Jeff on Cape Cod Learning Tours, Small Businesses, Chef Stuff

that's really good we're gonna have fun today good morning everyone I am joined by Captain Awesome here good morning Jeff Avery thank you so much for joining me uh thank you this is a tremendous opportunity for me and I appreciate it I know that you're having like a it's well not right around the corner so you had to drive here you're you're prepping for like blood work so you can't have any coffee or food or anything it puts my stoicism practices to the test driv down Route 28 what is it with you in this sto my husband now has been reading all of his stoicism practice books and I'm like what oh okay I mean we don't want to go to jail that's one is that it yeah it's part of it you know like and when you're driving down the road in the morning and somebody there's nobody behind you for Miles uh but somebody has to pull out in front of you and not hit the gas that's where stoicism comes into play really truly looking for the book that I took a screenshot of yesterday with my husband upstairs and I was like where are all and it's not the first one that I've seen lying around the house and I'm just like where where did this practice Yeah stoicism in the art of Happiness literally yeah I'm I'm trying to read some of that stuff my my girlfriend's trying to read some of that stuff she needs to read it because she's my girlfriend so you know that's going to be a difficulty thing right you need to you need to calm yourself as it is so you are a jack of all tra it's a man that does many and I'm pretty pumped to talk to you because we were connecting on all kinds of cylinders right right and facets of Our Lives not only are you a small business owner um but you got 47 side hustles like I do because our interests are not just onedimensional that's correct that's correct and um you know I I moved to the cape when I was six and one of my very first ways to make money was I would go collect those little mini pine cones okay and I would sell them to sue Preston at Country Garden so she could make Christmas wreaths out of them I was like 11 years look at you you were an entrepreneur from the very beginning I was like 11 years old funny story I worked off and on for Country Garden uh from when I was 14 to like in my early 50s really so yeah yeah always part-time when I was home it was always a place that I could go and you know have a little side hustle money I love that you have to on the cape you know especially as a chef which was my regular job I would walk into work and they'd be like hey Jeff we know that you have these giant piles of dishes to do uh but we also need you to peel and devain 200 pounds of shrimp before you leave and so the options are two you you quit or you do it and I often quit so I needed always had to have the ability to go somewhere else so I can do a smack in of everything you know you have to the Cape is a place that lends itself to needing the side hustle yeah well but it also is the place that allows you to do those side hustles and flourish which I love sure sure you know like I feel like the Cape is this very um something that people don't fully understand when they come here for two weeks a year for 40 years and talk about how much they love the cape and how beautiful it is yeah is that there the whole service economy that Services them doesn't get to enjoy that yeah true like I never had a Fourth of July off my entire adult life until this last year so yeah I'm I'm kind of with you on that one just because I I worked in the entertainment indry and when big those are big money holidays right they'd be like I love the Fourth of July I'm like yeah I just cooked like 1500 Burgers you know my glasses are completely covered in grease and American cheese we'll be fine you enjoy that burger though have a good one yeah we're okay it's it's great though because uh you're naturalist I am you uh also side side hustle for Noah it's not like your side hustles are like oh I'm just GNA go you know pick up your pine cones anymore it's a little bit more extravagant than that you do cool stuff little I've matured into the the cool side hustle so um you know small businesses are hard uh we take risk often times when we start a small business we have to have our primary um job still so you don't get to focus on the business like you want to so I have found this really kind of sweet spot where I get to work for Noah in the wintertime so cool and I get to do Cape Cod learning tours in summertime so I get to focus on my business in the time that it needs to be focused on and then I can go make my money to hopefully pay my bills I mean you know that the deal and the deal I mean let's I'm going to be very honest here because we're going to be honest about owning a small business uh this was the second year in a row that I focused on the business and went into October three months behind on my mortgage yeah you know like and I don't think that people always understand that yeah like they see an ice cream shop that's got a line out the door and they're like my God these guys must be rich they got to make all their money in eight weeks that's it yeah that's they got to they got to support 44 weeks of their life well and then the rising cost of everything so you know and then they B when the prices go up yeah some somewhere somebody has to pay for that somebody somebody and it's usually the end user I have a lot of really crazy kind of like socialist liberal ideas I think that maybe we should do away with tipping and just pay weight staff a living wage yeah I mean it's crazy I I they're doing it in New York it's successful right now um the I went to the Starbucks Roastery they big one in New York in Seattle or New York in New York okay and um you know it's it's $25 for an espresso Martini but this is the best espresso Martini you will ever have in your entire life and nobody takes tips everything's all included so and they put on a show and they don't what I watched was cooperation behind the bar was was people actually enjoying their space at work having a good time and I I loved that atmosphere because it wasn't graveling for tips or spending so much time on this group of people or oh you've got this I'm gonna go work on this oh you've got this I'm gonna go work on this I kind of liked it what's up Dave thanks for joining us Lisa hi Michael good morning we've got Captain Awesome with us today and we're just talking about you know first off being a small business owner and uh maybe working on some better ways for livable wages we don't know we're not solving we're not solving any problems we're really here just complaining that's okay I complain a lot but I watched you know I watched fullon cooperation and it's not something you often see in a restaurant industry I feel like it gets toxic and taxing and stressful and even on the way home last night from work my husband uttered why would you ever want to open a restaurant in this time right you're a chef you're a trained Chef so please people feel free to run with these two ideas one uh can somebody just create a printer that works can we do that two um you know like a big thing in the restaurant is waste uh so somebody just make a burger a burger place where you grind the burger meat every day you make the Buns homemade and you will only sell 500 Burgers so there's no way you know exactly how many burgers you can how many tomatoes to slice when the 500 are gone they're gone that's it you can have the IDE please take we're in America it's more more bigger better more thus me having to go have blood work this morning well shoot sorry about that it's okay it's all right so I don't even know where to begin with your story because you are once again this just eclectic ball of fun so let's talk about my small business yeah move your microphone closest to your face so I can hear you best perfect so much better so um so here's the thing uh that I learned from a very early age um I don't like having a boss right so that's obviously difficult because I miss being having a boss you miss having a boss a little a little not the one not the previous ones I've had um just having a little bit oversight to be like what somebody consult with so I wish I could show you my whiteboard that's in my office right now my whiteboard is what keeps me on track I all the tasks that I have to do I write down on my whiteboard it's very old-fashioned but then I get to as I do them I cross them off and there's a little rush find something about like writing things out sometimes helps you remember them better it helps me for sure I'm a huge Google Calendar fan I keep everything is in my Google Calendar I get reminded a week before an hour before 10 minutes before to to help me keep that stuff on track everybody's birthday is in Google you know when people like oh I'm so glad you remembered my birthday I didn't remember your birthday gole Google and Facebook remembered your birthday and I made sure they did it a week before so I could Amazon something to good morning Dave hegner and tell your daughter we said happy birthday true so through this long convoluted history of um I owned a fish tank business for a while I designed installed and maintained aquariums like the TV show Tanked no nothing like that at all more like more like you're GNA be have to work a full-time job and be perpetually broke all the time still like everyone else and I was doing okay I was doing all right and then 911 happened and so are you going to pay for your groceries or you going to pay the fish guy because you don't know if the economy is coming to an end so The Fish Guy didn't get paid so that went fell by sorry that fell by the wayside and then I had always um there's another whole long side story about movie theaters and in 2007 I leased the Buzzards Bay movie theater and I gutted it and renovated it and opened it and it was um doing really well and then we found out that it was um complet everything that could be made out of his best as was shoot so I lost like a half a million dollars no big deal I had the I had the FBI knocking on my door looking for Ratatouille which was on my living room floor sorry it was it was bad so seriously seriously so so if you don't know how film was it was reals of film that were put together and the landlord chained the door shut so I snuck in the back door and um had to get Ratatouille off of the platter yeah these movie people are no joke serious they are no joke want their product so I had it all clamped and I had it sitting on my living room floor and then I went to a job and my ex-wife like boxed it up for me and the FBI came and took it yeah yeah so um you know one of the things they say is that you can't succeed unless you failed a few times I think I've checked off the failure boxes a couple we checked all those boxes already we're ready for nothing but the cream of this crop here so in my free time I had always volunteered at Green Brier Nature Center at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History with aabon I worked for a group called ocean quest for like 12 years as a naturalist and then as an executive director and that ended up closing because they had a boat and I don't know if you've ever had a business that requires a boat I don't recommend it um they they clo we we closed but I loved the mission of ocean quest which was being better stewards of our environment teaching people how amazing the world is around us and maybe that helps us reduce our use of plastic or chemicals or things like that right and so I wanted to continue that in the meantime I've gone off and started working at C to make money because I've lost all the money on at um at uh the movie theater I feel like that track says a cape cutter like what what I need to go make money I'm going to se well you'd be surprised at how many people that I met at se from Cape cot I I believe it too Chevron has a pretty strong contingent shout out to Gloria I really wish thank you for saving me a seed on your flight have a great vacation enjoy Cuba I'm very jealous who's Gloria and how do I Gloria I know right well she's Canadian so I like Canadians e she gets to go to Cuba and we don't I can count to 10 in Canadian oh yeah yeah one a 2 a 3A 4 a five oh sorry sorry sorry sorry um so when it was time for me to start a new business I took the mistakes that I had made in the past examined them and then looked at a business that I wanted that would make me feel fulfilled a burger joint wasn't it a food truck wasn't it I didn't want to cook anymore so I started Cape Cod learning tours which is a Hands-On science educational company uh where we do I'm outside all summer I'm I'm kneed deep in salt marshes I'm at the low tide areas at pay Creek I'm you know walking the causeway in Provincetown I'm finding sharks and Horseshoe crack abs and mantis shrimp and I'm working with local hotels and local people and people from all over the world and it's amazing and it's great um and I'm almost at the point where I'm starting to make money with it uh so but I'm a sole proprietor I have a bunch of people that are 1099 that help me in the summer but I'm the guy who does all the bookkeeping and I do all the all the advertising and I do all the promoting and I do every it's a lot It's a Grind and I am not a smart man so I have to figure all this out Lisa yes Lisa says I have to go but sounds like he belongs to the children's museum I will I'll connect you to all right I will definitely connect you too and um and it's done well and the way that kind of you and I got connected is because one truism of any business is that nobody will come to you if they don't know you exist right so advertising is key you've got to get your name out there right but you were very raw and honest which is what prompted me to comment on what you were talking about okay and you're like how does somebody do this like I'm B I'm bashing my head against a wall and I'm spending this money and don't tell me this and don't tell me this and don't tell like you knocked off the things you've already checked because every everybody wants to help I feel like we're all as people right most of us are natural helpers right this is why I belong to the Cape Cod young professionals group and I belong to the CH I don't I can't belong to all all of them at once because it's too expensive right right so right now I belong to the cape card young professionals fabulous organization already been very helpful you know but that was my question my advertise any of my dollars are precious right so the newspaper says you need to advertise with us because everybody else does okay how much does my business increase if I advertise in paper how many tickets will I sell I see that so and so is advertising in the paper how many tickets did they sell based on your ad I don't know the answer to that question and it's also forever changing not everybody consumes everything the same way I mean and it's like you've got to figure out it's it's a like on top of already just doing your business and all the the grind that you have to do there now you have to figure figure out how am I going to find people that are qualified people the people that want my service right so and so for me where are you hello so for me I have a double-edged sword right I I so I do this I do these school vacation programs yeah they're not cheap and uh no but also they're very cool I wish that something like this was available for when I was a kid first off kids need to be outside out kids need to be moving their damn bodies they just do like move and get out of this space not glue to device sitting in a room rotting they need to be outside in their environment looking around touching stuff questioning things that's number one it's already difficult when the weather is the way it is in December but we're you know we're Hy fol we'll be fine but but but there's still we've done this program two times in December now and the kids good morning Jamie the kids love it because it's cool right like we I want to take it I'm a grownup I want to go to one of your programs right so we do our programs outside of these are generally for all ages you know um I think one of my initial early mistakes was calling it Cape Cod learning tours because after a certain point most adults don't think they can learn anything there's like this which is weird to me well there's this period of time I think between like 14 and 65 where they're like I don't want to learn anything and then ma capacity and then they retire and they're like I want to learn everything yeah well they're bored and now they have the they have the the wandering right and and the other part of that sword is that did you grow up on Cape Cod I did not I I grew up nearby my husband grew up here okay so I grew up I moved here when I was six yeah I married at towny and still here Cape cotters that are here don't always fully appreciate why the tourists come here right tourists come here to to interrupt our lives they come here to make more traffic to make us wait in line for coffee to leave trashes on the beach and that that's how Cape cotters kind of view it you know what I mean um so Cape cotters generally don't have really a super interest in coming to my programs because they're like I live here yeah I'm not doing this touristy stuff but when they do they're amazed oh 100% because you don't ever absorb you take for granted the things that you have because it's you've seen it but you haven't you Haven actually looked at it can I pull something out of my bag bring the stuff so so we all know what this animal is getting that's fine so we all know what this animal is right and so this is a horseshoe crab this is one of the most amazing animals on the planet okay the first dinosaurs existed 250 million years years ago when the the continents were still connected all as one this animal in this form has been here for 150 million years before that wrap your brain around that it's 400 million years old it has survived six mass extinctions it survived the uh meteor or asteroid that crashed into the Earth and killed the dinosaurs and we know that it's a hores grab and most of us pick it up like this which is absolutely not the correct way to hold it no no CU it has a number of tendons and things here that allow it to turn itself over so that it can't be eaten right don't injure our little buddy here don't injure our little buddy right and you could when in September and October there's buckets of Facebook posts where people go oh my God they're all ding They're All Dead look at all these dead Hors crabs well I can assure you that this horseshoe crab right here is out walking around yeah our skeleton is inside their skeleton is outside as we grow our skeleton grows theirs does not okay so when they get to a certain point and they're too big and they're too fat they crawl out of their old skeleton and harden a new one it's a malt so sorry I'm too far away from the micop yeah so what you are seeing they come they live out in the continental shelf most of the year and then in the spring they come in and they lay their eggs on the full moon high tide of May and June and then they're out in Pleasant Bay and out in the South part of the cape eating eating eating eating eating all summer by the time the end of the summer comes they're too fat for their old skeleton they climb out and they head back out to the continental shelf and then these all wash up on the beach I feel like we all want to do that in December right we just want to crawl out of our skin sleeve and get a new one I recently discovered the joys of heated weighted blankets ah very nice right it's unbelievable so comforting it's unbelievable so super cool so this is an amazing animal we have it uh we could talk a long time about the medicinal uses of it another thing that people think is that the medicinal use has created this problem of a of a less population well what's happening is the they're collecting the blood and then they're releasing the horseshoe crabs way out on the continental shelf because they're very valuable to the research thing a bigger problem is if you've ever been to flor or the keys and you've had a conch stew or a conch Fritter those are actually made out of welks okay which they harvest here and this is the bait that they use for wel so the fisherman crushed these up and put them in in traps to CCH and that's a bigger problem for the horseshoe crab is the fishermen that are doing that but nobody's talking about the tremendous value of the welp fishing industry you know but they are talking about the Blue Blood Of The hesho Crab yep so I do this whole Spiel with the kids and then they do this with it super cute right so we do we we paint it that they're allowed to do whatever they want we spray a coat of glossy finish on it I put a hook on it the kids have made a piece of artwork that they can hang very cool on the wall um and that's just one of the small crafty kind of but that's fun because you're mixing the science lesson in with a little arts and crafts they keep their hands busy and then they're learning something and they're more up to retain that if they're they're into it so like they learned that this is called a Telson this is actually called a Telson the tail and so when you teach an eight-year-old kid that the name of the tale on a hores grab is actually the Telson they find great joy in telling every grownup that when they refer to it as a tail an eight-year-old will go no that's not a tail it's a Telson I love it so you know that's a it's a great thing so and again we talk about the Mt and kids start picking them up and they go oh I know this is a Mt because it's split along the front if it's not split and this thing stinks then dead HHO crab so that that sort of very cool and you just learned something too I'm sure you did me no not you our friends I learned how much sand can be in a horseshoe crab it's all good it's fine we'll clean up later I dropped gills all over take your gills when you leave please so that's so that's kind of our overarching goal you know we want to be fun exciting hands on um and ultimately the goal is to um have people be better stewards of their environment that's that's the goal is that they're going to be like this is amazing we need to take better care of this you know like I mean I remember when I was a little kid I mean the dad used to just dump the paint down the sewer you know so like we well we weren't taught that that was toxic once again with yourest movie theater we didn't know we just trusted that that was fine and now the big thing is posos so like we're having to deal with all of this right trying to take the Plastics out of everything that we eat and are surrounded by and my in my little Ray of Darkness that my you know when well when you deal with these you know I read a lot you know like you're a radio DJ so you're probably reading about how Beyonce and Taylor Swift are besties right now because that is part of the things that I like to you know my my right my thing is like 75% of our oxygen is produced by plankton in the ocean and as the ocean gets warmer it becomes more acidic and if it becomes more acidic the Plankton won't be able to survive and at one point in time suddenly we'll lose 75% of the production of oxygen on our planet the ray of sunshine thus stoes breathe while you can right right yeah so so back to the advertising thing real quick right so the most effective place for advertising for me so far has been Facebook yeah there's no question about it I I I take this I I put it on my website on my Facebook page and I share it with a gazillion groups right because and boosting is Affordable um but when you're when you don't always have a strong positive cash flow you know Facebook will try to take your $200 at like 12:45 in the morning on a Thursday and I haven't got it in there yet you know so um so I share with a lot of groups I I do fairly well people are starting to recognize me a little little bit um but it just it's just hard I don't think print is effective you know um CA I didn't add on Cai but that's just like it you know the ad on a Cai is just you know this this hour brought yeah and like people like oh you should advertise in Cape Cod life yeah maybe after I start selling pictures of my feed on feed.com because I've already had an only fans conversation this week I can't do it again I can't go back most expensive place to advertise and they give you all these numbers about how it's $8,000 I've got to sell 400 tickets yeah to justify that one expense and I've got to put a coupon probably with a discount so I got to sell more that's more tickets than I've sold in an entire season yeah it's just not going to happen yeah exactly good morning Ashley hi Linda thanks for joining us captain awesome is here is that Ashley Deana yeah that's my niece hi she's doing fabulous how are you Isabella texted me the other day thank you very much perfect is that good we like that we love Isabella and Ashley and Taylor and everybody else okay hi fam we love you thank you for joining us um yeah it's really difficult when you get all these stats because you can make up statistics for pretty much anything but if you're not selling the tickets to afford the the that'ss that it's not going to come to fruition it's not going to happen so what I love is when they're like oh we had a million impressions don't care I care about website clicks yeah and they may have a million impressions but maybe 10 people click on the website and the other thing about Facebook is they give you all of that information yeah you know and I can pinpoint like right now I'm advertising to local people right as a like in May April or May I'm going to start advertising to people in Chicago in New York who are going to coming here for visitors right I will say that one of the most effective things for me so far I am an Airbnb experience yeah so when people go on to the Airbnb website and they book a place for Cape Cod I am a thing that pops up as something they may like to do that has been very effective for me yeah totally there's no upfront cost for that well because everyone's always looking for something to do with their kids and and steam is the buzzword for for kids at this point in time right good morning Hunter hi Colleen good morning Lenor Colleen happy birthday to you one of all of our we're all December birthdays so I've got a group of girlfriends and we usually try and get together prior to the season but it just hasn't happened for us sorry so if you're all Christmas birthdays I'm going to have total change of track I'm going to ask you a question yes my girlfriend's birth birthday is on December 25th okay I I think that's horrible I think Mom should have had better planning it's the worst possible day to bir better than mine is the 26th she's the day of I'm the day after no one wants to do anything so while she's with me yeah and you know who knows how long that's going to last you've met me now um stoicism I we've changed her birthday to June 26 okay so she has a half birthday we do a party summertime better for parties and it was very funny because her um her mother-in-law brought her um because it was a half birthday she brought her a half a pair of shoes you get the other one then hopefully you don't grow I think she got the other one because they were like summer shoes Colleen bonley said she used to work with you uh at uh I'm not seeing your stream did Colleen work with me at uh at um at uh the naked oyster yes yes yes she did yes Colleen is an absolutely wonderful person and Jim Miller told me that if I ever see her to make sure that he said hello and now you can say hello and happy birthday happy birthday it's a big one Colleen yeah is she is Colleen still at the naked o yeah she is wow it's a long time happy birthday Amina she's the 27th you're with us yep oyster yeah oyster still one of the best places it's so really delicious I'm not there anymore well Florence do a really good job Florence is fabulous like my two favorite places are is Florence at the naked oyster and then the um bonger on Main Street in Fus so good is iten oh my God it's they like have like they have a team of Swiss and French Bakers in there that are no J 24 hours a day they make their own puff pastry their own croissant everything scratch so much butter thus the blood work so good though it's so good I can't help it what's up Ashley we are talking to Jeff AKA Captain Awesome we're talking about um your naturalist Adventures uh and also being a small business owner it's kind of like that pep talk that you gave yourself like I'm gonna get up today hopefully nobody dies hopefully I can make payroll hopefully uh I can pay my bills hopefully I can do all of these things every single day and it was a mindset thankful I've got to give a shout out to eforall here okay because I had never been you've been an entrepreneur since birth I was in the military I I'm just a worker be I like to go and I know my task and this is what I do and I shut off my brain because I think too much and I just go and do the job and that has had to change for me substantially right and and having these small pep talks with myself sometimes I'll low um and it has been a whole new way of life for me and it's been difficult but I'm finally having the conversations I need to have sure and and they're difficult conversations to have and some people are more than happy to share their expertise you know the cape cot chamber has been hugely helpful to me like I said ccyp has been help have so many good programs out there if you're struggling as a small business owner keep talking about it run your mouth to someone some of appointment a direction and also here's the difference between two I put that same post on LinkedIn on Facebook I said how do you spend your advertising dollars and I got a lot of good advice and solid advice on LinkedIn I got my name is R Raji and I will help you with your social media and increase your business only for a small fee I don't have a fee I just told you I don't have any money to pay you like zero I mean I think that LinkedIn is supposed to be this big Professional Network working thing as well it's less effective than my local Facebook well it depends on who's in your LinkedIn it's just like that thing if you're not in the right circles then you're just going to get advertised at you can weed those people out eventually but it's still always going to be there someone is always going to be trying to sell you something that is life that is the world we live in I'm trying to sell people look at this great Christmas Day vacation program we have over at the west but I feel like it's brain enhancement like you're doing an actual service that will benefit our children you're talking about planked in you're talking about horseshoe CRA so look here's the thing we're doing planked in on the first day good morning Michelle we're going to make datom diagrams they're going to be put in a frame and photosynthesis synesis do you know what thin layer chromatography is um are you taking pictures no we're actually extracting chlorophyll from seaweed and then we'll use it on a paper and we'll talk about how again six to 12 year olds I already told told you I want to take your my group right I this is my education level right so it looks like a big word but what we're really doing is sparking interest yeah for sure hands on they're going to do it they're going to have something in a frame that they're going to take home at the end of the day who doesn't love slime Oobleck in lava lamps let's do it right and then on Friday I just literally have a big pile of the polymer clay they make whatever we want I'm into making snakes so that's what we're going to do and I'm a I'm a chef yeah so like the kitchen science and I'm making homemade lunches every single day hot lunches very cool it's all inclusive you know like I think the boys and girls club does a fabulous job thank you and you can drop I'm on the board you're on the board well you can drop your kids off there for $10 a day and they can be watched by perfectly lovely 15 and 16 year olds and then you have to supply everything you have to make sure they have their lunch and their snacks and when they go to the arcade you've got to give them another 40 bucks y my thing is completely inclusive I so yeah just drop the kids off come and pick them up don't be late because I'm gonna Jack your credit card if you're more than five minutes late you know his time is also money people forget that sometimes also good morning Michael Anthony you are out there on the hustle he runs his small business and he's always trying to make ends meet he had an unfortunate um accident and then you're out of work as a small business owner and that's just detrimental to your bottom line and trying to pay all of your bills so I hope you're back up and running and I hope you're doing really well Bella Transportation if you need some rides any take care of you very nice I am is awesome yeah yeah and it's just you know we're we're building um I'm so another problem with small business that people don't understand when you're when you're a worker B and you work for a big Corporation and things happen in your personal life you can take PTO and things like that well as a small business owner it never ends and I had like a run of like really hard familial stuff uh my wife got cancer um and then we got divorced on the day we got divorced we found out my son had cancer so we dealt with all of that and then covid hit which on the cape was a two-year process for the tourism industry and then um and my mom died and my dad died so I was like really dealing with all of this stuff and and this year was the first year I was really able to dial in and focus on the business done better which is good and we're planning on opening a location working with cruise lines in St Thomas well that doesn't stink and when that happens then I think the world will be my oyster I just got to get to that Point waiting on that oyster well you um she Alexander said I liked it better when the schools were in like you don't like school vacation Alexandra I don't know do you want to go to school 365 days a year I would go to school 365 days a year if it was school like this where you're learning out in the world way different so I mean I don't know how many of your lists areen but this is this is kind of Wald dorfy yeah it is you know it definitely is I like that train of thinking though oh we're in charge before and after school program yeah I miss the after school bus I think my husband yells it out at least three days a week we had an after school bus for any of their after school activities we lost all of these programs I don't know where they went but they're gone now yeah and I and I agree you know um there's kind of like two fundamental shifts I think in the education system one of them is that uh teachers are asked to do a lot they're burnt out and they're bringing their own supplies to school which is not fair like like I think that sandwich has a uh SWAT Command Center why there hasn't been a violent crime in sandwich in like 40 years that's why our taxes are high so maybe we could buy notebooks for the kids instead of swap material I would just like to see it shift in our educational system to I we saw what what a detriment in even reading it for our younger kids sure you've got you know third graders that can't read it's not great and I think that libraries have stepped up a lot they libraries have been doing again it's harder on the cape because we have an older population you know they have their Town meetings on Tuesday at 7 o'clock purpose when you're putting your kids to bed and the only people that can be there are the 65y old retirees which is why we have you know more pickle ball courts and less basketball you know um sorry that's that's okay but we we've discussed all of these things on this at this desk before so everyone's used to the pickle ball scenario those two things are good we have a pickle ball problem here in mashby apparently that even that's too noisy so someone's always unhappy I just like pickle ball only because I never played it uh I just unpopular opinion I dislike that everything gets hijacked by the retirees apparently it's the sport of the future we already have enough problems with the migration of young people with families leaving the cape and there's nothing any wreck programs are generally for ages 6 to 12 13 to 18 you're completely screwed you can't be in the mall if you haven't bought something you know like you know you can't feed the Ducks you know like all the fishing areas are all private that is one area where the boys and girls have really stepped it up over there is their teen programming and they're working on a whole new Teen building which I'm really excited for because that is something that they need to do my son wants to go shoot hoops or hang out with some friends in a supervised manner I'm definitely excited that they're branching the whole teen wing and uh that needs to happen more often than nothing but to 12 run around get outside be doing these fun things that's what we're working on yeah so kod learning tours make sure you follow them uh Christmas vacation young naturalist program it's going to be at the West Parish Family School right where do people get what's the easiest way for them to get involved and go and do this because I really suggest you do the easiest way to do it is just go to our website which is learning tours of America I was thinking big um and then right you should think big I like that though right on the front page is a um is the calendar of events and they click on the calendar and they can register now we have also made a decision that they if you don't want to register and it's last minute and you want to drop your kid off instead of pre-registering you can do that as well but we limit it to 25 kids okay okay we we limit it so that we give them a very you know personal experience um so if you don't pre-register and you show up on Thursday and we've already got 25 kids sorry I'm very sorry yeah you can only you're not doing the burger thing anymore we're making healthy meals thanks for joining us we're talking to Captain Awesome here and uh he's got a vacation program coming up for our young budding naturalists but also it's something I think I would want to do I would like to go to your program um and also we do our adult programs in the summer we've modified our stuff listen do you know where Nam sket Farm is in Brewster no so they've changed over the years when I was a kid it was a r of summer we would go there and pick strawberries right now they grow like uh trees for people's yards and stuff like that I went down there one day because I'm always looking for interesting locations to do totally I feel like that's I love being a tourist in my own town right and he has this Hill on a farm with no lights nearby so we are doing an astronomy program there with Doctor Lucy um and then we're also doing it you know Provincetown you know that uh that that when you first come into Provincetown there's the hike that goes up into the Dune Y in that first big bowl we're doing an astronomy program there so cool right I mean every you're doing a lot of collaborations I'm trying we're doing a we're doing a tea time talks with the fouth museums on the green where it'll be a high tea tea and cookies and then a talk by somebody uh I'm trying to convince Wendy Williams who wrote the book um the language of butterfly she's a local Jane Paradise who wrote uh did a coffee table Photography book about the Dune Shacks in provinc toown is giving a talk um they got a lot of highlight this summer as they were trying to remove people from them and some were able to stay and some were not it's a difficult I mean you know when the community worked so closely with the previous administration to make things happen and then they're completely ignored you feel dis that's frustrating spending a lot of time working on a solution and then it gets yanked away from you especially because it has such I mean again being a cape Cotter you know Hopper was here you know um um Eugene O'Neal wrote stuff here we've had amazing people it's not uncommon when you're in Provincetown to bump into Rachel mat as she's book shopping you know so that culture and does her makeup she does she's like I can't I got to go Rachel calling right bye she's my she's my calm liberal influence I have my Angry Lial in take a deep breath sto yeah right exactly oh speaking of books what have you got over there you were working with a couple of other people too so my I am a firm believer in hire people that are smarter than you why not absolutely you always want to hire smarter people right um so that I spent most of my career believing that I was smarter than most of my bosses so I hire people for whom that statement is true okay so Gil Newton who I'm sure many of you folks will know some of you probably he was my eighth grade science teacher okay he started the STEM Academy at Sandwich high school and was last name is Newton I feel like he had to be in science and so he has written 10 books about uh Cape Cod in the naturalist part of Cape Cod fabulous so we have them all available on our website as a PDF download I know that's it's not an ebook or anything but what we find is that you can download it as a PDF and then print individual Pages teachers love it because they can put it on Smartboard and stuff like that but by far the number one book is this activities for the Cape Cod Beach comr which I love why not have something like that and throw it in your beach bag so that when you're with the kids and like okay let's go and let's go find this let's go find that I'm always looking to make them go search their surroundings out morning Sue the thing we like about it as a PDF is you can download the pages and then you can print them as many times as you want so when you have multiple you know grandkids coming over the course of the summer you can use the book over and over and over again okay um can I talk about one last thing you can talk about whatever you want you're Captain Awesome right now what's the number one animal talked about on Cape godod sharks sharks and why um I don't know because it's scary so in 20 and also we got a lot of them in 2017 there was a young man who was bitten so awful off of well Fleet the shark nicked his femoral artery and he died on the beach and we became the epicenter of shark discussion well I mean I feel like it started with jaws and then you it just kind of came in this realm of it was time and we're there and we've got Greg scl out there and it's like oh we're on Shark Week and so when I worked for ocean Quest there was a female great whitear shark that got stuck in a lagoon over on Nan Island that was Greg's initial attempt to uh tag and track a shark right and right failures lead to success right and so they have this great program and we've got the Atlantic white shark conserv great in organization we've got urch which is a great organization we've got the center for Coastal studies great organization so there's a lot of focus on sharks here the number one question people want to ask is you know how do I not get bitten by a shark because we share the environment with a shark first of all the shark story is an incredible conservation story that goes all the way back to the early 70s fishermen used to carry rifles on their vessels and they would shoot every seal that they saw and then in 1972 the um Marine Mammal protection Act was passed and it became illegal to harass or kill marine family so the seals got a little bit of a break then we started managing the fish populations that they like to eat now what's your favorite food in the whole wide world the favorite food sushi sushi so now you have off of monoy Island it's it's broken off twice now it's a wildlife refuge you don't know what he's doing you're a cape Cotter so this is Cape Cod this is where monoy island is and it's broken into two islands the southern Island seals are pretty much left alone they've got fish they can eat they have a place to reproduce and so they the population has exploded over the last 20 years so if you had a place that you could move to rentree where you could have sushi anytime you wanted is that a place where you would like to spend time so South monoy Island is basically a sushi bar for great white sharks there's all the food that they want all the food that they need and they want a lot of fat that's what they want a m a male Gray Seal weighs 750 PBS and 50% of it is fat it's a nice dinner and it's all on the outside so they peel them like corn in the cob they eat all that fat and then they don't have to eat they only have to eat once every couple of months so they can go and reproduce and make babies and that's what they really want to do sidebar we were on Sandy neck and one of their skins just floated up a seal skin yeah I find I found a number oh my kids are like holding it up I have a video of I have a video that I found on this on this beach in in in Provincetown there's a seal that had escaped the shark but it had eventually died because it just had that classic circular piece taken out of it um so the number one thing that I will tell people if you want to avoid being eaten by a shark don't look like a seal yeah don't wear black don't wear black and don't be on a surfboard like maybe surfing where there's a high shark population isn't the greatest idea but we do it what's your husband's name Cliff I want you to imagine that um we have this great conservation success story of the wolves in Yellowstone National Park yep okay I mean they were the front page of the New York Times the front page of Newsweek the the the national park system's number one instagram every year is some new wolf puppy because they're you know fuzzy and blue-eyed and oh look at how cute we are sharks are not cute right that's they're just not right even even Finding Nemo couldn't really make them cute you know so so imagine that cliff and I have gone to Yellowstone you're there you know you're social media Savvy and Cliff and I have consumed a couple of 9% craft beers around the fire and we we know we know there's an active wolf pack right out there somewhere yeah right so we've had a couple of 9% craft beers and um cliff goes hey you know what I happen to have in my backpack the front end of an elk costume and I happen to have the back end of an elk costume so cliff and I put on the costume and you start videoing and we're prancing around in the field and the uh shark the uh the the wolves go oh my God this is an easy meal this thing is definitely this thing is sick it can't walk it's not behaving properly and they attack us and they find out really quickly that we are actually not what they want to eat so we're battle scarred and bitten and clawed but we get back to the fireplace and you release that video on YouTube mhm is the YouTube reaction going to be oh my God those evil wolves we need to destroy all the Wolves Who attack those people or is it going to be what in God's green earth were cliff and Captain Awesome thinking I feel like it's it's combination of both though I feel the I feel the same way about sharks okay right like they're biting us because we look like they're food they never eat us they bite us yeah fat does not have as much blood so I feel like I'm in a good good way right so when they get a mouth when they get a mouthful of blood they're brain just goes no calories and and off they go yeah there's only one other animal on Cape Cod that is that big and has that high a volume of fat and that's my ex-mother-in-law and she doesn't swim so she'll be okay so rtb wants to know who lives in the Monomoy Lighthouse and are they there year round I don't know the monoy lighthouse in chadam on the point or like no nobody lives in the mono Lighthouse no one as a matter of fact it's very very very few lighthouses that are actually manned and it's by the Coast Guard right it's by the Coast Guard generally but very few of them are manned as a matter of fact the um United States federal government just started putting a number of them out for lease how cool would that be I think that I think that the uh I think that the um Woods whole Lighthouse is is up for one of those leases you can live in that house right like that'd be fabulous are you kidding me yes yeah my Coast Guard Family Dave who was just popping on retired Master Chief uh did in fact live in a White House Lighthouse wait I just I just heard my girlfriend's eye roll finally from that joke so bad she's heard it so many times there are solar panels there what's going on I don't know solar panels where at the lious I mean we should be putting solar panels everywhere do you fly do you ever fly anywhere I get so frustrated when I fly into a city and I see a thousand warehouses with no solar panels of them like you're wasted wasted space just be everything I wish I could have solar but I have trees oh that's great for me I put solar on mine and I too many Tre I have like $330,000 worth of tree work I would have to do to get solar prohibitive around you seen the little seen the little three foot high windmills I asked my husband he said that's not worth it absolutely is worth it all right talk to him on your way out they put them they put them at the Carpenters Union Hall up in um Boston when you're driving in I asked him about that I'm like can we just have one of those windmill things in the front yard I mean look the bottom line and it's never going to that cost is never going to increase and electricity is only going to go up I listen every month every month I have a negative bill because of my solar panel I have a thousand credit but somehow I still have to pay a $12 delivery fee for something I didn't have delivered it's not being delivered it's a scam good morning Mary thanks for joining us seriously though I look at it every time and I'm like you got to be kidding me somebody was really taken back by the cost of energy when they moved here from down south said welcome to the north yeah yeah and don't forget that when they built the the cape C Community College it's that's all electric heat right we can do better we can do better that's it yes um what else do you want to talk before we go I mean this has been riveting I would love to have you come back I've had a great time I'd love to come back um you know I'm happy and willing to talk about anything I have very strong opinions that are often ill informed so I'm so go and get the expert to back it up that's what I appreciate you know we're going to throw out some bold statements here but we're going to go get an expert to back it up with lwhere I don't know how you feel about this but as the weather gets warmer um you know I'm happy to bring in some live animals I would love that i' love to bring in so so you know what an what a um echinoderm is no do you do you know Latin Nei very bad neither do I um EO means spiny Derm means skin right so a spiny skinned animal so echinoderms are all cousins and we have kind of a number of major species here that most people have no idea are related right interesting so we have a sea star which is a aodm we have two types of sea urchins the purple and green sea sea urchin and never the two shall meet one's on the North side one's on the south side we have sand dollars which are also any kind very pretty and then what most people don't have any idea of is that a c cucumber is also those are slimy right they're they're definitely slimy and they're squishy but they have radial symmetry in a in a spiny skin so those are echinoderms Mary says she loves working with chef at The Family Table collaborative oh Keeps Us laughing let me just tell you that the family table I'm again let's let's do see if you do a 360 you go right back to where you 18 um Family Table collaborative is one of the most I volunteer a lot and I struggle to find the thing that fits my Niche right that that hits me on the cylinders and The Family Table collaborative is that thing because they're not just working on trying to get people fed they're trying to work on people learning how to feed themselves better yeah Jenny does a really amazing program over there like you know when I was a kid uh you know we've all heard the phras you know you need to eat that because there's kids starving and Africa well guess what there's kids hungry on Cape Cod one of the wealthiest places in the country and so we can't all afford to go to Whole Foods we can't all afford to do that so what we trying to teach folks is how to cook nutritional food on a budget right so so that's an important thing um if you have time to volunteer please volunteer so many great volunteers over there and Jenny's philosophy of the rainbow as you were discussing I love right and if you I don't know what your listenership is but if they're happens to be a guy with a million or two bucks kicking around we'd like to buy the property see so Thanos is that you is it good morning are the Bel zians listening seriously any way we can uh help our community I I really suggest that you get in there and throw your hands in there collaborative is definitely one of those places where I went in and I had Jenny repurpose something for our um Thanksgiving table and we did a little fundraiser over at knockabout Brewing Company for another great place yeah it's fantastic uh we have so many great small businesses and people that are really in our community doing cool things and helping other small businesses along so I mean if I was going to give shout outs to small businesses it would be um um uh the Marcus's at uh the cape card beer yeah who've done a fabulous job um the earts at I don't know that that counts as a small business but Cape Cod commercial Linens is like donating to multiple nonprofits to make sure that they have the material I I know it sounds really stupid but you can't clean without Rags right and they're supplying all the materials for that kind of stuff um I love the uh I'm going to planning on being there tomorrow it's I think it's the um it's the amplify Market that's Tera that's that's all F so much stuff like please please do not shop at the mall yes I agree stay out of the mall and we have our uh Christmas Market that is happening on Sunday all smok uh small local vendors smok made up a new word I like that and that is at knockabout Brewing Company inside of the mashby common so it's their satellite location we've got the sandwich Arts Alliance uh we've got performers um goat yoga is coming back on the 17th we have a nutcracker performance so what happens if the goat is on your back and the Goat poops it happens it happens not convincing me to it's not all the time it's a rare occurrence I mean I I have a career where I get pooped on quite often to be honest I love full goat because um she adopts all the boys because they're The Unwanted ones okay they don't they don't make babies and they don't make milk and they don't make cheese so they're not often wanted they will eat the weeds in the power lines exactly so she th those boys are fabulous they're really fun they're sweet and uh we put tut on them and made them perform the nut cracker and they loved it they love the attention they do they really they're so happy to be there so I have another performance for you on the 17th whatever it is you do make sure it's locally and you're supporting some local businesses find Captain Awesome once again give a plug and a shout out for wherever they can find you because I really love Cape Cod learning tours so you should take one you can find me for the for the purposes of the Christmas Vacation program easiest way is to find me on Facebook which is uh Cape Cod learning tours on Facebook or Lear learning tours of America is my website I have a number of social media places we didn't even touch upon the fact that I've been to 35 countries on five continents and my Instagram has photos from all of those Adventures so cool including Alaska which was your latest trip four months in Alaska yeah um and I have a YouTube page which talks about a lot of stuff uh locally and in my Adventures that's Captain Awesome as well it's a little difficult to find because I have you know uh pretty amazing I broke two followers so it doesn't really pop to the top of the of the charts there and then and then I know that there's mixed feelings about this um I'm I'm I have Tik Tock I love my Tik Tock that's um Cape Cod Explorer and it's all about you know I generally keep it to one or two minute videos you can scroll through and find lots of really adventures in um Alaska Seattle I explored the Olympic Peninsula um last time I was there and got some really good videos very cool awesome not everybody has a side hustle with Noah or main Hustle No and I you know I got to work with Bob Ballard the guy who found the Titanic on the I worked for Woods Hole I worked for URI I mean I I got to you know have dinner with the American ambassador to Turkey you know that's that's pretty cool very random but also very cool oh my life is a random there's no question about that so definitely worth following give it a like and uh check out Captain Awesome have a great weekend everybody whatever it is that you're doing this weekend make sure it's something locally here on the cape we appreciate you off Capers plan your next visit we're ready and waiting for you including maybe take a tour all right lots of cool stuff in the winter we'll talk to you soon bye everyone by and if you're