The History of "Atlas All Access" - Atlas All Access 100

Rich Smith: Episode number 100. We go backing time Marty McFly style and revisit some of the fun pieces and parts of Atlas All Access and talk about why we did it in the first place with the OG, Adam Collette for the 100th time. Atlas All Access starts now.

Rich Smith: This format might be familiar if you've been watching since the beginning. There's probably two of you. Maybe one, I don't know.

Adam Collette: Probably none.

Rich Smith: Maybe none.

Adam Collette: It's probably our wives.

Rich Smith: No, she doesn't watch. She doesn't. This format looks familiar to you. This is how it looked back then and now this is how it looks now. Here, I thought this was fun and maybe they can use this too. As much as it was just my laptop before, this is what we see. This is what I see on my side right here. There's my laptop right there. Same laptop by the way. Same MacBook.

Adam Collette: Is it really?

Rich Smith: Yeah, yeah, same one.

Adam Collette: Wow.

Rich Smith: Here's my view of Adam.

Adam Collette: Here I am.

Rich Smith: As I talk to him or whatever. Okay, so 100 episodes.

Adam Collette: That's crazy to even think about.

Rich Smith: I know, right? The idea was, and I came to Adam early on and said, "Okay, this is the idea." But I need a cohost and Matt Loughran, our director of brand experience or director of experience had just moved to Broken Bow. He works remote with Missy, his wife who is a recruiter for us. And I needed a cohost and I said, "Adam, would you do this for me or with me?" And it grew and you said yes right away.

Adam Collette: Sure.

Rich Smith: And it kind of grew and changed and evolved or whatever. And you've been involved some and you never told me no though. Which I really appreciate.

Adam Collette: Yeah, absolutely.

Rich Smith: I think the idea was just to create a place that we could talk about anything.

Adam Collette: Yeah. And I don't think I ever told you no, but I also sometimes said, "Hey, I think get some other people involved as well." As much as I think and want to know everything about this industry, I think the great thing about it is everybody has a different perspective and to get other people involved or do those, not have one standing voice. I love that.

Rich Smith: Yeah, it could get kind of boring if it was, and there were other people that have hosted this too. I haven't hosted every episode of this so, but we've talked about, I wrote a whole list of things here, but I think on top of that, we've had other recruiters and other compliance and payroll. There's been a ton of people.

Adam Collette: Travelers coming in.

Rich Smith: That was the best. Just the number of travelers that we've had on the show, it's been a lot of fun. And it actually spawned different ones. We had Joe Getty on early, early on, that kind of spawned the Atlas Life. When we just talk about travelers on the road. I think that was one of the most fun, I think that came out of that was that new idea.

Adam Collette: Joe's a great example though too, because I've met Joe three, four times, over the years and stuff. But sitting in that room for, we probably taped for 10, 15 minutes. But we probably sat in that room for an hour of just hearing stories about what he's been doing and stuff. I really got to know him pretty well.

Rich Smith: And I think let's go back to that room because oh my gosh.

Adam Collette: I wish people could understand what was really in that room and everything that happened in that room, not just videoing stuff like this, but getting Christmas gifts out. Packed full of boxes and just all sorts of nonsense. Matt Loughran laying on the ground videoing and not being able to get back up.

Rich Smith: Because it was so poorly lit and it just, we did, we looked like hostages in there. We looked like hostages in the beginning and then somewhere I wrote this down somewhere around episode 18. Was, there you go. How about that? Somewhere around episode 18 was where Dolan and Jamie joined us. And so that was, so that would've been 18 weeks into this.

Adam Collette: Instead of having three people in the room, then we had five people in the room.

Rich Smith: Which made it so bad.

Adam Collette: Which made it even worse.

Rich Smith: It would get so hot back there, remember it would just get so hot.

Adam Collette: And you had to climb under the table so you didn't trip over the wires.

Rich Smith: Yeah, so we kind of did that with the, for the longest time we would just open my laptop and record that way on with QuickTime. And then we started using Matt Loughran's camera, which wasn't that great. Then we actually, once Dolan and Jamie started, we'd bought some cameras and now kind of where we are right now. The move to this, we moved to out of the hostage situation to this room about episode 26.

Adam Collette: Okay wow.

Rich Smith: And you can see that change when that happened too.

Adam Collette: Now has, have we done one every week since then? Or has there been weeks we've missed?

Rich Smith: We haven't always, we've skipped Thanksgivings and Christmas.

Adam Collette: Some holiday stuff.

Rich Smith: Holiday stuff like yeah, 4th of July, things like that. But yeah, we have stayed on schedule. We've never missed a week.

Adam Collette: That's awesome.

Rich Smith: In that time. November 16, 2017 was our very first one. That was me and Matt Loughran together and we just called it the podcast because I don't think we understood exactly what we were doing. We knew it was going to be an audio version, but then we recorded video too, so we just knew we needed to do something. We wanted to do something. Then episode two we named it Atlas All Access. We had two travelers with us at the time, which was a lot of fun. Oh my gosh. I remember trying to edit that one and at that point I thought, okay, if we're going to get serious about this and do this, we need to hire somebody. Because that editing process was horrible. Just out of QuickTime into iMovie. It was horrendous.

Adam Collette: Yeah, I bet.

Rich Smith: Oh, it was bad.

Adam Collette: Do we know when the finger pointing came in?

Rich Smith: That was, that was episode three or four. I don't know. I have thought back because a number of people have done it too. Thomas did it. Braden's made fun of it. There've been others that have done it too. I think where it came from was I listened to Jim Cramer and Jim Cramer starts his show with, with Mad Money starts now. And I think the thing was just, I don't know.

Adam Collette: It just happened.

Rich Smith: I had to do something with my hands all the time. Maybe that's where it came from.

Adam Collette: That's great.

Rich Smith: Three Q and A episodes so far. And I wish we had done more. And I want to do more of those.

Adam Collette: Those are honestly my favorite ones because it's real. It's real time or real life stories of what people want to know and everything.

Rich Smith: And then there were two episodes that Thomas Piper did for Scrub Squad, his group on Facebook. Same similar format, but a Q and A style with Hannah, with his recruiter here when he was in town last year. Well, no, 2018. Maybe, well, yeah, no, no. It was 2019 it was right around the first healthcare travelers take. It's not Jamie's saying, no. Is it 2018? 2018 okay. There we go. See? Time flies. Okay, so we've had four different agencies. Four different agencies other than Atlas represented on this show and three of them were the agency owners, which I think was a lot of fun. That was, I don't know if, were you involved in any of those?

Adam Collette: Wanderly.

Rich Smith: Oh, when Jason was here with Wanderly. That's right.

Adam Collette: Yep. We did that one and I think I was one other one.

Rich Smith: That's possible. I'm sure they're playing these clips as we talk about these or whatever, but yeah, so let's Republic Century and there was another one, I can't remember who it was. That have been on the show and talked through things. Next week we're talking with the guys from Kamana. I think is a lot of fun. They were here back in December and we recorded a bit with them. Not what you would normally think. It's a really interesting look at some new technology here in our space, in travel healthcare.

Adam Collette: Cool.

Rich Smith: That has a lot to offer I think so please stay tuned for that, for that next week. We've talked about compliance. More than once we've talked about the role of the recruiter. And I think that's evolved a little bit.

Adam Collette: I think that's probably another one that people most likely like to watch. You always see posts on Facebook of what do recruiters really do on a daily basis or whatever. And it gives you a good insight of what it looks like or what they're working on.

Rich Smith: Right. Client management, we've had, so Atlas is a little bit different. We have our client managers only work with hospitals where you only work with recruiters or I'm sorry, where you only work with nurses. And then we have allied people, allied recruiters that only work with allied travelers. We've talked with a number of our client managers. Social media do's and don'ts. That was one of my favorite episodes that we shared. Man, some of the things you should or shouldn't say or how you should conduct yourself on social media is a lot of fun. The actual cost of agency swag and that was an early episode. I don't know if you remember that one or not. That was fun. I'd like to revisit that at some point because everyone's like, "Oh don't give me the $3 lanyard, just put it in my paycheck." You want an extra 10 cents in your paycheck?

Rich Smith: That's really what it is. And so we'll, I'm sure we'll do that again. Extensions, too many phone calls. Meet and greets, fake jobs, referral bonuses, traveling with pets, how to become a travel nurse. We've done that. We've touched on that at least three different times. And you've been involved, I think you've been involved in all three of those. Which is some great content and if you go back and look, especially on Facebook, those are some of the videos that get hit often. Customer service, what does compact state really mean? With Hannah Bryant's done, that at least twice with us, especially with the changes that have occurred over the past year and a half or so.

Adam Collette: Hannah's a mastermind when it comes to licensing and states and the do's and don'ts and she's great.

Rich Smith: If you have a question about that, she could definitely answer it.

Adam Collette: It's where I go, that's for sure.

Rich Smith: Absolutely. Travcon, what it means to be veteran owned. I've dragged Steve in here twice now.

Adam Collette: I love watching you ask him to do those.

Rich Smith: Oh gosh.

Adam Collette: He just cringes and hides.

Rich Smith: He's so uncomfortable. He hates it so much.

Adam Collette: It's great.

Rich Smith: Little note, I actually tricked him one time. I told him, because Steve's the kind of guy that will volunteer. If he sees you bringing boxes and he'd be like, "Hey, let me help you," or whatever. I said, "Hey Steve, could you come in here and help me move something?" And he said, "Oh yeah, okay, whatever." And as soon as he came in, we closed the door.

Adam Collette: Classic.

Rich Smith: Yep. VMS versus MSP. And I think probably one of the most fun is when we have guests. I already mentioned Thomas Caselane from Highway Hypodermics has been here twice. We've had some great people on. Patty Hingst has been on before who, if you're not following her Adventures in RV Travel Nursing, if you are a travel nurse in an RV and you're not a part of this page, you are missing out. Adventures in RV Travel Nursing has taken on a life of its own. They host that. Her husband Bob is a recruiter with us, but there's no recruiting there whatsoever. It's just about traveling around in an RV.

Adam Collette: Great information. I think, do you think, do we know, was Kay the first person in the dungeon, in the holding cell that we had?

Rich Smith: She was. Well no, no, no. Episode two was Amy and Ryan Terry. They were travelers. I believe they were Becca's travelers. And then Kay was episode three.

Adam Collette: Gotcha. Okay.

Rich Smith: Kind of as we were feeling our way through and trying to figure out what we were doing there. What was your favorite, think back on the episodes you've been on, what was your favorite part?

Adam Collette: Honestly you go back to that one with Joe. I just love hearing people's stories. I just think it's so true. It's so genuine. You just learn about people. And I live vicariously through all of my travelers because they get to be out there, seeing places that I've never been and stuff. And I just, anytime I can sit and listen to a traveler talk about where they've been and why they made that choice to travel and then the different places they've gone and why assignments are good and bad and the people and the friendships that they met. I will sit for hours and just listen to people talk like that. I think that's why Vegas is so fun every year. It's because you meet somebody new and make a friendship and then you keep following those people throughout. You don't have to be good friends with them or anything, it can just be through social media or when they come through town and those kind of things.

Rich Smith: Well and I think that's, yeah, you're absolutely right. You make those little connections and then you reconnect it Travcon or Healthcare Travelers Take or here they come here through Omaha or whatever. And it's you pick up right where you left off like it never changed.

Adam Collette: Yeah. And the second to that, you said the question and answer ones are always pretty cool.

Rich Smith: Those are my favorite.

Adam Collette: And I think people, a lot of this is not scripted. And the funny thing is Rich will a lot of times send me the agenda and I won't even read it. I'd rather him just just shoot from the hip and come up with things. We did want a couple weeks ago where he asked me a question three times and we had to stop the tape and go back because I couldn't formulate a question in my head, or an answer to the question.

Rich Smith: I've only just recently started writing notes or whatever because if you look at the early, early episodes, it wasn't. It was just us talking and the notes are more for me because I'm getting older and I forget things. That really is it. And Adam's absolutely right on a lot of those, I won't tell people ahead of time what we're going to talk about or I'll give them an idea, okay, this time we're talking about housing, can you just show up? Be in the room at 11:00 o'clock, 10:30, whatever it is. Yeah, I love how the wall has grown. Travelers have brought us some of this stuff before. It's we've been given some of the stuff. Yeah, there's all kinds of just fun things along the way that have shown up.

Adam Collette: But the original was the man, right?

Rich Smith: The Koolaid man, yeah. The Koolaid man.

Adam Collette: The Koolaid man.

Rich Smith: I tell the story, but it's horribly embarrassing as to how.

Adam Collette: No, you should tell it again.

Rich Smith: Oh gosh. Have I ever told this story on camera?

Adam Collette: I don't know.

Rich Smith: Hmm. A bunch of us went out one night to Atlas people had gone out to this burger place and sometimes rich foods don't agree with me too much. And this was a place that had some, the hamburgers were super Kobe beef fanciness, whatever. Very, very good. Then we drove across town to go to our favorite brewery Kros Strain and about two thirds of the way there, the food got to me and we had to stop at a gas station because I wasn't going to make it to the, yeah. We stopped at this Fantasy's gas station. It's just like, I think it's a Casey's now or whatever. And I bolted in there to go to the bathroom.

Rich Smith: And as I ran in, I saw the Koolaid man here and it had a sign on. A handwritten sign that said 50 bucks. Went in, went to the bathroom, came back out, and I stood there at the door for a second and I turned back and I looked back at it again and Matt Loughran was in the passenger seat and he said, "Are you okay? Are you having a stroke? What's going on?" And I said, "I think we need to buy this." I went back in and I dragged it over there and I got my credit card out because I never carry cash. And they're like, "No, I'm sorry cash only." We pooled all the cash that we had and we barely got to $50.

Adam Collette: That's funny.

Rich Smith: And threw that thing in the back. And so yeah. If it wasn't for my upset stomach.

Adam Collette: Yeah, we would never have it.

Rich Smith: We wouldn't have the Koolaid man. That was a terribly embarrassing story. Thank you for making me relive that night. Yeah, so that's, but then all the rest of this stuff has kind of showed up along the way. People have brought it for us and stuff. We'll just keep adding to it.

Adam Collette: Something new everyday when I walk in here.

Rich Smith: I love it.

Adam Collette: That's for sure.

Rich Smith: I think it's a lot of fun. Another year's worth of Atlas All Access. This isn't going to stop. It's only going to keep evolving.

Adam Collette: What was the first date?

Rich Smith: Which one?

Adam Collette: The first date that we did one?

Rich Smith: November 16th, 2017.

Adam Collette: 2000 wow. That's crazy. It's going to be 2020.

Rich Smith: I know, right? We're going to keep doing these. If you have any questions or you have suggestions, what topic do you want us to discuss? Email me here, or Collette. We'll put Collette's email up here too. Either one of us or message us on Facebook or whatever. Give us a topic. Let's talk about, and I think we've proven so far, nothing's off limits. We'll talk about whatever you want. You let us know. We'll talk about it on a future episode.

Adam Collette: Sounds good.

Rich Smith: Adam, thank you for 100 episodes.

Adam Collette: That's crazy.

Rich Smith: That's just awesome.

Adam Collette: It really is.

Rich Smith: I love it. All right, we'll see you for another 100 episodes.

Adam Collette: Thanks guys.