#SDE Spotlight

[deltabusinessadvisors]

AZBBA Newsletter - November 2022

- Broker Spotlight - Lisa Riley How did you get into the business brokerage industry? After leaving academia and moving to AZ, my husband’s dream was to build a home. Since his career was the impetus for our move, I was the GC of building our home.  Throughout the process, we had a ton of assistance and others began asking me to help them.  GC license or RE license?  2+ years or 2+ weeks? Decided to get a RE sales agent license to remodel, fix and assist others. In addition to the courses, I attended the career night on what you can do with a AZ RE license.  Lo & behold – you can sell businesses!  Who paid attention to the 2 minutes in the entire 90+ hours of courses?   As a researcher and having taught Demography courses, I dug in and interviewed both business brokers as well as business owners.  I thought, I can do this AND it really utilized all my skills better than house building/remodeling. Although both share the same basics – understand what the client wants & needs and ensure expectations are in alignment to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome. This was the same strategy I used in my prior Evaluation Company.  Additionally, I had researched the top organizations and I immediately joined AZBBA and IBBA. Both organizations have provided, and continue to provide, invaluable insight and support. What is your favorite thing about the industry? The people! This industry is made up of generous professionals willing to share their knowledge and experience. I don’t have to make the mistake to learn from it. Thus, I always learn something new every day – be it from a colleague, a client or an opportunity!  There’s always a solution to every issue – it’s just at what cost and is the cost worth it. What is the best or most interesting deal you haveworked on? One of my client’s was negative $1M in EBITDA (yes, EBITDA not SDE) when we went to market. As it was a lower middle market deal, there wasn’t an asking price.  The key to this opportunity was finding a buyer in the same space – who could qualify for the government contracts, keep the long-term loyal employees, and grow back the business to it’s former $3-$5M EBITDA.  It took us 2 years and two private equity groups (PEG) (the first PEG was bolting my client’s company on one they had acquired the prior year).  In the midst of our transaction, 1st PEG sold that company to another PEG.  Thankfully, the 2nd PEG was a better fit for that company and its owner really, really wanted my client’s company. He & I kept the deal together with the new PEG. LOTS of lessons learned in this one! What is the key to being a successful broker? Listen and Learn.  Understand the needs of seller and buyers in order to create win win scenarios. Have a great deal team to work with (Bankers, Lawyers, Accountants, etc.).Get Involved. As a member, volunteer, committee member, board member, and past chair of both the IBBA and AZBBA, giving back always increases your knowledge, bandwidth and bottom line.  As St. Francis of Assisi said, “…It is in giving that we receive…” What is the strangest experience you have had while showing a listing? As a relatively new broker, I had a client who owned and operated a small HVAC residential company.  He had a couple of crews and trucks, however, the owner was also active in the business. After reviewing his business, preparing him for buyer-seller meetings and ensuring that the right types of buyers were interested, Steve Ferber had an interested buyer who had reviewed the Confidential Information Memorandum and wanted to move forward with a meeting! YEAH!During this meeting on a hot summer day, my client just kept repeating that he wanted to sell because he ‘didn’t want to die on the roof.’  Needless to say, he had NEVER said anything like that in any of my prior meetings with him. Steve’s buyer did NOT move forward with the purchase. Ask Steve about his perspective, although he may not recall it, I was mortified!  My client & I rehearsed for future meetings, discussed what went well and what didn’t (a repeat of what we had practiced prior to that meeting).  It was now time for a meeting with a second buyer…which had a very similar result. When we struck out the 3rd time, I decided that the best path forward was to part ways as we were going to have similar results and our contract was ending. The likelihood of someone purchasing this business was slim to none due to the self-sabotaging of the owner, who may not have been ready to let go. Lessons Learned:  Get to True Motivation & Move on Quickly. What do you do on your day(s) off? I enjoy traveling, hiking, wine tasting and overall exploring with my husband.  We also enjoy woodworking (built cabinets for our home and found out, wow, we get exactly what we want) and gardening. There is never a dearth of activities to do or places to go! As published in the AZBBA Newsletter - November 2022 Read the full article

[newmusicearofficial]

The Sweet's debut album "Funny How Sweet Co-Co Can Be" was a great first album of quirky Glam Rock and Classic Rock.  I chose 7 of the 12 tracks for my playlist.  The singles "Funny Funny" with its hint of Soul and Motown and the tribal Indian sounding "Co-Co" are here.  The cover of The Lovin' Spoonful's "Daydream" and the brilliant B-sde that is "Jeanie" make the list.  "Chop Chop" is similar to "Co-Co in its bare bones sound while the final two songs are Classic Rock standards of the time, "Done Me Wrong Alright" and "Spotlight".

[jtownarch]

Celebrity Sighting

Last week from an outsiders perspective it would look like, based on our excitement, we had ourselves two celebrity sightings in one day. In normal peoples lives, celebrity tends to be a term used to describe some Instagram famous model à la Kardashian. However, having the lives of urban planning and architecture interns changes the meaning of the word. We had the chance to sit down with two very inspirational, impressive, successful experts in their field. These people define what it means to put your work first, be successful, and strive to work for the people to make the world a better place. Our amazing boss, who’s more like a sister at this point lets be real, @Maya Tapiero where ya at, has so many amazing connections to people she is able to put us in touch with to meet to help determine and learn in what path life can take us, how we can direct it and why or where we should be focused in order to achieve what we want in this lifetime.

Go on #ImListening....

First we met Dana Gazi. At the age of 41, Dana has recently opened a private firm with a small handful of partners. Dana is possibly one of the busiest people in Jersualem, and we managed to track her down and get a quick run through of her journey from Kabbalah to the Gay Pride parade. We met in her office, an intimate and inspiring environment, beautifully decorated with style and work in mind. While Dana is currently in the process of getting her masters in Urban Planning, she received a bachelors in Jewish studies, specifically focused on Kabbalah (mysticism), then continued to study Social Work. When looking for a job, she turned to the municipality who said, “we need an urban planner, heres your job”. With no prior knowledge or background in the field, Dana was was completely thrown into the situation. Despite this she always put 200% of herself into her work. She worked as a Community Planner in Kiryat Yovel and Givat Ram for 5 years, always quick to learn on her feet. She described herself as someone who, while over the years has calmed a little, is always ready to fight her way to get her message across. She is the perfect Community Planner in that way, as she sees a need for the people and has the ability to give them a voice. Through her work there she found a need to focus on public participation. She saw that the only way to help the people was to hear the people and make them feel heard. She explained that the BEST outcome happens if you can hold many conflicting ideas and messages that you’ve heard from the people within your mind, and form them into something great. 

---Our faces when we try to get on her level and do just that---

#ComeAgain?

Her final project before moving to the private sector came from seeing an ignored need. The city had been planning to double the amount of residential buildings in the already over populated area. She and her now partner, (forget his name woops) came to the committee with concerns. They saw that this would ruin not only the environment but the quality of life in the area. The committee, in turn, essentially said “if you think its so bad, you find a way to do it.” The two had three months to come up with an entirely new plan. So, they hit the ground running. With that focus on public participation in mind, they spent a month and a half interviewing anyone and everyone. They then used all this information to not only come up with a new plan, but include documents and regulations that would need to be applied. In the end, 90% of their plan was used. After this success, Dana and her partner saw not only their own potential, but the potential of the people. They opened their firm which works with companies and governments alike to work with the people for the people...

Some of her firms most recent projects include organizing programming for Pride Month in Tel Aviv, tapping into her instinct for connecting with people and focusing on public participation to make it one of the most successful Pride Months the city has ever seen. Her team is also working on a new green and sustainable street on General Pierre Koenig street in the neighborhood of Baq’a in Jerusalem with benches, greenery, and pops of color to make it beautiful and fun! One of the issues she raised that’s close to her heart, is that many immigrants want to move to Jerusalem and in order to do that area needs to be rebuilt and in effect becomes much more densely populated. But, there are already so many housing projects and residential areas that need to be improved, that don’t get a steady supply of water or are in desperate need of a basic sanitation upgrade, that neglecting to help those people is wrong. She is continuously and tirelessly working this angle with hopes to have a better future for everyone.

After being blown away by our meeting with Dana, we were lucky to meet with an equally impressive Greek architect by the name of Elias Mesinass. A master of all trades, I think the simplest thing to say about him is that he studied architecture and sustainability in Israel and at the Yale University in Connecticut. While originally from Greece, Elias is constantly involved in different projects. The edited list he ran through included everything from working as a Urban/Community Planner for the German Colony in Jerusalem, to traveling back to Greece to help in synagogue restorations and architecture, programming and organizing Eco-week in Jerusalem, teaching in Holon and Sde Boker and, in collaboration with a landscape designer, helping to redesign the outdoor garden of the Nature Museum next to the municipality in the German Colony, where his official office is. While technically he is working part time for the municipality, it is truly a full time job. Its fascinating that he is willing to extend himself this much and take all this on because he is so devoted to doing what he does and making the world a better place through architecture and design.

Does putting mirrors on all the facades count as making the world a better place? .. it is very conducive to taking better pics... but people inside can definitely see every pose we strike... #awks

A crucial point he made is that design and architecture are so much more than the magazines. A lot of professionals will design in order to get their work into a pretty magazine. But truly caring about what the world and the people need is not about making it into a magazine. Whether your project is big or small, Architecture, Urban Planning, Sustainability and Design are all fields in which at the end of the day you feel accomplished having made even a small difference wherever you are, its not about fame or recognition at the core. He learned a lot of his theories from an Egyptian architect, Rass Al Hatri, that he met once in his youth on a class trip. He said at the time he didn’t understand the architects words and that they only made sense years and years later. To Elias’s understanding now what the architect said meant to go around and look at the communities, talk to the people, see the areas that need improvement, find out why, research how, and start there. This is one of the pieces of advice he left with us. 

While doing research for this internship, we came across something called the “Creative Class”. The creative class is a term that basically categorizes a group of professionals working in the field of the arts or design and separates them from another category of professionals working more in the realm of business, administration and health care. Richard Florida, the man who created this term and used it within his vernacular states that “along with problem solving their (Creative Class) work may entail problem finding”. This idea ties in very well with the concepts Rass All Hatri told Elias Messiness. This statement is at the very core of what is corrupting the professional world of architecture, urban planning, and design. If the main focus is to create new problems, who will focus on the ones that already exist? It is similar to what Rass and Dana both said. There are people, communities and areas in the world that need improvement, that are living below what is considered a healthy standard of living. So when professionals look to design for the sake of getting featured in that magazine its usually very possible that they will neglect to focus on the real issues at hand. Thankfully more and more often contemporary architects and planners see the importance of public participation. They enrage the communities to help themselves, and they do everything they can (ideally) to help those communities. They do this by considering the inhabitants and people using the spaces when they design and to do their research to learn from previous mistakes of others planners. Unfortunately, this practice was only been brought to the spotlight in the late 20th century. If any of you have ever read Jane Jacobs book of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, you will see that this wasn’t always the case. 

While telling us exactly what path to take, what to study and where to learn, is something neither one of these people could explicitly tell us, hearing how they ended up where they are and what drove them there was eye opening. As you can see, one of them was thrown into a new situation and made the best of it and is now a mover and shaker in her field. The other went down the path he was interested in but is constantly evolving and taking on new projects that stretch into a plethora of different disciplines that, contrary to popular belief, are all very important aspects of this field of work. This world is huge and if you make the right connections and are passionate about what you want to do then you will get there and whatever it is you end up with will be meaningful. The best advice we can give to you as well as ourselves is to learn as much as you can. Pay attention to every conversation, because everyone has something to teach you. Take in every sight, ask every question and meet everyone you can. The most influential and successful people are the ones that are able to find their passions in seamlessly tying together many different disciplines in harmony. 

Someone call TMZ because suffice to say, this was probably some of the most meaningful and interesting celebrity sightings to date.

also #sweatyselfiesofc

[teachercast]

Using Google Classroom to Teach Coding and Programming

In this episode of the TechEducator Podcast, we take a look at how general education teachers can infuse Coding and Programming lessons into their curriculum and package them neatly to be distributed through Google Classroom.

As educators across the world celebrate Computer Science Education Week, it’s important to remember that STEM education, Coding, and Programming are to be explored more than just during the Hour of Code.

In this episode, you will learn:

Three simple projects that you can bring to your classroom

Any one can Learn Ardunio and Breadboarding: Using TinkerCAD’s tutorials and virtual breadboarding.

Modeling the Digestive System with Scratch and Makey Makey https://twitter.com/MsKellyKnight/status/938094787772801029

Kano STreet Art - https://hoc.kano.me/coding-challenges/training

How do we take the fear out of infusing STEM lessons in the general classrooms

How can you wrap up your STEM lesson and distribute resources to your students through Google Classroom and Google Sites

Follow our Podcast

The TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network | @TeacherCast

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Follow our Hosts

Jeff Bradbury | @JeffBradbury

Dr. Sam Patterson | @SamPatue

Jennifer Judkins | @TeachingForward

Josh Gauthier | @MrGFactoftheDay

Rob Pennington | @RobPennington9

Join the Conversation

Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that h1appen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section.  

This weeks question is:

Question: In what ways can you use Google Classroom to bring STEM subjects to your students?  

Explore these Reso32urces

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

https://www.tinkercad.com

https://scratch.mit.edu/

https://scratch.mit.edu/tips

https://www.code.org/learn

http://classroom.shellyfryer.com/workshops/scratchjr

https://makecode.com/

https://hoc.kano.me/coding-challenges/training

http://sde.ok.gov/sde/instructional-technology-pd

http://wiki.wesfryer.com/Home/handouts/scratch

https://makeymakey.com/apps

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/2530241

Tech Tip of the Week

As Google Classroom and Google Sites become increasingly popular and essential, it’s important to keep up to date with what is new and exciting for your classroom.  Check out the great resources being created by @ShakeUpLearning and @AliceKeeler on Twitter.

Join our PLN

Are you enjoying the TeacherCast Network, please share your thoughts with the world by commenting on iTunes today? I enjoy reading and sharing your comments on the podcast each week.

Let’s Work Together

Host: Jeff Bradbury @TeacherCast | @JeffBradbury

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TeacherCast Podcast (http://www.teachercast.net/tcp)

TeacherCast App Spotlight (http://www.teachercast.net/appspotlight)

Educational Podcasting Today (http://www.educationalpodcasting.today)

The TechEducator Podcast (http://www.techeducatorpodcast.com)

Ask The Tech Coach (http://www.AskTheTechCoach.com)

View LIVE Professional Development from TeacherCast

Join us LIVE every Tuesday at 8:00 PM EST: http://www.TeacherCast.tv

Need a Presenter?

Jeff Bradbury (@TeacherCast) is available as a Keynote Speaker, Presenter, or to Broadcast your conference LIVE!

Check out this episode!

[npnews-thegrapevine]

Battle Royal: Let’s Talk Prom King and Queen

Competition is fierce for the sought after crown of the summer formal and while many of you might think of this as just a popularity contest, just as many are taking it seriously so let’s take a moment to look at who is in the running.

Prom King

Byron Masters - Third degree deathscythe hearthrob Byron Masters is rumored to have had his hat thrown in the ring by SDE alumni Godtfried Gunshow (I don’t actually know his last name but have you seen that mans arms holy shit). Byron has a long history of breaking hearts and kicking ass, and he is definitely the most beefcake option this year. But he’s also got a lot of controversy surrounding him and a list of ex-girlfriends longer than any other person running. Of course, being promiscuous didn’t stop last years winner, Alejandro Vasquez, from taking the crown, so we’ll have to see how Byron does. I mean, to be fair? He is used to being aristocracy.

Jun Matsuoka - Actual fucking pop idol Jun Matsuoka has captured hearts as assuredly as kishin eggs, with his dulcet voice and phenomenal hair. He’s making a comeback after having his vocal chords stunted by an ink witch last year, but oddly enough he appears to be running with his meister partner instead of his girlfriend which raises a couple of questions about his loyalty. And what do we know about Jun really, anyway, other than that he sings? Well. He’s a contender, anyway, and from this one’s point of view that makes him the prettiest option.

Wiley Whisper - Okay are we going to pretend this guy’s name doesn’t sound like it belongs on a porn star? Dark horse Wiley Whisper was the first to start putting up posters and right now stands as our resounding underdog. He’s a strange boy with a lantern hat and blue skin, but he’s got a lot of heart and unquestioning loyalty to girlfriend and Prom Queen Contender Athena Clark. Still though, there aren’t a lot of people at this school as socially awkward as Wiley so this is bound to be an uphill battle. Even so, he has the Grapevine’s seal of approval as the sweetest option.

Damian Wolfe - Musical, masterful and sexy from every angle, Damian Wolfe has stepped out of the shadows and into the limelight as a last minute entry in the struggle for Prom King. A hot contender, easy breezy with a tragic past, Damian has a kind word for everyone and an edge over the competition in terms of sheer willingness to connect with others. And ladies, this boy is single and ready to pringle with no previous drama attached, making Damian our most eligible option.

Prom Queen

Creed Hemlocke - Every bloody year, am I right? Dogged and determined, Creed Hemlocke was born to the crown and everything about her from the way she does her make up to the way she walks down the hall advertises it to the masses. She’s in control. She’s the HBIC (that means head bitch in charge for those of you who have been living under a rock). No question, Creed is caliente and that makes her the hottest option.

Aiko Koizumi - From the provinces of Japan, Aiko is bright and bubbly and every bit as skilled with a sword as she is with graphic imaging software. Don’t let her soft exterior fool you, Aiko is no stranger to harsh competition or the loving adoration of her fans and friends. Her heart is in the right place, even if it can be a little hard to understand what she’s trying to say sometimes. But all of this makes her the perfect cutest option for Prom 2017.

Pele Kapuni’ai - All hail the little fire cracker that could. Pele Kapuni’ai never gives up on her friends, and that is something you can take to the bank. It doesn’t matter how dark things get, she will always be a light in the night, and if that isn’t a glowing recommendation to her character I don’t know what is. Girl makes a mean cupcake. A real queen inspires others to stand with her, and no one has the capacity to do that like Pele, making her our fiercest option this year.

Athena Clark - Pint sized acrobat and spotlight spectacular Athena Clark is new to the North Pole scene this year, but no one can say she didn’t come in like a wrecking ball. She’s driven and confident, brave and beautiful, and has the name of a goddess which is perfect for a mythology prom like this one. Athena’s got our vote for classiest option, alright.

Zihna Farling - On her last hurrah, Zihna Farling is known for being desirable and down to earth. Rumor has it she’s stepped on a lot of people’s toes in the pursuit of romance, but that’s not stopping her from stepping up to the races and vying for the crown. Let’s just hope some of the people she’s stepped on in the climb don’t decide to topple her. But you know what they say, haters make you famous, and there’s hardly a pair of lips in this school that haven’t been whispering her name lately. She’s definitely our most notorious option.

This has been a quick review of candidates for Prom Royalty. While the Grapevine isn’t backing any one option over the others, we encourage everyone to get out there and vote because this is one election you can really make a difference in.

And don’t forget, you heard it through the Grapevine.

[soulcialdent]

Children of Ether

I’ve been waiting on this to drop for a while now.  And now that it with in my grasp, I am ecstatic and low key kinda speechless.  But with a staff of this caliber, how could I not be? Character designs by Hiroshi Shimizu, storyboard by Shingo Natsume,  and animation by Mitsuo Iso. As well as director Yûichi Takahashi. With the entire project being headed by LeSean Thomas. And how could I forget.…