The Local Voice

Hey, I'm andrew mccauley.

Why are we doing this? Jeff Harrison. You know what, there's lots of businesses out there, especially in the local area of Coachella Valley, that are having some trouble right now, as many, many businesses are. And we thought let's get out there and share some information. Let's do some, have a conversation with some of these business owners, get them to let you know that they're still open or still open for business or what they're doing in the face of this crisis right now. So we just wanted to make sure that we're doing as much as we can for the local economy, getting them an awareness out to everybody so that they know that there are people who are still operating, still need your hard earned money to help them survive through this crisis as well.

Yes, it.

Absolutely. And we're excited to be doing this, you know, because we've got lots of friends that are local business owners. We've made lots of connections in the local community and we want to make sure that we're helping them as much as we can. So, you know, if you're watching this and you see somebody who comes on the show and you think you can use their service or you can just get in touch with them and find out a little bit more about that. We're going to show you how to do that and we'd love you to be able to connect with those people as well.

It.

Exactly right. So, sorry, I'm just, I'm looking. I've got three going on at once. I've got Facebook over here, I've got YouTube and a website over here. It's all crazy. So I'm looking at all things at the moment. So make sure you let us know. This is an engaging conversation we want to have with you. So if you've got questions you'd like us to ask the guest, then by all means type those questions either in the Facebook comments, the YouTube comments, or over at our website. Now we're streaming this live on our website as well. We've got a chat module there where you can interact with us. That link is swingpointmedia.com forward/the local voice. We might put that in a. We'll put that in some other chats too, but the lo. The dash Local. Dash voice. Dash Live. The Local voice live. Please jump over there and engage with us over there. We'd love to be able to, to do that Now, Jeff, we've got someone saying that they can't hear you right now.

All right, thank you, Katrina. We've We've just. We've sound issues. Jeff's been saying some amazing stuff, and you guys have missed it. I'm gonna have to try and paraphrase it all again. We are doing this live now. You gotta understand, with all these people staying home in lockdown, there is going to be some technical challenges that come about. Sometimes it may be my voice is not matched lips at the same time. Maybe it's a bit of.

Right now, we're just fixing up a tech challenge that we've got with Jeff so you can hear him. But understand that there's so much going on with the Internet right now. I think I read an article recently that the amount of Internet traffic has increased by three or four times in the last three weeks. Because everybody's at home, we're on our devices. We're streaming Netflix, we're streaming YouTube. We're watching videos. It's put a massive strain on a lot of the servers. And I'm sure if you've ever been to some of those programs like Netflix, saying this may take a little time to stream sometimes that's what's going on with the Internet. Having said that, we are going to do our best to make sure that we can have our guests on there. We can hear them clearly. You can hear them clearly, and we can interact with everybody as well. All right.

Let's see. Katrina, if you can hear Jeff, let me know in those Facebook comments so I can make sure that we can do that. Because I can hear him. So I'm talking to him. I'm thinking. I'm talking to him. I'm thinking everybody else can hear him, but I may not be correct. So if you could let us know in the comments that you can hear Jeff, somebody let us know. That would be excellent. While we're doing that, Jeff, I'm still waiting for some people to give us some feedback on that.

Anybody here? Now, as soon as you hear Jeff, stick it in the comments that we've got somebody that can hear us.

Testing, 1, 2. Testing, 1, 2. I'm starting to see some sound on my side. That's. That looks right.

I'm going to just do a quick test here.

I'm starting to see some sound on my side.

Okay, good.

My wife is real happy about that. My lists are moving. No sound coming out. That's a good place for me to be. But here we need to hear my voice a little bit.

Yes. Yes, we do. All right, let me just do a quick refresh, see if I can see any comments coming through. Not seeing any comments yet. So maybe they're just gobsmacked with what's going on. Maybe they're practicing lip reading, Geoffrey.

I don't know. It's a possibility.

So, you know, one thing I want to talk a little bit about, Andrew, is just a little bit about swingpoint Media before we get started and what we do. And behind me on my blackboard, this was kind of fun because, again, yes, we're a company, we need to make profits and that type of thing. And yet something came up. And it was literally less than 24 hours ago. And a friend of my wife's and my friend owns a company here in the Valley. And, you know, she thought, okay, after two weeks, everything's going to be okay, or it's going to be, you know, better. She can kind of get back to work. Well, it turns out, you know, how we go another four weeks. And so now she's a little distraught, not sure exactly what to do. And I said, well, hey, what if we do this and she's a yoga instructor? And we said, what if we created an online yoga studio? And. And it all happened in how many hours, Andrew?

Not enough.

There was a bunch of hours that were in between. We had to get to work, but probably about seven hours, I think it was all up.

Yeah. And I mean, that included me going and filming her. So she had a promotional video, writing emails and all this stuff you see behind going on and that little chart over there and all the steps. And so we did this. And the cool thing about it is she was just hoping to get a few clients. Now, when she first started, when we first started doing this, Andrew, she said, boy, I just Hope to get 10 clients. Well, just before we went on, and I want to thank you locals. That's the whole idea. This is Local Voice supporting her is she just crossed 20, 20 clients. So that's really cool. So, you know, she's going to be able to meet some financial deadlines. And that's the whole idea of this. And this was our give back. She's a friend. We did what it took and we kind of compressed what literally two to three weeks worth of work into just a few hours. And it kind of felt like an Apollo mission. Hey, we got to get these guys down. So it was kind of fun, Andrew.

It was fun. It was testing. And there's also, as always, technology doesn't want to work when you have a deadline for some reason. That's the way technology goes. So here's just a piece of advice. If you're out there trying to make things work because you haven't used Zoom before, you haven't used Facebook Live or you haven't used some sort of technology out there, there's gonna be trouble. We all have trouble with it. Just go with the flow. Don't let it stress you out. It will all work eventually.

All right, so let's see. Jeff, I just want to check, I'm guessing everybody.

It sounds like people can. Everybody, everybody can hear me now. I now all of a sudden I don't hear, oh, everybody can hear me. Great, great.

That's what they're looking like.

All righty.

That's Ryan. How's joined us. Jakar joined us. Guys, good to see you on the call as well.

Ryan, just want to check while you're here, can you hear Jeff? Jeff, say something and say hello. Ryan.

Testing. Hey, Ryan, how, how you doing, buddy? Nice to hear. Nice to see you there. Appreciate you coming in.

Good to see you. Hope things are going well up there locally for you, Ryan. So, yeah, definitely, definitely. Good to see you on the call. So just give people an overview. We're doing, we're going to interview a couple of guests. We have a guest coming up in just a few moments from a local. Have a chat to her and share with her or she's going to share with you what she's doing, what they're doing right now locally. And then we're going to have a couple of other guests later on the show in about 20 minutes time after that, and they're going to talk about what they're doing. These both guests have different ones, retail. One's not in retail, but offices, professional services, locally. You'll find out all about that in a moment. But you know, this coronavirus, this COVID 19, is affecting all sorts of businesses, all sorts of people there having all sorts of challenges. So we want to just see how are people coping with it? What are they doing? What do they have to do in order to change the focus of their business? Because this has all hit us real quick and sometimes some of us weren't ready to be changing the way we do business. And it's important to understand how to do it, but it's also important to understand what other people are doing, too, because just by them sharing how they've shifted gears, how they've pivoted, may give you some ideas and some inspiration about what you can do to move your business in the right direction moving forward. So I'm looking forward to having a chat to these people coming up in Just a few moments. So as Jeff gets them ready, he's about to get them ready. We're just pulling them in right now. So in just a few moments, we're going to be back on with our very first special guest. Now, if you are watching locally, by the way, in Coachella Valley, I want to give a shout out to the Rancho Mirage Chamber of Commerce. They are doing a fantastic job on their website. If you need some resources, if you need some. They're doing some webinars today, I believe, live webinars with some sba, some funding people in order to show you what to do to get funding for your business, if you need to do that. Their homepage of their website has all sorts of resources for local businesses, local people, local institutions. Go and check that out, because I know Katie and Rhonda down at the Chamber have been doing an amazing job every single day trying to keep up with what's going on. Let's face it, the rules and everything is changing every day. It's important to make sure you know what's going on. They're doing a fantastic job of trying to keep us up to date. They're producing webinars, they're producing all sorts of resources and downloadable guides as well. So that is something you can go and check out at the Rancho Mirage Chamber of Commerce website. I think off the top of my head, the link is Rancho MirageChamber.org There you go. Rancho MirageChamber.org is the place for you to go and check it out. All right, let's see.

Looks like we have our first special guest. Jeff.

We'Re here.

Welcome, welcome back. And we have our first guest, Katrina Thomas from Palm Desert Law Group in Palm Desert. Welcome, Katrina.

Hi. Thank you for having me on today.

Absolutely. Thanks for being on today. Now, Katrina. Yeah. Say hello to Andrew. We gotta keep Andrew happy. He's bigger than I am. We want to make sure he stays happy. Tell us a little bit about Palm Desert Law Group, your role there and kind of what goes on at Palm Desert Law Group.

Okay. Well, Palm Desert Law Group, our primary focus is estate planning, which, you know, it is an all encompassing term these days. And especially what we're focusing on is continuing to serve our community in education about estate planning, in a new and simple approach to it. A big thing myth that we're trying to dissolve is that estate planning really is for everyone. It's not just for rich and famous. It's not for the old and the retirees. My role here at Palm Desert Law Group is I'm the client services director. So basically, I am the first person that somebody talks to when they're interested in learning more about our firm and answering questions about estate planning in general.

On the forefront.

You know, when we talk about estate planning, you know, what, what exactly does that mean? Because it's like, we think about estate and like, well, geez, I don't have an estate. But can you help define what that is? Like you said, hey, and we've talked offline before, and it, it doesn't mean that, hey, just because you're going off to college, you shouldn't have a plan. So tell us a little bit about what, what is an estate plan? What does it mean?

Absolutely, absolutely. A plan is basically plan for your assets and your body as your. And as you go along in life. If you have a home, if you have certain medical decisions that you'd like to have made.

Basically transferring all of your properties when you can no longer do it for yourself, is there an.

Is there an advantage to that? I mean, what's the big deal? I mean, I know we've heard the word probate, but what, what does that mean? So what if I, you know, I'm gone, right?

Absolutely. The biggest part is, and this is the key point to the education portion that we like to provide to the community is the simple fact that it makes it a lot easier for your loved ones that you leave behind or in the event that you become incapacitated, it helps them know what your wishes were or what your wishes would be if you could make those decisions on your own.

Is there, you know, besides the advantage of that, is there anything, you know, financially, is there a benefit, is there time benefit to having the proper estate plan?

Absolutely. You mentioned the key term probate. Well, in simple terms, probate is the process that the state, each state goes through to transfer ownership of assets in order to avoid probate, which can be upwards of 5% of your total estate, meaning insurance policies.

Home policies, any monetary assets that you have, lumping those all together.

The statutory costs or the costs that cannot be changed is about 5%, which doesn't really seem like a whole lot, but putting together a simple plan is a fraction, will cost a fraction of that cost and save your a lot of heartache.

So when you talk about.

Value, and this is the part that, when we spoke about this, that kind of surprised me is, let's say, for instance, you know, I have a home and we're here in Southern California, so let's just say it has a value of $500,000 and I owe $300,000. Now in my mind, I'm only going to get taxed in this whole estate thing for just that $200,000 in equity. But that's not true, is it.

Correct? That is not true. As far as the estate taxes go, that's completely, that's a little bit different. But as far as being your value for. As far as it goes for probate, it is the real market value. So if your home is worth $500,000 right off the top for probate, you're looking at 5% of that $500,000 in.

Fees alone and in the state plan will help avoid that?

It absolutely can help avoid that. If planning is done properly, you do your follow through, you can look at all of the different options that you have. Does it? Proper estate planning, including a trust if need be, can avoid probate having. If you don't have enough assets to avoid probate, will it still makes everything a lot more simple.

What about, what about when you actually go through the probate or, excuse me, you go through the process of a probate versus having an estate plan. Is there a difference in, hey, who knows what's going on?

Absolutely. That's one of the key things. That's one of the key things that Pantaya talks about. And one thing that she really dislikes about the whole process is the probate process is completely public. So when you do some simple estate planning, putting together a trust and the supporting documents, you can avoid that public nature. It also can speed things along. It can go as fast as you want it to go or as slow as you want it to go. But in California, the probate process can take 12 to 18 months and that's for a simple probate.

Well, let's just think about, you know, when you say 12 to 18 months, I mean, we're talking about, hey, we might be in this shelter, isolation thing for 45 days. And for some people, Katrina is driving them crazy, quite honestly. Imagine if you were that family that all of a sudden your loved one who passed away doesn't have an estate plan and you have to wait 12 to 18 months to carry on your life.

So what's the first step they should take?

And unfortunately, those numbers could be even longer as of right now, just because nothing is operating at full capacity. We have a lot of things in place. You know, the stay at home order, things are not moving as quickly as they normally would. The first step would obviously be, is to give us a call. We'll talk to you about the Basic information that you need to know. Gather some basic information from you to see if we can determine our. And then we'll determine our next best steps. Whether. But with us, we start with a family wealth planning session, which is a two hour session that you have one on one with Panteo where she guides you through that process of exactly what would happen to you right here, right now, if something were to happen, if you were no longer here.

Andrew, you had a question.

I was putting my hand up to say, is anyone going mad right now? And that would be me. But my question about the just about the business in general, as I was touching on the start of the show was what are you guys doing differently now as far as business operations go? Like how much has this changed what you do as opposed to what you were doing, say four weeks ago?

Thank you for mentioning that. We actually have been spending a lot of time setting up and perfecting our virtual office so we are able to serve our clients and our community in the exact same way that we did and that we did when people were coming into our office. So we'll do a simple thing like this. We set up a zoom meeting. We go through that family wealth planning session. The only thing we can't do is be a hug at the end.

I know lots of businesses in this very short time that it's been, which is we're talking only a couple of weeks, have already either made a decision or realized the potential of, hey, this is something that we could use going forward. We may not need to have the office space that we need anymore. We may not need to have the travel expenses that we have anymore. Because this virtual thing could be something that could potentially change the way we do business. Is that something you think you could do down the track or is it just still too early to know sort of thing right now?

Absolutely. Thanks for mentioning that. That is one thing that we actually were already in the process of doing with Safar virtual office to be able to seamlessly do appointments in office or virtually whatever the client chose. So we can serve any client in the state of California because that's where Pantaya license to practice. And we can offer the exact same guidance and counseling that she here in office. She can do over a zoom or gotomeeting.

Yeah, I just find it fascinating how all of a sudden local businesses now can be a lot bigger or expand their reach to a lot more people all of a sudden because this is breaking down their travel border travel barriers and now it opens up potential to do business as you said all over California, which is a lot bigger than where we are right now. And I think it's just exciting about what the future holds for people to reach out and get reach as far as what we're doing right now, I find it exciting. That's a possibility for a lot of businesses now. They can focus a lot more on not just being so local anymore. They can even expand to a lot more greater distances.

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, if looking at your plan or your life plan, your estate plan is something that you've been considering, now is actually a really good time with all of this uncertainty. Pante and I are firm believers that education is power. And through that family wealth planning session, we give a lot of education to, to individuals and to their families about what could happen and looking at those steps that can prepare for the best.

Outcome.

Excellent.

Jeff, I was going to say Katrina, on the page that everybody's seeing has your website, palmdesertlaw.com what's the one thing that before we let you go today? And first of all, thank you so much for coming, coming on and sharing your wisdom and all this. What's the one thing that you think, hey, I want to make sure people know this when it comes to estate planning and making sure they're taking care of, quite frankly, you know, their loved ones, their family, whatever it may be their business. As a matter of fact. What would you want them to know?

Absolutely. That's a great question. I think the biggest thing that I strive people know that.

Planning it is one of those things that you really do just need to take a little bit of time and make a few decisions with guidance from a professional like Pantaya and just get it done. It we really do offer a simple, easy approach to it and we can almost have fun with it. But the big thing is just that is the biggest way that you can show your loved ones that you do care and that you did care about them by taking care of a little bit of planning and letting them know how you would like things to be and ensure that they don't have to have an extra burden on their shoulders in the event that you're no longer there.

I love it. Well, I know that you said early on if somebody didn't have an estate plan and they had to go through probate, they're looking at about a 5% cost. And just here in the state of California, you know, if you have a home, you're probably between 3, 300,000 and 500,000 or more. Let's just say 500,000 here in the desert, you're looking at $25,000 in fees that go to that. Is that how much you guys charge to set up an estate plan? About 25 grand?

No, like I mentioned before, what we charge is a fraction of it. But more importantly, it's a peace of mind. If a little bit of planning in advance can save all whole lot of money, number one, and a whole lot of heartache when you're no longer able to be able to make sense for yourself or when you're no longer here.

Even if you planning early on. It's one of those things that you also have to remember. It's not like a crock pot. It's not a set it and forget it. We include a plan of your review. If anybody does planning with us, we include a review of that plan every three years. Not just once, but every three years. Pantaya really strives to be a lawyer for life and being that counselor that anybody can come to whenever they have questions, whether it has to do with estate plan or with business, making sure that you have a business succession in place. Pantaya looks at all of that when it comes to that family wealth planning session to ensure that you have the most comprehensive and personalized plan that's actually going to work for you when you need it.

I love it. Hey, I just have one thought here is, you know, a lot of times and I'm, I'm guilty of this is like if Pantea or you called me and said, hey Jeff, it's time to come in and, you know, do this, I'd say, oh, you know, I'm so busy right now, Katrina, could we do it another time? You're at home, you're on your couch, you got time. They have a virtual way to get this all done. What are your hours and what's the emergency hotline number they can call you at?

Absolutely. Like I said earlier, now is the perfect time to take a little bit of time to take care of these things. We are in the office from 8:30 to 4, Monday through Friday. We our telephone number is 760-674-7175. We also have online scheduling on our website, www.palmdesertlaw.com. and that's the easiest way to get in touch with us that online appointment. But I am always there answering the phone Monday through Friday.

That's awesome. Any questions? Andrew, Anything else?

No, I just want to thank you, Katrina, for jumping on the show. And I know Pantelia has been jumping on the live she's been checking up on you, just keeping an eye on you. So hello Pentaner, hello to you for jumping on as well. But thank you very much for jumping on. And as we said, palmdesertlaw.com is the website to go and check it out. They got great information down there. I think you guys are doing a webinar too, right? You do a couple of webinars that are live either coming up or just done some, is that correct?

Actually, yes, definitely it's both. We Pantea's mentor, Ali Kat, just did a personal resource webinar last week. If you want any information on taking those first steps of getting some planning in place, we'd love to shoot you information about that. But most importantly, we are doing our first webinar on Wednesday, April 8 at 10am and 3pm you can find more information about that on our website or you can email us and we're happy to send you the link to get you registered for that as well. And that one will be about. About estate planning.

What's that, what's the cost of that webinar? How much does it cost to join that webinar?

The best part is absolutely free and tend in your pajamas from your sofa.

Love it.

You were going to say there was a, there was another, there was another event that you have coming up besides that one.

The webinar is on Wednesday, April 8th at 10am and 3pm that is free of charge and we hope to be doing these regularly. They are free for our community and just looking at another way to give back and to serve our community, educate about estate planning and do anything that we can to help our community stay strong.

I love it. I love it. Well, Katrina, thank you so much for taking time out of the day and Pantea, thanks for letting her join us today and really fill us in again. Community, we're here. Our goal is to say, hey, let's educate you on this. Now's a good time to take advantage of some of the services. You've got some downtime. If you have a family, you have a business, you're just starting out on life, it's the best time to start planning and make sure you take care of it because the last thing you want to do is work your whole life. Something tragic happened and it wipes out everything you've worked on. Get a hold of Palm Desert Law Group. They're in Palm Desert just off the corner of Monterey and Fred Waring in that beautiful building on this. On what the north west side of the street and check them out and support our local businesses. Katrina, thank you so very much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Thanks so much, gentlemen, for having me on.

All right, thanks, Katrina. Thank you. Bye.

All right, well, that's a pretty good start there, Andrew. That was a great interview. Katrina just, I thought, gave us some great information. What do you think?

Absolutely, yes. And it's always good to get those first ones off out of the way. Katrina did a fabulous job. I know she was a little nervous at the start, so great job.

So.

Absolutely. Now, one thing, Jeff, I want to let people know is we're looking for guests. We'd love to have you as a guest on our show. And if you're watching us on Facebook, I'm going to put a link in there in just a moment where you can actually click on the link. You go to our live stream page, there's a button down the bottom underneath the video, and you can apply to be our guest. Now, we're not taking everybody at once because we want to make sure we've got the right people on the show, but you can certainly apply. We'll let you know pretty quick within about 24 hours whether you can come on the show. The 15 minute slots. We want to have people who have local businesses here in the Coachella Valley. We want to have people that have got some great things to share with the rest of the world. And that's what we're looking for. Jeff, anything else? We're looking for guests specifically.

You know, before we move to that, can you do me a favor? Just so it's not a surprise when they come on the show, could you, you tell them the investment? What. What's it cost to come on the show?

Andrew, I'm looking at a six figure wrong thing. No, I'm looking at zero. Zero.

Okay. So it's within their budget.

Most people budget. Yes.

And they probably have time now to come on the show.

Well, depends on what they're doing. If you're breaking the law, they may not have time.

That's true. Hey, while we're talking about that, you know, what kind of, what kind of person would make a good guest? Well, they have a business here in the Coachella Valley. They're serving the community. They feel like it could be a service, a product, something to let people know that you're out there still working through this and you're going to come out the other side stronger than when you went in. That's kind of our goal, is we're going to do everything we can to prepare ourselves when it started to say, when we come out of this, we're going to be stronger than we went in as a company like Andrew. Honestly, this whole coronavirus forced us to even take something. We did. We did about 1500 lives a year. But this actually forced us to do things at a very high rate of speed. So we're better on the way out. But if you're a local business said, geez, you know what? I'm strapped for cash. I can't put any money in advertising. I'd love to keep going. I'm trying to support my staff. We'd love to have you on here like Katrina with Pantella Group. That's a great story. Things that sometimes we don't know about. We think it. We think it costs tens of thousands of dollars to get that kind of advice. We'd love to have you on the show.

Yep, absolutely. Now, one thing I do want to say, Jeff, you just mentioned about all these lives that we've done. And, you know, people are coming on to this platform. Sometimes for the first time, they're, like, scared to do lives. We've got, I can tell, a bunch of clients in just this week that are all doing their very first live experience. Some are doing it for free. Some are doing it to educate people. Some are doing it to make money. They're charging for it. What I want you to know is these things will have challenges. Sometimes we have challenges. Do you think every one of our lives that we've done are perfect? No. This one here probably got some challenges. You might see some monkey movements and lifts like that that are not synced. You might see some dropouts and video and that sort of stuff. If we were to sit there and go, you know what? We're not going to do it because we're going to look silly because it's dropped out or my lips aren't moving or my head's too big. On this screen right now, we'd never get anywhere. I like to say version one is better than version none. Get out there, do it. People realize that these things happen. We see it all the time. People realize that you're moving ahead, and other people are still sitting on their couch in their pajamas doing nothing, feeling sorry for themselves. So be afraid of technology. This is part of what we want to do, is help people get over that fear of technology so that they can get out and share their message to their people right now. Because right now we want to hear positive messages. Okay? We're all probably sick of the news now. We stop Watching the news at 6 o' clock because the death toll hasn't gone down, it's still going north. Let's find some positive stuff and this is what we want to do.

Yeah, you know there's a saying, I think it was Paul Bunyan, he said the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And if you haven't planted a tree then today is the best time. And for us, I was guilty of this to say, hey, we wanted to start something like this a couple weeks ago but quite honestly our number one focus was to take care of our clients that needed the technology support. And you know, I think we have, I think we have three or four clients now that we're doing. We're doing a daily show for them that we weren't doing before, maybe three that we weren't doing before. And everybody has upped their game to help expose themselves during this time. Now what is that, what is that going to mean, Andrew? That means on the outs, when they come out, they're going to have a higher retention in the mind of those potential customers saying, oh like as an example, tell them a little bit about preferred services.

So preferred services are, you know, they're out there, they haven't done many videos previously. They did very ad style videos like 30 second, here's our stuff. Now they're doing a lot of content creation, they're answering questions, they're getting into the questions, the minds of their customers and they're answering those questions and what it's doing. And these are not live videos, these are, these are recorded videos. But they're answering their questions, they're answering those people's questions. So if we're sitting at home and let's face it, a lot of this, I know we're doing this looking go, well I need to fix that up or I need to go and get this sorted, maybe I can try and do it myself. Or why is this thing making that noise? Or why is this particular service doing this? We're looking at videos, we want to find the answer. If you can be that voice of education, that voice of why things are happening when people have got nothing else to do and they're going to remember, you know what, these guys answered my question. They were easy or quick to supply the information I'm looking for. I like what they've got, I'm going to use them, I'm going to give them a call to see if I can come out and fix my particular challenge that I've got. So what they're doing Right now is a whole bunch of education. They're not trying to sell anything. They're just trying to give you education about what's going on so that they are the first ones in front of your mind when you think of that problem when it appears. Because maybe you're not having that problem right now, but later down the track, you might have it.

I love it. Well, do me a favor and talk a little bit about, you know, what are the advantages? What are the, you know, let's talk from the. From the marketing mindset for a second. Is, is there a benefit, a significant benefit between somebody who says, hey, I'm going to put out a video. I'm going to, you know, put it together. I'm going to. I'm going to put. Put it on Facebook or YouTube over what we're doing right now, which is a live format. Is there any benefit to that or any difference?

Yeah, there's two ways to look at it. One is, obviously you do a video that's recorded. As Jeff said, that recorded video is good. It gives information. But here's the difference. With a live video right now, our live videos, when we do a live video, and traditionally you put out a live video, and the very first few times you do it, you may not get a lot of people watching. But as it starts to evolve, Facebook love it. They look, their algorithm is set to make sure that people are engaged on a live video. So when you do a live video and you get engagement, you're asking people to comment on the question. So if you've got questions right now, go and put a question. If you're watching us on YouTube, on Facebook, put a comment there. If you watch this on YouTube, put a comment there. Engagement is great. Facebook and all the platforms love engagement. So what they're trying to do is engage people. They want to see videos. Live videos like this that are engaging. You're getting people to watch the video, you're getting people to interact with you. When you can do that, what that does is it tells the algorithm for Facebook that this is a good video. Next time these guys go live will start to get some traction. Now, traditionally, what we'll do is we'll put some money behind our live video. So we'll go and spend some money, find the right target market, get that engagement up, and once we start to get that snowball rolling, we don't have to put too much money behind it. So what we like to do is once we've recorded these videos, we'll save it, and then we can use it to put on YouTube or we can use it to put it on our website and that way we've got the best of both worlds. We have a, a brand new live video that we can use live and then we have one that's recorded and we can use that as well. We can put on our website, we put on Twitter and all the social platforms, LinkedIn, you name it, we can put them out there, we can cut it up into little bits and put on Instagram, we're going to put on TikTok, if that's something you want to get into. So there's lots of opportunities for us to reuse and repurpose the content that we have when we're doing live videos. So that's why we like to do lives because it sort of kills two birds in one stone. Gives us multiple reasons to repurpose the content that we've got.

Hey, Andrew, I just want to give you a little update here. I stepped off camera for just a second because we were expecting our next guest to come in. We've had a couple of guests not be able to make it. But the good news is one of our customers or one of our guests, Jason Weir from last year, Lux electric car, he said, hey Jeff, I said I'd love to be there, but I have a client that just walked in that is actually purchasing a golf cart. So as we say, just the thought of us having him online will get him a sale. So, Jason, thank you so much. I just wanted. Let's take just a couple minutes and talk about Lux electric car. Andrew.

Well, Jeff, Lux electric car here in the valley, they've been around for very good, quite a, quite a number of years now. There's a. As if you're watching out of state or out of, out of the valley, you know that we're a very big golf community. I think we have 126 golf courses here in the valley, which means lots of people live on these courses. Golf carts. This is a Palm Desert is a designated golf cart city, which means we can drive golf carts on the road. I know I do. I do it all the time because I, I have one. But you can drive golf carts on the road. It's funny when I have friends who come out of town, and I'm digressing here, but when I have friends that come out of town, one of the highlights is just going for a ride the golf cart down the street. Strange things for some people, but it is. So anyway, golf carts. There's lots of golf carts. Lux Electric golf carts are, I think, the, the standard or the gold standard, if you like, of what, what golf cart luxury is all about. These guys here manufacture their golf carts right here in the valley. They create some amazing, amazing looking golf carts, some amazing functionality, some really upmarket class about it. If you're looking, if you've ever seen golf carts that look like a Rolls Royce or a Range Rover, that's what these guys do. They create some amazing golf carts. Not only do they create good looking stuff, but their quality of service and their craftsmanship that makes this golf cart last is amazing. And then they tend, then they service these golf carts on a regular basis to make sure that that cart is working its maximum output for you. So, Jeff, you've been in their showroom many, many times. What's something in the showroom that stands out to you when you go in there?

You know, one of the biggest things, Andrew, for the golf cart industry. Now, many of you maybe not know this, but I spent the first, probably 35 years of my career in the golf business. So I'm very, I love the golf business. Okay. And so going in there, the first thing that jumped out at me is the fact that there's a new power system for the golf carts. Now what I mean by that, typically a golf cart is driven by lead acid batteries. And just recently they've made a big move in the new power plant. And I remember Jason saying, the last 35 years, this is like the big biggest thing and it's lithium batteries. Now we say, okay, what's the big deal about lithium? Well, first thing is it's about 350 pounds lighter. So what it means, it means your golf cart has more, it gets to the top end speed a little faster. It's also a little bit less wear and tear on the tires. The other piece is it's very low maintenance. In fact, there's no maintenance. Now here's the thing with us being in the desert, Andrew, and so many people are leaving for the summer. They come back, well, that golf cart sets in that garage and it gets, you know, gets 120 outside. Imagine how hot it is inside that garage. They come back in, you know, October, open up the garage and there's acid all over the ground. Well, that's never going to happen again with this lithium battery. And they just recently did this promotion. And the thing was, let's say you buy a card and I'm just going to use the number $15,000. Well, not only could you get that card for $15,000, but they were also allowing you to Upgrade, which is a 30, I think it's a $3,000 or $3,200 upgrade to the lithium battery. No charge. No charge. I mean it's like, why wouldn't you do that? Now here's the other cool thing about that. Lead acid batteries have a one year warranty on them. The lithium batteries, I think they're either three or five years. Jason, if you're listening or you hear this later, correct me, but it's three or five years with an expected life of those batteries between 10 and 15 years. And as Jason has said on camera, he said for some of my customers, that's the last battery they're going to ever have to buy. So that's the biggest thing, Andrew is just making it easier to maintain your carts and, and it's just, it's great. I mean, obviously I'm excited because I'm a golfer and you have a golf cart. It's time for you to upgrade to a lithium battery.

Yeah, really is. And the showroom, Jeff, is on 111 Highway 111 just off the corner of El Paseo. When it comes around.

To the meet 111 on the Eastern end of El Paseo, just type in there. It's got, as I said, go and check it out. It's got some amazing, amazing looking golf carts. And by the way, they custom make stuff too. If you've got a specific color that you want, if you like a specific, specific floral ranging color or whatever, they'll match that color so it fits your outfit, your favorite golf outfit, or match your garage or whatever it is that you want to do. They'll make that work. So go and check out, go and say hello to Jason down there at Lux. They're still open, they're still operating. They, as I said, they're making sales right now. So if you've got the idea to get a golf card, now is a great time to do that. By the way, Jeff, we have many people here who have, have second homes. They come down for the winter, which is our busy time. They go home in the summer, which is fine. Now some of them may be locked out for a while. They may be back in Canada or they may be up and back home where they've got to be for this stay at home warning. The golf cart will sit there and it could sit there for a couple of months. And some of the challenges you have with a golf cart that sits there are things like the water running out of your battery or bald spots or Hot spots on your tires from the golf cart sitting there, not moving. Lux, offer a service to go to your place.

Get the golf cart, take it for a bit of a drive, go through and fill up the water and the batteries, do a quick service on it. Very, very affordable monthly price to go and do that so that when you come back to your home for this, for the season, it's not going to be one of those things where you started and suddenly you sit there and you can't move. So they do a very good service. Maintenance service, maintenance program. Is there anything else you want to add to that maintenance program or have I got all of that?

Yeah, here's the thing. And even right now, they're taking extra precaution where it's a no touch service, where they come out in there with a flatbed. Let's say, for instance, you want to have some work done in your car right now. Maybe you even want to change out. And this is another cool thing, Andrew, I forgot to mention. Let's say you have a golf cart right now, a lead acid battery, it may qualify where you can upgrade those to a lithium battery. It depends. I mean, you want to call Jason at Lux Electric Car, but it's a no touch. So they'll come out, they'll get your cart, they'll load it on the, on the trailer, they'll take it back to the manufacturing plant there in, in Palm Desert, do all the service, take it back, deliver it for you, you know, close the garage door and leave. You never have to touch them, never get near them. But they'll get that work done now. So they're still, they're still working on that. And now is, you know, now is a great time to do things like that. That's the stuff that you say, well, I'll get that done tomorrow because I have an 8am tee time today. And then when you get done, you want to play an emergency night. All those things that are true as a golfer and it just tends to go on and on and on. And our wives say, hey, how come that thing is still rattling? Ah, that's it. Get it done now. Call Jason at Lux.

Yep, exactly.

All right, well, Andrew, any last thoughts? I don't want to drag this on. The goal is to help local businesses get more exposure, have the locals tune in. And we're not talking about the coronavirus or anything like that. We're talking about what's happening here in the local economy here in the Coachella Valley and anything else that we missed that we want to Chat up a little bit before we, before we sign off today?

No, if you just joined us or you just just jumped on now, we'd love to take guests. We've got applications for guests, so we put a link in the comments on the Facebook live page there. Swingpointmedia.com the Local Voice live is where you can go and access an application or book in a time. We'll approve that within 24 hours. We'd love to hear about you. What are you doing as a local business? What's changed? What would you like to, what message would you like to get out to people totally free. This is not costing you anything to do. We are doing all of the heavy lifting for it. So we'd love to have you as a guest on our show.

You bet. Hey, you know, I'm about ready to, when we sign off, I'm going to play a little video and I want to say thank you to one of our newest people on staff here in the desert. We threw this together again in what, about half an hour? Andrew. Yeah, yeah. So if you like something like this, if you're saying, geez, I'd like to have one of those for our videos, this is what we do. This. We're full, full digital marketing company. We're not the type of people to say, hey, we'll just put up, and this is no offense to anybody, we're not going to put a billboard out there on the freeway. Our goal is whenever we do something, we want to track it and make sure you get a return on your investment. So if you put a dollar in, we want to say, hey, you got two or three or four dollars back, whatever that is. And so if you, if you need that kind of help, let us know. It's at Swingpoint Media. You see, it's produced by Swingpoint Media. We call this the Local Voice. We have a podcast of the same name. So we'd love for you to reach out to us if we can help you at all in the meantime. Hey, Andrew, thanks for taking this plunge. I know we are incredibly busy and you would rather be finishing up websites or communication links we're building. But I think this is important for us to give back to our community.

Absolutely. I'm looking forward to next week. So next Friday, 1:30 to 2:30. Every Friday, 1:30 to 2.30pm Pacific. Come along, join us. If you've got recommendations for guests, we'd love to hear about those too. So anybody doesn't have to be a client of ours. We'd love to have anybody that's got a local business here in the Coachella Valley. Let's do it.

All right, everybody be safe out there. Make sure you wear those face masks when you're out in the business. Out. I guess they're saying that now. Wash those hands, baby. Wash those hands. And we'll see you on the other side. I'm Jeff Harrison. Thanks for joining us.

I'm Andrew McColle.

Bye.

Bye.

All right.

Yep.

Okay, good. What do you think?

Good. I'm still here.

Hold on, hold on.

We're still here, baby. We haven't gone yet.