#260 - Lori Rubinstein

0:01 I just had the pleasure of spending about an hour and a half with Lori Rubinstein, who is, I believe the executive director is her title of Behind the Scenes organization, an extremely important organization that helps people who are in need in our industry, especially people who are sick with debilitating diseases, cancer or whatever. She talked about a gentleman who had a leg amputated, a lot of mental health concerns, you know, that that Behind the Scenes are working on. And by the way, they also have incredible Christmas cards or holiday cards that you can purchase from the site that support people in our industry.

0:44 So Lori is a very smart woman, very interesting woman, and has just done incredible work between Esta and behind the scenes. So I really hope you enjoy this podcast. And yeah, Episode 260. Hello and thanks for joining today for Geezes of Gear Episode 260. This podcast is brought to you by Ultimate Support. For more than 45 years, Ultimate Support Systems has provided musicians with unique Support Solutions that are crafted with unparalleled innovation and quality. Ultimate Support has always been determined to invent, design and manufacture the smartest Support Solutions and music accessories in the music industry, and that commitment to innovation continues to this day.

1:38 Be sure to visit ultimatesupport.com where you can learn all about their solutions for content creators, touring musicians, recording studios, and more. From acoustic treatment to best in class speaker stands, Ultimate Support has premium accessories that you can count on. And today's podcast is also brought to you by Gear Source. Founded in 2002 with an ambitious mission to support live events, businesses buy and sell gear globally. Since that time, the company's transacted in more than 100 countries, selling over a quarter billion dollars in sound, lighting, staging and video gear. Gear source continues to evolve the platform for massive global growth, enabling localized currencies payments held in escrow to protect buyers and sellers. AI powered Logistics behind a new logistics brand and much more.

2:33 In fact, the company has just released massive new features including gear Sync with the ability to manage up to 400 listings at once and Need Zone, an automated shopping assistant for hard to find items. Take full control over your gear with a visit today to gearsource.com.

3:24 Here we are episode #260 and just a couple things to cover this morning. So first, as far as the industry is concerned, I'm sure everyone knows by now because you probably follow the busy busiest social media poster out there, Cosmo Wilson. And so Aerosmith have retired and I've heard a lot of different angles on this and you know, as to why it's all related obviously to Steven Tyler, but is it health related? Is it related to some bad habits that he's had over the years and continues to fall off the wagon occasionally? I've heard it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, you know, it's obviously the end of an era from a music fan standpoint or a live events fan standpoint. Great band.

4:14 They they generated some incredible music and hit songs and stuff over the years. Great live band as well. And personally, I'm bummed and, and I'm also bummed for my friend Cosmo Wilson, who was headed right back out on that one in a couple of weeks. I think he just got back home to Orlando a couple days ago, as I record this from ACDC in Europe, and was heading straight back out on Aerosmith very quickly for the fall. And so if you're looking for a brilliant, incredible lighting designer, I think Cosmo's open for the fall now. Although knowing Cosmo, he's probably already filled it with something massive. So anyways, yeah, end of an era. Bummed and onward this week.

4:58 I'm kind of excited. I'm going to hang out with Rob Koenig for a little while and the Metallica crew in Edmonton. So I'm still up at my house in Canada. I'm about four hours, I guess from Edmonton and so I'll be driving over there Friday, seeing the show Friday night and coming back Saturday morning. I'll try and remember to post some stuff or to to record some stuff while I'm there with Rob and of the show. I think you've all seen it. I'm pretty excited to see, not necessarily the band as much as as the rig in person, just the way that they managed this in the round stadium show with, with, you know, without a ceiling or a grid to hang things from.

5:42 Very interesting how they've done it and I'm looking forward to seeing that in person. So that's this Friday and by the time you've heard this, it will have been last Friday probably or even previous. What else is exciting? We launched our first episode of The Leading Ladies last week, also on a Friday. And so Sarah did an incredible job with that Sarah and Claire Heat. If you haven't heard that yet, I'm guessing that's probably episode 259, but I'm not positive. But if you go in and look for Sarah's lovely face in the intros and stuff, you will see her there. And again, amazing job. Great first episode.

6:25 So much better than my first episode. I remember it well. And please don't go back and listen to episode #1 And, you know, we've received all kinds of compliments and just add a boys and add a girl. And, you know, I don't know that we were setting out to create this, you know, social voice or anything, but it's incredible that people have accepted it that way. And we're grateful to be in the position to have an audience to go out and do something like this. And we're very grateful for the support that we've received initially, even we've had a couple of new sponsors come forward and say we really want to get involved in this leading ladies thing. And so, yeah, it's amazing.

7:10 And you know, we've already had a lot of questions, like is Marcel not going to interview ladies anymore? Is he not going to have people like sooner on or, or anyone? And no, that's not the case at all. You know, we just, we have a podcast with a couple of episodes a month now that is dedicated to the women in this industry and how hard they work and how sometimes it's much more difficult than it is for men. You know, and Sarah and I had a very good conversation in a meeting this morning talking about this exact topic. And I think we're going to record something talking about it as well. So we'll still have to podcast under the Geezers of Gear umbrella and sometimes women or females will go towards that podcast. Sometimes they'll still come towards me because maybe they want, you know, to be abused by, by me and or I want to be abused by them.

8:10 And so anyways, Yep, 2 podcasts under the same banner and we're pretty excited about it. We're excited by the numbers from the first episode. It's done very, very well. And thank you to everyone for supporting that. Again, back to my favorite topic of AI. So I've started using quite a few AI apps and I talk about this a bunch. You know, I am a big fan of AI. I'm in the sort of crew that says AI is going to support our work, not replace our work. It's going to help us, not replace us. And so a few of the ones that I've used and just want to recommend to people if you're just kind of looking to sort of dip your finger into the water of AI, I just started using one called Hurdly.

8:58 And you know, I'm always in a hurry. I've always got a billion things to do, but I love listening to books. Audio books are definitely a passion for me, but it takes me as long as it takes most people to read a book, a physical book. It takes me that long to listen to a podcast because I started, I stop it, I started, I stop it, I started. I don't have a lot of time to sit around and even listen to a book and I can't listen when my mind is going because I just don't even hear the book. Like I'm hearing my mind over the book. It's louder. And so books in 15 minutes was very appealing to me. And that's exactly what this app is. It's called Hurdly. And you know, for me, the jury's out a little bit.

9:42 Some of the voices are weird, you know, like you'll have narrator. So these are AI generated voices and you'll have some that sound really great and they're easy to listen to. And then you'll have some that are just annoying. And currently you're not able to change voices, which is kind of annoying. The other thing is they use a lot of silly analogies. Like they, they throw in a lot of analogies, like, you know, the mountain was vast, vast, like, you know, a bowl of porridge in the morning, like just really stupid things that they'll say and they're throwing these in there. These aren't coming from the author. This is the, the AI spin on things thinking that they're being funny or, or humorous or whatever.

10:26 So, but aside from that, I really have actually like in the past week, I think I've listened to about 10 books and, and it's these little 15 minute summaries. So I believe they have a one week trial and go ahead and download the app and and check it out. It's heardly heardly, just how it sounds heard LY. And so next, I've actually made an interesting change. So I've been using a open AI ChatGPT really probably for about a year. And some things I've loved about it, some things I've really hated about it. One of the things I haven't liked about ChatGPT is whether you're creating a document or you're creating an image, it never seems to do what you tell it to.

11:12 You know, you can tell it how you want a document to be written, like sort of in what theme or mood or feel or whatever. And it always comes back very AI ish. You know, it just, you can automatically just look at it and go, yeah, written by AI. You know, it's using all the same goofy terms and stuff and it's very dry, very bland and on images like just a lot of really weird mistakes, 3 eyeballs, 3 arms, you know, just putting words into the image that you didn't ask to be put in the image. Or you say a company name or a brand name that you want in the image and it'll just put all kinds of other words in there and stuff.

11:54 Just really annoying things. And you know, first world problems, I understand. But someone said to me, have you tried Elon's, have you tried Elon's AI yet? And it's XAI, but, but the actual tool is called Grok. And no, I haven't. So I went on to Twitter to see how I could figure out how to try it. And you have to pay. So you have to become a premium member on Twitter, which I wasn't and and now I am. And so just happens to be the same price as what I was paying for open AI anyways. And I get all these added benefits. I get a blue check mark on my name on Twitter where I never post. And so, so anyways, bottom line is I love it.

12:38 Grok is amazing. Grok has the same quirky, interesting, fun sense of humor that Elon does. And so when you have it write something with you or for you, it actually is sarcastic like I am. It's sarcastic like Elon Musk is. It's got humor, it's got spin and innuendo and it's fun. And it just writes a lot more like I want to write. And so I have used it to help me write some things again, I, I would never create something on AI and then kick it straight out to the market. I just don't do that. So I'll have it write it on AI and then I'll go in and rewrite it. But at least it gives you a really strong framework. And So what I would say is on ChatGPT, that framework was maybe 30% of the way done.

13:30 And on Grok, it's about 75% of the way done. So I have to do less editing. I have to do less thinking and adding. It's done a lot more of the lifting for me. Same with images. With images, I've had the exact same result that, you know, the images are more fun, they're less dry and boring. And so I've even gone in and had it make some images using the exact same prompt that I used in in ChatGPT or Dolly to create an image. I've gone into grok and created an image using that exact same prompt and come up with a much better result from my my viewpoint anyway.

14:11 So check it out again. The problem is there's no free trial. So and there's no like open AI. You can use ChatGPT for free. You just don't get all the features with Grok, you have to pay to get it, and I think the minimum level to pay is $10 a month. So it's not a huge amount of money. Another one is in video. And so in video, basically you can go in and just say here's sort of the premise and the concept, and it'll produce an entire video, including scripting it. And you can select what kind of voice. Do you want an accent? Do you want a man? Do you want a woman? All kinds of stuff that you can customize or you can write your own script or you can go back in and edit the script and it will add images. It'll do all kinds of things.

14:55 And again, on a free account, those images will all be royalty based images. So you have to go in and change it to royalty free or whatever. I just went ahead and paid for it again. I think it's probably 20 or 25 bucks a month, which sort of seems to be the price for AI apps these days is $20.00 a month. That's where everybody wants to be. And so I love in video. Again, I wouldn't use it for highly produced wonderful videos or anything, but if you're creating a simple little explainer, here's how you do this thing video or a little, you know, you want to put something out on Facebook that kind of shows off some of your pictures or your event or something.

15:38 NVIDIA is really, really good at that stuff and explainer videos. It does really well. And so check it out. They do have a free trial. Again, it'll use images that have royalties on them. It'll have watermarks and you won't be able to do as much editing and stuff. But, and again, when I talk about editing on these things, I'm talking about editing from the standpoint of ACEO, not a video editor, not a not a writer, not any of those things. So these are really simple editing tasks that I'm doing. And then finally, Opus Clips. I might have even talked about this one before, but it's really it's, it's something that we use a lot, especially for geezers of gear, but I use it in other parts of my life as well. And so the cool thing about Opus Clips is what you can do is you can upload a video and it can be really any video. It can be a video produced on AI or a video of one of your shows or a video of anything.

16:37 And Opus Clips has just created a way of finding viral moments within that video. So let's say it's a 10 minute video. What it'll go and do is it'll go and pick out five or six little under one minute sections. So you tell it basically where you're going to use these clips. If you tell it you're going to use them on YouTube Shorts, it knows that it needs to be a minute or less, but you could say I want these to be 32nd clips. So you can select the time of the clip or where you're going to be placing it on reels. It's up to 90 seconds and it just creates these clips and I can tell you about 80% of the time they're awesome. And then 20% of the time you're like, weird. I wondered why.

17:21 I wonder why it picked that out and it ended so abruptly And it just is awkward and, but most of the time it's like it. And by the way, it edits, so it'll chop little pieces and create a 62nd video and then it captions it and puts a title to it and the headline and all kinds of stuff. It does all the work. And I would say again, 80% of the time it's friggin perfect. 20% of the time it's bordering on unusable. So you just delete those clips and don't use them. And the other 80% you use great tool again, probably. I think we paid 100 bucks for a year or something, so it wasn't expensive.

18:02 Really, really, really useful app. Next, I actually wanted to try and do a screen share, but I think it's too complicated. You can go search for this. There is an AI generated parody song about immigrants. It's it's a German song and it's on the charts in in the top 50 in Germany right now by an artist called butter Bro or a programmer or coder called butter Bro totally AI generated visuals. The song is AI generated and it's on the charts right now and it it's the thing was just done as a joke, as a parody and it's charting and it's making this butter bro person all kinds of money.

18:48 So go check that out. I saw it on YouTube. You can just go search for it and you'll find it. And another an interesting wrinkle in this. Any of the, the fearful naysayers of AI are going to hear this and go see, I told you. So there's an interesting thing happening. Interesting, sad, terrible publishers who are working with authors are selling academic papers right now. And so this could be happening with fictional, non fictional, whatever down the road. But right now it's academic papers and they're selling them to tech companies who are then using them to train these AI large language models.

19:31 So they're using them for AI training and they're earning millions from companies that they're doing this IAI training for, and the authors are receiving nothing for their work. So you're an author. You publish a document, a manual, a book, whatever it is through a publisher. That publisher is basically renting out your information. You're publishing your details. Not for people to use verbatim, but to build that large language model, to build that the AI bought the training to train the AI system and they're being paid for that and you're getting nothing. And so this is opening up a big can of worms on, on who owns what and who has what rights and things like that. And that is a fight that's going to go on for a long time, I believe.

20:29 And it's scary. It's a really scary topic. And that's one that I'm on. Any of you who are fearful of AI, I'm on your side on that one because you wrote it. You've spent years learning that craft and now they're just coming and duplicating your writings and they're not, again, they're not just copy and pasting the stuff that you've written. That would be, you know, plagiarism or theft or whatever you want to call it in any form. But what they're doing is they're taking that information, handing it to the computer and saying, hey, read all of this stuff and bank that knowledge and you're getting nothing from that. So you've trained these computers for free basically, and these companies are going to be trillion dollar companies or more than a trillion dollar companies. This is going to be a massive market and massive wealth being generated, but not for the people who are training the the computers and that's terrible.

21:22 So onward. Today's guest is somebody I've known for a very long time and always had a great deal of respect for. Lori Rubenstein is the Executive Director of the Behind the Scenes Foundation A5O1C3 charity, which provides basic needs grants to entertainment technology professionals who are seriously ill or injured and counseling grants for therapy or addiction rehab. The BTS Mental Health Initiative provides tools and resources to support entertainment industry workers and promote mental health and Wellness. Lori has been in the industry for over 45 years and was the Executive Director of the Entertainment Services and Technology Association, also known as ESTA, for almost 30 years where she oversaw the creation and development of an NC Accredited Technical Standards Program and the Entertainment Technician Certification Program. Her experience in the industry also includes working as a lighting designer and stage manager for dance, Symphony, theatre and musicals, and for industry businesses including a lighting supply company, a theatre consultancy and a manufacturer of entertainment products. Is that enough?

22:39 Wow, that is quite a resume. So please join me and welcome Lori Rubenstein. Well, hello Lori, how are you? I'm fine myself. Thank you for inviting me to be a guest. Well, and thank you for being so incredibly patient with the process of getting into the studio today. It was. It was a task. It was, but I'm glad we finally made it. Yes, me too. Me too. I've been looking forward to this. So I was thinking this morning, I had you on during COVID and, and I had a very specific situation, a guy who I was friends with on Facebook, who basically on Facebook was threatening to off himself.

23:28 And so I was reaching out to this gentleman and I didn't know how to handle it. And I, I remember reaching out to you and saying, what do I do? You know, what do I do about this? Like, I'm not sure. I don't know where to send him. I don't know, like how to say the right things or not say the wrong things. And I was really nervous about this, but I was very upset that, and by the way, I didn't know the guy well or anything. He was just a Facebook friend, you know, like, I don't actually believe it or not. And I'm admitting this now. I, I don't know how many Facebook people I have now, but let's say it's 3000, I don't have 3000 friends, you know, so I promise those people aren't all my friends. But yeah, I remember talking with you about that.

24:08 And, and we got into talking about, you know, there were so many problems during COVID with, with people not knowing what to do with themselves, financial issues, all kinds of terrible things, you know, that happened. So I'm guessing your in mail, your inbox became rather full. Well, and it it, it wasn't just COVID. This industry is extremely difficult for people, extremely hard on their mental health as well as physical health and has been for a very long time. Everything was of course exasper exacerbated by COVID. But the CDC statistics on suicide, which came out pre COVID, the last ones came out pre COVID shows entertainment, sports, media and the arts are grouped together as an occupation and as an industry. And it has the third highest suicide rate for men and the fifth highest suicide rate for women of all occupations. So these issues existed in the industry before COVID. COVID certainly exacerbated it for everyone in all parts of the industry.

25:20 And the after effects continue when the film industry, the strike of course, has just doubled and and tripled and quadrupled the effects of the pandemic on the folks in the film industry and other changes going on. So, you know, we talked about starting our mental health initiative pre pandemic. We realized something needed to be done and the conversation worldwide was beginning to be a little freer, open up a little more about mental health, and we felt it was time for that to happen in our industry as well. I, I want to spend a lot of time talking about this, but I feel like we've started from the end and, and I want to kind of go back first. So one thing I don't know.

26:04 And, and I think because you've been involved as a like a director of these organizations, whether it's Ester or behind the scenes, I, you know, I tend to forget that you were actually a lighting person before all of that stuff. And, and I completely forgot until looking at your resume again yesterday when I was going over notes for the show and stuff that you were at San Diego stage. And, and you know, I don't remember if I met you back then. I doubt it but but I completely forgot about that whole part of you that you are actually a lighting person 1st and and all of this stuff became sort of a a second and now primary career for you obviously. So did you go to college to be a lighting person? I went to college to be a ballet dancer. Interesting.

26:59 I received my degree in ballet, but I went to a very interesting program. The concept of it was that your first two years of college and your last two years of high school were basically repetitive of each other, so it combined those into two years. So I left high school after my sophomore year and did a four year college program. At the end of two years, I got a GE degree and then I could take anything I wanted rather than having to worry about fulfilling requirements for math science. So I took lighting and stage management and all that type of thing in addition to the ballet curriculum. And then I danced professionally for just a year when I got out of college and stopped because of injuries. And I spent a year, year and a half working for a gentleman who was a theater consultant, but he was also the lighting director for the San Diego Civic Light Opera and he was the production manager for the San Diego Symphony. So I, and I stayed, I stage managed the Symphony on and off for, oh, I don't know, about a decade I would say. And he closed down his practice.

28:04 I went to work for San Diego Stage and continued to work in lighting all around San Diego. I did a lot of lighting for dance, ballet, modern, jazz, etcetera, and some musicals and you know, that type of thing assisted at the Old Globe Theatre, whatever I could get in addition to my full time job at at San Diego Stage. And one day a gentleman named Glenn Becker from Grand Stage in Chicago walked in the door and said I have this idea for an association for a trade association. And there were three companies that really put all of that together, put that first initial meeting together, which was Grand Stage Bash and San Diego Stage. And that's how I got involved with what was initially the the Theatrical Dealers Association and then became ESTA. Right, didn't Didn't Jimmy Ray Hutton get involved pretty early on too at Cal Stage?

29:00 Jimmy Ray used to be at San Diego stage and then he started California Stage. Of course, yeah. There were about, we had a formation meeting in Las Vegas in November of 1987 and there were 25 companies, 25 dealers from around the country that were there and those were the original founding members. Interesting. Yeah, and the and the founding was based on what need. Well, you know, there were a number of needs. Insurance was a really big issue for dealers at the time. In those days, there was a little more of an adversarial relationship with manufacturers and I think there was some thought about, you know, sort of banding together, which really never, you know, never came to fruition because we learned we could talk to them. But the other thing was learning that we could share information about business questions and all kinds of things and that it would benefit everyone and not hurt anyone. Sharing that information, actually educating each other made for a much stronger, more profitable industry. And it was that idea that took hold and people realized that by working together.

30:18 And that's what actually led to things like the technical standards program and the Entertainment Technician certification program, etcetera. Such, such an important decision to make because I think what, and I, I had, I don't know if you ever listened to it or anything, but I had Paul Vincent on recently as well. And he said something very similar where it was like, you know, initially we were going to puff up our chests and go against the manufacturers. And then we went, wait a second, you know, why don't we just become more friendly and, and find a way to support each other better. And I can just imagine had you gone the other direction, what might have happened. And you know, it's, it's an interesting concept or an interesting thought, I guess, because I talk about this often, how back then dealers were this big and manufacturers were this big. Now you've kind of flipped the script a little bit on some of that where you've got dealers the size of PRG and Solo Tech and four wall and upstaging and Bandit. And a lot of these companies are very big now. And so, so the, the things have changed a little bit. And now it's the dealers who need to try and be nicer to the manufacturers as opposed to the the opposite, right? Some of the manufacturers are hurting now, you know, or, or especially during COVID and stuff. So, but yeah, obviously ESTA then went on to become well, so it was originally the TDA, right, Theatrical Dealers Association and then it went on

31:50 to become ESTA. Yeah. And the transition ESTA is sort of an interesting one because what happened is that the industry, particularly manufacturers, realized the need to start to create industry standards before government stepped in to create them for us. We didn't want people who didn't know what they were talking about to create standards. And so the manufacturers came to us and said, we think there's a real need for this program. We think ESTA is a good home for it. TDA is a good home for it. But we want to be full citizens. We don't want to be affiliates or associates. We want to be full members. And that's what precipitated the the shift from TDA to ESTA was that opening up of the membership to really encompass all the categories involved and gave everyone an equal representation. I think it also helped with the funding of it as well, right, Because manufacturers got involved in helping to support the organization as well.

32:49 Because this is, you know, similar to the one that you run now. It was based on people supporting it and funding it and stuff. Membership dudes only go so far for the most part, right? Yeah. But especially like for the technical standards program, which has no way to bring in income, it's there for the good of the industry. It needs to be supported. That's right. So at some point did you like basically leave the lighting business and go into the the, the politics of it all or the operating organizations or whatever you want to call that world? Well, I got involved with the Theatrical Dealers Association from the very beginning, helping to put together that initial meeting.

33:32 But in 1990, I made the decision to move to New York to be with my future and current husband, John McGraw, who was the owner of Commissioner Sliding. And so when I moved, you know, I, I wasn't going to try and make a career in New York out of lighting because everyone in the world was trying to do that. I worked for a little while, I worked for Roscoe and the TDA at that point hired a part time, hired me part time as executive director and eventually that moved into a full time position. So that's that's how I made that transition because the association had grown enough to where it actually needed a staff person to run it. You never thought about, you know, putting on the shoes and starting to dance again or anything. No, I No I did not.

34:21 I'm sure that I, you know, I've never been a ballet guy. I will admit, you know, I'm the guy that would be dragged by his ear, you know, to a ballet to watch it. So I've never been a big fan of it, but I do understand how physically challenging it must be, You know, just seeing some of the things that are happening. It's like, Oh my goodness, how do they, how do they do that? You know, So I, I respect it as as an art form, but and certainly, you know, it's, it's something that you have to fight through those injuries and, and I would guess that that shortens a lot of careers, But that's interesting. I didn't know that that's that's how you started and that you went to school to be in ballet, not in lighting.

35:04 So sort of a good thing that yeah, it's it's a good thing that you kind of took that extra credits, you know, and went after lighting and stage management and stuff. So so then, you know, Esther's going along and how did behind the scenes come about? Because that's where I want to spend most of my time talking is is because I'm very interested in what you're doing in behind the scenes and and it's important. So not that Este isn't. We got, we kept either having people approach or hearing stories about industry members who were in need because they were facing serious illness or injury.

35:45 And there was also an educational component that we thought that the two things, the charitable component, the educational component really belonged in A5O1C3 organization rather than A501C6 trade association, among other things, fundraising for a charity. Obviously if you're AC 3 donations are tax deductible for individuals, for example. And it just made sense. And so we created the, the ESTA board voted to create the Behind the Scenes Foundation, but it is a completely separate entity, but obviously had very close ties. I mean, ESTA, you know, I ran both organizations from 2005 through the end of 2017.

36:29 So very close ties as to his of course, always been extraordinarily supportive of behind the scenes. And really that early support is what allowed the charity to get on its feet and get going. And eventually in the evolution of the charity, we decided we really wanted to focus 100% on the charitable aspect of it. And so we actually at the time we're developing an educational program that we gave to USITT, which they have continued to develop. And we focused 100% because we realized there was tremendous need out there. There are a number of industry assistance organizations who we work very closely with, but all of them have their various criteria.

37:15 And we're really the only one that encompasses every aspect of the industry from motion picture, broadcast, any kind of live event, etc. And not just the the crews who are literally on stage, behind the stage or behind the camera, but also for the people who work for the companies that that design, that manufacture, that sell, that produce all of the all of the things we we know and love. So we're very, very broad. We also cover both the US and Canada. Interesting, Is there any push to become more global? We, it's, it's not easy to become global, global of course, because of all the rules and regulations etcetera. And there are charities in many other countries that serve those populations very well.

38:07 Yeah. So we really, we talked about at one point, but we've really decided we want to stay focused on. Yeah. There's enough to do. Yeah. There's enough problems just in North America, that's for sure. Yeah. So I don't even know where to start on this because it's such a big topic. And, you know, I know a lot of people who have benefited through your organization, who have received, you know, either financial help or other help through the organization. And it's so incredibly important. And so I mean, can you tell me like maybe get into some of the not necessarily individual stories because obviously that's all private, but types of situations that have maybe come to you and you've managed to help people through, you know, a hard time or whatever it is. Sure.

38:58 Yeah, the the charity really has two main programs, if you will. One is our granting program and the other is the mental health initiative. So on the granting side, there are two kinds of grants that we offer. So the first is our what we call our basic needs grants and this is for entertainment technology professionals and that's a a broad overarching term who are seriously ill or injured or if they have an immediate dependent family member such as a spouse, a partner, a minor dependent child who's seriously ill or injured and that's putting a financial strain on the family. So we will step in to assist with basic living expenses, things like rent or mortgage, utilities, food, you know those types of things or medical expenses.

39:49 We help a lot of people with either doctor bills, prescriptions, physical therapy, insurance, melt health insurance coverage, you know, if they need help paying premiums. We don't aren't able to grant a lot of money to anyone person, but it's really designed as a bridge. So you have. A lot of people, for example, who, you know, are diagnosed with cancer or some sort of disease and they're going to be out of work maybe while they have treatment and, you know, need some help paying those bills because it's most people in this industry don't have a significant nest egg saved up for a rainy day because they're living paycheck to paycheck. And you know, even those who have health insurance, there's a lot of catch 20 twos in health insurance. For example, union members who are paying into health insurance have to bank a certain number of hours every quarter. And if they're I'll or injured and can't bank those, they risk losing their health insurance.

40:46 So. How? How quickly does that happen? How quickly do they take your health insurance away? Just depends. It really depends. It can be. It's not immediate, but if someone is ill or injured for lengthy period of time, it can become an issue for them. That's a problem. But we're really designed or let's say someone is needs to go on either short term or long term disability, we try to to bridge that gap between when their earnings have ended and when disability kicks in. And unfortunately, disability is just a nightmare in this country, especially long term disability. We've had people who can't get out of a hospital bed that have been turned down for disability and you have to hire a lawyer and you have to appeal it. So almost everyone is turned down initially, but it's just designed to take some of that burden off of someone who's already got enough on their plate because they're dealing with illness or injury and to, you know, to assist them to take some of that worry off.

41:47 And we've helped so many people, a lot of people, this is a very difficult injury industry and people in terms of injuries, right? It's a hard physical injury. So we see a lot of injuries, shoulders, backs, knees, you know, you name it, hips. So lots of people who are having surgery, you know, I need time to recuperate kind of thing. It's not because people are maniacs or anything. It's just that, you know, it's that show man must go on mentality and there's always a way to get it done. And somebody needs to climb the Truss and and take care of this thing. And you know, we're so willing to do the impossible to make something happen in our industry. So, you know, and I always say things like that, like if, if you want it done, you know, talk to one of these people over here, you know, they know what they're doing. It's, it's more, we see more injury from years of wear and tear than actual accidents on the job. And we cover, it doesn't matter if there's an accident on the job or an injury on the job or outside of the job. We've helped people who've been hit by cars and you know, that kind of thing doesn't have to be job related, but it is a lot of it is, is that wear and tear on people? No question.

43:04 And of course, unexpected illness, diagnosed with cancer or heart attack or stroke or that type of thing. Yeah. Do you focus on education at all? Like, because I, you know, whether it's the injuries that we just talked about, you know, if you go to a typical rock concert, for example, and look at the stagehands, look at some of the people rolling cases off of trucks or whatever, we're not the healthiest bunch sometimes. And so, you know, education on lifestyle, education on, you know, even simple things like, OK, every morning at 6:00 in the morning, get off the bus and go, do you know, jumping jacks or something? I don't know what it is.

43:49 But you know, like I know personally myself, the healthier I get and the less I weigh, the less knee injuries and ankle injuries and hip injuries I get, you know, and versus how it used to be when I was 40 lbs heavier, so. You know, we're starting to do that. I'm glad you brought it up. We're starting to do that with the Wellness Lounge at LDI and we launched that last year and we're repeating it again this year. And what we've done is we've got three days of short 20 to 30 minute presentations all about, well, there's all kinds of different aspects. Last year, Eddie Raymond offered two sessions about sleep and why sleep is so important and what happens to your brain and your body if you don't get enough of it. And those weren't very well attended. A session on nutrition.

44:37 Luther Bell is doing how to eat better on the road. Even if when you're you're eating from a gas station or a 711, there are ways you can still take care of yourself. But a simple David Linscombe from ETC leads a simple cup of coffee. Yoga, we call it morning. It's literally chair yoga in 20 minutes. What you can do to get your body off to a good start. We had a session on meditation, so a number of different types of sessions designed to really give people some self-care tips about how they can improve their physical health and their mental health. You know, and it's funny because I know, like, again, most of us are tough guys in this industry or tough women or whatever it is.

45:20 But you know, you hear things like you should meditate or you should stretch more. You should do yoga in the morning. You should, you know, eat a salad every now and then. And we're like, come on, that's crazy. You know, I'm eating pizza on the bus after the show or whatever, right? And it's so important. And, you know, for my own life and my own self, you know, I've made so many changes in my, my own personal and habits and, and, you know, diet and all of those things. And I've seen the results from it. And I feel so much, I feel better at 60 than I did at at 40. And I'm probably many times healthier at 60 than I was at 40 as well. And, you know, I had to change otherwise I was headed for, you know, what's the book Outlive?

46:10 I don't know if you've ever read it or listened to it or anything but that. He calls them the Four Horsemen, which are cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's. And you know, you want to avoid those four at least. And if you can do that, you'll probably, you'll probably have a much healthier like a health span, not necessarily lifespan. But if, and I was having this conversation with someone yesterday, if I'm going to live to 85, you know, I want to live to 84 3/4 really healthy and doing the things I want to do and then maybe have a short sickness and die. But I don't want to be sick for the last 10 years of my life with dementia or whatever it is. So I think.

46:52 People are, I think attitudes are changing. You're absolutely right about how that's been, but I think a lot of people are starting to understand what taking care of themselves, the benefits of taking care of themselves and, and what that does in terms of changing their lives and, and their outlook. And all that. But we both go to LDI and then we see friends that in many cases I've known for 40 years and I'm just looking at them and I'm thinking, please make changes in your life. And you can't get too preachy, even though every once in a while I do on the podcast, sometimes in person with people. And you know, I just, I want everybody to live a long, happy life is what it comes down to. I.

47:34 Think that the younger generation, he's placing more value on work life balance, on taking care of themselves. I do think there's a generational shift in attitude that is starting to happen. Yeah, I would agree. And yeah. Yeah, I would agree. And I, I think a lot of the younger people today, like even, you know, if you look at people on Instagram and stuff, they they're putting a big priority on how they look and, and I think how they feel as well. And you see a lot more things about good food and exercise and healthy living and organic eating and blah, blah, blah. So but you know, for me, a lot of the problems in our industry seem to focus less than they need to on education. Like let's deal with the the problem after it happens versus why don't we avoid it happening.

48:26 And so I'm glad that behind the scenes is getting involved in some of that stuff. I think it's important. And you know, you said something that I just want to come back to for a minute about if you need something done, you ask someone in the industry. And our folks are so used to solving everyone else's problems and being the go to people that when something does happen to them, they are too slow to ask for help themselves. True. And it's something that we see with the grants is that people often wait until they're in really dire circumstances to come and ask for help because they're reluctant to.

49:13 But when they wait that long, it becomes much harder for us and for any of the other assistance organizations to help. So one of the messages we'd like to get out to people is don't wait until you're about to be evicted. Don't wait until you're about to be foreclosed on your home or until your utilities are going to be turned off. If you get injured, reach out for help. If you know you're going to have surgery next month, it's not too early to reach out and say, hey, I'm going to have surgery, I'm going to be out of work for three months, can I apply? It's much easier for us to assist when there's a little bit of. Yeah, Well, I want to get into some of the details of that too, because like you already said, basically you can only give out so much money to each individual because there are a lot of individuals and you're you're run on, on people's generosity. You know, how much funding you get is how much funding you give.

50:09 And so obviously the industry needs to do a better job of, of supporting behind the scenes. I know there are other there are other charities now and you know, my podcast supports one of them just because it's how it got put together. But and I think you and I talked after the fact, after we did it with this coffee thing that we do with Geezers Grind Coffee and it supports Roby backstage. But you know how so like I know some people who just keep falling back off the wagon, back off the wagon. They're either, you know, addicted to drugs or they're Alcoholics or they're just, they cause themselves mayhem over and over again.

50:54 And I know one guy in particular who goes from living in a nice apartment to living in his car to living on the road on tour for six months to back living in his car. And sadly, like within that, there's so many problems that for some reason are not being addressed or there's just not enough education or whatever it is. But like, first of all, if I'm out making 1002 thousand a week, whatever the numbers are these days on a tour and I'm being fed every day and I'm being housed every night, I'm not spending money on that stuff. Why can't I at least find a way to smooth things out so that money will sustain me if I don't have work for three months when I get back home?

51:39 And so the question that I'm building up to here, sorry I'm spending so much time explaining it, but what do you do about repeat offenders? So someone comes to you, gets a grant, you help them get out of their car, back into an apartment, and six months later they come back to you and say I'm in my car again, I need more money. How do you handle that type of a situation? I want to address a few things here. One is that so almost all of the industry charities work together on a regular basis. Robe has not joined that group of charities, but we work daily with the Entertainment Community Fund, the Motion Picture and Television Fund, Music Cares, the Will Rogers Foundation and the AFC up in Canada, and we all work together to assist clients. Since we're all limited in how much we can do. By working together we can provide more and some of the larger organizations Entertainment Community Fund, Music Cares, Motion Picture and Television fund have extensive programs.

52:44 They have financial literacy programs right which try to help people learn how to manage their finance better. They they have treatment programs. Entertainment Community Fund has a wonderful program. Well, they will provide case management, long term case management to someone who is dealing with any kind of a substance use issue from helping place people in a, in a rehab facility to managing, you know, helping to manage once they get out. So there are tremendous resources available to industry people and part of it is making sure that the industry knows those resources. Are they and we, because we all refer to each other, that helps is, you know, if if someone applies to us and I know that they have an issue, I can refer them, you know, to the appropriate organization. So it's really the industry working together to help everyone, you know, as much as possible. We're a very small charity by comparison. Now those other charities, one of the reasons that they're much bigger is going back to the fundraising thing, because they also help performers, they tend to get big name stars fundraising for them.

53:58 But because we only assist the backstage people, our fundraising is really, you know, as we like to say one bake sale at a time. It's very much, you know, we're entirely funded by the industry, for the industry and, and fundraising is frankly more difficult because we don't have those stars signing on. But it is, it's really working with everyone to provide. There is a lot of good education out there. We wish there was more. We wish everyone had financial education from a very young age. So I can't tell you the number of people we see who earn 6 figure salaries and don't have a dime saved. It's and that's really. Frustrating a ton of those people. Yeah, yeah.

54:41 It's really frustrating. So we do wish there was better education, but there there is a fair amount out there and there are work programs. Entertainment community has a wonderful work program. So if you're in a downtime between jobs, they can help you identify, you know, temporary jobs, you can find that kind of thing. So there's a lot of really good stuff out there and we're trying to do a lot of work, particularly in the area of substance use. We have a wonderful task group where we have our clinical advisor, if you will, is the head of addiction Services for the Entertainment Community Fund. And we've had other clinicians specializing addiction join us over the last couple of years.

55:25 And then our task group members are all people in recovery, well known people in the industry in recovery, some of them in short term, some of them in long term who are very open about the issues that they faced and very willing to share their experience, their lived experience with others in the industry. And it's a remark important. People, yeah, that that part is important, obviously. Yeah, simple things like they, they produced a document which I think is really terrific of. They have all been in the situation of in this industry, you get your job at the bar, That's where you get your next job, right, Is you got to go to the bar after working and socialize and that's where you get. But what happens if you feel like you need to do that, but you're in recovery and you don't want to come out of recovery? Or David Linscombe did a whole section on what happens when you have to take clients to dinner and they expect you to drink. In some cultures it's actually almost required. How do you deal with that?

56:22 And this is just, excuse me, their tips and tricks for how they have managed this over the years and it's very helpful. Well, I have something to add to that. Imagine being at LDI and deciding you don't want to spend all night at the Circle Bar at the Hard Rock anymore. You know, because I, I consciously did that. I don't know, eight years, seven years ago, I don't even remember when it was, but maybe even 10 or 12 years ago. But I was just like, you know, I've been doing this every LDI, every night of LDI for 20 years. I just don't want to do it anymore. And so I'd be like, OK, got to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back and boom, I'm up to my hotel room. And you know, I'd take some hell for it the next day or whatever, but I don't care.

57:12 I felt better at my morning meetings, you know, and plus today I don't drink hardly at all. Like a couple glasses of wine is a big night for me, you know, So it loses its appeal, that's for sure. And. David Linscombe talks very movingly about the very first LDI he had to go to in recovery. And he was terrified hard. And someone advised him to find an ally, to find someone who would assist him through that period. And he did, and it proved to be an enormous benefit to him. Yeah, Well, I think the words getting around like we're becoming inch by inch a little bit healthier. You know, again, there's still a lot of people, and I won't mention names and embarrass anyone, but there's a lot of people that I look at and they need to make some lifestyle changes or, you know, the future is not going to be as long and happy as it should be.

58:09 And you know, it's sad for that, but yeah, no, it's an important topic. The whole sobriety thing and healthy living and yadda yadda yadda. Just gonna do a plug that currently the task group is working on a webinar which we'll be offering sometime in the fourth quarter, which is about why and and it's focused on dealing with substance abuse in the workplace. But it talks about why you would want to help someone and the fact that recovery is possible and these people can become productive helping members of society and of the of the workplace and how you go about help some helping someone.

58:53 And it's just filled with lots of good tips because most people who have to, especially people in leadership positions who have to deal with someone who works with or for them, who is dealing with subsidies problem, have had no training. This goes back to the education. I've had no training on what to do, on how to approach the person, on what kinds of resources to offer them, and the purpose of this is to give them a start to give them some ideas on how to approach that situation. So when is that webinar? It's fourth quarter, I think you said. We are. Yeah, we don't. Have so it's not scheduled. Just finishing, we're just finishing up the script. We actually did a, a test presentation in the winter for an invited group.

59:35 They gave us some wonderful comments about the structure of it and we've gone back and retooled some of it and we're going to be doing rehearsal in another couple weeks and if all goes well then we will start to roll it out in the the fourth quarter. Well, please send me information on it and we'll be happy to share it on our socials and stuff as well and, and get people signing up for it. But I want to go back to a question that I asked you. So the guy who is living in his car and you support him and help him get into an apartment. He goes out on tour with the. Rolling Stones for another three or four months comes back. He spent all the money while he was on the road and within a couple of weeks of being back home, he's living in his car again and calls you and says, Lori, what do I do?

1:00:22 Well, so let me make one thing clear and that is that we are unable to assist people due to lack of work. We're too small a charity. So our focus is on assisting those who are dealing with serious illness or injury. And there are times when some of the other charities are able to assist, like during the strike they got some special grants. But for the most part, that is everyone's focus. And so, you know, you try to have a conversation with people about putting together a rainy day fund and, and helping that. But you do, I mean, we even find, for example, people who, let's say they have been injured to the point where they're going to be going on permanent disability and yet they're maintaining the same lifestyle that they had when they were working and earning 6 figure incomes.

1:01:15 And so it's a very difficult conversation, but it's one you have to have about looking at your change circumstances and coming to face the reality of those change circumstances. Yeah. And maybe you need to move into a less expensive place or even a less expensive city. You can't eat out every night of the week or go to Starbucks every single day or, you know, those kinds of things. So it is it's trying to get people to to face reality. It is not easy to do, but there is a limit to how much any of the charities can do. And for us, our focus really was on the people who are seriously ill or injured. Now we, we do have people where our grants are designed to be one time grants, but we will occasionally do another grant if someone, for example, we know their recovery is likely to take longer. We have a gentleman who had an amputation and he's come back to us and permanent disability.

1:02:14 He's he's been trying to get on permanent disability. It keeps getting delayed because that's how disability works. And he's in a very difficult place because he's not capable of earning his living right now. So, yeah, you know, we did another grant to assist him, but it's it's really, these are designed As for all the charities. These are designed not to support people. This is not another source of income. Yeah, yeah. This is to get you through a difficult place. Yeah, well, I'm sure other than fundraising, I would think that saying no is probably the hardest part about your job. Oh, absolutely. Because people come to you in great distress. It is absolutely an extremely difficult part because the opposite is so true. It's so rewarding when you can call someone and say, yeah, we're gonna pay your rent this month. Yeah.

1:03:03 And you know, the reactions you get are just so. Crying. A lot of crying I guess, yes. But it is, yeah, it's very difficult because people don't necessarily want to take ownership of of their actions. I want to mention one other grant that we do, and this is for entertainment technology professionals. We are unable to offer it to family members, but specifically for the professionals in our industry, if they want to begin to see a therapist or if they need to go into addiction rehab, we can assist with the cost of those. It's called our counseling, counseling grants. And we again, they're limited in amount, but we can generally get, you know, whether it's paying a copay for a therapist or if they don't take insurance, you know, getting them X number of sessions, at least get them started on that journey.

1:03:57 And people have found it extremely helpful. That's fantastic. Yeah. I can't remember the organization that we just had a few weeks ago who has therapists available at shows like Coachella. Yeah, that's wonderful for the big shows that can afford to do that. It's fabulous. Now obviously the majority of events can't, can't do that. One of the things though, that we did when we did our survey of the industry in 2019, we heard a common refrain and it was how frustrated people in the industry were by not being able to find a therapist who understood anything about working in the industry.

1:04:42 Yeah. Right. They didn't want to go in and spend their time educating the therapist. They didn't want to be asked if they could get tickets for them for the the concert the next night. Or, you know, we had one person say that who worked in the film industry and say that they're, the therapist said if they get anxious during the day, just to take an hour off and go for a walk in the middle of the afternoon. Oh my goodness. You know, so we created something called the Entertainment Industry Therapist Finder, and it only includes therapists that have a knowledge of the industry, either because they've already had clients who were professionals in the industry, So in effect, they've been educated by those clients, or they used to work in our industry themselves.

1:05:22 And we've discovered that the mental health field is an extraordinarily popular second career for people from our industry. There are lots of therapists out there who spent a lot of years working in the industry themselves. So when someone goes to the Finder to search, they know that the person is already going to have a pretty good basic understanding of the lifestyle, the hours, the stresses, the pressures, you know, all that type of thing. And it it really saves a lot of time, a lot of energy, because they can start to get right into what their issues are. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. I mean, it's, you know, it's massive. That's such a massive thing.

1:06:03 Sorry, I'm trying to look this up. It's Chris Lyle is part of the organization and I've just forgotten the name of his organization sadly. There are touring career workshop. Workshop, yeah. Touring Touring Career Workshop. Yeah, it's great. And the other thing along those lines that we've tried to do, you probably know that we're offering mental health first aid training for the industry, right? And Mental Health First Aid is actually a program that was developed in Australia in 2008 and it's now taught in about 25 countries around the world. And the premise of it is very similar to first aid. If you take a first aid course, you don't come out knowing how to diagnose someone. You're not a doctor, you're not going to perform surgery, but you know how to stabilize someone until you can get them to professional help.

1:06:52 And mental health first Aid is very similar. It's learning how to recognize the signs and symptoms that someone may be having either a mental health issue or substance use issue and how to start a conversation with them, how to listen non judge mentally, how to direct them to appropriate professional resources, etcetera. And we think it's it's a really terrific tool for people to have. And we would love to see, you know, every film set, every touring crew, every venue have a mental health first aid. Are there that people can either go to for themselves or you could go to and say, hey, I'm sort of worried about, you know, Pete over there. I think maybe he's having some issues.

1:07:33 I don't know him very well. I don't want to approach him, but could you maybe start a conversation with him? But just someone who has the support of management to do what they're doing. And we've trained almost 1500 industry people so far. Wow. It is a standard curriculum, but what we've done is our trainers are all entertainment industry professionals. So they put the classes through the lens of the entertainment industry. And we limit attendance to only those who work in the entertainment industry so that the conversations are are very real and very pertinent. It's one. Specific experience. Yeah, and people have really felt they've gotten a lot out of those classes. I remember you mentioning this to me before. I think it was back in, you know, in during COVID times when I had this gentleman who I felt was going to maybe do himself some harm and I didn't have time to take a, a course at that time.

1:08:28 I was just like, tell me what to say to him. I want to help this guy. But I think that's an excellent program. So how? How did when and how does that all work? So we offer classes, virtual classes, one to three times a month. We took August off, but we start up again in September. I'll post the schedule next week for September And people sign up. You do about two hours of online pre work they call it. And then there's a six hour live virtual class with a trainer and it's extremely interactive. You go and breakout room sometimes there's a lot of interactive discussion. So it goes very quickly and at the end you go back online and do about 10 minutes worth of stuff and then you download your certificate saying you're a mental health first aider and it's valid for three years. And we also do private classes.

1:09:23 So we offer private classes of groups of 10 to 25 and those can be virtual or they can be in person. And I'll just mention for any of your listeners who are members of the IATSE, the training trust Fund will reimburse the cost of the class if you take the class and complete it. So, and we have thanks to Chauvet, we also have a limited number of scholarships available for those who are not going to be reimbursed by the IA or by their companies. Very cool. So you said you're going to post the schedule. So where is that? Where will you post that? If you go to our website so BTS help BTS is behind the scenes help HE lp.org/mhfa for mental health first aid. You will see information about the classes, what's involved, how to register and from there you once we get the the September schedule up because our trainers are all working professionals in the industry, right? Excuse me, we have to wait till they get their work schedules before we can schedule.

1:10:30 Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything's always a little flexible in in our world, you know, I mean it honestly, I talk to so many people all the time. Like, I think it would be something that I would even do, you know what I mean? Like it. It's just something that I think if you're around a lot of people and especially a lot of people in our industry, in our industry, it's not that people are quacky or anything, like we're not a bunch of gypsies like most of the world thinks or whatever. It's just it's an interesting lifestyle. You know, it's a very unusual lifestyle that lends itself to, you know, running into some of these problems, sometimes loneliness and. Everything.

1:11:12 Lead you down past. Exactly. Yeah. You know there's so many stressors in the industry, the long hours, etc. And you know if you take first aid, chances are you may never actually have to use what you learned. If you take mental health first aid, you'll find you use it every single day in your interactions with others. That makes sense. In so many different ways, you'd be amazed and and some of the stories I've heard about people using it in completely unexpected situations. So going back to the grants, what kind of scale are we talking about as far as the number of applications that come in? Like are you getting 100 applications in a month or or 500 applications in a month?

1:11:58 Like is it? No, it's not that high. And part of it, I'll tell you a an interesting dilemma that all the charities face. Part of it is getting the word out that this help is available and union members know about us because they have a centralized point of information. They read their newsletters, they go to their union meetings and all. For example, the international, the IATSE has been wonderful about getting the word out about our grants, about our mental health initiative. All the locals I've spoken to many, many locals around the country. It is the non union freelance population that doesn't have a central point where they get their information. They don't necessarily go to the industry trade shows or read the industry magazines or you know, that type of thing. So reaching those people has always been the most difficult thing for all of the assistance organizations. How?

1:13:04 Do we tell them our services are available to them? Well, it's that and then it's this incredible pride and ego of people not wanting to ask for help. I would guess is the next problem as well. Yeah, yeah, no, it's an interesting thing. Like you've got money and and funding available and programs available to help these people, but you can't get to them to let them know. It's absolutely. It's incredible. Marcel. I want to go back before I forget and and make one comment because you've mentioned a couple times when you've tried to help this person who you find is at risk. Yeah, there's a lot of information about suicide prevention on our website. And we joined a program run by the Crisis and Suicide Lifeline and its partners called Be the 1/2. And we have information on the side about the warning signs to keep an eye out for, because the more familiar you are with them, the more likely you are to spot them. And then there are sort of five steps that are agreed by all the experts that you should take if you're concerned about someone. But what do they really mean?

1:14:07 The first one is ask. And of course, everyone says should you? So what we've done is we've written some sample guidance and examples and those are posted on the website. You can download it as a PDF, as a PowerPoint. That literally can be a step by step guide to you to help if you're trying to help someone through a crisis. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was. Like everyone know that that's there to use at any time. Right. I was just very concerned about not, you know, again, I don't even know this person. So, you know, for me to say the wrong thing to trigger him, to make that, you know, effort to, to off himself, you know, I didn't want to say or do the wrong thing, you know, and, and that was the biggest thing.

1:14:53 It wasn't, you know, I, I can usually talk someone through a problem pretty well. I'm really, I've always said I'm, I'm very good at solving everyone else's problems, just not always so good at my own. But I don't listen to my own advice. But yeah, you know, it's so important, like in our industry. And again, I learned it more than I did at any other point in my career during COVID. And it was because I was doing a weekly Zoom call with people. And I'd have people call me right after the Zoom call and say, hey, you know, I know we were talking about this thing, but I've got a real problem. And would you mind spending 30 minutes with me? And I would and I will, you know, by the way, I'm putting this out there right now. If anybody needs anyone to talk to and you want to listen to my dumb a, you know, call me anytime, I'm happy to to at least try to help somebody through a problem or a challenge that they're having or whatever. Well, and you know, a big, a big part of that and, and this is the first bit of the guidance is you absolutely should ask someone how they're doing and really mean it and ask them if they're thinking about harming themselves, because all of the research shows that's not going to put the idea into someone's head.

1:16:04 I've done a couple of presentations with the executive director of the Lifeline and there were two things he said that really have stuck with me. First of all, asking some of the thing about harming themselves is not going to put that idea into their head. You're not going to bring it up if they, they will have already thought of it if they're really serious. So don't worry about doing that. But asking tells them that you care and it gives them permission to open up and it gives them permission to unburden themselves and to talk about what's going on. And that's a big part of it. If you can learn to listen and to listen non judge mentally, that's a huge, huge way to help someone. The other thing he said, which really stuck with me, is more suicides are prevented every year by someone the person knows than by a mental health professional. So it means that all of us are the first line of defense, if you will.

1:16:57 Definitely. And I completely agree with that, by the way. We're the people who are around them and see them every day and we know that we can see that there's a problem developing, you know, before it's all the way at, you know, I'm holding a gun right now, you know exactly. You can see it coming. So as far as applying for a grant, what what does that process look like? There is a a formal application process. It is a can be a little bit daunting to people and there's a few reasons for that. First of all, of course, we need to assure that our all our donors that we are spending their money appropriately. Yeah.

1:17:38 The other thing that's been going on is that all of the charities have been seeing fake applications in the last few years, fraudulent. Applications terrible. So we have to do a lot of vetting and but part of it is, is a really good exercise for people. For example, there's a page where you have to to show your monthly budget, and most people have never sat down and actually figured out what that is. Yeah. Really good exercise for people to understand what their money is being spent on. Yeah. And we require verification, medical verification of whatever the illness or injury is. So whether that's a letter from a doctor or a summary of a hospital visit or whatever it might be, we do need to see that we asked for someone's most recent copy of their most recent bank statement, right?

1:18:26 Because we want to know that they're not doing a lot of onion and gambling or that kind of thing. Trust me, we've seen that, right? Well. I could imagine, I could imagine at one point you've gotten a call from someone saying, you know, and you say what do you need the money for? And they say well the new iPhone 13 is out and I got to get that because my mine is an iPhone 10 and all my friends have twelves and I need to get the 13 you know. So please give me 1000 bucks. One of the things that we do is all of our grants are vendorized, meaning we pay the landlord, we pay the mortgage company, we pay the utility company, we pay the therapist, right? Because we. Want to ensure it's spent appropriately? Well, cuz chances are it wouldn't be. There's a reason sometimes there's a deeper reason that you're in that position.

1:19:14 That's right. And yeah, so, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So they fill out the application. Supporting, they fill out the application they returned along with the supporting documentation and then it goes to our review committee and they generally meet within certainly within a week of receiving the application and they will review it and they're very diligent. They're very dedicated. It's a wonderful group of people who spend a lot of time reviewing these applications. Very, very compassionate people. And they will determine if a Grant's going to be awarded, how much that grant will be and what it should be used for. And then I'll coordinate with the grant recipient immediately. I can issue payment immediately, you know, So if it's a check or however it's done or if they're putting me directly in touch with the therapist and I'm working out the details of the therapist or I'm doing something through an online portal, but payment can be issued essentially. Same day as the grant is awarded, or within a day or two. So the whole process is a couple weeks maybe. Yeah.

1:20:16 I mean, it's much of it is dependent on someone submitting a complete application with all the sporting documentation. If we get that, then it's a quick process. Yeah. If we don't get that, then it can dry out for a lot longer in terms of getting that information from people. Yeah. But you know, we work with them, we coach them through the process as much as possible so that it's not, not too difficult. Do you still do the Christmas cards? We do. That's. Wonderful, wonderful crop of Christmas cards this year. So for those who don't know, every year we get designers, everything from Tony Award winners to high school students who design holiday cards for us.

1:21:00 The only criteria we give them is that it has to have a go slide in it, which is of course our logo. And all the proceeds, of course, go to support the work that we're doing. And those are available online at BTS help.org holiday cards. And I've bought them a couple times and everyone who got them loved them and thought it was the most unique card they got or whatever. People outside the industry specifically. But yeah, it's a great program, the holiday cards, and it's been going forever. I mean literally as long as I can remember since the beginning. Of since we started the. Chair the organization? Yeah. Five yeah, we've had wonderful designs this year's crop is is a set of absolutely gorgeous designs so. Yeah, going back quickly, just back to ESTA, you know, how did, how did ESTA like?

1:21:46 So I remember ESTA and you might not know this and I don't know if I've ever brought it up to you, but I remember going to a few ESTA meetings when you were doing the fog and smoke thing. And at the time I was the VP or President of of Martin and we had a fairly large smoke and fog division in our company. And so I thought I just had to show up and hand a check over. And then suddenly I got roped into being in some of these meetings and I was absolutely the wrong person, I will admit, to be in those meetings. I'm not very technical. I'm probably not the most patient person in the world or, or diplomatic. And so to put me in that committee was was probably way more painful for them than it was for me. But how has it evolved from that? Because that was probably 1994 or five when I did that. How?

1:22:42 How did it evolve to where you were no longer there but most recently? Well, sure, I mean 90. The program was formed in 94 and and we were just getting started, but here's what the program is all about. It's industry experts, so technical experts coming together to write standards that, you know, health and safety standards, interoperability standards, etcetera. So it's really, you know, think about things like DMX or ACN, et cetera.

1:23:22 Think about outdoor temporary outdoor structure standards. It's flying performers. It's getting the the experts together to to write a standard that you know, helps to ensure a, a safer or more productive industry, you know, on the control protocol side. So not every rental house doesn't have a gazillion black boxes right sitting in their rental inventory. On the safety side, it's to prevent accidents. You know, the the forensics reports for Indiana, both forensics reports cited the fact that the standard was not followed. And it's this idea again of industry coming together to create standards, having the experts in the field create the standards. And the way that American National Standards accreditation works is once the standard is the draft standard is written, it has to go out to a public review so that anyone with a vested interest in the subject matter can comment on it. And then those those comments have to be reviewed in detail by the task group, by the working group, and they have to be responded to Either, you know, they have to say that's a really good idea and we're going to incorporate that into the standard, maybe make some adjustments, or they might say, we've considered that and we've rejected that comment and here's why.

1:24:39 And they have to offer you a reason. So it's really a consensus program. Create consensus standards for the industry, by the industry. And so you want to have the right people in the working groups. You don't want to have the guy who writes the check not sitting in the working group meeting. Yeah, you don't. Want to have the guy You want to have the guy who designs the machines sitting in the working group? Kind of. Thing I can't remember if I quit or I was thrown out, but it happened pretty quickly. Whatever. It was. I didn't last. Any given time, there are hundreds of people involved in the technical standards program and over the course of its lifetime probably thousands have been involved as standards.

1:25:19 You know, a standard will be worked on and one of the things that Angie requires is that every five years a standard be reviewed and either gets reaffirmed or revised or sunset basically. So just depends on what's going on. But certainly the work in fog and smoke has, you know, they've worked closely with equity, establishing testing standards and all of that. And what it did was it it put to rest a lot of the concerns about using atmospheric effects. You know, it's funny, I just on one of the Facebook forums for lighting design or whatever it was, I saw a fairly active conversation happened just a couple of weeks ago where it was a relatively new designer or lighting tech or whatever it was who had posted that.

1:26:12 You know, basically we're getting a lot of feedback from actors in this play that we're doing, and have you ever run into this before? What should we do? Do we need to get rid of the hazer that we're using? You know, they don't want us to use any haze. They're telling us it's causing them throat problems and they're not able to read their lines and stuff. And it just went on and on and on as far as you can imagine. The comments, everything from actors or a bunch of prima Donna poser wannabes and they're just talking smack all the way to here's the real technical information that you need to know. But the bottom line was it's generally safe. You know, most people are just overreacting. They see smoke so they think it's impacting them like smoke from a firewood and it's it's really not. And there's a.

1:27:06 Lot of information available on Essence Technical Standards program website about. That. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that was, again, that was, I believe the very first standard they tackled for some reason I, you know, and. Not the very, very early, very first standard was the wire rope ladder standard. Yes, yes, and. I'll tell you a very early story about that. There was a fatality at a tour down in Florida and someone sent us a clipping from a newspaper that quoted the OSHA inspector as saying, I don't know what these wire rope ladder things are. We're going to have to look into that. And we overnighted the wire rope ladder standard to that OSHA inspector and he immediately wrote us back and he said, thank you very much. I can now eliminate that from my inquiries. Wow.

1:27:53 Because he. Saw that it had been built to the standard. Wow, that's really cool. So last topic that I want to cover. So a lot of people listening to this are probably younger, and I know it's called Geezers of Gear, but our audience, actually the core of our audience, if I remember correctly, is like 30 to 44 or something like that, the demographic. And so a lot of people in that age group don't remember a company called Production Arts, which was run by a couple of characters named John McGraw and Steve Terry. And the company was ultimately sold, I believe, in the late 90s, early 2000s to Jerry Harrison Production Resource Group. And I think Steve stayed for a while at PRG and then went on to ETC after that.

1:28:44 But John, I believe, as I recall, 'cause I think he told me himself that I'm just getting out of the business and he retired. And so he was one of the smart and lucky ones. And so this is, of course, Laurie's husband, John McGraw. And honestly, I haven't spoken to him since. So what's he up to? The sale actually happened in June of 1998 and he has of course was active on a number of boards, including the Gilbert Helmsley board for a number of years. What he has done has allowed me to do what I do.

1:29:25 Yeah, he takes care of everything in our lives so that I've been able to focus on 1st ESTA and then behind the scenes and has allowed me to work the kind of hours I do and put the kind of energy and focus into what I do. He has been my supporter in every possible way that you can imagine behind the scenes for for me and for the organizations. Yeah, well, I mean, he was a, he was a monster of a human in the business. And you know, production arts, for those who don't know who production arts was, you know, they were the standard, they were the gold standard of lighting in our industry.

1:30:08 I mean, they were just such an Immaculate, perfectly built company from a standpoint of, you know, if, if Production arts was doing a, a rental or an install, just basically forget about it. It's going to be perfect. It's going to be great. And their standards were so much higher than anyone else's. And I know that because when I started at Martin and I went to New York and I went to call on those guys, Steve Terry put me through the ringer. And for the first probably four or five visits, there was just no way he was going to use anything with a Martin logo on it because in his mind it just wasn't up to what it needed to be. And he was right.

1:30:52 I mean, it just wasn't, it wasn't as good as other stuff that was out there in the market. And because his standards and, and John's standards were so high, we just didn't meet that, that level. And eventually we did. And eventually we started selling stuff to production arts. But I always really looked at them as the gold standard company. And and, you know, I think there is still a hole in the market left by them, to be perfectly honest. Yeah. No, lots and lots of people miss that company because not only did they set the gold standard in terms of of the product they put out, whether it was a rental product or permanent installation or whatever, but they also said it in terms of of customer service and customer care and the nurturing of new talent in the industry and you know, all of that type of thing.

1:31:42 Yeah, I completely agree with you, completely agree with you. So please tell him I said hello. He probably won't even Remember Me by this time, but tell him I said hello. And if he ever wants to come on and talk about how screwed up the theatrical lighting is today or whatever, I'm happy to have him on the podcast. He is a geezer. He's he's, he meets the standard of geezerdom. And so we would be happy to have him on. But thank you so much, Lori. I always love hearing from you, and I have a great appreciation for behind the scenes and the things you're doing. And I know that you would do 20 times more given the budgets, because then you could hire more people and then you could solve more problems and help more people. But this is the challenge with charities. Of course it is.

1:32:32 Yeah, you can only. Spend. Yeah. You know, we've touched on a number of the the programs within our mental health initiative, but just to let people know there's a lot more there and if they go to btshealth.org/mentalhealth, they can see all of the various tools and resources. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I know, you know, you take on a lot of the social stuff too, right? Like a, you know, whether it's racism or, or just accepting everyone and inclusion and all of those different topics that are so important these days, which is also good. You know, I know we talked a lot about things like, you know, substance abuse and, and health and, and sick people and things like that, but you're really trying to sort of raise up the the standards of how people treat each other in the industry as well. One of the things that our survey showed was how prevalent bullying and harassment and intimidation still were in industry.

1:33:32 And we knew that. But what surprised us was that we heard it across every part of the entertainment industry. We heard it from every age group, every racial and ethnic identity, every sexual and gender identity. And so we have a really extensive stop Bullying campaign, lots of tools and resources available on the website. And one of the things that we offer that people have found really helpful is we offer thanks to the sponsorship of the IATSE International Court Bystander Intervention in the Entertainment Workplace webinars. So these are just free 90 minute webinars that teach people real tools, actionable items that they can use if they're witnessing bullying and harassment happening in the workplace that they can use to safely intervene. And it's given people a real set of of tools to go out and, and make a difference in their workplaces if they see that kind of behavior happening.

1:34:32 So drop the, the web URL again for us and, and how people can reach out. And I want people to share this, to share it on your socials and, and share it, You know, obviously besides funding and besides all of these other things, one of the things Lori said a whole bunch of times here is get the word out. And, you know, you're not spending 10s of thousands of dollars every month on Google advertisement or on Facebook ads or whatever. So sometimes it's hard to get or it's easy to get lost in the noise that's going on in the world. And so yeah, share your your web stuff.

1:35:13 If so, BTS help.org/mentalhealth will get you to all these programs. It'll get you to stop bullying, campaign to mental health first aid to the suicide prevention information and everything else that we offer. And of course, there's a link there to the main page where you can find out more about our grants. You can donate, you can find out about a new program we have called Ghost Like Groups, which is industry people coming together to do something they love riding a bicycle, running, seeing movies, reading books, whatever it is and and turn it into fundraisers for the charity so that they're helping their colleagues. So there's lots of information available on the website. So good.

1:35:53 Well, thank you Lori, appreciate having you on and again, say hello to your husband and best of luck with everything. You going to be at LDII. Will. Yes, I'll. See you there together. A terrific Wellness lounge for LDI this year. Awesome. I'm doing something secret at LDI. Ellen knows, but nobody else knows, so it'll be fun. All right, Lori, thanks. Have a great day.