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Feeling overwhelmed by your family's daily grind and looking for a way out? Welcome to "Dig the Well," the podcast that empowers you to build the life you deserve. Your hosts Vikki and John are top earners at Neora. Vikki is a # 1 best-selling author and John is a retired Los Angeles Police Officer. Together they’ve navigated family challenges, raised successful kids, and achieved financial freedom.
In each episode of "Dig the Well," they dive deep into the strategies and mindsets that can help you break free from the constraints of the traditional 9-5 lifestyle. They understand the unique challenges faced by stay-at-home moms and families who are juggling multiple responsibilities and struggling to find balance. Their mission is to provide you with the tools and inspiration you need to create additional income, gain more family time, and ultimately, transform your life.
Throughout their journey, they’ve had the privilege of working with renowned figures like Jack Canfield and Jeff Olson, whose wisdom and insights have greatly influenced their path to success. They’ve also celebrated significant milestones, such as raising two valedictorian children and supporting their son, an Olympic weightlifter on Team USA. These experiences have equipped them with valuable knowledge and practical tips that they’re eager to share with you.
"Dig the Well" is more than just a podcast; it's a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to personal growth and financial independence. Whether you're worried about your family's financial security, longing for more quality time with your spouse, or simply seeking a way to reignite your passions, this podcast offers actionable insights and real-life stories that can help you achieve your goals.
Our mission is to inspire you with the belief that if we can do it, so can you. We want you to feel empowered, educated, and ready to take control of your future. By tuning in to "Dig the Well," you'll gain the confidence and knowledge needed to break free from the daily grind and create a life full of possibilities.
So, if you're ready to transform your family's future and discover the greatness within you, join us on this journey. Subscribe to "Dig the Well" and start building the life you deserve today!
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John:Ever wondered how you could turn your side hustle into a full time gig and spend more time together?
Vikkie:Hi. I'm Vikkie, a number one best selling author.
John:And I'm John, a retired Los Angeles police officer. Welcome to Dig the Well, where we help couples navigate the world of business.
Vikkie:We've been married for thirty five years, and because we built a successful side business, John retired nine years earlier than he originally planned from the Los Angeles Police Department after twenty five years on the job. Now we spend more time together, and we want to help couples like you do the same.
John:Join us as we help you overcome common obstacles, and we show you how to make extra income without sacrificing family time.
Vikkie:Ready to dig deep and build your well? Let's get started. Hello. Hello. Hello.
Vikkie:Welcome back.
John:Yes. Welcome.
Vikkie:Welcome. Welcome. This is going to be an interesting episode. We are going to open your eyes to something, and we really want you to have an open mind on this and just really take it in, take it in and make critical decisions yourself.
John:Yeah, for sure. So I think the big question is, how do you know when someone's lying to you? And you got to figure it happens all the time, right? Whether it's a person, it's a company, it's what you're watching. How do you know that it's the truth?
John:And does it matter?
Vikkie:Yeah. Yeah. Heck yeah. It matters to me. I think it matters to everybody.
Vikkie:Nobody wants to be lied to. Nobody wants, mistruths out there, especially when they involve you or something you're a business maybe you're looking into, you wanna get the facts. Yeah.
John:Yeah. If you're gonna make a you figure you can't make a good decision or based on, bunch of mistruths, bunch of opinions, and certainly not lies, right? You want the truth. You want you want to be make your own decision and make the best decision you can.
Vikkie:Yeah. So this is going to be a serious episode. And I think you're going to be enlightened. You might even be a little shocked. You may be in some disbelief, but what we're going to share is personal testimony on what John has experienced as a police officer in the city of Los Angeles, and the media surrounding that.
John:Yeah. So go if you back it up, I guess, going back to, you know, like long before we were married, when I was just a kid, I used to watch the news. Right? My whole family used to watch the news on TV. Excuse me.
John:And it was, a lot of it was just network, news, but it was like the national, like ABC, NBC, CBS, their national broadcast.
Vikkie:Right.
John:And they had actual journalists, I think, back then. Right? Back in the sixties and the seventies and Impartial. Yeah. And I think the people that were on the the personalities that were on TV, the Walter Cronkites, you know, those guys, they, I think, were actual professional journalism journalists, that really took pride in what they did.
John:And I think there was it was, almost like a profession, not an occupation, right? I think that they, they felt, that their job was to tell the truth. Just tell it like it is. Good, bad, ugly, didn't really matter. But we're just going to report the truth and let everyone that's watching make their own decision and come up with their own opinions.
Vikkie:Right. Somehow that changed. Yeah, absolutely. It has.
John:Right. And I'm not sure when. And I know why I can kind of figure it out. Right? There's a lot of money in it.
John:So I think that all of a sudden now you don't have journalists, you have newsreaders, Like the personalities you see on television. I hope you realize that they don't write any of that copy that they're speaking. They don't write any of that. It's just a script that's been written for them by others. And they're just reading a teleprompter.
John:And in fact, oh, go ahead.
Vikkie:I was gonna say, I think a lot of people don't know that. I really do. I've talked to so many people. Think when you say newsreader every time, oh, the newsreader, I laugh because it's true. Yeah.
Vikkie:So I just wanted to point that out. I think a lot of you listening are probably like what they don't. I thought that was their own words. Yeah.
John:They truly are just reading. Yeah. Then they're just reading what what they're told is the news. So I don't know if some of those personalities that are on camera even know that they're lying to the public. I think a lot of what's written for them, they think that must be the truth.
John:And, of course, if you're on the other end of that watching the television, you're seeing it and hearing it, and you're probably just taking it for what you think is the Believe me. Yeah. When in fact, oftentimes it isn't, and it's nowhere near the truth. And we're not trying to get political. Right?
Vikkie:Yeah. No politics.
John:Yeah. We're not jumping on that bandwagon saying, oh, it's all it's all what what do they call it? Fake news. Fake news. Right?
John:But in reality, it is. And I know that firsthand. I saw it firsthand. So going back, like I said, when we were when I was young, we used to watch the news. And even when I became a young adult, I watched the news.
John:It wasn't until I started working for the Los Angeles Police Department and was at scene, where the news was there. And I would, I would be excited because I would seem like I was on TV. So, there were, there were times, many times I would call, Vicky Me? And say, hey, watch, whether it's ABC, NBC, CBS, channel eleven, channel nine. Because they were all there.
John:And this is during the time I was working Hollywood division. And you got to realize, even though there was probably more newsworthy events happening in South Los Angeles, it wasn't it wasn't newsworthy, I guess. Right. And I for the news stations, I always thought it was. There was a lot going on down there.
John:But, we didn't see the news that you see a lot of stringers.
Vikkie:News loves Hollywood.
John:Yeah, you see a lot of stringers and you see them out in Hollywood too. But you see the actual news vans of these stations in Hollywood. They're right there. A lot of them are stored there. Their stations are there.
John:So they can arrive at scene, quickly. And so we always had if it was a big event, we would always have to set up an area for them to park these big vans because they would it would have to be clear of, overhead, power lines, because they would always send up that big mast with their antenna so they could get a satellite link and broadcast live from the scene. So it was it was a pain, to be honest with you. It was a real pain. So we would set all this up and then they would come in and ask, hey, what happened?
John:Can someone give me a statement? And I, you know, nobody wants to do that. But oftentimes I had to, right, because somebody had to give them a statement to kind of get them off our backs. So we'd give them the statement, we tell them what happened and how it happened and what has led up to where we stand now. Then they'd run their live feed.
John:Hey, it's so and so live from Hollywood, California. And behind me is the scene of this. And he'd start to explain what what it was. And it was a very same knucklehead I just spoke to, just spoke to him and told him what happened, told a completely different story, sensationalize the crap out of it, made it sound like it was way more than it was. And even and like I told I would tell you, what would I tell you?
Vikkie:Yeah. Yeah. And so this goes way back. So this is nineties guys. There wasn't texting, you know, and you would call me and you'd tell me to watch just like John said, played out exactly like John said.
Vikkie:And I'd put the station on and then I would repeat back. I go, oh, wow. I see. Okay. I see you.
Vikkie:I might even see you in the background. You know? But I'd say, oh, he just said this, you know, a perpetrator or whatever, whatever, what did they LA is weird. Yeah. They don't use perpetrator, but he would say suspect, did this, that, and the other thing.
Vikkie:And I would say, you know, cause it's been so many years now, but I would say that to John, they just said, you know, I thought it was an armed robbery or something. And he said it was something completely different. And he, and John would go, oh my gosh, that is not, I just spoke to him. That is not what is happening.
John:Right? Even close. It happened over and over and over again. There were times when I would be in a pursuit and I would call Vic and say, hey, I'm in a pursuit. Because they always broadcast those live.
John:Right? And that was such a big deal. They'd follow those things for hours.
Vikkie:It still isn't. It happens. It's crazy.
John:Remember they used to have an app that was, a pursuit app that if a pursuit happened, it would send you a notification on your phone and then you could watch it, watch it live. People are getting they're so
Vikkie:Well, it's the negativity. Like we said on a previous episode that people want to see negative things. It's just human nature. It's really sad instead of positive. I think
John:that they're looking for it. I'm not judging. Right? Because I watch NASCAR and half the time I watch it, see some of those hellacious crashes as long as everybody's okay, which it seems like that's the way it is in NASCAR. No, hardly anyone gets injured.
John:Those those things are so safe and they can take some crazy crashes. But I think a lot of people watch pursuits because oftentimes they end in some sort of hellacious crash. Problem is usually some innocent person gets hurt on that. Yeah. So but anyway, that's a whole different whole different deal.
John:So I'd in this pursuit and I'd tell Vic, hey, I'm in I'm in this pursuit. I'm in shop, you know, eight sixteen. And so the shop number is the three numbers that are on the roof of the car. The two numbers on the deck lid of the car indicate the division that that this is for Los Angeles Police Department. It indicates the division.
John:And then on the roof of the car, there's always three numbers. On the white roof, there's three black numbers. And so I would tell her the shop number because you could easily see that from any aerial feed, during the news. Right. So we're watching this thing or she's watching, she could record it for me.
John:And I would get home to see the recording. Well, yep, there we are. That's cool. And I'm listening to them broadcast what led up to the pursuit, and it's not anything close to what happened. We may have been pursuing it because we knew that maybe been like a proly at large, or we had some other information.
John:They're saying that this guy pistol whipped somebody, pointed a gun, carjacked their car. And they get, no, none of that happened. Not any
Vikkie:of it happened. I want you to really pause for a second and think about this. Like, why are you believing everything you see on the news? Because prime exam and this happened over and over and over.
John:You know, I've I've heard things say that, I've heard people say that, they would have, they like me believed in the news until something happened to them personally, where they said thought, just like with me, right? I guess I'm the perfect example of that, that I actually believed the news until I saw that it was an absolute falsehood. That just was with And I saw it time and time again. So I'm thinking if that's the case with just me, then it wasn't one news station, it was all of them. Right?
John:And I thought, what about the rest of what I'm watching? And I think a lot of other people feel the same way because I've heard it. I've heard people say that I used to believe in the news. I used to watch it until something happened personally where I knew that they were lying. For most people, that's probably not the case.
John:Right?
Vikkie:Yeah. That's why we wanna educate you on this because most of you are never gonna be on the news. You're not gonna have firsthand, acknowledgment of, you know, what really happened and what they're reporting. And so we want you to have a critical common sense mind on that. And and one of the reasons is, my father is the prime example.
Vikkie:You know, born in the thirties, grew up in the forties, fifties, and trusted the news. And I kid you not, he, until he passed away in '22, still could not shake that mindset that no, they can't be lying to us. They they they can't. They're just getting wrong information maybe one time. No.
Vikkie:We would say, dad, John knows it's happened time and time ago. Well, I just don't want to believe it. He would tell us it's heartbreaking, but until it happens, yeah, you just don't get it. And Joe Rogan, another example, I was listening to his podcast the other day, and he talked about that, how he believed in the news % until or media, whatever you wanna call it, until he was totally misrepresented. They shared things that were absolutely falsehoods.
Vikkie:And he's like, okay, now I get it. Now I get that this is this is all fake. It's all false.
John:I think the vast majority of people are never in a position where they have anything happen to them personally that's going to be on the news. Right. So where they can actually see that for themselves and see what wow, that was just a straight up lie. Right. Exactly.
John:Well, who do you believe? Are is Vicki and I are Vicki and I lying to you about this? Or is are all those stories that I just told you about that actually happened to me? Are they the truth? Or am I making it up?
John:You don't know. Yeah. Unless you were there. I guess You know. If any of my partners are watching this, and you were there with me, you know that happened.
John:Yeah. Because you're part of it too.
Vikkie:Write something in the comments. We'd love to hear from you.
John:But you really don't know. So I mean, that brings up a a really kind of a dilemma. Like, do you know what source I guess there are certain trusted sources that you may have. And then you want to stick with those.
Vikkie:Yeah, exactly. So let's let's transition to business. You know, maybe you're investigating, looking into starting a business, a second one, a third business, whatever it is, or your first business. And you Google, you Google about that business. I caution you on that.
John:Oh, boy.
Vikkie:Oh my goodness. Is there ever false information on Google or wherever you're trying to to get your information from? And most people just Google. You know, we've had
John:docs research. Right?
Vikkie:Yeah. And they call it well, let me do my research. I'm sorry, but a Google search is not research.
John:It's a search.
Vikkie:It's a search. Exactly. And you're gonna get fake false information. You're gonna get lies and there will be some truths and it's really difficult to decipher.
John:Yeah. It really is. It's difficult. Yeah. And you figure the first thing that pops up in a Google search is just happens to have the algorithms that put it at the top of the list.
Vikkie:Exactly. Yeah.
John:I, you know, probably it's probably gonna be more like what what I was describing with the news is that it's just, it's something that's really sensational.
Vikkie:Right.
John:So it's almost like clickbait. So people click on it and share it with other people because it's just so sensational. And most of the things that I find that are outrageously sensational are not the truth.
Vikkie:Right. Exactly.
John:Because like, it's like with the police work, you see these, these shows on TV all the time about police work, right? They're all like they say the the most common, drama on TV are shows about police or shows about the medical industry, doctors, nurses, that sort of And it with the police, the number one is the Los Angeles Police Department. They're always LAPD is always a big focus of, of, these dramas. NYPD is another one too. It's a very well known police department and they'll have to cover that.
John:But for whatever reason, LAPD is covered all the time. And it's like, they run so much crazy stuff on that. You think, wow, being a policeman has gotta be just so exciting. You know, you go from pursuit to pursuit, to shooting, to this, no, you actually don't. It's long periods of complete boredom, you know, interrupted by short bursts of excitement.
John:Right. It really is
Vikkie:for And a lot of domestic violence that are very dangerous for you. That scared me the most.
John:Just a lot of and it's if you work patrol, and for those of you that work patrol, God bless you, because it's tough.
Vikkie:You did for how many years? Twenty years?
John:No. Didn't. Worked specialized units mostly. I rarely work.
Vikkie:Oh, that's what you mean. Okay.
John:I'm talking about I'm talking about the men and women who are out there every day and especially every night when I always thought police work was meant to be done at night. Right? I love working nights. But they're answering call after call in Los Angeles, I'd say. Right?
John:I don't know about other cities. I do know the call load at other cities. Some are high. Most of them are are a lot lower. So they do they they're not worked quite so hard.
John:But I mean, in Los Angeles, they're worked like mules. It's call after call after call. They're always behind rushing from call to call. And like I said, 90 99, 90 eight percent of those are boring. Not that they're not dangerous, but they're just really boring because it's almost the same thing over and over and over again.
John:And so when you see something that's really sensational on TV, you think, wow, that's a great that's great, but it's not true. So I think that's the same with a lot of these Google searches. They go to the top of the search engine or they go to the top of the algorithm. So they're the first stories, but they're probably not true.
Vikkie:Right. And what you've also taught me is you never like, John will search for something and the top is ads. So guys don't click on those top ones either because they're just, they're paying to be pushed up there.
John:Yeah.
Vikkie:They're ads. So you always talk. Sponsored. You've always taught me scroll down to get into the real articles and somewhat of the truths.
John:Just like when we buy from Amazon, we try to avoid I try to avoid it as much as possible because I know a lot of what's on Amazon are counterfeit from from China. We talked about this before in another episode. But there are times when it's like, it's just so darn convenient and we'll just order from Amazon. But the one thing I do when I do a search and all the, all the products pop up, I skip past anything that's sponsored. I'm not even going to click on a sponsored item because they're just paying to, like Vic said, they're just paying to get themselves put up there first.
John:I look at, being past the I look at first ones, and I look at several of them, but it's after the sponsored ones.
Vikkie:Right. And if you and we're not conspiracy theorists at all. But here's another thing. We found out that we didn't know, things from the government are put at the top of Google also. And that's not always factual either.
Vikkie:Some of the things that are put there. Anyway, we'll just leave that where it is.
John:Yeah. Right.
Vikkie:But yeah, so be very careful. Do not believe everything you read. Is, you know, the discerning, entrepreneur consumer is very rare. Very, very rare. Most people believe everything they see if it's well, I searched and there was, you know, and it's not the truth.
Vikkie:So if something maybe you're researching a company. I just want to give you this. And something doesn't sound quite right. Whatever came up, reach out to that company and get their get their information, get their take on it. Right?
Vikkie:Let them share their side, if you will. Does that make kind of sense?
John:Yeah. And if and if they are in in the right, let's say, or whatever position they take, If you're talking to someone from that company, or someone who's involved in that company, and if they're whatever it is, their position, they should be able to back it up with some facts. Right. They should be able to provide you with something that says, here, this is what this is our stand. This is what we're being told, we did or we didn't do or whatever it is.
John:And you can see here. Right. And then you can look at it yourself. And once you get that those facts, you can you can analyze the facts and figure it out on your own. Because if you're doing it like what you were at mentioning, or your example was looking at it, looking into a business, that's important.
John:Right? Right. You just don't want to say, I'll just go with it anyhow. You probably want to do some research, but you want to get the get good information, and it's gonna take some it's gonna take some time. Digging.
John:Yeah. It's gonna
Vikkie:take some investigative work. Yeah. Yeah. I've been shocked. Yeah.
Vikkie:Exactly. And I've I've I've, you know, gotten that first knee jerk reaction when I've Googled something and thought, you know, even when I'm buying something and you look on Yelp and whatnot, we can even talk about reviews.
John:Oh, yeah.
Vikkie:There's negative reviews on everything. Right? Not a % of the people love the product or the restaurant or whatever it is. So you've been really good at teaching me that too, that there's always gonna be some negative reviews. And sometimes it's good to read those and think, well, I can see right through this.
Vikkie:This guy was just trying to get a free meal by complaining. Right. Or, you know, you use your common sense and it's amazing how much people don't use common sense, right? Looking at hotel rooms. Like we've done that a lot when we travel And John will say, well, it got a couple bad reviews.
Vikkie:They dinged it on cleanliness or, you know, bugs in the room if it was a tropical location or something. But he's like, there's gonna be bugs in that country. Like, why aren't these people getting that? I'm sure the hotel's doing the best they can. Right?
Vikkie:You kind of read, into that. And I don't think people are doing that and thinking critically and common sense wise about a lot of things. Right? Yeah. So hopefully that's a tip as well that not 100% of the people are not going to like whatever the business is.
Vikkie:So you got to keep doing your research.
John:Yeah. And you have to remember too, that if it's, if you're looking at a business, there's going to be people who didn't succeed at it. Probably most people will not succeed at whatever they choose. And it has to do with it probably has to do with them more than anything.
Vikkie:Right.
John:Right. Because I do think that most business opportunities that are available out there, I think almost anyone can be successful with almost any of them. It just requires, commitment and work.
Vikkie:Consistency with just commitment.
John:Yeah. And I think And work. I just think there's just more people are just not willing to put in that kind of work, to do it.
Vikkie:Right. That's absolutely true. Absolutely true. Yeah. It's because they didn't work it.
Vikkie:Yeah. You know, like we said, we coach a lot of people and they'll say, well, I tried this. Well, first of all, they use the word try. And you guys heard our episode on that. That's in the luck episode.
Vikkie:If you haven't heard that, stop saying the word try, because if you're just gonna try something, of course you're gonna fail. No, you're gonna do whatever it is. So anyway, when someone says I've tried this and I, I, I was terrible at it, or it was, you know, I lost so much money that cracks me up when somebody says that. And then I do my due diligence. I investigate the business they they were had started.
Vikkie:And I find out, there's no way they could lose money. They bought a product, got the product and it's a business, you know, and then they were sharing it with other people. How are you losing money? You know, there's just no way, but they they put the fact that they were purchasing a product and getting that product. It still makes absolutely no sense to me, but they would think that they lost money.
Vikkie:No, they were going to buy that product anyway. How are you losing money?
John:Yeah, some of them though, it's because they didn't put in the work to build, a book of business so they can move the product through their business. And on some, some it's luckily it's not for us. But, some of these, compensation plans with some of these other businesses require a certain amount of volume before you're eligible to receive your paycheck. So then what they have to do is they have to what's called garage qualify themselves. So they'll personally buy the product that they're short to make up for the volume so they can hit that threshold and get paid for the month.
John:Unfortunately, it's product, like you were saying, they're paying and they're getting tangible product. So it's not like a Ponzi scheme where they're just paying and not getting anything forward. So it's a legitimate business. It's just a, it's just not a great bit, compensation plan in our opinion, when you have those, those types of compensation plans because you force the distributors to become garage qualified. So that just means they're buying extra product and storing it out in the garage.
John:And if you go over to their houses, that's exactly what you find. Right?
Vikkie:You can't
John:even fit the car in the garage anymore because it's loaded with boxes of product, you go inside their house and you open up the whole closet and it's, floor to ceiling with product, and you feel bad for these people because they're trying to buy themselves that paycheck. They want to be they want to be qualified to be paid for the month. And part of it too, is I think there's a pride thing because if they move backwards, let's say they reached a certain level in that, in that particular company, that organization, and then they're not qualifying for that anymore. So they fall back and they think that, wow, I look like a failure because I'm falling back. So then they buy their way back up to that position.
John:It's sad. It's kind of a sad situation to be in, which I think when I don't think people would feel bad for you because that's
Vikkie:how And nobody knows.
John:Business works. You it ebbs and flows.
Vikkie:Right. But how would they see that mindset, like, throws me every time because nobody knows whether you went back or not. You know, and the public, your friends don't know. So don't do it guys. If you're in that type of business where you're feeling like I've got to purchase all this product to maintain my rank, don't do it.
Vikkie:Nobody knows. So We travel
John:a lot. And so we both have, status with airlines, right? Because that's we travel enough to earn the status. And it's it's not I mean, it's not easy to have that top status with either American Airlines, executive platinum like you, or with Alaska. And what was it?
John:Last year, year before last, I we didn't I didn't fly that much. So I wasn't going to qualify at that really high tier level. I was a little bit below that. And I thought it comes out back in the day, you could do these mileage runs with the airlines, which toward the end of the year, it was really inexpensive. You could find some cheap deals on flights, and all you did was just fly the flight just to get the flight miles so you could qualify in a higher tier for the for for your elite status.
John:I know it sounds silly, but we've both done it. I mean, one time you flew to Hawaii.
Vikkie:Yeah. Hawaii in
John:the same flies to Hawaii. She gets off the plane. As soon as she gets off the plane, you just walk to the next gate. This is in, I think it was Honolulu. You walked to the next gate, boarded the flight back to Los Angeles.
John:And it seems really silly, but the flight was only a hundred and some bucks round trip. It ended up getting you qualified. Yeah. And you earn enough miles that you earn over $200 worth of miles in that flight. So it actually didn't cost anything.
John:I've done it. We've all done it.
Vikkie:And I can work from you might think that's crazy, but I can actually work from planes too. Because I have my cell phone and I can work. Yeah.
John:And you have Wi Fi and planes. It's really not that bad.
Vikkie:I didn't waste any time for my business doing it. Yeah. It was just kind of fun. I got a meal.
John:But it wasn't that long ago that I was far enough away that I thought this is ridiculous. I'm not going to go on a mileage run. It's going to cost too much money for me just to make the next tier level. And so I didn't garage qualify myself with that airline. That's what I'm getting at.
John:It was too much for me to do that. And so I think a lot of people that are garage qualifying themselves really need to look at it and look at their finances and just be honest with themselves. Is it worth garage qualifying that month? Or would it be better to just work a little harder and earn it organically?
Vikkie:Find a new company that doesn't require you to garage qualify.
John:A better comp plan for sure.
Vikkie:We know a great one. And so get in touch with us because our company's taken the gotchas out of this direct sales industry.
John:Yeah. The other thing I love about the comp plan that the company that we're involved with, it pays, the very newest person that gets involved pays them very well. And like there's a car bonus. And like I know, other comp plans have a car bonus, but it's only for the very top elites that get that car. In ours, the car the car qualification comes really early on.
John:Yeah. Just takes that, but you can earn that you earned it
Vikkie:and In my first three months. Yeah. And that's our plan that everybody can earn their car bonus. Do they all do it in the first three months? Do they all do it?
Vikkie:No, because it takes commitment and work, like you said, which commitment and work are consistency. I think that's our new definition for consistency is commitment and work. Yeah. I like that.
John:You guys are the first to hear that. And are we lying to you now because we can show you, the actual compensation plan? Yes. You can have a copy of it if you want and read it yourself. Yeah.
Vikkie:Absolutely. So I hope this was enlightening on you've been hearing a lot about fake news on the media, and you might be one of those holdouts that wants to believe it can't be true. And we're here to tell you from experience, how do I say it? It's true that you're not being told the truth most of the time.
John:Weren't you in Australia in '20 Yes. And I was home. And I came home and I was watching I was watching the it was the election. Right. We're not trying to get we're not saying that, Trump won in 2016, beat Hillary Clinton.
John:We're not saying that we voted for Trump or that we voted for Hillary or that we voted for you. We're not telling. Yeah. It's our plan. We never know.
John:Maybe we wrote your name in. That's not the point of the story. The point of the story was I'm watching the election returns and they're already starting to like, even a lot of the media was first showing that, Hillary was way ahead of Trump, right, so that Clinton was far ahead of Trump. But then as the returns were coming in more and more, it was starting to switch. And, I was switching between a bunch of different channels because again, right, don't know who's telling me the truth and who's lying to me.
Vikkie:That Because of your experience.
John:Yes. And that goes for, Fox News, which is a very right, right leaning news source. Right? So you have a CNN, MSNBC, they're very far left. And then you have Fox, which is very far right.
John:And so I'm not saying that I trust Fox. I'm not saying that if I and that's why I didn't watch Right. I didn't watch any of them. Just solely just watch them because I knew that, hey, I'm going to watch CNN. They're going to tell me something.
John:MSNBC is going to tell me something. It's probably going to be that Clinton's leading. I'm going to watch Fox News and they're going to tell me that Trump's leading. Even if he wasn't, they're going to tell me that because I would think because they're so far right, right leaning. So I don't know who to watch.
John:I'm switching back and forth. Pretty soon, all of them are saying that Trump's ahead and it looks like he's got it. And they're waiting for actually, it was so far ahead that they were waiting for, Hillary's, concession speech. Well, I'm talking on the phone with Vicky who's in Australia. Yeah.
John:And what story were you getting?
Vikkie:We were getting the the the propaganda was unbelievable. They clearly loved Hillary, and all the news would show Hillary at a podium I'm sorry. All the newspapers leading up to it would show Hillary's strong stance, speaking powerfully, you know, with a great headline, and you'd always see Trump, like, this nasty or looking down, looking discouraged. And it was just clear to me because John was telling showing telling me what was going on in The States. And I'm like, well, it's amazing what's going on over here.
Vikkie:And then that day when John's talking about when all that was happening, the Australian and I, you know, this is just my facts that I witnessed. Australian, media was saying Hillary's winning the whole time. Hillary's gonna take it. Hillary's got this the entire time. And then when John called and said, oh my gosh, you you won't believe this.
Vikkie:And you said something like Trump is taking, you know, the lead or whatever. I'm like, that is not what they're saying over here. And it was real time you guys.
John:This is real time. While it was happening. And they were they you were telling me they were reporting that Hillary looks like she's got it. It's a landslide kind of a thing. And it was even, the the left of news channels were even saying, for a while, they were saying, wow, this is going to be close.
John:And then pretty soon it was, I think I don't think that, Clinton has enough to to do it. So anyways And he
Vikkie:just points out another yeah, that internationally too are getting it wrong.
John:Yeah. And I'm not gonna mention someone's name, but you have a close friend who is a news reader in another country. Oh. And did she or did she not admit to you that she editorializes what she's reading?
Vikkie:She did. Right? Yeah. She did. And was proud of it.
Vikkie:She reports for her country a lot back home. I mean, her country, I don't wanna say what country it is. And then she flies to The United States and reports on events here. And she clearly has a political view, and who she likes and who she doesn't. And she shared that with me and I privately shared, you know, my beliefs with her.
Vikkie:Right. We're good friends. And, but she really
John:Then they got in the fight.
Vikkie:Yeah. Well, she really No, no, no. But she really did share that, her perspective on a political person. And I shared, well, here's a different perspective. Right?
Vikkie:Well, anyway, basically she admitted that I said, gone are the days of, reporting both sides. I, you know, I see it. I don't ever see both sides anymore. When, when someone's interviewing, when these news readers are interviewing somebody, it used to be, they would ask their side and not editorialize. Right.
Vikkie:They would ask their side, but then they'd get the another person's side. So you would, you would hear both sides and then you get to decide what you're, what you're gonna believe. Right? Well, I said that to her, I said, what has happened? It just seems like there is no, what's the word I'm thinking of?
Vikkie:Objectivity. Yeah. That's it. Objectivity. And, and she said, oh, well, I just expect my readers to want to know what I think, my listeners to want to know what I think.
Vikkie:I'm paraphrasing obviously. But, yeah. So I don't give a different perspective. I'm just sharing what I believe. And I was blown away.
Vikkie:And again, I came home and told my father the whole situation. I said, and here she is on her country's news. And, dad, she's clearly not reporting both sides. She's clearly not being unbiased. That was also the word I was thinking, unbiased.
Vikkie:She's clearly biased, dad. Are you okay with that? Like, are you not getting it? And he really had no response because I so, and I think that's where a lot of people are. They don't wanna believe.
Vikkie:They can't believe their media would do this to them. Like a lot of people can't think their government would do hurtful things to its people and whatnot. And and it happened. So anyway, yeah, that I'm glad you brought that up. That is it's it is crazy, guys.
Vikkie:So it's going on internationally. There is no such thing as unbiased anymore. It doesn't appear. You know? I yeah.
Vikkie:It's it's crazy.
John:Yeah. That was weird that she just admitted that, and she was proud of it.
Vikkie:Yeah. And she got really flustered and I stayed calm, cool, and collected. That's the other kind of crazy thing. I feel like when you bring things up that, you really just, you know, you just wanna have a conversation and talk about it, how heated and defensive people get.
John:Some people. Some people
Vikkie:are Some people.
John:Yeah. There's there's a number of people, though, that I know that I've had, like meaningful conversations with that we feel differently, you know, quite a bit differently on certain things. Because I think, know, you and I are kind of, we're very moderate.
Vikkie:Right.
John:Whether we lean a little bit right or lean a little bit left, but we're pretty close to the center because we can see we can see issues on both sides. Right. And and they make sense from both.
Vikkie:And we work with people on both sides.
John:Yeah. Exactly. We don't have we don't mind having a conversation. If somebody wants to have, we try and avoid political conversations. Right?
John:Because politics and religion generally lead down a pretty, pretty violent path. Yeah. But we we can have conversations with people and have differences of opinion. That's cool. It's like even like if you think about, your friends who are fans of another team.
John:Yeah. Yeah. You don't have a fist fight every time like I like, for instance, there's, Troy. We talked about Troy before with the shirt. I was just thinking about Troy the other day because someone was saying they're a big, Bengals fan.
John:I'm like, why?
Vikkie:We need to send Troy the podcast. I don't even know if he knows. We even have one.
John:Yeah. So and what we'll do is we'll have to speak really slow for Troy so he understands, because if we speak too fast, he doesn't follow. He's a Bengals fan. So anyways, I give him a hard time for the Bengals thing, and he always gives me a hard time for being a Steelers. We don't get in fights over it.
John:Right? We can we can just talk about how we like our team more than your team and which one's better, both of them, right? As far as he's concerned, the Cincinnati Bengals are the best team. That's cool. I'm glad he's he loves his his team.
John:I'm glad other people like whatever team that they like. It may not be my cup of tea, I may not like it, but that's okay. We don't have to fight about it. We can talk. Yeah.
John:And that's what we think about politics Like we've yeah. We have a number of friends that are that are on the other side of the fence from us. Yeah. But we don't get in arguments with well, couple of times, I guess, have maybe. But we usually don't argue about things.
John:We usually or get into fights, I should say. Because anytime you have a difference of opinion and you articulate it, it's an argument.
Vikkie:Yeah. That I think you should clarify that because
John:nothing wrong with arguments. Right?
Vikkie:You'll say stop arguing with me, and I'm like, I'm not arguing. But then he had to define what arguing is, and then I'm like, oh, okay.
John:Wrong. Because an argument is not is it it's there it like, if you go to court, each side is arguing. Right? It's an argument. Right?
John:It's like anytime you have a difference of opinion and we're gonna talk about it, we're arguing about it. It's not it it doesn't have to be negative. But argue sounds like a bad word. It does. Right?
John:It really does. Yeah. I don't yeah. It's not meant to be in a negative It's not meant to be it sound negative, right, just because
Vikkie:you're having an argument. But It's true. So, yeah, it's just a difference of opinion. I like that. And and hearing each other and being open to each other's opinion too, I think is important.
Vikkie:So, yeah, and like our mothers and fathers always taught us, don't talk politics and religion. That's kinda gone by the wayside with social media. And it really if you're in business, that is another big tip we'd like to leave today. If you run a business, you should not be talking about politics anywhere because you're going to ostracize yourself from the people that you know and love. You just are.
Vikkie:And you're they're not going to do business with you or not going to want to. So that should be left out for sure. Especially politics.
John:Yeah. For for the people that are in our business, some of them know which which way we feel about politics, what how we feel about religion and whatnot. But I we don't let that affect how we run our business. We don't let it affect how we interact with others. Right?
John:It's, it's important, I think, like Vicki was just saying that you don't, you don't post things that are really strongly one way or the other, because like you said, you alienate yourself from other people, and you make people feel uncomfortable. Yeah. You know, that's not what this is all about. Just we can have we're human beings, right? We're adults for goodness sakes.
John:We can have differences of opinion and still all get along.
Vikkie:Exactly. And still like each other.
John:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. We think the world of, of the people that are in our business, regardless of what political policies they believe in or Right. Whatever.
John:I mean, it's We
Vikkie:pray for them on a daily basis. Yeah. For them and their families. I know. So yeah, I, I hope that you are, you learned something today.
Vikkie:If you did, we're excited about that. We'd love to hear what, what on the next podcast you'd like to hear from us. So send us a message, put it in the comments, what you'd like to talk us to talk about. I don't know if you realize this is our twenty sixth episode. I didn't say that at the beginning.
Vikkie:So that means half a year. Right? Twenty six and '26 is fifty two weeks. We have 26 episodes, and we hope you've been loving it. Hope you want us to continue.
Vikkie:Let us know because we could always just pull the plug. Right? Should we pull the plug? Let us know.
John:I don't want your brains to get all these comments. Pull the plug. Pull it.
Vikkie:You guys are boring me. No. But, seriously, have a wonderful day, and we will see you on the next one.
John:Yeah, guys. Bye bye.
Vikkie:Thanks for joining us on Dig the Well.
John:We hope you feel empowered and ready to take on new challenges.
Vikkie:Remember, if we can do it, so can you. Keep learning, keep believing, and going after your dreams.
John:And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who needs a little inspiration or maybe a nudge in the right direction.
Vikkie:Help us grow this community of go getters. Together, we can achieve greatness and get back to family.
John:Thanks for listening, and let's keep digging the way.