We've talked about building community a lot on past episodes of this podcast and a little bit on

building intelligence networks. So today we're going to talk to somebody who does both.

Welcome back to TREX Talk. Today I have a guest named Mike Shelby. Mike has a business called Forward

Observer and he's written a book on area studies and is an expert in gathering intelligence,

but specifically for the purpose of building community. So Mike, can you tell us a little bit

about what it is that you are trying to

accomplish? Well, right now, we're going through somewhat of a transition period. I started

Ford Observer back in 2016, writing intelligence reports and has my full-time job, because people had a lot of questions about what was going on in the world,

and they were concerned about things that were happening overseas and then here domestically as well.

And I just said, look, hey, I'm an intelligence analyst.

I know how to write intelligence reports.

Let me just take a crack at this.

And then, you know, people ended up paying for it.

The problem is, now those reports were very good.

And we've since grown.

And in 2020, we exploded and started hiring more folks.

And the problem is, though, I would write a report and I'd just say,

there's no solution here.

Like, I'm not, I'm, I'm really good at describing

the problem every day, five days a week for years. And we really haven't been focusing on any solutions.

And so we've just recently last year said, look, this is it. We're going to focus on solutions as

well. And so now we have this, the report's called Early Warning, and we have an

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