And then there comes, so just picking up on that point around if you're just the bearer of bad news and you're not doing anything proactive with your owners, Through understanding that, you can then start to put some KPIs in with your team that become then something that's measurable, right? Is that where you're going?

Exactly right.

And so what we want to think about this is almost like a tree.

At the tip of the tree, we've got our objective.

Our objective is to increase or maintain our retention rate.

Our key results, we might have a couple of different ways we want to measure the success of that objective.

And then under each of those, they're going to have their own branches for, okay, well, what are the lead indicators or the drivers of that key result of...

As well as the damage that detractors can give.

What is going to be on the menu for the day before the game? So I guess maybe after walkthrough tomorrow.

Yeah.

So pregame meal is kind of the same wherever we go.

It's meant to have consistency, right.

And it's meant to have, you know, clean carbs, simple complex carbohydrates, some simple carbohydrates, clean lean proteins right so uh the meal looks the same every time and and i don't really share what exactly is on the meal it's not protect or anything but you know like it it's not that complicated you know it's it's pasta and and clean steaks and chicken breasts and stuff like that so it's not anything that people are like oh my gosh that they're serving lobster tail for oh can't have

Do you and your staff get the opportunity to cook and host those recruits and their family?

We have.

I've gone to the coach's house and interacted with the families.

Any insights as to what we might see that way?

Yeah, definitely.

ESPN is definitely going all out for its Super Bowl this year.

Like you just mentioned, the game will air on ESPN, but also ABC with its simulcast.

You'll also be able to catch it in Spanish on both ESPN Deportes, Televisa, Univision, like you said.

And yeah.

ESPN plans to bring its mega cast approach from the CFP to the Super Bowl.

All right, Mike, how about on the Fox front?

And I think collectively, we can really try to fix the perceived problem of what's happened over the past 20 years.

One of the things, interestingly, we're doing within SRI is we're identifying that second and third tier supply chain bin that you talk about.

And one of the ways we're doing that, we do a lot of research, but the other way is to call our clients.

Call people that build power plants or nuclear plants and ask them, what are you worried about? What's the second and third? And what we hear is not what you read in the press.

What we hear are, well, everybody's talking about transformers, but we need medium voltage transformers, or we need molders.

You find out, and now what we're doing is digging deeper and going and finding those small companies, in many cases, where we can lean in with advice, with balance sheet, with capital to help those.

In many cases, not just de-bottleneck, but expand to meet requirements that are coming up.

And then we realized no matter how great the facilities are, they can't run without the inputs.

It's not exactly the same in

season.

No.

And for us, you know, we don't like to knee jerk.

We like to steer the ship small, so to speak.

And so the menus, by and large, changed a little bit with consideration to all the other athletes coming in.

But for productivity and production for us, it's almost predictable because the meals are mandatory for football.

What's the best protein for gut health? I almost guess like eating protein and not feeling like trash maybe or full or bloated.

What's a good fajita marinade recipe?

So there's two different types of marinades, and they need to be described clearly here because one is meant to flavor and one is meant to tenderize.

And if you're using a marinade like with lemon juice in it, a little olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, whatever your seasonings are, that's a quick marinade.

And it's meant to, because it has acid, it will break down the meat tissues.

And if you leave it in there too long, it'll turn it into meat pudding, literally, you know, like the tissues will break down.

If you left it, whatever meat cut it is, it really doesn't matter.

If you left it in lemon juice or lime juice, that's strong of an acid overnight.

And you got any, like, tips on that to make it better?

Yeah

...

the chilies and the spices.

It's, I, I mean, it re- it d- it just does.

I mean, Asians have a lot of chili and spice in their, in their cuisine.

And, and so, so do Lou- oof, so do Louisianans, and I think that that's a, a marriage.

You know? Like, that you just need one thread to kinda pull things together, right? And, um, a lot of Asian dishes also have very long cook times, right? Uh, they, they've got street foods that, with pots that have been perpetually cooking for 30 years, you know? And so I think the Cajuns by and large appreciate that, that kind of pot cooking t- uh, technique.

How should I prepare them?

So what's actually changing right now in the customer behaviour and where are brokers and lenders either getting it right or missing the mark? Good question.

I think, well, as you would know, like the main factors that play at the moment all across the news is the change to CGT and negative gearing.

I think in terms of consumer behaviours, one shift we've seen off that is that more consumers are now saying that they intend to start a relationship with a professional advisor or they're going to increase the sort of frequency by which they engage with them.

Generally, what we know is the most common sort of professional advisor they're going to go to or trusted advisor is an accountant and about sort of one in five have a relationship with a broker on an ongoing basis.

And so when I think about what does that mean for brokers, for me, the angle is Well, if more people are going to be turning to their primary trusted advisor being an accountant, what's a broker takeaway from that would be, hey, how can you make sure you're going into your accountants and saying, hey, I'm fully across these changes and fully across how this might affect some of our shared clients or how maybe I can inform the accountant of a couple of things to keep in mind from a funding and debt structuring perspective.

That's probably the key behavioral shift at the moment.

I think the other factor is around what do these changes mean to sort of demand? We're yet to see in our real-time consumer tracking, we survey about 1,500 consumers every month.

So what's it telling you brokers are now feeling? What are the pain points? where are they hitting barriers and where is the clean air for them?

So how much time do y'all beat everybody else by? How long does it take to get, I'm assuming, the breakfast ready? What time does the team start showing up?

Yeah, around 6.

Yeah, we pre-shift around 5.30, give ourselves a little bit of wiggle room there.

If anybody shows up and we're ready, we're potentially going to open the doors and let them in.

But we just like to stay ready, brother.

And if we're not thinking ahead, somebody's going to catch us.

Yeah.

What is your favorite seasoning rub for smoking meats or chicken?

you

give them back.

Right.

So that's why we try to stay ahead of it.

And her name is Amanda and we stay, I mean, she's the first person that when I get in, I start talking to where are we at? How are we with things? What's going on with this? It's a constant conversation between she and I, because I'm making sure that the product is here.

we also have, Oh crap moments, you know, so we, uh, plan for that, especially during camp.

Um, you know, because you're working over the weekend, we don't necessarily get deliveries over the weekend.

Do you ever cook that at LSU? What kind of meat do you use?

Mm-hmm.

But he, um, just all of a sudden, there are certain artists where you're just like, "I gotta hear more of this person.

He's so unique." He's g- just got this unique sort of, I don't know, certain flavor to his voice, and when you see him, you're thinking, "This is a guy from Spain or Italy." He's got a name that's, of course, sounds very Italian, but he's in fact Scottish.

And so that even was intriguing as well to me, um, because I lived in Scotland for a time, and it was my favorite place, I think, uh, to live.

But he, um, this was from his 2006 debut album.

Uh, the album was called These Streets, and there's, like, three or four songs that are just amazing off of that.

So if you're ever on Spotify or wherever you get your music, look up this Paolo Nutini, and this song is called New Shoes.

... we'll talk about it.

Hashtag munchies, what's the proper way to wash your produce?

Well, with all things considered now, we use an antimicrobial wash that you can get, and there's different types of antimicrobial washes, like chlorine-based or Clorox-based, or there's...

I forget what all the bases of them are.

It matters not.

But, you know, if you're washing fresh vegetables from the produce stand or from the...

You should always wash your vegetables because there's always likelihood that there's dirt or debris.

I think one of the falsehoods is that when you get stuff out of a bag and it says pre-washed, that people trust that.

If you have a player that is trying to maintain weight, what say you about breakfast?

Is there always go-to things that you make for the team or do you switch it up every year?

Um, it, it, some of that depends on the dietitian.

Some of that depends on the philosophy of the head coach and what they're believing in.

Um, you know, some, some of it depends on the athletes, you know, cause we, we gain and lose athletes every year.

And so, um, a lot of it is dictated by what they're wanting to eat during training camp because, um, the, the philosophy of training camp is not to put on weight.

It's not to lose weight.

Right.

And so how important is it to have somebody that specializes in each sport?

So, hashtag munchies, how often should you flip your burger on the grill?

Shouldn't need to flip it more than twice, to be honest with you, brother.

If you cook it, you know, like...

I flip and turn, if that makes sense.

So you're looking to get the really nice marks on there.

You put it on, you leave it on there for a couple of minutes, two to three minutes.

You're looking for the liquid, which is... myoglobin leaching out and the fat, and then you turn it and you let that bottom side cool a bit while it's up and you're cooking the, the, the side that has not been, uh, you know, touched by the grill yet.

Baked beans, how are we going about preparing those?

If you were to suggest, like, what would you consider, like, if you had all these Europeans coming from all over the world or all over Europe, like, what are the things that you would tell them to go make sure you try before you leave?

Well, you got to, I mean, I'm assuming, you know, like, if we're in our town, you got to go have some gumbo.

You got to have some jambalaya.

You got to, you know, like, even a friend can take you to their house and have a crawfish boil, man.

You know, like, experience it.

I have to put myself in their shoes.

And when I go overseas or when I go, you know, to foreign places, I don't want to be a tourist.

Like if you were making wings for somebody, how was your preparation?

The next big thing we worked on together was improving Michael's understanding of Nine, the protagonist of his story.

Nine was really tricky, actually.

I really struggled because this story is a prequel to the series that I want to write.

It being a prequel, I knew where she needed to be at the end of the story.

And I knew that I wanted her character to be kind of broken and damaged.

And I knew that in the beginning, she was kind of this hothead who was kind of forced into working as a thief.

But I couldn't really think of how to get her from point A to point B.

Now that he's achieved his lifelong goal of publishing a book, I asked him, what's the best advice he would give to newer writers who are earlier in their journey?

What do you put in just your basic, like, chicken stock that you like to make, and how long do you cook it?

Well, you know, it depends on how you like your chicken stock, light or dark.

I prefer mine dark, so I roast my bones first.

And I'll put a little bit of tomato paste on the bones first.

to roast them because it caramelizes during the roast.

You take a pastry brush and brush tomato paste on the bones.

You roast those in the oven.

How does their hummus kind of differ from what we, what we know over here?

Yeah.

I'm a former lawyer.

I don't know.

I used to say I was a recovering lawyer.

I mean, I don't know how you wanna say it, but I, I was a lawyer for a while.

Started off doing mergers and acquisitions.

Then I moved, switched into finance, and then I came to Los Angeles to do film finance.

A- and for people who don't know, Final Draft is, like, the writing program pretty much in the industry.

Any advice from chef how to amp it up?

Oh, man.

I don't know.

You know, like you said, chicken fried.

And all I thought about was Nashville hot, you know, like putting spice in that chicken fried steak.

And chicken fried steak, rather.

You know, like I like to cook my chicken fried steak on a flat griddle and label butter on it instead of deep frying it and battering it.

There was a trend recently going around social media about what's your hear-me-out person that you're going to talk about? What's your food hear-me-out?

Now it's an expected thing for people that don't do a whole heck of a lot on the service

side of things.

When you go to a restaurant, most restaurants, at least in the United States, with the exception of some of the big cities that have gone to an inclusive charge, the waitstaff is only making $2.13 an hour.

The tip is meant to accommodate them up to guarantee they're making at least minimum wage and then above that.

And so tipping in a restaurant is absolutely necessary.

If you can't afford the tip, then I suggest you not go.

And I'm not trying to be rude.

What's a respectable thing to do for to-go orders?

Are there any TV chefs that you respect out there that are like, man, that guy, that really knows what he's doing? Or are they just good TV personalities?

Yeah.

Well, there's two that come to mind, a couple actually that come to mind.

So back in the day when I was a kid, they had this guy named, it was called Yan Can Cook.

This is straight up from the late 70s, early 80s.

And Yan Can Cook, That guy, he could close his eyes and chop food faster than you can blink, right? And Yan Can Cook, it was the knife skills.

But Jacques Pepin, as far as a chef is concerned, Jacques Pepin has done some TV shows, and he's just a really neat, kind of humble chef that is extraordinary at what he does.

Why?

Y'all get together once a year and just kind of talk about what works, what doesn't work?

Yeah, this is actually the first time we've done it.

So when Dr. Frakes was here, he was Coach Kelly's dietician.

He's a PhD, super brilliant guy.

He got me engaged in this community of performance chefs.

And it's really, we kind of started from the ground up.

It's not my design, but I've been a part of it, and I'm on the board of directors.

temperature? And so how does that specific heat control the bitterness of the coffee?

The, the, is that something you enjoy doing, making your own bread?

Once upon a time, I absolutely dove, you know, went completely down the rabbit hole with bread and would make, like, swirled rise and all kinds of stuff.

But I, you know, my, with my diet comes my passion, right? And so I just kinda got away from bread because it's kind of a filler for me.

You know, like, I, I, I became more interested in ...

Because for me, you know, like, the b- the breadth of variety of vegetables that are out in the world is incredible for me.

You know, so I just, I kinda took a spin to vegetables and proteins.

You know, there's, there's, there's only so many proteins on Earth.

What exactly is a compressed melon?

the problem?

So, so pricing really, a lot of pricing is based on fear, to be honest, and, and a lot of times we don't wanna admit we're fearful because just starting a business is, is a bold thing to do, right? So entrepreneurship is someone who's bold, but you can be really bold in some things and really fearful in others.

So what happens with pricing is we have a lot of fear based.

Number one is we sell based on our own budget, right? And we price things on what we think is a fair price, but fair is not a number, right? And, and we shared this before we were recording is what does, what does a fair price mean? Does a fair price mean this is fair to the homeowner and unfair to me as the business owner? That's not what fair is.

Fair means it's a fair price to you, Tim, as the owner, and it's fair to me as a business owner.

It's not fair if you get a great deal, and then I come home and I can't feed my kids.

I can't put my kids in college when they get that age.

Yeah

Mm.

With my coach, understanding how to train to get the best from myself physically.

What do we need to do in terms of our training program on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to be ready for the season, to have optimized speed, optimized strength, optimized power, to be able to go and run the fastest times that I'm capable of running? That's one.

Then figuring out how to get myself into the right emotional and mental state going into this pressure-cooked environment, and being able to not get distracted, being able to manage the nerves and the pressure, and go in and still execute the best race that I'm capable of racing.

And like you'll hear athletes, I just heard, you know, a, an athlete the other day, um, who didn't do well in the Winter Olympics say, you know, "Before that race, you know, I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna treat it like any other, any other race." It's not any other race, and you can't fool yourself into believing that this is any other race.

And so if your preparation the whole time is, "I'm gonna treat this like any other race, any other race," and then you get to the race and it is far from any other race, the entire environment is different, the competition is different, the entire situation is different, the lights are brighter, the sounds [laughs] and the distractions are greater, everything is bigger, you're not gonna be prepared.

So, okay

...