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One of the things I love about talking with Kevin Bourke is how I am guaranteed to learn something I can use immediately. Kevin has been on the show before (listen here) and is a great supporter of other efforts we undertake, such as sponsoring TEDxSantaBarbara for many years. In this conversation, Kevin talked about how he and the team at Bourke Wealth Management, look at finances from a big picture view, not just isolating their lens on stock portfolios. He calls it the Family Financial Ecosystem. He takes us on a deep dive of what this means, and once you hear it, you'll wonder why no one has explained this to you before. Kevin also introduced me to a new word right off the bat - you may need to look it up. It's Decumulation. It's how you thoughtfully and strategically use your savings to fund your retirement, though Kevin explains it much better. Kevin helped me to understand the differences in how you look at your family finances, especially as it relates to long term planning. He explains where Asset Management fits, how to think about Wealth Management, and how it's different than how someone like him sits as the family CFO and manages the relationships with attorneys, accountants, and anyone involved in your financial ecosystem. We love it when Kevin spends time explaining complicated topics to us and encourage you to get a copy of his book, Make Your Money Last a Lifetime. His site: http://bourkewealth.com His book: http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Money-Last-Lifetime/dp/0984789529

Dennis Baker is an accomplished marketer and entrepreneur. His latest venture is called POLIS Assist. For the last two years, he and his team have been locating every parking space in Los Angeles County and putting them into an app. Yes, it's true, need a space, use POLIS to find one. Dennis freely gives of his time and extensive expertise to the non-profit community in Santa Barbara to help them with messaging, strategic positioning, branding, and crisis communications. He has a deep background in marketing and has focused that energy into bringing the POLIS app to the millions of drivers in Los Angeles. While developing POLIS he and the team have collected parking information on over 500,000 blocks. Dennis talked about one day where he looked at the eight signs in front of a potential parking spot and was confused. Some of the signs said what day he could and could not park, what type of plate he had to have, and other regulations governing the single space. He was maddened by it and decided to fix the problem. The only obstacle was, there was no central database for street parking, which meant his team had to photograph every street sign on those 500,000 blocks. The volume of street information turned into a big data challenge and opportunity. Dennis says that POLIS is the Waze for Parking. We appreciate the mammoth effort that has gone into and will continue to go into POLIS. We also thank him for his support of the Santa Barbara Non-Profit Community and his frequent attendance at TEDxSantaBarbara events.

Claudia Weintraub is the Director of the River Oaks Academy, a Personalized Learning Public Charter School, based in Thousand Oaks, California. We sat down with her to understand changes that are occurring in various proposed laws that are going to affect students in Charter Schools throughout the State. Claudia spent some time updating us on Charter Schools since her first podcast with us in 2015. Lots has changed, specifically in the legislature and the current political climate. Claudia helps educate us, and parents and citizens about the challenges Charter Schools are facing during these challenging times. What was fascinating to learn was how Charter Schools are a perfect alternative for individual students. The concept of Personalized Learning is an answer for a lot of problems young people face when trying to navigate the structured public school system. Thankfully we have people like Claudia leading the charge and advocating for this innovative way to teach our children. More information about River Oaks is here: http://www.riveroakscharter.com/

Will Bellomy is himself quite a character, ironically he designs characters for his party game business, Murder Happens. Will joined us in the studio, with guest host, Kimberly Herriman. Kimberly is studying 'Play' as a part of her doctoral research at Antioch University. By day, Will works at Photothermal Spectroscopy in Santa Barbara, designing marketing materials to illustrate the incredibly complex process of their products. It's no wonder he's fascinated with creating complex narratives that anyone can play, with eight of their friends. This conversation was interesting on several levels. Many of us love solving puzzles, and interactive mysteries, like the ones Will designs are tremendously fun. Will says his stories come from everywhere and hints that an upcoming game stems from an idea he had while talking with an Uber driver. Kimberly added an interesting voice, as she's doing a lot of research into the psychology of play, and what motivates people to play. You'll learn a lot from listening to her questions. I'm looking forward to playing on of Will's games soon with her, and a bunch of our friends. Will says his business is just getting going and that he's encouraged that board games are really hot right now especially social games. I think that we're experiencing a backlash against screens.

We invited Tara Jones Haaf back to the show when we heard that her very successful company, Eat This, Shoot That, has expanded into Solvang. For those of you outside the 805, Solvang is a lovely recreation of a Danish town, nestled in the Santa Ynez Valley, just 45 minutes from downtown Santa Barbara. Tara tells Mark and Patrick all about the charming city and the hidden culinary treasures that abound on the tour. Tara says that her tours are an 8-course adventure. We can't wait to go up to Solvang and discover these hidden treats. Listen to our original episode with her from 2017 to get a full background on what Eat This, Shoot That is all about. We caught up on the business; she's now operating with seven tour guides. She is full of great quotes, including, "Take the picture that got you to go to the restaurant in the first place." Good idea. Tara gave us some pro tips for taking pictures of food - and they are simple and easy to remember. 1. Get in nice and tight. She suggests getting into the personal space of the dish. 2. Shoot at eye level. Forget perfectly framing those over the dish shots. 3. Front light the plate (have the sun at your back) unless you're taking pictures of glasses of wine, then have the light behind the glass. Tara also writes for Noozhawk and has an unfair competitive advantage in finding the best places to eat. You can see her many articles here. Her writing talents are also on display in her book that she spoke about in our first show: The 100 Things to do in Santa Barbara Before You Die.

We had a far-reaching conversation with Max Drucker, the CEO of {Carpe Data, a business located just upstairs from our studio here in downtown Santa Barbara. Max understands data, big data, and the future of how data impacts businesses like few we've had on the show. We learned about predictive analytics, his start at Apple working to bring Insurance Companies to the Internet, machine learning, and how to manage the data that impacts your business. Max is easy to listen to, especially if you are unsure about your relationship to big data and how it is used to calculate risks to businesses. He makes the discussion, which can frequently be nerdy and complicated, straightforward and easy to understand. Towards the end of the show, he takes us on a journey into the future, with a prediction about autonomous cars that you'll want to hear. As co-founder and CEO, Max leads Carpe Data in the development and execution of the business. Before Carpe Data, Max co-founded Social Intelligence, a social media background screening company. In November 2010, Insurance & Technology Magazine named Max as one of its Top 10 Innovators of the Decade, an award that recognizes accomplishments in the insurance technology industry over the past ten years.

Mike Williams has one of the better jobs on the planet. He's the Getting Things Done Enterprise Architect for Zappos. What the heck kind of job title is that? In this episode, Mike tells about working with Tony Hsieh, the legendary founder of Zappos and being immersed in that fantastic culture. Mike is deeply involved by way of his background working for years with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. Together they recently co-authored a new book, Getting Things Done for Teens (Video below) and he's putting everything he's learned and taught around the world to good use at making Zappos one of the premier places to work in the US. Mike talks about the Airstreams and Tiny Homes and the Village which has been designed so you will 'collide' with those you work with regularly. He says Tony will talk about colliding many times during the day and believes it's a key to the organization's success. Mike calls it Holocracy. Holacracy is such a big idea you'll want to follow the link and dig in; it's a revolutionary way to think about organization. Which brings us back to Mike and the work he's on the planet to do - helping people get things done. He says figuring this out is the DNA of life, which he states so clearly as answering the simple question, "What's the Next Action?" One thing that amazed me about the conversation was learning Mike, who lives in Camarillo, commutes to Las Vegas every week. Ok, that doesn't sound so bad, but he leaves out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County because he loves Jet Blue. What does that tell you about brand loyalty? We met Mike a few years back as a part of TEDxCamarillo and were able to help him along his road to the red circle. You can watch his talk here. Mike talks about the Airstreams and Tiny Homes and the Village which has been designed so you will 'collide' with those you work with regularly. He says Tony will talk about colliding many times during the day and believes it's a key to the organization's success. Mike calls it Holocracy. Holacracy is such a big idea you'll want to follow the link and dig in; it's a revolutionary way to think about organization. Which brings us back to Mike and the work he's on the planet to do - helping people get things done. He says figuring this out is the DNA of life, which he states so clearly as answering the simple question, "What's the Next Action?" One thing that amazed me about the conversation was learning Mike, who lives in Camarillo, commutes to Las Vegas every week. Ok, that doesn't sound so bad, but he leaves out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County because he loves Jet Blue. What does that tell you about brand loyalty? We met Mike a few years back as a part of TEDxCamarillo and were able to help him along his road to the red circle. You can watch his talk here.

In this episode, we talk with Dan Hamilton, Associate Professor in the School of Management at California Lutheran University, where he is the Director of Economics for the CLU Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) and the Director of CLU's Master of Science in Quantitative Economics (MSQE). In partnership with CERF Director Matthew Fienup (previously on the podcast), he is a member of the Wall Street Journal's Economic Forecasting Survey and has more than 22 years of experience in economic forecasting. We had a lively conversation about forecasting, how you present data to decision makers and how 'data can be tricky.' Dan believes that we are in the Golden era of forecasting. Luckily for us, he has deep experience in the topic and was able to present Patrick and Mark with a Master's Class worth of information in under an hour. Dan joined CLU in 2009 and in three months, established CERF and MSQE. CERF has computed economic forecasts for the United States, California, Oregon, Los Angeles County, the San Fernando Valley, Ventura County, and for various other counties in California. The MSQE program focuses on teaching the application of quantitative methods in applied economic and financial analysis, including economic forecasting. Before CLU, Hamilton joined the UCSB Economic Forecast Project in 2000 where he worked with well-known regional organizations including Vandenberg Air Force Base, the County of Santa Barbara, the County of Ventura, The Towbes Group, the Sares-Regis Group, among many others. Before UCSB, Dan worked for three years for the Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates (WEFA Group) where he produced and interpreted forecasts for a wide variety of clients including Visa International, the Panama Canal Authority, and the United States government. He also conducted intensive forecast training programs for both internal and external clients at the WEFA Group.

In this episode, we meet two amazing women, both winners in their respective categories of the 2018 Spirit of Entrepreneurship Awards. We've been partners with SOE for some time now, and love having these conversations. Both women are remarkably accomplished as you will learn in this spirited episode. Nirasha, the winner in the Hospitality and Tourism category, has built a thriving business based on her passion for food. She outlines how she went from attending Brooks Institute with a degree in photojournalism to starting The Food Liason with her husband and growing it to be able to feed 4,000 people a day. Zdena, the winner in the Retail category, has grown her passion for art glass that comes her home country in Eastern Europe, into a business based in Solvang, California. She and her husband have grown the business from art glass and jewelry to include a shop featuring olive oils and a new shop called Flavors, which is an artisanal cafe and gelateria. I loved the eclectic nature of our conversation, as will you. Next time you're in Carpinteria (during lunch) stop in at The Food Liason's counter for a treat, then when you're in Solvang, stop into Flavors, after visiting Zfolio's Gallery to see the art glass.

Jan Campbell is the Executive Director of Santa Barbara-based non-profit, Domestic Violence Solutions. Jan gave us a quick update on DVS's history, having been founded with their first shelter in 1977. She also introduced us to a new term: Intimate Partner Violence. She says that the #MeToo movement has raised awareness of this epidemic. Her statistics show that there are more than 6,000 calls a day nationally to organizations that provide support like DVS. DVS relies extensively on volunteers, with a 40-hour training for each of them, as there are more sensitive issues to consider than you'd first think. For instance, the actual location of the shelters is a secret known only to staff and law enforcement. Makes sense once you think about it. Another term she taught us was Intergenerational Violence, here's a link to a white paper on this topic for those of you that want to dive deeper after you listen to this episode. We talked at length about early warning signs, prevention and how to help. She said, "Be an upstander, not a bystander." Agreed. There are many challenges facing our community and this is one she rightfully called a Silent Epidemic. If you're interested in helping DVS be successful in their mission, check them out here. Listeners will remember Jan as the first guest on this podcast. Welcome back. (J.C. Corliss / Noozhawk photo)

Ashley is an avid sports enthusiast and is an athlete for life. It's no surprise she has remained in the sports industry for over 17 years. Her experience has ranged from Collegiate Volleyball Coach and Youth Development and Program Director to most recently General Manager and her current role as Director of Corporate Development at Sports Academy in Ventura County. We had a chance to catch up with her and talk about the wide-ranging offerings at Sports Academy and how they're impacting lives from small kids and families, local school sports teams all the way to professional athletes. Ashley explained how the founder of Sports Academy, Chad Faulkner, has an enlightened view of the definition of sports. It includes eSports - they have a cool room dedicated to it, a close-quarters defense course for first responders and even competitions for entrepreneurs. Ashley is an inspirational leader to be sure, and we're sure she and the team at Sports Academy make a difference in the lives of the athletes that train there. She explained their ALPHA motto - A = Athletes, L = Learning, P = Positive, H = healthy and A = Attitude. Love it. They recently hosted a Startup Weekend at their 96,000 square foot facility. Thanks to Mike Panesis, a friend of the pod, and past guest from California Lutheran University for the introduction.

In this candid interview with Dina Landi, the managing partner of Riskin Partners, we learn about the local real estate market and the attraction of people to the region. She explains how the market is complicated and how our coastal lifestyle is one of the main attractors to people in the area. You'll learn what's it's like to be a realtor who focuses on properties of distinction. She gives tips for meeting new people and how to get beyond just thinking about square footage when representing a home. My biggest surprise was when we talked about real estate technology and how realtors tend to be early adopters, and she said, "Yes, we have our own drone." Of course, she does. This conversation had a bit of sadness to it as well. Riskin Partners was founded by Rebecca Riskin, who perished in the Montecito Debris Flow in January 2019. Dina told us briefly about her story that day and wanted to dedicate this episode to her memory.

Dr. George Ayoub is an author, scientist, and educator, experienced in medical research and higher education. He has taught over 10,000 students at colleges and universities and is appreciated for his ability to make things clear for all audiences. He enjoys word plays, gardening, and teaching. His research has identified natural foods that protect our bodies from disease and improved the health of people. His most recent book, All the Worlds a Stage is a concise guide to the workings of your body, with clear explanations of how to improve your odds for a healthy and productive life. It includes an overview of human biology, including cell function, organ system physiology and development. The book explains common chronic diseases and how to adjust diet and exercise to improve your odds of a healthy life. Our conversation covered George's broad interests, from teaching, researching, and why he chose Physics as a major and in Grad School he majored in Neuroscience. He was drawn to these two subjects because they were core to his worldview that the two most core subjects were Physics and Philosophy. So he minored in Philosophy. These cover the bigger ideas of how things work (Physics) and who we are (Philosophy). This conversation is so packed, it's hard to isolate the best bits for the show notes. This show is best experienced by listening - keep a notepad around to take notes.

Alex Cicconi-Kasper, CEO of +Charge, is the winner of the recent Startup Weekend, held in February, at UCSB. He's a second-year College of Creative Studies student and Physicist. He and his team have developed a single-use cell phone charger. In this episode, Alex goes into detail about how they worked as a team over the 56 hours of the weekend to come up with a concept, test market the idea, get feedback and secure a team to mock up the idea, which led to them winning the weekend. 805Conversations is supportive of the efforts of the various Startup Weekends in the region and offers a podcast interview to help these young companies get some early publicity and gives the new leadership a chance to hone their presentation skills for the media. You can read more about the product in detail at the UCSB Center for Creative Studies website: https://ccs.ucsb.edu/news/2018/reliable-charge

Siobhan Holden is a student at Santa Barbara High School and brought cookies to her class one day, and everyone fell in love with them. Sometimes that's all it takes to get that entrepreneurial energy flowing. It turns out that high school kids don't have enough money to afford organic, handmade cookies, so she turned to a broader market and debuted at last year's Summer Solstice Festival. That was a great launchpad, and since then the cookies and the cookie business has grown exponentially. Along the journey to growing the business, she's learning about marketing, distribution, bulk baking, customer relations, and finding ways to build the business. She says that the reason they don't use preservatives in their cookies is that you wouldn't expect your mom or grandmother to use them in theirs. We agree.

Jennifer Berger is a native Southern Californian and a third generation Realtor. Following the footsteps of her Grandfather, and Mother, Jen began real estate in 1998 while attending UC Santa Barbara. She graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish and soon after attained her Real Estate License. Jen began her career in a boutique real estate firm in Santa Barbara and after five years joined an established real estate firm to accommodate her expanding clientele and connect with clients on a local and international level. Jenn joined the prestigious and elite agents at Compass at the end of 2016. Our conversation took us into areas I'd never considered when thinking about real estate, like how to deal with death and divorce. She says that there are two reasons to be in the business, the money and the people. Knowing from working directly with her as a volunteer at TEDxSantaBarbara, for her, it's the people. She also busted some myths I had about weekend realtors that think it's easy to get a licesne and make a million dollars and only have to sell a couple of homes a year. Not true. If you want to be a realtor, she suggests: 1. Be ready to invest all of your time 2. Be a jack of all trades 3. You've got to have heart Coming from a 3rd generation realtor, that makes a lot of sense. We appreciate Jen's spirit and her sincere desire to build lifelong relationships with clients.

Edgar Terry, President, and CFO of Terry Berries comes from a long line of farmers. He has a lifelong interest in finance and teaching. In this episode, Edgar explains the Food System in a way that helps us understand the process of commercial farming in a way that helps us appreciate the complexities of the business. Terry Berries have been a fixture in Ventura County for the past 16 years. They are centrally located at 1701 Telephone Road. They've operated a fruit stand this entire time and don't wholesale the berries. If you want some of the best tasting, picked-fresh-daily strawberries, you'll need to go during the season (February through Mid-June). In addition to the berries, Edgar grows large crops under contract, peppers, celery and other vegetables for large food producers. As a chef, I was fascinated to learn how this all worked, and how he manages the entire process. Edgar explained that they operate on single-digit margins, meaning it only takes a minor mishap, maybe too much heat, to erase the profit. Luckily for the family, he has a love of numbers and suggests that there's no substitute for sound finance. He loves this aspect of the business so much; he's been teaching it for 32 years in California Lutheran University's Degree for Professionals Evening Program and the Master of Business Administration Program. He also somehow finds time to sit on eight boards of directors, including being the President and CFO of Terry Farms. He's a busy guy. We also talked about the challenges and surprises of commercial farming, and some of the innovative aspects that are being implemented to help him and other food producers meet the demands of an ever more discerning population.

Emily Barany has a great story to tell about how ThomasFireHelp.org started. It was the day after the Thomas Fire had burned through the night and was barreling towards downtown Ventura. She helped a friend evacuate and in the morning started looking for ways to help those affected by the raging fires. She contacted a friend Chris Collier, and together they came up with a plan to connect resources within a few days. Listen as she tells the story of rallying private pilots in the area to create an ad-hoc fleet of planes to transport key personnel and those in need of medical treatment during the worst days, primarily when the 101 freeway was closed. ThomasFireHelp was born out of the immediate and desperate needs of people in the Ventura and Santa Barbara communities facing disasters of unprecedented scale and destruction. No one knew where to go or what to do, and everyone wanted to help. That was their simple beginning - they became the 'Craigslist' of recovery, building a “scrappy” web-based platform connecting those in need with those who had resources to give. Emily has a background of helping local organizations. Her company, Visionality, works with non-profits to align their vision with their strategy and focus on the business side of the operation. This episode takes a deep dive into the motivation that has now resulted in the creation of a Disaster Resource and Recovery Platform. Emily admits that she knows nothing about software development, or disaster recovery, which leads to her quote above, "Everything starts with I don't know." She's been on a steep learning curve since early December 2017 when the Thomas Fire started. She continues to develop the platform, knowing that the recovery efforts may easily take ten years until we're back to a new normal. Emily is a graduate of California Lutheran University, one of the sponsors of our podcast and represents her alma mater very nicely.

Seth Streeter is a community organizer and CEO of Mission Wealth. Over the past two years, he has led the creation of a significant new effort in Santa Barbara called Sustainable Future. His Advisory Council of 24 civic leaders reads like a local Who's Who. Collaboratively they have found ways to amplify what's happening in the environmental movement in various silos and bring the efforts together under one umbrella. The site that they've created has an underlying strategy of employing game mechanics to make participation in various activities engaging and fun. At the recent Earth Day, they set up a Scavenger Hunt that took players in and out of over 200 organizations at Alameda Park. Part of the success of the project is how they are connecting non-profits to business to schools, the public and private sector and faith-based communities. It's a significant mandate. Seth's concerned about scope creep and has a clear focus on the challenges that such a sweeping initiative has. I enjoyed hearing Seth talk about Environmental Stewardship and feels that is an important message to communicate. We applaud everyone's commitment to this project and hope that it inspires you as well. Take a look a the site and sign up to discover new ways to be inspired.

Narelle Wickham is a forensic mental health clinician, here visiting Santa Barbara for the summer from Canberra, Australia. This conversation opened up a window into why mental illness is such a driving factor in school violence and how educators can be taught to recognize early warning signs. Narelle became aware of the impact of mental illness and the judicial system while working in the court system in Australia and saw the challenges of mental health vs. criminal justice. She said that when you focus on solving the mental illness issue, there's an extremely high success rate. Narelle suggests that mental illness is primarily a young person disease, concentrated mainly on 12-25-year-olds. She has a method for training teachers called SOLD; S = Smile, O = Observe, L = Listen and D = Discuss. We talked about gun violence in Australia, where there's never been a school shooting, to here in the US, when there was a shooting while we were recording this episode. Another focus for her is Internet Addiction. We spoke at length about that issue. Narelle creates professional development workshops for teachers and school districts in Australia, and after having spent some time here, would love to start training here in the 805.