Good Day Google+ - Black Friday Edition (Episode 10)

Hey there, it's good day Google+. I'm Chef Dennis and I'm happy to have you join me today for our special Black Friday edition. Those of you that aren't out there shopping and enjoying the madness, if that's your thing, that's great. For me, I stay away from the stores when they're like that. I just read a post somewhere, it posted a fight broke out in Walmart. Was that you, James, that posted that?

Yes.

I think so. We're going to stay here and calm. I'm very sorry to say that Jenny Melrose won't be able to be with us today. Her little ones are not feeling— oh, hang on a second. Hope you guys can't hear that, but I just started—

there we go.

I always forget to check and change that. Sorry about that, guys. All right, yeah, Jenny can't be with us today. Her little ones are sick, so she's nursing them at home and making them feel better on this day. I'm going to introduce everyone, and then we will get get started. Today with us on the panel, we have Craig Fifield.

Hey, what's up, Chef? Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. James Fierce, he's with us today.

Hey, Chef. Yep, thanks for having me as well.

My pleasure. And Tim McDaniel. I got that right, right, Tim?

Good to see you today.

Good to see you, too. So what we're going to do today is we're just going to start off and let everybody talk. And Tim, since I got you Blue Box, why don't we start with you and just tell us what you do on Google+ or what you do in general, like to do, and we'll go from there.

Well, I got on Google+ when it was in the beta stage. I've been on it for quite a while. I really enjoy it. I've met lots of really neat people, including you, Dennis Littley, and I just love it. I just have met so many wonderful people. People being on Google+. I did meet somebody who's very special to me, kind of a sweetheart thing. I think I'm the first one that did this on Google. I proposed to this lady. Wow.

That's awesome.

Hey, Tim, so it was a matchmaker for you?

Exactly, it sure was.

Congrats.

It has changed my life completely. Completely. I don't think many people can say that. I can. Awesome.

So I guess maybe a good place to have your honeymoon would be at Google, at the Google office.

Ah, I would love that. I would love that. I would love for Google to just take a hold of me and say, hey, Come on down here and let's show you how it's done.

Maybe they could start a new matchmaking service and that could be one of Google's new ventures.

There you go, yeah. I thought about that.

Hey Tim, there's also a Google office in Venice Beach, California. That would be a good honeymoon location as well.

Yeah, that would be nice too. Sounds like Venice Beach. I've never been there, but that would be kind of fun.

Now, Tim, I see you do a lot with music. Can you talk a little bit about that, what you like, what you do? I see you post a lot of videos.

Well, I just love music in general. I listen to just about everything and anything. I like the blues, I like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Of course, I dearly miss that guy. I just wonder what he would be like today had he not passed on. I just love music. My son, I've got 3 sons, 2 of them are very talented guitar players. One of these days I'm going to try to get them on board here with us and maybe show off their talents a little bit. I don't know, I just love music, you guys.

We do get an awful lot of good stuff on Google+, so I'm happy with that.

For sure.

Hey Tim, and you know, I imagine since you've been here from the beginning, you followed Daria Musk's career, and she made her whole music career off of Google+.

She sure did. You know, that's really amazing that that's possible. I mean, it really did make her whole career just take off. Basically, it was overnight too. Right.

Yeah, because she was on her last leg, she was ready to give it up, completely give it up, and then she discovered Google+ and she just kind of thought, well, why don't I try and do a concert on Google+? And then she just took off like crazy, like you said, almost overnight.

Amazing, I found it just totally amazing that that could happen, really, really. It changed her life for sure.

Oh, for sure. Another good friend of mine, Heather Faye, I don't know if you've heard her at all, she and her CD. She did the same thing. She really used Google+ as a platform to get started and get herself known out there.

Right, right. Very good.

Well, thank you, Tim. Let's move on to James. James, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, thank you, Chef. So I'm a small business coach who's actually just I recently integrated Google+ into my small business coaching. So I, from the coaching perspective, I look at businesses, I work with small businesses, entrepreneurs. I take a look at their business model and I see what's working well and what's not working well and then work with the entrepreneur to step up their game in the areas that aren't working well. And then also in the areas that they are working well, also work with them to kick it up a notch because I think you should focus most of your energy, you know, where you're successful. And then if there's anything that you're doing that could potentially disrupt the business or harm the business, then I help them to step up their game in those areas.

Sounds good.

Bloggers are pretty much all small business people when you come to think of it, and I know our food bloggers are always thinking in terms of that. So maybe that's something that you could redirect a little of your energies to and try and figure out a way to help bloggers because we're always looking for somebody to show us what to do better to make our food better.

Oh yeah, I'd love to. I'd love— yeah, I'd actually love to do that. I'm putting together some classes. I'm trying to figure out a way maybe how to do them via the Google+ Hangout. So I'd love to get a bloggers group together and put a class, you know, put a workshop together for them to help them, you know, kick it up a notch or two for sure, absolutely.

Yeah.

The other thing— right, sorry. The other thing that I started to do that the community is just eating up, the local community here, I started to do some Google+ workshops. And I took it out to the community, and they can't— they just can't believe all of the opportunities that this platform provides for them. The networking via communities, the ability to promote yourself and engage on an unprecedented level, like through the Hangouts. Yeah, and there's just so many— oh, and the productivity. So with, you know, using Google Drive The things that the platform offers up to them from both the social media standpoint and a productivity standpoint is just amazing. They're amazed, you know, when I start to show them how this social media platform can help them on so many levels.

Now, are you talking about your local community?

Mm-hmm, yep.

How did you, how did you go about reaching them? I mean, I wouldn't even know where to start to go out to the local community.

Oh, great question. So I went to the Chamber of Commerce, and they have a breakfast meeting once a month. So I went to the Palmdale Chamber of Commerce meeting, went to their breakfast meeting, and gave my kind of 1-minute elevator speech on what it was that I do. When I started to talk about Google+, Right, like at the end of the elevator speech, and I said, and I'm incorporating Google+, the social media platform, into my business model. A bunch of people came up to me and started asking me about, you know, Google+. They'd heard bits and pieces about it, but they weren't really familiar with what the platform offered, right? So I just started to talk to them about it and got so much interest that I said, okay, this is a perfect opportunity for me to start doing a workshop. So I got a workshop together, got like maybe 5 or 8 people who were interested in it. At the same time— sorry, not to ramble on for too long— but at the same time, I joined this referral group called TEAM, T-E-A-M, and they're a networking referral group where you work with all of the people in your chapter to get them referrals. Well, come to find out, once I joined Team, they're redoing their website and they're integrating Google+ into their website. So now they— this Team organization wants me to help bring all of the Team chapters in Southern California up to speed with Google+ because they see the power that this particular platform offers for small businesses as well.

What would you say, James, is the feature that they're paying most attention to? Is it Hangouts that's really getting their interest?

It's the Hangouts, it's the communities, and it's the level of engagement that they can achieve on Google+. It's those 3 things together that's really getting— oh, and the 4th thing is the SEO juice that they'll get. Out of using Google+.

Right? Cool. Yeah, for sure. Would you say they're finding it easy to use, or are they struggling?

I'm trying to make it as easy for them. It is a struggle, to be honest. It is a struggle for them at the very beginning, just because there's so much to learn. So it is a bit of a struggle, but they are willing to go through the struggle because they see the opportunity that this platform can provide to them. And they also see the quality and the caliber of the people, you know, like Craig, like you and Tim and Sheff. It really impresses them, the caliber of people who are on Google+.

That's great.

Here's a question from Melanie, it's a good one. Did you have to join your Chamber of Commerce?

Great question, Melanie. I did not, so I didn't, I haven't joined the chamber yet, and most chambers will allow you to come to their breakfasts or their lunch meetings for free. They're gonna put, they're gonna hit you up heavy because they really do want you to join, but you can, at least for a short period of time, you can interact with them for a little while before you actually join. And then you can see if the people are really those type of people you would really hit it off with. But it's a great way to initially network. Like, for me, I wasn't quite ready to join the Chamber, but when I— but I met some of the members from Team at the Chamber breakfast, and so as a result of that, I kind of found my tribe, and my tribe was the Team group, but I met them through the Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting.

Excellent. Here's another comment, here's a good one from Shannon Hernandez. Shan Man's here. And he says, James Fierce, that's kind of how I did it. I just happened upon an incubator for startups, Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation, and found they had classes you could teach. So I guess, you know, that's really what we have to start looking. You know, I think it's an amazing opportunity for us as people that know Google+ and really love Google+ that I would have never thought of to go to a chamber of commerce and start reaching out locally.

You can also go to meetups. There's a lot of local meetups. As soon as you start talking about Google+, their eyes kind of glaze over because they're not using it yet. Once you start telling them the benefits and showing them how it works, they get jazzed.

Yeah, I know. When we're out, my wife will just walk away from me when I start. She goes, "Oh, there he goes again." She posted something to Facebook. They were trying to have— she has an iPad, so she does FaceTime. I'm saying, "Hangouts are so much better." She posted something. I said, "That is so old hat. You have to do Google Hangouts." I posted that on her. That sounds good. We'll come back in a minute.

I found a lot of new users of Google+. They're overwhelmed by it.

Oh, absolutely.

They don't know.

It's definitely a little different.

My brother just got on and he has a doctorate and he is just a certified genius and he can't figure it out. I said, well, I'll have to do a tutorial with you.

That makes me feel good, Chef, that I know more than a doctor does, right?

Yeah, and he is very good at what he does, but he can't make heads or tails of it. So I said, well, you know, I do tutorials all the time. We'll do a Hangout and I'll show you how to use it.

Hey, bring me in, Chef, bring me in one time. I'd be happy to help you get him learned.

Absolutely.

The best part of doing all that teaching is I find Every single time, even when I help with the smallest things with somebody new, I end up learning something new. It's a win-win.

Absolutely.

Alright, Craig, let's move on to you. We haven't let you highlight yourself. Let's talk— I know you've been on before— and tell us a little bit about you, what you do, and what you like to do.

So I've been in the web marketing space since 1995 or so, doing a lot of SEO and general web marketing. Worked for Microsoft for 10 years making web apps. These days I'm on my own just doing consulting, which I'm kind of burnt out on. So I basically just run around Google+ helping everyone that I can with whatever I feel like helping with that day. Hangouts are of particular interest to me. I'm working with Christine Degraffe on the My Music Hangout, and I'm talking with Mia Boss about some other Hangout-related things that we might develop soon. But mostly I'm just having fun and enjoying Google+ or Google+ networking, I guess.

And he's my sriracha brother.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There you go.

I'm afraid I'm a lightweight. Yeah, I just— there you go. I always put that out as a chef. When we would run dishes, I always had a couple bottles of that out for everybody to use. Hot sauce has got to be a little bit even mild for me when I use it anymore. My stomach's not as strong as it used to be. Craig, then, you're getting more involved with the Hangout aspect. I know I saw your music video, your music show that you have on. I'm hoping to come on that with you sometime.

Yeah, that'd be cool.

And talk about it because I love music and used to play in bands years ago. Part of the reason I'm a little deaf right now.

What did you play?

I played guitar. I had a Les Paul Custom.

Do you still play, Chef?

I haven't played in a long time. I did the only— actually, my brother has my Les Paul and my Ovation, but I kept the Martin. I have that in the closet.

Nice.

I came down with carpal tunnel pretty bad in both hands, and when that hit, I kind of stopped playing as much as I used to. I play bass and a little piano.

I was going to ask you, is there certain foods that would help arthritis?

They talk about antioxidants a lot. Helping arthritis. Some of the things that are always one of the cure-alls they point on are like anything colorful in the vegetable world is supposed to have a lot more properties for you. Then some of the spices that we've been talking about more or less, turmeric I think is one of these spices that has all these different properties. I just started taking some different oils for me, for mine. You just have to look and see. I know there are other things. I'm not as knowledgeable on that end of the spectrum for foods for health reasons, but there are some great books out there, and of course, you can Google it.

I know—

Go ahead, Chris.

There's definitely lists out there. Foods that will help reduce inflammation, which can be a big part of arthritis. I don't know any off the top of my head, but a quick Google will find a lot of sources for that stuff.

Yeah, I think that—

Kale is like a superfood, right?

Yes.

Kale?

Kale is, and again, it's a dark— if you get the dark one, it's a dark leafy green. Kale's always good. They're talking about blueberries with their antioxidant help. Just different things you can take to alleviate some of the pain and some of the swelling. Ginger's always been quoted as having different healing properties, too. I used to go along with Chinese philosophies for a while. I was actually going to study that at one point. They list everything, reasons for everything, like with your organs. It's either heat, wind, or different dampness that gets into you, so they qualify things a little differently. Too.

The other thing is if you eat a lot of raw vegetables, you might want to cook them at least a little bit. I forget what the chemical's called, but a lot of raw vegetables actually have a defense mechanism that makes them taste a little bit bitter or a little bit harsh, and that can actually cause a lot of inflammation if you eat a lot of raw vegetables. If you just take a minute and cook them a little, it reduces that effect.

That's good. I didn't know that, but that makes sense.

Kale is a big one because people juice a lot of kale, and they're just getting— I forget what the chemical's called, but it supposedly can cause quite a lot of inflammation.

Good to know.

All right, what else do we have? Randy, we have a nice comment here from Pennant. Randy Hilarasky, "The quality here and the availability to communicate with them is unprecedented." on Google+. Boy, that is the truth. I'm happy to say that I just connected with Hulk Hogan the other day.

I'm jealous.

I was really happy about that. Then I actually passed his beach the other day. I was in Clearwater and I went, Hogan's Beach, Hogan's Beach, that's where Hogan is. Yeah, he's got a restaurant.

Hey Jeff, you should check it out sometime. He's got a restaurant I think over in Tampa, right?

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yes.

Wow.

Yep. I'm trying to get the Hulkster to come on the show, so who knows, maybe we can make that happen. I'd love to have him.

Yeah, make that happen. I'd love to see that.

I would, too. I'm telling you.

Invite me on that one. Invite me on that one, Chef.

We'll have to have a full panel for that because there's going to be a lot of people wanting to talk to him.

Yeah, for sure.

All right.

Well, you know, that's— oh, James, I wanted to come back to you too. Let's talk about— you have a cash mob going on. I wanted to hear more about it.

Thank you, Chef. Absolutely. So a week from tomorrow, I'm gonna do this awesome, amazing— I'm calling it the first time ever in history, 'cause as far as I know, I don't think anybody's done this before, but it's gonna be a hybrid cash mob. So it's gonna be in real life, and I'm also gonna take it Google, make it virtual. And incorporate an HOA into the equation as well. So I'm going to Rancho Roviri. Rancho Roviri is an almond— it's an amazing chef. They have the most amazing almonds and candies and toffees that you could just even begin to imagine. And it's been around the community for 60 years. The current owners bought it about 5 years ago. And they've been struggling a little bit. I think the first year that they purchased the place, like shortly, within a couple of months after them buying it, the city started to do construction on the road in front of their place of business. And so it was literally shut down for almost 9 months, you know, because people couldn't get to the business. And then after that, they started to build— right after that Dennis Littley came in next door, and so they had construction going on for them building that plaza, and there were trucks that were parked in front of their business. And so they really haven't been able to get it off of the ground. But you go into the store and it's the most charming little store. The people are the nicest people, you know, the owner is the nicest guy, and he's doing a whole lot for the community. He's got a burden for Quartz Hill, California is where it's at. And Quartz Hill used to be a community, an almond-growing community in Southern California, and it is no longer, but he's trying to bring— he wants to create a co-op, and he actually wants to buy some property and start growing almonds again. So he's— and he's done a lot of things for the community, and now it's an opportunity for the community to do something for him and pay him back for all of the things that he's done for the community. So I met with him. He's not a client. Actually, I'd like to get him as a client, but he's not a client of mine. But I met him. He's, he is a part of team, and I met him about 3 weeks ago and sat down with him in his store And I thought, what's a way that I can help him and be really innovative about it? And I thought, Cash Mob. He's got the perfect location to do a Cash Mob event. So what a Cash Mob is, is if you think about the flash mob concept, you know, kind of the viral videos where just out of nowhere in a mall or a train station, you know, like 10 to 100 people would come together and they'd do, you know, a little dance number or singing or something like that. And people would just, you know, be amazed at this flash mob that came together. And then somebody would videotape it and it would go viral. So a cash mob is a similar concept for businesses. So a bunch of people ascend onto a business. The premise is that everyone who comes into that business as part of the cash mob event will spend about $20 at the event, and you just get together and you have a fun time, and it's community building, it's supporting the local businesses.

That's really cool.

Right? It's just a really, really good time. And so I thought, let's do a cash mob, but let's even take it to the next level because his store has an e-commerce site, and I thought I can make this virtual because we can do the Cash Mob live at the location. I can bring my little laptop computer, we can do a Hangout, and so if I can get, you know, 100 or 200 people to come in in real life, why can't I get 100 or 200 people to come in virtually, come onto their website at the same time, so double the business that they're gonna get by taking the concept virtual, right? So that's— yeah, so that's what I'm gonna do. And what I— I need a couple of things. I need help. Like earlier in the show that we're watching previous to this, Mia's show, they were talking about it takes a village. Well, for me to pull this off virtually, it's gonna take a village to make it happen. So I'm, I'm doing well rallying the troops to get them to participate in real life because it's super easy. I mean, you can take flyers, you can go meet and greet people, you can give them samples, you can say, hey, you know, taste these amazing almonds. Do you know what I mean? The, the product pretty much sells itself. So it's real— it's been an easy— it's been fairly easy to get to rally the troops to get them to come in real life. Because it's such short notice, it's been a little bit harder for me to rally the troops to get them to come into the virtual, you know, into the Hangout. So that's my challenge, I guess, over the next week, is to get the buzz going for this, you know, to generate buzz, to give it a little viral action. And getting people to be real super enthused about it and support it from the virtual standpoint.

But it's a great cause. Is there anything we can do to help you? I mean, what could I do, for example?

Yeah, well, Tim, if I can get music— you know what I would love to do is I'd love to do a segment with musicians. So I'm going to— I need co-hosts for the 3-hour period. And I'm gonna split it into half-hour segments so that I don't burn any one co-host out. So I've got 6 half-hour segments, and I'm gonna try and do something fun and exciting every half-hour segment. So if I can do like a musician's segment or two, you know what I mean, and get some musicians to come on and maybe play a little bit and just interact and engage, that would be awesome.

That's something I could probably think of to work on there for you, maybe help you out. I've got to keep you in mind.

Yeah, that would be amazing. And then Chef, there's another half-hour segment that I'd like to do. I'd like to try and get 4 chefs, and I'd like to do a parody of Chopped. I'm going to call it Axed, right? So I'm going to do this virtual— I haven't got it completely sorted out, but I've got a pretty good idea in my mind how I can make it work. Nobody's gonna have to cook for real during the segment, but we're going to prepare a meal virtually, right? And I'm going to have— I'm gonna put some ingredients into a bag and I'm gonna pull them out, and then virtually the chefs who are participating will get like 5 minutes or 8 minutes to figure out how they can make those ingredients come together and be a dish. And one of the ingredients will be an item from the store, right? So it'll be one of the— so one of the mystery ingredients will be an item from the store. There will be 3 other mystery ingredients, and the chefs will have a certain amount of time, and they'll have to virtually prepare a meal. They'll come back and they'll tell us, you know, I'll give them 5 minutes or something, and we'll have some judging you know, we'll have some judges, and each chef will come back and they'll tell us, or draw pictures, or whatever they want to do to describe the dish that they come up with. And then the judges will pick a winner, and then we'll chop somebody from— and we'll do an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert course. And then the one who ends up being the winner at the end will be the axed champion.

Cool.

We'll have to get Larry Fournier in on this. Hopefully we can grab him, Larry. So, you know, you'd be a great one for this one. We'll see who else we can come up with. If there's any chefs out there that are interested and that have the time— I know it's a Saturday and it's a work day for a lot of you, but if you're out there and you're watching, you know, if you know anyone, let them know about this great event. We can have some fun doing it.

And, Chef, we'll do that whole segment in half an hour, so they won't have to devote much more than half an hour, you know, to the event. And the other thing for the viewers, on my event page, I want to make it clear the event is from 11 to 2, and it's going to be a virtual hangout throughout that time period, but you only need to come on for, you know, 10 or 15 minutes, watch an enjoyable segment, you know, go on to the website, of course, and make a purchase. And their products are excellent, the prices are so reasonable. For their products on the website.

So here's a question talking about that from Sylvia.

Hi, Sylvia.

Sylvia Lara wants to know how would we buy the products at the Cash Mob?

Excellent question. Yeah, thank you, Sylvia. So this particular Rancho Riviera has a website, right? So they have an e-commerce site. So all you have to do is come on to the e-commerce site and make a purchase through their e-commerce site.

Cool. I dropped those links into the comments too, so they can just click through.

Perfect.

Alright, that sounds good.

Speaking of fundraisers, I wanted to give a shout out to all the efforts that Jason T. Weiser is doing for the Philippines.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

And when you're thinking of Black Friday, I think it would be a good idea if you can, with the money you save, dropping $10 over on that fundraiser, because $10 will feed like 10 children, I think, is what they're trying to do. And he also has an event page that if you don't have $10 to spare, you can share the event page, which I think is pretty awesome. I'll share that in the comments now.

Yeah, and hey, Craig, I think he and Dustin Stout are actually doing a Q&A this Saturday. I don't have the time, and he didn't have the event page set up for it, but he was working on it. So that's another thing that we can plug for him as well.

Sure, cool.

Yeah, Dustin is another great one.

Can you put the link for that up for Sylvia?

It's already up in the comments.

Oh, it is?

It's just a couple comments below her comment.

Oh, okay.

I see it. Before I lose it, too, I also want to put up— here we go. Let me find it again. Talking about inflammation.

Oh, yeah.

Here we go. This is from Shannon. Check out the book on Practical Paleo if you want to reduce inflammation. His mom follows some of the recipes, has reduced a lot of arthritis. There's a link for that, too. Also, Mia Voss had mentioned— hi, Mia— that turmeric helps, as well as Sylvia mentioning that oxtail soup is good for that. A lot of good suggestions there.

Hey, Chef, can you talk— I've heard a little bit about the Paleo diet, but can you talk talk to that a little bit? What is it, and why is it important?

From what I understand, I'm not— again, it's not a diet that I follow, but the Paleo was— they used to call it the caveman diet because you're eating more of the original foods, I think. It's not just a plant-based, where there were some meats with some of the older grains. Craig, do you know anything about that?

Not a lot, but I think a big part of that is that you try and avoid all Processed food, all chemicals, any preservatives, that's a big piece of the paleo diet.

There's a lot of different schools of thought out there with different diets. They all, I think, have great attributes. It's just a matter of being able to follow them and stay true to the course. The vegan diet's supposed to be amazing, even just a vegetarian diet, eliminating A lot of the processed foods, I think, is the biggest step we could take to help us feel better. Gluten-free diets, a lot of people don't understand that the gluten is a big part of why they feel so bad. We had Jean Layton on here before, and she was talking to you, I think, Craig, about it. You were mentioning that you were going to give that a try. Did you ever go to do the gluten-free, or—

Yeah, I did it for about 35 days. The jury's out if it helped me or not, because I don't eat a lot. I eat pretty well in general, so eliminating wheat, the biggest thing was I drank a lot less beer, a lot less real beer. I pretty much automatically felt better every day. I don't know if I can attribute it to gluten.

Got rid of the hangover, huh?

Right. Gluten-free hangover.

Gluten-free hangover, there we go. You never know what's going to help.

The big thing, though, that it did do is it made me realize how much wheat is in just about everything. Everything. Even chewing gum, any seasonings that are put on food usually have wheat in them. The restaurants themselves, they'll tell you something's gluten-free, and they're often wrong. They have no idea. That was a surprise.

Dr. Pompa: Yeah, and that's really not a good thing. If you're not sure as a chef— these are people that are depending upon you, not because they just don't want to eat something, but I mean, it can really get them sick, and they can feel it. You have to really be careful. At school, I had a lot of girls that were on gluten-free, and they'd come up and ask. Sometimes they'd make the decision. A big thing was a lot of French fries are coated now with stuff to help make them crisper. You don't even think about that, or some of the other thickeners that things are using that you just didn't even think of. You have to be really careful.

Yeah, they did that. A bunch of restaurants, we would ask if the fries were seasoned, and they'd be like, "No, they're plain." I was like, "Cool, we'll get those." Then they come out, and they have that wheat batter on the outside. It's like, okay, you're wrong.

I hate that too, honestly.

I like— It drives me nuts. I like regular old French fries. Stop messing with them. They're perfect.

I like the ones with the skin on them too. We used to call them boardwalk fries around the Philly area.

And fresh-cut fries, oh my God.

Hey, Jeff. Do you guys— have you seen the new— so I just learned about maybe a week ago about this new pizza— pizza— it's Chipotle for pizza. So the Chipotle concept for pizzas. Have you seen those restaurants?

Mm-mm.

I haven't seen that yet.

Oh, they're really cool. I think there's actually one— believe it or not, there's one— I heard there's one in Palmdale. But it's like when you go into a Chipotle restaurant, you get to pick the different ingredients. Right. You know, give you your taco. What's the— a similar concept, you pick the different ingredients that you want for your pizza and then they put it into the pizza oven and fry it— or not fry it, but cook it up real quick. And it's like taking off like crazy.

It's—

yeah, it's huge. The growth is huge. There's 3 of them coming to Santa Clarita and there's one already here in Palmdale.

So I'm going to try and go Is it brick oven pizza or is it the thin, like, fast pizza?

Well, there's both. I've heard that there's both. Like, one— the one that they just opened in Santa Clarita is real super thin crust pizza. But I've heard some of them are doing, like, you know, different types of pizza crusts as well. And I think the best ones do have the brick ovens, but I don't know if all of them do.

I mean, I know in a brick oven, in the traditional, it's like 6 or 7 minutes and that sucker's done. I could see that working really, really well, but if you've got to push it through a regular pizza oven, even though it's only like 12 minutes or 13 minutes, when that starts to add up, people start to get a little cranky, your line backs up, then it wasn't such a good idea. I could see that being really good if they did it.

You know what I think they do? I think they give you the number so you go through the line, you order your— you pick your ingredients. I think they give you one of those numbers and you go to your seat and then they bring it out to you when it's ready.

That'd be fine, yeah. Right? That's a good idea. That'd be great. I have not ventured around for pizza in the Florida area. You know, when I moved down here, people were telling me that, you know, you're gonna miss good bread and you're gonna miss good pizza, and you're just not gonna find it. So we have not really looked yet for pizza. I actually just bought a grill, so I may be doing my own I finally broke down and I got a Weber 4-burner so I could keep the 2 in the center off and do a— try and do— because I've done pizzas on the grill before and they come out really, really good. I figure worst comes to worst, I'll start baking my own bread and that, especially when it's so hot in here, I can just do it outside.

Hey, Chef, I think in January or February you should take pictures and send— all the people who told you you won't be able to get good pizza, and good bread, send them this great sunshiny picture of you out on your grill in the middle of January and say, "Hey!" Well, you know, I used to do that up in the Philadelphia area too, except I'd have a coat on half the time out there doing it, warming up next to the grill.

I've been having a great time down here. It's just really It really was good. My body feels better. I don't have the aches and pains that I did as much, so hopefully that's helping some.

You're in Houston?

I am in Kissimmee, Florida, which is just a little south of Orlando. We're kind of away from all the madness.

I lived in Lake Wales for a little while. Okay.

We're close enough to everything that we can get to it if we really want to, and if not— You have to drive through a couple little cattle ranches to get to us, so it's far enough away from everybody so we can still stay quiet and peaceful. The biggest thing is we're not in an airport landing zone. Back where we lived in Jersey, we had airplanes all day long, all day long. You get immune to it. You get used to it, but it'd be like you have to stop talking while it's flying over. Then you start your conversation back up again. It's dead quiet here. We're having a good time. Oh, here's a good one. Yeah.

No, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

I was wondering, I'm surprised I haven't asked you before, but what do you do for work? Are you just a blogger now, or are you out working in some kitchen somewhere?

Actually, I've stepped away from it for a while. You know, I worked actively as a chef up until June. I did have a series of injuries that I just needed to take care of. It just was best that I think at my age and how things were starting to affect me that I just kind of slowed up and stopped for a while. Right now, my wife retired. She's a teacher. She put her 25 in, and she retired. She was the one that really got us moving to Florida. I just thought I'd just take it easy for a while, let my body recover, and see what I could do. I'm actually thinking of teaching. I'm hoping to get some involvement. Chefs do a great job. The schools teach them everything they need to know about being a chef, but when they get out in the real world, they don't know anything about social media. They don't know anything about taking pictures of their food and even blogging. I thought if I could get connected with one culinary school— there's a bunch of them in Florida— and maybe go in and just work part-time doing that.

Cooking social.

Yeah, you know, they get on Twitter and that's basically it, and then they really don't know what to do, and they're missing so much, you know, especially with Google+.

Hey, Chef, I see a collaboration opportunity for us, so please, as you start to do this, if there's anything that I can do to help you to get it started and get it going, I'd be more than happy to do it. I'm not a great cook, but I sure appreciate all of you chefs out there who do an awesome job at cooking and inspire us, you know, to do better. Like the Food Network, the Food Network channel has inspired so many people to get interested in, you know, food.

Yeah.

So, I don't know, I think you're pretty good, James, because you made my Craigs look a lot better than I did.

Your Craigs, I love it.

So tell the Craigs story, Craig.

Yeah, please.

Yeah, we all want to hear this.

I think you can tell it better, James.

You think so?

Well, all right, I'll tell it. Yeah, go ahead. James posted about the rooster sauce, Siri Racha, however you say it, Sriracha.

Sriracha.

I happen to be a big fan, if you can't tell. I chimed in on his post because he was asking for recipes, what to do with it. Is it Texas Pete or Texas Red Hot or one of those where they say, "I put that shit on everything"? That's what I do with the Sriracha. It's like, "I don't need a recipe. Just squirt it on there." Pretty normal, yeah?

Not bad.

I've been eating a lot more eggs recently. Recently, and I'm not a big egg fan. It popped in my mind that that's where I really found a home for it because it makes my eggs delicious. I posted my first recipe, which is basically just cook some eggs and stick siri on it. I called them Craig's. Then James went out and made his, and he made me look bad. His looked all nice and fancy.

I had to step it up a notch. I had to step it —so I went out literally after we were having so much fun with that Sriracha post, I went out to the store because I was all out of eggs. So I grabbed some eggs, I grabbed some Mexican cheese, oh, and some pancetta. And so I fried up the eggs, fried or seared, sautéed, whatever you call it, the pancetta, and threw a bagel with cream cheese on the plate. And then I did the the Sriracha on the Craigs, and it was awesome. It was really, really good. And you know what, honestly, that was the first time I'd ever actually tasted Sriracha. I had purchased it in the store about a week or two before, and I couldn't figure out, well, what am I gonna use this on? And so I thought, well, let me post and get some ideas from the Google sphere, 'cause Google people know everything about everything. And we just had a blast with the Sriracha post. And yeah, I made the Craigs and showed them to Craig, and he was like, yep, you made the grade, you did good.

Yeah, gotta love it. Good stuff. Let me throw up a few more little comments here we've had. Mia Voss, gluten-free hangover, Craig Pfeiffer. She loves that. And here's something that Rachel Alford posted the other day, so you can Check that out. Logan Lynn Roberts is posting about Philadelphia. She wants to know why the bread is so— the bread in Philadelphia is amazing, especially that really crusty, hard bread. I remember I worked in an Italian restaurant for years, and the guy used to say, "The outside of the bread should be hard enough to cut your gums on, and the inside's got to be nice and soft." Yeah, we do miss that. She offered to send some Amarosa rolls. Logan, Wawa opened up right down the corner from me. You guys don't know what Wawa is, but it's like a 7-Eleven kind of store that really went over the top in the Philadelphia region. They are everywhere. I pulled to come into my community when we moved down here, and there was one, lo and behold, on the corner. They came into Florida because so many people from that area have moved down here, so I can get some rolls there. I think I may still have to start baking my own. Awesome. So we're having fun here, alright.

Hey, so Tim, I think your story is great about meeting your fiancée on Google+. How did that happen exactly? Were you— well, you know Running around plussing each other?

No, no, actually I can't really explain it, it just happened. She would have to tell you. It was her, she found me, I'll put it that way. She picked me out of 400 million users, which just blows me away.

Yeah, so hey Tim, where did you live and where did she live? Where did she live when you met her?

Well, I'm in Texas and she's in Texas, so we were close enough that we could meet each other. We're about 5.5 hours apart. And she was interested in me, wanted to meet me, and I told her, I said, "Well, it's pretty close, you know." And so she made a 5.5-hour trip to meet me, and the rest is sort of history. I fell head over heels in love with this girl. She's amazing.

She's beautiful. Hey Tim, so when did you first meet on Google+?

August 14th, I mean October 14th actually. We hadn't been knowing maybe a month, a little over a month. Just recently? Just recently, yes. It happened so fast, it just amazes me. I just can't believe it. I'm walking on clouds. To tell you the truth, I've been on cloud nine for a month. It just blows me away that if it wasn't for Google+, I wouldn't be able to tell this story.

They definitely need to make a commercial out of this for them.

Yeah, I think there's probably a lot more stories like mine, but I just haven't been able to find them. I would love for anybody out there that can maybe to chip in on this and let me know if they found their love on Google+.

Hey Tim, you need to start a community, "I found my soulmate on Google+" community.

I thought about that, I'm going to start a community like that. You see how many people are really falling in love on Google. I know Christine, she found her fiancé through Google. And what I'd like for Christine to do, if you're out there, I want to do a double wedding. Oh wow.

I actually talked to her about her upcoming wedding, and I asked her— I was just kind of joking— I asked her, are you a bridezilla? And she says, no way, I want to keep it small, I want to keep it simple. It's all about, you know, her— me— not me, but her and her family, but she's just so happy. She's like you. It sounds like she's on cloud nine, like she found the real deal.

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, I'm just still blown away. That's cool.

Teal is a sweetheart. I know there's a photographer on here, and I'm trying to remember her name. She's a food photographer, and she met her her husband on Google+ too, Brian. I can't remember his last name, but he does a lot of photography stuff and does stuff with Google as well. So I'm sure there's a bunch of you guys that really need to do some kind of commercials. That would be a great—

Well, actually, you guys, our story is Sylvia has a blog, and our story is on her blog as well. Oh, cool.

Hey, Tim, can you throw a link Yeah, please.

I'm actually in Dallas right now, you guys. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm in Dallas. Are you with Sylvia then?

Is that who you're talking to? So she's the one posting those comments every now and then. Yes. I saw her post, "I love you, Tim McDaniel," and then I saw it disappear, so I was afraid maybe— I didn't want to go there.

She's a little bit bashful.

She's on board. Can't you pull her into the picture with you there? She wanted to step on stage here for a minute and say hello.

She's shy. Yeah, she's bashful.

What kind of blogger is she?

She drove 5 hours to meet you, she's not bashful.

Right, she can't be that shy.

You need to tell the students. She's putting it up for you guys.

Okay, great. And now here's— while we're doing that here, David Kuchner made a mention about Sacco's Subs in the Atlantic City area. And David, I'm very familiar with Sacco's Subs and also the White House for— he's talking about Atlantic City bread. Atlantic City bread is amazing, some really good stuff for subs. I miss that a whole lot. I wish we had— I can find some bread like that down here. Hey, Chef, what does he mean, has a pass? I'm sorry? She's talking about— Logan's from Philadelphia, and I think she was talking about— here we go. Here's Logan's comment: I'll be in AC for a real estate conference next week, but I don't go anywhere that calls it a sub and not a hoagie. Okay, see, there's different terminologies. My wife and I go back and forth on that because she's from Philly and I grew up closer— actually, I'm from Texas, Tim. I'm from San Antonio, but my parents moved— my father was from the Philadelphia area, moved us back up here. We lived about 12 miles west of Atlantic City, so I grew up calling them subs rather than hoagies. Wawa calls them hoagies all the time, but I interchange them. I figure as long as I can eat it, I don't care what you call it. You can call it a grinder. You can call it a muffuletta. You can call it whatever you want to call it. Just call me when you make it. That's right.

Just don't call us hungry, right?

Kim chimed in. Kim, you're in Oklahoma. How do you know Wawa's logo is a pair of flying geese? Here we go. Well, I never thought of that. Oh my God. I didn't know your daughter worked there. How about that? We used to joke about the Mawa Wawa. That was always a good one. Mawa, New Jersey. In that area, if we didn't have one close by, it was a hardship. Always happy to see them. Here we go, Shannon made a comment too. His friend Desiree Ford had her wedding on a Hangout.

Wow! There you go.

That's pretty cool.

I think, Tim, it's destiny. I think you should do that. Invite us all to your wedding via Google Hangout.

That's what I want to do, you guys.

That's really what I want to do. Absolutely, or at least at the reception. Maybe we can get George— George Strait's a Texan. I wonder if we could get him in on it.

I think that dude is in Cancun. Oh, wow. Wait a minute.

I might want to go down there in person then. I'll help with the hangout.

Yeah, there you go. I could use some help there. That would work. There you go.

Well, you know, Ronnie Benson might like to take that trip too. He's real good mobile. He does a good job with that. Tell him— and he's in Colorado, so I don't know if it's cold where he is or not, but it might be a good reason for him to head south a little bit.

Oh yeah, get down there where it's warm.

Oh man. Well, guys, this has been great today. We've had a great time with this, and Sylvia just posted her link to her blog. Yeah, let me post this up for you guys.

I'm gonna get her on one of these Hangouts one of these days here. She's gonna swallow her pride and get on with us.

Hey Tim, tell her it's only scary the first time. After that, she'll be addicted and she'll be hanging out like—

she'll be stuck Starting from where we hang out, right? Absolutely.

I'm telling you, I know I drag food bloggers on and they're always afraid. I've had some where they'll only show— the camera shows like their forehead and on up because they don't want to be on camera. They have their makeup done, their hair's not done. Oh my God, really? I said, look at me. Are you really afraid to come on? Once you get over the fear and realize you're really just talking to the people in it, it doesn't matter that there's all these other people watching it. It's a lot easier to do when it's interact and have a conversation.

How many have you had, Chef?

How many Hangouts have you done? I've got 60-some YouTube videos, and those are the ones that were public. Other than that, I taught classes. I taught cooking classes on this. I was part of ChefHangout.com, which is set out of Dallas, actually. My friend Joe Sod is in Dallas. He started us. That's really what broke the ice for me. I got on those. That's when anything that could happen started to happen. You'd be in the middle of the class. I finished a class on the telephone one time because our sound went out. It's just whatever you had to do, you did. That got a little of the butterflies out. Then I started doing them for my food bloggers when I first started doing them. That helped a lot. But it's easy having friends like you guys that'll come on and help out. I hardly do anything anymore and just let you guys talk most of the time and have a great time.

Yeah, it's a good time for sure.

Well, guys, we're going to probably call it. If you have anything else you'd like to add, now's the time to add it. Otherwise, we're going to say goodbye for the day for Good Day Google+. Craig, anything, any final parting words for us?

Donate that saved money. Black Friday, save that $10 and yes, to the Philippines.

Yes, or, or also remember tomorrow is shopping local, it's Small Business Saturday. So support is always good. As Craig, as James was telling, support your local business in your local community. James, thanks so much for coming on. Any last words you'd like to share with us? Yes, absolutely.

Please help me with the Cash Mob that's going on at Rancho Reverie Saturday, December 7th from 11:00 to 2:00 Pacific Time.

Sounds good. Tim, thank you so much for coming on today. Anything you'd like to share with us?

I've had a really good time, Jeff, and I very much enjoyed myself, and I'd like to do it again.

Absolutely.

If you want to invite me, I'd be welcome to come on board. And just anybody out there that's got a Google love story, I got a profile on Google, let me have it. I want to know your story. I know I'm not the only one.

Share your Google love stories. Maybe we can get Google in on this and let them do something too because that would make one hell of a TV commercial, I'm telling you.

Well, it sounds like a great Hangout.— people keep coming on telling their story.

Yeah, that would be wonderful to hear that.

Hey Tim, get the community, start a community, that's where it all begins, with your community.

That's right, right, yeah, I'm going to do that, watch me.

There you go, let us know, we'll talk about it when you get it. Well gang, thanks so much for coming on today to Good Day Google Plus, it was a great day, it's a beautiful day in Central Florida. All my friends back in the Philly area, I hope you're not too cold, but come down to Florida. I'm loving life here. Guys, thanks so much for being with me today on the panel. We had a great day. Enjoy your Black Friday, what's left of it. Thanks, Jeff.

Have a great weekend, everybody. Good weekend.

Take care.