FULL EPISODE | The Standard with Chance Brown | Episode 4 | Neighborhood News with John Garrett

And um we my wife and I are from Austin, Jennifer who also went to Sam and we um wanted to go back to Austin and so we went back to Austin. I went to work at the Austin Business Journal which is part of the 41 American City Business Journals. Um and that was my first management job. But I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I I had a goal, a personal goal when I turned 30 that I'd be an entrepreneur. And so I had a lot of ideas that weren't very good. Um we had one idea that was really good. Yeah. We open an insurance company. That's right. Together. See, I knew you were going to be so successful back in college. I just knew it. Yeah. We were going to open an insurance company together. Um, man, we Can you imagine? We be killing it. We got the golf course right now. I know. Who needs a podcast? We were not very smart. Instead, I'm doing newspaper and you're you're being a Realtor uh mogul. But I um yeah, I I didn't have a really great idea. And then and then I started noticing at the Business Journal, there was something missing out where we lived. So there was like there were community newspapers, but they were writing about stuff we didn't care about. Jennifer and I had a little kid. We just wanted to know uh what if we're going to get a Starbucks near our house or what you there's road construction all over our house. We just wanted to know kind of we wanted to build a business journal for the average resident. Yeah. And I knew from my time at the Houston Chronicle that that um I knew the mail business and I knew the advertising business. And so I kind of put a plan together and um I ended up leaving the business journal to start uh Community Impact in the game room of our house with a $39,000 credit card loan. And um and we just we just did it and and we we were really smart on the front end of how we structured that deal. Um we did got prepayment from our customers. We got long-term agreements, right? So that we knew we'd have cash coming in and it it just worked. Our first edition went out in September 2005. And by customers, you mean advertisers. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

We'd have So, basically the idea was I knew at the Business Journal that getting paid subscribers, even back in 2005, was tough, was really hard. Yeah. And I was like, what if you just mail it to everybody? And then basically the advertisers share in the cost of the of the deal. Yeah. And I did the math and it was like $32,000 uh for me to pay for printing, mailing, and my I had one staff member at the time and a couple of freelancers. And our first edition, we gave everyone a half off. So they they I had $16,000 of revenue in my first edition. Nice. Which meant I had 32,000, too. The only thing was just like, did people like it? And we we that first edition went out and it it was a home run. Like we it was unlike anything anybody had seen. It was it was content with maps in it. It told you what was going on around your home. It didn't have, you know, Johnny kicking the winning field goal.

We didn't have any of that what's called today uh refrigerator journalism, you know, where you'd cut out a a picture of the the chess team that your son's on and you post it on your refrigerator. None of that. Just kind of business journal stuff. And then 30 years later, your mom brings it over to your house and you're like, why on God's screen all this, right? You got, let me UIL speech debate. Yeah. Let me introduce you to my weekend this weekend. Yeah, that's right. Every time she comes over, she brings a box. You know what's funny is now as time has gone by and our kids have gotten older, I have so many of our friends are like, "Why don't you do high school sports?" You know, they all want me to do. I'm like, I agree that high school sports could be better covered cuz max preps is not good. But like, no. Yeah, that's a lot. Know who you are and uh do what you do. And um so we just started growing, cash flowed everything. We never had to take on any other debt other than, you know, we built a printing plant. That was some debt there. But um we never had to take any outside capital. And so today we're sitting, you know, we have 40 editions across Texas and all in all the major cities. And we uh we we're sitting really well, I think, for the future of news. Um because we we only we started as a monthly print product, which you know back then was because we were thinking if you do a business journal for like a city of Round Rock, which is where we started, how much news, right?

How much you have to talk about. Yeah. And so we were like, if we wanted important news, it needs to be monthly. That was lucky. If you look today, almost every news organization would love to have a more monthly print cycle in a digital kind of daily cycle and um but we just got a little bit lucky with our model and and we're in really good really good shape to grow. Nice. That's awesome. So there are a few things that I would want I want to talk about. As you were talking, I wrote down a couple of other notes. Um, but the one thing that I really wanted to hit on in this episode with you was you've described it as hyper local like what when you're driving local content because a lot of agents they want to be the resource in their community. They want to be the voice of their community whether that's actually just their neighborhood or their town or whatever that is.

What's what what is how do you choose what to put into that? Yeah. like contentwise, what resonates and what what what doesn't make the print edition. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think I think um you know, people want to know about new businesses opening around them, new restaurants for them to go to. you know, we we we we're able to get different advertising business because we're kind of a serious um what's happening in your neighborhood type publication because we cover city council and right like we're show we have real reporters that are driving around and they're professionals and they do a great job and um whereas if you're doing it as a Realtor, it's kind of like your side gig, you know, so you're doing the the best you can to to be the best Realtor but then also deliver all this other content. Yeah.

And and and from a focus standpoint, it's really really hard, you know. So So I think that that's what's been um I think if I'm a Realtor that's trying to be uh to try to give news that's important to the people around them, I you know, to me it goes around one kind of key principle that I I learned early and it's people want to feel good about where they live and work and that's the filter all of our news goes through. Now we've covered brutally difficult subjects. uh sex trafficking, um masks in schools, you know, all that stuff has been a part of our journalism coverage, but we've do it through this filter that even when bad things happen. People want to know that there's things about it being done or that they could participate in what's being done or talked about if they really are passionate about it. So, our our focus from a journal from a newsroom standpoint is okay, we're going to cover this stuff. We're gonna filter it through the idea that people want to feel good about where they live and work and write about difficult subjects, even non- difficult but sometimes controversial like elections, those kinds of things. We still do it through that filter and it and it works. We found a way to to be a trusted local news source in a very progressive area like central Austin, you know, and also a more conservative area like the Woodlands. and and but if you talk to people from both communities, they're going to tell you that they love community impact. And that's not because our tone is different. It's the same.

But it's it's this idea of empathy and curiosity with the idea that, hey, how are we going to approach this uh difficult subject in a way that honors our role as members of the community? And I think that that's the difference uh between being kind of a somebody that considers themselves a watchdog versus somebody that believes that they're part of the community. How are you going to cover that news? And so if I'm a Realtor, I'm thinking, okay, if people want to feel good about where they live and work, okay, what are the things I can include in my newsletter that are going to make people feel good about where they live and work, even if they're looking to move, which wouldn't be a bad thing. Uh but that's that's that's what I would recommend because the more attractive it is, the more attractive it would be to a buyer. Totally. And then, you know, when you're ready to sell, you're thinking about all the reasons why your house is so attractive. So, all that all that content is good. Yeah. Awesome. Okay.

Next thing I was going to ask you about. So, I mentioned it in the intro. Sometimes I will sit and read an entire article. Yeah. Because it's something that's like genuinely I'm curious about. I want to hear about in the politics editions when there's elections. I'll read what each candidate says. Yeah. Um, but I think that community impact does an amazing job of mixing printed content with graphical content, right? Because if I don't want to sit and read a whole article, I can get the gist of it by just taking a look. I think I mean I think we're the best in the world at that especially at the especially at the local level. Yeah. I mean, no, no one's doing no one's doing the work on maps and infographics uh about topics that we are like we are like we're doing. So, where did that come from? And how do you like make sure it's it hits what you're really trying to do and it's not just I think you know shutter stock for shutter stock sake or you know what a graphical representation of something just for the sake of having a picture there which I see a lot in all kinds of content. Yeah, it's hard, you know, doing great design, even with all the new tools that we have with AI, it's still really difficult to do um a map uh that's not just a screenshot of Google, right? and and what happens with lot of a lot of our topics like road projects.

I mean, we we just did this incredible layout for the Woodlands road bonds that well what happens is in most news organizations is the entities that are putting on the road construction, they just send them the engineer files and and it's like I don't I can't read this. And so it really goes back to the start when we started community impact. We h we were bu our first story was on the toll roads in Austin 130 and 45. And so September 2005 was you know Google maps was just barely coming out like no one had maps on their phones or anything like that. And so we would see these roads being built with our eyes and we no one because I was driving downtown Austin at the time and I just wanted to know like where was it going and how much was it going to cost but you couldn't find that information. Um, and in fact, one of the fun stories is so we did this huge spread of the maps and we did we we mapped every entrance ramp and exit ramp. So if you know if you I mean that's like the most important thing about a road if you're into a highway if it's new, right? Like how do I get on and off? Is it closer to my house?

Exactly. If you can you imagine if you own a business in that area. Yeah. For me, it sucked when they did the fly over at 99 and and uh 249. Yeah. Because it took my house exit off. Exactly. So, you care about that stuff and it was hard to find that information. And so, I went to the text office and and this remember community pack was nobody nobody knew who we were and they wouldn't give us their their PIO would not give us the time of day. And I understand I mean we're just in the game room of my house in Flugerville. And so I You literally made like a a press pass off of like Exactly. No, no, for real. You borrowed your kids like high school lanyard and just like taped over the front. Press with my photo from best photo I could take. But I I went to I personally went to that office and they had a huge engineering map up on the wall and I just marked it. And I think I think we pulled an allnighter that first edition, put that paper together. We built the whole thing on a little mini Mac and I think that was in our DNA like we we felt like what was out there or how you were getting information and um was always always and it's even worse today as quickly as people could put the information out there. And so if we could take a little bit of time with it and make it appealing uh visual then I think people will spend a little bit of time on it and study it. And we see that we see that happening all the time on our stories online. And I mean people want that kind of information. Our brains that's how our brains work now.

And we live in you know it's the attention economy. So we're all arbiters of attention. I got I got very little time and I'm really really proud of our team because we about two years ago we did something called um CI simple which basically stole a lot of the really good ideas from a um smart brevity a book called smart brevity which is the founders of Axios uh which is a news site that kind of does they kind of take these complex issues and try to break it down and one of the keys to that book is simple doesn't mean um a lack of depth, shallow, simple does not equal shallow. You can be simple, it's still deep. And that's our focus. And our team has totally like embraced CI simple. But that was about two years ago. But today in the attention economy, we're we're even we're even taking it to the next level with um our covers. How do we make sure that when the that person gets Community Impact in the mail, the cover is beautiful and so informative? Like, I want to read this, right? And that's a it's an art. Um, it is. And I think we do a pretty good job because I think, you know, and you and I grew up in the same era of news. Um, I mean, in college when I worked for the Huntsville item, like literally laying out pages in the middle of the night because the bars were my clients.

Um, but you know, you think, "Oh, here's a bunch of boxes with a lot of type." A lot of type. Like the writers were getting paid by the word or something. Um, and no graphics. Yeah. You know, the Wall Street Journal used to do like the pencil graphics, remember? Um, and then you open up this color thing that comes in your mailbox. And whether you want to spend five minutes reading it or 5 seconds looking at a map, you got it. That's what That's what it's all about. And and we just want people to how muchever time they take with it to feel like we taught them something or they learned something new about their community. Even if it's they got they got a coupon for their favorite restaurant, you know, like as long as we could be useful to that reader, we're going to we're going to do it and we're going to do it uh with quality. We want I mean you're in the mail. I mean, how much junk mail, you know, there's we did a re readership study and 70% of our readers said, actually 70% of the community, because it was sent out to just the community at large. 70% of the community said that they would miss community impact if it didn't come anymore. 70. I mean, what what do you get in the mail? What do you get for free besides maybe air? Well, I can tell you something that I get in the mail other than Yeah. Community impact that I'm going to miss. That's right. So, uh, I think, yeah, I think we just found a way to to we found a good formula. All right, let's stick with that thought for a second because we've talked about how to try to make things local and important to the reader, right? Um, and we've talked a little bit about incorporating graphics that actually mean something. Yeah. Yeah. We oftent times like you've got to find your you got to hit your audience where they are things, you know, those are the the cliches that go around. Um but you know whe you look at typical junk mail readership levels. You look at typical email mass email open and read rates. I want to talk about the idea of putting this in the mail. Yeah. Where it came from. Why why we're doing that.

Yeah. Um and you touched on it a little bit with the graphics on the front making it something that invites somebody in. But when we talk about delivering content where where is the important place to deliver content or is every place important? I think right now um you know I don't know about you but like I found some social media for me I'm I'm more um useful and it shows like LinkedIn I do a lot better than X like and and I think I think you got to find where you where where people are really appreciating your content and go kind of go all in on that. Right. For us mail we we always you know I always believed in mail because like I did another community newspaper. Yeah. And it's tossed in my driveway and I don't want it. It's a shitty public and what I want to do is wait out there for the person that's delivering it and pick it up and throw it back at them. That's what I really want to do. Oh man, you're bringing back some memories. We we we had a we started our Leander Cedar Park paper that there was a similar paper and we one of our first read your emails was just what I it was kind of more violent than what you just said but like you know I think first of all I don't think it's delivery mechanism I I mean if that paper that was delivered on your yard was something that you actually delighted in getting you would be okay with it. you'd be like, "Wow, thanks. I can't wait to go pick it up and see what's in there that's useful." Or if it's social media or if it's email or if it's whatever, like in the mail. I think it starts with is your product worth my time. I think it all starts there. And in our business, it's such a low bar.

Um today example I'm in our newsroom here in Houston talking about headlines and what's interesting is the journalists are taught a certain way AP style that headlines should be written and the problem is is that ship has sailed and and the reason why a lot of news rooms don't understand uh why their publications are going down is because they we were grow we were uh maturing into a place where um just because you're in the newspaper business and you have a community newspaper doesn't mean people are going to read your crap, right? But that's you that's just one generation, right? Like when we're growing up, if the newspaper wrote about it, people paid attention. Absolutely they did. So they the headlines could be like really boring and dry because people were going to read it. Those days are over. Oh, I I distinctly remember when I would spend the night at my grandparents house. You know, I'm not I'm I've never been an early riser, but when I would get up, my grandfather was always at the breakfast table, cup of coffee in hand, reading the Houston Post. And I mean, he read it cover to cover, including doing the crossword puzzle and the word jumble, right? Like all of it. So, our whole industry has been built upon, and I think it's probably relevant to your industry, right? There's all these things that our industry had been built upon that were true for hundred years plus. And those things are not true anymore, but they're so ingrained right in our industry that we we we think that that's the right way or the correct way and you have to do it that way and you just can't. The world has changed. Yeah.

One of the things, one of our core values is challenge traditional thinking. Yes. Because the real estate industry does in fact have a we've always done it that way mentality. Um and that's real broken. So yeah, if we if we were to spend some more time on that, you know, I I would flip the table and I would ask you those questions like, you know, you know, one of the reasons why you've been successful building your firm is because of that mentality, right? Is that all the firms you're up against have been thinking about things like like we're in the 1980s, right? Right. And you decided to build a company where your uh Realtors are thrilled to work here. They feel like that they're important and they feel like they matter. Yeah. And you have because they do I know and I sorry I mean I right it's all part of your DNA and because of the other brokerage models thinking like it's 1980s Yeah.

they're not able to that's given you an opportunity to be build a successful business. Yeah. And I think it's given us the opportunity to be far more flexible. You know, like we don't change what we do integrally as model and brokerage and all of that, but it allows us to be more flexible in our approach to certain things and to building out services and tools for our agents, support mechanisms because there's not a giant anchor around our neck from a staffing standpoint or facility standpoint or whatever it is that holds that back. That's right. Yeah, that's 100%. And there's probably a lot of other stuff you're not I mean there is Yeah. But you know we could be here all day. I know. I mean yeah but that's what people are trying to understand because they pro there are probably people in your business all the time. How are you growing right now? Yeah. And same for us like h how I mean it makes no sense. I get calls all over the country from newspaper publishers large and small that are trying to figure out like what are we doing and how are we growing when the rest of the industry is shrinking.

And the wild thing is going back to the the the smart brevity book is it really is kind of the old kis like keep it simple stupid. Totally right and it not to call people stupid because we don't want to hurt anybody's feelers but it really is like you don't have to overthink this. And I think that in a lot of times when you especially when you put a bunch of people in a room you really overthink the crap out of things that could just be very simply hey let's just do this. Well what does this matter to the reader? Yeah. Why are we writing this story? Right. Are we writing it because a PR firm spoonfed it to you? No. Right. Yeah. We What does it mean to the reader? Right. Yep. All right. So, hit hit the rewind button. Just a couple of bullet points here. And you mentioned something where people are calling and saying, "Why are you growing the way you're growing?" You mentioned that you bought a printing press. Yeah.

So, hashtagprint ain't dead because I've seen it on on all of your social media. But you've kind of built this by in a lot of ways by doing things that other people aren't and in fact the opposite in a lot of cases of what people are doing right and so let's talk a little bit about that because I feel like in my industry there is a follow the leader mentality right totally like there is a you've got to be on social media all the time doing this video or that video or doing a podcast u or whatever that looks like, right? And you've kind of gone across the grain like when literally, and I mean literally, not in the way people overuse literally, but actually literally Austin American Statesman is shutting down their printing press.

You're like, you know what? I'm going to build a printing press. Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, like, okay, there's a podcast out there you may have listened to it called Founders. Have you listened to that? They did um the Cades guy and he says he's just he he's just like us. He was told, "No, you can't do it this way. you have to have a more complicated menu. And he says, I love this and I'm totally stealing it from him because it's the only way I can like explain it in a way that that makes sense to me because it makes sense to no one. Um, but he says, "Hey, I'm just living my chicken finger dream and I'm just living my newspaper dream." Like, I love the newspaper. I love the the tactile, the way we can put maps and printed products, the way we way we can send it to you. Like there's no way that we could have built what we built digitally only. Like there's just no way because you know why you would know to Google what's going on in Tombball or you know you wouldn't know to Google it if we didn't tell you and push it to you and I'm sure as heck not going to leave it up to Google or Meta their algorithms.

No, you know. So yeah, we we you the printing the the funny thing about what you said is when we built the printing press in 2016, what's really funny about what you said is, you know, states been shutting theirs down. ones and it's true like today we're one of the few uh printing presses uh left in Texas and there's a couple but but what actually spurred me on so I was actually in New York City looking at these presses that we were going to buy and it was like for us it was like $3.5 million to buy these just the presses just the presses every that's not include the building or the other equipment it's just the presses and I remember praying I was like Lord like I need a sign that I need to do this. And that very week while I was in New York City, that's when the statesman announced they were closing their plant.

And what's what's the different thinking is, okay, everyone in our industry is moving away from this. My thinking was, holy crap, my whole business is dependent on outsourcing, right? It's not my coffee. I'm not talking about my coffee that I outsource or my janitorial services or somebody else has control of your actual tangible product, your business. and one more company just just shut it down. I one more option for me to print to outsource. And so for me it was a clear sign that we needed to do it. Now you know God did like crazy things beyond that. Like the timing was unbelievable. The the the printing plant at the statesman shut down in uh September October of 2016. We needed all these pressmen to start in April of 2017. And so it was like 6 months of difference. And listen, I didn't understand when I said yes to the presses, how hard it was to find pressmen. And so those pressmen, they got six months severance from the statesmen, went on vacation with their family, rolled right, rolled right into CI. It was totally a god thing. And I give him all the credit. But it it is an interesting thing to think about as a Realtor or as a business person is the the way everyone else is thinking should give you pause, right?

Um, everyone thinks that meta advertising is the best thing in the world. I'm not saying it's meta advertising is very effective, but if it was God's g to every business owner, you would never be able to buy an ad. They'd be sold out. You could not, right? The advertising is an imperfect science. And so if everyone is saying do this, do this, do this. You might want to be like, uh, okay, maybe I need to think different. And for me, listen, if we fast forward 20 years from when I left the business journal to today, I'll tell you insourcing printing, bringing that in-house has saved us. It saved us through the pandemic. Do you remember the paper shortage? Like if we were out, if we were like still outsourcing, we would have had real problems. Um, so it's given us an ability to run a business uh that's allowed us to have efficiencies and given us a lot of ability to like navigate unknown circumstances like even as we face you know possible tariffs on newsprint if I was outsourcing that I would pay full freight for the tariff but since I own the plant I can take some of the margin out of the printing company and help my newspaper company out and that's a huge benefit and a side note which is fun for It's so fun for me that, you know, we just learned that we're going to be printing all of the business journals around Texas in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. And I cannot wait for that first one to go off the press because for me, it's like as an entrepreneur, it's like I left a great job that I was scared scared to death to leave with everyone telling me I was not I shouldn't do it. And 20 years later, we're helping we're helping them function as a business. And it's so fulfilling uh to see uh choices that you make that are against the grain uh turn out to be really wise choices that not only help our business, but I mean we're helping lots of publications around Texas stay in business. and um the print product. No one no one really understands that the New York Times, the most successful news organization in the world right now, would be out of business without their print product.

60% of their revenues still today come from their print product. And so math is math. Yeah, ma. Turns out you can't mess with numbers. Yeah, that's right. I mean, you can, but only for the IRS. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Um, all right. Speed round. Are you ready for speed round? I'm ready. Okay, speed round. Favorite business book of all time. I'm going to go with uh The Fish ate the whale. And I love that book. It's You know what that book is? I don't. The Banana King. Oh my gosh. It's about It's so inspiring for me because I feel like that's that's who I want to be when I grow up. So, uh, it's about, uh, an immigrant that basically got into the banana business selling ripe bananas and turned out he ate all of them. He became the biggest banana king. And it's a great book because it's inspiring as an entrepreneur to see this immigrant like rise through all the challenges that we all face as entrepreneurs. Yeah. But it's also really cool historical stuff like like wars that kind of led to the Bay of Pigs and like how he was personally connected and his banana trade and how the bananas worked actually impacted impacted US foreign policy. So it was it's a it's a fantastic business and historical book.

Very cool. Uh, your favorite piece of technology right now, tech toy, like actually something tangible or just software or whatever. Man, I think right now my favorite tech is playing around with with uh uh Chad GBT. I I just think I I I I still feel like it's a little bit of Music, man. Are you familiar with that musical? Like some people don't even know what that is. No, I know. So, you know, I still feel like they're selling us instruments that we may not get, right? But I think it's I think so I'm I'm really doing a lot of work on that because I I'm certainly interested in how it can help my business efficiency and um so and learning how it integrates with data like I'm really curious about that. So I would say that so we are in the process right now. So I did a I was kind of a crash desk dummy on stage at a conference a couple weeks ago that I actually spoke at but they brought me up the day before as kind of like a a test balloon. Awesome. um on some AI stuff for real estate brokerages. And what we're doing now is taking and building out custom GPTs. Yeah. That take some of the more energy draining tasks from a Realtor or some of the just it I repeatedly do this and it takes me time.

Yeah. U kinds of things. and building custom GPTs into a library where they can just go in and they can say, "Okay, I need to prepare all my listing stuff for 123 Happy Street." Type in one 123 Happy Street and boom, it just does it. I love that. Yeah. Um, and for me, it's not necessarily like our all of our tech stack is built around automation. Yeah. Um, like from head to toe, it's built around automation. And for this, yes, it's automating those tasks. That's important. But the other thing is, you know, if you do something twice a week that takes 30 minutes and I can give you that one hour back, right? We're talking about four hours in a month, right? And 200 some odd hours in a week or 52 hours in a in a year. Like real time. Yeah. Like that's giving you almost a full work week back. That's right. That's a lot. That's a lot. It's so if I can give you a week of your life back Yeah. by clicking a button. Come on. What are what are we doing? You know what's funny is and the the news the news people have a little bit of a a bias against it, you know, like words like are these my words? And I'm like, hey, have you ever like written in a Google document and a little squiggly line comes underneath it and says, "Did you mean yeah, that's AI? That's AI." So like if you've ever done that cuz it's still as an editor, you're making the choice, no, that's not what I meant. or you know so even as Chad GBT looks at our work and makes suggestions we still have to pay attention correct and if we can use that energy that's where our brains are if we can use that energy uh for the business great yeah and you don't lose the originality like that's always been my because I like to write um yeah you've always been a good writer you have thanks appreciate that I enjoy it um and so I don't use chatpt except to cut down because sometimes I get a long-winded, right, in my in my So, I'll have it like, hey, maybe great. Yeah. Um, but I don't want to lose the original flavor, right, of what I have to say and how I want to say it. But if I can use it to help optimize it so that it's easier to read for the end user, heck yeah, all day long. For me, it's been really helpful to gather my thoughts, my strategic thoughts. So, like I'll I'll I'm not as good of a writer, a concise writer as you are. Um, but I love getting my thoughts in there and as it gets better to understand who I am and it gets better with my tone. But I will say this, one trait that human humans have is we're really good at telling accents. So, like if you meet somebody from New York, you can tell like right southern bells, you can tell like we can kind of tell ChatGPT's accent. Have you noticed words? So, we joke about it in the real estate world because um nestled. Yeah. Boasts.

Perfect. Perfect. This home boasts. Whatever. Um gamechanging. Yeah. Like those are words that constantly when somebody uses chat listing description. I'm like, "Yeah, I know that. I know where that came from." So, you got to use your own words. And I don't know about you, but my train mine mine is trained not to use the word at all ever. And I think they'll get better. But I think right now the only thing I don't like about it is it makes me feel like um it it always kind of feels like a kiss ass. John, that is so smart what you just I love that you're I'm kind of like ah but then there's a part of me that's like well I've watched the Terminator movies so I'm going to be nice back just in case because if we go to war with the machines I want them to remember me as the guy who said things not he didn't call me a kiss ass. Right. Exactly. On a podcast. Yeah.

Um, all right. Next one up, and you may have already mentioned it. Favorite podcast. Uh, you mentioned the Founders. I like Founders. I like Acquired. Um, which is kind of the same genre. Um, yeah, I think that those are two of my I also like there's a couple of industry specific ones. um people versus algorithms which really talks a lot about the future of media and a and a and another one called rebooting the rebooting which is also very specific to the future of media. Okay. Um best piece of advice that you've ever gotten? Doesn't have to be business. Yeah. Yeah. This one's this one applies to business and I use it in business. Uh but um I I love to use it on the golf course more. My grandfather taught me you could only get so wet and then you can't get any more wet. You know, when on a rainy day out in the golf course, it's pouring down rain, you want there is you're soaked, you can't get more wet. Yeah. And I think that that applies in business, too. Um and especially about my golf balls because they're always wet.

If there's water, mine are going away. They're there. There's water over there. That's where that's why I hit it. No, it's it's in business. I think one of the things that as entrepreneurs have been through the the pandemic like we've been through I feel an enormous amount of resiliency right now like all this stuff that's happening geopolitically and terrorists blah blah blah like I am approaching it like that with that with my grandfather's mentality like you could only get so wet and you can't get like there's nothing that's going to be harder for us to overcome in our generation. We've already done the crazy. Yes. Yeah. We it's our great depression, right? And we've done it and we survived. Yeah. So, yeah. Bring on these hard things. No, I'm super optimistic right now about all things. You're I don't know if I'm optimistic, but I'm I'm resilient. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not worried. You can't You can't beat me because I've already been through the hard part. Yes.

We'll figure a way out, right? Yeah. Awesome. I love it. Um, if somebody wants to find Community Impact online because they don't get it in their mailbox once a month, where would they go? Communityimpact.com. We have great outstanding uh outstanding daily email newsletters that you can get for free that are kind of if you love community impacts monthly. It's like a daily dose of what you love about community impact and uh yeah find us online. LinkedIn is a great way to find me if you want to reach out John Garrett. Uh I think it's John P Garrett on LinkedIn and um love to connect. Yeah. Awesome. John, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it everybody. Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back with another episode of The Standard soon.