SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Welcome to the Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with the Good News, here’s Angie.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:08

Hello, Angie Austin and Jim Stovall here with the Good News. And today we are talking about betting on the past. His winner’s wisdom column this week, betting on the past. Hey, Jim.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:19

Hey, it’s good to be with you. And as you and some of your listeners know, I began my business career on Wall Street and I was an investment broker in You know, when you do that, you expose investors to a number of different investments, and they all come with this incomprehensible document you’re supposed to give to people called a prospectus, which is supposed to explain everything, but it just confuses it. And it gives all the past history of the investment and how it’s performed and all that sort of thing. And then right on the front of every prospectus is the statement, past performance does not indicate future results. And while that is true, it certainly doesn’t ensure it, past performance is all we have. Whether you’re looking at a friend, a loved one, an employee, an investment, or anything else, the only thing we have to predict the future is what we’ve done in the past. And it’s amazing how good that is. Warren Buffett, several years ago, was at one of his investor conferences, and I remember being there, and he said, Somebody asked him, you know, what do you think will be the top-selling candy bar in the future? He said, Snickers. It’s been number one for 40 years, and I don’t see anything changing. And things like that rarely change. And that meeting was 15 years ago, and at the time I wrote this column, Snickers was still number one. And, you know, the best keep getting better. You know, that’s the best way to bet is on the past. And we certainly can’t guarantee anything, but it’s the best way to know what to do.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:58

I love that. I love it. And it totally makes sense. I mean, he has such common sense. I love that about him. And also, I think, you know, I’ve heard, I think it’s Dr. Phil, but other people say, you know, insanity is to keep doing what has, you know, not worked in the past and continuing doing it in the future. You know, that we also know we can learn a lot from the past in terms of what we might want to change.

SPEAKER 02 : 2:19

Yeah, I mean, you know, I had a good friend, and she was getting ready to marry a gentleman, and she mentioned his ex-wives. And that’s not a term you really want to hear in a plural about somebody you care about. And I said, he’s got two, and she said, actually, three. But in all three cases, he claims, you know, he married bad people. Well, there seems to be one common denominator here, and it’s him. And, you know, I mentioned that. I said, with all due love and respect, this is something you need to think about. And she went ahead and married this guy, and less than two years later, he had had four ex-wives. And, you know, the past does indicate what’s going to happen in the future. And I’ll be the first to tell you, people can change. Things can change. The world can change. But it’s amazing how often it’s the same. We had a high school intern with us early this year. She spent a whole month here. And one day I was talking to her and I said, what are your friends and you talk about? She said, well, you know, homework, basketball games, jobs, who’s dating who, that sort of stuff. Well, that’s the same thing we talked about when I was in high school. It’s the same thing my parents and grandparents talked about. So, I mean, the world has changed a lot, but the basics are pretty much the same.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:41

That is true. That is true. And now when you have an intern like that, do they work with you quite a bit? Like you said that she was with you when you wrote this article. Uh, do you give her a lot of input? Does she kind of follow along with you, everything you’re doing?

SPEAKER 02 : 3:54

Yeah, I let her stay with me the whole day, every day. And, uh, so she was sitting there while I dictated this and I asked her opinion on a You know, and one thing, you know, when we had IT questions or something, I didn’t need to call anybody. This 16-year-old kid knew what to do. And that’s rather amazing because, you know, everyone in my office, we had to learn how to use computers and things like that. She doesn’t remember a time in her life when she didn’t do this. So, you know, it’s really truly amazing to see, you know, how that is a different skill set than we’ve had before. But you still use it to keep in touch with friends, and the conversations are a little different digitally, but people are still talking about the same things they’ve always talked about.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:45

You were mentioning basketball. Just as a side note, I know you’re really into sports. Did you watch slash listen to the Iowa-South Carolina women’s basketball game?

SPEAKER 02 : 4:59

I sure did, and Caitlin Clark is amazing, and so are the young ladies from South Carolina. I am so excited that women’s sports have elevated themselves to this level, and I’m a huge fan of college softball. I’ve really gotten into it, and our team here in Oklahoma has been the national champion three years in a row, so it’s fun to follow them, and it’s amazing how well they play, because The girls have a tendency to be more team players, more dedicated to the college game. The guys are baseball or basketball or football are all looking at how quick can I go pro or can I switch to another team. And the girls are amazing. And as you know, my great friend and mentor, John Wooden, was one of the wisest men I knew and the best, winningest basketball coach of all time. And late in his life, he would sit up late on ESPN and watch women’s basketball. And he said it’s just a better game. They pass more, they hit their free throws, and they play defense. Guys have a tendency to want to shoot three-point shots and slam dunk and do a lot of things that are kind of interesting, but they won’t necessarily win you a championship.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:14

Yeah, there was one that Caitlin Clark hit. She was almost on the logo in the middle. She was probably maybe three feet from the logo. Of course, my daughter, who’s really into basketball, was quite into that. She’s always played pretty much every day, sometimes for hours a day, but she and her dad now are getting up at 5.30 in the morning, not just on weekends, but on school days because that’s when they can get the court to do rebound after rebound. She’s been practicing at this really expensive private school. She goes to a public school, but This private school has just facilities that would blow your mind, like a really good university, because I think the tuition is $25,000 per kid at this private school. And I’m sure there’s additional fees for sports, this, that, and the other, and fundraising. So anyway, what she was blown away by was they had two $25,000 return machines where you’d shoot and it returns the ball to you. And I’m like, we don’t need that. You have your dad. You have a free machine.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:14

Yeah, the Purdue game was amazing because they have this 7’4 kid, but they interviewed some of the people that played against him. And one guy, a foot shorter, shot over him all day. And he said, how did you get used to shooting over him? And he said, I grew up playing in a playground in my area, and there was a power wire that went right over the court, and I was used to shooting over it. And so it’s no different than a guy like that. It’s just like a big high line and I shoot over it. That’s hilarious. Yeah. So it was fun. But no, this is a great time of year. I love the sports and it’s fun.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:48

It is fun. You know, her friend, you know, that’s interesting you say that. And I’ve seen videos of, you know, NBA stars who grew up poor. you know, on the dirt in their backyard or whatever with some crummy basket shooting over and over again. But we’ve got, you know, blacktop on the back, like a big blacktop square, I would say, with a pretty decent basketball hoop, but it’s, you know, a portable one. Anyway, my daughter just thinks, oh, she’s so, because the neighbor has a basketball court outside. And but we’ve got a basketball court four blocks from the house. It’s brand new that they put into it. It’s like a small community that we live in. Maybe, I don’t know, 60, 70 houses. And they put in a new basketball court. So anyway, she can go over there. So it’s a matter of blocks. Right. And then we have the rec center where my husband takes her, where they have two or three full size courts. So then she says to me, yeah, but my girlfriend, so and so, her dad just built her a court inside their house. And she has one of those basketball return machines inside. And I’m like, girl, there’s always going to be people that have more equipment, you know, a court inside their house. It’s one of the girls she plays with at high school. I said, but with that said, you go every day with your dad and you have a really great court. There are kids that don’t have anything near what you have, you know, at your fingertips. So it’s all relative, isn’t it?

SPEAKER 02 : 9:03

Yeah, I mean, I was doing an event once in Indiana. And I was talking to the people about, you know, who was from around here. So, well, you’re 40 miles away from where Larry Bird grew up in French Lick, Indiana. And we went there and my driver and I and I said, I want to go there. And so somebody said, well, he lived right out there in the middle of nowhere, a little tiny house. And, you know, this asphalt thing on the driveway, slanted down, gravel, you know, pretty primitive. But, you know, I have reason to believe he must have shot a million shots out there, you know. And I think, you know, I think you can make it. And people there in the coffee shop were telling me, you know, you could go by there. I mean, he would literally shovel the snow off of it and shoot baskets all day. And, you know, I think that has an awful lot more to do with it than that. then whether or not you’ve got a ball return machine, you know?

SPEAKER 03 : 9:57

Right, right, right, exactly. And if you have a dad that is your ball return machine who also trains you, he trains the girls almost every day they live together, I think that’s better than any of that other stuff just because there’s so much personal attention and love put into them, you know?

SPEAKER 02 : 10:13

Yeah. Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think it’s great. I mean, to have a dad that wants to go with you at 5.30 in the morning, I would – I would give up a ball return machine for that any day.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:24

Yes, no kidding. In fact, my husband is with our middle daughter right now, the volleyball player, and they went to four universities and over four days they drove to Kansas. And as you can imagine, in Kansas, there’s a wide diversity of the type of schools and a couple of them literally are like in a cornfield, right? So a couple of the hotels I got for them, they literally were the only hotels in the entire town. They were called the Country Inn and the variation of the Country Inn. There was also one outside of town called the Celebration Inn. I saw the pictures. I told my husband, no one is celebrating there. No one.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:05

I remember going out there when I used to. I spent a summer hauling hay, and we went north with the harvest and went up through Kansas and Nebraska. And the amazing thing was, I remember going into these little towns. They’d finally give us a Saturday afternoon and evening off on Sunday, and we’d go into these little towns. And I remember asking, you know, where do you recommend we eat? And they said, oh, there’s a diner down there. And I said, what are our options? You guys should go hungry. You eat at the diner or you go hungry.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:37

Those are your options. There were two places in. When he went in the subway, he said he went in twice. It was open, but no one was in there. So I don’t know what the story was there. But yeah, they ran into a couple of kids later on when they went to a subway in a different town. And one of the football players and a softball player, the football player said, when my mom pulled up to the school, I said, let’s turn around. And then let’s leave. And then he said, you know, I love it here. And your schedule is all, they understand that you’re going to be traveling for sports. They really work with you with all your classes. And, you know, you don’t have to like make excuses for why you won’t be there. They know that we’re all, you know, athletes at school. And he said, if you’re looking for a party school, this isn’t it. But most of all the ones she went to, they’re small, like Christian NAIA schools. So they’re faith based, too. But he’s like, he just said, if you’re looking for a party school, this isn’t it. And so I hope my daughter took a bunch of pictures next to cornfields just so, you know, we’d be assured that, yes, indeed, this was not a party atmosphere.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:37

That is great. No, and I think some of those schools are the best opportunity. You get to know everybody and it’s it’s like a big high school and and it’s a big deal. Sports in those little towns are amazing. I mean, everybody comes out, and the town turns into a ghost town because everybody’s at the ballgame.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:53

You’re right, because a couple of little old ladies stopped her and asked why she was in town and said they hoped that she came so they could come watch her play. I thought that was really sweet. After church, they all met at the buffet. Jim, it’s so classic. My husband was so shocked by it all. And I’m like, bro, like I’ve lived all over the country. This is the way America is. This is middle America. This is what you have not in Chicago and you’re living in Denver. This is not what you’ve really been accustomed to. So, all right, Jim, always fun to talk to you and talk about your winner’s wisdom column. And I love the idea of betting on the past and that the Snickers bar was big back then. And it’s still number one now. Thank you, my friend. Thank you.

SPEAKER 05 : 13:37

It’s that time of year to start cleaning out your closets, basement, and garage by donating to Arc Thrift. With 34 thrift stores and 15 donation centers across the Front Range, you have almost 50 different locations to donate your gently used clothing and items you don’t need anymore or are taking up space in your home. ARC will also take large furniture off your hands by scheduling a pickup through the ARC website. Any soft goods you choose to donate, you can just put in bags, while hard goods need to go into boxes. This helps ARC turn their 5,000 weekly donations per store into resellable items immediately. With spring around the corner, donate the spring and Easter clothing that is too small or just sitting in a closet to help out another family. And while you’re there, get your Easter decorations and clothing. To schedule your large furniture pickup or to find the nearest Arc Thrift Donation Center or store location near you, go to arcthrift.com. Castle Rock is locked in to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.

SPEAKER 03 : 14:39

Hey there, Angie Austin here with the good news. You know, I love to share good news stories when we have time. And this one, I think, is a real doozy. I mean, on so many levels, it’s good news and it definitely has an element of faith that really impresses me as well. OK, so April is National Donate Life Month. And this is a story of two old friends who were reunited through grief and kindness, and they ended up creating the perfect plan. Okay, 15 years ago, Angie Lynchard moved across the street from Mary Ann Carroll. Okay, so Angie moved in across the street from Mary Ann, and that’s in Columbia, Maryland. Their sons, Jarrett and Phillip, soon became best friends. They were inseparable, spending all their time together biking and fishing and catching frogs, and they have pictures here of them, you know, 15 years ago as little boys, you know, fishing together. They moved then three years later, okay, and the families lost touch with just some social media contact here and there. Jared and Phillip grew up, and Jared joined the Marines, and a year ago, tragedy struck, and 23-year-old Jared suddenly died suddenly. So Marianne came by to visit after Jared passed, okay? So they kind of got together to, you know, she wanted to offer her condolences. And Marianne came by. Jared had passed away. Marianne wanted to offer condolences, and she brought her a prayer shawl, says Angie. And she said, I noticed right away that Marianne looked different. I hadn’t seen her for over a decade. I asked her, is everything OK? And you don’t look quite right. So here’s the mom grieving. And she’s noticing that her old friend looks sick. And it was then that Marianne then said, you know, I’ve had a three year struggle with illness. I’ve got end stage liver disease. And the only cure right now for me is a transplant. So Marianne went on the national waiting list a couple years back for a suitable organ, and there were 10,200 names at the time on the list. So Marianne leaves, and Angie said she just prayed for a miracle for her friend’s life. She had no clue that… She, Angie, would be that miracle. So a couple months after Marianne visited, she saw on Facebook that Marianne was posting a search for a living donor to provide a portion of their liver because no one in her family was a suitable donor. Angie says that her strong faith gave her the courage and motivation to honor her late son by getting tested as a possible living donor for Marianne. When she told her old friend about this life-saving offer, Marianne was like, you know… I don’t want to burden you like you just lost your son. You’re dealing with a family tragedy. I don’t know if this is a really good time for you to donate part of your liver to me. Angie says what convinced her to donate was something that her husband told her. Her husband, Steve, recalled that during a missionary trip to Costa Rica, not long after her son, Jared, had passed away, a minister told him out of Jared’s death, new life will be born. And Angie said, Steve and I were just astonished because Angie’s donation would be the literal fulfillment of those words from the pastor saying, out of Jared’s death, new life will be born. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. So Mary Ann said, okay, it’s almost as if Jared was telling her, his mom, to save my life. So Angie was a match and Marianne got a second chance for life. That was December of 24. So not long ago, they actually went through with the surgery. And Jared had been apparently deeply inspired by a sermon that he’d heard in church exactly one year before the transplant surgery. And the title of the sermon that their son who’d passed away was so touched by the title of the sermon was the perfect plan. And she said, when I recalled the title, I knew this transplant was destined by God to be that perfect plan that Jared was basically telling her from heaven. Good job, mom. Good job. You’re saving a life. The transplant was successful. They did it at Johns Hopkins. They removed a small portion of Angie’s liver and they put it in Marianne to replace her failed liver. And apparently they could use like this robotic surgery system now. So it’s a lot easier on Angie on the donor. It’s not as invasive. You have a really small scar. And because of the way that this works, not only do you have a small scar, but you also have… Less danger and a shorter healing time, etc. So less pain, faster recovery and better post-operative outcomes. And best of all, she said she was expecting Angie thought she’d have this big scar, but she just had a few tiny ones. And three months after receiving Angie’s liver donation, Mary Ann is doing really well. She is a very, you know, religious person. She feels that it was divine intervention that God brought them together and eventually, you know, leading to a healthy, renewed life for her because of Angie’s gracious act. And it says here, so many things had to happen to make this a reality. Our sons being friends, taking Angie to prayer shawl after Jared passed and then Angie saw me sick. And then finding out Angie was a suitable donor, she said that she felt like God and Jared had a hand in it all. And she says she has a photo magnet on her refrigerator of Angie and Jared. And she said, it’s my angel on earth and my angel in heaven. And Angie says that by donating part of her liver, she also saved someone else because someone else moved up on the donor list to get another – She gave two people really life by doing that. So I just thought it was a beautiful story to share with you, a little good news story. And I’ve got other news for you as well. I think my guest is ready here. Well, if you’re just joining us, this is Angie Austin with the good news. A new report reveals that cybercrime continues to grow at an alarming rate. creating serious threats for businesses and consumers. So as we change gears now, joining us today is cybersecurity expert Ala Resnick, who is here to share the latest info from Verizon’s annual data breach investigation report. Ala Resnick is the Senior Director of Advanced Product Sales at Verizon Business with more than 20 years’ experience providing solutions to prevent cyber threats. Welcome to you, Ala Resnick.

SPEAKER 04 : 20:48

Thank you very much, Angie. It’s such a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER 03 : 20:51

Well, let’s just talk about the highlights of the report. Let’s start there.

SPEAKER 04 : 20:55

Okay, well we issued a data breach investigation report on an annual basis for dozens of years now and I look forward to that read every year. I’ll break it down for you on a few key takeaways. So what we’re seeing in the cyber security space is that the crime is definitely on the rise and the criminals are becoming more sophisticated with both the experience but also with the advent of generative AI, because they are using the generative AI to make the phishing attacks on us more and more realistic, right? So we, as humans, are more likely to fall victims of those. Another key takeaway is that ransomware, which is a serious cybersecurity crime, is on the rise, 37% increase in that, And SMBs are super vulnerable. SMBs continue to be the most vulnerable group in cybersecurity space, mostly because they don’t really have the resources, the specialties, the technologies in place to protect their business. So those are probably the key takeaways, and we can dive deeper into those. if you’re for the interest of the listeners here.

SPEAKER 03 : 22:23

Yeah, in terms of small businesses, how can they be better prepared?

SPEAKER 04 : 22:27

Yes, it’s not an easy task if you’re running your business and you are, of course, focused on growing it and you’re excited about what you’re doing. But the reality is once you have the security, it becomes part of your operations. It’s like You know, banking or payroll is part of your operations, trying to do this. Security should be one of those disciplines that you think about on a regular basis. And to start with, simple things, like keeping your passwords up to date, changing them often, and keeping them strong, using multi-factor authentication, keeping up with software updates. You know, it sounds strange. Why would software updates have anything to do with cybersecurity? But it’s super important because software has vulnerabilities in it. And every time the new feature becomes available, there could be a crack in that software that allows cybercriminals to get in and access our systems, right? Our databases, our customer information. So software companies work daily to… prevent or kind of cover those cracks in the software so that doesn’t happen. So don’t delay software updates. Small businesses can also deploy, not that expensively, very, very good software on their routers, on their computers, on their mobile devices that will help to kind of build a shield around their systems to bounce back cyber attack attempts. And then finally, education of your people. It sounds sort of like educating about cybersecurity, but just recognizing a spam and thinking about what to do if you actually click on the phishing email, who to contact, what are the next steps is important. It gives comfort to our employees and that awareness is super important.

SPEAKER 03 : 24:39

All right, in terms of the most common threats, what are you seeing as the most common threats?

SPEAKER 04 : 24:47

So the most common threat is phishing, essentially. Sending something that sounds so real. Like, click on this link, or your boss asked you to transfer $10,000 to another bank. Or just click on this link to enter your information because your delivery of your goods is delayed, right? And then the employee clicks on that link. But what happens? They open the door to software, like a piece of software code that now enters the system and then kind of gets there and grabs. It’s like a hook. and gets hold of customer databases and so forth, ready to strike and say, oh, I have your customer data. If you don’t pay this amount of ransomware, then we will expose that data or shut down and disable your system. So that’s probably the biggest threat for small businesses.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:55

You know, when you talk about that, you know, you think about these hospitals that have been, you know, the ransomware, you know, they’ve got all this information on patients and, you know, how serious it can be. So how serious is cybercrime in general?

SPEAKER 04 : 26:09

Super serious. It’s interesting that you brought the hospitals because, of course, not only they have customer data, the financial data, they have health care data. So that makes hospitals very vulnerable. But for small businesses in general, according to one of our partners, National Cyber Security Alliance, 60% of them, like more than half, would go out of business six months following a successful cyber security attack.

SPEAKER 01 : 26:36

Wow.

SPEAKER 04 : 26:36

That is super serious. And you know, the average ransomware is $116,000. And there are a lot of small businesses that don’t have that kind of money lying around, right? That certainly would get them out of business in many cases, so it is very serious and have to be taken seriously.

SPEAKER 03 : 26:56

Absolutely. All right, so I know we’re almost out of time. One more question. How can businesses or even us, the consumer, protect our information?

SPEAKER 04 : 27:07

Yes, let’s finish on a positive note. There are things we can do to protect ourselves, right? Keeping our passwords strong, using multi-factor authentication. No delaying software updates and securing our endpoints, which is computer routers and mobile devices with simple software. And finally, being aware. Be vigilant when we see something that sounds like a little bit off. Don’t click. Those are the three steps I would think about when it comes to starting on your cybersecurity journey.

SPEAKER 03 : 27:43

Yeah, don’t click. And just like yesterday when I got something from, I don’t know, the energy company or something, rather than click on that link, I just Googled my local energy company and put in pay bill and went to their site on my own rather than click the link that was sent to me, which actually ended up being legitimate. But you never know. Where can we go for more info, Allah?

SPEAKER 04 : 28:04

That is so smart. Definitely is a way better way to do it. To start with, I would recommend Verizon Cybersecurity Awareness page. You can just Google it. The report we discussed is going to be there with additional tips and thoughts on how to go about cybersecurity.

SPEAKER 03 : 28:25

Perfect. Thank you so much for the great info. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:29

You too. Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.