Well, well, well. If it isn’t our old friend Covid. And just as we were getting back to in-person events. But wait one darned minute! There’s a big difference this time. We’re ready. Not to say that it doesn’t suck, or that it’s just like it used to be. But that we have a plan.
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Carl: I just had to get that out.
Gene: That's good, good story. Although, I will say, what is a Beatles song, if not a Paul McCartney or a Lennon or a Beatles song? It's all the same, isn't it?
Carl: Well, it's the two of them, right? That's the thing. It gets to teamwork. And it's so funny because I didn't know who had which idea for what song, who was collaborating and who was creating, right, which I know is a weird line. But then you get in and you find out that Baby You Can Drive My Car, originally, it was, "You can buy me golden rings, you can buy me everything, and maybe I'll love you," instead of, "You can drive my car, babe. Yes. I'm going to be a star." And he's writing and he's like, "Yeah, we'd already done diamond ring in the other song. And who likes golden rings? That's crappy. And then I lost my license because I was driving too fast and it just all came together." And I'm like, "Okay."
Gene: Hey, [crosstalk 00:03:03].
Carl: I wanted a little more, but that's cool.
Gene: That's collaboration, that's collaboration.
Carl: Gene, are we going to talk about the thing that happened?
Gene: I don't know. You tell me. What happened?
Carl: How are you feeling?
Gene: Oh, I'm feeling better.
Carl: From what? What happened?
Gene: I don't even want to mention the thing that shall not be named.
Carl: I have to say, I have fewer friends that haven't gotten it now than friends who have, but you-
Gene: Yes. Yeah. It's weird. Everyone I know, right now, has COVID or has had it.
Carl: COVID, COVID, yeah.
Gene: I hate the word. I'm getting to the point where I can't stand thinking about it or talking about it.
Carl: I'll catch super hell for this, super hell.
Gene: Super hell? Not just regular hell?
Carl: Well, but it's at that point where I'm surprised when people haven't gotten it.
Gene: Yeah. Well, I've made it two years and nothing. I was starting to feel a little invisible, to be honest with you.
Carl: I got it last summer and it was one of those situations where I had been home for probably three weeks, four weeks. I hadn't seen anybody except my family, and maybe I'd walk by somebody on the sidewalk, and, boom, I caught it. It's just crazy, because you know this and it was in the newsletter last week, now it's coming in so hot and heavy-
Gene: Coming in hot, baby.
Carl: ... and everybody's like, "We're in the middle of a surge," and it's true-
Gene: It's a thing.
Carl: ... but everybody's acting different about it now. That first time around-
Gene: Well-
Carl: ... you either had people who were on board or thought it was a hoax, seriously. That first time around, you were like, "Oh, shit."
Gene: It's not real.
Carl: [crosstalk 00:05:01].
Gene: Why do I feel like shit?
Carl: That's what Last Man on Earth was about. This is all of those things. And then you had people who were like, "Oh, really?" and even those people are like, "Oh, no, no, no, it's real. but you should drink your own urine. That's the way to get through it," I know, or horse ... whatever. I don't know what they're doing, but now they're just like, "Oh, no, COVID is real, but the vaccine is ..." Okay.
Gene: Yeah. That's a whole-
Carl: But this time around, it's very much your people, and this is in the community, who are like, "Well, it's not going away."
Gene: No.
Carl: "We have to continue on with whatever we're going to do." And it's not just a choice that you make. Some people are immunocompromised. Some people have young kids who can't get the vaccine. And then there are some people who are just like, and I've spoken with people on both sides, there are people who are like, "We just need to wait until it's gone." Do you think it's going away or do you think it becomes another flu? Not that it's like the flu now, I'm just saying that, eventually, it's like-
Gene: But the-
Carl: ... you get another flu shot, you get a COVID shot.
Gene: The strain I had, they didn't tell me which one it was, but whatever, I was not that sick personally.
Carl: Did you check the receipt? Normally, they put it on the receipt, just like your server.
Gene: It was probably 12 hours. I woke up ... you know how you wake up and you're trying to get out of bed and you're like, "Oh, this is not going to be a good day. I think I'm sick." And I slept most of the day and, by that night, I was feeling better, and, the next day, I was feeling much better. I don't know if that's because I was vaccinated or whatever, or the strain, I don't care, and then everybody else in the house got it.
Gene: And the thing is that was after a few people had told me at the gym, because I'm coaching classes at the gym, I teach martial arts, so I'm in front of 15 people, 10 people at a time, and this was after some people said, "Yeah, I was exposed. My kids had it," or whatever. Okay. And so then I had it and then another coach at the gym had it and I was like, "Look, we're just going to close the gym for a week. Hopefully, this will, here in our little micro-community, burn it out or whatever," and that's what we did. We were back yesterday morning to half people, half [crosstalk 00:07:41].
Carl: How did everybody respond when you said, "We're going to close the gym for a week?"
Gene: Here's the thing, I was super freaked out. I was like, "Oh, shit," because, what was it, two years ago, we had to close the gym for three months and, because our landlord was super cool, we didn't go out of business. It was really bad. So I was like, "Oh, fuck. No way we're going to survive another ..." because, before, we had almost a hundred members. We came back, we had 30. Yeah, I'm not kidding. I've slowly built it up to we're about 65 now, and so we're paying our bills, and I was like, "Oh, shit."
Gene: But I'll tell you what, I just made a message and I said, "Hey, we're going to do this. We're going to close from Monday to Friday. We'll be back open Monday, MLK Day. I know a lot of you are on vacation. We're going to open back up. We just want to be careful. We want to be safe. This thing's super hot, it's spreading everywhere, and we don't want to have to close for a long period of time, so that's why we're doing it. And, please, if you've been around someone, you've been exposed, let us know. If you're sick, let us know, whatever." And they were like, "Thanks for looking out for us." They were like, "That's awesome. We appreciate it. We understand. We know this is a heavy toll on you. We appreciate it." I think, in the long run, it's really helped us look like we're taking care of people. It was done with the best intentions.
Carl: It doesn't look like you are, you are.
Gene: Well, thank you. Well, thank you.
Carl: "And this helps it look like we're taking it seriously."
Gene: Well, I'll be honest with you, I was more scared about the business going out of business than I was caring about people-
Carl: Well-
Gene: ... in the short term. I'm just being honest, man.
Carl: I love that honesty.
Gene: You got to be honest in a world full of bullshit.
Carl: I want to tell you that I do not feel the same way, I care more about the people, but that doesn't make you a bad person.
Gene: Hey, half of your people are virtual, man. Come on. Come on.
Carl: They're real. They're not Sims. There's not like a Bureau of Digital Sims pack.
Gene: Are you going to go into the Bureau metaverse?
Carl: Oh. You mean back into it or-
Gene: Go back into it.
Carl: Come on. I want to say this is kind of funny though. Some people know my mom's in rehab right now. She's been in the hospital the last ... she's been in there since before Christmas, and I'm technically on leave from the Bureau, but there are certain things that I need. This podcast, I need. But what's hilarious to me is, when I go to check in, when she's in the hospital, the proper hospital, I'd walk in and they literally say, "Are you feeling okay?" And you say, "Yes," and they hand you a tag says screened. They don't even check your temperature, right?
Gene: Well, it doesn't matter,
Carl: They don't even check your temperature. Then you go into the rehab hospital, and these are both really well-respected institutions in Florida, but you go into the rehab hospital and I literally do this, "135, Carl Smith, COVID answers, no, 98.7," and they just go, "Thank you," and then I grab the badge myself. They don't even hand it to me. It's just right there. A couple of days, I just kept the same badge on and walked back in. Nobody gives a shit.
Gene: Well-
Carl: And I get emails every other day, "Hey, these staff members came down with COVID, blah, blah, blah." I'm like, "No shit."
Gene: Well, yeah, but here's the thing, are you going to go see your mom if you're feeling bad? If you have a fever, are you going to slide in there and visit your mom?
Carl: No, but I feel like I have a fever all the time. I'm hot-blooded, Gene. Check it and see.
Gene: I feel shit like all the time. No, that's the message we gave our members at the gym was, "We respect you as informed adults. Please act accordingly," right, and I think they got the memo because, since we've opened up, I got four or five messages, like, "Hey, you won't see me for a week. Friday, I was exposed. My kids got it. I'll come back if I don't have symptoms or I get a negative test on Friday," or Monday or whatever. I think they've gotten the memo. I think they know to be responsible, right, and I think a lot of it comes down to just being responsible because you can spread the thing before you even have symptoms, right? You can transmit it and not have a fever-
Carl: What?
Gene: ... and not feel like shit two days before you can spread it.
Carl: I've been keeping it to myself and I feel bad. I could have been sharing this a lot sooner.
Gene: Right. You can preemptively feel bad-
Carl: [crosstalk 00:12:34]-
Gene: ... but that's the thing. It's like you don't know. And I'll tell you this, too, I got a COVID rapid test Monday. I still haven't gotten those results back.
Carl: Oh, wow.
Gene: But I took one later, Friday, and I got them back within 30 minutes. It's like what the fuck? It doesn't matter.
Carl: Well, actually, it's almost like food trucks now. You can drive around and find the pop-up COVID test trucks. I think it's gotten to that level of value-
Gene: It is.
Carl: ... for [crosstalk 00:13:07] giving the test. With the gym, you have people that are constantly coming, right? That's the whole point is that you come two or three days a week and blah, blah, blah. Now you look at a business like the Bureau, right, and you start to think, and when I say business, I mean really the business side, right, what is it that keeps the business around, the Bureau around, and it is membership is number one. Now that didn't exist before COVID round one, right? We've talked about this. When COVID hit, people bought memberships to keep the Bureau afloat, and thank you all, right, because that means this round, COVID round two, we're able to be a lot smarter about it, and we can take some losses, we can take some lumps, and it's not going to be as big of a deal, whereas, last year, a $70,000 loss one month and you're like going, "What? I don't have that kind of [crosstalk 00:13:56]."
Gene: What are we going to do?
Carl: Yeah. You know what? It's like, when you're in a plane and they say, "Hey, we just lost 30,000 feet on that bump," and you're like, "How many more times can we do that? That doesn't sound good." Yeah. And the other thing is, you've got people who are going to call you and say, "Hey," or email or whatever, "I'm you out for a week, but then I'll be back." We have people who are spending a significant amount of money to go be somewhere for four days and they're doing it months in advance, and then they find out right before, or they decide right before, "This is not a fit for me," or "I've got a little kid," or "I'm worried. I got to be around my elderly folks," or whatever, so it's totally different.
Carl: And things that we did were, first of all, with every event venue now, I think everyone accepted this clause, we have a clause in there that, if anybody cancels within 30 days of the event, not before 30 days, but within 30 days, for COVID reasons, the venue can't charge us for that individual.
Gene: Can I cancel after the event?
Carl: You can cancel during. We've had that happen a couple of times.
Gene: I have, too, actually.
Carl: Now the thing is, we also know, though, that we can't necessarily just resell that ticket.
Gene: Right. No.
Carl: And so now, if you look at it, it puts you in this weird place, right? Now not all the venues have that. I know that the upcoming event we've got in Palm Springs, I think, does. But what that means is we've basically done it where we will refund 25% or, no, we'll give a credit for 75%, but 25% goes against the cost of the event. And the thing is, everybody has been really gracious about this, they think it's great, and it's also in the terms when you sign up. This is something that happened after round one, where we were like, "We can't just give people money [crosstalk 00:15:52]."
Gene: Carte blanche, yeah, you can't.
Carl: And the thing was, the first time around, nobody expected COVID," so, yeah, you're like, "Okay, no matter what, get the money back." This time, you knew COVID was there. We thought it was going away over the summer.
Gene: Right. It kind of did.
Carl: It's tough because I serve the community, that's my whole job, but to serve the community, we have to be here.
Gene: [crosstalk 00:16:19] you. Well, yeah.
Carl: "I thought Carl was serving the community." "Yeah, that was until his power got turned off." It's this weird thing. But then the thing that I think is great is we made a plan in 2020 about what we would do if another pandemic showed up, we didn't know it'd be the same one, and, basically, it was this talk show model. And, for the people who want to be in person, that part of the community, we have, I think, it's 50 seats, so you will be the studio audience. And then we invest, which we did, in a streaming service and, luckily, we have somebody in the community, one of the members, Cameron, runs, I'm going to get it wrong, I'm not in even going to guess the name of the company, but [AVD-3 00:17:18]?
Gene: [crosstalk 00:17:18].
Carl: Anyway, basically, we're investing with him. He's bringing people and equipment, there's a lot out-of-pocket cost, right, to do this, and we're going to put on the best streaming we can. One of my favorite things, when we were talking, is he goes, "Well, you got to figure out your budget. If you just want to strap on a GoPro and run around with an iPad, we can do that," and I was like-
Gene: Let me sell some tickets here.
Carl: ... "That sounds kind of cool actually-"
Gene: It does, [crosstalk 00:17:45].
Carl: ... just running around going, "Hey." I don't know how long people would watch online or if you can ask 500 bucks for that ticket.
Gene: I'd watch the whole thing.
Carl: Yeah, you would. Yeah, you would. That's why I find those drop cams in my house all the time and they've got that whole Gene logo on them, which I don't understand-
Gene: You shouldn't have found those.
Carl: ... [crosstalk 00:18:06] your own logo. But so, anyway, yeah, so that, to me, it's an experiment. We're going to see how it goes next month. If people don't buy that streaming ticket, I don't think we'll do it again.
Gene: No. Nope. Nope.
Carl: It's going to be a thing. But then, for camps, and we may do this for summits as well, we talked for a while about this idea of a crowdfunded or a Kickstarted model, where it's like, until we get enough deposits, the event's not green-lighted. If you want to go to a camp that's going to happen in three months, put down your deposit, deposit's 10%, if the event doesn't happen in person, it switches to online, and we just go with that. I don't know what else to do because there are going to be surges, and I've talked to other event coordinators, and the event organizers are the same as the community, there are definitely people in the middle, but a lot of them are like, "Well, I thought we'd be able to do in-person events again in 2022. Check back with me in 2023." They seem to think that it's a full-year cycle.
Gene: I don't think so.
Carl: We got to get back.
Gene: Yeah. Yes, there are definitely people that aren't going to have any of it, right, and I have members at the gym, we have members at SOCO, they're not going to have any of it. They don't want to be around it and they chastise you for being around it, right? Those people, I don't know what to do. You're not going to make them happy.
Carl: Well, I respect that they don't want to be around it.
Gene: I do [crosstalk 00:19:46]. I'm not-
Carl: Everybody's got different concepts, things that make them uncomfortable, the context of how they live, who they live with, I get all that-
Gene: [crosstalk 00:19:53]. I'm talking about [crosstalk 00:19:55]-
Carl: ... but chastising others-
Gene: ... strictly business sense. I'm looking at, because you probably did the same thing, you look at them in terms of avatars for your business, right? You're like, "There's this person, there's the person who's sensitive to it, that plans a lot about where they're going to be and how they're going to do it, and then there's people that are just, 'Hey, we're just ready for in-person stuff. I'm going to take the risk, whatever.'" And it's like, "How do I get in front of each person?" Yeah, it's tricky, tricky to navigate.
Carl: [crosstalk 00:20:26]. And that, to me, is what's great about this talk show model is that it gives everybody what they're asking for. Now the whole chastising thing, I guess, on the streaming ticket, you could point at the screen and yell at people if you want.
Gene: But you know what I'm talking about.
Carl: Yeah, no, I totally do.
Gene: It's not just COVID though. You could insert any political thing and have the same type of person [crosstalk 00:20:54].
Carl: Oh, no. I totally get that, and I think the gym is an interesting thing to put these two next to each other and compare and contrast-
Gene: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:21:09].
Carl: ... the gym versus the Bureau community. But the other thing is that I did have somebody reach out to me and say, "Please, God, don't stop in person," even though it said very much in the email that the plan was to do this smaller in-person with a stream, they couldn't get past that first sentence, right, because, no, and I am in no way dogging them, they were just so hyped up that it's got to happen. It's tough and I know [crosstalk 00:21:43]-
Gene: [crosstalk 00:21:45]-
Carl: ... disagree with me, but-
Gene: Yeah. Well, probably, but there's those of us in the world that we're not introverts, and I'm not knocking introverts, but I'm not an introvert. I get my energy from being around other people, from talking to people. I need those sorts of things. Running the gym and coaching the classes feeds me socially and spiritually. There are those people that exist, and then there are people that don't need that, don't want that, and they're not going to understand the pull for someone that wants that, and you got to straddle that line.
Carl: Yeah. And I'll say that, having worked with people that really were on that introvert side and also had phobias, right ... there's a lot of things to be worried about now in terms of travel, in terms of attending with a group of people that you don't really know. All that stuff is so real.
Gene: And you've just been validated. Every fear you've had is being validated.
Carl: Right. Yeah. All those people who would never touch a doorknob are now like, "Told you."
Gene: Yeah, I ain't touching it. Yep.
Carl: And then they're still waiting on somebody to open the door for them, but that's cool. No, they always have a handkerchief. [crosstalk 00:23:08] handkerchief have the germs?
Gene: You got the one that's like your foot-
Carl: I don't know how it works.
Gene: ... in the Lowe's or in the hardware stores, it's like your foot can open the bottom of the door.
Carl: Oh, now I will say this, okay, we may need to cut this out, nah, but-
Gene: You don't cut anything out of the show.
Carl: ... you go into a public toilet, I got to ask you this, Gene, do you use your foot to lift the bottom lid?
Gene: I do.
Carl: I do too. I think we all [crosstalk 00:23:33].
Gene: [crosstalk 00:23:33], but that's got nothing to do with COVID.
Carl: No, that's just gross.
Gene: I've been doing that for 47, 45 years-
Carl: Forever.
Gene: ... [Crosstalk 00:23:41] I could walk. Yeah, I ain't touching that.
Carl: Yeah. And, here's the thing I think of it as yoga. I'm learning to balance.
Gene: A little bit.
Carl: I'm doing a thing. I'm going to also flush with my foot.
Gene: Oh, yeah, especially a gas [crosstalk 00:23:56].
Carl: ... as long as it's not an eco-friendly toilet, because then you have to take your shoe up and you have to go around and you have to push it with your toe. It's hard, just difficult. People walk in, your pants are around your ankles, and you're bent around like that and-
Gene: What are you doing?
Carl: Yeah, and almost like, "You didn't get the text?"
Gene: I'm helping the environment. Yeah.
Carl: Anyway, see, that's the level of germ control I'm at is I don't want to touch a toilet seat.
Gene: That predates COVID though. We've been through that.
Carl: Yeah. We've been doing that for a while. You're double-vaxxed, right? Have you been boosted?
Gene: Yes. I haven't had the booster yet because I was going to and I got goddamn COVID. I guess I will in a week or two. I don't know.
Carl: Well, that's it, right? And so, for a lot of us who are double-vaxxed, boosted, and got COVID, we're just like, "Now what?"
Gene: Am I invincible now?
Carl: Right. I don't know what to do now.
Gene: Now you can touch that toilet seat.
Carl: No.
Gene: No, still [inaudible 00:24:58].
Carl: That is disgusting.
Gene: It is.
Carl: I'm not going to do that. Yeah. I think this whole concept, moving forward, has just got to be, be careful, do things in a manner that people can participate how they feel most comfortable, and, if the community doesn't support it, then we just have to rethink, it and maybe there's people who say you have to wait until the following year, right? Here's the other thing-
Gene: Yeah, but [crosstalk 00:25:31]-
Carl: ... the membership that we've got now, that revenue that comes in from membership, which we are very frugal with it, that helps us make these decisions to try things like the streaming ticket, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't mean we're going to keep doing it. That'll be the challenge, and we only have venue contracts through April, I think.
Gene: Well, hell, if it keeps going, you won't need a venue contract. They'll just let you do whatever you want.
Carl: Kind of.
Gene: They're probably already like that
Carl: Kind of. We'll put a toilet on stage and we'll do the lid-lifting Olympics, where everybody will have to come up, lift them, lower than without a big sound-
Gene: Yeah, you can't make a sound.
Carl: ... [crosstalk 00:26:17] noisy, and then flush on the eco-friendly toilet, and we'll just see ... you know what? Ninja Warriors, we've got a competition for you.
Gene: We're coming for you.
Carl: That'll be good. Yeah, that's where we're heading and-
Gene: Yep. Good luck.
Carl: ... [crosstalk 00:26:36] happens. Thanks, man.
Gene: What are you going to leave us with this week?
Carl: There's a lot. I'm going to do this. I mentioned at the beginning of the episode that this is the second week that I have not been at work. I don't think I've ever, even during the breaks and stuff, literally taken time off, and this is hardly time off because I'm having to change another human's entire way of living, right? It's so much stuff and getting into financials and legal and all this kind of stuff with another human. It's like this is bizarre, but what I want to say is I want to thank Brett and I want to thank Lori. I want to thank the team at Metis. I want to thank the Bureau ambassadors. It's like there was so much that I did that I just put on this big Google Doc and people just came and said, "I can do that. I can do that. I got that. I got that."
Carl: And also Katie, who is a administrative assistant, I guess, that whole term and that concept is weird, but she's been helping go through my emails to make sure that I do get to things that are important or that things get routed to the right people. Having somebody in your email is really weird, but I trust her implicitly. It's like [crosstalk 00:27:57] the others. But one of the things that I think we all need to understand ... I never wanted to be important. I've always wanted to be valuable, I've always wanted to contribute, but I didn't want to be the reason something couldn't happen, only the reason something could, but, if I wasn't there, that doesn't mean that it had to stop. And that was a big fear of mine was that a lot of what I did, even though it felt super repetitive ... Lori said, "A lot of the stuff you were doing was mundane," and I looked it up and I think she was right.
Carl: But Brett said something to me that was really powerful. He told me it was okay not to be there. He gave me permission. And I think, for a lot of us that are leaders, we build these great teams and then we keep doing some of the stuff because we feel that it would almost be insulting to ask somebody to do this. But the ambassadors have taken over monthly roll calls. Wayne is now doing the welcome and the have a good week and welcoming new members and all this kind of stuff. And I just want to say thanks to everybody. It's allowed me to focus on my mom and my family.
Carl: And, yeah, it's been really transformative, I think is the word, because what I found was that, as much as I loved the ego side of the Bureau was my thing, it's moving on without me. I'm seeing the same level of conversation and engagement and all that. Thanks to everybody at the Bureau too. I'm going to be back, hopefully in two weeks, and I'll have all this stuff figured out. Also, make sure your parents' credit cards aren't going late, kids, because they're going to jack up that rate to 26.9.
Gene: Damn. That's good advice.
Carl: Yeah. And then just never use those cards again and shame them in public as much as you can. All right, Gene. Thank you. Transformative, shame, financial institutions, that's what I got for you. [crosstalk 00:30:17].
Gene: Shame, the financials, nice. All right, man.
Carl: All right, sunshine. I'll see you next week. All right. I'll be in Palm Springs, so it'll be an early one.
Gene: Ooh, I dig it.
Carl: All right, brother. I'll talk to you.
