Good Day Google+ - Come on Get Happy

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Good Day Google Plus. You know what it is? It's a come on, get happy, it's a whole new world, let's out and we're living. Come on, get happy. Now that wasn't the one that Anna was thinking of, but that's the one I was, and that's The Partridge Family, if everyone is old enough to remember that. So we're here today and we're going to have a lot of fun. We have a great group of people on for you, hopefully some that that you don't know so you can make some new friends. If you have questions or comments, go ahead and leave them for us in the comment section, and we will pull up the comment tracker and make sure that we get to all those. So let me just go down from the side, and I'll introduce my guests. And on my left is Stacy Lyon from the Healthy HooHoo.

Hi, nice to meet everyone.

It's great to meet you. And you were telling us you're in Bend, Oregon, and you were talking about the weather a little bit, and it's a little nippy there. Here in the Sunshine State, we're loving the weather. It's just a little in the 70s and it's a glorious sunny day. Glad you could join us and we'll get back and talk more about your business. I was happy to meet you at ShiftCon just a couple weeks ago. That was fun. Then next to Stacey, I have Michael Daniels. Michael is the new Chuck Woolery of Google+. He is— there we go, you're muted. He is a co-host amongst a myriad of other things that he does on the Plus. Very nice to finally have you here, and I love that luxurious presidential suite that you're coming to us from.

Chef, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. My goodness, I mean, it has been long overdue. I mean, I love following you. I love when you're cooking and stuff like that, and the things you used to do in the past in December when you had all those calendar events. I loved that stuff. That was my favorite. I used to try and go to every single one, get in everybody's Hangout and using Hangouts for it, so I'm a huge fan, huge fan, so I'm just glad to be here. I'm glad to meet some new people too. It's awesome.

So that's it, that's what it's all about today is networking, meeting new people, making some new friends. So we'll come back to you in a little bit. And then David Leopold, it has been way too long, my friend, and I am happy to see you with some nice bandwidth there. Everything's so clear, and at our age though, being clear isn't necessarily a good thing.

Things are crazy at our age, aren't they, Chef?

Yeah.

And I was amazed when we saw Michael Daniels. I thought it was a Susan Sara, Laurie Lazure designed room behind him. Look how beautiful it is behind him.

Oh my God, isn't it? I got to get me one of them.

So thank you for inviting me, Chef. It has been a long time. We'll have a lot of fun today. It's always fun to be on a Chef Friday afternoon show.

Absolutely. And then last but certainly not least, Anna Hoffman coming to us from sunny California, and I'm so glad you could make it today. We're loving having you here.

Thank you so much, Chef. It's a pleasure as always.

Yeah, and so how are things? You had a nice trip last week, I hope, to Sonoma?

Yes, I mean, give me a good glass of wine, how bad can it be, right? We had a great time.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, thanks for being here today, and we're gonna jump into things. So guys, if you have questions for our guests, please feel free to chime in. And we're gonna let Stacy start because she's really the newbie on the block today. And in fact, last week she was supposed to be on and came on right at the very end if you did see the show. So we give her an A for effort on that for coming in. She was actually at a winery last week, so that would have worked perfectly too. She could have got us all a little tipsy. Stacy, so why don't you tell us, we met down in Los Angeles 2 weeks ago at ShiftCon, and I think you and Mia Voss tried your very best to embarrass me. I wasn't having any of it.

You're amazing. I'm surprised the words that we used in front of you, you did not blush, and not only did you not blush, but you chimed in with some pretty good jokes. I think it was about the Ho-Hos.

The Ho-Hos, yeah. I always get them mixed up. I knew I used to unwrap different things, but that was a different kind of unwrapping in my younger days.

Yeah, no, it was awesome meeting you and Mia at ShiftCon and learning more about Google+ and Hangouts. This is all new to me. I'm the crazy creator of Healthy Hoo Hoo. It's a line of natural feminine cleansing products. Trust me, when I told my husband this is what I wanted to do, he's like, "Couldn't you have found something in the wine industry?" You can't argue with a light bulb moment, and this was mine. Away I went and started. I guess I came up with the idea about 4 years ago, and we hit the shelves in Whole Foods about 2 years ago. We're growing every day, and thank goodness for the internet so I can figure it out.

Absolutely. It really is a topic. I don't want to make light of it, but there's so much going on with a woman's anatomy that you really need to pay specific attention to things. Men, we're like filthy animals anyway, so it's not as bad for us, but a woman's such a delicate—

I know I pay attention to women's anatomy. I'm just saying. I know. That's what I'm I'm just throwing that out there.

Dr. Pompa: Yeah, well, 49% of the population, we're blessed with this hardware. Yeah, it's just such a taboo topic, thus the crazy name. We wanted to bring light to it to start a conversation, to realize, you know what, 49% of the population, let's talk about the chemicals that we expose her to. Let's be mindful of the food that we eat. This is where the chef part comes in. So many women, and they've got issues, they don't even think about their diet and how it affects their whole body. Yeah, we're big wellness warriors and trying to teach women that less is more and that our bodies are really plumbed to take care of themselves.

Dr. Pompa: Absolutely. You taught me something new. I always thought that women were at least 51% of the population.

You know, I was corrected actually at ShiftCon when I was with Chef. There was kind of an expert gal in the audience, and she corrected me. So she told me it was 49%. So maybe they're bringing China into that stat, maybe. I don't know.

You said in the world or in the United States?

It was for the world, so there you go.

Okay, thank you.

So hopefully we can get that number up if we keep the hoo-hoos all healthy and happy. So yeah, we'll work on that. I'd rather have a female-driven country, I think, any more than a male-driven. We pretty much screwed things up pretty bad, so I think it's time to let the women take over and see if they can nurture us back to good health, nurture— if it's not too late for this country.

Yeah, and nurturing is the perfect word. We learned a lot. I don't know about you, Chef, but I learned a lot at ShiftCon, and shifting the views on the products that we use on our body, the foods that we eat, making some simple changes to try and choose a little bit healthier because gosh darn it, a head of organic broccoli is a lot cheaper than some of these cancer treatments these days. If we can just be a little bit more mindful— I mean, we don't have to go overboard, right? I mean, you know, I still like to shave my armpits, and I really don't like Grape-Nuts, but we can make some simple changes, and I think it's really holistic.

Well, speaking of Grape-Nuts, you said you're gonna come up with a male version of the cleanser too, right?

Well, yeah, so, you know, the only thing that makes my line feminine— okay, I can't look at the screen because I can't see all the laughter, but yes, the only thing that makes my line feminine is that it's formulated acidic because we have, you know, this pH that's all over our body, and our skin is one set of pH, but down there we're more acidic because things don't grow in an acidic environment. So the line is created to match that level of pH. Well, we're finding that because it matches more of an acidic environment, it's great for all kinds of other cleansing areas including wound care, but we've got some men who've started purchasing the product. I won't go into details of why, but we're finding that yes, there is a contingency out there rooting for a male line. And so that, Anna was actually drinking some wine, coming up with some good names for the men's line, which I'm not quite ready to reveal yet, but stay tuned.

I can't wait. And you know, speaking of which, I, you know, used to be in that male contingent that you would be a little embarrassed if you went in to buy feminine products just because that's how we grew up, that's how we were raised. And I heard a comedian one time talking about when his wife or his girlfriend would send him in to buy tampons, he would grab them and he would be proud. He'd go, "Yeah, I have a woman! I'll make her bleed!" So, you know, that's the whole outlook on things, is, you know, as a man, you know, you have to respect the woman that you're with, and if you need to go get her some things, get them, and don't be so embarrassed about it. I've always found too that if you act like it's natural, the people that are trying to embarrass you lose all of it. All the fun is sucked out of it for them.

Yeah, it's just the spin that we put on the whole thing, and I think it starts with the young teenage girls. It shouldn't be considered a curse. It should be considered, "Woohoo! Welcome to the womanhood club. You got your superpowers." I think it's just all the spin that we take on womanhood, and rather than making a taboo subject, something that we don't talk about. Let's bring it out of the closet. Let's talk about it. Let's keep it healthy, and let's embrace this wonderful gift that we've been given.

Sounds good to me. I think I retweeted— I quoted Will Rogers. I had a little poetic license with what he said, and I retweeted it as, "I never met a hoo-hoo I didn't like." I can't believe Will's saying that, but you know, any man who loves his horse, you know, go for it. Well, you know, his was, "I never met a man I didn't like," but I took poetic license with it.

Got it.

Because I can, you know, and also I'm old and we don't really care what we say anymore when we get old, so I found that out and it's like a license. So here we go, Michael Debbie Davis. A nice segue from grape nuts. I thought so. You know, it's a gift, what can I say? We've got a lot of people in the audience. Cheryl Deuce is saying, Stacy Lyon, I love your attitude. Little changes add up to big things. There's another one, Debbie Davis, Yahoo for letting the women take over. Hey, it's not that you let them, it's that you might as well just roll with it because what the heck, you know, what are we going to do? You don't get to be this old with not understanding how the world really works, okay?

That's right, a happy wife is a happy life, they always say, right?

I just got a new leather sofa, okay, and the compromise was that it's a very light color, okay? So, you know, I wasn't going to argue the fact she let me get a leather sofa for my room with my 60-inch TV. So, you know, I wanted a nice dark sofa, but, you know, I'm just happy it's leather.

Michael, I should have learned that lesson. I failed at that lesson twice. Twice.

Oh my Lord, sorry.

Well, I failed at that lesson too twice, David, so don't feel bad. So now let's move on to Anna. We're gonna stay with ladies first here. And Anna, well, it's so nice for you to have you here today. And we were gonna talk a little bit about LO last week. I don't know if you still wanna broach that subject or—

Uh, sure, if that's what we wanna talk about. However, I wanted to stay on the subject of nuts for a little longer. What did you think about that new social media campaign, Feeling Nuts, that's going around? The campaign for testicular cancer. I find it quite peculiar and very humorous in a good way. Did you see it yet?

I did not see it, no.

No? Oy yoy yoy, I'm gonna have to load a picture. So yes, this is, you know, this is Breast Cancer Month that started— it's a testicular research company that started a new ACL bucket challenge kind of thing, and this one is for men, and it's called— it goes under hashtag #FeelingNuts, and guess what they do in those pictures?

They feel their nuts.

Yes, I'm going to try to find a picture and upload it to into the comment section, but it's hilarious. You've got to say it.

I will. Actually, I had prostate cancer, so I do understand some of that and the feelings of it. The one thing that I did understand, as I sat there for my treatment for a totally treatable form of cancer, and the women would come in, and they would come in in so much pain, not just physically but emotionally. They would lose their hair. They would just lose so much of their femininity, they thought. It was just a terrible thing. And then they bring people in that were really truly even sicker than either of us that were undergoing treatment that they would wheel in, and you go, "Thank God that I am not that bad." But the thing that always amazes me, and some people had told me, was prostate cancer is very treatable and curable because it is a men's disease. And I found that a little offensive. I started to think about it a little bit more. If it was a woman— because the researchers are mostly male. And that's just not right. We need to spend more time and more money and more influence on breast cancer and other forms of women's cancers.

Anna, would you address a little bit— and I'm amazed I didn't see more of it this year— breast cancer is a problem with, fortunately, a small number of men, but it is a problem. As a matter of fact, I have a friend who is a 15-year survivor of breast cancer, and there is little mention made of male breast cancer. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Well, excuse me, I am really not an expert on cancer. All I know is what I read in the news, so I can't really help you there. It is just a topic that has been on my mind because of the Breast Cancer Month, of course, and everything that comes to mind. And, you know, there are a lot of articles out there these days, and I don't know if you've seen them, but basically, um, the articles allege that, um, the Breast Cancer Awareness Month is really more for the breast cancer industry to feed them, um, you know, to kind of make it more commercial than it needs to be. But I would argue that despite all of this don't we all benefit from thinking about these kind of diseases and the kind of help that we can provide by raising the money, by raising awareness, and yes, by wearing pink. Why not, right? So I don't care what's behind the intentions of, you know, of the big breast cancer industry. All I care about is that We are more aware as a result, and that's a great thing, right?

I agree with that, and the one point I would like to make though is I think October is great because we need to bring awareness, and if we have to do that through walking, through wearing pink, the only thing I'm not a fan of is the thing called pinkwashing, where companies whose products contain known carcinogens companies put a big pink ribbon on the front of their product saying, "We support breast cancer," when in their product are these really harsh chemicals.

Dr. Pompa: Yeah. I just wrote a post on that. I don't know if you saw it, Stacy. I was so overwhelmed when I heard that at ShiftCon. Some of the things that were thrown out, like even Susan G. Komen, who you think should be a saint for all the work she does. Has products out there like her perfume, Promise Me, had a carcinogenic in it. They're the head of the breast cancer movement. Also, a product that cost $59, they donated $1.63 from the sale. That was it. Then there's— I read something recently that the CEO of the company— I mean, everybody should be paid what they're worth, but the CEO of this nonprofit or the not-for-profit company is making like $600,000 $140,000 a year. So where's all the money channeling? It's a great cause. It's a great way. We want to support it. You see everything from the White House and pink lights to the NFL players supporting it. But you just have to, like you said, you have to know what the motive is behind it, if they're brainwashing and whitewashing the truth.

Right. Yeah, I just let women know that One fact that we do know is that 99%— actually, 99.8% of breast cancer tissue biopsies come back from the lab showing a preservative called a paraben. A paraben is a lovely preservative. It does a great job of keeping your soap and shampoo on the shelves for months without having any kind of bacterial growth on it. What happens is that women use these products every day, and they use them in multiple layers, right? We're not just using one product. We're using shampoo, and conditioner, and face lotion, and makeup, and we're layering on these things. Again, the parabens are actually showing up in the breast cancer tissue biopsies. That's just one product, or one ingredient, that I think women should look at the label on their products and just say, "Is this something that I maybe want to change out and swap out for something a little bit better?" because we know that it is actually showing up in the biopsies. The products that are laden with parabens— there's 5 different types of parabens— they're the ones that have got the big old pink ribbon on the front of it. We know that chemical's in breast tissue biopsies, but yet we've got a pink ribbon on the bottle.

Dr. Pompa: I think they use them in those KFC buckets, too. I was reading the pink buckets that they have the parabens. So I'm very glad I didn't get a bucket of chicken to walk around the 5K at ShiftCon. That would have really put me in a bind.

I think you would have been mauled.

Yeah, so anyway, Anna, how was Sonoma then? Tell us a little bit about what you did.

It's beautiful. It's harvest season. Actually, harvest season is just about over because we had such a hot summer this year that the grapes were ripe way ahead of time. But it's all good. The drought actually served preserved the grapes well, and hopefully we'll have amazing vintages ahead of us. And also a lot of wineries are bottling 2012. They're— I'm sorry, yes, they're bottling 2012, but they're actually releasing their 2012 bottles, and they're tasting okay. A little bit young for my taste, maybe another year in the bottles, but A lot of promise.

Now, you know, I don't know a lot about wine, but I always hear people talking about aging. What will that other year do to the wine?

Basically, when you taste a wine that's a little young, it tastes very harsh. You know, it's like you put it in your mouth and you're like, whoa, I'm not sure if I like that. Once a wine sits in a bottle for a few more months, basically it mellows it out, and when you taste it, it becomes much smoother and you can actually taste the way it's supposed to be. You know, if it's smoky or peppery or whatever it is, jammy, you can actually taste that and not taken aback by the harshness of it. So that's kind of the aging process. That's what it does.

Is there any, like, specific formula for knowing how long a wine needs to age more?

Not really. It depends on the wine, really. Like, my favorite wine right now is Zinfandel, and for those of you who are not familiar with Zinfandels, I always equated it to like a rosé wine that, you know, women who don't know anything about wines like to drink on Sunday. Sorry, girls, but that's just the impression. But no, Zins are absolutely incredible, full-bodied, full-taste wines that I was just wowed. And Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County is the place for the best Zins. So Zins, the great thing about them, they don't have to sit in barrels and then in bottles for years like Cabs need. They can be ready in about 2 years from start to finish, and that's why, that's what makes them very, very drinkable wines. So that's basically what I was looking for on this trip, is to see which Zinfandels show the most promise. And again, the 2012 release is just a little too young. It needs to sit in the bottle till maybe spring, early summer, and then it would be perfect. So I'm very excited about it.

Cool.

Here's a comment from Heather Crafter. Young wine, old wine, either way for me. She's just happy to get wine.

I'm with you. I'm with you. But you know, once you spend money on the wine, you might as well enjoy it, right?

So, um, I know California wines are really, have really come into their own, and as opposed to European wines, and you actually see them costing more. And that always like freaked me out that like I'd go to buy wine and stuff from France or Italy was actually cheaper than the California wines.

Absolutely. And these days you go to Sonoma County, Napa Valley, and you would expect on average to pay about $40 a bottle. Now, you know, if you drink a glass of wine every day with your meal, that gets quite expensive, but that's the way it is, you know. Of course, you can always go to Trader Joe's and buy buy a very decent bottle of wine for $10. But then about 15 years ago, you could have bought a good bottle of wine for $3 at Trader Joe's. And by good, I mean drinkable good, not like a good bottle. So things do change. And yes, California wine is just going through the roof. Again, $40 on average per bottle. But you know, it's an expensive hobby.

Yeah, it is.

I guess I'll stick with my limoncello for now then, because that's a little less— yeah, that's my alcohol of choice. I don't drink very much anymore. When I did in the old days, it was vodka, and it's probably a good thing that I don't drink vodka anymore because there's so many designer vodkas out there. I used to always look for a good— I had one, Suntory made one. It used to make my mouth numb. I loved that vodka.

Oh, I don't want to know what's in that vodka to make your mouth numb.

I think my husband would like that.

Yeah, it was a rice vodka, so that was interesting. You know, they were one of the few out there, and I can't find it anymore. Like I said, I'd buy a bottle now and it would probably last me a year at least, or a year and a half. The limoncello stays in the freezer all the time, along with tuaca. I don't know if you've ever had tuaca.

With apple cider.

Ooh, that's a good idea.

Yeah, hot apple cider. It's even better. It's awesome. Great drink, little whipped cream on top. It's awesome.

I'll get myself some organic apple cider this weekend and give it a try.

How about some mulled spices in it and just make it taste so Thanksgiving, it's spicy, and oh, I love it. And the smell—

Make it like a Russian tea. Like a Russian tea. I love Russian teas too.

So what's a Russian tea, Michael?

I don't even remember what's in it, but we used to do it in my dad's restaurant. He used to make it and it was super fantastic. It's, it's like she's talking about with the seasonings in it and everything. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, I'm not sure if it's vodka, but I think it's bourbon-based, and it is delicious. I mean, it is really, really good, but you will get knocked out. We were kids when Dad had the restaurant and everything, and we'd taste it and we'd be like, "Wow!" We thought we were something. But it's really good.

Here's another from Heather Crafter. She says, "My root beer and whipped cream vodkas are dangerous. Is it too early to drink yet?" Heather, no, it's 5 o'clock somewhere on Google+. It's always 5 o'clock somewhere.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Plus, it's Friday. You can't go wrong with drinking on Friday, really.

Debbie Davis, Tawaka, that will be in my glass for game show tonight. Sounds like a plan, Debbie. Yeah, Fridays are always a good day to start your drinking just a little earlier, especially for Good Day Google+. Sit down with a glass of wine or something and enjoy the day. So let's move over to David Leopold. David, how you doing, buddy? Oh, you're muted.

I know, I had to unmute myself. Usually I don't mute because I'm doing the talking. You have to figure out— okay, I'm doing wonderful, Chef, and I want to thank you for inviting me on today. It's actually very, very appropriate in terms of what's happening in my life. Is it okay if I make a major announcement?

Oh, absolutely.

Well, we semi-quietly launched the Small Biz David Foundation last weekend, and now we're starting to make a lot of noise with it, we hope. And it's— Chef, it's wonderful. You know, at our age, we're supposed to slow down a little bit, but I've got things in high gear now, and it's one of the most— Oh, didn't mute the phone. I'm sorry. You know, there's an app out there that I just read today that automatically— oh no, Vivek was telling me about it. You can automatically mute your phone. I mean, it's amazing if you're supposed to have your phone shut off. Anyway, we launched the foundation, and right away we're going to be publishing what I am calling video, digital video books. You know that I love to do videos, and I, and I don't like to write as much as I like to do videos. So having that kind of interest, we're gonna create a book, as we're gonna call it a book, but it's not gonna be, certainly not a traditional looking book. Another thing the foundation is going to do Scott Silverstein about 6 months ago came up with his own personal idea that he wanted to have a magazine called Hangouts On Air Magazine. And it was a wonderful idea, and we did a little bit of brainstorming about it 6 months ago. And as he was getting into the project, he said, I don't want to put this much time into it personally.. And so he and I had some discussions, and I have a community that's growing by leaps and bounds called Dreaming with Entrepreneurs in Google+. And Scott said, and I said, why don't we make it a community project and just publish the magazine out of the community? And so that's what is going to happen. We'll probably come up with the first Well, I'm gonna have my book out in January. The first edition of the magazine will probably be out in January. And the second half of the year, I hope to make the first interest-free loan that the Foundation will make to a small business where the owner of the business can make a compelling case. And the loans aren't going to be big ones, they're going to be small loans for small businesses. And the interesting thing about it, and this is where it gets really exciting, that the foundation will closely monitor that loan and mentor the purpose of the loan so that the small business owner can repay it on a timely basis. It's going to be interest-free. So that we can keep the money recirculating to other small businesses. And that's a fun concept. And finally, I hope to have in place by Labor Day a recreational vehicle where I'm just going to get in and travel the country and visit any community where I happen to stop and invite the small business owners of that community to come and Let's talk about how the Foundation can help you with the challenges in your small business.

Very good.

This is an exciting time, and I can see me pulling the recreational vehicle up in Orlando and getting a wonderfully cooked meal for that evening in Orlando.

I'd love to have you here, David. You know that. Sounds like a plan, and sounds like you got a lot going on there, so good luck with all that.

Starting to share the idea with folks, and we're getting some really, really, really good feedback. So very excited about it, very excited.

Cool.

And Michael just posted the recipe for Russian tea. Thank you very much.

That's fine. My sister, she actually works at Whole Foods, so— and I pinged her real quick because she's also a chef, and I said to her, I said, real quick, I need the Russian tea recipe that Dad used to use. She actually had it and sent me a quick email, so I copied and pasted it in there. I love the part she put in there about a whole lot of vodka.

Lots of vodka.

Lots of vodka. Stolichnaya is what makes it Russian, I guess.

Yeah, Stoli. In my drinking days, I would order— there was a movie out called Rustler's Rhapsody. I don't know if anyone has ever seen it with Tom Berenger. He would go in. He was a good guy, and he didn't drink, but he would— they wouldn't serve him root beer or milk. He'd have to order alcohol, and it was always, "Give me a shot of whiskey in a dirty glass with a human hair in it. So that's how I would order my Stoli, pretty much. I would order it— or you get a lot of strange looks when you do order it that way, but most of the time the bartenders knew me when I was drinking. So, gotta love it, the old days. I'm glad they're behind me. Anyway, so let's move on to Michael. Michael, since we had you, let's talk about what you're doing, your game shows and everything else that's going on for you.

Yeah, I'll do it. Thank you. And again, like Dave said and everybody else, thank you so much for having me on. It's been a long time. I've been looking forward to it, and I'm glad to do it. It's absolutely awesome. And I just want to say that I'm a huge proponent of breast cancer awareness. I'm very aware of breasts, for one thing. No, but my mom— in all seriousness, my mom actually had a mastectomy, a double mastectomy, excuse me, and she had throat cancer. She also had kidney cancer, so she had a kidney removed. So I'm a huge proponent of that, huge, huge. So I'm all for it, I love it. I umpire, I do a lot of umpiring and stuff like that, so I wear like the pink wristbands, whatever I can whenever I'm out there doing— I really push for that because I think it's really important. Gotta have them women, I love them. So it's really important. And you know, and I like the— I love— and I'm gonna go check that out too because on the testicular cancer too, because Chef, I didn't know that about you with the prostate and everything. I learn something new all the time. You can relate. I think when it hits home with people, I think that makes a big difference. Okay, let's have some fun now. Game shows, yeah, absolutely. What happened was a long time ago, we would sit there, really around last Christmas, last November, huge— you can see right in here, I'm involved with a bunch of different communities and things like that, but the Hangout Mastery, Ronnie and all that kind of stuff, I met a whole bunch of cool people, and we were getting together on Friday nights. We called it Friday Night Lights. We just said, hey, let's just get out there, have a blast. And we started playing games just within, you know, a separate community, but it was Hangout Mastery chats. So we would get with people and just start playing games and stuff. And one of the persons said, I believe it was Scott Scowcroft and Heather, you know, that you see in here, Heather Crafter and Debbie Davis and some of those guys, and we need to go public with this, let everybody else get involved. So they talked me into it. I really— I was fine just sitting there drinking and, you know, playing games and having fun. So now I just do it in front of everybody, but it's been a blast. We just— what our main game show that we do on Friday nights is called Plus Word. It's like the old game Password where you pass a word and you have to guess and everything. You get a certain amount of points and stuff, and we just have a blast. It's on tonight, so it's gonna be— it'll be fun. It's always fun. It's always a blast. And Chef Chef, he was on the inaugural one that we had for, it was similar to Hollywood Squares, we call it Hollywood Circles because of Google Circles and I try and make the names a little bit creative and stuff like that and try and change it up to reflect Google and Hangouts and stuff like that. And that was a blast, that was so much fun that time and it was interesting because if you remember Chef, a couple of your questions were actually food related. I remember that. You were spot on on every one of them. Do you remember what those mushrooms were or whatever? That, uh, you know what I'm talking about though, right? That they were poisonous.

And I, yeah, and I know I was making a lot of noise. I went and that, that's kind of how I, the restaurant, they would come back and ask questions, and if I didn't know, I would just make something up that sounded good.

Well, what was funny though is you were spot on, so I was like, wow, this really worked out pretty well. So So we have fun. I try and make up games. I try and have some of those old game shows that everybody always used to watch back in the day, and it's awesome. It's been great. I've had great success with it, and it's just, it's just fun. A great way to unwind. We do it on Friday night at 10 PM Eastern, and then we do it on Sunday night at 10 PM. So to end your weekend, kind of end your week and end your weekend kind of thing, or get your week started, however you want to call it. But that's— it's been an absolute blast. So I love it and having a good time. And anybody wants to come on You guys that are in here in the panel, come on, you know, just let me know. I know Dave, that's a little late for Dave. He's always says, dude, why don't you do them at 4 in the morning or something? Because then I could probably get it. I was like, okay, okay.

I haven't been on at 4 in the morning in a long time, but I know when I used to, Ronnie Benson was always still on. And I'd be coming into work and I'm going, he's still on. What do you want?

I know, it's crazy.

Well, anyway, finally get on and then, you know, you've been a big part of the Hangout Mastery group and we've done a lot of fun things with— thanks to Ronnie, and Ronnie's introduced a lot of people to each other. So it's—

yeah, I agree. And you know, I'm using Hangouts in business, every facet of my business now too. I mean, we do— what my real job— I always call it my real job, although I think the game shows are actually my real job. I like to consider it that way. But we do construction, we do floor construction, and I have implemented it with our foremen that are out on jobs working in these places. We're able to use Hangouts to show customers things. We do it with sales on Fridays. We do one Friday a month, we do a sales thing where we pitch it to engineers. I also do it from our temporary services that we use. The two temporary services that we use now actually use Hangouts and I do an interview before the employee even— it's kind of a primary interview, so I'm doing it that way. I mean, I'm really using it a lot in every facet. I really am. And I try to even when buying products and things like that. So the Hangout, so the Hangout's real important to me. So that's why I try and emphasize that and get this out to people, because there's something about talking to somebody face to face.

So makes a big difference, it really does. I'm going to throw up a couple more comments we have here. Heidi is here, and she's talking about, "When you talk about cancer, the right food can heal it. There's a lot of research about that. I thought this would be interesting for chefs cooking for cancer patients." We do, but we need that guidance from some of these people that really know more about food. Not all of us— I know what foods are better for you in some instances, but I think for some cancer treatments, there's more specific things. I think that would be a great idea and a good way to help make people feel a little bit better about what they're going through, too. Anytime you get a good meal, it makes you feel a little better.

Jeff, happy birthday to Heidi.

Oh, it's Heidi's birthday. Happy birthday. She's saying hi to Anna. She loves to see her on so many shows lately.

Thank you, Cindy, I appreciate it.

As we all do.

Aww, so sweet. So I think this is as good a time as any to bust some myths about Russia. How about it?

Okay, let's do it.

So I grew up in Russia, right? Russian raised, born, bred, everything. So in Russia there is no such thing as Russian tea. There's tea, and it's black, and it's very strong, but we certainly don't add vodka or anything else to our teas. So there's no such thing as Russian dressing either. Oh, really? Russians don't dress their salads like they do in the States. At best, we use some salt, pepper, and maybe oil as a dressing, or maybe sour cream. That's about it. So there are a lot of different things that I hear about Russia all the time, and I think a lot of it has to do with Russians that came to the States that are trying to reinvent what Russia could be all about. And I don't mind it at all, as long as we all know that in Russia, people are really very simple. When people ask me, "What's the Russian food that people love. And Russians are all about simplicity. It's all about meat, potatoes, salt, and pepper. There are no spices that we use. You know, it's very natural. The foods are very natural. You bring out the flavors very naturally. So it's pretty simple, really. And one thing that is true, we do love our vodka. That is definitely not a myth.

Is there any other drink, I mean, that vodka— you'd see in vodka, I mean, see in Russia besides vodka? I mean, is that typical of what Russians would drink then, or wine's bigger?

That's about it. You know, some parts of Russia produce wine, but it's really very bad. Some parts of Russia, like around the Baltic area, they produce some beers. Really, to me, pretty bad. How about the Moscow Mule? I'm sorry? Oh, Russian Moscow Mule. Never heard about it in Russia or Moscow.

That's like a White Russian or Black Russian too, I'm sure.

Right, right. I have no idea what the origin is, but yes. In Russian, never heard of it.

Well, I think probably just because it had vodka in it was why we named it that.

And why not? Yes.

Yeah, but yeah, I know we take liberties with a lot of, I think, nationality stuff and just call it— it's just like I'm Mexican and people celebrate the Cinco de Mayo like it's some really big holiday. For gringos it is, but for us, you know, it was a battle that went bad. That was about it.

That's funny.

So, you know, we were going to talk a little bit, and if you don't mind talking about it, I'd like to talk a little about Ello. We were going to talk about that because I'm on it and I don't really know what to do with it.

Okay, so Ello, right, for those of you who don't know, it's a new social media network that basically there are two types of people on Elo, people who know what they don't want in a social media network, and mostly that's the fact that they don't want Facebook. They ran away from Facebook, they came to Elo. That's one group of people that feel very strongly about Elo, they're very attached to it, they love it, mostly because it's not Facebook, really. And then there's another group of people who don't really know where Elo's going, what's going to happen to it, but they don't want to miss the boat. Just in case. So they're on Elo kind of, you know, mingling, trying to figure out what to do with it. Is it good for business? If it's not good for business— so those are the kind of people that are basically lingering around, again, not knowing what they're doing. And everybody's kind of waiting who will step up and make Elo something more so that we can decide for sure, should we be on Elo or not? But you know, Google+ has been in existence for what, 2, 3 years, something like 2 years, right? Yeah, and people are still deciding about it, right? People still don't know whether they should be on Google+ or not. I mean, in my business, so trafficgenerationcafe.com in case you don't know me just yet, that's my main business. And people come to me all the time saying, should we be on Google+? Should my business be on Google+? And to me, that is such a wrong question to ask because when you decide where to establish your presence, basically you look at what is happening right now. Don't look to see, you know, don't get a magic ball to see what's going to happen to Elo in a year or two. What is happening right now is that A lot of people, marketers and non-marketers alike, are flooding Yellow— I'm sorry, Ello, because they are curious about it. And what is going on is that you have the cream of the crop of people who you otherwise would not be able to touch on Facebook or Twitter or even Google+ now, because they have so many followers that it's very hard to get to them through all the noise. And yet all the same people, if you think about it, are on Elllo right now and they are wide open because there's no one else there. You can go and ask Guy Kawasaki a question and he will probably answer you personally on Elllo, but he might not do that on Facebook or Twitter, maybe on Google+. So the possibilities are there right now. For people to go and explore and put your best foot forward. And maybe something will come out of it, maybe nothing will. But you know what, right now I think it's a very good opportunity just to go and mingle. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Now I see something I see called noise. It's got connect friend, or you friend somebody, or you follow them, and then noise. What is the noise?

Is that just a message or No, basically when you choose who to follow on Ello, you can categorize them into a couple of different ways. Number one, obviously you can choose not to follow them at all, right? If they're someone who you are truly interested in and you want to hear from them and you want to see their posts in your main stream, then you put them in the friends Friends category. Then there's noise category. Those are people who you think you might be interested in, but maybe not quite yet. They kind of need to prove themselves to you a little bit, so you can put them in the noise category. And what happens is that you kind of have to switch back and forth between friends stream and noise stream, and you kind of have to keep track of both if you want to get engaged.. And then people who are in the friends category will only show up in that category, and people who are in noise category will only show up there. And we all kind of think that noise is really not a good word, right? Because it's negative, you know, it's like, I don't want to be noise. I'd rather not be followed at all than be noise. But if you think about it, it's really not that bad. It's just, you know, that first getting to know each other, that first step in the relationships. Ooh, we saw each other, do we like each other? Should we see if we want to have a cup of coffee? It's that kind of category, you know, just getting to know someone. And once you know them and you see their posts in the Noise category, you can decide, I really do like this person, they're posting something right up my alley, let's put him or her in the Friends category. So that's basically what those two are for.

Great, and people don't know what you put them in, right?

They don't, they just know that you follow them, they don't know how. It's sort of like Google Circles, you know, you can make up a circle for people who you hate their guts and you can call the circle that way, but for all they know you're just following them, they don't know how and why. And of course, Ello just has so many problems at the moment, and that's why a lot of people are put off by it. And the notifications are not working properly. Basically, it's very hard to follow conversation. And because of that, you find a lot of people who talk a lot on Ello but not really engage a lot, partly because we're people, right? We like to talk. We don't love to listen as much, but partly because it's really very hard to keep track of conversations because, um, Ello doesn't have notifications as of right now, um, the way Google+ does or any other social network. But they're working on it actively. I think it's one of the priorities on Ello for Ello founders to come up with that system of tracking conversations.

It's still pretty new. How long— do you know how long it's been around or?

Well, officially they were out available to public since August, since the beginning of August. So it's been barely, what, about 2 months.

Yeah, it's not very long.

They're still in beta. They will probably be in beta for a long time. And it's still by invite only. Invites are maybe still hard to come by because their servers are so swamped with requests. That it's a little bit difficult, but it's not impossible. You know, there are people on Twitter, on Facebook that offer invites. You can buy an invite, believe it or not, on eBay for anything from $0.99 to— I saw one for $10,000. I don't think there were any bids, but you know, it's out there. So, you know, if you have to be on Elo, just ask around, see who is on Elo and I'll see if they have any invites available. So again, it's worth a try, it's worth to be there, it's very raw and it's interesting. It's like you take Tumblr, you take away all the pretty fonts and pretty everything and then you have Ello. And for some people it's perfect because it's stripped down to nothing. You know, and that's for some people is an opportunity to shine.

That's a good point. Yeah, you take away all the fluff and then you get down to just the basic of what's really going on. So that's one way to look at it. I know when I went on, I'm looking at it and it didn't have that warm, fuzzy, friendly feel to it, so I didn't stay on as long to really You know, as I always say, that you kind of have to give it a shot.

If you just want to go and dabble in something, it will inevitably end up to be a waste of time, because if you don't give it a true effort, then why bother? If you come to Elo— and mind you, most people most likely will hate it from the beginning because it's completely not intuitive, even though the founders think otherwise. Of course they do. But it's really very difficult to get around, it's difficult to understand, it's unlike anything else that we've seen before. But you know what, if you hang around it for a month or two, maybe you'll fall in love with it, might become your social network of choice. But again, you know, whatever you choose, just go into it with both feet, because otherwise, you know, if you just dabble a little bit in it, it's a waste of time, I think.

Yeah, good advice, absolutely. Well, thank you for that on Hello, and I will definitely look into it more too.

Eh, whatever.

Well, let's— we have a few minutes left in the show, and I just want to go by everybody and we'll say a quick see if you have anything going. Stacy, is there anything you have planned coming up in the near future?

Any—

you're going to do more Google+ I hope. We'll get you on some other shows, but anything you have going on that you're going to be out and about?

Yeah, actually I'm leaving after this interview and I'm heading to a wonderful conference here in Bend. It's called the Bend Venture Conference and it's pretty amazing. They're giving away to small businesses, they're giving away today about $125,000 and everyone gets up on stage and they have a pitch and it's like a condensed version of Shark Tank. We have a lot of entrepreneurs here in Bend. Not to be outdone, by the way, of our new favorite statistic that we have the most breweries per capita than any other city in America.

Woo-hoo!

80,000 people and we've got 29 breweries. I'm going to go grab a beer and go sit in at the Bend Venture Conference and listen to all of the new startups and entrepreneurs pitch their businesses Sounds like fun.

And people can find you on your website, or where can we find you?

Healthyhoo.com. And we've got the social media platform of Pinterest, which is really fun for this category because it's, it's a lifestyle. It's fun, it's outdoors, she's funny, she's goofy. We also have Twitter and Facebook pages that are dedicated to just kind of getting out the word about living a simple healthier lifestyle, kind of trying to pull out, you know, some of the toxins and the chemicals from our daily, our daily routines.

Very good. So now we know where we can find you. And Michael, I know you have a game show tonight. What else is on plans?

Um, you know, as, as you can see right here with— I have my little lower third or side third or whatever you want to call it. I use business Hangouts all the time. We have a community called User to User Live This is for anybody that's starting out and use it. It's absolutely, absolutely free on the user-to-user side. We just help people out, you know, how to create lower thirds, how to get involved and get Hangouts going. It's users helping users. It truly is that. So we created that last January where Andrew Hatchett is the one that started it, and with my collaboration, and we get on there and we just teach people things. You want to learn about a certain thing, it's a great place to ask questions, stuff like that. The Hangout Mastery that I'm involved with Ronnie Sheff, you know Ronnie and David, I mean a lot of you guys have been in the Mastery for a long time. I help Ronnie out quite a bit lately, I'm just about on every single one of his shows trying to help him wrangle in comments and helping him a little bit behind the scenes with newbies, with new people and stuff. So that's a paid community, that's a paid one. And so that's what I'm doing besides the game shows, but yeah, every Friday night and every Sunday night we try and do something just to have a little bit of fun. And please, anybody that wants to come out and be a participant in that, just ask. I mean, we don't hold it to, you know, just a certain bunch, or it's not a little clique or anything like that. Trust me, you want on, I'll put you on, I promise. But I'd love to have you, I really would. But that's it, that's enough, isn't it?

That's good. Yeah, you do quite a bit. I'll keep you busy for now. And David, what can we look for from you? You know, you got your book, your foundation, anything else coming up in the winter? Or any shows you're doing?

Just pretty much what you just said. Chef, I want to thank you very much. I learned so much today from the other panelists. I mean, it was a wonderful learning experience for me from Anna and from Stacey and from Michael, and I'm sure the audience, the viewers, are going to have a lot of takeaways today. Thank the other panelists for sharing wonderful information.

Very good. Glad to have you. Like I said, it's been a while, so I'm glad you could come on and we could chat a little. And Anna, any shows you're coming up on, anything you're doing, or what should we be looking for?

Uh, you know, nothing really in particular. I'm just right now focused on hopefully coming up with my own product. It's been long overdue, and it will be about traffic generation. So if there is anything in particular you'd like to learn about traffic generation, feel free, give me ideas, help me out. You can always find me on Google+. That's my platform of choice, like it is for many of us, I suppose. And the one thing that I wanted to mention is that I've been doing it for a while now, and I see the value behind it because of so many comments that I get. On Saturday mornings I always publish my weekly marketing skinnies, and in those posts I basically collect all the important marketing information for small business owners, website owners, so anything, all kinds of announcements that come out of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus You name it, you don't have to read hundreds of articles like I do on a weekly basis, but all you need to do is just to come to trafficgenerationcafe.com on Saturday morning, the skinny will be there for you, it might take just a few minutes and a cup of coffee and you'll be caught up on your latest business happenings around the world, in the country, anything you need to know. So I just want to encourage you to come join me on Saturday mornings. I'll bring you a cup of coffee and I look forward to seeing you at TrafficGenerationCafe.com.

And we can subscribe to that too, can't we?

So, uh, if you choose to, you can subscribe to my email list and you will get the skinnies in your inbox every Saturday morning. So that's a very convenient way of doing it.

Absolutely. That way it comes right to you. You sit there with your coffee and enjoy a good read.

Absolutely. And thanks for having me again, Chef. Really appreciate it.

My pleasure. I'm so glad you could come on. And everyone, thank you for coming on. I always enjoy my Friday afternoons. I get to talk with friends and just enjoy life a little bit, you know, and realize what this is all about. Google+ has brought so many of us together, and I really appreciate it for that. It is my social media of choice just for that reason alone. And thank you all that watched. I always appreciate your comments comments and your questions. Have a great week, a great weekend. Get out and do something fun and enjoy it while the weather is still good in whatever part of the country you're at. It's always going to be good in Florida, but if you're up north, get out while you can and enjoy it. Have a great day on Google+. I'll see you all next week.

Thank you, Chef. Thank you, Chef. Thank you, Chef.