Jason:  And now we're recording. So it's Jason, Michelle moderating, and our topic today on the Speaker Series all is Guide Dogs graduates who also happen to be brave enough and smart enough to be entrepreneurs. And we want to hear what makes them tick, how they got to where they are, what their business is, what their challenges are, how their vision loss plays into it, if at all, and how their guide dog assists them. 

So I'm going to start off with Stu. I'm giving everyone seven minutes. So I'll set my timer for seven minutes. And, Stu, if you want to start us out and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and why you're here. That'd be great. 

Stu:  Sure. Sounds good. Well, thank you for inviting me and having me speak about this. It's something that I've always wanted to be able to spread this message because I always wanted it for myself. I wanted somebody to help guide me through this process in this journey of losing your vision and a much smaller pool of somebody trying to be an entrepreneur while doing it. So thank you for the opportunity.

I'm Stu Starkey, 37 years old. I have a condition called choroideremia. It presents itself a lot like RP in terms of symptoms and progression. When I was a kid or teenager, I had big dreams like I think most teenagers do. All I thought I had was night vision problems when I was a kid. And my big dreams were that I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to start a business and earn some financial freedom, and I wanted to solve one of the world's big problems.

When I was 19, I learned of the condition that I have, choroideremia, and I learned that what the progression was going to be. And that, for a few weeks or months, really set me back, and I had to figure out what that meant for me, what that meant for the rest of my life, what struggles I'm going to have. And then I kind of had a realization that there was nothing I could do about it, so I better get to work. And that's where getting this condition or learning about the condition that I had gave me a motivation I never had before. Looking back at my teenage self, I realize that I thought I had infinite time. And I wasn't going to achieve those goals if I didn't work harder at them. This was impetus to do that. 

After learning about this, I changed to doing parasports and traveled the world doing different parasports that I wanted to try. When I realized that I needed to grow up at some point and earn a living and work toward one of my other goals, which was start a business, I did that. I got to do that from a perspective, knowing that at some point, vision is going to continue to be more and more of a difficulty. So I knew and had this drive that I needed to grow my business fast enough so that I could create a position for myself that I would work best in. 

That progression led me to grow to the company that we're at now where we -- we're a moving company in western Canada. We have nine locations. We have a staff of well over a hundred people now. And I'm really happy and fulfilled doing what I'm doing. I'm able to choose my purpose, choose my roles, and really add value to the community and to our business. 

	That's my story in a nutshell and how my sight loss has influenced my decision making, how I've grown my business, and the role that I chose within it.

Jason:  Okay. Do you want me to give you a few questions? You've still got two -- you've got three minutes left. What do you think are your greatest challenges with your business?

Stu:  Recently, I was working a lot in Excel, and I was working on operations. And I'm really thankful to be able to give up and hire somebody for that role now because it allows me to get to do more of the stuff I really enjoy doing, which is business development, business strategy. So that's been a challenge to learn to give up that role, letting go of some of those responsibilities that I really had a close pulse on, and turn that over to somebody else is certainly a challenge on the visual side. 

In terms of business development, an obstacle is I'm now at a point with my vision where I'm not recognizing people. So I can see silhouettes, but I have to learn by voice, like I'm sure some or most of you on this call have had to go through. That is something that I'm learning and learning to accept that it's okay that I don't know the person, that it's okay to ask and say, "Who am I talking to? I'm sorry. I can't quite see you." 

The guide dog has been an incredible introduction to that. It makes me feel so much more comfortable with saying, "Hey, I don't see that well. Who am I talking to?" They get it. Whereas before, I didn't carry my cane very much, and it was a much more awkward conversation. 

Jason:  How do you deal with things like filings, filing your taxes? You mentioned Excel. What about social media? Do you have presence, and do you have someone that helps you with those things, or do you take those on on your own? How do you deal with that?

Stu:  Yeah. We have a team that works -- and I actually lead up our marketing department, so I am using accessibility on my iPhone to handle the content that I really need to be involved with. We just launched a new initiative called The Community of Big Hearts, which is an offshoot of our business where we're making sure -- we're trying to have the most positive impact we possibly can, sustainably, in all the communities that we operate in. So there's a lot of content that ends up going out, and I'm staying on top of it, but it's becoming more tedious with the varying different platforms that I have to use accessibility on. There's a guy named David Green out of Ontario, Canada that's coaching me on accessibility with my phone. 

Jason:  Yeah, and we're at seven minutes, so thank you and perfect timing. We'll have you, if you don't mind, take some questions from folks a bit later on.

Stu:  Of course.

Jason:  Now Stu, is Stu still out there? 

Stu:  This is Stu. I think we're --

Jason:  - I mean not Stu. Rod. Sorry.

Alex:  Sorry, Jason, I'm just going to jump in for a moment. It's Alex with Carbon Solutions Northwest. And I joined you at about 3:58, so I missed the very first moment or two, but I am on the line.

Jason:  Okay. That's Alex?

Alex:  Yeah.

Jason:  Okay. Rod, are you still there?

Rod:  I am here.

Jason:  Okay. So I think because I said earlier that I would go to you second, I'm going to keep my word, and then we'll switch over to Alex if that's okay?

Rod:  No problem.

Jason:  I keep my promises. Many say I don't, but I think I do, sometimes.

Rod:  Ha. No problem.

Jason:  So, Rod, what's your story?

Rod:  Okay. Well, first I also want to say thank you so much to GDB for inviting me to be on the panel here, and already, hearing the first speaker, I'm humbled to hear the story and what's going on. I love entrepreneurship and owning a business. So I'll get into a little bit of my back story and then fumble through some of the questions. If you can help me out with areas that I've missed, that would be a great blessing.

So as a background, in the early '90s, I had a small tumor about the size of the end of a pencil eraser. And I was managing for [inaudible 00:09:38] in Seattle area at the time. And the tumor -- I was flying my little airplane. I had a little Grumman TCAT. I flew in and out of Boeing Field. And I suddenly had lost vision on short final and full throttled it, and I thought, "Well, the worst thing I can do is say something to the tower that I don’t have eyesight at this point." It actually only lasted for seconds, which seemed like an eternity, and full throttled my little airplane went around the pattern. And of course the tower says, "Grumman 6309 Lima, what are you doing?" I said, "I need to go around. I just need to go around." So I went around. Everything landed normal. Everything went fine. 

I started having these moments of vision being just gone. I decided when I was having ice cream at Dairy Queen, there was a doctor's office next to it. I thought, "I'm going to walk over there and tell them what's happening," because I didn't have any kind of doctor at the time -- and this is '94 -- and just walk in and tell them. As I did, the gentleman that was there had just opened his practice. He was from India, and he was a neurosurgeon and said, "You have tumor pushing against your optic nerve." And multiple MRIs later, we found that that's what it was, and they thought everything would be fine. 

	I had surgery, but unfortunately, the surgery didn't go exactly as planned. They couldn't just remove the tumor. They had to do a bunch of cutting, and it ended up getting rid of the majority of my eyesight all in one big blow. It limited my eyesight down to about seven to nine degrees wide and a little taller than that, so a very small amount. And then over the years, the quality kept getting worse and worse. My wife and I discussed it over the years and decided it would be time for me to get a guide dog. And now I'm blessed, since December 14th, when I had my graduation, to have Cairo, my guide dog. GDB has changed my life in that way.

Getting to the questions about entrepreneurship, which is my excitement of life, my burning passion. I grew up as an entrepreneur. My parents owned a bakery in Portland, Oregon, largest sit down pastry shop in the entire area. They owned it for 19 years. They could seat almost a hundred people. It was wonderful growing up. I remember taking naps on the flour sacks and dreaming what my bakery would look like some day. I had one over in St. Johns for a little while, and it did not go as well over there for me at the time, but it was certainly my first taste of after being in my parents for lots of years and then having my own. 

Then starting going to college and finishing business degrees as I got a little older and went to work for Safeway and managing for them, always wanting to become back into the entrepreneurship field because that was my life. I got business degrees eventually ending up with nine degrees and a doctorate in law focused in business law. 

Now, I'm a principal broker, owning Mount Hood Reality, and we have two locations with about 15 brokers working for us, so much smaller than the first gentleman, but we love our little business. We have an office in Camas, Washington and then in Troutdale, Oregon which is just outside of the Portland metro area. 

So choosing the life of entrepreneur, it really at first was chosen to me, and I learned that I would work half the night with Dad and go to school because school was always very important and then come back and clean the bakery after school, do homework. And it all, of course, would start over again. 

Getting into this why did I pick the field? Well, the field really was largely picked for me. The question I really want to deal with is how does blindness impact my field as an attorney and as a principal broker of a real estate brokerage. It impacts it a lot because people come to the business with a lot of preconceived notions that you can't sell a house because you're blind. I would get out with my cane, and lots of time, like lots of people, I would try not to use my cane over the years. And that, of course, just did not work well, as I would end up running into my client and the client wondering why are you running into me. And I would have to tell them to story, and then it always kind of came off odd. Over the years I had to use my cane more and more and more. 

It is so much easier with the dog because number one, people love animals. Overall, people love animals. And it is a icebreaker. I have actually gained clients because of the dog. People come out and see it and realize, wow, you are actually doing the business. You're doing the job. It becomes such a social icebreaker. 

So Cairo - his name is Cairo. Cairo and I have taken on a Facebook presence of the team that does real estate, and we call ourselves the real estate guru team. I also go around the state teaching real estate law in Oregon and Washington and then some nationally. I do some speaking. I'm now taking him with me to those events, and people are falling in love with him, which is important to me for people to like him, but also that breaks the ice for people to understand my business, how I'm doing the business.

There are still some problems because legally while disabilities are a protected class in all 57 jurisdictions, someone's house isn't. And there are times that people are saying, "You're not welcome to bring your guide dog into my home," and that would be a right of theirs to say that. So far, I've been able to overcome that either by explaining that the dog is respectful and all of that, and we've been able to overcome. Or the client decides with me and says, "Well, that's ridiculous, and I'm not going to buy your half million dollar house." So it's worked out quite well for me so far. I'm sure I'll come against a time that that's going to need more explanation, but the excitement of that has been just really crazy. 

I continue, also, on the side to teach at the university. I teach law and I was tenured faculty years ago and gave that up because I love entrepreneurship so much that I wanted to own my own business and just focus mostly on that. But also my love of teaching, I'm currently teaching a law class for Multnomah University and of course the students dearly love Cairo. Again, it served as the initial icebreaker in the classroom. This week we're going to over contract law, and what the uses of different contracts -- and of course as you all know, it's a contract that we have with Guide Dogs for the Blind on how we care for the animals. I didn't pull that contract out, but it's a nice discussion point as to many things in life become contracts. So using my experiences as an icebreaker to the students and opening this concept up.

Probably the number one question I get right now from people randomly at the University or just around is, "How to do you know when the dog wants to go to the bathroom?" It's odd to me that that would be the big question. How do I know? [laughter]. I just tell them, "I have him on a schedule. He poops at 7:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., and 7:00 p.m. And that’s it and he has to wait." And we laugh, and again usually it's sort of an icebreaker, and we just laugh about it.

Jason:  Right. We're a little over seven minutes, but I wanted to let you go because it's so fascinating.

Rod:  Sorry.

Jason: Yeah, yeah. No problem. Trust me, I know. I'm also a lawyer, so I have to have people very specifically remove me from the microphone [laughs] forcibly with the jaws of life.

Rod:  I totally get it. My wife uses the sheep herders hook on me regularly.

Jason:  Yeah. Yeah. I have to often be dragged away. Are you living in Portland? Am I correct in that?

Rod:  Literally, I'm living in Corbet which is a suburb. It's in the Columbia River Gorge, but Portland's close enough.

Jason:  Close enough. Okay. So thank you, Rod. That was fascinating. And again, I'm sure we'll have some questions for you a little later. Alex, are you still there, buddy?

Alex:  Yeah. Still here. Yeah.

Jason:  Okay. Thank you. So, Alex, over to you my friend, seven minutes or more.

Alex:  Well, it's funny that we've got a couple of lawyers on the phone. I'm not a lawyer, but I managed a law firm in eastern Europe in Kiev, Ukraine for many years. 

For a long time, I would say up until my mid-thirties, I was able to fake it as a sighted person because I had 21/50 in one eye and 20/200 in the other eye. So I could ride a bike. I could read 12 point font. I could use a mouse if you put it on the large setting. I had to deal with my blindness to a certain extent, but I didn't have to deal with it to a large extent because for the most part, I was able to fake it. 

In the early 2000s and certainly by 2010, I was suffering quite a bit of vision loss from glaucoma. Then I went in for what turned out to be a series of surgeries towards the latter half of 2010 to replace the pumps in the eye that regulate pressure. And those surgeries didn't go well. And so I lost all the vision in that eye in a period of 48 to 72 hours, and then I was faced with the decision of do I want to try and do the same surgery in the right eye, which still has okay vision, with sort of a 50/50 chance of success. 

And I said, no, I would rather go blind painlessly, inexpensively, and most importantly, I would rather control that decline. So I made a conscious decision that I was going to go blind slowly and under control. And as I was going blind, I was going to take all the steps that I needed to take to become a successful blind professional. 

By the time I left the Ukrainian practice, I was a 10 percent partner at least in the revenue end of things, and so I took that money, which was 50 to 60 thousand dollars. That's something you don't get when you're 37, 38 years old with a wife and kids and a mortgage. And I used that money to reinvest in myself because basically I could take a year off and figure out how do I reinvent myself. I knew what I wanted to do because I'd been doing it with some of our clients for the firm for the past two or three years. And that was I wanted to work on projects that either generated renewable energy or reduced greenhouse gas emissions in some way or other.

So in late 2006, I sold my share in the firm, and in early 2007 I launched Carbon Solutions Northwest. I don't have the degree of success in terms of financial numbers that Stu and Rod have. On a good year, I'll make 100,000. In 2009, which is the worse year, I made less than 40,000. But it is what it is, and I've had some great clients. 

Most of my work is centered around helping folks that want to launch a renewable energy project, understand whether that project makes sense, running different project scenarios, developing different pro formas, helping them with business development. Business development is a passion of mine. I love business development. 

And Excel is something that I'm very accomplished in now, but I'll tell you this. When you're using Excel has a blind person, until you learn how to use it well, it's a bit like standing on the beach and looking at the beach through a straw because you can only see one cell at a time. Maybe you're looking at a piece of sand or maybe you're looking at a piece of water. You've got to develop strategies to make Excel useful for you. 

Some of the challenges that I've faced outside of the challenges associated with learning to use JAWS and learning to use accessibility in your iPhone and so forth, I guess on the accounting end of things, taxes are always a pain in the ass. And it is what it is. You've got to learn to live with it. I have my daughter develop my -- go into online banking and develop my revs and expenses for me on a yearly basis. I'm quite accomplished in terms of navigating websites and that sort of thing, but I'm not good at developing a solid LinkedIn presence or that kind of thing. I have another daughter who's a marketing major at Oregon State University, and she's going to start helping me manage a blog and beefing up my LinkedIn presence and revamping my website and so forth. 

But I have gotten good clients over the years. I've had clients like Wellons, which is a major manufacturer of forest products, equipment, including biomass [inaudible 00:24:19]  systems. I'm currently doing a lot of work for the Northwest Gas Association. That work is centered around transitioning northwest fleets from diesel to conventional and renewable natural gas. I've done a lot of work for Northwest Natural Gas, helping them figure out how to clean up their fuel mix. That's just a few examples of the types of clients that I've been working for. 

I helped the town of Lake View in southern Oregon get off of fuel oil for heating their town and onto GF renewable resource. And I helped a client out in eastern Oregon develop their windfarm. That looked like helping them market their renewable energy certificates, and then once their project had crossed the finish line and they were cutting the ribbon on it, I helped them monetize the $1.4 million tax credit that helped them pay off the bulk of the debt associated with that wind project.
	
So that gives you a flavor for who I am and what I do. Obviously, I'm multilingual. My dog, his name is Frisco. He's my second dog. He's very different from my first dog. My first dog had a boy scout personality, "Yeah, I'll be there. Just don't mind me. I'm over here in the corner." This dog is like, "Hey, I got something I want out of life. What about me?" He's smarter than the old dog, but he's definitely got opinions about what his life should look like.

I completely agree with Rod's comments. From a business development perspective, the dog is a total ice breaker, and actually I think I'm more effective than many sighted people because I have the dog because people want to talk to me, and they want to talk about the dog. And in talking to me about the dog, we start other conversations. So that's a little bit of background about me, and I'd be happy to take any questions.

Jason: Well, you're about 15 seconds away from seven minutes. So that's pretty amazing, your time management. Good skill to have. 

Alex:  Well, speaking of time management. Another thing I would say is that to be successful for anybody, but especially as a blind person, you've got to have a database. You've got to have a database that keeps track of all your contacts and tells you what you've done with whom and what you're going to do next with that person, with all the people in your database. Otherwise, you're just fumbling around. 

Jason:  Thank you very much. Did KaeAnn join us?

KaeAnn:  Yes. I'm here.

Jason:  Are you on the call?

KaeAnn:  Yes. I am.

Jason:  Okay. Great. So last, but not least, we have KaeAnn. Hopefully you've been following the format, so off you go, seven minutes --

Unidentified:  - Unfortunately, I'm going to have to run. Sorry. Can I email someone with the question? Who would I email?  

Jason:  Maybe Theresa?

Unidentified:  Email Theresa?  

Jason: Sure. Theresa will take your email.

Unidentified:  Okay. All right. Okay. Great.

Jason:  Thank you.

Unidentified:  Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Jason:  Okay. Thanks. 

Rod:  Okay. Well, that's the classic entrepreneur. She's got stuff to do, you know? [crosstalk]

KaeAnn:  That's right. You don't let the grass grown under your feet, right? Well, I'm KaeAnn Rauche. I am the owner, principal owner anyway, of Guide Lights and Gadgets. We live out here in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We moved here about four years ago from Boston where I had lived for 20 years. 

During that time -- well, first of all my resume looks like a patchwork quilt of things that I've done. I was never afraid to make a change when I needed to, and I explored in a lot of different directions. I actually had done some business related stuff the few years I tried the vending stand program that was available to me. And actually I came away with some good skills from that of how to maintain contacts, deal with vendors, deal with the public, although I was pretty good on that one already, but how to structure yourself in a business to be able to effectively -- as you mentioned about the database -- knowing where you were with the many contacts that you have and know what the next steps are. I'm a person of next steps, and that has carried me very well. 

I started this -- now my husband, Barry, he is totally blind. I am legally blind. He has been, for some years, doing a vending kind of -- well, vending's probably not the right word. He's been an entrepreneur most of his life in one way or another. He is another attorney. There seems to be a lot of that going around. Well, and his initials are B.S, so need I say more? [laughter]. 

Anyway, so on the side from his long career as a medical -- he terms this better than I do -- he basically would take over hospitals. He would become the CEO of hospitals and insurance plans and whatnot and pull them out of the hole and get them profitable again. That was his thing. But on the side, he loved gadgets and loved to share with others things that were going to be helpful. So for many, many years, Barry would have his little gadgets, and he would go to a conference here or there, talk to a local group. That was actually how I met Barry at one of those little presentations.

But anyway, after we were together for a while, I decided I would really like to have my own piece here in the entrepreneurial thing. I just really was so tired of being an employee of somebody else and really wanted to be able to do something for myself to transition to my own. 

[Background noise and conversation].

Jason: - background noise there.

KaeAnn:  Yeah. it's pretty bad. 

Jason:  That's better. Everyone mute your phones. All right. Go ahead.

KaeAnn:  Okay. So I decided -- I was working my first dog at the time. Her name is Melody. She was an amazing addition to my life. And I found that going to these conferences and whatnot, there wasn't much available for guide dog handlers and dogs. And I thought well, Barry does his electronics thing, and he does it really well. How about if I do something with equipment and toys and everything related to guide dog, grooming and travel, some of the gadgetry as well, although most of what I do is not electronic. So that was really, really, really well received. People were very excited about it, as was I.

We ended up naming our company GuideLights and Gadgets. GuideLights was in reference to my first dog, Melody, who I always called my guide light, and Gadgets, well that's what Barry did. So GuideLights and Gadgets it was. Since then we've expanded into -- we added a line of leather goods. Blind people love to carry around stuff, and you've got to have stuff to haul your stuff around in. So we sell tons of leather products. It's a really strange marriage of merchandise, but we make it work. 

Most of our business is face-to-face or over the phone. We found that e-commerce didn't work well for us because our audience is primarily the blind community. We found that if you haven't seen the item and you haven't touched the item or handled it in anyway, oftentimes what you get then in the mail wasn't what you expected. So we were getting 35 percent returns on our e-commerce business and just decided that we really need to be able to talk to people. We need to be able to put things in their hands. So primarily, now, we go around to the conferences, to the state and national conferences, and a few other oddball things and work one-on-one with people. And we have a blast doing it. 

At this point, we're both retired. I did transition out of my government job about six years ago now, and GuideLights and Gadgets gave me a really wonderful entre into the world of retirement, even though it isn't really quite retirement. But when you have as much fun doing what I do, it doesn't feel like you're working. So you keep hold of the loose ends as best you can. You develop systems. You develop relationships. You develop products. You keep track of all those things, and you keep track of who you're doing business with, what you did in the past, what next steps there might be with this person, and develop very personal relationships.

My guide dogs have been huge in this. Up until, let's see, last September, I lost my first dog. I had her -- at one time, I had her. I had my second dog, Thor, who retired, and then my newest dog, Debra started a year ago. So for about 10 months, I had a pack of guide dogs, and it was an amazing dynamic.

As everyone else has said, it's amazing how people warm to that furry, wiggly thing down there. I can't tell you how many times I hear from people, "Oh, I'm just dying to pet her. I'm not going to do it because I know I'm not supposed to, but I'm just dying. She's so beautiful." On and on they go, and it's an instant ice breaker. Then I start talking about the different -- why it is as it is and what she's done for me. It then transitions into more substantial, meaningful dialogue regarding the business.

Since then, we've expanded beyond just the blind community. There are other legitimate service dogs that can use most of what I carry and people with pet dogs. We happened to move into a community that is just loaded with dog owners. So we've expanded ourselves. And everybody loves leather. I don't care who it is. I've got some great stories around products, but we don't have time for all that. 

We love what we do. When we stop loving what we do, we won't do it anymore, because it's tough work. It's long hours. When we're on the road, when we're hauling all our merchandise with us, it's exhausting. We're not getting any younger, either. When it's not a lot of fun anymore, we will [inaudible 00:36:24] it. But it's hard to think about that. 

Jason:  So how do you advertise? You said e-commerce isn't a big part of your business. How do you spread the word? Do you still have a website? Maybe I'll throw that question out to the panel, actually, because I think we can move on to questions now. How do you folks advertise your business? Is that a challenge for you?

Rod:  I'll jump in here. This is Rod. Talking about -- can you hear me?

Jason:  Yeah. We can.

Rod:  Talking about my real estate business. Advertising is quite expensive when done electronically. We put a lot into advertising. To be candid about it, we spend, between the two offices, about $12,000 a month in electronic advertising whether that's paying for Zillow, Trulia, Homes.com, Realtor.com, and social media campaigns. People think all this is free. It is free to the consumer, but the businesses to get your advertisements up there, it's quite expensive. So it takes sales just to support the going engine of all the advertisement. 

However, we get about as much -- and we're making huge pathways in this -- out of just going to chambers and networking events as we are with all of this other dollars, the 12,000, 14,000 a month that we spend in advertising has seemed to get us going and keep us going at first. But now all the chambers and networking and repeat customers and direct mailing to our past customers, we're finding that that is probably the path to success. The old fashioned touch the person, do a business deal with them, keep in touch with them, and become real to them has what has ultimately I believe is the future of our business.

Stu:  I can add on to that. Stu here. We used to spend a whole pile of money on yellow page advertising and pay per click on Google and realized that that cost a lot of money and wasn't a big return on investment. So what we did was we invested more in content and education and being thought leaders in our industry, as well as we took the leftover budget and we just started giving back to the community in a way that would be recognized by the community as well. And we're doing that in an authentic way. 
We're talking to our listenership and letting them know we want to give back to the community. The charity partners that we have where we're giving free moves or other things, we say look we want to give back. One of the criteria is we just want to know can you get the word out there about what we're doing. We're not looking for straight advertising. All we want people to know is that we're doing this, so that the community will support us more so we can do more of this.

It's more of we've found a more authentic way to market where we're doing more good than lining the pockets of Google or Yellow Pages or whatever.

Jason:  And Stu, what city do you live in? 

Stu:  I now home-based in Winnipeg, Canada, but I have lived all over western Canada. We have offices in nine different cities, and I've lived in half of them.

Jason:  Cool. I'm in Toronto, but go Jets.

Stu:  Go Jets [laughs].

Rod:  This is Rod, again. Can I chime in there again?

Jason:  Sure.

Rod:  So to add one more comment about that. If I was to rebuild the business, the social media campaigns have become, over the years, such a crutch, and they're so wildly pensive, whether it's pay-per-click like Stu mentioned, which feels at first like you're not spending a lot, but it wraps up to a lot right away, hundreds and thousands of dollars, and Zillow which is just crazy expensive. If I was to redo all the business, I would develop it based upon networking, face-to-face networking. Come and meet me, which of course Cairo's there now and that's wonderful, doing more and more that way, giving to schools, being around -- I'm going to basketball meetings and basketball times right now, and my wife explains to me what's going on, and it causes a big conversation. And I'm there with the guide dog and that face-to-face advertising, it's so real, and people want to know you. 

Jason: Especially with our dogs.

KaeAnn:  That's for sure.

Stu:  Jason, can I ask a question?

Jason:  Yeah. Sure. I'm just going to -- I was going to open up the floor to anyone who has questions at this point. Yeah. Go for it.

Stu:  Thank you. So this one has become a challenge for me. I'm doing a podcast now, so I'm interviewing guests on our community initiatives, and I'm struggling reading my notes. Does anyone have tips, tricks, or are they using Braille to, on the fly, write down notes to remind yourself to come back to. For example, even this talk here. There's a few things that I would have liked to have said and made a couple notes on but didn't get to it because I had forgotten. Is there a way to remind yourself with little to no vision of those notes on the fly, while you're talking to somebody?

Rod:  An in earpiece can help a little bit for those that need an earpiece for on the fly. If you are in control of a small device in your hand that you can control that way, there are some tricks that way or have somebody of course off stage or off mic that is cuing you. My wife often is giving me a note here and there as to what to say. Whether I catch it or not is another story or she has to kick me in the knew to get me to realize what she's doing. I have seen people do that.

Stu:  Thank you. [Crosstalk 00:43:43]

Unidentified:  You're not got a braille reader, right?

Stu:  I am not currently a braille reader [crosstalk 00:43:52].

Unidentified:  I guess a good way would be, again, the earpiece and good use of voice over, I would say, or something that makes you can jump quickly from heading to heading so you don't have to read too much. I suppose you would need to make them concise so that -- it could be distracting to hear the thing babble in your ear as you're speaking about something else, but yeah.

Unidentified:  What I do is I -- go ahead.

Unidentified:  I would suggest doing something like that on a Victor Stream because you can move either by a chapter situation or minute or by so many seconds in an earpiece. 

Unidentified:  Another thing I do in court a lot is I have certain points I want to cover or certain themes, and I count them. So I say, "I've got eight themes I want to cover." And I try and every time I got to a new theme, "This is number two. This is number three." As I come up and I've only gotten six and I want eight, I know I'm missing two, so I've got to figure out what I'm missing. There are, I think, little memory tricks you can do if you can have some preplanning to help you out to organize your thoughts.

Alex:  Alex here. I've got to give presentation at the Washington Trucking Association Trucker's Outreach Forum next week. It's a 10 slide thing, and I can probably memorize 10 slides, but then again, you're under pressure and your dog is looking for chocolate chip cookie crumbs on the floor, which always happens. So I'm going to send the PowerPoint to the conference organizer, and I'm going to ask them to change slides for me, and I'm going to have my computer with me, and I'm going to arrow down -- I'll have a separate Word file that will say slide number one intro, slide number two capitol expense, slide number three fuel expense. And it will just remind me what I'm supposed to be talking about in conjunction with each slide.

Unidentified:  Yep. Perfect. 

Stu: I like that. Thank you.

Jason:  Any other questions?  

KaeAnn:  I would just like to make a comment. If you are working on Braille, if that is a possibility for you, I think that you might find that just by writing one to three key words on index cards in Braille where you're not having to worry about oh, can I read this paragraph. Am I fast enough? Can I keep up with the line tracking? Just by some key words often that's what I do to keep on track with things, just a simple word or two. 

Stu:  I think that's all I need is one to three words as queues. Can you do that on the fly? Say you're having a conversation with somebody. They're giving a long response, and there's two or three thoughts in there that you wanted to respond to. But I feel like I'm getting older, and I don't trust my memory as much. So can you jot down on your Braille device to remind you of those three things to circle back to?

Unidentified:  I think you can.

KaeAnn:  My husband does it on the fly all the time his way. You just need a few words.

Unidentified:  Yeah. You absolutely could do that. But then again, something that's simple and inexpensive as just an index card with a word or two. You would be amazed at how that can help you.

Stu:  Okay. Thank you.

Jason:  Any other questions for our esteemed panelists?

Rod:  This is Rod. I could add in a couple things if I've got a chance here. There's a question I skipped over about the accounting and bookkeeping, and how do I deal with that. Do you want me to speak something to that for a moment?

Jason:  Go for it. Please do.

Rod:  I believe strongly in utilizing our skill -- we all have skill sets. Everybody has skill sets, and all of our skill sets are somewhat different. I studied in law school, taxation and all that, and I love numbers and that kind of thing. However, while I love it, it is not my burning passion. I believe that everybody should be going after, if you're an entrepreneur, your burning passion. My burning passion is human relationships, networking, human relationships, getting to know people. 
For me it would be let's go take a look at a house. Let's talk about that. What are your needs, get them all the way to the point where they make an offer. Once they make an offer, I hand the deal off to another person in my company. Go close the deal. And I am happy to split commissions, whatever has to happen at that point in time so that I can move on to the next person I can impact in the best way. That doesn't mean I'm never going to have another say with them. Of course I am, but I mostly refocus. When it comes to accounting, it's probably not my best use of time. So I hire accountants. I hire bookkeepers that keep that part of the world up for me. 

I'm blessed with an amazing memory. Speaking to the lawyers here in the bunch, as you may know there are 3611 legal doctrines that are possible to test on any bar exam, and I've taken a bunch of them. I used to own a company called Bar Exam Essentials and train people how to pass the bar in that particular state. And it's all -- most of the bar exam is about knowing how to interact and analyze the elements, like negligence, duty breech, causation, damages. There's two mixture cases that come with it and three defenses. And if you can remember the 3611 things, you're going to pass. 

If that's one of your skill sets, use it to your best advantage. I'm using the ability to get in there and network with people to my best advantage. You don't have to be good at everything. Find people to partner with. People will help.

Jason:  You're a friend of Donahue v. Stevenson on that one?

Rod:  Yes.

Jason: The law of torts, ginger beer. There you go.

Rod:  Very good. Yeah. I love it, love it.

Jason:  Oh boy, I feel like a nerd. Anyways, anyone else have any suggestions about -- go ahead.

Unidentified:  I just wanted to ask what is the name of the podcast that you say you do?

Stu:  Thanks for asking. It's called The Community of Big Hearts.

Unidentified:  Community of Big Hearts. Okay. Thanks.

Unidentified:  What's it about?

Stu:  It is about inspiring people in the community, no matter who they are, to try and give back to the community. We try to lead by example, myself and the producer Ryan, and use our businesses to try and impact and show how little it takes to have way more impact. And in fact, what we've found is that us and the other people who end up giving back are getting even more just by giving.

There's a lot of stuff I'm learning along the way, and it's all so positive. It's not just about helping the people in need. It's about creating a community, and that community that we create has this huge positive effect. And it combats those things that are becoming a real issue in our society today through social media where so many people are now logging so much time in social media. It's actually counter to the term. It's called social media, but you're not actually getting a real social interaction. You're getting the highlights of somebody else's life, and then you end up comparing yourself in your own head to somebody else's highlight reel. It actually gets people to remove themselves even more. 

So all those things combine. We're trying to inspire others. We deal a lot with business leaders and charity leaders, find out their story, and we either want to help the charity leaders encourage others to help that organization or start their own charity, or we challenge the business leaders to give back. And then usually when they accept, we make sure we hold them accountable.

Jason:  Wow. Community of Big Hearts, right?

Stu:  The Community of Big Hearts. Yep.

Jason:  Okay. 

Rod:  I love it. It reminds me of the givers game, which the more you give, the more you get.

Stu:  That is so true.

Jason:  Fantastic. We've got about five minutes to go before the top of the hour. Does anyone else have any more questions for our -- I should say -- distinguished and illustrious panel? Any other questions?

Theresa:  Hi guys. It's Theresa. I just really -- this has been such a great program, and I really want to thank all of our panelists for sharing their stories with us. I'm going to definitely -- this has been recorded. I'm going to post it on the Guide Dogs website in the alumni section so more folks can also take advantage of the learning. It was just really fascinating, and I really want to thank you. And thank you Jason and Amet and all of the rest of the team that put this together. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Jason:  You're welcome. Does anyone have any parting thoughts?

Roxanne:  This is Roxanne Hillsborough. I just wanted to thank you all for sharing all of your experiences. I'm retired and I'm also an attorney, but I did a lifetime of dispute resolution. So I know what you're going through, and it just sounded like a lot to my life would be faking and trying take notes when things were going on and things like that. So thanks for sharing your stories.

Jason:  Thanks, everyone.

Rod:  My final thought would be if you're not in business today, why not?

Jason:  Good parting thought. Good parting question for us to all ponder. [Crosstalk 00:55:46]. Thanks everybody. It was a great call and thanks for helping out.

Rod:  Thanks for the invitation.

[End of Recording]