TruCode®

13 - TruImpact: Solution-Based Code Enforcement

• Civica Law® • Episode 13

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:05:43

Code enforcement is often seen as citations and compliance—but what if the real job is to restore dignity, solve problems, and rebuild trust in communities?

Host Matt Silver sits down with Jon Martin, Code Enforcement Division Manager for Seminole County, Florida, to explore the philosophy of solutions-based code enforcement—an approach centered on communication, compassion, and collaboration. Drawing on decades of experience in law enforcement and public service, Jon shares powerful stories from the field that reveal the human realities behind code violations, from grief-driven hoarding to families struggling through hardship. Together, they discuss how code enforcement professionals can move beyond citations to identify root causes, connect residents with resources, and ultimately strengthen neighborhoods while still achieving compliance.

Host: Matthew R. Silver, CCEO, Esq.

Guest Speaker(s): Jon C. Martin, Author and Code Enforcement Division Manager

Jon C. Martin is the Code Enforcement Division Manager for Seminole County, Fla., President of the Florida Association of Code Enforcement, and a devoted husband, father, minister, motorcycle enthusiast, and public servant with over 30 years of experience in local government leadership. A leukemia survivor and the father of a son who tragically passed away at 16, Jon brings deep compassion, resilience, and perspective to everything he writes.

He is the author of several books on code enforcement, public service, and leadership. From leadership to children’s books to his Southern-inspired Great Boiled Peanut Compendium, Jon’s work reflects a simple mission: to uplift, educate, and inspire — leaving a meaningful legacy rooted in service, heart, and hope.

Resources:

Submit to podcast@civicalaw.com for a chance to have your story on the show!

----------

At TruCode®, our mission is to reveal the truth about code enforcement and its role in protecting and improving communities.

New episodes drop every other Wednesday, so follow, review, and rate us wherever you're listening now.

----------

Legal Disclaimer:

TruCode® Podcast provides updates and insights into current municipal legislation and is not intended as legal advice. Outcomes of legal matters can vary significantly based on specific factual and legal circumstances. Civica Law Group, APC® remains dedicated to providing unmatched legal solutions and upholding community standards and environmental integrity. For professional legal counsel or guidance, visit civicalaw.com/contact-us to get in touch with our experienced attorneys.

SPEAKER_01

Code enforcement isn't about citations, it's about connection, it isn't about authority, it's about accountability, empathy, and impact. From building trust and strengthening neighborhoods to protecting the vulnerable and navigating difficult conversations, code enforcement is a tool for transformation. The legacy of a great officer isn't measured in keeps us closed. It's measured in lives changed, communities strengthened, and trust earned. The future of this profession depends on officers who lead with passion, act with integrity, even in tough times, and serve with purpose. All leading to what we're all aiming for: solutions for blight, health hazards, crime, and safety issues, and communities stay tuned to learn all about solutions based on code enforcement.

SPEAKER_00

From Civic Al, it's the truth code, a podcast explaining what code enforcement is, why our communities need it, and why you need to care. From first-hand experiences, we discuss quality of life issues to reveal the truth about code enforcement.

SPEAKER_01

I'm your host, Matt Silver. Thanks for joining us here today on True Code Podcast. Today I'm really honored to have with us John Martin. John is the Code Enforcement Division Manager for Seminole County, Florida. He's also president of the Florida Association of Code Enforcement, otherwise known as FACE, and a devoted husband, father, minister, motorcycle enthusiast, and public servant with over 30 years of experience in local government leadership. A leukemia survivor himself and the father of a son who tragically passed away at age 16, John brings deep compassion, resilience, and perspective to everything he writes. And right he does. He is the author of several books on code enforcement, public service, and leadership, including A Reason for Every Season, A Guide to Solutions-based code enforcement, Serve Well, a modern guide to thriving as a civil servant, which applies to everybody, and unlocking the essence of effective leadership, where he champions ethical leadership, clarity, and service-driven purpose. He's also developing a children's book series, I Am My Own Superhero, designed to help kids discover their inner strength and identity. From leadership to children's books to his Southern-inspired great boiled peanut compendium. I want to hear about that, John. John's work reflects a simple mission to uplift, educate, and inspire, leaving a meaningful legacy rooted in service, heart, and hope. From your mouth to my ears, John, thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02

Hey Matt, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01

I'm blessed to be here. We're blessed to have you here. Thank you so much. So, John, there's a lot to cover here, but I always like to start with how the heck did you get into code enforcement?

SPEAKER_02

It's a great story. It started. A very long time ago, when I became an Orlando police officer, um, I used to arrest the same people over and over and over again. And then the whole time I'm chasing bad guys through neighborhoods, I'm watching code enforcement officers condemning homes and knocking down drug galsies. And I'm realizing what they're doing seems to work, but what I'm doing's not. I keep putting guys in jail and they keep getting out the next day, standing on corners. And I did that for approximately 13, 14 years. And I got to the point where I was done. And I walked over to the code enforcement office and said, What do I got to do to be a part of this? And I met a gentleman named Mike Roach, who was the manager of code enforcement for the city of Orlando, and he said, Come on over. So I went over to code enforcement and I began working with them in the same neighborhoods I was a cop. And I had a reputation in the streets of Orlando, they called the flat top, because you're not used to have hair. So it was a little bit different switch to see me in plain clothes, by a gun, without a batch, walking the streets, and I'm talking about how we can solve your problems. I was beginning of my solutions-based code enforcement journey. For many years, I did that with the city of Orlando, and then I went to the private sector. I finished getting my degree. I ran a very large environmental drilling firm for a number of years, and then my son was killed. And when my son was killed, I said, Well, I've got to get back into being home every day for my wife and our other son. And I um came back over to Orange County Code Enforcement.

SPEAKER_01

Now this is Orange County, Florida.

SPEAKER_02

Orange County, Florida, not Orange County County.

SPEAKER_01

So we got one in California too, and we're sitting in it.

SPEAKER_02

Yep, the other one on the east side. Okay. With a number of years there as an officer and a Bateman officer, and then I became a supervisor, and I was there for a while. And things were great. And then one day they said, Well, now we want y'all to find the violation, cite the violation, take the violation of the hearing. And we'll sort it out in the fines and the reductions. I said, hold on a second. That doesn't that math doesn't math. It's not gonna work. I'm not gonna do that. And they said, Oh no, that's the way it's gotta be. And I said, So you're telling me I can't work my cases the way I know how to work my cases. And they said, Well, we just want to get the numbers on the board. And I said, Well, this is my two-week notice. Oddly enough, within about eight or eight or ten days or so, I got invited to uh make an application for the manager's position of Sunlow County Code Enforcement. They wanted to bring code enforcement under the planning division, take it from the sheriff's office and the building department, and make one department out of them. And I said, I'd be happy to come do it, but it has to be solutions-based. It has to be communications-based, it has to be earn as you go based. There are, you know, we have to do this with the goal of solving problems. And I'm extremely blessed to have probably, and I don't want to send any other county managers out there, but I have the very best county manager in the world and the very best bunch of commissioners because they share my heart for the committee. So they said absolute, and that's what we're gonna do. So we worked diligently since May, and October 1st, we launched the Semo County Code Enforcement Division, which is 100% solutions based. But I'm super excited to be at the helm of it, and I can't wait to raise some leaders to take my place when I'm radio to Yeah, code enforcement is one of the unique jobs where we're trying to work ourselves out of a job.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. So on that note, uh when you you use the phrase solutions-based code enforcement. What does that mean? And how does it compare to whatever the opposite of that is?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I've always believed in finding out what the root cause of things was, and you know, why do you I I young top, I put a 16-year-old kid in my car for selling delivery, and I said, he said, You didn't prep me, Fly Top. I said, We're not going to jail, we're going to McDonald's. We're going to sit down over a Big Mac. You're going to help me understand why it is you do what you do. Because I don't understand why we keep playing this cat and mouse game. He sat me down and explained it to me. A couple weeks later, I went to the chief of police and I said, I want to start a community-oriented policing program. They've got one of these up at Multinoma County Sheriff's Office in Oregon. Can I go up there and view it and come back here and do it? And he said, if you use your own vacation time, so I did. I went spent two weeks with Multinoma County Sheriff's Office. I learned the police mountain biking and community policing, and I came back and I started Orlando's first mountain bike patrol unit and put cops in shorts, and we worked in neighborhoods and knocked on doors, and it was was a very good program. Started to work. We were solving problems, you know, economic problems, educational problems. We had after-school tutoring, adult education classes. We had men's warehouse donated suits, and we brought UCF interns in. They teach people how to start a job application, how to interview. We put 44 convicted phones to work in six months. And then one day I get a phone call. We gotta stop the community program. So it doesn't cost you anything, everything's grant fine, babe. Then we want to go in a different direction. So that's about the time I left and went to code enforcement. In code enforcement, I am able to go to a house early enough to catch the identifier that there's a problem. I believe my officers know you're charged with the responsibility of being a part of the community, sir. You don't have to live there. But when you're in the field, you're in the field. Yep. I don't know if the truck stopped, If you went out and talked to the guys playing basketball, the man mowing his lawn, the guy dragging out his trash can. Pay attention to what's going on in the community so that when you see the first sign of a season on coming, you're able to go to the door and go, I've noticed that your house is not the same as it was six weeks ago. Is everything okay? Um I'll tell you a story about a house we went to. A gentleman's truck was sitting in the yard, his tag expired, and his tires went flat. Knocked on his door and I said, Oh I'm the tea. He said, But who are you and why do you care? And I said, Well, I'm the code officer and I got a complain about the truck. Uh it's not like you. I've always seen your yard cut. I've rarely seen the truck here. Now it never leaves, and the grass is hot. And he says, I lost my job. He said, My wife died of cancer. I lost my job. He said, I've got a child in here to raise. Can't get my head screwed on straight. I need help. He's down. I said, okay, what do you do? And he said, I'm a I'm a carpenter. I build stuff. And I said, okay, well, we have an open in Public Works. Do you have a computer? No. I'll go get mine. Went to the truck, got my computer, came inside, sat down, built this man a resin paint, filled out his application online. As soon as I left, I called Public Works and I said, I don't I don't care. As long as this man's got a clean background, please give him a chance. Well he gave him a chance. Two weeks later he got his tags reneged and his tires are. A couple weeks later he got his first paycheck and he was able to cut his grass. He has it repeat offended. Solutions-based code enforcement is about finding the root cause of the problem. Matt, all your experience, have you ever met, anybody out there is listening, have you ever knocked on somebody's door and asked them was your intention when you blocked this to lose your investment, destroy your community, or cause your neighbors to lose their property better? If you ever find that person, I want to meet them, because I've never met them.

SPEAKER_01

I'm gonna, you know, John, you're one, you're you're preaching the right thing. I I love it. It's right, it's a direction that code enforcement I feel like it's increasingly focusing on across the country, which is how do we do our jobs well? That's really what solution-based code enforcement is. It's the answer to the question, how do I do my job well? I'm gonna spend a career doing it. I've been doing it 20 years. Sounds like you would do it a little bit longer. Uh, but we're dedicating huge chunks of our day and our lives, our energy and our emotions and so on to this. Some people dedicating their lives, you know, physically to it. Absolutely. How do we do it well? And how we do it well is solving problems. Because for, you know, I I kind of joke that job descriptions for code enforcement are so funny. They're so long and they're so wordy. Every job description for code enforcement should just be two words. Nuisance abater. That's it. We solve problems. Now, nuisance is a legal term for problem. That's all it is. We solve abatement, of course, being solutions. So if you're not doing solution-based code enforcement, you gotta ask yourself, what am I doing? Am I even doing code enforcement in that situation?

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I learned this firsthand and it solidified my heart firsthand June 17, 2020. I was a supervisor for code enforcement. I was the men's national bodybuilding champion for the National Gym Association. No, I haven't always been this fat. And I got a blood clot on my knee. So I was doing squats and my knee swelled up and I rubbed it, my knee turned black and blue, and I went to the doctor, and it made my blood work and they wouldn't let me go home and said you have leukemia. And you're in what we call blast phase, and you're probably going to die, so we're gonna keep you here until either you survive or you die. And I said, Well, I get things to do, I need to go. Regardless, about four weeks later I managed to uh make it back to my own place, my home, and my grass is higher than I am tall, and my fence has got problems in my foresplat. Yep. And I thought long and hard about that. I was embarrassed, I was ashamed. I was a code enforcement supervisor in every violation that mattered in the community that I didn't buy the home to destroy the community's property value, but get here we were. By the grace of God and my small group from church, my neighbors, they were all like, man, where you been? What's going on? You know, I saw I got leukemia dupe. Got myself in a corner to get out of it. So they cut my grass and they fixed my fence and cleaned my corn. And they hit me. I can have happen to me. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

What I teach my teenage and what I preach to every code enforcement officer is be you tomorrow. You have no idea what that person on the other side of the door is going through. And I don't care if you've been there fifty times, I don't care if they've cussed you every time they've gone, every time you go to that door, it's okay. I am John with Code Enforcement, I'm here to help. What can I do to help? Get off my property. Okay. See you in 10 days, I'll be back. And we keep playing this game until eventually we figure out what's going on and eventually be able to open up a line of communication people. But I don't believe there's bad people. There are true refusals, and and there's there's a there's a system for true refusal. There's a system for that, and it's usually the it should be at all costs the last resource. Liens and fines don't work. We've proven that to ourselves. I wish I knew what the national total number of code enforcement liens and fines was. It's to the billions, I'm sure. It's gotta be trillions, right? Yeah, but it doesn't work. What works is solutions-based code enforcement, what works is finding out what is the cause of the problem. How do we help you get beyond this heart and prevent you from becoming a repeat offender? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's what this is. It's what it's all about.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. No, I I completely agree. At least effective code enforcement is. All right. You know, there's always gonna be problems in our communities in terms of problem properties. Um, people are imperfect, and of course, Mother Nature has a hand sometimes in these things. Um, people fall in hard times, and you do have you do have people who just go, I'm not gonna comply, I'm not gonna do it. We've got us, like you said, we've got a system for all of it, but shouldn't shouldn't the most effective system, in fact, you know what, I'm not gonna state it facetiously like lawyers like to do. The most effective system is the one that starts with finding what the root problem is. And if the root problem is they need a helping hand, then we get the resources together to the extent we have them to do it. If, and that may be tapping into charities, third parties, church groups I find are always willing. Call it kids trying to go to college, that's really important for their resumes now. They may want to chip in other dubiter groups. Sometimes we're doing it. And the answer may instead be get off my lawn. I'm not gonna comply. And like you said, that the solution then is the process that goes forward. Everything you're saying is kind of reminding me of a book I'm reading right now called Cherished Belonging by uh Father Greg Boyle. Father Greg Boyle is the guy who started Homeboy Industries. And if you are on the West Coast and you go to a grocery store and you look to buy uh tortilla chips, you're seeing a bag called Homeboy Industries because Father Greg works with, uh he lives in, is invested in, goes in uh the neighborhoods in LA that are gang ridden. And there's a lot of them in LA, as I'm sure even 3,000 miles away, you've already heard about us out here. And uh he says the same thing that you just said, John. There's no bad people. There's people who maybe don't know that they're good, haven't found that goodness in there. And uh he talks about helping to dial in on what is the core problem. What is the core problem? And you got people who aren't ready to solve that core problem. And for that, we've got a system. Whether it's there, here, code enforcement otherwise. For the people who do want help, uh, there's help. There's a system. Absolutely. All roads lead to compliance in code enforcement. That's that's a nice thing. That's what keeps me an optimist. In code enforcement, we're going to get compliance every single time. Right.

SPEAKER_02

But it has to be the end goal. It has to be your end goal. It has to be your goal, it needs to be solutions-based compliance, voluntary compliance. And I I outline in my book, a reason for every season, there's four pillars of solutions-based co-enforcement. Communication, obviously it's person, it's the most absolute, most important part of this whole equation. Communication collaboration. One of the first pieces of the department I put together was a 49-page resource manual in digital format for each of the officers I was going to hire. What I did is I went around and I got all these churches and charities and community groups and youth groups and everybody else that would ever think about doing anything to help under any circumstance. And I compiled a resource book. Collaboration, number two. Number three, obviously, is compassion. If you don't have a heart for this, don't do it. Yep. They used to fill these slots with ex-cops and they were hard notes and mean the old guys that beat, you know, they beat a pension, they got done with it, and the next thing they wanted to do was grab a second pension, so they'd come over and do code enforcement and issue citations and yell at those days are gone. We've learned that doesn't work. If you don't have a heart, don't be a codeman. Don't do it. And the fourth pillar of it is appliance, and compliance remains the goal, but the path to achieving it was so much different. Instead of relying on citations and penalties, solutions officers, education, resources, online, flexible timeline. Can you be a pundit in 15 days in your jurisdiction?

SPEAKER_01

In some, in some you can. Depends what it is. In some good luck.

SPEAKER_02

Maybe a fence. If you came there with everything, you might get the fence. Most code compliance deadlines are 15 days. I can't even wrap my head around you just yelling at me. Yeah, dead end. You know, so flexible timelines matter. You can't communicate and you don't have a heart for people. This isn't the right profession. I can't preach heart enough. And it's kind of funny because when people said logging law enforcement, you were on narcotics, you were on slot, and next thing you know, you're out of your rubber people.

SPEAKER_01

Right, absolutely. So, John, you were talking about admin fines don't work, liens don't work. Is there a place for those? I mean, as we talk about compassion on the one hand, is there I don't know that they're even opposite of each other, but there is there a place still for fines and penalties in code enforcement?

SPEAKER_02

Unfortunately, there is. There, there's a segment of people in the world called true refusals. They're the people who just it's my property, I can do what I want. You can't tell me what I can do and what I can't do. They they just filled the wetlands and built a tiny home for grandma in the back where they shan't be. And they're telling me I pay taxes, it's mine, I can do whatever I want, and I'm not in violation. You are now I have to take you to the magistrate, and I have to get you to understand that, yeah, in fact, we have a problem here. But the reality of it is, is even when the magistrate rules on the case, adjudicates you, Mr. True Refusal is violating the code, the guy that's gonna be standing right beside you to walk you through the process, we get you legal, it's gonna be us. We want compliance, we want voluntary compliance. And then when your fines and when your case comes into compliance, the person handing you the fine reduction paperwork is us. Every time we put a case in compliance that has a lien or a fine recruit on it, we send them, we bring them the affidavit of compliance with the fine reconsideration paperwork. The goal is I want this off of your credit. I don't want this to prohibit you from getting that better interest rate or that the HELOC.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, HELOC, right?

SPEAKER_02

Or a refined. I don't want to tie up your equity with my loan, so let's get these things settled. Let's get you before the magistrate, lower the fines, get the liens reduced, and get them off your credit, get them off your property so you can enjoy your property to full benefit. But as long as there's true refusals in the world, unfortunately, we'll always have to have hearings. But I promise you that the majority of your abatements, the majority of your inmute cases, these are coming from people of difficult cities. These are coming from people who need more than a farm.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, though the I was really it kind of brings me back to memory I have of going out with code enforcement um into a hoarder house the first time I ever went into one. And it was a long time ago. Although it seems like it's getting more prolific these days to me. And I remember, you know, it's easy to think, oh, it's a hoarder house. What a bunch of junk out here. What the heck? What's going on with you? And on the walls, I started to see the pictures of the family. And, you know, it's this is this person I'm looking at, which in that case was an elderly man who looked really rough and tumble at that point and disheveled, completely different in these photos. He's in that life. He's got little kids, he's got a wife, he's here alone here. And you start, you know, col connecting the dots and going, okay, there's a trauma point in this person's life where everything fell apart. And uh in code enforcement, you know, we're not psychologists. We're called. We like to play once on TV sometimes. We're called to it, but we're by and large, we're not. And um but you know, what we're all born with is a degree in the potential for compassion and understanding, which leads us to solutions. Is that about an accurate sum?

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's very accurate. Um the the the problem with hoarder houses is the biggest the largest component that comprises a hoarder house is grief. You can't see it in the house, it's not a tangible physical item, but the items they hoard are usually because of grief. And when you knock on the door and you talk to them with compassion and you lead with understanding, and I'm just here to talk to you, I'm just here to understand how we've gotten here. And when they start telling you your story, usually it rips your heart out, and we both end up hugging on the front porch and crying about it. And then we need to try to figure out how to solve the problem because it's it's unfortunately oftentimes the unsanitary conditions are very bad for their health. Uh, it's not just the fire hazard, it's also uh environmental health hazard that causes folks to have a lot of illnesses they never recover from. But I've not met one yet that got there because they wanted to. They got there because of grief, they got there because of misfair, they got there because somebody that was in their life taking care of them is no longer there anymore. Um, oftentimes it's a result of gaining hold of possessions so that they can control what gets taken away from them in a scenario where they've never been able to control what was being taken away from them.

SPEAKER_01

That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_02

Right, so being able to talk with them, work with them, and bring in the professionals to talk with them and work with them. These things take time. And it's not something that you can do overnight. Sometimes you have to go back three or four times and spend 20, 30 minutes sitting on the front porch talking to them to build enough trust with them to be able to introduce them to a professional that may take them to the next step. Done quite a few of them. I had a lady finally, she called me after about four weeks of going by two or three times a day or a week to talk to her. She called me and said, I'm I'm ready. And I said, Okay, I'll I'm on my way. And she goes, Please hurry because I've fallen in the front yard and I can't get up. I call paramedics and they show up, and I show up, and sure enough, she's laid in the front yard in her nightgown and she couldn't get up. I said, What do you want me to do? And she goes, I want you to make it all go away. I said, All right, you go to the hospital with these folks. I'm gonna get adult protective services, gonna come down and talk to you at the hospital, and then we're gonna go ahead and get a cleanup team in here and clean this up, food. She went on to the hospital, cleanup team showed up, we cleaned the entire mobile home out. We got used but very nice furniture and furnishings to put back in the house, uh, local bed manufacturer donated a brandy mattress. We set her house up with what she would need, a way that she would be able to get around with those uh roll-and-lockers. And um, she got a home health care nurse who she came home from the hospital. She was super excited. She was happy. She had a clean house, she had people with her, she had everybody in the code enforcement department would go about talk to her or take her lunch, and the people in the Mola Home Park would start coming over now, taking care of her. She felt like she was part of a community. She had previously been hospitalized from Yeah, cherished belonging.

SPEAKER_01

That's the phrase I'm learning.

SPEAKER_02

We solved the problem and we gave her a community.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and you gave her dignity. Absolutely. And you know, as I as I think back to uh why we have a show called Hoarders now and just focusing on the hoarding epidemic for a bit, I think I think it is an epidemic. I think it is an increasing problem. Twenty years ago when I started doing this, I didn't see it nearly as much. And I wonder if there's a relationship between an increase in hoarding and the decrease in the sense of community that most of our listeners are probably thinking, I don't know all my neighbors. Maybe some of you don't even know your neighbors. I know all mine, but it took a little more effort than it did in the past. Um, you know, when was the last time you had a block party? When was the last time you went to dinner with your neighbors? When was the last time you went over and knocked on your neighbor's door? When was the last time you even asked them to take care of your animals while you're gone, or you offered to do that for them? I wonder if there's a relationship between our estrangement from each other, even living in the same country, and uh maybe the manifestation of that with hoarding and other issues like that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I believe there's a huge correlation in it, Matt. I do I um we're we're strangers in our own communities and our sense of family uh, especially in your jurisdiction and my jurisdiction are very transit in nature. Yep. Um, you know, a lot of folks in Florida don't have family nearby and they fall on bad times, but usually ashamed to pick up the phone and call home. Yeah. Hey, so and so, you know, we're we're we're we're not making ends meet, so-and-so lost a job, we can't make it. Um we need help. So they don't. And the next thing you know, things start suffering. And when those things start suffering, it's up to us to see it ahead of time. And I believe if you're an ownership-involved code enforcement officer, where your community is your responsibility. When you're out there meeting the neighbors, playing basketball with the kids, celebrating their birthdays. Uh I had a lady, um her name was Miss Mary, and every morning Miss Mary used to sweep the walk away from her front door to the sidewalk, and it was about 15, 18 feet long. And she took so much pride in doing them that at her age of 88, that was about the best she could do. And um Miss Mary, every morning I'd go by, she'd be out there the same time sweeping it. One day Miss Mary wasn't out there. I thought, okay, something's wrong. I'm gonna leave alone, maybe I'm early, maybe she's late. The next day Miss Mary wasn't out there. Pulled the car around the corner, stopped, got out, went, knocked on the door, and I couldn't get a hold of Miss Mary. Went to the next door neighbor's house and I said, Where's Miss Mary? And she sold it, took Miss Mary to the hospital last night, or night before last. And I said, Okay. I wish she, she said, I don't know. And I said, Okay, well, I'll go to the hospital and I'll find out. So I go to the hospital and they told me Miss Mary died best now. Her daughter had flown in from Rhode Island and she asked me who I was. And I said, I'm the code guy. It's the code, man. She said, Well, how'd you know my mom? And I said, I used to wave at her every morning, I'd stop, talk to her, check on her and see how she was, and I noticed she wasn't out there. And she goes, That's ridiculous. I said, What do you mean ridiculous? She goes, So you've known my mom how long? I said, maybe about six weeks. And you're up here at the hospital checking on my mom. She's part of my community. And it and it hit me that I was able to realize something that was out close. It made an impression on that lady. It made an impression on the community. But I believe that when you go through the community, when you notice that the grass that's always edged, it's no longer edged. It's no longer mowed. Right. There's there's a reason to get out of the truck and knock on the door. How are you doing?

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

What's going on? Even if it's not in violation, it's going to be in violation. We are the best educators in the world. Nobody loves this stuff more than we do. We know it better than anybody. Knock on the door and to say, you know, I noticed your lawn's not moved. Is everything okay? Hey, give them an opportunity to tell you what's going on or ask you for help.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Most of the times, if we catch it early enough, it's easier to solve the problem. If we wait till it's too late and they're five mortgage payments behind, it gets harder and harder and harder. So they the earlier we're able to interact with the problem, the earlier we're able to help them get solutions in play that can prevent decay, can prevent bikes, can prevent nuisances, can prevent these folks from ending up homeless.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, there's uh there, I heard this phrase once, we're not nosy enough. Well, you know, we we think we're connected. I mean, I'm a big, I'm a big uh, I'll just say it. I'm a hater of social media. I hate it. And so I'm gonna make no bones about, you know, my feelings on it clearly, but I think we're disconnected through this uh attempt to connect. God bless us, we're trying to connect, but I think we're disconnecting from each other. And so how do we get you're being nosy there, John? You're you're looking at people's crabgrass, you're looking at the grass growing, you know, and yeah, but you're knocking on the door. Maybe we need to be a little nosier with showing, you know, uh someone cares. And also, by the way, for bad actors, you know, people who are who are intentionally making bad decisions, the community's watching. Neighborhood watch. Remember that sign from like the 80s? What happened to that? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

I had a guy breaking to a neighborhood three, four neighborhoods over from mine. And when the lieutenant arrested him, he the guy said, he said, Why didn't you commit the crime in your own neighborhood? And he goes, There's too damn many cocks over there. Yeah. And he said, What do you mean? He said, There's these white trucks with lights on them that constantly in the neighborhood. And he said, There was no weight I could. He ended up breaking into a house in the city limits because he couldn't do it in my jurisdiction because there were too many of us in the neighborhood. Yep. But that's what it takes. You know, we're crime prevention, where well you're driving, you pull to a stoplight or stop sign, and you look to your right and you can't see oncoming traffic. Whose problem is that vision obstruction? Right. Mine. Right. I'm not roads and drains. But that vision obstruction is my problem. It's up to me to address it. It's not up to me to pick up the phone and call, you know, somebody and go, you need to come fix this. It's a problem, or wait till a citizen has to do it. I tell my guys all the time, it's only asking what you do for a living, you tell them I'm a civil servant. Right. I'm solid waste, I'm public works. I'm the building department, I'm cleaning and zoning, on toad enforcement, on animal services, whatever it is you need me to do, that's what I now. And that's what we do. I take each one of my staff members spent weeks at a time to learn what each department does so that we can better serve our communities. We went to a lady's house and I noticed that her sprinklers were always on on the wrong days, and they were on for a very long time. And I started noticing dollar weed taking over for a year. So I called utilities. Said, how much is this water bill? They said, six hundred dollars. How much are the water bills on either side of this house?$47 to$51. Okay. So I went up and I knocked on the door and I said, hi, I'm John of the shows enforcement. So goes, Oh God, what's wrong? And I said, What's wrong is you're spending too much money bombed water. And she goes, What do you mean? And I said, Your water bill is six hundred dollars. She goes, Yeah, it's about right. Your neighbors are paying$40 and$50. And can you walk out here with me and let me show you this weed that's generating in your front yard that's gonna cost you thousands of dollars to get rid of? And she walked out there and we I showed her the dollar weed, and I said, This is a prime weed for watering too much in Florida, and it's going to take over your lawn, and it's going to choke out your grass, and you're gonna spend thousands of dollars getting the landscaping company to try to fix it, and they can't. But you can, if you'll let me set your timer for your sprinklers, right? Easy fix. Set your timers for your sprinklers, set your timer for your days, and let's do a walk around on the outside and check for leaks and things like that. So we did all that stuff, and I went about my day. She called and thanked me, and folly much she came down and really thanked. She said, Oh my god, John, look, here's my water bill. I said, How much is it, darling? She said,$41. I didn't know it wasn't supposed to be that. Wow. And I said, Well, how's your dollar weeds? He goes, It's dead. So it died itself out. But that's our job. Our credibility in the community is not, oh God, here comes those people, they're gonna find us. Our credibility is it's just John and his guys. It's one of, you know, it's Chris, it's Christian, it's Katina, it's demoral. But open the door, find out what they need or what they're here for, because the perception I want everyone to have is that those guys are civil sort of things. We're we're not cops. There's a whole bunch of people get paid a lot more to do that.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

We're not liens and fines, guys. If we're knocking on your door, there's generally a reason for it, and we're generally here to help. I think that's the message that we need to push agency by agency across this country if we're going to save this, you know, our homes. I I do a lot of community speaking in the poor communities, and I talk about legacy generational wealth. And it breaks my heart to see somebody dying, a couple days later a roll off dumpster shows up. The kids flew down from up north, they throw everything in the dumpster, the roll off goes away and the house goes up for sale. And when you ask them, well, why aren't you taking? I ain't living this never. Crime's too bad. You know, the house isn't worth anything, the neighborhood's in decay. That's not a reflection of the parents that lived or died in that house. That's a reflection on us.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

If we had legacy generational wealth, if we could maintain those communities and kept the crime rates low, we'd have kept the property values up. When mom and dad died, those kids have been fighting in the front yard to see who's going to move into that house and stay there and give themselves an opportunity to take that home and pass it down generation to generation with generation. I don't know about you, but my family lived in the same house for 130 years. We don't have that today.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, that's hard in California because our states barely existed longer than that. And so now, you know, all kidding aside, I know what you mean. And uh, you know, don't you want to be, I think for everybody living in a community, this isn't just we're all public servants, whether you're paid or not. If you live there, you should be serving your community because you live there, right? Who wants to live in that stuff? But for us who are actually our careers are in public service, um, I think we've got to ask ourselves a question when we're thinking, should I take the time to stop here? You know, should I fix an obstruction in the stop sign you're talking about? Should I knock on the door? I think the question that I want to ask ask myself next time I'm out there thinking about you, John, is does a good community look like this? And do I want to work for a good community? And so if the answer to the first one is no, then I hope the answer to the second one is yes. Because what that means is I'm getting out of my car or I'm doing the extra thing to help make my community better. Absolutely. Otherwise, what am I doing all day, by the way? I'll let's go get a job somewhere else that is a good community. If I'm not if I'm interested in finding it where it is and not improving it, then what am I doing in this in code compliance, code enforcement, neighborhood improvement? Those are all the names we go by. What am I doing here at all? So I I think most of our listeners, in fact, I'm gonna venture to say every one of our listeners here is a person going, yeah, I want to go into a community that I can fix, that I can improve, that I can make better, not twiddle my thumbs for 30 years.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. I I tell my staff and I tell myself, it's not me too.

SPEAKER_01

Right. It could even be Gandhi saying be the change you want to see. It could be Winton Churchill, you know, uh Prime Minister of England during World War II, you know, saying every day achieve something. And so there's, you know, it's an iteration that goes beyond code enforcement, but it has resonance with us. So with that being said, you know, these are all great ideas, John. You sound like you work at a res at a uh agency that's got great resources. You've helped cultivate a lot of those resources very clearly by building the integrity of your system and showing it works and that the money, taxpayer money they're putting into it, their commissioners and whomever, are paying dividends. But what do you say to someone who's listening right now who's like, this sounds great. I I have too many cases. I don't have enough people. I can't stop and talk to somebody and check on them four times. What do you say to them? Or maybe even what do you say to their bosses?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, number one, I I I I would start with the officer who says, I I I don't have the time. Make the tile. We have the time. You can't do this job with any degree of of credibility or respect if you don't try to communicate at all. The drive-by drive-by-siding guys, the ones that never get out of the car that have the dashboard pictures in their case files, they don't need to do this job. Take the time to knock on the door. Take the time to put yourself in their shoes. It doesn't take an hour to communicate with somebody to find out what's really going on. When you say to somebody, I'm here because your brass is high and that's a code violation, and they look you in the eyes and go, I don't give a shit about your code violation. I got two babies in here that I can't feed. They just answered all your questions right there.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So then you say, Well, ma'am, what if I could help you get the resources in hand to feed those babies? Do you have a lawnmower? No. Would you mind if I send a guy over there that can probably take care of it for you? Please. Right. We've spent, what, talking just now less than four and a half minutes. Mm-hmm. You've told me you got two babies in the house and can't eat. You've agreed that I can give you some assistance. In the time it would have taken me to type up your notice of violation in the car, I found out what your problem is, what you need, your needs are, and we're making a mechanism in place to solve what the original complaint was. Now, is there follow-up work to do? Absolutely. Right. But there'd be a reinspection, there'd be another reinspection, there'd be a reinspection before the hearing, there'd be a reinspection on the order from the magistrate before you could impose your lien and fine. You have five or ten inspections between the beginning of the hearing. Why not use those positively? And to the manager who says we derive an income from this, shame on you. Because what you're doing is you're creating lower property values. Number one, lower property values. Number two, harder to sell in your home for what it's worth in crime-ridden communities. I send everybody back to an original root source that turned my life around, called the broken windows here. Yep. Go read it. If you've never read it, Mr. Manager, go read it because it talks about how the very first time and nobody cares, the rest of the neighborhood starts caring. You're not this is to everybody out there who hates complainants. I've got an answer for you for that. That person who complains and continually calls in complaints may be the last person standing at the gate trying to hang on to the integrity of their community. Yep. And pleading with you for help. Don't be upset with them.

SPEAKER_01

They may also have nowhere else to go themselves, and they're trying to do the right thing, keeping their property going. Uh and they're watching it fall apart around them. By the way, the broken windows theory, a theory we've talked about frequently on our episodes because it is well known. And I'm, you know, one of our guests uh recently was out of um Georgia. And I'm always, I don't know, I guess I'm happily surprised uh always to hear that here in California, you and Florida, we could not be further apart in Miles. We are exactly next to each other in terms of the issues that we deal with. The people, people are the same, problems are the same, code is the same. The challenges you face in your other jobs or this job are the same in code in California. And I like hearing that. I mean, it's uh I feel like in a time in which we feel uh about as far apart from each other as the miles between us, we're really the same.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we're a lot closer than you think. And and I and I love being a the president of face and getting to meet people from all over the state. And I actually we have members outside of the state that have somehow become face members, but they're face members and to talk to other agencies, and when I go to different places to speak and I meet people from all over the country, and I find that exact thing that we're miles and park but we're very similar. And there's so many people that share our passion, our heart for this. Um, I I think probably within the next five to ten years, this will be the norm. There this conversation's about, well, you know, how many citations did you get today won't be the water cooler talk anymore. It's gonna be how many lives did you change today? It's gonna be the common water cooler talk. I told him I said, when I get ready to leave here, I only want one thing. I want the community to decide which word I'm getting the bench with my name on them. That's what I want. You know, I I want the community to decide how bad they're gonna miss me.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Ral, that's that's a reflection of the impact that you've made on there. And, you know, I it sounds like you've had a similar experience that I've had, John, which is the transformation of the profession of code enforcement from when I began 20 years ago to now is profound. When I started 20 years ago, it it very much was that I have a badge, you don't, uh, you know, I'm we're kicking down doors and shooting for, so to speak, who's since they don't carry guns, and then asking questions later. And I gotta tell you, I haven't heard, and I interface with probably a thousand, fifteen hundred code officers a year. I have not heard a single person um in and outside of work talk about quotas, fine amounts, revenue generation, any of that kind of crap in a long time.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's sad to say, and I hate to say it, but there's still agencies out there where the only thing that matters is the numbers. Sure. Sure. And it will come a time when they realize what the numbers are giving them. And again, it It goes back to derelic communities, dilapidated homes, lower property values, higher crime rates. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. When you take code enforcement out of the equation, and nobody was there at the front gate to keep these communities safe, clean, property values up.

SPEAKER_01

They go to hell. They go to hell. And they have trickle-down effects as the broker windows theory shows, right? Property values go down, that's less uh tax revenue for the local agency. Now you're filling fewer potholes, you're building fewer stop signs, you're building fewer parks, there's fewer after-school programs, crime goes up. I mean, it is it's an ecosystem in which it's all tied together. Out in California, I don't know about in Florida, but in 08, 7, 8, when the whole economy melted down.

SPEAKER_02

Great foreclosure rush. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, code enforcement was the first to be cut in some jurisdictions. There were, you know, we have 480 cities out here in California, and there was only maybe two or three, but there were two or three that had no code enforcement. And I'd like to think that um, I know they all hired them back later on. I'd like to think that they've looked in the rearview mirror with regret at that for the years of impact that that creates.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I I don't think that uh we didn't go through that yet. We went through the foreclosure issue here, but instead of cutting any of us, they just made us work ten times harder. Courts. You know, we were slammed, we were horribly slammed, we learned a lot from it. And I don't think you'll see another if it happens again, and it very well could, but if it happens again, I don't think you'll see the same response.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think you will either. What what would you say to the person out there who's just thinking, I guess, I guess we've identified two different schools of thought that may be anti-code enforcement. One is the elected official, perhaps, or the boss up up the chain at a city or a county, who's like, it's not worth the money. Unless we get all the money back, it's not worth it. And number two, what would you say to the person on the other side who maybe is outside of government? It's just like, get off my property, leave me alone, big brother. What what would you say to these these two?

SPEAKER_02

Well, in the jurisdiction of the uh the politicians and the people at the food chain that don't think that drug enforcement is a viable auction, I would invite you over for an opportunity to meet some commissioners that can provide you with some education. They created this department because what they were seeing wasn't working. And they believe, and as do I as the you and most of our listeners, I believe where we are civil servants, we work for the community, we work for the citizens. If you don't share that mindset, you probably don't need to be in the political seat that you're in, and you're probably not going to last there long. See the citizen that says, I don't need you here to build my property. If I'm on your property, there's a reason you need me there. You've either violated a code that you're not aware of, and that does happen a lot. People come here from all over the world. They show up and they go to do the same thing they did in their hometown, and they can't do it here without a permit, or you can't do it here without zoning approval. We're going to communicate one way or another. It's easier to placate the fat guy. Listen to what I have to say. Let me help you get past this little hurdle and will never have to deal with me again. I always tell folks, if you don't want me at your party, don't invite me. Sure.

SPEAKER_01

That's a great point. And you know, I think another thought is um there are parts of this country you can live in where you're not living two feet from each other. Uh and you have those options. But when you're living in a community, you're in a community, and it's not just you alone. We're not just this is a selfie world where I'm the only one in the picture frame. We we have neighbors that we have obligations to because we impact them. Yeah. Our actions, good or bad, impact other people. So all that being said, John, I appreciate that. Thank you for that very much. Um, talking to people, knocking on doors, telling people a range of um barfing out their tragic experiences, which is kind of a crass way to put it, but that's how it could fill on the receiving end sometimes, or um someone saying, get the hell off my lawn, or maybe even threats. There's lots of those towards code enforcement people.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, this can really wear on folks. So talk to me about burnout in code enforcement. It's a real thing. How can code enforcement officers um protect themselves against it and how do they deal with it? And by the way, I'll note the point uh is driven home in the chapter in one of the chapters of one of your books, which is, you know, how to prevent uh burnout in code enforcement. I thought to myself, well, gosh, if you're in it long enough, you're gonna get it. To me, it's not just prevent it, it's how do you uh push through it instead of quitting.

SPEAKER_02

Right. I'm gonna go back to what I believe is the prevention of and and I I do that myself because after this length of time and seeing some of the things I've seen and cleaning up some of the things I've cleaned up and dealing with my own issues with a uh the death of my son, leukemia, etc., it's real easy to give up, right? But I have a mission, I believe in my mission, and I believe that I am an ineffective leader if I don't train my reinforcements. Yep. So what I do is I invest in others within my department. I try to prevent them from having to learn all the hard things I've had to learn throughout my time doing this. I reinvest back in the younger officers, the ones that are coming up underneath me that in hopes that one day when it's time for me to step out of these shoes, they can fill it. I spend a lot of time doing educational stuff. They teach schools and talk to kids about career choices and what a great life this could be for them if they would choose to do it. I spend a lot of time in ministry. I spend an awful lot of time writing. I'm blessed to have an incredible partner who uh shares my crazy. My wife is amazing. She stood by me through some very difficult times or times or I can't imagine she's still here. Having a village to prop you up through some of this stuff. ETSD and code enforcement doesn't exist. Absolutely. Yep. Abs absolutely. When you go to a house that burned down and there's loss of family in there, people would be new because you did have ownership in the community, you take it home with you. Solution to burnout is stay positive. Invest in others around you. Be a good leader. It doesn't matter what your title is, doesn't have to be manager, it could be code officer, it could be training officer, it could be supervisor. Rains up the next generation of leaders behind somebody's watching you at all times. Don't let them see you crack. Have somebody that you can lean on and cry on their shoulder when you need to. But I believe we have to make a mark in the world. When I do that, it'll be time to go. You know, it'll be time to going about my merry way on to the next chapter done as prepared for me. I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna fight burn up, I'm gonna do everything I can to raise up the next generation of leaders. And my mission in life is to make sure, well, before I'm done swinging, every agency in the country is doing solution-based coding force because it's that important.

SPEAKER_01

That's wonderful. And if you're listening to this right now and you're driving in your car or listen to at work or whatever you're doing, and you're thinking, I am burned out. And gosh, brother, I'll tell you, I've been there myself. Um, I want you to know that you're making a difference. Yeah, there's not a lot of jobs where you make an actual difference in communities. You know, that's a big reason as a lawyer, I do this. It can make everybody in my firm, all my colleagues, we can make a lot more money representing big companies, corporations, all those guys. Uh, nothing on them, but here we make a tangible difference every day in real lies. And uh you are too. So if you're a person who's feeling burned out, uh, realize that you pushing that extra day, you doing it for that extra month, extra year. How many lasting impacts are you making? How many lives are you saving? Now, there does come a point where you've done your time. And uh, you know, at the end of uh gosh, I want to say which one it is, but one of Paul's books of the New Testament, he says, I fought the good fight. And it's right before he's dragged off to be martyred, but he says, I fought the good fight, I finished the race. And uh for you, code enforcement folks, you're fighting the good fight. You're finishing the race. That race will be finished. Whatever it is, it's different for all of us. But until then, keep at it. You're doing a good job. I do want to switch topics real quick here, John. Um talk to me about face. You are a you are the president of the Florida Association of Code Enforcement Officer. I'm on the board for the California Association of Code Enforcement Officers, and there's a lot of other acronyms for associations of code enforcement officers throughout our country and even some around the world, by the way, I've heard. Um, what is the role of an association and uh why are you president of it?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I'm glad you asked. Um, the Florida Association of Code Enforcement, better known as FACE, is a pet project of mine, something I've been wanting to be involved in a very long time. I started off as a chairperson for the educational committee. I did about four years sitting in a chair helping rewrite the fundamentals program. And then finally I stepped up and said, I'm ready to be the vice president of education certification. I became the second vice president of face. I did that for two years with the mission of being able to get into the presidency because I've got visions. Um, not the crazy people scary visions. I've got great visions, but uh so after being the second vice president, I became the first vice president and I was in charge of the conference committee, which was a whole lot of fun. We put on a really great conference last year in Beethoven Beach, and then from there I became the president. My role here in this position is to assist all of the other vice presidents and committees to achieve their goals. Part of those goals are the future of education for face, uh, one of which we are working on a digital platform currently. We are hoping to be able to start a digital learning platform where we're able to put some of our classes online. For those smaller agencies that might not necessarily be able to afford to send members across the state to a class and put up with hotels and everything else, we'd want to make what we had to offer more accessible folks. Uh FACE is a professional organization with the intent of education, with the intent of building a long-term better code enforcement officer, somebody who shares these beliefs that we've just spent an hour talking about here. Um part of FACE, there are other chapters, and one of them is the Central Florida Code Enforcement Association. I'm blessed enough to have been coerced into becoming that president from the swell. No, I don't have a lot of free time now, but it's okay. And it goes back to make it up preferred. So I encourage anyone, everyone, get involved in your chapters, stay involved in your organization, get your voice heard, make a difference, join a committee, participate, work your way through leadership ranks, those things to your resumes, continue to work on your career. Participate. You you my mom's dumb enough little kids and said, you know, when you grow up, you gotta make sure you vote every year. And I said, Why do we gotta be back to it? Gonna get your ED reticulous. Whole other conversation for another time. The son, if you don't vote, you can't bitch. So if you're not going to participate, you can't scream and cry about the direction of your association. So please, everybody who bears this, every person that's in voting for get involved in your local membership towers. Get involved in the chapter, get involved in your state chapter, get involved in their national chapter.

SPEAKER_01

I would I would say the same thing out here in California. We we have about 1,500 members in KCO. Uh many are code, some are animal control, some are building. We welcome it all. Welcome them all. You know, we focus on education, training, that transformation, the profession we've talked about, uh comes through those kind of things. And we're only going to get better because we're going to transform again and again and again as our communities change, and these change, we're going to change. Uh, John, I we're coming up on time here, and I want to get, I just want to wrap it up with two things here, two questions for you. What is the hardest thing about a code enforcement career?

SPEAKER_02

I think the hardest thing about a code enforcement career is oftentimes we s we continue to pay for the sins of the past. One of the hardest hurdles that we've had to overcome here is convincing people we're not what they had before. Um, convincing people that we are here to help. Not having the right resources in place sometimes are who's who's heartbreaking. It's one of the hardest things when you don't have a way to get away. And that's why I tell people all the time it's so important to be involved with every aspect of your community. Find out, go to the churches, knock on their doors, talk to them, find the resources. I had a guy that used to carry canned goods in a weed whacker stroke. I'm like, what are you doing? And he goes, I don't ever want to get in a position where I can't give somebody something to eat, and if it's not a lot of grass, I'll just cut it myself. And I said, Well, I love the effort. But you could touch a thousand more if you add all the if you put the time in generating the resources. So I think for most co-enforcement officers, I to venture to guess the one thing I hear the most of is that they feel like they're kind of alone. They don't feel like they have the resources available to them. 407 556-7370 is my number. You can reach me at J Martin O2 at SeminoleCountyFL.gov. I don't have all the answers. But I'll get dirty with you and we'll find them. But that's the beloved part about having associations and other people, even if it's across the country, even if it's another state and another jurisdiction, by being with your association, by being involved with other code officers, by joining the LinkedIn groups, by following their podcast, by reading and educating ourselves, we can build a community of officers that become resources. I called other people after a conference and go, what do you guys do about this? Right. Hold on, John, I'll send you our ordinance, I'll send you our forms, I'll save you everything. Yep. So if all of your resources so that you don't have to face those hard problems, said a man by God, if you run into a corner where you can't fill it, how to get out call him. You know reach out to each other, we're family. We're all trying to be the same thing here. Let's make this a better place.

SPEAKER_01

Amen. Amen. Well said. And what is the best thing about Code of Horsesome? Which you kinda just named a couple of them, I think.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, there's there's too many.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

There's too many. Can you boil it down to one?

SPEAKER_02

The whims, man. The winds when you um you get a family back on their feet. You know, you bring Christmas to a family that wasn't gonna have it. You get a guy a job, so now he's able to take care of his family.

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02

On each rifle again.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Dignity. Restoring dignity to people's family.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, restoring people's dignity. Um you know, going from being the bad guy to the good guy, that's that's some when you knock on the door and you tell people, I'm from the government, I'm here to help. Right. Most of the time they don't believe that. But when you can turn that around and actually help them at that point, and they're they're sending you Christmas cards. Um I've got them on the wall.

SPEAKER_01

I love it.

SPEAKER_02

Christmas cards when people are sighted, so to speak. You know, I Yeah. I ha I had people come to the hospital when I was in the hospital who came in.

SPEAKER_01

You're the good guy. You're the good guy even before you knocked on that door, John. Whoever it is. They're the good guy, good gal, before they even knocked on that door. You know, other people's perception of the things you do are not fact. Fact is what you do and how you do it. Um, and I promise I'd come back to it, so actually we'll end with this. What the heck is the great boiled peanut compendium? And how can I get some of that?

SPEAKER_02

Glad you asked. Well, we can end this, uh, end this podcast on a great tone. Um, so when I got diagnosed with leukemia, is anybody who has this nasty disease knows it costs a lot of money. Um, so I said, Well, I gotta do something to generate some more income. And a buddy of mine is like, so you really make the best bowl of peanuts in the world. And I'm like, Yeah, they are pretty good. And good, you really ought to sell them on the side of the road. I said, You've lost your damn lot. So he said, No, I'm serious. We ought to you really ought to sell your peanuts on the side of the road. So I started making my boiled peanuts, and one day I found an old beat-up trailer, and I drug it home, and my buddy Tim had a shop, and he took it to his shop, and we turned it into the Buffalo Peanut Company. And um I started selling boiled peanuts on the side of the road to supplement my income to pay for the peanut.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, you got a business license for that there, John? I did.

SPEAKER_02

I actually got a PTR in a little city that I'm that I live in, and I actually had a legal place to park and uh would sell boil peanuts. And um when I came here to Semo, I wasn't able to continue to do that because this takes so much of my time trying to build a department. So I stopped doing it, and I had customers and friends and people that were hitting me up going, come on, man, what we gotta have your peanuts. So I was making that home at night, and people were coming by at 11, 12 o'clock at night buying peanuts. And I think everybody in my neighborhood thinks I'm a drug dealer, but I'm a peanut dealer. So I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just going to make a book. I'm gonna write the book. I wrote the book, The Great Boiled Peanut Propendian, and it's the story of boiled peanuts, where they started, wider here, and some great recipes and a few antibil uh story inside that some paquitos of truth and you know situations I've run into in my life, and all of my recipes but one. My sweet Thai chili boiled peanut is not in to holding one back. I'm taking that with me to the grave. Yeah, it's a fun book. It's uh it's just fun to remeat on that's uh I think it's two dollars on Amazon or something like that.

SPEAKER_01

So got a Kindle, you can read it. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Thank you for that. And thank you for today. Thank you for joining us. I think that's a wonderful conversation. I'm hearing the echoes of some of the other guests that we've had and some parts that we've talked about. So the message is out there, folks, uh, about code enforcement and how it's done and how it's done effectively. Uh, and I'll I'll say as well, if you want a rewarding career where you make a difference every day, maybe you're a little hyperactive like John and I are, where we don't like to sit still too long. Code of force is a great profession. And I'll add, if you're a lawyer, you put all this time and money, and maybe your parents did too, backing you up and your family, and you want to make a real difference, come join me and do what we do. Or some of the other companies out there that do code of force and law, uh, help us, help us help others. And then in addition, I'll note uh John's books are on Amazon. So pick these books up on Amazon. They're a great read. And then finally, for those who are looking to help uh marshal the resources, as John was talking about earlier, it's you know, kind of multiplying good, check out our our website and our social media here at Civica Law Group. Civicalaw.com is the website and go to the True Code Academy because we are matching donations right now to a nonprofit uh run by one of our former guests, Mesa Sawyer, I was referencing earlier, uh, that helps families that have gone through tragedy and grief. And so we're matching here at Civica uh dollar for dollar um up to a certain amount, a couple thousand bucks, for others who'd like to contribute. So I I encourage you to put your money to work. That's going to pay the highest interest rate you can find, and that's in good. So, John, thanks for joining us today. We really appreciate you. Thanks for the conversation, pal. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, thanks for having me, Matt. I appreciate the brotherhood and I love your efforts here and what you're doing. I support you 100%. Anytime I can help, let me know. And um, we'll we'll talk further.

SPEAKER_01

I've got some ideas for you. Wonderful. I love it. Thank you very much. And uh for everybody, thank you for joining us today. I uh I hope you found I hope you found the good in it. I hope you found the you know something you're looking for, maybe in that conversation. And I look forward to seeing you all in the next one. So stay tuned for the next True Code episode. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for joining us on this journey. If you enjoyed what you heard, don't forget to subscribe, follow, rate, and review it wherever you're listening right now. Until next time.

Head Shot

Matt Silver, CCEO, Esq.

Host
Head Shot

Celina Zambrano

Producer