well as furthering my education. So that started the journey within accounting fast forward to now and a few years back I was working for a bank and within the I was able to get a position as a management accountant at one of our banks here in Columbia and it was a great position a great opportunity but it was in that role that I realized that that type of accounting work was not for me. I would show up to work with tons of work to do GLs to balance and things to do but I was bored out of my mind. So at the same time I was also realizing and understanding myself as a professional and then just as a woman what made me tick and I realized that I needed to be a part of something greater. I needed to be had to have a seat at a table and make a great impact a visionary just naturally I love to be creative that's something I've always known I just didn't know how to channel it within my profession which was was in business so I was able to shift from that position I worked for a CPA firm and I was when I got my experience working with small businesses and it was there that it really allowed me to experience working with people and working within different industries as well as exercising the skill sets that I've already obtained within accounting but what it provided me was something that made me excited was working with people and different industries it was something different I had to be creative I was constantly relearning things and learning how it would apply to different people and that's what I lacked in the other setting and environment so starting my own company meant that I own my own time and that was important for me then it is still important for me now it just means something different when you are owning and operating your own company you own your own time so whether it's you're doing what you're supposed to you're not doing what you're supposed to is still on you but being a mom as well as working and furthering my education being there for her now is important and owning my time means that I get a chance to be there for field trips or be there for her after school versus working 45 60 hours a week outside of my home without her and for me that's a higher value for me personally and I realized regardless to what I was gonna do I was gonna work hard at it I rather do it in a in a way that it's it makes sense for my lifestyle and for me as a mom that's extremely important and I'm not gonna wait until 30 40 56 years from now to do what really makes sense for me so that is why I decided to start my own company and it started off by just trying to do bookkeeping and avoiding going to a nine to five and I realized there's a need for the services that I provide and I enjoy what I do so naturally it turned into a business yeah and I was gonna ask you a little bit about why you decided to start your own business but I think you touched on some of those points already but I mean what was how was that for you to go from you know there's it takes a big leap of faith to go from you know working somewhere where it's structured there's kind of that that regular you know getting paid every two weeks to now you you are really accountable for for bringing it in and delivering and then you know in some cases even making sure that you are getting paid by the client when you're done with the work so I mean how was that for you to kind of just emotionally just jump into that sure I'm still in my first 12 months of operating 100% on my own so I'm still figuring this out I mean the process of proposal engagement set in the stage for your clients and making sure that you are paid for your time and then shaking off the imposter syndrome of who am I to do this kind of thing as well so it it's something that I'm still learning to perfect as I grow something greater than myself because the goal is not just to replace the salary for myself the goal is to hire other people set a culture for my organization that'll help do the same thing as done for me for other women or men or whomever so that's really the greater purpose is not just about me but making the shift I it's kind of hard to explain it takes courage for sure but I know my backup plan is a position I'm over-qualified for the bookkeeping work of things that I've done and I know it's there but I just got fed up with not being able to own my time and personally I've I've gone through some changes in my personal life and I realized that now is the time to take control and that's what I decided to do and it was just a matter of recognizing that there's value there and I provide value through the feedback from the clients I've serviced working for someone else and it was just taking the jump and as soon as I did I gained support so that was confirmation that I was headed in the right direction so yeah and and I noticed through you know looking at your website so it's not just traditional accounting bookkeeping services like you are working with your clients kind of looking at their business processes identifying those areas you know where they can be more efficient where they can streamline things so you're you're kind of looking at it from front to end and helping them streamline things and and get organized so that they can be more efficient and more productive and have better results as well so it's very focused on on you know their needs what are some of the major problems your people are encountering though I mean what do you kind of see from a general business perspective where people missing the mark and where can they be more productive at the average small business owners still working in their business so time is a huge huge problem having the time to work on your business is the biggest issue and most and I'm experiencing it as well I am all departments currently as a solopreneur but really having the mindset of creating efficient systems and processes preparing for your growth typically is not the mindset of the entrepreneur they're in business for what they're doing their service in your clients and they're bringing in people to help service the client but they're not working on building this machine of a business that will flow so that is usually the biggest issue and on top of that they're not looking at their numbers and often some people will see bookkeeping or accounting work as a means to your tax return because the iris will knock on the door every year without fail but that shouldn't be the only reason why you're looking at your numbers right if we want to be reactive sure and we know we need to follow our taxes but what about your business what's the five-year plan what is a two-year plan we understand the plan how we're gonna get there the only way you're gonna determine that is if you take a look at what's already happened and if you're a brand new business it's even more vital to set up those systems and be able to understand your numbers so what I help to provide is that quantitative data through their bookkeeping and then also looking at what's happening operationally when if you're in your own a landscaping plumbing type of business where your service and clients out in the field and you have technicians that are going from one place to another across the Midlands how you optimize in their time in your time if you're taking the call to dispatch these guys out into the field gals out into the field to service your customers we need to understand what's happening from point A all the way to point F and for me that naturally is just the way that my brain works so it really excites me when I'm presented with a client who has no clue because then that's a problem that I can really identify those gaps right and then once we identify the gaps what I love is to pair that with the technology that's already doing the job of streamlining it so there's so many third-party applications that help to automate your communication with your clients whether it is to send them a reminder about your appointment coming up to send feedback initiation or at least to check in because my I'm doing my job if I can help you as a business owner service your customer a client more efficiently and yes we want to do the job but we also want to provide great service and so you even help them identify that the technology that can help them with their specific industry so that you know they get they get tied in through that and they have automation and processes now yes why leverage technology for what it's what it's there for and there's so many options there so my job is to research and find the key features that'll pair up with the pricing that make the most sense for the business owner and this is service industry as well as other industries and that that's a that's a good strategy I think some people you either love technology and you really dive into that stuff or you're the person who's very technological reverse and you need someone like you to kind of come in and say this thing can really be of use to you and even internally so there are a lot of CRMs that'll help to maintain your customer's information internally and if you have a small team you all need to be able to communicate efficiently about your client your customer and even create your internal workflows so that's again we're all talking about time optimizing your time being more efficient and my goal is to have the small business owner that's working in their business transferred to working on their business and that happens when you create the systems in order to do that and then focus on growing their company there seems to be kind of a resurgence of activity in the entrepreneurial community here in Columbia of which you're a part of now and you know just a lot of energy from young up-and-coming business owners such as yourself who are getting more active involved and engaged in the community so from your perspective what do you what do you think's kind of driving that interest in activity and kind of how does it feel to be a part of that community here I think and this is this might be nationwide that the entrepreneurship has is grown and we since on a society level almost received permission that it's okay to take this route and we're dealing with a different generation who's taking control and what they're doing and thanks to social media and other platforms where we can be our own PR firm and market ourselves we don't need permission from the new station to tell our story it's really helped but here in Columbia I remember two years ago in 2016 I was a part of the savvy musician in actions kind of start up boot camp session and we sat in at City Hall and heard Mayor Benjamin speak about the vision that he has for our city and really wanting this to be a place where the talent stays there's innovation and there's entrepreneurship growth so I think not only are we pairing our generation with having permission and having the courage to just go ahead and do it we've got the the technology that's supporting us and giving us a voice where we can speak to other people but locally we have the resources that are put in place like like the co-working space that I'm a part of so cool and that's it is a huge huge help for me because that environment is what I was looking for when I compared my corporate America experience to working at a cubicle a nice big cubicle but it was a cubicle nonetheless not really working with people or tapped in and needing to wear my specific outfit just for the sake of of of uniform and performance but when I go into SoCo and I can just be who I am an artistic entrepreneur as well as an accountant and it doesn't make a difference what we're focused on is building something greater than ourselves and being creative and just sitting around talking about how we can take all of our businesses or what we're doing to the next level that to me for Columbia is vital so having the resources to help cultivate this and then pairing it with those that are going to be interested because I mean entrepreneurship is not for everyone I don't think that everyone needs to own their own business and it's okay to be an entrepreneur I'm one of those people I would not fare well with that environment and that's okay it's just really figuring out so all of my assessment for other people and for myself has been started internally I recognize that this is what I needed and not to say that there's not a company that would value my skill sets and allow me to sit at the table I decided to do it on my own but for some people they need that but we can't go far we can only go as far as the resources will allow us and thankfully Columbia is is on the track to provide those resources for entrepreneurs like ourselves and even having events like today what we have here we're relocated and there's resources coming together and saying how can we help so I'm glad to be a part of that for small business owners to say how can I help you and when I reached out to our community partners and say well what is the real need for small business owners here in Columbia now my services are not stationary to a physical location I will work I've got clients in other states and I work remotely constantly but I'm interested in serving the community that I'm a part of because that that's what I enjoy and I think technology has certainly enabled the younger generation you know folks who have embraced it more to the barriers to start your own business or lower than they used to be and the ability to reach out to people and tap into your potential market or customers or even just people who would be interested in here and what you're doing is greater than it used to be because you've got apps and social media platforms and websites are easier to make people are doing them their WordPress and on their own so the tools are there but you still need those traditional things you know you're still going to want to have a solid business plan you're still going to want to understand you know how are you doing your marketing who are you marketing to and why are you getting to that target market you know having access to people like yourself who can consult and kind of give you that third-party neutral view and say hey if you considered this thing over here they could help you know some of the old ways are still good but you know the technology is definitely allowed people to kind of ramp up what they do and when they do it and now they can a lot of people are doing it from home or from the co-working spaces so it's pretty awesome to see that now just this past month you got the opportunity to do a business pitch to Michael Bloomberg and a group of venture capitalists that he brought in to take a tour around the city of Columbia so how was that you nervous at all like what was that experience like I mean first I want to say it was a great honor to have the experience when I got the invitation to be in the room or be in the space when he was coming out that was all really just a billionaire I mean that's there's no pressure the dude's just got more money than right it's combined so so when I got asked to share my story in two minutes by the way share my unique story and give some information about the business that's not hard at all no did you sleep at all the night before the thing is rehearsing I only had that night before to prepare for it and this is something that most people don't know I actually came off of the stage performing I had a dance performance right before I met with my so not to say that I'm not juggling a whole lot but I am but the experience itself once it was actually happening was great I mean he is very personable he seemed like a really nice guy what was more intimidating was venture capitalists and I was really impressed at the diversity that stepped off with that bus I mean there were men women from all backgrounds and it was it was really nice to see and what kind of helped me to relax was that I knew I wasn't pitching for anything I wasn't looking for anything returned besides the experience and to meet them and to share my story so it was a little easier for me because of that but I was more nervous about the venture capitalists and anything because they listen to these pitch they understand business on they can compute things so quickly when it comes to your model how you scale what you're doing what you're not doing so once it was happening and it was done it was nice because I got a question from Michael two questions from Michael when we're getting some advice and then the venture capitalist Patrick who gave me some advice actually connected with him and he's followed up with me connected that's really cool a EVP at Salesforce in California so that might be a great connection he's given me some advice so again I didn't go there for a picture looking for anyone's money but it was a great experience to have to even within a quick turnaround share my story and I had to ask myself well what is my unique story because often we go through our lives and things happen and we persevere through things and we're juggling so much and we don't think it's that impressive until you share your story with someone and like wow you're going through all of that plus you're building a business so I had to really sit down I wrote out three or four pages of notes to prepare my two minutes that's what it takes to you you got to start big and really distill it down to the high value stuff so yes and they I was more excited to hear the stories of the other entrepreneurs who spoke the other three so it was just a great experience and I was honored to be there so I didn't really go there expecting too much besides the experience in the present so it was great definitely it was and even from my perspective it was definitely cool to just participate in and be involved in you know not every day you get that you know something like that happens in your hometown so you you talked a little bit about your dance background and I'm always really fascinated by people who are you know owning and operating their own business but who also have that that cultural or social aspect you know to their lives and what they bring to the table and so you've got experience and dance and performing arts and you even started your own performing arts program called I am art back in 2015 so tell us about that just because I think that's cool and fascinating so the arts is a passion of mine naturally I knew from a child that I was creative my mom gave me the freedom to create things so my room looked an entrepreneur who's creative there's no correlation right so I am the idea came out of an accounting class actually so I was interesting yeah the assignment was to come up with a fictitious business to develop the financial statements for we had to write a one-page paper and the financial statements of course and writing is not my thing I would clean the house I'll do laundry I'll probably take the leaves off the roof before I have to sit down and we're talking about a paper I can write a mean email and proposals are getting better too but for me writing wasn't something I was interested in so I figured I need to do this create this business and something that I'm interested in so it one of being a creative arts center and I called it the Northeast creative arts so the idea was for it to be a creative arts center offering dance music and visual art classes in addition to having an event space for evening type of things so in my mind I that's what I saw a brick and mortar offering classes and then what made it really different from dance studios or a music program is that the goal was to intertwine the discipline so a child would get dance classes as their core and then also have visual art classes or music classes what that has morphed into is a company that creates developed creative arts programming partnering with the organizations that are already here so I partnered with the art museum one year I have a partnership with ideology where and this is the program we're currently running we pair technology and creative arts expression we've done two years of week-long summer camp the first year they taught their students how to code sound so they created and produced music for our performance as well as LED lighting for e-textiles so they put the lights on our shirts and coded some of the robots to move in our performance my role was to direct it what I taught my students at the art museum so we had dance class at the art museum was contemporary technique improvisational technique so learning how to move on the spot from your own body and we also learn how to collaborate so how to work with others for a common goal and these are leadership skills that these students nine to fifteen are learning how to work with each other and peers and we worked four days to work up to a performance on the fifth day of the camp so it's so they had to learn a lot in a little bit of time yes it's a full all day summer camp eight eight o'clock to five full day just like real adult life we're gonna do this thing and we want it done yesterday so knock it out but believe it or not they they eat it up because as as young children they can learn so much and we that we give them credit for then we give them credit for so this year what we focused on was something similar but the students the technology students learn how to code images so we took made it really simple for them and creating these programs is in collaboration with itology so we came together December of last year what's the theme what's the goal for this current year their students learn how to code stick figures pretty much like animation so they had to make the stick figure move and my students learned how to take the movement that they were seeing and paired with their own movement so by the end of our camp we had moving figures that the middle schoolers coded and what we were able to do was go in and speak and give them language to creative movement so doing something like this and turning your head is a lot of lines of code that they had to learn and really understand how to fluidly put in place I mean these are people that are getting paid how much money to code animated figures on TV so these are skills sense that they can take and move forward and the greatest takeaway for me with this year's camp for the technology students was that they realized and what I my job was to help them realize they can be creative without being creative so most the average tech person feels that they have no creative bone they're just their technology and they're writing lines of code after all lines of code right well when I talked to one of the students he showed me his little piece of animated figure doing very simple set up a static movement and then he showed me something he did when he had free time and this two figures fighting hitting each other flipping moving so much movement around the screen I said well hey what happened to our dancer why is the dancer standing in place moving their hands up and down did you know that flipping doing the split turning is also movement and his dance is expressed like oh okay so he implemented that into his next together yes so to me that's the greater purpose yes we had a performance but really I am artist about the process and my goal with I am our is just to create these programs and connect with the dance studios connect with organizations that are teaching our students throughout the year the technique and then give them the platform to express and see what they come up with so it's really about creating the program that they can have a say in as well and as of right now I am artist a one week the dance and collaboration is a one week program throughout the just for the year because that's what I can manage operating two businesses but it's it's a passion project yeah it's not a heavy lift just doing both of these things over here and raise it my girls but with what with what we have with that one program is so rich it's too rich for me to just let go so I'm okay with where it's at is manageable it's a summer camp and hopefully I can hire some folks to come in and really take ownership and love it just as much as I do so that it'll bring on some relics well I think what you're doing with both of your endeavors but your your business that you're running on the day-to-day and your performance arts is like really good and a lot of people have trouble just you know juggling the one job much less doing that so it's really awesome that you're you've got both of these things running and it sounds like you know they're both moving in a really positive direction and growing too so I hope you know over the next year we we get to see more growth in both of those things and you continue to take those to the next level it sounds like they're both really awesome thank you and I'll be honest with you I struggled with the identity of the two so I feel like I had to hide one in certain settings and not another so over the past year and a half I've become more comfortable when we're in both hats and it being okay I would show up in a business professional accounting setting mentioned the arts and like oh the arts nonprofit that's cute but really taking ownership of both sides and finding the best way to marry my skills so that the love for the arts as well as my business sense and my accounting world that owning my business seemed to be the perfect spot so I appreciate being able to speak about both and it'd be okay well you know and yeah and even from the economic development perspective what we see you know companies want talent education and jobs and you know there's capital investment in those things but they still look at cities and your cultural amenities and your quality of life you know it's not just a one-sided equation anymore people want to go to locations you know where you can make a good living wage but there are things to do in the evenings and on the weekends and places to take your family to so you really kind of have to have that that balance overall as well as a city overall so but it's pretty cool that you found like a successful way to play in both spaces and and still manage to make it work and keep your sanity at the same time so it's pretty awesome hope to hear more great things from you over the next year on both of those fronts but um thanks a lot it's great having you and I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to come in here and just talk with us and share about what you've got going on so thank you it's my pleasure