October 16, 2026 – Small Words of Leadership Shawn Hunter, Swimm with Timm Timothy Heffron and ICANN Internet Infrastructure Kim Davies

00:04 Intro 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:21 Jim Beach: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. Thank you so much for being with us. We’ve got a great show for you today. A lot of stuff we are going to cover. We’re going to start off with Shawn Hunter talking about Mindscaling. You know that I am fascinated by the idea that we can make ourselves smarter, that we are. Our brains are neuroplastic, that our exhibit neuroplasticity that they can change over time. We can change our synapses. And so anyone who uses or talks about the idea of changing and improving our brains, I want to talk to. After that, we’re going to talk with Tim Heffron.

01:03 Jim Beach: He has built an amazing business in his backyard in his pool. He is a swimming instructor. You may know that this is something I care a ton about because we have rented our pool in our backyard many, many a time, and we had, we raised 4 kids with a pool. And all of them went through the baby Y or the swimming infant program. So you will hear Tim and I talking about that. After that, we are going to speak with Kim Davies. He is from the internet. I’m being serious.

01:37 Jim Beach: The organization that runs the internet that creates the backbone that makes it all work for the rest of us, who does all of the thankless hard work, is with us here today. Tim is going to change or tell us about huge changes going on in the backbone, the infrastructure of the internet, and what we need to know and how we will be affected. It’s just like the what was it called? The clock ticking over to 2000, um, the new millennium. Anyway, I don’t remember. But anyway, of course, it’s not going to be a failure. Going to be a great success. We will learn about that from Kim.

02:17 Jim Beach: And then we have a Quick Ten. What more fun could I throw in for you than a Quick Ten? So thanks for being with us

02:36 Jim Beach: We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us today. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Shawn Hunter to the show. He’s had a really interesting career back a couple decades ago. He started a company with his father that videotaped and created learning lessons for leaders, and it was a huge success.

02:58 Jim Beach: They sold that business for [amount unclear] dollars. He went on and became a vice president of leadership there at the company called Skillsoft. He was there until 2015 and then he started his own company called Mindscaling. It’s a leadership development and learning company. It helps organizations build stronger leaders and better teams. In addition to Mindscaling, he is also a LinkedIn learning instructor, an author of a new book called Small Words of Leadership. Shawn, welcome to the show. How you doing?

03:29 G. Shawn Hunter: I’m doing great. Thanks for the introduction and the reference to 100000000s of dollars.

03:36 Jim Beach: Yes, I was really impressed by that. I mean, that makes you and Elon, the world’s 1st and 2nd trillionaire. So I am impressed.

03:43 G. Shawn Hunter: Yeah, it hasn’t ruined my life.

03:46 Jim Beach: Yeah. Well, you know, we’re not known for our accuracy here. We’re more about the feeling than the accuracy, you know, 200000000, 180,000. Same thing to us. I feel you Tell us about Mindscaling.

03:57 G. Shawn Hunter: Oh, Mindscaling is a company that I constructed after it’s true, we sold our 1st company targeted learning to Skillsoft. So maybe some of your listeners have heard of Skillsoft, it’s kind of a big e-learning company. But anyway, I stayed there for almost 10 years because I love the people and I love the nation. And then I had to leave and start this new company, Mindscaling. So we’re on a mission. To build humanity and human interactions into the workplace alongside AI, not in place of.

04:31 Jim Beach: Okay. How do you use the AI?

04:33 G. Shawn Hunter: Oh, well, basically, a lot of our content talks about how to use AI as a cognitive prosthesis, not to surrender to it. So, I mean, if you ask AI any kind of question, however idiotic, it will give you eloquence. I mean, it will give you absolute poetry in response, and then you can think that’s divine. So I argue that the real test nowadays is to have taste, to have experience, to have wisdom and increase the quality of the question itself and use eye as a sparring partner.

05:06 Jim Beach: I like that. I like that a lot I’ve tried to give it, you know, uh, teach it irony and deceit and uh, all the other things that AI is going to need to take over the world and kill us all. But I had gone through and said, that was a joke. You should have seen that that was a joke. And I think it pays attention to me more and knows that I do joke with it. And it’s actually gotten some of my jokes, you know?

05:38 Jim Beach: Um, you know, I’m using AI right now to write a book and we’ve written 3 books together, AI and I, and I joked the other day. Let’s start volume four. It was like, no, no, no, I know you’re teasing me. I actually learned that I was teasing it.

05:58 G. Shawn Hunter: Oh, okay. That’s good. I thought it was going to ask you where John Connor was to stop Skynet.

06:03 Jim Beach: I’ve had that conversation with it as well. I’m very scared of AI, Shawn. I, I don’t know that this ends well. I’m not… I mean, I love using it, but I believe in the conspiracy theories. What about you?

06:17 G. Shawn Hunter: Yeah, I, look, I do too. I listen to all these guys. Like Nate Soares and and and Roman, whatever his last name is, and they are 100%, you know, the, if you follow them and listen to them, that, that AI is going to kill us all, not intentionally, not malevolently, not maliciously, just by in the same way that, you know, ants get crushed under a skyscraper. Yes.

06:43 Jim Beach: What a great analogy. Wow, that’s…

06:45 G. Shawn Hunter: Well, I mean, they say they say the AI leaders say, well, they’re creating gods, right? And the gods will be able to do anything, but the gods will then be slaves to us, the humans who then can direct them to do anything we say. This is sort of like, uh, as you’ve all Harari said, it’s kind of like explaining bond markets and financial fluctuations to a cow.

07:10 Jim Beach: Are your clients? Asking about AI? Are they, uh, worried about, what are they asking? What are they wanting help with?

07:18 G. Shawn Hunter: Well, I mean, there’s a lot of in in industry, I hear a lot of AI optimism, and I hate hear a lot of, you know, AI integration and allow the AI and token accumulation to take over your work incrementally over time and a lot of a lot of hype on AI adoption. So, you know, we are creating content about how to do it ethically, conscientiously, critically, and still retain your humanity. I mean, a lot of, look, what I do on the side is I run a dog walking business called wagon wheels.

07:52 G. Shawn Hunter: And we have a bus, and it’s called wagon wheels, and we drive around the neighborhood and pick up dogs and take them hiking, and I, so one of the best ways to stay grounded is to get out and have adventure.

08:07 Jim Beach: I agree with that. I love that business. That sounds like a really fun one if you like dogs. True. True. Yes. How is that business doing?

08:17 G. Shawn Hunter: Oh, it’s great. It’s actually great. I mean, the truth of the matter is, I personally don’t do a ton of the hiking myself. There’s 2 people who operate it and they absolutely love it. But, um, you know, talking about bringing the humanity back into, to work, you know, they, they, they drive around and help these abandoned dogs are stuck inside and take them out adventuring throughout the day and it gives great satisfaction and joy to the community, the animals, the walkers, you know, it’s, it’s fantastic.

08:49 Jim Beach: I bet that business, though, would be a leading indicator of a recession. That’s the thing you would cut first. So that’s why I asked how business is dealing. Because I think you’ll see a recession coming before anyone else. Just like Home Depot knows 6 months ahead of the recession is coming.

09:08 G. Shawn Hunter: Oh, interesting.

09:09 Jim Beach: Right. People stop buying the mulch and the and the and the perennial plants and the power tools. I think the Home Depot indicator is one of the best indicators for a recession. Um, but anyway, I was just wondering about that. Let’s get back to the important stuff. Small Words of Leadership. What’s the difference between we and I? I sounds a lot better, Shawn.

09:34 G. Shawn Hunter: Well, I mean, I do put forth a model in the book. I mean, towards towards the end of the book, I talk about the 3 levels of conversations that we’re having on the surface. There’s the words you use. But there’s an internal conversation about the story, the narrative you’re telling yourself about why it was important for you to say those things. And then, of course, what everybody in the room hears is the cultural conversation. So, I mean, for example, you know, you’re sitting around in a meeting trying to decide what to do, you could be a landscape architecture company or you could be an IT company or maybe a retail chain.

10:15 G. Shawn Hunter: And then on the surface, you say you, you interrupt somebody else on the team and you say, whoa, let me just clarify that. But internally, your internal narrative is I need to demonstrate expertise. I need to demonstrate that my wisdom, my hierarchy, my seniority matters. And then the cultural is what everybody hears, everybody hears that hierarchy beats ideas. And that is to say, you didn’t say it explicitly, but that’s what people understand. And then what it does is it creates an environment where people are slow to speak.

10:48 G. Shawn Hunter: So, you know, you asked the question was, what’s the difference between I and we, we is empowering an uplifting and I believe in you and extends trust. I is. Not necessarily ICANN do it alone. I mean, you do need that level of eye, like a sense of competence and capability, but we is what elevates a team.

11:11 Jim Beach: Yes. That makes sense. Are there other words like that that we need to use better options? Sure.

11:16 G. Shawn Hunter: I mean, one of the one of the things that I emphasize in in the book is, and this is really fun. Okay, speaking of dogs, okay. You and your listeners probably know a little bit about guide dog training, you know, and you see them, you know, service dog, in training, please don’t pet. And what happens is most of most dogs make it through the 1st 12, 18 months because they’re following commands. You know, you say, stop, you say, go, you say, step off the curb, lead me down the street, but where they fail, where most dogs fail is when you, as the handlers say, okay, let’s go.

11:56 G. Shawn Hunter: Let’s step off the curb and cross the street, and then they step in the path of a bus. So what it takes is intelligent disobedience. This is where the dog needs to have situational awareness and understand. Oh, no, you know, I I feel I hear the command, I feel the tug of the harness, but I’m not going to step off the curb because I have situational awareness around safety, and that in and of itself is intelligent disobedience. So, My message is you want to frame and couch your words in a way that encourages intelligent dissent and intelligent disobedience. So that’s a, I think, a valuable little piece of advice.

12:38 Jim Beach: Yes, that is interesting. I hadn’t thought… How’d you get the idea for this book? Where did the idea of small words come from?

12:46 G. Shawn Hunter: Oh, it’s interesting. I joke that a lot of my books are kind of self-help for myself. So, so I wrote a book. It’s been almost 10 years now, a book called Small Acts of Leadership, 12 intentional behaviors that lead to big impact. And to my surprise, I mean, this was the 3rd book I published, and kind of to my surprise, it was popular. And a lot of people picked it up and in it, I have actions, you know, that individuals or leaders can take to demonstrate small acts of leadership. And I thought, well, you know, let’s follow that up with the language, the words, what words do you choose in different circumstances?

13:29 G. Shawn Hunter: So that’s that’s how it kind of originated.

13:31 Jim Beach: That book has 205 star reviews, Shawn. That’s amazing. That puts it in the top one percent. Very important.

13:38 G. Shawn Hunter: Hey, right on. I like I like that.

13:41 Jim Beach: That’s impressive. But let me ask you about your new book. I’m not asking this to be a jerk, but just to learn, you have the hardcover price at $180. What’s the thinking behind that? What is the thinking behind that?

13:55 G. Shawn Hunter: This is published by a publisher, a big academic publisher called Routledge. Yeah, they’re gigantic and and they, they control, you know, the pricing and the format and the publication and and all that, all that stuff. So I have very little say in the distribution in the pricing in the format. What I’m responsible for is the content and the ideas and the words on the page and the and the practice. So, that is a puzzle. I should talk to my publisher and see what’s up with that.

14:30 Jim Beach: Well, Routledge does stuff like that. They have academic pricing, which is, you know, designed for a university to buy one to put it in their library and stuff. And that might be what that is. I don’t know. Routledge, though, is very impressive and one of the best out there. I put it in the top 3 or 4 publishers around. So, you know, obviously they know what they’re doing.

14:53 G. Shawn Hunter: Yeah, I, I, right. I have the same reaction. Obviously, they know what they’re doing, but I don’t understand the rationale. I confess. I mean, I came to Routledge Routledge by they acquired my previous titles. So I came to them by inheritance.

15:09 Jim Beach: Ah. I had one of those too. We sold our 1st book, school for startups to McGraw Hill, and then the person who bought it at McGraw Hill, quit and went to Penguin, and so now McGraw Hill had this book that they own that the champion of has disappeared. And so we got really screwed by not having a champion. And so they assigned us another editor and I flew up to New York. Shawn, to meet her because I thought your editor, your book editor was like your best friend. I’ve seen movies like that where your book editor is your best friend. I have seen that in a movie.

15:50 Jim Beach: And she gave me 30 seconds. I flew all the way from Atlanta to New York, got a hotel room for $400 a night, $300 of airfare, 2 taxis, and 30 seconds of time the woman gave me. Yeah.

16:03 G. Shawn Hunter: I mean, my observation is that I think increasingly, and again, this is anecdotal. I have no strong evidence behind this, but my anecdotal and friend evidence is that publishers predominantly rely on the strength of the author’s network and their reach, you know, and and and they wanted to, you know, I’d already published 3 books and they were like, sure, yeah, let’s absolutely. You can, we’ll give you the best terms and you can publish another book. But I think they rely on the strength of the author’s reach.

16:36 Jim Beach: Oh, yes, very much so. Your platform is the number one indicator of whether your book will be published or not, not whether it’s a good book or not. Right. That’s very rare.

16:47 G. Shawn Hunter: So, I mean, back to my point. But I am proud of the content. I’m really pleased with how it came out. I spent a year and a half on this book.

17:00 Jim Beach: Well, uh, the indicators are that you’ll end up with 200 reviews. That’s what you have done in the past. So um, very, very impressive. How are you marketing your business Mindscaling? How do you go out and sell leadership services?

17:14 G. Shawn Hunter: Um, we have a couple different distribution systems. One is through uh, distributors, aggregators. So in this particular industry that I am in, like anything like in video or imagery or even books, um, There are big companies that aggregate quality content. So we produce human centered, learning content, leadership, innovation, creativity, teamwork, et cetera. And then we go to some of the biggest and broadest distributors out there and license it to them for distribution while simultaneously, we go direct to market as well.

17:47 G. Shawn Hunter: So we work directly with predominant, most mostly small and medium size organizations, like think, you know, regional banking systems or, um, you know, a food logistics chain in the Northwest. You know, these kinds of size organizations where we can do a really high touch custom, um, interaction with our clients. We really value that. Again, I’m back to the human side of the equation. And we’re not transactional.

18:11 Jim Beach: All right. That seems like a really great way to do it. That’s a unique method.

18:18 G. Shawn Hunter: Yeah, we try. We try. It’s a lot of fun. I mean, it provides a lot of flexibility and autonomy. I mean, it’s the kind of company that I built. If you rewind the clock. I mean, you, you mentioned at the, at the top of the, the conversation, my 1st company, which we built in the 90s with my father, and what we were doing, this is pre-internet is we’re broadcasting content by geosynchronous satellite. So we’re booking satellite time. Um, and and broadcasting content. Think of like direct TV and pay-per-view.

18:49 G. Shawn Hunter: And so with the advent of live streaming on the internet, we collaborated with, uh, Mark, one of Mark Cuban’s 1st company, uh, called broadband, Broadcast.com, and we, we translated our content into live streaming video and we were one of the 1st to market at the time.

19:07 Jim Beach: Interesting. I would, I was associates with Mark’s partner in that deal and, um, I’m going to put Mark Cuban is one of the luckiest people on Earth, but put him in that category. Yes. Because his partner did 99% of that is my take.

19:24 G. Shawn Hunter: Oh, it’s interesting. One of the things, because I’ve been an entrepreneur for the past 25 years or so, and I always think about all the different elements that go into success. Is it the idea? Is it the team? Is it the business model? Is it the availability of revenue? Is it the the, is it the timing? And and time after time after time? It is, in fact, the market timing that can dictate a large part of success or failure, failure. I’m not saying the team doesn’t matter. It does. Money matters. You can run out of money and crash. But like the least of all valuable is things like business models.

20:05 G. Shawn Hunter: Really, to get it right is timing. If you can get market timing, right, which is really hard to predict.

20:12 Jim Beach: That’s what broadcast did or broadband, whatever that company was called. That’s, they were luckily, they were right there first. They were not good. You know, it wasn’t a good product. No one liked it. No, but it was 1st and yeah, I’m going to put Mark Cuban in one of the luckiest 3 or 4 people ever to have lived category.

20:35 G. Shawn Hunter: You know, it’s funny. Most of the people listening won’t remember this, but they’re using real player at the time, which is a technology that people are going to have to Google. But it was famously clunky, clunky and crashed and, you know, people were trying to use it on 288 modems and anyway. So yes, timing matters.

20:56 Jim Beach: John, let’s talk about LinkedIn for a couple seconds. Give me a couple of LinkedIn tricks.

21:01 G. Shawn Hunter: Um, I don’t claim to be an expert on LinkedIn. I don’t have any top tricks. I did, because of the strength of the content that I’ve produced over the past 10, 15 years or so. They invited me to be a LinkedIn instructor. Um, if you can track down the right people and decision makers and have an idea to share that matters, I do recommend it. It’s, it’s some nice visibility and credibility and you can reach an audience that cares about, about your ideas.

21:32 G. Shawn Hunter: Um, I have an online coach who constantly encourages and reminds me, you know, to record snippets of myself and take little videos of myself and and prepare and publish videos of myself. Again, I don’t use avatars or AI in any of that. I use myself, and so she keeps me under the gun to share meaningful ideas. So I think that is valuable. If you want to achieve reach, on LinkedIn, but again, that’s if you want to achieve reach there.

22:02 Jim Beach: John, great advice. I appreciate you being with us. We are out of time, I’m afraid. How do we find out more? Follow you online, get in touch, get a copy of mine Scaling’s new book. You can find, is it mindscaling.com? Fantastic. That’s a good URL. Fantastic. Easy one. Thank you so much for being with us and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot, Shawn.

22:28 G. Shawn Hunter: Thank you, Jim.

22:29 Jim Beach: And we will be right back.

22:33 Station bumper (multiple voices): Well, that’s a that’s a wonderful pleasure, actually, Taylor. Oh my gosh, I’d love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded cluster. And that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

22:55 Jim Beach: We are back, and thank you so much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great entrepreneur. Please welcome Timothy Heffron to the show. He is president of Timm Swimm, which is, or Timm Swimm. I have a typo here. We’ve got to fix that. And.. The owner and head swim instructor of Swimm with Timm. It is a Massachusetts-based swim instruction program serving children and adults of every skill level and every age. Tim morning. Welcome to the show. How you doing today?

23:26 Timothy Heffron: Good to be with you. Thank you very much for having me.

23:32 Jim Beach: So how young can kids learn to swim?

23:33 Timothy Heffron: Uh, really? The young kids can learn to swim as young at 3 months old. Um, we usually don’t start them till about 6 months old because if you’re starting around 3 months old, you’re really just teaching them reactions or uh, reflexes, you’re not really teaching them anything at that point. When they get to around 6 months old, they can actually start understanding different things and how different things work. So it’s a little, it’s more teaching and less, you know, teaching reflexes, I guess you can say.

24:07 Jim Beach: Don’t the moms freak out when you throw a 6 month old in the pool?

24:11 Timothy Heffron: We’re not. I’m not one of those people who’s for throwing you 6 months in the pool. Um, I like, again, when you’re doing that, you’re teaching the kids reflexes, you’re training the reflexes so that they know what to do. You know, ISR has its place, but it’s in my opinion, it’s not its place up here with us. Um, I am more belie- a believer in teaching the children. The skilled teaching the children rather than training the reflex. So when I get a kid in at 6 months old, we are doing the same kind of things, but we’re doing it in a way with, you know, an amount of cues and different ways of doing it that teach the child to do it so that they enjoy the water and don’t just learn to be afraid of it.

25:02 Timothy Heffron: You know what I mean? I think that’s the biggest problem with ISR and stuff like that nowadays is so many of those kids, if they do learn what they’re trying to learn, great, but they’re almost gonna, they’re almost guaranteed to come away with a bad sense of the water. You know what I mean? And that is definitely not what I’m trying to promote.

25:27 Jim Beach: Right. Well, I have 4 kids. Every one of them went through ISR, infant swimming. What’s it called? Infant swimming.

25:33 Timothy Heffron: Infant swimming rescue, yes.

25:35 Jim Beach: Rescue, that’s it. And we did it around 6 months because we have a pool in the backyard with no fence around between the house and the pool. You know, the house or the fences. No, I, I, kids out.

25:48 Timothy Heffron: I went down to Ocala, Florida to learn swim, float, swim from the people that originated it. And I will say, like I said, it can be an effective tool if, if, if, if, if, if, if necessary, but it’s, there’s no guarantee that, you know, in the situation arises, the kid’s going to, you know, learn that’s going to do what they’re supposed to do. And like I said, a lot of times kids don’t end up like in the water after that. And that’s something that I don’t want to encourage.

26:22 Jim Beach: Yeah, we didn’t do the throw in part. We did the ease in, which, you know, helps the fear part.

26:30 Timothy Heffron: It does. Yeah. E’s in does help.

26:32 Jim Beach: Yeah, so we were big fans of that. But at the end, they all 4 jumped off the diving board wearing their clothes and got out of the pool by themselves.

26:44 Timothy Heffron: That’s fantastic. That’s what you’re trying to get out of that Um, that’s what you’re hoping for. Um, you know, again, I, I like to use flotation aids. Um, we were one of the few programs that you use as progressive backflows because with our kids, we can get a kid at 15 months in without a parent, without an adult. Um, we get them in, swimming around safely, winter flotation, and and again, we’re not trying to teach the kids to stay in forever, but as a tool to, you know, teach the kids to get in, get comfortable, and get swimming. It’s a valuable resource to let them get in and explore.

27:23 Timothy Heffron: Um, I, I’ve always been a big believer in in keeping it positive. Um, and that is something that we really try and do with our lessons.

27:36 Jim Beach: I grew up in Ocala, Florida, right south of there. And there was a guy there named Fleet Peoples who was famous in the area and there’s a park, uh, state park named after him now. He taught something like 50,000 kids to swim in that area. And he had a graduation swim. You had to swim across the lake and back, which was one mile, and I did it when I was 3 year old, and guess what he gave me, a 6 inch long buck knife. He gave me a knife. That’s what the graduation present was, a 6 inch buck knife. I have it right here. There it is.

28:15 Jim Beach: I still have it. It’s got my name written on it and fleet people signed off on it and everything. But isn’t that the dumbest thing to give a kid a 6 inch?

28:27 Timothy Heffron: That is a little crazy to be giving a little kid a buck knife. Yes, that is not not what I would generally be handing out as, you know, promotion to promotional gifts, no.

28:39 Jim Beach: Yeah, that was back in the 60s though. You know, they gave out.

28:44 Timothy Heffron: I hear you.

28:46 Jim Beach: Oh, yeah, that was… That was back when your father threw you in the pool and said, swim.

28:51 Timothy Heffron: Go ahead, you can do it. Yes.

28:54 Jim Beach: And then took you to the top of the ski slope and pushed you down and said…

29:00 Timothy Heffron: And yeah, took you to the top of the black diamond and said, figure it out as you go. Don’t hit a tree. Whenever you do.

29:09 Jim Beach: So why is this your calling, Tim? You’ve had some other professions as well and come back to swimming as your main profession. Why is this your calling?

29:20 Timothy Heffron: You know, honestly, I, I, I am someone who, I’ve done a lot of jobs. I worked UPS. I work Comcast. They work different, you know, car dealerships and recruiting and all that other stuff. And it just, it just comes, it just comes back to, you know, what do you love to do? What do you like to do? I mean, I like what I do and that makes me really good at what I do. Um, you know, I have, I, I, I take a lot of pride in, you know, teaching kids how to swim and I, I, I just enjoy. I think that’s the biggest thing. I just enjoy what I do.

30:00 Timothy Heffron: Um, I, yeah, I did a whole lot of other jobs and I never really enjoyed anything I did. You know, even if I was good at it, like I was really good at UPS. I could run around all day and finish a night hour route in 6 hours. But I never got any joy from that. And that is something that now I, I don’t have that problem. I get, I get a lot of joy and a lot of pleasure out of, you know, doing what I do and doing it well and and helping kids get comfortable with the water.

30:39 Timothy Heffron: I think that is the most important thing to me is not so much, it’s teaching the kids that are that are afraid that there’s nothing to be afraid of because everybody can swim. There’s no such thing as someone who can’t swim. If you can’t swim, it’s just because you don’t know how, it’s just because you haven’t been taught yet. You haven’t learned that everyone can float. It’s just a matter of learning to relax. You know, there’s no, there’s no secret to floating. It’s not like, you know, you have to learn this special technique or handshake to learn how to float. You just have to learn how to relax in the pool.

31:21 Timothy Heffron: And if you can do that, the rest you’re made to do. So it’s really something that everyone can do if they just learn to relax and let themselves do it.

31:32 Jim Beach: Very well said. You make a living doing this, Timothy? Is this your entire business?

31:37 Timothy Heffron: This is my entire Well, we do swim lessons. We do swim team. We’re we’re into lifeguarding for pools. Um, we’re involved with um, pool maintenance and we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re getting involved in more and more stuff as we go because one thing about the Northeast is there’s not a lot of people with a lot of expertise when it comes to running pools or managing pools or, or anything like that. So when you when you are, uh, someone who has knowledge in an area that many people do not. It makes you somewhat of a, of a unicorn, I guess you could say.

32:15 Timothy Heffron: So, you know, we, we, you know, we have people call us up and say, hey, you know, we know it’s June 1st, but we need lifeguards at our pool, you know, and we need to open in 2 weeks, and we can do that kind of thing where you couldn’t go to anyone else, and they do this. No one else could pull that off. But that’s kind of thing that we can because we have a whole lot of aquatics professionals with a whole lot of experience. We have a lot of LGIs. We have a lot of lifeguards, and we, we have the ability to, to adapt quickly into situations when need be.

32:57 Jim Beach: Very good. And… The swim team, that’s… What, how many kids do you have? 100?

33:02 Timothy Heffron: Well, well, we, we, we, we, this is, this is almost, I guess you could kind of say this is the 2nd coming of the swim team. We had got it up to about 60 kids before and then we lost our coach. Um, and it was my fault. I wasn’t as involved with the scrinting at that point as I should have been. So when we lost the coach, we had a transitional period. We got down to, I think, about 26 kids on the team, but we’re back up to about 70 now, 2 years later. Um, we got a solid coach, a solid team in place running the swim team.

33:43 Timothy Heffron: I still get to be involved in the swim team now. Um, and it’s really good because, you know, swim lessons are great, but you know, it’s hard to be, you know, it’s hard to get, you know, people to, to really take you serious as, as a, as a coach and a teacher, if you’re only doing swim lessons. I think, you know, swim team has that, that cachet to it, that swim lessons might not have. So, you know, my hope is that, you know, I, I, I think, in my opinion, swimming up in the northeast is fundamentally broken. They they teach you safety only and survival and they don’t teach you actual swimming anymore.

34:26 Timothy Heffron: So my goal is to change that and teach kids to actually swim, go back and forth and be able to do it again and again without being so tired after one length that you can’t, you need to take a 10 minute break, you know? Um, I, I mean, there’s, there, there, there’s a difference between swimming and swimming for survival and I think a lot of people have gotten to the point where they think swimming for, for survival is learning is swimming, but that’s not. That’s just learning how to survive. That’s not the true art of swimming.

35:02 Jim Beach: Right, you’ve got to learn the different strokes and all of that too.

35:08 Timothy Heffron: Exactly. It’s not just learning them, but it’s about doing them efficiently and effectively, you know, swimming’s not one of those sports where like, you can go, you can just work real hard and you’re going to get better. Working real hard is great, but you have to be able to do it better. You know, it’s, it’s not just like your technique is, is, is so much more important than, say, in other sports. I mean, I was a football player. I played a lot of sports as a kid.

35:39 Timothy Heffron: I know that, you know, technique is important in football, but you can get away with not doing something the right way in football that you cannot in swimming. You know, if you do something, you know, you’re not doing it the right way in swimming, you’re gonna, you’re gonna, there’s gonna be repercussions in football, your athleticism, your, your, your drive, can get you through some a lot of that stuff. And I think that’s one of the nice things, one of the, one of the great things about swimming is it really holds you accountable for what you’re doing and how you’re doing it and so on and so forth.

36:20 Timothy Heffron: It’s, it’s, it’s the best sport out there, in my opinion, if you ask me.

36:25 Jim Beach: Well, it’s also great for, Oh, it’s so new. The better body and getting strength building for other sports is…

36:33 Timothy Heffron: Yes, I think of it too. I have a lot of kids that swam for me and, you know, kids don’t always, you know, they go on other sports, whatever, but I get, I get the baseball coaches a lot of the time telling me that the kids that swim are in far better shape than are far stronger, can throw far hard, can throw a lot harder than the kids that aren’t doing things like that. Because, I mean, the shoulder work and the, in the overall body conditioning that you get from swimming, you can’t get in any other sport.

37:10 Timothy Heffron: I mean, I get triathletes in here all the time that run and bike and run and bike and they come in and they swim for an hour and they’re more tired than going for a 10 mile bike ride. You know, I’m like, you know, if they can even go for an hour. I mean, hell, most of the time it’s like half an hour and they’re like, But, you know, my goal with triathletes is to teach them that, again, it’s not about working harder, it’s about working smarter in swimming. That is, that is really the thing. It’s not about working harder. I mean, working harder can only take you so far.

37:49 Timothy Heffron: Working smarter is the is the ultimate, you know, key to swimming better, swimming faster, swimming longer is just doing it more efficiently.

37:58 Jim Beach: That is so true. So true. And the swimmers certainly get that swimmer’s body, the triangular body that is the girl’s love.

38:06 Timothy Heffron: Yeah, you do get you do get in some very good condition with swimming. Yes, it is. You don’t see a lot of, you don’t see a lot of out of shape swimmers. Let’s put it that way.

38:21 Jim Beach: Yes. All right, fantastic stuff and congratulations on a great business. It’s a pretty simple business too, isn’t it? And you know, there’s a, you know.

38:31 Timothy Heffron: Yeah, I would say it’s simple, but you have to have an understanding of what you’re trying to do and, you know, swimming is so much more than just, uh, you know, swim lessons or swim team, like they all need to work together and they all need to feed each other and I think, I think if you set it up the right way and you built it the right way, I think you can, you know, the, the, the sky’s in the limit when it comes to something like this.

39:03 Jim Beach: I agree. Timothy, great job on what you’re doing. Congratulations. What a great business and I hope your swimmers win the meats this year.

39:10 Timothy Heffron: Hey, I appreciate for the for the positive feedback and hopefully everything goes smoothly. That’s what we’re hoping for.

39:18 Jim Beach: How do we find out more about you? You can get in touch with you. Find your URLs and things.

39:26 Timothy Heffron: You can find us on the web at www.swimwithtim.com. That’s 2Ms in Swim and 2Ms in Tim. Um, and we are also on Instagram and Facebook, at swim, at hashtag, Swimm with Timm, uh, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, we’re on all of it. Um, we, we, we enjoy social media. We enjoy showing people, you know, different ways to do things and different approaches. So, uh, we take it very, we, we, we, we have a lot of, we have a lot of fun with it.

39:57 Jim Beach: Fantastic. Thanks a lot, Tim, and we would…

40:00 Timothy Heffron: Thank you very much.

40:01 Jim Beach: And we will be right back.

40:03 Station bumper (multiple voices): Bye, bye, bye.

40:05 Jim Beach: We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Okay, I’m about to educate you on how stupid I am with my next guest. His name is Kim Davies, and he is one of the people that literally makes the internet work. You know the last time you had to deal with your DNS servers, your domain servers, and you had to go to the ICANN and figure out your URL and buy it and all of that stuff. Kim actually works at ICANN. The people that run the internet. I don’t know how that happened, but they are. And he is here today to give us some news on some important changes that are happening in the security of the internet.

40:50 Jim Beach: He is vice president of internet assigned numbers authority services at ICANN, and president of public technical identifiers. Kim, welcome to the show. How are you?

41:00 Kim Davies: I’m well, thanks. Thanks for having me.

41:03 Jim Beach: So ICANN runs the internet. Is that a fair thing to say? You’re the police behind the wall.

41:09 Kim Davies: I wouldn’t go that far. I think it’s important to remember the internet as a network of networks. It’s comprised of lots of different organizations that all play their part in making sure it works. What we’re here really to do is to be responsible for internet identifiers. You mentioned a key one, which is domain names, but there’s all kinds of identifiers that we use every day on the internet that require some kind of global coordination. And that’s really what our job is, is to make sure that globally they’re assigned, they’re used in a consistent manner. Um, so that when every day people use them, they just work as you expect.

41:49 Jim Beach: Okay, excellent. And we love what you do because my internet works as I expect. So good job. What are the changes or the news, the critical security changes that are happening in October we need to know about?

42:04 Kim Davies: Yeah, sorry, I mentioned that the domain name system is one of the key functions that we perform. It’s relied upon every day by people using the internet, just to visit websites, send emails, et cetera. But it’s important that the Domain Name System is secure. The way we do that is we apply a cryptographic key to it, known as the root zone KSK. Um, a very technical term, but essentially what that does is provide a layer of integrity to the Domain Name System.

42:35 Kim Davies: So the software can validate that when you visit a domain name, you’re actually getting to the right place, it’s not being tampered with, it’s not being interfered with. Um, and we do that by using this, this cryptographic key that we apply to the Domain Name System. Uh in terms of what’s happening next. We’re actually going to replace that key on October 11. So we’re spreading the word that um this key is going to be updated um and Network operators in particular, but those that run critical applications, those that run networks, will need to be mindful of this changes coming up to make sure the internet continues to work smoothly um on October 11th and beyond.

43:16 Jim Beach: What kind of downtime or dysfunction would they notice on October 11th and things didn’t go well for a particular server or application?

43:26 Kim Davies: Well, hopefully with everyone being prepared, they’ll notice nothing, but if, uh, if there is a problem, it’s likely to exhibit itself by being sort of a general unavailability of internet resources, for example, you might try and visit a website, and maybe the website will say this, this address is not found, um, whereas today prior, it looked like resources are disappearing off the internet, come October 11th. There will be a good indicator that the change hasn’t been properly implemented and that some configuration updates are needed.

44:00 Jim Beach: All right, what do I need to do to make sure that my sites and my servers are okay?

44:06 Kim Davies: Well, the primary thing you need to do if you operate service is make sure your software is update updated. We’ve been working hard over the last 2 years with software developers, with the operating system vendors, to make sure that the latest keys have been in the software updates that they’ve been providing. So if you’ve simply been taking the latest software updates, you’re probably well positioned and likely don’t need to do anything more than that. Um, Beyond that, uh, check your configurations. Um, we have some tools available, some instructions so that if you want to check in advance to make sure you’re ready. Uh it’s usually a very quick uh few minutes uh well spent to validate that the new keys are properly configured.

44:52 Kim Davies: Um and if not, we have instructions on what needs to be changed to make sure it works correctly.

44:58 Jim Beach: All right, but if we’re running a WordPress site on one of the big named hosting services, we’re going to be okay, right?

45:06 Kim Davies: I would think so. I would think that, um, firstly, you don’t need to change any configuration in a website that you’re hosting. This is in the network resolution layer. So your hosting company probably has to make some updates. So the company that is hosting your WordPress site, for example. Um, but um, you individually for an individual website, unlikely you need to do anything there.

45:31 Jim Beach: You said you’ve been working on this a couple of years. You know, I’m used to a company, Microsoft putting out a new update every 4 or 5 months. You’ve been working on this a couple of years. How often do you update this? Is this once in every decade?

45:49 Kim Davies: I mean, that’s roughly been the case. We’ve only ever done this once before. This technology has been in place in 2010 to secure the Domain Name System. We changed the key once in 2018. Um, we did plan on doing it every 3 years after that, but the COVID pandemic happened, so we had to delay our plans a few years. Um, but yeah, it will be 8 years since the last time we changed the key. We do plan on doing it every 3 years beyond this year. So I expect the next one to be likely in 2029.

46:25 Kim Davies: But it is quite rare, which is why we’re trying to spread the word to make sure everyone’s aware because it doesn’t happen very often.

46:34 Jim Beach: Alright. I don’t know if you go to the movies, but there’s always a movie that happens when one big system switches to another big system, there was a Shawn Connery movie where in those 8 seconds that there was a switch, he was able to steal 1000000000s of dollars on October 11th. If I was really smart, would I be able to steal 100000000s of dollars because of your downtime for 8 seconds? That’s going to make a movie. We’re going to make a movie of you, kid.

47:06 Kim Davies: That sounds like a great idea for a movie. Um, you know, sometimes they make TV shows, the movies about… Sounds like a good plan. Unfortunately, in reality, it’s a bit more, um, benign than that, it’s, it’s gonna happen over the span of a couple of days, sort of a bit in slow motion, but, um, but I like it. I like the sound of that.

47:30 Jim Beach: Well, it doesn’t have to be true. We can, you know, bend the rules. The viewers won’t know. You know, we can use a real event, like your October 11th, and just kind of switch it up a little bit, and we’ve got a Shawn Connery movie on our hands.

47:48 Kim Davies: There you go. It sounds great.

47:51 Jim Beach: Uh, Kim, how did ICANN become so important 30, 20 years ago? Were they at the right place at the right time or did the government create them? A bunch of universities create them? How did you become?

48:04 Kim Davies: Yeah, it’s a really interesting story. So, my predecessor, uh, in my role, going back to the 1970s was part of the original research team that sort of designed the internet, and it sort of more or less it’s formalized over the years, uh, over the decades. Really. It started as a research project. But around the mid 1990s, there was a recognition as the internet was really exploding then that there needed to be some kind of global body responsible for this. Um, that, you know, was accountable to the world that had the proper structures in place. And that’s what led to the creation of ICANN.

48:43 Kim Davies: It was at the initiative of the US government who had really overseen internet development until that time, but there was, there was a lot of pressure and a lot of recognition that, really a global entity was what was needed. So ICANN was created in 1998 to really fill that purpose.

49:02 Jim Beach: By Al Gore.

49:03 Kim Davies: It was one of the contributors to the discussions that led to it, amongst many others. Um, you know, one of the great joys of, of doing this job is I’ve got to work with some of the, you know, the inventors of the internet. So, you know, everyone was at the table and and contributed their opinions.

49:23 Jim Beach: And where are you located in the world? Are you allowed to say?

49:30 Kim Davies: We’re a global organization where you have officers all around the world. Our headquarters is in Los Angeles. That’s where I’m talking to you from today. But we had a presence globally. I think it’s, it’s really important part of our composition that we’re not strictly a US organization that we, we operate around the world because we service a global audience and we’re really here to help everyone around the world connect to the internet.

49:56 Jim Beach: Well, you’re doing a great job. How do we find out more? Follow online, get more information about this key change.

50:04 Kim Davies: So we put together a resource side just about this change that’s happening on October 11th. You can find information about it as well as information about our history and everything we talked about. It’s all at icann.org. So icann.org.

50:20 Jim Beach: Fantastic. Kim, thank you so much for being with us and sharing this information, and I hope it goes well. I’m sure it will.

50:29 Kim Davies: You’re very welcome. Thanks for the time.

50:31 Jim Beach: Thank you. And we will be right back.

50:36 Station bumper (multiple voices): Bye, bye, bye.

50:36 Jim Beach: We are back and have another brave contestant willing to play the Quick Ten. Please welcome Kristen Prinz to the show. She is a negotiations attorney out of Chicago and has just written a new book on how to negotiate better. I heard you want to play the Quick Ten.

50:53 Kristen Prinz: Yes, I do. I want to see how I do on it.

50:58 Jim Beach: All right, are you currently sober? I’m required by state law to ask.

51:03 Kristen Prinz: Yes, I am currently sober.

51:04 Jim Beach: Okay. Do you want to accept the standard wager?

51:08 Kristen Prinz: What is the standard major?

51:09 Jim Beach: The bet that everyone else made?

51:11 Kristen Prinz: Uh, I need to know more. What is that?

51:14 Jim Beach: The bet that everyone else made. Just say yes.

51:17 Kristen Prinz: Well, what do I have?

51:19 Jim Beach: Yes.

51:20 Kristen Prinz: Okay, fine, yes.

51:21 Jim Beach: Number one. Your favorite creativity hack.

51:23 Kristen Prinz: Step away for 5 to 10 minutes and take 5 deep breaths.

51:29 Jim Beach: Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick.

51:29 Kristen Prinz: Yeah, ultra focus. I’m doing one thing really, really, really, really well and get to know your market better than anyone else.

51:37 Jim Beach: Number three, name your top passions.

51:39 Kristen Prinz: Reading, travel, exercise, humans, and my number one passion is seeing others reach their potential so that family friends, clients, strangers, everyone.

51:47 Jim Beach: Number four, the 1st 3 steps in starting a business are…

51:52 Kristen Prinz: Have an idea with the name, talk about it and ask questions from, talk about to everyone, ask questions of everyone and start charging money for your product or service. After that, you can do everything else.

52:04 Jim Beach: Number five, the best way to get your 1st real customer is.

52:08 Kristen Prinz: Solve a real problem you see in the world. Tell everyone about it and require payment for the solution.

52:16 Jim Beach: Number six, your dreamiest technology is.

52:18 Kristen Prinz: Uh, my assistant and I set up an AI phone call, reminder that calls me 15 minutes before every meeting and it is my dreamiest technology.

52:27 Jim Beach: Number seven, best entrepreneur advice.

52:29 Kristen Prinz: Learn from failures. Celebrate the wins.

52:32 Jim Beach: Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake.

52:33 Kristen Prinz: Getting distracted by what everyone else thinks or believes.

52:36 Jim Beach: Number nine, favorite entrepreneur and why?

52:39 Kristen Prinz: Oh, uh, Oprah, because she built a whole business around human stories and how we can be better.

52:45 Jim Beach: Number 10, favorite superhero.

52:47 Kristen Prinz: Oh, elastic girl from the Incredibles.

52:48 Jim Beach: All right. While we calculate your score and find out the winner of the wager, how do we get in touch with you and get a copy of your book?

53:00 Kristen Prinz: You go on Amazon and order it right now for pre-order and it will come out November 3rd.

53:06 Jim Beach: That was yesterday. Okay.

53:09 Kristen Prinz: No, I need it tomorrow.

53:09 Jim Beach: I’m in your score, Kristen. I’m so sorry.

53:12 Kristen Prinz: Oh, I’m devastated.

53:13 Jim Beach: You have to have a 94 95 to win our little games. And you got a 94. Apparently, one of our judges was from Milwaukee and didn’t really like some of your Chicago comments and stuff. So unfortunately, we win the wager, and as always, we’re playing for a Tesla. So you owe us a Tesla.

53:33 Kristen Prinz: I look forward to receiving that soon.

53:36 Jim Beach: All right, it’s on the way. It’s used and I think it’s broken down too, but the tow truck will arrive shortly. All the Teslas are broken down. We just get 3 or 4 of them together and make one good one.

53:51 Kristen Prinz: Correct.

53:51 Jim Beach: And we would be back. I’m sorry I lied. We’re out of time. Thanks for being with us. Have a great day. Bye now.