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Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Maddie Kirby is currently the Senior Social Media Manager for the video journal app, 1 Second Everyday. Maddie started her social media marketing career at Ozwest. Ozwest is an exclusive distributor of Zing branded toy products and the Ozwest toy line in the USA and Canada.While working at Ozwest, Maddie started growing her personal social media presence. Maddie has almost 400k followers on TikTok. Since joining 1 Second Everyday in 2019, Maddie has been instrumental in leveraging TikTok to organically drive millions of downloads.Maddie has a bachelor's degree in advertising from the University of Oregon, and has also worked for companies such as Bytedance, Inc., Egg Strategy, Transition Productions, and Atomicus Films.In this episode, you'll learn: How to promote your app with user-created content Clever tricks to get your app noticed Why TikTok is a great place to market your app A great strategy for growing your app's follower count Links & Resources Maddie and David's App Promotion Summit USA panel discussion Cesar Kuriyama's Twitter Cesar Kuriyama's TED Talk David Smith on The Sub Club Podcast Widgetsmith app Maddie Kirby's Links Maddie Kirby's TikTok Maddie Kirby's LinkedIn 1 Second Everyday's website 1 Second Everyday is on Twitter 1 Second Everyday's Instagram Zing Toys website Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode TranscriptMadison: 00:00:00I like to think of them as content buckets or pillars. You pick three and stick with those for a little bit. Try a few ideas in each bucket. See what's working, what's not. Scrolling through the app is the best way to kind of keep on top of things. And then you have to be able to think really fast and post really fast because these trends come and go. Jacob: 00:00:39Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. Our guest today is Maddie Kirby, Senior Social Media Manager at 1 Second Everyday. She began her career in social media marketing at toy company, Ozwest.While working there she also started growing her personal social media presence, accumulating almost 400,000 followers on TikTok.In 2019, Maddie joined 1 Second Everyday where she has been instrumental in leveraging TikTok to organically drive millions of downloads.Maddie, welcome to the podcast.Madison: 00:01:08Thank you. I'm excited to be here.Jacob: 00:01:10I'm also here with David, my guest, which I forgot to introduce in our freaky Friday intro swap.David: 00:01:16I usually do the introductions, but that was great. Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:19Hey, you know what? I'm very, very, very versed at...David: 00:01:21You gotta mix things up. Jacob: 00:01:23I'll pass back to David because he's the one who preps all the questions. David: 00:01:29Nice. Maddie and I were on a panel together earlier this month, at App Promotion Summit, which is a great thing to watch. We can link it in the show notes.It was four of us on the panel and it went really quick, but she shared a lot of really interesting stuff about what she's working on in social media marketing, and working with 1 Second Everyday on their TikTok presence.So, I wanted to bring her on the podcast to actually give her time to talk a little more about it in the context of promoting apps, because she's been on a couple of other podcasts where they're talking more specifically about social media.I'm super excited to have you, Maddie.I do want to dive in. We typically do have more developer focused guests, you know, people that are doing the coding or focused on user acquisition, spending 50K a month on Facebook. And so that's another reason I was excited to have you on the podcast is to just get a really different perspective.I think that there's a lot of potential in social media marketing. But not a lot of people talking about it in the app space and then...Jacob: 00:02:40Or just knowing how to do it, right?How do you even start, especially if you're a developer-turned-promoter. I think a lot of app creators tend to do the things you were talking about. David does technical channels about buying ads on Facebook or whatever, where's a lot of leverage in social media stuff. If you can do it. David: 00:03:02Yeah, absolutely. So, I did want to start with, you got your start in social media marketing, not with an app, which is another thing. It's like you came to the app marketing with such a different perspective, which I think is is really good. There's too many people who are just so narrowly focused in the kind of existing playbook for marketing apps.So, are there any lessons from your time at of all the places a toy company? Any particular lessons from being at a toy company that you think helped you grow and learn this form of marketing and specifically that apply to subscription apps?Madison: 00:03:41Yeah. I don't know if it's necessarily a lesson or lessons that I've learned. But I think coming from the toy industry, which is also an industry where people don't leave it. They have a lot of people that started in the industry and then just stayed there forever. You have a lot of people that aren't really thinking beyond just what they are normally, what they're used to, I guess, is what I would say. Jacob: 00:04:05Is what they're used to, like ads on Nickelodeon.Madison: 00:04:08Yeah, it's definitely commercials. Like when they were still talking about TV and trying to transition out of that, that's really funny that you brought that up, but that's kind of what we were talking about at the time. So I got really lucky and I had a great manager who really wanted me to push people outside of their boxes.And I feel like I wouldn't have found TikTok unless I was at a toy company, because we were so focused on trying to connect to Gen Z and young people. And I heard some kids talking on our public transportation about TikTok, which was musically then. And I was like, oh, and I just had like my feelers out about it because I was just so focused on kids at the time, and like trying to find this like cool new way that we can connect to them. And I downloaded it and I was a content creator, too. So I thought it was super cool. Getting onto TikTok at that time and super early, I feel like wouldn't have happened without being in the toy industry. Also then I was able to take that into 1 Second Everyday and already had experience, which I feel like a lot of people don't really have TikTok experience coming into a company.David: 00:05:16Yeah, that's really cool. and so then what, what was the leap like? what, what, yeah, how'd you land the gate hit 1 Second Everyday and decide to jump into that the app. Madison: 00:05:24I was using 1 Second Everyday already, before even looking for a job. so i had already, and i had known about the company the company is amazing and they have a lot of great benefits and they care so much about the people. in the company itself and it's small and, remote. so i was already hoping that they would have a job opening.Right. And I, so I didn't necessarily have my sights set on an app. really. it was just, i was interested in 1 Second Everyday, cause i use it. and i also like it because it's content creation and i have a background in that. so i feel like i was able to kind of have this weird experience coming into it. David: 00:06:04Yeah, i do want to pause real quick and maybe talk a little bit about the app. and i should have researched, i should have read up on this before the podcast, but it'd be fun to just ask. 1 Second Everyday has been around like 10 years, right? like this is the, like, i think i bought this as a paid app in, in 2009 or 10 or something.So tell us a little bit about the history of the app itself. and what the app does.Madison: 00:06:30Yeah. so our founder has been recording his life for 10 years now, which is a really long time. and they started on kickstarter actually. and he did a ted talk and that's how a lot of people initially found us was through his TikTok, where he had left the ad. for a year he left his job to go record his life, his 30th birthday.And yeah. it's, it was amazing and people really connected to it. and it's like a very simple idea. and then he did his ted talk about it and then that's how he launched the app. and now it's just kind of built slowly up, through that. really just being able to have him connect with people. caesar's an amazing person and a really great storyteller and people were able to connect to him first.And then that's kind of how he built a team around him to slowly.Jacob: 00:07:22I love the, i mean, i think, you know, when you talk about. user acquisition or, or, you know, ultimately that's, you know, what marketing or whatever is, right? you want to get people into your business, your app or whatever. it always feels so much easier when you start with the story, right? when you start with like the narrative, the story, then you add in the business or the product later, right?Because now you have a foundation. i was, i was on the 1 Second Everyday reading the timeline, right? it's all very clean narrative, right? like this person has this story whenever, and then everybody can join in. humans are very narrative driven. right? so we'd like to be part of something that like that like makes sense, right.That like has an arc to it. so i think it's, i, and i think that downstream that's going to help will help makes apps like once every day be successful is they have this like something that makes sense. and they don't have to just go out and like, oh, you need 50,000 users spend $50,000. right. you actually have a little bit of like organic story there.David: 00:08:21Yeah. and speaking of. no worries. so while you were still at the toy company, you started building your own social media presence. so you had, your own personal TikTok account, but then also built up several others. what was it like again, this, as you said earlier, this was a musically at the time before it even became TikTok before he even blew up.So you're really early to this really cool platform. how did, how did you build these, accounts.Madison: 00:08:49I started off at, on vine and then of course, vinyl. yeah, i know i had started it and then i had a harambe bay vine blow up. and then a week later they announced that the app was shutting down and i was devastated because i was like, here's my shot. i got it. and then, so i was looking for my next place to go cause i was a youtube kid growing up.So i've always wanted to make videos and i, and i love it just naturally. and i had some friends invite me over to this app called flipagram, which is actually kind of funny because that was a. competitor to 1 Second Everyday at the time. and i didn't even know about 1 Second Everyday yet. and so i was a paid content creator over there to be using their app, and then got on to TikTok and started just posting random, funny videos.And at the time things were the algorithm wasn't really developed, then it was more you post and then whoever likes your stuff is really important. so if you have somebody really cool and like, that likes your video, your video is going to blow up. and i just had two popular twin girls had liked my video and i had all these people coming over and said that these girls had liked my video and they saw it on their platform or their account.And then that's how it started. it just started like going up and getting followers. and now, i have, an account where i play guitar. i decided to take up learning electric guitar. and so i built. an audience of 11 k on there in two and a half months. so i'm really like addicted, i guess. Jacob: 00:10:28So, yeah, so, so, and do you, do you, you know, i dunno this is more about like personal, just like brand and like building these, these properties. i mean, i do think it's, it's, it's the skill, like, you know, we're talking about developers building their own social media properties. it's like, okay, you got to have a shtick.Right. i don't know what you'd call it. right. like could learn guitar. so do, do you carry them over from your other properties? you try to like bootstrap them or you're just like, nope, totally greenfield. i'm just going to like, be a guitar person now and like make it a thing. is that, is that more how it goes or.Madison: 00:10:57I mean on my other account, my comedy account, i guess it's always been a really hard thing to kind of stick with one thing that you're into. and some people are really good at that. yeah. definitely not the best when it comes to my own stuff that i, like, i just want to do whatever and kind of see if that works, but that's kind of morphed over time.And then with guitar, i was just like, i'm just going to record myself, playing guitar and see what happens. and it did well.Jacob: 00:11:24Oh, so you don't, you don't, you don't like plan out like, oh, i'm going to do a funny heran bay guitar thing. it'sMadison: 00:11:29No, i just do it. it's a lot of it's like improv and going for it and just seeing. i think that being on the platform for so long, i kind of know what's going to do well, and yeah. and sometimes you'll put, you know, five seconds of effort into something and it does really well. and then other times you put, you know, an hour of work into something and it doesn't do well.Jacob: 00:11:50This is me and my twitter game. So you need to give me some advice because like i can, i still can, 11 years in, i, sir, out 13 years in on twitter, i still can't predict what's going to do well.Madison: 00:11:59Yeah, exactly. David: 00:12:01So you've kind of been talking about your, your personal accounts. but these things that you're saying, i would assume also apply to company accounts. okay. i would assume growing a company account, you just need to have a similar amount of exploration. so how how have you taken those lessons from your own personal accounts and then systematize them to, to grow a company account and then even pushing back on, on not overly systematizing because you have to keep experimenting.Madison: 00:12:37Yeah, that's a really good question. i think how i tackle it now, since i've been on so many accounts, because i grew one, back at the toy company too, for the stop motion animation toy, and that's kind of my first dipping into that. and we grew really fast. like it's like at a half a million now for followers—t but, i think hat's kind of when i was realizing that there's buckets to these things.And like, i like to think of them as like content buckets or like pillars and you like pick three, like i'm going to do behind the scenes videos. i'm going to do, some kind of. app walkthrough maybe for 1 Second Everyday purposes and then fun trends and stick with those for a little bit, try a few ideas in each bucket.See what's working, what's not. and then kind of maybe if the behind the scenes stuff is not working as well, then we won't make as many of that stuff. and then just scrolling through the app is the best way to kind of keep on top of things and make sure that you're experimenting with new stuff, because people are always thinking of really creative ways to make new videos and have these like wild ideas that you don't think could ever relate to 1 Second Everyday but they can, and then you have to like, be able to think really fast and post really fast because these trends come and go. so that's kind of like my system, i guess. Jacob: 00:14:01How do, you avoid the. what did that steve buscemi meme that's like, hello, fellow kids. how did, how do you, because that's always my fear too, is like, especially as i get older, it's like, if i'm trying to be hip on twitter or whatever, like, it feels like there's this uncanny valley that brands can really easily get in to and you see it with like bad social media.Right. is there is, there is a solution just hire people who are actually good at social media or like, or is there like a framework for not becoming the steve buscemi meme?Madison: 00:14:30I think the biggest thing is don't try to make anything that you don't understand already. like don't try to guess. i think i learned that. Jacob: 00:14:39I canceled this, the, the, the sea shanties revenue, cat, collab, because yeah, i still don't understand it.Madison: 00:14:47Yeah, it's i think i learned that on my personal account. specifically just as i age and everything. and you get like these young kids on there that are like, wait you're, you're a millennial. that's really old. and then they just kinda like it pierces your heart a little bit. and you're like, oh god, that hurt really bad, but okay, thanks for reminding me.And it's okay if they do that, it's actually kind of funny and you can lean into it. but don't try to be gen z i think is the big thing when you're trying to relate just as i wouldn't try to be boomers either. Like you wouldn't try to be somebody else. so it's being yourself, knowing what you know, and like, not trying to guess at it, and you can talk to that generation, but they might just tell you, like, stop, get off the platform or something. i don't know. but there's always people that you can find within the platform that will relate to you too. that's a big thing David: 00:15:41How much of this do you think is kind of product social media platform fit? i guess. so my question is like, can you shoehorn a product that wouldn't necessarily work on social media, into social media marketing. so revenue cap being a good example. you know, we are, you know, sharing some videos on twitter and stuff like that, but it doesn't feel like TikTok would be a good platform for us to invest in marketing wise, as opposed to. Jacob: 00:16:18Cause because we're an infrastructure tool. David: 00:16:22As opposed to, you know, it sounds like even at the toy company, the stop motion animation product was what really hit on social media. did you try other, products within the toy company that didn't hit? or do you have any kind of thoughts on that kind of product platform fit? Madison: 00:16:41That's a good question. we specifically got on to TikTok because of the stop-motion toy. and i think it definitely makes it easier when you have a content creation tool, because we had an app that went with that toy too. and, and really it's all about entertaining people at the end of the day on TikTok and if you can't make entertaining content with your product, then it gets harder. i don't think we tried with other products. we did do a cross-promotion where we would have like a stop-motion toy playing with our other toys that we had kind of thing. and that was a fun way to do it, but we had different strategies for other toys, like influencer marketing or unboxing videos as well.But i think that anybody can be on TikTok but i also like to ask people, why do you think that you can't be on TikTok and people will say, well it's because kids are on there, it's a kid's platform. and it's really not at all. it used to be, it used to be people just lip sinking. and that's what i had started out doing.And i was terrible at it. i'm like this sucks. i am not, this is not a good platform for me. and it's really just transformed into a place where anybody can kind of find their, their audience and, and maybe with revenuecat it might be a thing of just trying to explain what you do in a really fun way and unique way to make people excited about it.Jacob: 00:18:03There are other developer brands that find success on there. right? there's like a certain language or that, that works. it's just like, hey, you know, for us. and so it's, and i think for any, any, you know, as an app, i think to going back to your point, david, about products, network fit, right. apps in general.Sit. well, i was thinking about 1 Second Everyday and TikTok, right. you're pointing a camera at your face at something. right. so like you're already, like, they were very like products in some ways. so it's like very smooth transition. but for most apps, it is right. you're there, you're on your phone.You're doing stuff you're probably bored like here. like, let me tell you about some other application you can use. it's a smooth transition. but then like i still. yeah. thinking about, i mean, we have this problem now that'd be the podcast we do. it's one thing. but then like, you know, for, for blog content and other things, it's really hard to come up with stuff that matters.Right. that like, like you were saying, maddie, like, so that, that, that, that, that's funny, like you care about, right. that that's what you want do. cause like, at the end of the day, if you're just trying to like chase the meme, it's gonna come off as hokey. right. it's going to come off as like an ungenuine. so. but i think app developers. yeah. i mean, i, i, it feels like we've heard like this whole tick talk as an app distribution mechanism really has kind of something that surprised me too. like it, it blinds, i mean, it's like we, and not just the first order of like we're selling ads on TikTok, this like second order user generated content stuff, which i think is just fast.Madison: 00:19:35Yeah. and i, i think that again, it's, you just have to figure out how you can be on the platform if you want to. and there's really nothing to lose with it too, because it doesn't cost money to be on there and try things like you can have a podcast format on there and you can take clips of a podcast and put them on there.And people have a lot of success doing that, or just having their, reply with the video feature. there's a lot of different kind of structures that people it's not just. making skits or trying to use popular. Sounds popular. sounds do well, but maybe that's not for you. i think it's, brainstorming, trying things, seeing what sticks and if it doesn't stick, then try something different.And if that doesn't, then you can focus your energy somewhere else and realize that, you know, you gave it your best shot and maybe there's a different kind of opportunity that, comes up later or a new feature that's introduced later that works.David: 00:20:29On the, on the trend chasing, what are some examples of that with 1 Second Everyday that you feel like came off? well, and, and kind of, how do you, how do you attach yourself to a trend without that? hokiness cause it sounds like you've succeeded at that, but i imagine that it is a hard thing to do.So any tips on how to do that? well, Madison: 00:20:50We kind of get lucky sometimes. and i, that is kind of like how TikTok works is luck. and i hate saying that. David: 00:20:58Favors the prepared though. Madison: 00:20:59Yeah. i mean, it's good that we were onto it. it definitely helps, to be able to, to see what's going on out in the world, but we just had, a wall street journal article that was about this too, about TikTok in 1 Second Everyday.And how there's this trend going on on, tech talk, where people are making 1 Second Everyday type video. and there's a lot of trends out there that show it's like the 27 video challenge where you have 27 videos and you set them to a song. that's very, we say that's one. when i see vibes, when we ever like share it inside of our slack channel Jacob: 00:21:34I mean, the thing is, is like bad posts. nobody sees, right? like, Madison: 00:21:39Yeah, it's kind of, it's like such a tiny thing and that goes back to the luck part of it. and i think being able to, jump on a trend, it's like, you could have a great video and people think it's awesome and you show it to your friend and they think it's great. and it just doesn't do well at the time.And you could post it two months later and it'll do that. Maybe not for a trend it's randomness and kind of like just how the algorithm works with wanting to reward you sometimes. but i think where we've done well with, jumping on a trend too, is we had a, a video that took off with, one of my coworkers made, she, she helped me make it.She was just standing there with her phone and was having somebody else zoom in on her that said i recorded 1 Second Everyday of my life for the last year. and then it just rotated through like really, really fast imagery of the year. and that was the trend of people showing it, but it was like this, we just kind of twisted it a little bit to make it about 1 Second Everyday, but don't ever make it like an ad.It shouldn't be, it shouldn't feel like 1 Second Everyday is posting it. and that's really cool. we were getting a lot of positive feedback on the posts because people were like, okay, what's the app that you use.Jacob: 00:22:56Yeah. Madison: 00:22:56And, and that's not a bad thing. people think that's a bad thing to have people ask that, but it's actually not.It just means that they think that some random girl posted a video, not a brand.And I prefer Jacob: 00:23:07On your brand account though Madison: 00:23:08On our brand account. we get that all the time. Jacob: 00:23:11I mean, that's a good sign of success, right? Madison: 00:23:13Yeah. people don't really read the, they don't read the captions. maybe i'm not sure what it is, but they don't Jacob: 00:23:21Yeah. it's really understated on TikTok, Madison: 00:23:24Yeah. Jacob: 00:23:24Kinda like floating in the Madison: 00:23:26Yeah. i feel like it's a great thing. when people have no idea that it's coming from a brand, even when it's posted on a brand account and that's, i would say with trends, it should feel like that it shouldn't feel like, like i'm trying to think of an example. like if oreo cookies made a thing, it shouldn't feel like they are just trying to sell you cookies.It needs to be entertaining. it needs to tell a story. you can't just find an easy way to do it and hope that it works.Jacob: 00:23:55So how, how so you've had success with first party content? i have you used like user generated stuff as well. have you tried to, i've seen it a lot of apps do this where they'll, i, we know if we've had it on the podcast, people before who have had like TikTok influencers make videos and then use those as ads.Have you experimented with any of that?Madison: 00:24:13We haven't used any as ads—something that's kind of weird about 1 second, everyday too. I mean, it also just has to do with us being a small team, with not a lot of money to spend on ads. so we really lean into organic because organic has also done really well for us. so why would we spend a bunch of money? Jacob: 00:24:31It's too usually Madison: 00:24:32But my, yeah my manager who used to be the social media manager when she started at 1 Second Everyday started a thing, where they added a feature actually to get more spikes monthly. and that was to make it so that people could mash their month and share their month on social. and then they had a giveaway that went with it and we still have that giveaway.And that gets hundreds of people to enter by sharing their, their, their month essentially, of 1 Second Everyday and that just keeps that going and just feeds into it. and then the more people that post about us. the more people that download and then the more people that can then post about us again.So it's just keeping that stream.Jacob: 00:25:15Did you have, it does again, post to tech talk as well as like other platforms or is it like specifically. on TikTok.Madison: 00:25:21Uh that's for instagram, actually Jacob: 00:25:25Oh, really? cause like take that, sorry. i'm th this is i'm totally like a tick tock idiot, but like you can't actually like post videos into TikTok, right? or,Madison: 00:25:34No. You definitely can. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. and we, we share user-generated content all the time on instagram, and we're trying to do that on TikTok as well, but it's, it's not the same because you can't really just share a one second everyday video from a random person. that doesn't mean as much as trying to kind of make it more of that TikTok format or putting a little bit of context behind it so that people understand. David: 00:25:58So, and, on the, on the panel we were on, you talked about, how well it's done for y'all at 1 Second Everyday. can you, rehash what you already said, but on here, tell us more specifically about a couple of the posts that went viral and then being able to see the direct results on, in downloads.Madison: 00:26:22Yeah. So we started arctic talk, in december because we wanted to be able to launch it before the new year, which is our biggest time of the year, because that's usually when people don't. and then, because it's the start of the year, that's a great time to just start a thing for your life and then they'll wait a year to post it.And so usually we see like this massive spike because everybody wants to post their year. but this time, what was different is that i think it was the day before the new year a girl, i was just randomly scrolling through TikTok and a girl had made a video that was like, hey, i have an idea. what if we just recorded 1 Second Everyday of our life, and then we would have a life movie, and then i went, oh, that's our app.And it hadn't even been, i don't think it was even at 1 million views yet. and so i was like, i got to do a duet right now. and so i filmed a duet where i just was walking through the app. as she's explaining this idea and people even thought that we made the app because of her idea, like how did you guys do that?So fast. so then people thought it was like this new cool app. and, it started this like microtrends, through ticks hawk and her video. i think it reached a lot of millions of views. i think it was like 13 million or something crazy. and then ours got, like a million views and then everything after that for a couple of days, it's like a million on our own account because then everybody started translating her video into their own country languages.And so you had hundreds of people copying her video and just ending up on everybody's feed. and then everybody that had already downloaded 1 Second Everyday and knew about it was commenting inside of those videos saying, hey, download 1 Second Everyday. so they were doing our job for us really. Jacob: 00:28:11You know, and that's a sign of a great product, right? Madison: 00:28:14Yeah, it is. it's like we, we talk about it cause we go and it's again, kind of a lucky circumstance of having this girl think of this idea. that's really similar to our app, but also we were able to capitalize on, on it even more because we do edit with it. and then we were able to grow an audience that to like now we're at, i don't even know what we're at 20 k or something on a TikTok, but we grew really fast within that time.And then. kind of going back to being able to see download spikes is we got a number one in the app store that day for the first time ever had never had that happen. and it just, i mean, it blew the other numbers just away dramatically. and then, now we're able to see these little spikes every month when a TikTok is posted from somebody.We had one in france and you'll see all the downloads that happened in france. just. and then we had one in argentina and that spiked and uk. so being able to like, see that and also just learn from them, like what kind of videos are they posting? super simple them just saying I've been recording my life for this long people just think that's cool. cause they're like, you did what you recorded your life for four years. what, how do i do that? and then you tell them how they do it. and then they just, they're all like talking in the comments. it's really cool. and, but we haven't seen them. at all on the other years, it's only this time that we've seen these like massive monthly spikes too.David: 00:29:46Didn't, y'all hit number one again in may or something. Madison: 00:29:49We did for a different country. And i think that was argentina, which we had never done before. David: 00:29:55Nice. Madison: 00:29:56Country, but you could connect it back to one second.David: 00:29:59Wow. Jacob: 00:30:00We've seen, i mean, we had david smith on the podcasts a couple of weeks ago. and his app, would just meth, like exploded because of that. and like, he, it was just, somebody made a video, right? david, that was a story for his, like, it wasn't, it was the same thing. it was like not, they didn't pay for it, somebody to just like, show how to do a cool thing with this guy's app.Well, i mean, from our perspective, we talked about it on the podcast at the time, but from our perspective, we, we provide his infrastructure for purchases and we were like, what the hell is happening? like, it's, it's, it's amazing. i mean, i don't know it was like computer brain guy, but like what this like interconnected, like we've really like shortened the loop for like the, just like minimal.Energy to like move around. right? like people can like spike this stuff. and it's yeah, it's, it's it's mind blowing the capex cause we've seen it also, not just, we've just been, we've seen other apps too. like, you know, it's hard to move the needle for our infrastructure because we're thousands of hours.But in TikTok and like some of these, and to a lesser extent, instagram can still like drive events that show up on our graphs, like what the hell is happening? we had one, it was a paid one car, like a kardashian driven one that obviously it's different because you're paying an influencer. but, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible.And maybe back to your point about it being organic, right. versus, or like earned, you could call it too. right. it's earned as organic. watching it and being there, you know, for, for us, the first party, like to, to take advantage of that, i think is as important as trying to be like, you know, creating your own content.Right. it'sMadison: 00:31:39Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't have gone as well if we didn't have, a presence on the platform too. and i think that just goes to show that you should just be on the platforms and have a voice on the platforms for that moment. you shouldn't be just jumping on. i think there's probably like examples of that with other brands, like, the cranberry juice, like ocean spray stuff that happened.I don't think they had a presence on TikTok, but then they caught on real fast. but just imagine if they already did have a presence and then people would want to be posting about them more. but i think, yeah, just having a presence on there too, when that's all happening Jacob: 00:32:17Oh, i was trying to place the meeting. that was the guy with the skateboard,Madison: 00:32:19Yeah, that's the skateboard.Sorry. yeah, yeah. no, it's, it was really cool to see that all happen and, and be able to show numbers because everybody, i mean, on the team, has everybody in general has opinions on TikTok. and when you're able to actually just correlate these things with numbers, some people, the people that are number of people were just like mind blown.They love it. feel like this is great. Jacob: 00:32:47It sounds like the algorithm is very capricious though. it sounds like it's very kind of, even, even you even suggested that there's like intentional randomness, like progressive randomness.Madison: 00:32:57There's yeah, there is. but then there's also, i've made a video like the four years that i had captured kind of video where you have something playing in the back, like the app i have in the background and me just sharing my story. i've done that three times, i think. and every time it's done. So you, it, it also rewards you for doing the same thing over and over, which isn't a good thing and that's how you can get trapped, but it is a nice thing to lean on when you're like, we need a spike.Let's do this kind of video. David: 00:33:27Did you follow the, the widget smith and homescreen customization thing that blew up in the fall.Madison: 00:33:34Hm.David: 00:33:35Okay. i was just going to get your thoughts on that, but, yeah, i mean like, like jacob said, he blew up on TikTok inMadison: 00:33:43I know, i know what you're talking aboutDavid: 00:33:44Okay.Madison: 00:33:45I, yeah, yeah, yeah. when everybody was customizing their screens to make it like a theme and everything. David: 00:33:50Yep. yeah. and so that's what jacob was talking about a minute ago was that widget smith was, was kind of the center of all of that and, and, they use revenue, cat. and so it just blew up. But but that was kind of, just this crazy viral wave where, what i thought was so cool about how that happened. and, we talked about on the podcast, i want to go super into it, but, she basically gave it to tutorial of how to use the app, which is like the best onboarding you could ever hope for. you know, it's like, it is a complex thing to like go set up a widget. and, configure all these, this stuff to get the widgets, to show up correctly.And it it's all a hassle that you would typically, as a developer have to think, oh man, i need to onboard the user. i need to convince them that it's worth all of this hassle to get some reward out of it. and then she goes and like, i forget it was like 45 second video, maybe even 32nd video. it was like, here's how you do it.Damn like, or actually i think she said like, she showed that like homescreen at how cool and aesthetic it was. and then, then she showed how to do it. and then she, it was like, she, it was like this perfectly scripted marketing. onboarding thing of telling you how to do it, telling you the result, telling you it's worth doing, telling you, you know, it's worth the hassle of going through these steps and then showing you the steps.It was just amazing how it wasn't an ad. it was totally user generated, just ended up being the absolute perfect ad because it was user generated. and because it was user-generated she felt like she needed to explain it all and like tell that story. so yeah, it was just a, it was just a really fascinating little blur lip.And then, and then, you know, a lot of apps have been going viral because of TikTok. since then, i forget there was another, another one recently that was like super random, like some kind of calculator or something that got into the top 100 in the app store. Madison: 00:35:50Oh, that's cool. David: 00:35:51Yeah, so it's just crazy. Jacob: 00:35:53Have, you all, thought about product changes to try to incent that behavior, to like try and encourage folks to make video as a aside from you mentioned the like sharing thing, but there seems like there could be other ways to kind of. plant some more of those viral spikesMadison: 00:36:07Yeah. something that we're working on. i don't know if i'm actually probably allowed to say what it is because it's not yeah. even secret. We have things planned where we're thinking about it. yes, we do. we think about ways that we can incorporate it in the app. and we want to think about more ways. i mean, we've had.TikTokers that have influenced product changes to just even the ability to flip, like mirror their video. i don't know if you know what that trend is, but there was this, effect they had on tech talk that would mirror your face and it makes it look bizarre when you flip it for some reason it's a psychological thing.And so then everybody was telling us that we need to have a mirror button so they can flip it back the correct way. and we made that change when people were really happy. so we definitely listened to everybody on social about stuff. and yes, we do think about product changes and are trying to think about more for the future to encourage people to post, but definitely making sure that there's no, paywall with that too.Jacob: 00:37:12You know, if you want to make hay off of like organic or viral or something like that, it has to be, i've worked on several like viral, organic or viral cheri features like stuff like this, the only ones i've ever had be successful are the ones that are like core to the product, which means like, you have to think about it early.Right? you have to think about. early on. i mean, you can add stuff later, but like, unless it's like consequential or like it's easy or interesting, like it's not actually gonna get to that viral coefficient. that makes enough of a difference. but, but doing the product work in some ways, it's going to be higher leverage than like trying to make your end video.Right. Madison: 00:37:50Yeah. Jacob: 00:37:50Making the product more shareable. uh Madison: 00:37:52Yeah. We have those conversations and people try to loop in the marketing team to, and pick our brains about, hey, we heard about this product request and we want to know on a scale of one to 10, how important is this for the success of the app? and like, how much is it going to affect it? and we'll talk about it and be like, well, that filter is not really that important.You can hold off for like next summer or something. it's, it's having those conversations. they're really important. i think everybody on the team talks together about the features. David: 00:38:24What do you think are, are some other ways, and specifically going back to the algorithm that, that helps you stand out. yeah. like so aside from trend chasing, i know the like popular songs is one thing, right? because if you use the background audio from a video that was trending, the kind of audio trends separate from the video, right.Or separate from topics and things like that. are there any other kind of tips and tricks to, to help your video stand out? even if you're not, you know, doing specific kind of trenches.Madison: 00:39:03That's a difficult one. cause that kinda comes down to like you and your personality and what makes you different as well. and that's a really hard one that can take a long time to kind of flesh out. but if you're not trend chasing, it's kind of playing around with features in the app and kind of seeing new ways that you can play with it.I know i had a video on my own personal account that was using their voiceover effect that they have, where the text is read out by a woman. and i would misspell the names of like popular celebrities on purpose. and i found out that i could actually drag the misspelling out of the video. you couldn't see it, but it would still do.It and then i could put the actual person's name so i could make it seem like this voice is just completely butchering these names in the worst way. and it went viral. just like thinking of these like random ways that you can use these features or like tricks is really important and it's super fun.And people love it so i think, yeah, just diving into using the app itself. there's so many features that go on and new ways that you can use them. and that's how you stand out just kind of making like a little bit of a tweak to something Jacob: 00:40:15So i'll, you know, just to look into the future because if it, you know, having seen, having seen myspace and then now, then facebook become cool and not cool. and twitter, i think twitter is not cool anymore.Probably i don't know. now i'm on there. so now it's my social media of choice and i take talks.The rising. cool. like, do you have any, like, i mean, imagine you're in a multi-decade career of doing something along those lines, do you, do you think about, or imagine like what, what might be next? or like what the kids, what the kid on the bus might be talking about in, in, in five or 10 years?Madison: 00:40:50All the time. yeah, but they're, i mean, i have been on new platforms all the time too, and they just flop sometimes you'll think it's a great thing. but it's often because people think they're putting out something different and they're really not. it's just the same thing, but looks a little different, different colors maybe, or you can't force people to use an app.You can only get people to like naturally kind of come over there. and a lot of companies will pay people to come and use their app. Yeah. to try to get people to come over there and generate fake viewers or a fake users really. and that doesn't work either. so i do think about it a lot. i haven't quite seen that yet for what the new thing is.I think TikTok has stayed around a lot longer than i thought, because i remember talking about it with people at vidcon a couple of years ago, where we went, when do you think vidcon is going to go? just because we were all scared because of. vine when that i mean, dropped it affected so many people and it impacted them in a positive way too, because some people had already set their sights on, youtube or doing TikTok it's either you chose short form content or long form. so just being ready, don't have all your eggs in one basket. it's kind of like the big thing and be looking and just be aware of what's out there. it doesn't mean that the thing will be the next big thing. it just means you should be aware of it in case it does become a thing Jacob: 00:42:17Yeah, i would say like taking your company brand onto very unproven platforms is probably not a great use of time. right? like you want to wait until there's something there.Madison: 00:42:26Yeah, i think it's with, smaller teams. it's definitely us trying to think is an hour going to really be worth it, or is it really more well-spent if it's an hour of me making some tech talks in my apartment, probably the tech docs right now,David: 00:42:42Yeah,Madison: 00:42:42Of a random thing, but it's. David: 00:42:44But but how do you approach it set then? because there is value in the experimentation. i like seeing what's next. so do you kind of think okay, i'm going to waste. two hours this week, checking out new. i mean, you probably don't timebox it like that, but there is some value in that experimentation. how much are you time?Are you spending on that experimentation? it sounds like that's, i mean, that's kind of been a theme of this whole conversation is try this, try that, see what sticks, see what happens. so, and there's value in that. so how, how much, how do you kind of view that time? that you're. throwing stuff against the wall.Okay. Madison: 00:43:25It can really range and not just depends on what apps are out. there are a ceo caesar's awesome at being in the loop with the tech world and kind of seeing what platforms are being talked about on twitter. so twitter still is a relevant thing for people talking. yeah, it is. Jacob: 00:43:42Early millennials, Madison: 00:43:44Yeah, Jacob: 00:43:45Out of anything relevant, Madison: 00:43:46Exactly. like, he sent us apps that were like, whoa, this is really cool. and even if it's not something that blows up, it can still help us with our app too. and like internally. yeah. we're like, that's a really cool onboarding video. i've never seen anything like that. that's super helpful.And that, that's just the team being curious about stuff. and i think that's so important. also, if you're in social media, you should just be, i mean, on social media and i am definitely on social media way too much, but that's what i do with my own time too. i'm not like making an account for 1 Second Everyday on every new platform that exists and like trying it out.I'm trying it out on my own own time sometimes like on my own account. and that's the best way is just to see how you like it and how it's working for you and your friends to you. i can't remember what the app was called. it's like paparazzi. i think maybe that's what it's called. Yeah. Jacob: 00:44:42Now went viral for four days or Madison: 00:44:44Right. went viral for four days or whatever. and it was great. and we were like, well, this is so cool. that's like one of the onboarding videos that were like, this is awesome. it's got like the, the phone was vibrating and stuff while you were like going through this onboarding experience. so it was so cool.We didn't stick with it, but that's also because we're like, we don't have as many friends as like a bunch of kids do. so maybe that's a different experience in their world. maybe they're all talking about it more. yeah, i think just getting on it and seeing it can be a valuable thing and using it for your own time and actually creating content on the platform is important.Jacob: 00:45:20It's not too dissimilar from how developers use new, like coding tools. right? like you try it for side projects. i mean, it's one channel for revenue. cat's talking about our own growth is like, we want to make sure. selling into bigger older companies. it's a little, sometimes it's taken longer route. we'll do it now, but like it's much easier to win.Like yeah. they'll like inconsequential or less consequential side project. and then, you know, ramp that into something bigger later, right.Madison: 00:45:45Yeah.Jacob: 00:45:46That is sometimes a better place for that experimentation. David: 00:45:49It's funny. i would say here. an app developers perspective. so we have the tools guy, the social media person at me and me is the app, focus. So exactly what you were saying is, is how you want to prove out your own app. like i've had apps where i send out a beta and people stop using it like a couple of days later.And so, you know, when you go onto this social media platform and you're trying it and your own personal use just drops off. then it's clear, it's not a sticky where most people would get on TikTok. it's like they're hooked and they're going. Jacob: 00:46:22Will not open the damn thing.Is to get, like, i got twitter enough in my life through ruining it. like i don't David: 00:46:29Yeah. Jacob: 00:46:30Other one. yeah. David: 00:46:31But for, but for the developers out there, you know, when you send out a beta, you know, your beta people might not be your exact target market, but you should have some level of like stickiness. in, in the app signs of product market fit. but anyways, i do want to talk a little bit and we need, we're getting short on time, but, you're launching a new community, feature with a community manager. or tell me about that. because i actually don't know all the detailsMadison: 00:47:01Yeah. I think you mean brand ambassador program, is that correct? that's what you're talking about. cause i kind of, i, yeah i had announced that on the panel that day that we were launching that and we. had over to just like 200 applications for people to join our brand ambassador team. and we have a marketing team of three people to manage that team.So we had to narrow it down a lot, unfortunately, but we had, you know, over 200 people submitting videos of why they wanted to be on this team. and this team is for us to be able to connect with people in the community, to kind of just start a brand ambassador program, because we've always wanted to do that.It's been talked about forever, so we just made the leap and we narrowed it down to, 26 people and announced them last week. and so we're getting them all onboarded and ready to go. and we've got like people from all over the world that are ready make some content about 1 Second Everyday but that's kind of the thing is they get, you know, connections with us and can have impacts within the app as well as like free merch and things like that, that are really fun.And then. we get some content from them in exchange, which is kind of like user-generated and hopefully we'll be successful and we'll see some like, really cool things from them. we're just excited to see what they create. David: 00:48:24So, so the, so the, goal is, is to be more directly connected with some of the people who are already creating content in the space. and then, and it's not a paid gig. it's, it's a, they, like you said, they get paid in, in, in merge, and, but i imagine that that's not. Jacob: 00:48:46March. you can't put a dollar value onMadison: 00:48:48Right? yes. Yes. exclusive. David: 00:48:50What, what, i mean, what was the pitch to them specifically?Madison: 00:48:54Yeah. The pitch to people, in general, was to be a part of the community to identify as a 1 Second Everyday fan, which we've got a lot of big super fans out there, who've been using the app for eight years to, you know, a year and they just love it. And they just want to be a part of that and really kind of make their own with it.If they're a writer, they can submit a blog post if they want. If they really like social media, they can focus on TikToks to make for us to post and kind of help give them shout outs. They just really want to have experience some of these kids are, some of them are like kids that want marketing experience.Some people are older that are just like, I love this app so much. And I promise I will make the coolest videos for you. And here's like what I do. And they're just so jazzed about it. And they're going to get like the younger people that are newer to the app, really excited, guided. So we're just excited to see them interact and everything.And then get content and like new ideas because I'm just a one person making stuff for social media. And I want to see kind of what people naturally make. We're not trying to force them to make anything. We're not telling them that they have to make this kind of video. It's just whatever they want to do.And then they can discuss within the community. Jacob: 00:50:11So, I'd like to take this opportunity to announce the RevenueCat brand ambassador program.David, figure out the details.David: 00:50:18Oh, thanks. Jacob: 00:50:19I don't know what this is just the sort it out for me.David: 00:50:22No, this is blowing my mind though. I mean, and again, the whole reason I wanted to have you on the podcast is you just are thinking so differently. I know brand ambassador is it, I just I've seen brand ambassadors. I know the general idea, you know, but I just never would have thought it could work for an app.So it's so cool that y'all are just trying this new thing and having users help with your marketing.Madison: 00:50:46Yeah. David: 00:50:47Then being so like thrilled to do it. That's just incredible. Jacob: 00:50:49So much better too, than like a bunch of like stale Facebook ads degenerated on Fiverr, right?Madison: 00:50:59Yeah. That's mostly how people find out about our app is through word of mouth and people posting about us. So it only made sense. And we knew it was the right time because we had all these people asking if we had a brand investor profile. And that's kind of like how we sold it to the team too, is being like, hey, people are asking, people are interested. This is the time to do it. And just try it. There's nothing to lose. Let's go for it. See what happens. And then hopefully from there, we'll be able to just keep growing it.David: 00:51:30Yeah. Madison: 00:51:31Like awesome connection with our user base.David: 00:51:34And what's been so cool about doing this podcast and talking to so many folks is that different things just click for different people. So, if you're listening to this podcast and you have an app that isn't content heavy, you know, maybe social media is not the perfect fit for you. And maybe you're not going to be able to have brand amabassadors and things like that.But the point is you don't just have to buy ads on Facebook. There are so many different avenues to explore, and this is one really cool way to do something different, and to very cost-effectively grow without just dumping money into ads. So it's so cool. And we do need to wrap up. Is there anything else you wanted to share?We're going to put links to your TikTok and 1 Second Everyday. But anything else you wanted to share as we wrap up?Madison: 00:52:23No, I think that's it. Thanks so much for having me. I had a really fun time talking about all this with you guys. This is my passion, so it's great to chat.David: 00:52:33Well, thanks so much for your time. This is super insightful.Jacob: 00:52:36Yeah, thank you. Madison: 00:52:37Thank you.

Show Summary: “Presence is the greatest present.”We often see pain as a red flag. When we were young, we were taught that it was a bad feeling. But actually, it can be beautiful as it can teach us a lot of things. When we feel it, it tells us to slow down and be with our body because pain is a compass to return to our true north and higher self.Your body feels different emotions for different reasons, and listening to them and letting them flow through you, is your medicine. Loneliness, defeat, and despair are painful, and crying it out is OK because it makes you feel better. And surrendering allows those triggers to heal.In this episode with Gina and Raj, they discuss masculine and feminine energy & how emotions change our physical chemistry towards healing. Listen as Juanique also shares the beautiful things she learned through Tristin's death that help her create a safe space for their children.If someone you know is in deep pain, please share this with them to help them process what they feel through the golden nuggets mentioned in this podcast.Exceptional Highlight:When you're present and slow with your body, it can magically do its work.Let the pain be your teacher and guide into your body.Children are one of our greatest teachers because they teach us to slow down and play.Show Highlights: How are Juanique and Tristin's loved ones doing four weeks after his passing?Raj 1:00I can still feel the amount of love from him in every moment, in the kids and the house. He randomly pops into my mind all the time. Gina and I talk about him quite a lot.GinaHe's a part of our lives. He's not a memory; he's an active part of our lives.How are Juanique's children doing?Juanique 7:41I don't think there is a right way to prepare your children. The only thing you can do for them is doing the work to hold a really safe space that is loving and gentle for them. I think I've done a great job of letting them feel the sadness. And then we'll hold each other in love and let it move through them.Intentions help you do things with love and energyRaj 16:27It doesn't matter if it's a workout or a desire to have a healthier life. The origin of the intent is the seed that heals. If you think that you're not enough, you will be in this rat race or the hustle culture that gives you more stress and makes you do more. It puts you in this place where your mind is in the driver's seat instead of your mind being in service to the heart.Our bodies will not heal in fear and stressGina 20:17The researchers at the Heart Math Institute look at heart rate variability and other health indicators that predict longevity and aging. They look at how joy, love, and gratitude directly change heart rate variability. They're all these different keys to longevity. So we have to have love and joy for our bodies to heal. Otherwise, we're out of sync and coherence.Important LinksConquering CravingsJuanique Roney IGGina Worful IGRaj JanaSupport the show (https://www.mygutsyhealth.com/gutsy-family)

Audacity, I am disappoint. 0:07 - The epic saga of my quest to secure decent exercise equipment for my home finally comes to an end! 11:47 - I bought a new mic but Audacity let me down 46:28 - Are all isekai anime harem anime? No. Not ALL of them... 1:02:01 - My physical therapist attacked my IT bands with a spackle knife. Or was it a giant shark tooth? If you missed Saturday's live broadcast of Molehill Mountain, you can watch the video replay on YouTube.  Alternatively, you can catch audio versions of the show on iTunes. Molehill Mountain streams live at 7p PST every Saturday night on RandomTower! Credits: Molehill Mountain is hosted by Andrew Eisen.  Music in the show includes “Albino” by Brian Boyko. It is in the public domain and free to use. Molehill Mountain logo by Scott Hepting. Chat Transcript: 6:57 PMSily Chicken3421​Hi andrew 6:59 PMmatthew wilson​apps apps aopps, make sure you exit out of backround apps 6:59 PMmatthew wilson​get ac /s 6:59 PMaddictedtochaos​Hello 6:59 PMmatthew wilson​its hot where I am, but I ac 7:00 PMmatthew wilson​apps left running in backround tends to kill battery in phones 7:02 PMmatthew wilson​I fallow someone on twitter who picks up scam calls and trolls them 7:02 PMmatthew wilson​"3 days later" news report guy gets cruches atempting to bench press without a spotter /s 7:05 PMmatthew wilson​atruas 7:05 PMaddictedtochaos​Atreus 7:07 PMmatthew wilson​"used to be" 7:10 PMmatthew wilson​never click the link 7:10 PMmatthew wilson​yup 7:11 PMmatthew wilson​honestly ont get a ton of spam, gmail is prity good at this point 7:12 PMmatthew wilson​500 you could spend on a ps5 /s 7:13 PMmatthew wilson​I have a 3070, so im good 7:13 PMTheRiverAnduin​my mom falls for scam calls I have to tell her to block all in coming calls that are not familly 7:14 PMmatthew wilson​when is your place of work planning going back to in offoice work? 7:14 PMSheekago​what about some sun blocking drapes to keep the heat out? 7:15 PMLee Showron​Hey 7:15 PMTheRiverAnduin​I have a RTX2070 on my desktop, 16GB of ram good for now. 7:15 PMmatthew wilson​im weird discord is my primory way to talk to freinds/family, and google voice for the rest 7:16 PMPhyre Lite​ouch 7:16 PMPhyre Lite​hello 🙂 7:16 PMmatthew wilson​so no robocalls yahho 7:17 PMTheRiverAnduin​anyone try to pre-order the Steam Deck? 7:19 PMLee Showron​It's ok 7:20 PMLee Showron​I remember it back in 80s 7:20 PMSheekago​I have the power 7:20 PMaddictedtochaos​Had a lot of the He-Man toys but didn't watch the original show much. 7:20 PMSheekago​Does Adam still 7:21 PMLee Showron​He-Man and She-ra I use watch 7:21 PMSheekago​look like a pale version of He-Msn 7:22 PMaddictedtochaos​I'll watch it eventually, but I don't want to watch something new while I feel horrible. 7:22 PMLee Showron​They usely charge it from original 7:23 PMLee Showron​He-Man, and She-ra is siblings 7:23 PMSheekago​I enjoyed the Netflix remake of Voltron. Is the He-Man remake in the same vein? 7:27 PMLee Showron​Talking about remakes I don't like the newest remake of thundercats 7:28 PMaddictedtochaos​Had Castle GreySkull. Sadly not anymore. 7:28 PMLee Showron​Did the first He-man remake go well? DKSamaritanNZ$10.00I found you through the Behind the Scenes of "Fifty Shades of Grey: The Pop-Up Book", funny how things change. the your serious sense of humor still makes me grin. 7:32 PMaddictedtochaos​Super dark would be Beserk. 7:33 PMSheekago​You should definitely give the Netflix version of Voltron a watch. I went back to the 80's version. I could not watch it. I remember loving it as a little kid, though. 7:34 PMAof520​2002 he man was great

放送日：2021/7/20（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。☆パーソナリティー／鳴海真奈美（役者）鳴海真奈美 (@nrmn524) | Twitter☆パーソナリティー／晴森みき（役者）Twitter☆パーソナリティー／北垣達弘（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kitawo☆パーソナリティー／青木 奏（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kanak..

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David Smith is a full-time independent app developer. Since 2006, David has owned and operated a small company focusing on creating applications for the iPhone and Apple Watch.David has built many successful apps over the years. His most recent app, Widgetsmith, went viral and hit #1 on the App Store. It has over 50 million downloads. David's other successful apps include Watchsmith, Pedometer++, and Sleep++.David also co-hosts a weekly podcast called Under the Radar, where he and his co-host Mario Arment discuss Apple-related topics.In this episode, you'll learn: How to transition from a hobbyist to a full-time app developer Two big mistakes to avoid when starting out as an app developer How customers find new apps in 2021 The biggest waste of time and money for an app developer Links & Resources The LibriVox project Mirror app Launch Center Pro app David Smith's Links David's Website Audiobooks app Widgetsmith app Watchsmith app Pedometer++ app Sleep++ app Under the Radar podcast David's Twitter: @_DavidSmith iOS Version Stats Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingLike this episode?Subscribe to Sub Club on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get the latest news on mobile subscription apps.Episode TranscriptDavid Smith: 00:00:00I've launched, I think it's 56 or 57 apps at this point, and all but about six of them have completely failed. I say that mostly because I've launched more failures probably than anyone in the App Store in some ways, and that's the way that you can end up with success, I've just kept trying, and it got me that little baseline of income that it was like, okay, I'm not just wasting my time here.David: 00:00:19Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I'm your host, David Barnard, and with me as always Jacob Eiting. Hello Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:43Hi David Number one, How are you?David: 00:00:46I'm good. Our guest today, maybe number two, is David Smith, long time indie developer and podcaster. Starting with Audiobooks in 2009, David has built many successful apps over the years, including Widgetsmith. Pedometer. His most recent app, Widgetsmith went viral on TikTok, and hit number one in the App Store.Welcome David.David Smith: 00:01:10Thank you, It's great to be here.David: 00:01:11Yeah, it's great to chat. We've chatted in person a few times, and bumped into each other at WWDC over the years. You've been doing this pretty much since the very beginning, right? Audiobooks came out in 2009, when did you actually start working on that?David Smith: 00:01:27So, It wasn't even my first first app. I think my first app that never went anywhere, it was launched in 2008. So, I mean, I was within a couple of months of the App Store launching. So I've been doing it essentially as long as you could, and I think I started working on, oh yeah. Audiobooks, the end of 2008.And it's just kind of grown from there. So it's about 13 years in the App Store.David: 00:01:46Like me and Jacob, actually, we both had apps...Jacob: 00:01:50In the on days of paid up front, and only 200 apps on the App Store, and all that. It is a good time. Were you a developer, like a Mac developer before that? Or how did you trip into iOS?David Smith: 00:02:06Sure. I was a web developer before I did this, and so, I mean, honestly, I started writing apps before I even actually owned an iPhone. I just, it seemed like a good opportunity and I wasn't particularly happy where I was at work and it was just something that I thought would be interesting opportunity.And I started learning and didn't know what I was doing for a long time, but just kept at it. And so it's just one of those things I got into mostly because it seemed like a good opportunity at the time. And so, you know, I just, eventually I initially was doing some web consulting as well as my iOS work.And eventually they just, the web consulting disappeared and it became iOS full-time, and that's sort of been the story for more than a, you know, like 10 years now probably.Jacob: 00:02:47Yeah, no, I was, Kind of similar, like I just saw it coming and it was like, Hmm, maybe I should. And I went and picked up the Macco OS, the the Hillegass book and learned Mac OS programming, like, yeah, because there wasn't the iOS book, right. There was no iOS, it was iPhone iOS. But yeah, it was a different time, fewer apps way, smaller community.So, yeah. Interesting decade.David: 00:03:15I do want to start by digging into the story of Audiobooks, and, I think one of the, one of the interesting things to me, because it happened to me as well, is how having this kind of foundation app that, that started in 2009, that did well enough. And, and I'm, I kind of jumping ahead here a little bit, but I, I think if I know your story correctly, Audiobooks is kind of what helped you make the leap to be full-time indie. And then once you become full-time indie, you started to have the time to experiment with all these other apps, and a similar thing with me, like I've had a couple of key apps over the years that kind of provided that like foundation of income that let me keep going.And then, that allowed me to experiment with all these different apps, like launching a pro ended up coming out of, of already having income to be able to take this big bet. and then mirror came along where it was doing really well, and I was able to take other bets. And so it seems like that's somewhat the story of Audiobooks.So, so let's, let's dig into that. So it was 2008, you had had a failure and then you, you start working on Audiobooks in late 2008. what was the, what was the inspiration and, and, and, and how did how did you kick off that?David Smith: 00:04:31Audiobooks was an app that it's essentially, it's a, it's a wrapper and a player for a free public domain Audiobooks. that was all it was, and it was essentially just coming into the market because. at the time, I mean, there were there, wasn't an easy way to listen to any Audiobooks, on the iPhone at that point.And there wasn't an audible app there wasn't, apple didn't have anything and it was just, you could, I guess you could listen to Audiobooks, I think in the music app potentially, but it was...Jacob: 00:04:57Yeah, you can buy them on iTunes. Right. And they were like, 20 bucks a pop.David Smith: 00:05:02Yeah. And So that's where the idea for the the app came from, and it became, and it's just sort of, it, it just, it took off in a way that I wasn't really expecting and it was successful.And because it was an app that had a very broad appeal, it was something that I think, as you say, it's sort of like built a platform for me to. Then continue to experiment and try things. And, I mean that, that app has gone through originally, it was paid up front and then it went free with ads. And then I tried selling my own ads for awhile.I sort of went through lots of different models over it over the years, but, it was certainly the app that I think was my first thing that was commercially viable, where I don't think. On its income. Initially I would have been able to go into, but it was the kind of thing where it became a client for me when I was doing consulting work.And I would say like, you know, it would buy my time because it would start generating enough income. And at first it was like, maybe it would buy me 10 hours a week that I could work on my kind of like independent stuff and then make the event, it would do better. And, and now could buy 20 hours a week of my time and eventually it bought all of my time.And I think that model worked really well for me to have that initial success that I could then keep trying things. And I mean, I've. Launched. I think it's up to, I think it's 56 or 57 apps at this point. and all of it, about six of them have completely failed. Jacob: 00:06:18That's incredible.David Smith: 00:06:20And I say that mostly because it's like, it is so easy.It's like I've launched. So I've launched more failures probably than anyone in the App Store in some ways. And they're like, that's the way that you can end up with success though, is, is that it's just like, I've just kept trying. And I think Audiobooks was a useful one because it got me that a little baseline of income that it was like, okay, this is not just, I'm not just wasting my time here.But it allowed me to then just keep trying and lots of things that, you know, lots of ideas and lots, lots of things went different places. Some of them had their moment in the sun and then like failed off. Like there was a period in the App Store where you, the classic model is you had a paid up front app and you'd make, you know, a reasonable amount of money in the first two weeks.And then it would make almost no money ever again. And that was just the way it was. And like that's a model that. isn't very sustainable, but you know, it's like if you had something that had a bit more, you know, regular income as a baseline, you, you could make work.Jacob:00:07:13And that's how you incentivize a developer to make 60 some apps it's still like,David Smith: 00:07:17Exactly.Jacob:00:07:18And I just said it like a curiosity. Did the Audiobooks in Audiobooks, what was the source for those are those like prerecorded public domain or.David Smith: 00:07:27Yeah, exactly. So there's a thing called the LibriVox project where people volunteer to read, classic Audiobooks, such as, you know, essentially, you know, Dickens or Jane Austin or things like this that are out of, out of copyright. And so people volunteer to read them. And then, those are just available on the internet.And this, essentially my app was just a wrapper for that. It was just a way to, get into that. And the people who act, who run the liberal box project were actually very happy with it. Like they, they cause for them. There was no easy way to get their audio onto an iPhone. And so they were delighted that there, you know, this app is just creating a venue for their project to get a lot more visibility and interest.Jacob:00:08:06And he got an incredible like App Store parked name, just Audiobooks. That's a great one.David:00:08:12That's exactly what I was going to dive into. Like how did, did, did that, was that just kind of a happy accident or in 2008, did you already start to notice? Cause it took me like. Three or four years, I'm a little slow on the uptake to, to realize that these like naming a keyword instead of trying to create a brand was actually a fairly successful strategy for a lot of apps.So did you just stumble into that or was it somewhat intentional?David Smith: 00:08:37No. I mean, I think it was largely just a result of, I didn't have a name. I didn't have a better name and because the content of it was so generic, it wasn't like there was a natural branding that I was doing this and it's like, yeah, it's the related to the App Store. So you could just pick a proper noun and it would be available because there only a few hundred.Grow a few thousand apps in the App Store. And so I picked it, I tried it and it certainly has turned out well in that regard that it still has reasonably good, you know, search, search, search optimization and things. Cause if you want an audio book and you go into the App Store and search Audiobooks, it's an exact name match.So, you know, audible likely, still ranks higher because it's has more traffic, but, it's going to be in one of the top, couple of hits. and that's just a natural thing. And I wouldn't say it was intentional. Like this is part of some grand plan, but, it is certainly something that. I found useful. I mean, many of my other apps, like I have an app called pedometer plus plus, and sleep plus plus, which, the plus plus when the App Store is doing its algorithm for searching, typically just sort of drops off.And so they start, they rank very well for those terms for sleeper pedometer. and then, but I learned though that it's important to have something be somewhat trademarkable just for, legal reasons and copycats and those kinds of things. And so. Having something additional to it, was helpful that I could trademark those terms and go after people who are, are being, you know, sort of trying to, trying to get that benefit from the, any sort of success I've had on it.But I think in those tricks, they're always a bit tricky cause like they, they are useful at the time, but they're not really long lived and you can't rely on them. Like. It's something. If apple just tweaks their algorithm slightly, then it goes away. So it's not worth chasing necessarily, but it certainly in this case, worked out well for me and was useful, but know less and less of a factor now.Jacob:00:10:24If you, if you made Audiobooks today, it would be Audiobooks, degree sign, tiny cross, probably.David:00:10:31That's I was going to ask though about, you know, algorithm changes over the years and things like that. Did you, have you seen a, cause you took it free in like 2010 or something, right? Like pretty early you switched to the in-app purchase model. so like, what I saw with my mirror app was that once I switched it to, it was like mirror by app heavy or something.And that switched it to mirror with like a little, Unicode symbol that looks like a mirror. And so then it was the exact match for a mirror. And then it just really took off and it was, it it's been the number. And I ended up selling that app in 2017, but it's still the number one, one hit for mirror on the App Store.And, I got to, I think around 2015, there was kind of a peak of like five, 6,000 organic downloads every single day. And then even though, even though like the ASO didn't change, like it still ranked for all of these keywords and everything else, it did slowly kind of start to dip. And, and I kind of wonder if that was, if that somewhat follows the kind of people going to the App Store searching generic keywords, it was like the iPhone more and more people were buying them more and more people were coming like first time into the app.So you can either confirm or debunk my, thesis here that, that. There was kind of a wave and then a, a, a crest and a, a fall of the, of these, organic searches on the, on the App Store.David Smith: 00:12:06I couldn't speak with authority about it, but that seems consistent with my experience where I think they're in the early days of the App Store, there is definitely a higher sense of just curiosity that people would open the App Store and just be browsing and just not necessarily looking for anything in particular.'Cause they didn't know what their phone could do. They hadn't like that they have a phone and they knew it was going to be good for, you know, texting an email, but, oh, there's an App Store. Let's see what it does. And I think that phase is certainly behind us that I think people know what they know. They know what they're to know.They know what they want to use their phone for. And very often they're going for a particular thing, not just like browsing. And I th and I think if you were. and similarly, I imagine if you're just one looking for a generic term, you may not start in the App Store, even if that's where you gonna get the app, you may start in, in Google or YouTube or somewhere else.Yeah. Like you're, you're, you're, that's because there's a mature enough ecosystem there. That there's a better way. Find that even though the App Store is a great place, but it's, I think that's some, those kind of just generic, organic downloads are much harder to sort of define at this point. And I think that that's just the reality.David:00:13:15Similar kind of build and crest and fall as far as like. Since, since Audiobooks is so heavily rely on organic installs you don't. I mean, from my understanding, you don't do any paid advertising for it. did it kind of pressed around that 20 14, 20 15 and then, or have, have organic downloads been pretty stable?David Smith: 00:13:35Yeah. I mean, I think I know, I couldn't tell you a date. I don't know if it, I actually look at the numbers, but it certainly isn't that way that there is that I think there have been a couple of phases of the App Store and there was the early first, maybe four or five years. you had that much sort of just higher interest and it was easier to be, be seen.And I would say sort of in the last five years, the ACQUITY user acquisition. Reality of being in the App Store is very different. That it, it is, there's a lot more either like, or just organic, organic is more and more challenging. And, I D don't do very much paid, but I think if that would be the only way that I've actually wanted to affect change, to my downloads beyond kind of just word of mouth and natural, sort of, I think at this point, a lot of my downloads are coming from.Sort of the word of mouth version of organic, rather than the someone coming to the App Store with a need and then trying to find it. and so that's just, that's just a guess, but I think there certainly is those, there, there, the App Store has changed dramatically in 13 years. I think there's, there's certainly no doubt about it.Jacob:00:14:31User base too. I mean, I think about the way that, that what we were talking about as I was thinking about like my usage patterns pre and kind of post that era. And I think one thing that has changed is kind of, I kind of found all the apps I needed by 2015, you know, I kinda got, I got my podcast app, I got my, this app, I got my, that app.I don't really go in there just doing that, that way. You're talking about, the, the like, oh, what can I find for my phone anymore? Right. It's just not something I do. I still occasionally get a recommendation or I find something organically or whatever, but, you know, and yeah, like. In 2021. This is very few people's first smartphone, right?This is like somebody's fifth iPhone plus. And so it's just like, there's less curiosity, I think, but I guess that's exactly what we're arguing here. Okay.David:00:15:18So you mentioned you you've probably failed more than any developer ever on the App Store, which is really cool. I mean, I, in some ways feel the same way. I mean, I'm, I'm not nearly as prolific as you, but I mean, I've had gosh, like 26 apps and maybe four or five have been reasonably successful. But so I'm going to put you on the spot here.Are there any, any things that really stick out of like, you know, and I can think of one app, cause I'm still working in this space w your weather app, but are there any apps that you can point to and say, you know, I learned a very specific lesson from this, in those failures. Cause I think a lot of people who've only ever had one app and that one app was super successful.There's kind of a confirmation bias. Like I'm awesome. I did everything right. But it's like, they don't even know what they do. Don't know, they don't know what they did wrong. They just happened to like hit some level of product market fit. So any, any specific apps and lessons you learned from these failures?David Smith: 00:16:18Failure is obviously a complicated thing because I think I learned something from all of them. And so in some ways they were, they were useful. But I think from a financial perspective, it's mostly what I'm talking about when they're sort of a failure on that. And I think the two areas that the biggest mistakes that I've learned is one is under.To try to really understand and having an honest evaluation of the size of the market you're addressing. and some of the things that I've launched are very focused. were very niche and. That kind of a thing. It it is possible to make it work, but the economics are incredibly difficult and you're dealing with a very uphill battle.If you're dealing with something that, there is only ever going to be useful to 10,000 people then great. That for that 10,000 people it might be really cool, but it's very unlikely. You're going to make a sustainable living on an app at that unless your economics can be so high, that each one of those people is giving you a substantial amount of money on an ongoing basis.I think some of my failures were things where I was like, Ooh, this is really cool. And it's an app that does something, very specific and it doesn't really end up working out. I think the other thing that I found too is just having that sense of. that apps understanding what are the ongoing costs of related to an app going to be, and making sure that the economics of that can balance out.So, in your example of my weather app, ultimately like the app was successful. It had, a reasonably good user base, but at that, this was, it existed in a time before, subscriptions were a thing. Like they just did it didn't exist in the App Store. And so. The economics of trying to make it so that people could continuously, you know, pay for the weather data that I had to buy for.It just wasn't there. And at a certain point, it became, it's like a change from being a business to a charity because I was spending more money on the backend. than I was, you know, getting people on an ongoing basis. And that was something that I don't think I really it's easy when I'm building something to just ignore that because the costs, especially early on are so low when you look at these things and especially with, with, with most, if you're some kind of data service or some kind of hosting provider you often will have a free tier or something that like the E and if in some ways, success can be your own failing because you haven't taken into account that, oh, if this, you know, if I get any amount of volume, then suddenly I'm going to be spending thousands of dollars a month.Supporting this app. And if the economics aren't balanced for that, then it can, you have to essentially shut it down and deal with that. And I think those are two things for that. It's usually when an app has failed it's because either I didn't fully understand what the ongoing constantly going to be, or I didn't sort of real it.Wasn't realistic about how big of a market it is.Jacob:00:18:54Yeah, the unit economics are tricky because at the beginning, it's, it's hard to get good to data because everything's so small. It's like, oh, I can't really tell. I don't really know what my CAC is or what my cost to service cogs are. So you're just like, whatever. And then by the time it matters, it's too late.Right. And in some cases,David Smith: 00:19:12The two that you just used several terms that I have no idea what they mean. and I think this is another failing on my part that like, you know, Kat Mike hack and my Sasser service caught, like, I dunno, like it's it's, this is fun. That was just fine. I think. But that's...Jacob:00:19:24An educational moment. Cost of user acquisition. And what's the cogs cost of goods sold. Sorry. Yeah, those were like, those are the things I didn't learn until I had a SAS company though, to be honest. Right. Like it's, it's interesting. Like, yeah, the different. Which, which, which, I mean, just highlights kind of the world we're in now.Right. Which is where most app developers are running a SAS business. Right. would you, would you wear with the weather app, you just didn't kind of think about it in those terms. It was like an app with an API, but really it was a SAS business. and, and, that's why we're here@subclub.com to educate people.Actually, it's not.David Smith: 00:19:58Yeah, well, but I think there's definitely that teachable moment in that insofar as it's just it's that's another aspect of that failing is I think it's so easy coming at it from an engineering background that I can get too excited about the engineering aspects of what I'm doing that. I think that, oh, there's this cool, cool new API.There's this fun new feature. There's this cool problem I'm solving. And I can go down, you know, spend a month of my time building this app. And then in the end, I haven't. Really thought about the marketing side or the economic realities or all of those things. And in some ways it's like, that's fine because part of what I'm like, what I'm good at is the engineering.And if anything, I've been able to just engineer my way out of this problem by keeping I can just keep building. And eventually I've had enough things that just kind of naturally hit. and it isn't necessarily the most efficient way to do it or the way I'd recommend it. But I think that is an aspect of my failing, where it is.You know, and it's, it's also the reality of being an independent, independent developer where. Like, I don't have a staff. I don't have anyone else in that regard. And so it's not like I have a business, a business, a business team, or someone doing user acquisition or any of those things, which on the one hand is great because it means my costs are really low that, you know, my, my revenue is divided by one and I get to see, you know, and I keep it.So if I was a team of five people and I'm dividing my revenue by five, it's quite a hard thing to, you know, Have five times to five X the revenue. And so it's like a trade-off that you, in some ways it'd be great if I had both have both, but I'm not sure if it's actually reasonable or practical too.Jacob:00:21:29I mean, really though, that's, it's a good algorithm for finding a new, new API APIs are the apps or version of the market shifting, right. It's when something gets created, right? There's a new opportunity. So exploring those and understanding those and finding out how you can remix those with existing ideas that might, that, you know, as a, as a team of one where one is an engineer, that's kind of your strategic advantage, right?It's might not, might not be ASO. It might not be acquisition and all these other things. it might be like, Hey, what can I do? Cool stuff with computers. And I think historically that's been a pretty good, ROI for, for a lot of companies. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily call that a weakness. though it's both right, but yeah.David:00:22:12Yeah. And that, that specifically has been part of your strategy, right? So like you, you know, I mean, Widgetsmith, which we'll, we'll get to in a little bit, but even, watch plus plus, but domino plus plus, or Widgetmith's sorry. yeah. Tell us about your thinking around using these new API APIs to get attention.Doing something that's never been done before as marketing, which, which is, is, is a great way to do it.David Smith: 00:22:42Yeah, well, anything. So this is certainly something I've done time of day. And again, that like predominant or plus plus, which is, after Bridget Smith, the most successful thing I ever made was the first pedometer app in the App Store. And it was, you know, when the iPhone 5s launched apple introduced to put a step counting ship into it.And it was the first app that took care of it. And it's like for a few weeks, even it was the only one. And it was. Probably one of my strategic advantages is the fact that I'm just one guy who really likes to program and is pretty good at doing things quickly. And that means that I can be there on day one.And I think that's beneficial in sort of two main ways that being out there early is something that often gets Apple's attention and. It's ebbed and flowed in terms of whether that's important for apple featuring you or not, but it's never a bad thing for a, for apple to feature you or to get on their radar.And, you know, as an independent developer, that's one of the few things that I have that I can kind of pull on that apple gets excited about where on day one, here's this app that takes care of this new thing that they're trying to sell their new phone withJacob:00:23:44Yeah. And that speed, that speed. Even like a one person team compared to like a three or five person team. There's a real advantage. If it's just one person like no communication overhead, no, nothing. Like you can just do it all in your brain. And like, it's really hard to be. I mean, now I'm saying this is watching, I haven't watched our company grow so much.It's like, wow. The just like getting all these folks coordinated at the same time really is a different world than when it's. Just yourself, like trying to put things together quickly.David Smith: 00:24:09Yeah. I mean, I think that, that, that's just such a, the other aspect of this, just so much. It's so, so often I can do something faster than anyone else. Not necessarily because there's something magic about me, but it's just, I don't have it. There's no, it's not like it does that. Oh, there's a designer who will, you know, do a bunch of specs and then that's going into it.We'll have it, then we'll have a sprint planning meeting and we'll break up the features. And it's this whole thing that like, that's not my process. I just open up X code and start working. And so it's an, you know, maybe it means that, I, you know, it's like, and I ended up with as long as I have a good idea in my mind, I can just be driving towards it.I don't need to go through a lot of infrastructure to get that. Like, I don't have. You know, a roadmap with tasks, with, you know, sort of issues that I'm working through and burning down my, like, whatever, all those software things that you need to do, if you have a big team and are valuable, but I just don't exist for me.And so there's that extra multiplier. And I think being there early. Is just, it gets, it gets attention and it creates opportunity that there's a vacuum. It's, it's a short-lived thing. You know, the, if I, if I had launched Widgetsmith a few, a few weeks later, I don't think it would've mattered. It would have been complete.Like it is this very ephemeral, like thing. It wasn't, you know, once a year, there's this giant opportunity for me and I've done sort of dove in and taken advantage of it several times. And sometimes it's worked and sometimes it hasn't, you know, like my message App Store apps didn't go anywhere, but. That turned out that was a market that didn't exist, but I spent my summer making sure that I was there and if they hadn't, if they hadn't been really important and was super cool.Cool. And apple cared about it a lot, then I would have been there and yeah. Or know that ahead of time, unfortunately, but that's, I think just something that a small team can benefit dramatically from is like taking advantage of that and being okay with too of not shipping things that are as robust and complicated as fair enough.If I was. A five person team. It could do more or have more capabilities or, you know, be localized into more, more languages or also launch on Android or whatever those things that, that you would imagine would be beneficial. I don't have those, but like, it's just a trade offJacob:00:26:09Yeah. Search your marketing channel primary. Right? It makes a lot of sense. We did this at, when I was at elevate. This was a constant strategy for us was what does apple interested in? Even, even for us, we were a team of 10 or 20 at that stage, but like, yeah. Adding APIs. Oh yeah, sure. It kind of makes sense.Okay. Yeah, we can add that. Like it's not on our product roadmap, not really something, but like yeah, the, the benefits were tangible, but as you kinda mentioned, it has gotten at some point, I think for a team of that size, the benefits of being in the, like what's new, I forget what the, they used to always have a feature like what's new in iOS, whatever.And you would get Nat and it would be a pretty good feature, but that has gone down over time. So now it's like, It's exclusively the, to the benefit of really small developer teams, right. That they can take advantage of.David Smith: 00:26:53Yeah, well, and it's just, I think that the impact of being fee, because to your earlier point about, I think fewer people are searching for apps. so being in a featured list in the App Store is not as the, is not the thing that it used to be. That I remember the first time I got featured in the App Store and it was.I just rev. It was completely, mind-bending where I would go from like, yeah, you lasted a week. And I went from, you know, maybe having like in the tens of downloads a day to suddenly I'm having like tens of thousands of downloads a day and it was just like completely mind-bending, but that's not the reality anymore.Like that, that multiplier isn't there in, the same way. Like, it's It's lovely to be featured, but it also is very muted now because it's not for a week. It's kind of on this random algorithmically driven basis, where if you're the app of the day, you're actually the app of the day, only for one person necessarily.Like it's not like everyone in the world got it that day. Um it's and so those, those things lessen the impact of it. and Their benefit becomes more in aggregate rather than kind of in an acute way.David:00:27:52One of the things you mentioned kind of in passing there was, not having to wait on a designer and that's something I actually wanted to talk about. I, you know, as much as it's like the apple ethos to be pixel perfect, and to like, have these like amazing, you know, leather stitched icons back in the day or whatever.I regret spending as much as I did and kind of letting design in some ways, overly drive the process. because as an independent developer, where every penny I spend is, is money. That's not going into my pocket. I spent tens of thousands probably over well, over a hundred thousand dollars on design over the last 13 years.And from what I understand, you've spent very little, so, so I mean, it sounds like that's intentionally part of your strategies. Like you, don't one you were saying, you know, you're not a team of five, so you keep your expenses down, but two you're, you're also not waiting on them. So yeah, it was at, have you spent much on, on design over the years or have you done it all yourself and then has that been a very intentional for, for speed and cost?David Smith: 00:29:07Yeah. I mean, I think I've certainly tried spending money on design and it over the 13 years, like I it's, it's not that I've never done it, but it's, it, it, I, it was never, it never paid off for me enough that it would. For it to be something I continued doing. And I don't think I've done it in five, six years now.And at this point, the only design that I typically will ever pay for is, icon design. because that's just something that I can't do very well myself, but even like recently, like Widgetsmith, the icon I made myself, cause it's just a blue round direct, like I could handle that.Jacob:00:29:41That's a good icon.David Smith: 00:29:43Which has been it's fine.Jacob:00:29:44And it's number...David Smith: 00:29:45Think, yeah, like.Jacob:00:29:47Icon designer actually.David:00:29:48Yeah.David Smith: 00:29:49And I think, but it's to the point of like, I think eight. It's easy enough to like, if you try to learn basic design and get competent at the basics, you can go, that can take you a very long way. And I think really elegant, new fancy design that's doing really like groundbreaking or cool things with fancy animations and all that stuff.Like I love it. And we're using an app that does that, but that kind of design, like that takes a tremendous toll on your development process. And I think. A M like a, if you're a thoughtful to the developer who wants, is willing to put in the work to just kind of like study what the basics of design are, you know, you can get good enough that you can do a lot of it yourself.And I think that's something that has worked really well for me. and I think it's also been to my benefit that it isn't necessarily that I'm not waiting on a designer. It is that I'm able to, I'm a better developer because I understood, I took the time to. Study what makes a good design for an app.And so I'm w that informs my development, and then it allows me to build things that'll be easy that are structured, such that the design will naturally flow from it. And those types of differences that if I just was being hand handed a list of like, here's a, you know, a handful of mock-ups go and build it.And I don't really understand why things are structured the way they are. Then I would often find myself in kind of, I'd pay myself into technical corners that, if, if you, if you are responsible for both the design and the development, you're that the two are blending together really well. And so I think it's something that I certainly recommend.And I think like, I mean, some of the best apps I think have come out of the one developer, one designer teams, like I think that is a can, we can be a useful model, but. For me, it's just something that I think, you know, in the same way that often I've, you know, I've known many designers who learn just enough coding to be able to sort of, to make the basics of the key, to the same thing and go the other way that, a developer who puts in a little bit of time and is a student of what, like, if you're using something and you start paying attention to why is this good?And you don't try and overreach and. Like try and do things that are beyond your capability. Like, I can make a really nice clean UI. I can't make a, you know, something that is, is clever and fancy and that's it. That's fine. And I'll just, if I scale my scale, my applications to fit, what I can do, then I'm fine.Jacob:00:32:13Yeah, I, I'll share it. Not like we're revenue count. We didn't have a, it, I mean, we have a full-time, product designer now that helps with like dashboard work and stuff like that, but we didn't have, I was the only person doing design for the first two years and very similar, like I, I knew going into it.It was my weak spot. So I spent a few weeks, one summer just like taking. I took an online color theory class. And then I just like learned, did some like basic tutorials got really good at sketch and like made some mock-ups. And, you know, I had worked with a lot of great designers and kind of had knew what the process was like.But yeah, again, it's like, what's your advantage? And in your case, it's the API APIs and being first to market and all that stuff. And so you're not likely to get a lot of like, Yeah, leverage or whatever out of having really great design, you just needed to be functional. You needed it to be good enough something.That's not going to turn people off right. When they see the app on and that's, and that's kind of the bar and yeah, I agree with you. I think it's actually pretty easy to achieve, at, you know, with a, with a minimal investment.David Smith: 00:33:14Yeah. And I think you also, it's, I'm very, I very much like a model where the initial upfront costs are as low as possible. And if I need to double down on something and like, it becomes a situation where, oh, now I need design resources or I need something more graphically oriented or like things arise.Like. I'm delighted to spend money on an app. That's making money.Jacob:00:33:36Yeah, exactly.David Smith: 00:33:37it, rather than spending the money on something before it's even proven itselfJacob:00:33:41Yeah. We've spent a lot on design since like revenue cat's hit like our stride, but in the early days it was like, not like this API is like the design of the Jason is more important than the website.David Smith: 00:33:53Exactly.David:00:33:53Yeah, and it does force this kind of function over form approach. And I think that's where your apps have really succeeded. Is that there is it, you focus on them doing things well, Like serving a specific purpose and serving that specific purpose very effectively. And that's where I think a lot of the kind of form over function design either within apple.I think apple still makes this mistake a lot of, of focusing too much on, on how things are going to look and how things are gonna, come across versus like, well, how, how is it actually going to be used by people? And, I, you know, that's where I think I've fallen down a lot, as well as like spending so much time on these pretty graphics.And then, and then everything then like the user you can't like iterate quickly on a user interface based on feedback when it's all so polished and pixel perfect. Like it's so much harder to do iterative design. To enhance the usability of an app when, when there's so many barriers and then so much already kind of like set in stone because it was designed this way and you can't, step back out of that as easily.So, yeah, I think, I think it's great the way you've, you've done that.Jacob:00:35:12The one thing that resonated with me that you said David was, just how a designer, if they don't fully. And I love designers, all of my designer, friends are gonna hate me for talking bad about designers, but I think one, one universal experience of developers when you get handed something that. It's it looks great and like functional on paper, but like, there's just like, because there isn't like internal knowledge of UI kit.Right. And just like this thing that looks like, yeah, I know it's just pixels and it should be really simple, but like, it's actually going to add hours and days to my, to my, and, and you know, if you're not an assertive developer, that's going to be like, no, I'm just not going to do it. You can do that on your business.Right. But like, Because you own it, but, but if it, you know, if you work on a team or whatever, sometimes there's a lot of loss there where a developer will feel. And also like, I feel like it's a challenge, right? Like, oh yeah, I can do that. Right. And they ended up over investing in these ornate, user experiences or use user interface elements.It just like you talk about like ROI and whatever, like just not there, you know? so I think it's a very like prudent approach.David:00:36:22So I did want to touch on real quick and. I want to get to Widgetsmith and talk more about that. But, I wanted to touch on the, your iOS version stats. So, it's something I've really appreciated over the years. There's a flurry has, has published stats here and there that your site has been like my go-to place to say, you know, how's I was 14 adoption going, how are so you published publicly?The, the version stats of your Audiobooks app, which is a fairly broad market app. It's not perfectly representative probably of the entire market. but yeah. Tell me about why you publish that and then do you actually run a customer analytics to power that, or, or do you have a third party analytics provided that you just pull the stats in front from.David Smith: 00:37:09So, I mean, that came from, I think there were certainly, I mean, I'm running it for years and years, because in the early days of the App Store, there just wasn't good data on this kind of thing. And it was so I, I remember finding that it was just so frustrating. Right. I, I couldn't get. Basic sense of like the different device distributions and, iOS adoption rates and things.And so I just wrote something, myself to do this, and I sort of shared it because it was really helpful. I thought, I, I, I, if it's helpful for me, it's going to be helpful for someone else. and Audiobooks was the best app. I had to make the public version of this for, because it was my broadest kind of user base, that it wasn't as like pedometer is great, but it's.Dealing with people who are fitness oriented. And so like my, at some of my adoption numbers are like th there's a skew to it and it's a bit less mass market. but it's all built in custom. I I've used analytics packages and things before, but, in the, in, especially with apple being. I think it's a sort of like the privacy consciousness and things.It became something that I just didn't want to have. I want to have it the minimum amount of third party code in my apps as I could. And something like the, the kind of analytics I'm collecting is very easy to do as just a little, sort of custom thing that I wrote. That's just, you know, it's just a little website.That's collecting some very basic stats and being thoughtful about making sure that it doesn't log essentially anything except for very anonymized. aggregated things just so I don't collect any user level information whatsoever. It's all just being collected, at, at, at an aggregate level. And it's just something that I wrote and it's, it's a basic thing.And I think it's a useful tool because this is sort of to the same thing of a question about philosophy. It's like, you can't know when you can drop all the old devices or which device to optimize for. And this, you actually collect that data and you actually look at it. and so like right now, for example, send that, I re like I always try and optimize my apps for the iPhone 10 R because in all of my apps, it is by far that screen size.So the it's the F1 10 or the iPhone 11. those are by far the most popular phones in the world right now. And so like, that's my primary testing device. That's where I start, but I wouldn't know that if I wasn't collecting that kind of data and. You know, sort of, I wouldn't have guessed that necessarily.And especially because I live in the like apple tech ecosystem and I wouldn't, you know, in my mind, oh, it's probably just like the pro size, you know, like the, the, the 11 pro is probably the most popular phone because that's what all my friends have. But, that's actually not the case. That's, you know, that is a popular phone, but it's by no means the most popular.And so. Having that kind of data to back up my choices and making sure that, you know, like, I, I, I, if am doing a design, I'll optimize it for that and then adjust it for the other ones rather than going the other way around. Or if I'm doing screenshots for the App Store, I make sure that my screenshots.Are perfect for that one. And even if, sometimes I'll do you know, for the, my, the more minor phones, I might just say, like use the scale down the assets for something else, but that's a size that I've we'll for sure. Use. I think also it's speaks to, there is, I think there's still some of this, but maybe a bit less, but in the earlier days of the App Store, there was a, I felt like there was a group of.People who were kind of, we felt like we were in this together. And, like, especially among kind of indie small developers, we tend to try and like help each other out. And so like I made that public, it was an internal dashboard. And then I just like, well, let me just publish this to a different URL. because if you had to kind of just help out.And I think that was a nice thing that I think there's just, there are fewer Indies than there used to be. but it's certainly an aspect of the community that I think is still nice when there are, there are some aspects of it that still exists.Jacob:00:40:52It's also really nice to have. usually I would caution people to roll against rolling their own. Right. but I think there is this like somewhat unserved niche of some of these tools get really expensive, even like an amplitude or a Mixpanel or whatever. They're, they're more. There, the pricing often is more favorable towards a B2B and like smaller headcount kind of, or smaller like user based size apps.And you can lose this, this like kind of information. I, and I gathered not an App Store connector. It's probably crappy if it is. David Smith: 00:41:24Like some of it's in there, but not really in a way that like abstract connect sometimes has some of the stuff, but I like, I like just having it myself and there's also, it means that I can do additional beyond just, demographic collection. There are a few things that I will do in here where I can add in a hook and say, Oh, like, do, does anybody ever open this page of the app?And I can do a little basic, like those kinds of basic analytics things that you can't do on that, do an App Store connect. and so I can put, you know, put this into my system and do those kinds of basic collections, which a more sophisticated analytics packages, just like, that's just a basic feature of it.But, it's a, it gives you that kind of middle ground and it's, it's just, it's a tricky reality of, you know, apple once, you know, I have to put in my privacy things, all the, you know, all the things that I do. And so. I start using a third party thing. I have to be completely on board with everything they're using my data for.And so sometimes it's easier to just roll it. Have it be basic and simple. I mean, the actual, these apps are not complicated or I think the initial version of this was actually, I just based it on the error log of a, engine X server, where I just ran it and they would make, they would make the record.They would just. Yeah, they would just make the request and they would actually just all 4 0 4, like the trend analytics requests were just 4 0 4 and I would just parse the error log and add it to a SQL file. And it's like that, that was super straightforward and easy to build. And it's just a script and it's...Jacob:00:42:47Mixed panel, basically like in...David Smith: 00:42:49Like, You know, and like that's where I think mostly just to say is it doesn't have to be like super sophisticated and fancy.This is a backend utility tool. So you can very easily, like you could go crazy making it fancy, or you can just, you know, write a little scripts to process a log file and it'll get just as much data out of it.David:00:43:09Yeah, that's great. I did want to touch on, on witness Smith. You you've talked about it at length, so, There's a great episode with you and Marco. I think what came out like two weeks after we just hit number one. And so that's a really fun episode. People can kind of go get the history, but it's a cool kind of, culmination of this story of launching 56 different apps, trying all these different things.And then you, you go after these brand new features with the widgets in iOS 14 and. somebody picks the app up on Tik TOK. It goes viral. It hits number one in the App Store. It's just such a cool story as an indie developer to hit number one. And, and, and again, you've told a lot of that story. other places I don't want to just rehash the whole story.But there were a couple of things that I wanted to go over and I don't know if you've talked about it, since so one of the things that I think would be to follow up on is just how the, Durability has been. So like you hit number one, it stayed there for like, gosh, like weeks, right. Or almost a month.And then, yeah. So how has it, how has that gone since, and like, you're still like number five you're you're in the top 10 of productivity regularly. how has the app been durable? download wise and revenue wise, like how, how has it gone after hitting number one? Like.David Smith: 00:44:37I mean, I think it is, it certainly continues to be my most successful app. And I think it probably, it seems like it will be for, for, for quite some time. And obviously the first couple of weeks were insane and completely. Like mind bending and, you know, I think I exceeded my luck like to date App Store downloads.You know, of all my apps over the last 13 years were in a few hours of it when it kind of hit that crazy moment.Jacob:00:45:03We've seen a couple on revenue casts, a couple of viral events like that, and I am blown away every single time. It's it's more like it outpaces the App Store featuring like by 10 or a hundred X. It's insane. David Smith: 00:45:15And I think that, and let me say that it was really cool and fun and exciting and a little bit like scary and like terrifying. But I think it's, what's, I didn't know where it would have, where it would settle down to. And it's like, where is that? Come see the nature of. Something being a flavor of the moment is that like, that moment ends and it just vanishes like the, the driver behind that, you know, it's not like it's being featured in Tik TOK videos anymore, at least not in the same way.And so the durability, I believe now is largely just coming from the fact that that initial spike generates enough kind of ongoing word of mouth advertising, that the nature of. Especially the nature of what it does is it puts something cool on your home screen. And it has that natural. If someone sees your home screen or you show them something or you share a screenshot and it has the name of the app in it, and it's like, it, it has that natural, oh, I want to do that to witness to it.And that seems to be where the durability has come from because, I've. Tried sort of like the, the sort of like the paid marketing things to try and keep something going. And for me, it's a model that gets very, it's very hard to not just like, lose your shirt on it because you can.Jacob:00:46:22Yeah.David Smith: 00:46:22Spent a way out, spend what you're getting back or not have.Jacob:00:46:26Someone else's money to blow.David Smith: 00:46:27Yeah. And so like for me, it's just, it never makes sense. And so, like, I w I wonder if something's going to be something that I keep working on, it needs to be sustainable kind of on its own. And for it, it's still, you know, it still continues to do really well on a, on a, on a download basis. And it's also, it's, you know, it has, it's monetized both with advertising and with subscriptions.And so. You know, th the two together create a really nice, sustainable, revenue for me that it's based mostly on usage rather than, needing necessarily to have big spikes in downloads to keep it going. It's like as long as people keep using the app, that they're opening, it they'll see ads, or if they're, you know, power users who really want like the pro features of it and they'd pay for a subscription, if it's continuing to provide value to them that they'll continue subscribing.And so it's, that durability has been there. I think largely it certainly is easy to be durable when you have. This wild spike at the beginning to kind of kickstart that, effort. but it's, it seems like the there's enough ongoing utility of it, that it keeps people keep using it. And, that has a natural sort of knock on effect of people just telling their friends about it.And I mean, it's kind of a cool thing that, even after. You know, many millions of downloads, it continues to find new art, find it, find a new market and people will continue to sign up for the subscription. And it's, it's that's happening sort of on its own without me having to necessarily do anything other than just keep adding, you know, features and improvements to it.I don't need to worry necessarily on that side of things as much.David:00:47:56Yeah. One of the things that I was, initially taken aback by, but now see the, the maybe accidental brilliance of how permissive you were with the feature. So, and I mean, I made a mistake with launch center pro. I was actually trying to kind of ride your coattails with my app and. I was much more aggressive with the paywall.So I pay walled one of the like more prominent features instead of, instead of paywall and some of the lesser features. And then to your point earlier about like user acquisition, you know, part of how you make user acquisition work, is it, you forced, you can't pay $5 for a download. If you know, one out of 200 people are paying you.But we just Smith going viral. It went viral in part, because you were so permissive with the features. So like, how did you decide where to draw the line in the paywall? yeah. How did, how did you make those decisions?David Smith: 00:49:01Yeah. I mean, I think, I think a lot of this comes from a place of my goal is to, I want a business that lets me keep developing, like what I love and what I enjoy is programming. That's that's, that's, I'm gifted in it. I enjoy it. I love it. And I will just keep doing it. Like if it wasn't my job, I'd probably still be making apps.But, and so I don't, I'm not chasing some kind of like wild exit or something dramatic. And so I think, I, I feel like I want to make things that people will like using, and that will won't be annoying or irritating. And, that I can feel proud of at the end of the day, like that. I'm not, you know, like the people who are paying for my subscription.Or paying it out of a genuine desire to support the app, to do the really advanced, like these are my super fans who really care about it. and there are the people who I'm sort of sort of going after for that. And so I don't didn't feel necessarily compelled to make the paywall up all in your face and be limiting features and kind of doing those types of things.And in this case, it worked out really well because it, it created a. it created its own marketing machine as a result. And like what I gave up potentially in having a less permissive market, pay paywall strategy I made up for in essentially free marketing for, because the app is used by so many more people.And I think that trade off is something that's easy. It's like I don't have, or I don't necessarily want to spend the capital. To acquire those people, but in some ways I'm spending that capital by just making my paywall more permissive and making it have a natural, more virality to it. and that, for me, I think works well for everybody that like more people are getting more out of the app and, I, I benefit from it.It's sort of coming along and I don't think it was, it's not like that this grant. Strategy that I had for it. It was just in general, if someone's going to pay me something I want for what they're paying to be something that is super clear is super straightforward and is compelling. That is something that I feel like I would pay for that.It isn't an arbitrary restriction or something that feels kind of. mean-spirited, that's sometimes a lot of paywalls can ha you can run into these limitations that feel completely contrived, that there isn't a reason for it. Like most of what I'm people paying me for in Widgetsmith are things like my weather data, the tie data, and some graphical assets, things that I have to pay for that there are, they are ongoing and tangible costs that I have to pay.So I can't make those free because then I go out of business because millions of people are requesting weather data. Like that doesn't work for me. And so, yeah. Making it paid feels good to me. And if anything, it works well, but I think that's definitely something that you can get. If you're too stingy with you, with what you offer, you're kind of like shooting yourself in the foot because you're ma you know, you want to make that first run experience feel so good that people want to keep coming back.And if you get too uptight, that the first thing, the first thing the app does when you open the app is ask for money. Like if I open that app, I'm just closing that up and deleting it. Like, I don't want to, I don't want that, that, thatJacob:00:52:05I mean, that's, that's...David Smith: 00:52:06Be them asking.Jacob:00:52:08That's an app that's for distribution basically is what you can tell. And if you're not then like, I mean, I think this is not a comment on an uncommon strategy, but, but, but, you know, optimizing for distribution early, Becoming not a monopoly because there's other apps like we just missed, but becoming a dominant player or like the best app, you get data, you get usage, you get word of mouth, you get a brand.And then in the future, if it becomes an operational requirement that you make more money per download or whatever, like, oh, you have a lot of levers there and you can go about it more thoughtfully than if you try to like, Try to shoot blindfolded, like from, from the start, there's just no way you can, you're going to be able to get, I talked to a lot of people getting ready to make their subscription apps and whatever.And they're like, ah, they're going back and forth. I go, what should I put on my paywall? What should I, whatever. I'm just like, just don't think about it too much. Just don't do something stupid. Like just see something reasonable and normal and don't try to be too clever. And then, you know, be prepared to iterate and change like over time.Cause inevitably, well...David Smith: 00:53:06That's good advice. David:00:53:07This is such a fascinating time. I wish we could talk another hour just on, on, on paywall strategies and, and freemium. I think a lot of developers do make the mistake in the subscription space of because they're spending so much on user acquisition, they have to be more aggressive with the paywall, but then in the long run, you're, you're, you're paying for users that you immediately ostracize.You know, if you're, if you're only getting, you know, 10% to start your free trial, and then only 50% of those convert. It's like, you're paying for all these people who ultimately have a bad experience in your house. And so it works cause that's their model, but, but they're leaving a lot on the table long run by not having a more, permissive freemium strategy where you can get people in using the app, finding value and then over time bringing them along.And it seems like that's part of what Smith has done well with, like, you didn't start with ads. Ads came later, right. And then. The paying for assets, I think came later as well. so like exactly to Jacob's point it's like you just got out there with a great product, you know, found that product market fit.It went viral. I mean, you know, it probably wouldn't be the success it is today without that, but, but then you've kind of layered on some additional moneymaking over time. And so that's great. but anyhow, we're, we're at the top of the hour and need to, to wrap up, in the show notes, we'll have links to your, Twitter underscore Smith, underscore David Smith, Jacob:00:54:35Oh, my God. I never realized that pun Widgetsmith, Dave. Oh my God. I'm so slow.David Smith: 00:54:43Yeah.Jacob:00:54:44The brand is just so it's perfect, but we're on your lap. It's so great.David Smith: 00:54:49That was a, as soon as it was one of those names where once I, once the name came to me, it's like, yep. That's theJacob:00:54:53Oh, it's even, it's a good name on its own. Right.David Smith: 00:54:55Yeah.Jacob:00:54:56I just love when things are like tidy and tied up like that. It's so perfect. Sorry.David:00:55:02Anyways, anything else? anything else you wanted to share or, anything else you want to mention as we wrap up?David Smith: 00:55:08Yeah, no, I mean, I think we covered some good things and I think it is, I, I always like sharing my story as an independent developer, because I feel like in this industry, they're like, there's a, there's an aspect of it. I know this is something, you know, I've listened to this podcast before. Like there there's a, there is an industry in a branch of this.That is very data oriented. And if you're built almost like you're building a machine to try it, like a business machine to try and like spin off money. And it's all about how you're getting your conversion rate value to this, and then you can put it into this and the eights. There's a very like, and I respect that and understand that, that, that is a very viable business.But I think what I, I was like sort of to share the other side of the story where it's also possible to just make cool things and have them have just have enough, enough of a business in them that it makes a good living for you, but you don't need all of that infrastructure and all of that other things.And I think to our point, we've made many times is if you have something that you take the approach of simplicity and straightforwardness, and Craftsmanship early, you can shift and pivot and change as you go. And if you start to numbers driven and you start to like kind of cold in that way, I think you can lose just as many opportunities, as, as, as you could.And I personally, I enjoy this way. I think this is fine. I, you know, I'm very excited about WWDC next week, because it's the, the time that I get to just discover what I'm going to launch this year. Kind of thing. And so I'm very excited to become about that. I think that excitement is something that I wouldn't have if I was building something that I didn't enjoy doing in quite the same way.David:00:56:52Well, thanks, David so much for your time.Jacob:00:56:56Good luck next week. 

Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Fathom Analytics. Fathom is trusted by thousands of businesses to power their privacy-first website analytics like GitHub, FastMail, Buffer, Tailwind, and so many amazing small businesses, too. For the longest time, website analytics offer was seriously bad.  It was hard to understand, time consuming to use, and worse, and exploited visitor data for big tech to profit. Fathom is website analytics without compromise, easy to use, respectful of digital privacy, and fully compliant with GDPR. Plus, Fathom's script loads faster than Google Analytics, meaning it's better for SEO. With Fathom, you can see all of your visitors, not just half, because they've pioneered the method to bypass ad blockers without invading privacy. Fathom also doesn't chase venture capital or need investors. Like my company, Geocodio, they are customer-funded, and customers are the only folks they answer to. Try a free seven day trial or check out Fathom at UseFathom.com/ssp.  Michele HansenSo, the other day, I totaled up how much I have made from my book so far, and all the expenses.  Colleen Schnettler  01:19Okay.  Michele Hansen  01:20So, as of that point, $1363 in presales, which is just, like, the number of copies times 29. That's not my actual payouts. It's just, like, the gross revenue.  Colleen Schnettler  01:34Okay.  Michele Hansen  01:34And then, so the expenses. So, first one, for the formatting, I have to use the software called Vellum, which is $250. I had to buy ISBNs, like, the little, like, numbers on the back of the book that identify it.  Colleen Schnettler  01:49Yeah. Michele Hansen  01:50So, and I had to, you can either buy one, or like 10, and since I'm going to do an audio book, you need an ISBN for that, and like, a hardcover needs zone ISBN. And so anyway, that was $295. A barcode is $25. Proofreading $800, which is a lot of money, but I feel like that's the price of like, not being embarrassed that it's full of typos and you know, I feel like if I want to, like, have a book that, like, a manager could buy for their team, or like, people would recommend to their clients, like, it has to be professional.  And so having, like, professional proofreading is the cost of that. Colleen Schnettler  02:24Yeah.  I didn't know that was something. I didn't know that was a thing. Michele Hansen  02:30Yeah. Yeah, I spent, I think last week I mentioned how I was fighting with Grammarly a lot, and,  Colleen Schnettler  02:35Yeah.  Michele Hansen  02:36I just, I was like, I have spent like, two days fighting with Grammarly, just trying to get it to work, and like, and I was like, this is just, my time is more expensive than this. Colleen Schnettler  02:47Yeah. Michele Hansen  02:47So, I'm just gonna hire a proofreader.  Colleen Schnettler  02:50Good choice. Michele Hansen  02:50And then, of course, you know, don't include hundreds of hours of my time over the last couple of months. But, so, the total for expenses so far is $1370. Colleen Schnettler  03:01That's wonderful. Michele Hansen  03:02So, when you deduct $1363 minus $1370.  Colleen Schnettler  03:11Oh. Michele Hansen  03:12You get negative seven. Colleen Schnettler  03:16Yeah, I see. I misunderstood what you were saying. Got it. So you're in the hole seven bucks and hundreds of hours of your time. Michele Hansen  03:25Yes. Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  03:26Alright. Well, good thing it;s a labor of love. Michele Hansen  03:28So, I looked at that number, though, and I just had this moment where I was like, holy, forking shirtballs, like, I need to market this thing.  Colleen Schnettler  03:39Yeah.  Michele Hansen  03:40Umm, and actually, so like, I sold another two since then. So now, I am actually at positive $51.  Colleen Schnettler  03:51Whoo.  Michele Hansen  03:52Yeah, whoo. Umm, and of course, you know, we're only like, only in presale, and like, a ton of people have today said they want the hardcover or they want the audio book. So they haven't, they haven't purchased it yet, or they just simply want the finished version. Umm, But yeah, that was kind of a wake up call for me that, like, I've been, you know, we talked about with Sean like, I, like marketing a info product feels very different for me than marketing a SaaS.  Colleen Schnettler  04:19Yes. Michele Hansen  04:19And also requires a lot more self-promotion, which I'm not comfortable with. Like, it makes me like, deeply uncomfortable to like, reach out to people and be like, hey, like, would you consider, like, you know, reviewing my book like, or, you know, can I be on your podcast and, like, talk, like, it makes me super uncomfortable. Umm so, so but I got to do it because like, negative $7, man, for like, four months worth of work is, you know, basically half of my time the last four months, certainly, last two months, has been on this book. And so I feel like I owe it to myself just for that, like, time to like, sell the gosh darn thing. Colleen Schnettler  05:07Definitely. Michele Hansen  05:09Yeah. So I like spent, you know, this week I was kind of working on, you know, like, I went through all of the newsletter issues and I, like, put in a link at the top to, like, buy the book because I've noticed that people are sharing the scripts around. Like, I can see the analytics that they're getting shared in people's Slack channels, or, you know, Trello, or Asana, which is a good sign that those maybe have some staying power. So, and just kind of thinking through a little bit more, a little bit more of the marketing and trying to arrange, you know, yeah, podcasts and stuff, but I gotta, I gotta market this thing. Colleen Schnettler  05:52Yeah, didn't Alex, who promoted his book on our podcast, didn't he do, like, 20 or 30 podcasts? Michele Hansen  06:00Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  06:01And how many have you done? Michele Hansen  06:04Um, I, well,  Colleen Schnettler  06:07I already know the answer. Michele Hansen  06:09Well, I mean this one. I mean, I was on a couple recently where I talked about the newsletter. Like, I was on, I, yeah. Like, I was on the Get the Audience podcast, and I was on the Learn Neto podcast as well. But like, the book wasn't out yet. So those weren't really, Colleen Schnettler  06:37Right, you didn't have anything to sell at that time.  Michele Hansen  06:39Yeah, it was just the newsletter. Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  06:40A good goal for you would be to try to book 15, you know, and get yourself as a guest on 15 to 20 podcasts to promote your book, because you can sell it now. Right? Even though it's not completely done. Michele Hansen  06:52Yeah. Yeah, I guess I guess. Yeah. I'm like scheduling one for the middle of July, like, so I'm currently, my goal is to publish it on July 2, but I like, I really hope that happens. But there may be like, you know, some people may need more time to, like, write reviews, and, like, making a cover and everything. So, it should be out by early July. Colleen Schnettler  07:20You're, when you say, I don't know. You mean the book?  Michele Hansen  07:22Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  07:22I am little confused about what you're saying. Michele Hansen  07:23 Yeah. So like, upload it to Amazon, and people can buy a physical copy. Colleen Schnettler  07:28Yes. Michele Hansen  07:29So I don't think I'm quite there yet. Like, exactly like, and I think there's some things that I'm just saying aren't going to happen for, like, this first version, like, a friend of mine, who is a UX research expert was reading it, and there's a couple places she's like, this would be a really great table. This would be great as a graphic. And I'm like, yes, it would be but I have zero faculty for visual communication, and that is not going to happen right now. Like, that can like happen when my brain has the space to like, think that through, but it is, it is not happening right now. But yeah, I guess I guess I should say, I guess that, I don't even know where to start. Colleen Schnettler  08:13No no, Let's go like straight Nike style here.  Michele Hansen  08:15Nike style? Colleen Schnettler  08:16What is it, just do it? Just do it. That's my challenge for you. I'm not going to talk to you for a couple weeks because I'm about to embark on my epic road trip. So, my challenge for you is to reach out to, find and reach out to 25 podcast hosts that you think, Michele Hansen  08:34Good Lord. Colleen Schnettler  08:34And they're not all going to say yes, which is like, hey, man. I know. Michele Hansen  08:37I'm sitting here being like, Colleen, and I really struggle with self promotion. And even, you know, one person was hard for me and you're like, go do it 25 more times.  Colleen Schnettler  08:4525 times. I love that idea. Michele Hansen  08:46Coach Colleen says 25 more reps. So not fair. Colleen Schnettler  08:50Yes. So, that's what my challenge for you is, is to reach out, Michele Hansen  08:54 How about five?  Colleen Schnettler  08:57Really? I'm not impressed with your five. Michele Hansen  09:00I feel like everybody, I feel like everybody like, needs this person standing on their shoulder that's like, I will write one landing page this month. And you're just there. They're like, really?  Colleen Schnettler  09:11Really? That's the best you can do? Michele Hansen  09:13That's, like, that's it, you know? Wait, like, why are you here?  Colleen Schnettler  09:18You should try and, I don't know, just ask, ask one of our prominent friends who is a book author, Alex comes to mind again, how many podcasts he went on?  Michele Hansen  09:27Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  09:28And try to hit that number. I mean, it's game time girl. Like, you wrote the book. You did the hard work,nd now it's a whole new set of hard work that you have to do because you're right, like, this is a brilliant book. You don't want it to languish because, no one's ever heard of it. Michele Hansen  09:43I didn't say it was brilliant. You said it was brilliant. Colleen Schnettler  09:46Well, here you go. It's brilliant. it's needed. It's gonna be amazing. So, I think you need to like, get in gear. Michele Hansen  09:54Yeah, I, yeah. Okay. I guess, I have to go, well, if you are listening and you want to promote me, then help me. Colleen Schnettler  10:06Maybe what we can do is we can, I have an idea. Okay, plan. So, just put a tweet out and ask everyone for their favorite business podcast. I bet you'll get a list of at least 30. And then you can just, Michele Hansen  10:17Yeah, I guess, yeah, like, but like it has to be for SaaS, for example, because like, Planet Money isn't gonna have me on. Colleen Schnettler  10:25Right, right. I meant yeah, SaaS podcast. I mean, there's enough of them that do podcasts similar to ours.  Michele Hansen  10:31Make the internet do my research for me.  Colleen Schnettler  10:34Yes, there we go. Harness the power of the internet. Michele Hansen  10:41So if you see a tweet from the Software Social Account soon about your favorite business SaaS podcast, now you know why.  Colleen Schnettler  10:50The secret's out. Michele Hansen  10:52Yeah, the secret is out. Okay. Well, I will, I will try to book myself on some, some podcasts. I guess, I guess there's other ways I could promote it, too. Like, I could go on, like, Tiktok or, Colleen Schnettler  11:12No.  Michele Hansen  11:14No, we will not do that. For those listening at home, I think Colleen just spit out her coffee. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have some marketing to do. Colleen Schnettler  11:34Yes. Michele Hansen  11:36Yeah. I think I have like, I've literally sent I think one email, maybe two. No, yeah, one email that mentioned that the presale was live, which basically goes against every best practice, like, some like, someone sent me some advice the other day, and they're like, send at least three emails a day on your like, launch days. I was like, okay, I've sent like, one in the last two weeks, and I sent out my newsletter the other day, and I actually forgot to include a link to the presale. So, I need to, like, Colleen Schnettler  12:06You know what, suggestion.  Michele Hansen  12:07Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  12:07This is really cool. So do you know the Wes Bos is?  He's, like, a famous JavaScript instructor. I bought like, all of his courses. But what he does is, he does, when he has a new product to launch, he does send a lot of emails, but he actually segments his emails. And to be fair, his list is probably like 30,000 people. But he segments his email, so you can unsubscribe just from the product launch emails, which I love, because I'm like, oh, I don't care about this product launch, or I already bought that, and then I can still continue to get all the normal newsletter emails. I mean, don't stress yourself out.  Michele Hansen  12:10Yeah. Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  12:14But it's an idea. It's an idea. Michele Hansen  12:20Yeah, I'm only using review at this point for, so, I don't, like, I don't even have like, ConvertKit or anything.  Colleen Schnettler  12:50Okay, set up. Michele Hansen  12:51Set up, so I, I don't, I probably should do that, but I haven't really,  Colleen Schnettler  13:00Okay, so I think podcast.  I'm still in editing, like, get it out the door mode, because there's still other like, launch stuff. Like, I have to like register the ISBN and like, I need to go through the whole process with Amazon of like, making sure all that's like, setup.  Michele Hansen  13:19So, that feels like a July task. Colleen Schnettler  13:24July task. That's fine. It's halfway to July. It's almost July. So, Michele Hansen  13:30Yeah, so I, maybe I should, like, make a spreadsheet of all the different things and, like, have a goal for those. Colleen Schnettler  13:39I'm, I'm a big fan of measurable goals, right? Like, so, so I'm team, you know, write it down, keep a spreadsheet, keep track of it. Not that I've executed so well on my goals, right? It's easy for me to sit here and tell you what to do. It's way harder when it's you telling me what to do. So, you know,  Michele Hansen  13:57Well isn't there, there's some business axiom about like, it's not like, like, like, achieving the exact goal is not important. It's the fact that you create one and then work towards it that matters. Like, there's somebody who has said something to that effect much more articulately than just said, but you know, it's like just you set the goal and then you go off on a journey to get there and you may end up somewhere else, but like, you have, you're at least doing something. Colleen Schnettler  14:23Right? You're making forward progress. Michele Hansen  14:25Yeah, and I should probably have a revenue goal, too. Like,  Colleen Schnettler  14:29So, okay. Michele Hansen  14:29Even though I don't want one, I should, I guess. Colleen Schnettler  14:32Okay, I'm gonna get off topic, and I don't want to get too far off topic. But, so I'm a really big fan of, like, famous sports coaches, like,  Michele Hansen  14:42Okay. Colleen Schnettler  14:43Like, this is, like, a thing. Like, I love reading biographies of like John Wooden and all these other really successful sports coaches. And one of my favorite takeaways from all of this information that I've osmosed is you cannot control the outcome, right? You can only control your effort and your attitude, which is why revenue goals are not very actionable. Because a revenue goal, like, you actually can't control that. What you can control is your attitude, right? How you approach the problem, and your effort, and how hard you work, and by aligning all of these steps in terms of effort and attitude, the revenue will come. But to set a goal, like, like, in the, you know, the basketball metaphors, like when the NCAA championships, you can't actually control that. You can just control how prepared you are, and your mindset when you attack the problem. Michele Hansen  15:40Oh, that makes sense. Colleen Schnettler  15:43I know that's, like, totally off topic, but I just read about it. And I'm like, Michele Hansen  15:48Yeah, so it's, so to what you were saying, like your goal of 25 podcast episodes. And, and rather than having a goal of say, you know, I don't know, like, $5,000, for example. Instead having it be like, be on 25 podcasts over the next six months to a year, about it, not including this one, because if we include all the episodes of this show then I'm like, totally hitting that, but I assume we're not. Um, and, you know, so like, being on a specific number of podcasts, or something else. I don't know, guest talks or something. Um, yeah, like picking like, specific actions that I can do that's like your equivalent. Like, it's like, write a landing page, right? Like, like, all these, like, things that are actions that I know are accretive towards,  Colleen Schnettler  16:51Right. That's the idea. Michele Hansen  16:52Good outcomes, but like, I fundamentally don't have that much control over how much I actually sell. Like, I can keep my ears out for things that might sell like, you know, for example, I'm gonna sell templates, too, for $19 that are like, Notion templates of all the scripts and it occurred to me earlier, like the, the How to Talk So People Will Talk section like, people seem to really love that. And I was like, that could maybe be its own, like, mini book for like, $10. It's like, just like, so you want, like, you know, you, you want to get information out of people, and you want them to think you're like, trustworthy and you want to, you know, learn how to, like listen actively, then, a mini book or something, like there's other stuff I could do. Colleen Schnettler  17:36Right, I guess all of my points, all of that that you just described, that's effort, right? Those are things you do. You ultimately can't control your revenue, but it'll get there if you put the effort in. That's the idea. Michele Hansen  17:46But like, I if I set the goal of like, be the, I don't know, New York Times number one bestseller or whatever, like, I have zero control over that. It's also not realistic. And it's not it, in some ways it's like, de-motivating there have a goal that is not clearly achievable.  Colleen Schnettler  18:07Exactly. Michele Hansen  18:07But being on 25 podcast is not like, like, that's like, those are very nebulous goals, because it's unclear what will lead to that.  Colleen Schnettler  18:17Yeah. Exactly. Michele Hansen  18:17But being on 20 Live podcast in six months is concrete. And I ostensibly have control over that. Colleen Schnettler  18:26Yes. Nice. Michele Hansen  18:28Wow. So, it sounds like you are doing like a lot of like, business reading lately. Colleen Schnettler  18:38Yeah, um, not a ton. So I do have a couple audio books queued up for my drive that I'm excited about, business ebooks, Obviously Awesome is one that I've been wanting to listen to and I have purchased but I have not yet. This one I just really liked. This one was about, like I said, some of the famous coaches. First of all, I'm a sucker for sports movies, but, but I really liked that idea that ultimately you, you can't control, like, if you're going to win, but you can control all of the aspects of your journey, like how much time you put in, how much effort you put in, like, what your mindset is, you could, those are all things that you know, you can control. And as you know, for like, it feels like for a couple months now I've been struggling to move the product forward. Like, the product is doing well. I hit $1300 MRR.  Michele Hansen  19:28Nice. Colleen Schnettler  19:28Which is, yeah, I mean, it's great.  Michele Hansen  19:30Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  19:30I'm really happy with it. But it, I feel a little bit stuck. I feel, and I don't know if it's, I feel stuck because I haven't had the time, or if I feel stuck because I'm actually stuck. Like, I can't figure out if I feel stuck because if I, if I, let's say I gave myself a week and I just worked every day on it if I would get myself out of that kind of rut, or if there's really no rut to get out of and this is just the nature of the product. That it's just a slow burn, which is fine. I mean, it's going well, like I'm not complaining, I know some people can't, you know, haven't hit this milestone, especially not as quickly as I did. But, um, so there's that. So, I think what I want to do is I want to make a bigger push on content. Because I really haven't, I really don't have any content out there. So that's something I'm going to try and spend some time on, and like, there's just some things about the product that I want to keep iterating on, and I want to make better. Michele Hansen  20:36I mean, we were just talking about goals and the, sort of how difficult it is to have a monetary goal because you don't have control over it. And it's, it's awesome, first of all that, I mean, to have $1300 MRR means that, I mean, a month or two ago, we're talking about how you're hitting 1000. That means that like, that's, the thing, the thing about revenue for a subscription business is that revenue happens every month, like, this revenue that I have from the book, that happened once, and that's not going to happen again. But yours, people are paying you. So it's not just that you have made $1300 like, you, that is compounding and adding on top of each other. But I am sort of curious, like, there has to be some number or range in your head where you're like, I can stop consulting now. Or I can, you know, somebody offers me a full time job and I can just like, turn it down without even thinking about. Like, there has to be some number for you. Colleen Schnettler  21:38Absolutely. And I think like, and, and, absolutely. And I mean, I'm in this for the money. Like, just to be clear, that makes some people really uncomfortable. I don't know if they're not used to women saying that or what, but like, when I tell people that they get a little uncomfortable. Michele Hansen  21:53It's like, your job, like, Colleen Schnettler  21:55Yeah, like, I want to make more money.  Michele Hansen  21:56Like, of course everybody is in their job for the money. Like, yes, I'm doing this book as like, a passion project and like, which leads me to make all sorts of decisions that are confusing to people who prioritize money, like, but like you, understandably, are prioritizing money, because this is your job. And if this doesn't work out, then you know, Colleen Schnettler  22:17I gotta go get a real one. Michele Hansen  22:18I mean tons more consulting, or like, getting, getting a paycheck job is what you have to do. Like, this is not, Colleen Schnettler  22:25Yeah, so.  Michele Hansen  22:27Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  22:28I mean, the thing I love about owning your own business is the possibilities are infinite, right? Like, I mean, I, from a personal perspective, you know, if I could get to 10k, that would be like, Oh, my gosh, I cannot, that would be, I'd be over the moon, right?  Michele Hansen  22:45So that's the number. Colleen Schnettler  22:47The number would be 10k. But, you know, why can't I have a couple million dollars a year in revenue? Like, I want a business. Michele Hansen  22:53 Why can't you have a million dollars?  Colleen Schnettler  22:56I mean, I want a business. Like, if I hit 10k and stay there forever, like, I probably would be a little frustrated. Like, to me, the whole point of having your own business is the possibilities are, in, you know, infinite. And like, one of the things I've been able to do with my modest income, is I've been able to hire two people to help write content for me. And yeah, hired someone else.  Michele Hansen  23:23Oh, you're, wait.  Colleen Schnettler  23:25And, yeah, man, I'm crazy over here. I'm just, dollar bills.  Michele Hansen  23:28Dude, and I'm like, 7 years into this and I like, just hired, like, a part time VA, like, three months ago. Colleen Schnettler  23:34Yeah, yeah. I feel like you're doing it wrong. But that's a different issue. Michele Hansen  23:37Probably. I'm doing it my way, okay.  Colleen Schnettler  23:40That's right. So, and the thing I love about that is, I, with, with the people that I'm paying, I've been able to, you know, people who are kind of writing anyway, now I can pay them to write, it seems like such a win-win. Like, I feel like I'm, it's good for them and it's good for me. And it's something I really love. So like, ultimately, I would love to build this into, like, you know, a really successful business and hire a person and, and, and be able to have created this environment where I can work with who I want and buy my beach house and all that. I mean, I'm big on the beach house if I haven't mentioned that a few times already. Michele Hansen  24:25So the first, like, the first big goal, which I think it'll be fun to reevaluate this a year from now, is like 10k basically. Colleen Schnettler  24:36Yeah. I mean, Michele Hansen  24:36To get you to 10k revenue and then to like, the big, big goal is buy Colleen a beach house. Colleen Schnettler  24:43Buy Colleen a beach house. Yeah. But to me 10k, and I don't know if I have, and I'm still, I feel like I'm in that messy middle phase. Like, I hit 1k, which makes it feel like it's a real thing. Like it's, it's legit, but I don't know if I'm in, I feel like there's a, going from zero to 1k is different than going from 1k to 10k. Right? It's a factor of 10 more. Like it's a big, you feel like going from zero to 1k is one milestone and one to 10 is your next milestone. But one to 10 is way more than zero to one, right? So, I honestly don't know if I'm positioned correctly with this product to get there. Michele Hansen  25:26Which is why you're reading Obviously Awesome. Colleen Schnettler  25:28Which is why I'm reading Obviously, Obviously Awesome. I just, I just don't know, if I'm in the right space, there's so much opportunity. I was talking to a founder recently and he talked about how he pivoted his company and moved into a totally different space, and they started growing, like they were kind of stagnant for a while, and then they kind of made this pivot, moved into a new space and their growth exploded. So, I definitely think there's a spot for me, I just don't know what it is, and I just don't know, it feels like a lot. Like the other thing that, that I wanted to just kind of bring up is when people talk about how to grow in your business. They talk about, like, building the product, as if it's this static thing that takes you like two weeks, and like writing good software is hard. And, it's a constantly evolving process. So it's something that constantly needs my you know, my attention, and that's not bad. I just feel like, you know, it's hard to balance, as most people who listen to this who are working and building a product know, it's just hard to balance all of those competing desires. So I just don't know if I have a, I guess the truth is, I don't know if I have a product that's going to get me to 10k. Like, I don't know, I don't know where it is right now. It's that product. Michele Hansen  26:52I mean, thinking back to where we were like I don't, I don't have our numbers in front of me, so I don't remember them exactly. But like, the thing that really made our revenue jump was not adding any one particular feature or one particular marketing thing. It was a pricing change, because we like, so we started out, I think we were like $31 our first month. And then I don't know, like, maybe maybe $100 the next month, and then like $400 the next month, and then in May of 2014, we had someone who needed, like, a crazy volume of usage every single day. And the only way we could make that work was basically to give them their own server. And we looked around and see what, you know, big companies were charging for these sort of really high volume, like, plans and we're, and I think we we figured out like, the cheapest one was like 10,000 a year, for, that was still like rate limited, I think to 100,000 a day, but we're like, okay, we can do like basically Unlimited, up to like 5 million a day for you for $750 a month, which worked out to 9000 a year. And adding that plan, which was like, slightly different feature-wise, but like it wasn't it wasn't like adding a feature to the API, but it was like a pricing feature, and a new plan, adding that one plan and then, like, we didn't think anyone else would ever take it, and then people started taking it. Like, that is what caused our revenue to really grow. And so I wonder if there's some space for like, you know, pricing evolution here. And like maybe there's some other way of packaging your products with the existing features in a way that's at a higher price point. But I don't like, I don't know why that is. Colleen Schnettler  28:44So I do. Michele Hansen  28:44 It's your business, like, so.  Colleen Schnettler  28:46Yeah. Michele Hansen  28:46But like, I think it's worth thinking about, like, the pricing aspects of, of this. Colleen Schnettler  28:50Yeah, well, and one of the things I do is my app has a lot more power that I'm exposing at the moment. So, I think the answer for example, like, I think I limit your file size to 50MBs, there's no reason I have to do that, like I don't, you know, there's there's a couple things someone reached out to me and told me that his company has a setup now where their customers upload files, like up to a gig(GB) through Upload Care, and then they, but they move them off the Upload Care servers, because it's so expensive, or it's a whole thing. I'm talking to him, I'm gonna, you know, have I have an interview scheduled with him to better understand Michele Hansen  29:26Whoo. Colleen Schnettler  29:26I know. Michele Hansen  29:27Music to my ears.  Colleen Schnettler  29:30But I, you know, so my point is, there's the two things that I'm not doing, I think I've might have mentioned this last week, is multiple file uploads, which I can do. I'm doing it for one client, special, and large files. So it might just be that I'm not quite positioned properly yet.  Michele Hansen  29:46Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  29:46In terms of I've really kept, I've kept a lot of that functionality close to the chest for no particular reason, just because I didn't want to like, release all the features at once and overwhelm everyone like, oh my goodness, but since I can't do those things, it seems like re, kind of revisiting, revisiting some of those options would probably be a good move for me.  Michele Hansen  30:09Yeah, I think it's really smart that you're, like you're doing a big road trip. So you're, and you're going to be listening to this book in the car, right? Colleen Schnettler  30:19Yes, ma'am. Michele Hansen  30:20Like, I find that we do our best like, business thinking on road trips, like, I, maybe it's because, you know, you like, you, you can't be doing anything else, like, you are literally stuck there. Colleen Schnettler  30:34Right. You're stuck. Michele Hansen  30:34And like, and I can't be looking at my phone in the car, otherwise, I'm going to get carsick. And, of course, it's the two of us and like, like, our go to for road trips is like, how I built this. So we end up like, really like, coming up with stuff on on, like, you know, I have, like, emailed myself of, like, conversations we've had on road trips. And so of course, it'll only be you. But, you know, those times when, like, the kids are sleeping in the back or whatever, and you can't have the audio book on and thinking all these things through, like, I think it'll be really good thinking time for yourself. And but remember to like, take notes every day on what it is that you think about. Colleen Schnettler  31:17Oh. That's a good point. I should bring a notebook. That's a really good point. Michele Hansen  31:20Like, a notebook or even just like, record a voice memo for yourself or whatever, if that's easier, just like, something so you don't, like, because there are times when when we've had like, an amazing conversation on a road trip, and then I didn't write it down. And then like, you know, a week later, we're back and we're like, oh, my God, like, what was that like, an amazing thing. And like I had this whole, like, like pre COVID, we were on a road trip. And I had this whole idea of like, our content strategy built around, like really unique address data. Like, for example, in South Carolina, there's three, there's like four towns called Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, all right next to each other, like, I was gonna, like, write about all of these, like, odd location, address things, and I came up with this great name for it on the road trip, and then I like, I still cannot remember what that name was, so take notes. Colleen Schnettler  32:09Yeah, I totally, I totally hear you. I know exactly what you're saying. I think that's a great idea. I think I have a lot of thinking to do. You know, I kind of feel like it was really exciting in the beginning when I was trying to launch the product. And then it's really exciting. And then everything is very, very exciting. And then you hit your first milestone, and then it's kind of like, oh, but now there's another milestone, okay, so I never really win.  Michele Hansen  32:32Right. The goalpost just moves. Colleen Schnettler  32:34The goalpost continuously moves. So it's interesting to me, I mean, I have a lot to think about is like, is this a product that can get me to 10k? How do I, and how do I get there? Right? Like, what is what do I need to do to get there? As I just said, when I was giving you my little pep talk, like it's putting in the work, I mean, you know, it's not going to sell itself. So yeah, I'm ready to really, really give it some time to think about it on my epic journey. Michele Hansen  33:01Alright, well, on, on that note, I guess we should just sort of make a quick programming note that Colleen will be away for the next two weeks. And so we will, we will be leading on that social side of Software Social and have some guests coming up that I'm super excited about. And then I will be away the following week, so Colleen is gonna have a guest on, and then we will both be like, basically a month from now. Colleen Schnettler  33:34Oh my gosh. I won't talk to you for a month. Michele Hansen  33:35Wow. That feels so weird.  Colleen Schnettler  33:37Oh, gracious. That's sad. Michele Hansen  33:45I mean, you'll text me roadtrip updates. Colleen Schnettler  33:45Obviously. Michele Hansen  33:46Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  33:46Obviously, I'm so excited to see, like, cactuses, by the way.  Michele Hansen  33:52Yeah? Colleen Schnettler  33:52In Arizona. Yeah. I'm so excited to see the great American West. Michele Hansen  33:55I've heard Arizona is, like, gorgeous. Colleen Schnettler  33:57Yeah, I'm super pumped to see a big cactus. Anyway. Michele Hansen  34:00Oh, I've been there. I was okay, whatever. We're gonna stop here for today. Colleen Schnettler  34:07Wrap it up. Michele Hansen  34:11I'll talk to you next week.

Pre-order Michele's book! deployempathy.com/order/Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. Oh Dear does everything they can to help you avoid downtime like scheduled task monitoring, SSL certificate expiration notifications and more. But downtime happens. When it does, it's how you communicate in times of crisis that make the difference. Oh Dear makes it easy to keep your customers up to date during critical times. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app. Colleen Schnettler  00:35So Michele, do you have a,  Michele Hansen  00:38Hey,  Colleen Schnettler  00:38Good morning. Do you have a numbers update for us on your book? Michele Hansen  00:43I do. So my presale went live about a week and a half ago, when our episode with Sean went live. That was my deadline. And, I've sold 43 copies right now. Yeah, it's kind of exciting. Um, it's not all people I know, which is exciting. Colleen Schnettler  01:06That's very exciting. Michele Hansen  01:08I love how supportive people have been. And it also, it makes me, it's just reassuring that people I don't know are buying it. But yeah, so that puts it right now, just, and this is just the raw, you know, number of times $29, which is $1,247. Colleen Schnettler  01:30That's amazing. Congratulations. Michele Hansen  01:33Yeah. Thank you. And I got my first payout yesterday, which after, like, taxes, and everything else, was $912. Colleen Schnettler  01:41Wow. Michele Hansen  01:42Which was kind of exciting, and gives me a little bit of budget to work with, with, like, you know, hiring a proofreader, and using some, like, layout tools, but, you know, so I was pulling these numbers, and because, you know, everybody loves numbers and whatnot. And I was thinking about it. So, so I got this, this message from someone yesterday, who had started reading the book, and it was actually someone I don't know. And if I can just kind of read what they, what they said. Colleen Schnettler  02:25Yes, please.Michele Hansen  02:26And so I had a personal aha moment reading distinction between sympathetic, empathetic and solution based responses. My sympathetic conclusion based responses are leaving no space for empathetic, something I need to address. I'm an engineer and an architect by trade, and I'm looking to do a better job interviewing the humans attached to our work. But I'm also thinking about your book from the sense that a better balance of empathy will help me be a better teammate as well. And, like, getting that was so moving for me because it made me think about how, you know, I'm not writing this book for the money. Like, yes, the book needs to make money, because I've been working on it for four months now and have, you know, there's a lot of time I haven't spent working on Geocodio. Oh, like, I've been a pretty bad Geocodio employee the past couple of months, like, full honesty, right? So like, I have to, like, it has to have been, you know, worth my time. But like, I am not, I'm not motivated by that, like, I am motivated by this, by like, you know, like, I have this like, secret dream goal. Well, I mean, it's not a secret cuz I've, like, tweeted about it, but like, whatever. You know, Mathias sometimes says to me, he's like, I know you were thinking about something because you tweeted about it. And I'm like, oh, I forgot to, like, verbalize that. Anyway, um, I have this dream that through the process of learning this for interviewing, and, like, product development and marketing reasons, people will understand how to be more empathetic and use that in their daily lives. Like, everyone has a capacity for empathy. Everybody can learn it, not everybody is taught it or shown it so they don't really learn it. But everyone has a capacity for it. And, but also, like, very few people, you know, put like, be more empathetic, like, learn how to learn how to use empathy, like on their to do list every day. But they put write a landing page, get more customers, build a feature, like, reply to all of those customers and intercom like, those are the things that end up on a to do list. And so I have this like, kind of, I don't know, like, naive dream that like people will read this and apply these skills to the things they're already doing, but in doing so, learn how to be more empathetic in their daily life or you know, as a as a team member or whatnot. And just getting this message really, it was so motivating, but also so soul-nourishing because it really made me feel like, like the book has done what I wanted it to do. Like, this is what I set out to achieve and, like, this message makes me feel like the book is a success, regardless of how many copies it sells. Like, so it was just like, it was kind of a, it was kind of a, like a moment, like it was, it also sort of like if you're having this effect, like you can, like, stop rearranging it, like, you know, I feel like I've done a rewrite every week for, like, the past eight weeks. Yeah, time to time to ship the gosh darn thing. Colleen Schnettler  05:57That is wonderful. So what I just heard you say is, this book is secretly teaching us how to be better humans, wrapped up in a book about customer interviews. Michele Hansen  06:09Yes, wrapped up in a book about which features you should prioritize, and how to, you know, pick a pricing model based on what people's usage patterns are, and, like, how to understand what people want and write better landing pages. All that stuff they're already trying to do. But then yeah, there's, there's this kind of bigger message. Like, I feel like so much of good UX practice is good human being practice. Colleen Schnettler  06:35Yeah. Michele Hansen  06:36Um, and, I mean, I, I really learned about empathy by doing interviews myself. So this, I mean, it's, it's, it's very personal for me in a way that, like, the book is, I don't know, it is very, very personal for me. And it's not just about showing empathy to other people. It's also about showing empathy to yourself, too, which is just as important. Colleen Schnettler  07:06So I have not read the book yet, unfortunately. Can you tell me briefly, what the difference is between empathy and sympathy that that writer wrote into you? Because we talk about it a lot, but we've never defined it, really. Michele Hansen  07:22Yeah, that's true. So empathy is when you, basically when you, when you try to understand the other person's context without judgment, and it doesn't mean that you agree with what they're saying. You're just trying to find the context behind what they're saying or what they're doing. Because, sort of, most of us, basically, we assume that our, there's this assumption that our actions make sense from our perspective. That is to say you wouldn't go out and do something if it didn't make sense to you, like, maybe very few people might, but like, for the most part, we have this underlying assumption that, that the things that we do make sense to us.  And so you're basically trying to find that internal context for why somebody does something, and then you reflect it back for them. So for example, if you came to me and started telling me about how, like, I don't, I don't know something you were struggling with, like, let's say, you felt like you were banging your head up against the keyboard all week on some, like, coding problem and it was really frustrating for you. An empathetic response to that would be man, that sounds really hard and like you were working really hard on it and it was super frustrating for you. A sympathetic response would be, oh, I'm sorry you went through that. So a sympathetic response creates distance between the person who is speaking and the person who has aired something, and that might not be a complaint or a frustration. It could be like something positive, but it creates distance. And sometimes it's called fake empathy. Like, I feel like this is what you see in a lot of, like, really bad public figures, celebrity apologies. It's like, I'm sorry, that offended you. It's like, no, that's wrong. Like, like, that's not, that's not actually apologizing. And then there's also kind of this other element that I feel like is this sort of, like, solution-based responses, which comes from a place of caring, and I think us as product builders, I know me, like, we really fall into this, is someone, like, if you came to me with some, some problem. If I just said, oh, well, have you tried this? Which, I'm trying to solve your problem, I'm showing care, right? Like, I wouldn't propose a solution to your problem if I didn't care about you and making that solution better. The problem is, is that it doesn't validate your experience and it doesn't acknowledge your experience. So, while it comes from a good place, it's not empathetic because it doesn't say, wow, like, that was really hard for you. Like it doesn't, it doesn't fake make you feel seen or heard. And it could end up being, through the course of a conversation, you end up explicitly asking me like, do you have any advice for how I could do this? Like, what should I try? I feel like I've tried all these other things. But an empathetic response starts with acknowledging what the other person has gone through.  Colleen Schnettler  10:25Okay. Okay  Michele Hansen  10:26And then also checking in with them, like, do you, do you want me to listen to you about this? Or do you want me to help you brainstorm ideas? Colleen Schnettler  10:33Okay. Michele Hansen  10:33Like, so but I think that's, that's like one of those that really, like, it took me a while to wrap my head around that because the other thing about a solution response, especially in the context of a customer interview, or whatnot, is that you need all the context behind, behind why someone does something and why they went through something in order to really build something that solves the problem for them in a way that they understand and they're capable of grokking. Right? Because we need all of the context behind it, not just the functional context, but also sort of the emotional and social context of things in order to build a product that someone feels like is speaking to their experience and the problem they have. Does that make sense? Colleen Schnettler  11:18Yeah, it, it does. It's, it feels like a subtle difference, though. Like, when I try to understand your problem in your context, in your context, the sympathy for versus the empathy, like, it feels very subtle to me. Michele Hansen  11:34It is subtle, but like, um, I mean, it's, it's subtle. You know, it's the difference between, I'm sorry, that was hard for you and that was hard for you. Like, those are a subtle difference between them, but there is a huge difference between that and what someone would receive. Colleen Schnettler  11:53Yeah, I can see that. Michele Hansen  11:55And because when you say, I'm sorry, that happened to you, it emphasizes that it didn't happen to me. Colleen Schnettler  12:01Right, okay. Michele Hansen  12:01It actually, like, Brené Brown talks about this a lot. I'm sorry, that happened to you. It, it makes the other person feel more alone because it emphasizes that they are the only one who experienced that, and it makes them feel isolated.  Colleen Schnettler  12:18Okay.  Michele Hansen  12:19And she has a great way of responding, I'm sorry, of phrasing this, and I don't know if I'm doing it justice. But basically it creates that distance, and feeling alone and feeling like you're the only person who went through something is a really, really hard feeling, especially when you have just gone through something frustrating, and it doesn't have to be a big thing. It could just be, you know, the fact that I spent my week fighting with Grammarly, like, like that could be the problem we're discussing. And, but if you said oh, I'm sorry, you went through that, like, it reminds me that you didn't go through that.  Colleen Schnettler  12:55Hmm. Okay.  Michele Hansen  12:57And it was like, oh, yeah, that was like, maybe it was just me, like, maybe I was doing something wrong, like, am I using it wrong? Like is like, like, you know, it creates all of that doubt and feeling of sort of loneliness in it. Colleen Schnettler  13:11And so tell me the empathetic response again. Michele Hansen  13:14That sounds really hard. Colleen Schnettler  13:15That sounds really hard. Okay, right. So you're not, you're trying not to create that distance where they're an individual isolated, Michele Hansen  13:23Right. Colleen Schnettler  13:24And you're over here. Michele Hansen  13:25And it doesn't start out with I, right? Like, the sympathetic response to start with, you know, like, I'm sorry, that offended you.  Colleen Schnettler  13:33Okay. Michele Hansen  13:34Versus the difference between like, that offended you. Because when you say it that way, you're sort of asking for elaboration. Colleen Schnettler  13:41Right. Right. Michele Hansen  13:42Versus I'm sorry, I offended you just shuts it off.  Colleen Schnettler  13:46Wow, I say that all the time. I'm sorry, XYZ happened to you. Michele Hansen  13:50I said it all the time, too, then I started learning about this stuff. And I was like, I'm accidentally like, a jerk, and I didn't even realize it. But so many of us speak this way. And we learn the way we speak from the people around us. And if the people around you, when you were learning to speak, didn't speak empathetically, even if they're otherwise nice people. like, then it would make sense why you think this way and don't realize it. Colleen Schnettler  14:15Interesting. Michele Hansen  14:16Like, it's totally normal to not realize that what you have been saying is actually not empathetic. Like, like, it is a, it is a learned skill for many people. I mean, the people who have it built in are the people whose, you know, parents really made it a focus when they, when they had their kid. Like, but for most of us, it's kind of oh, I guess I should stop saying that. Like, I remember how at one point, like, when I was in my early 20s, I was at a job and somebody was like, you know, you really shouldn't say well, actually. Like, I don't know if you realize how you are coming across. Like, I know you don't mean anything by it, but like, it's, it's kind of like, and I was like, oh, crap, I do that all the time. Okay, like, mental note, like, mental dictionary update: stop. Like, so it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean that you're not a nice person or that you're not an empathetic person or that you're not, you don't have a capability for empathy, it simply means that you haven't learned it and all of the various implications of it and we can call learn. Colleen Schnettler  15:15Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you for, for telling me about that. Like, that's really interesting. I didn't know that. I find that like, this whole thing, empathy and psychology, as I'm trying to, as I'm talking to people and trying to sell my product, I have found that it really, and I already knew this, but like, now I'm seeing it, it really makes a difference. Can I just tell you about this one issue, which I find so interesting? Michele Hansen  15:42Yes.  Colleen Schnettler  15:43Okay. So the way my product works is you upload files to the cloud, and then I provide you a dashboard where you can see all of those files. I have gotten several requests now from people to allow them to tag the files. Michele Hansen  16:02Oh, yeah, like Drew asked for that. Right? Colleen Schnettler  16:04Yeah. So I've been trying to figure out why people want to tag the files. He's not the only one who asked for it. Some other people have asked for it. The reason these people want to tag the files is because they want to be able to mass delete all of the files they've uploaded in a development environment. Why did they want to do that? From what I'm understanding, they want to do that so those files, like, because those aren't production files, they're not, like, cluttering up their dashboard. So when those people have asked me about this, I said, well, look, if you exceed your storage, because I don't have a mass delete function right now, and I don't have that, I'll just give you more storage. But nobody likes that answer. It's like, and so I think it's like a mental psychological thing where they want, like, a nice, clean dashboard. I don't know, I just find this really interesting, because I'm like, storage is cheap. I'll give you more storage until I implement this. But, but it's like, it's, like, as human beings, they really want, like, to segment stuff. I don't know, it's like mental. That's kind of the way I've been, I've been thinking about it. Like, as human beings, they don't want files that they don't need on their dashboard, even if they don't have to pay for them. But I'm like, I don't know. So, so that's just kind of been an interesting one for me. I'm like, but you literally like, I'm not gonna make you pay for those files. It's fine. They can just be there in outer space. But no one, yeah, that's an interesting one that keeps coming up. Michele Hansen  17:25Yeah, it sounds like they, like, that clutter is creating a certain like,  Colleen Schnettler  17:33Mental clutter or something psychological clutter. Michele Hansen  17:36Nervousness, or something. And then there's also this element of wanting to, like, mentally, like to mentally separate things like, I'm sort of, I'm reminded of one of my favorite economics papers called Mental Accounting by Richard Thaler, which is basically on how people like, they create different jobs for different bank accounts and investment accounts, and like, you know, for example, people might have one brokerage account that's just for, like, they have like fun money versus they have their serious 401k. Or like, some people have many different bank accounts for, you know, for different purposes. And it, there's, there's probably a broader term for this, but since I come from an econ background, that's, but like, people wanting to create these different mental categories, and basically, like, it's almost like they want to go, sort of, it's like mentally going to IKEA and buying one of those room divider shelves with all the different boxes you can slide boxes in and, like, being able to look at it and see that everything is in all of its little different categories and is in its place. And they know like, you know which things are in which box, and it looks all nice and organized from the outside. Colleen Schnettler  18:51Yeah, I am going to do it because I have found I use my own product for my clients, and I have found I desire the same thing. But I think you're absolutely right. Like, from a purely practical perspective, it doesn't matter. But from, like, a human organizational mental box perspective, like, it seems to make people happy. Michele Hansen  19:11Yeah, like, there's that functional perspective of it. But then there's the emotional perspective of feeling like everything is organized. And then I also wonder if there's a social element where like, maybe they're afraid one of their coworkers will use a file that was only for development, or because there's so many files and they're all in one list, someone will use the wrong file or, like, I wonder if there's any, any sort of elements around that going on? Colleen Schnettler  19:41Yeah. Could be. I didn't ask that. That's, Michele Hansen  19:47So when someone asks you for that, what did you say back to them, exactly? Colleen Schnettler  19:52Well, the first time someone asked me, I said, that's a great idea. I'm totally gonna do that.  Michele Hansen  19:58Okay. That's an understandable response.  Colleen Schnettler  19:59I know you're over there thinking, like, have I taught you nothing, Colleen? You have taught me. That was before we were doing a podcast. Michele Hansen  20:06No, that was a starting point, and that's a perfectly understandable reaction to that. What did you start saying after that? Colleen Schnettler  20:15So the second request I got was via email. So I didn't really have the back and forth that I would have had when I'm talking to someone on the phone or on Slack. And, so this person, I asked them kind of what their use case was, and I also told them in the email that they, you know, I wasn't going to charge them for development files. So if storage became a problem, we could work something out until I had the, you know, a bulk delete API set up. And this person was looking to segment files so they could do a mass delete of the development files. And they also brought up they thought it would be great to be able to segment files, like via model. So you could have, here's all my avatar files over here, here's all my resumes over here, which would be really cool. I mean, that I can totally see the value because and then you're then in your admin, yeah, then in your admin dashboard, you could easily filter based on, you know, what your tag was. And it's really not hard to do, I just haven't done it. But I do like, I do like that idea. And that, to me, makes a lot of sense because I think people really like, like we just talked about, like, you like to have your stuff in the appropriate boxes. Michele Hansen  21:34I think it's hard sometimes when somebody proposes an idea that we get the value of because we would use it ourselves. It can be really hard to say, can you walk me through how you would use that?  Colleen Schnettler  21:46Yeah it is. Michele Hansen  21:47Like, because their reasons may be different. And we really, we need all of those reasons because the reasons I would do something might be different than the reasons why somebody else would do something. But when we understand something, it feels very unnatural to ask for clarification, even when we don't need it. But it's so reasonable.  Colleen Schnettler  22:08That's exactly what it is. It feels so weird, because I'm like, yeah, totally. That's a great freaking idea. Yeah, it is odd. Michele Hansen  22:16I sometimes feel like it's, I wonder if this comes from, like, conditioning in school where, like, I feel like the kid who asks a lot of questions is, you know, sort of branded as annoying. I was definitely that kid in math class. Like, I just always seemed to understand it two weeks after the test. And I wonder if it's like that fear that like, oh, God, like, am I going to be the person who asks questions. And then we have this like, sense that being the person who asks questions, even one that might be sort of a quote, unquote, like dumb question that's clarifying something. Get you like, like, I wonder if there's kind of this built in social conditioning around that, that makes us not want to ask those clarification questions. And we're like, okay, I think I can guess what they want, so I'm just not gonna ask further about that. But, but when we're building a product, you need to be able to, like, look in all the different nooks and crannies of how they're thinking. Colleen Schnettler  23:08Yeah, definitely. That definitely is valuable. To your point, you might use it one way, and they might want it for something totally different. So I really do think, like, throughout the course of this podcast, and since we've been spending a lot of time talking about customer interviews over the past several months, that I've gotten way better at it, because it's, it's my instinct, just to say, yeah, I totally agree, because I do totally agree. So why, I think for me, it's not like, I'm not I don't I'm not scared of asking clarifying questions. I think it's more like, I don't want to waste any more time. Like, I'm like, okay, cool. Let's not waste anyone's time, and let's just go do it. So I have, I do really think I've grown a lot in that, in that kind of sphere of pausing, slow down Colleen, because not really good at slowing down. And, you know, kind of dive into what they want and why they want it. So I think that's been good. Michele Hansen  24:02It can be kind of tough as like, I feel like we're both pretty enthusiastic and kind of like, like, have you ever been called bubbly? Colleen Schnettler  24:11Yeah, of course. Michele Hansen  24:11Yeah, I have been called bubbly, too. Yeah. So like, I like feel like enthusiastic people want to be like, yeah, that sounds awesome. Like, it's so, it's so counter,to like how I would interact with someone socially. Colleen Schnettler  24:25Yeah, I agree. So, so anyway, that was something, I was thinking about that when you were talking all about, you know, empathy and sympathy and psychology, is how much these kinds of factors play into product building.  Michele Hansen  24:41Yeah and building an intuitive product that, that makes sense to people. Like it's, it's really hard to build something that's intuitive because it requires understanding the user's mental model of how something works, and you can't understand their mental model unless you have, you know, really, you know, poked through every nook and cranny of how they think about it. And also seeing what are the similarities at scale across many different customers. You can't just build it for one particular person, right? Like this, I think this is like, do we want to do we want to do more definitions? Because now I'm excited to get into definitions between Human Centered Design versus activities under design. But if we are, we are feeling good on definition today, then, Colleen Schnettler  25:29I don't know what those are. Yeah, go ahead. Michele Hansen  25:32So like, you probably hear people talk about human-centered design, right? Colleen Schnettler  25:37I mean, no, but okay, I believe you, so not me.  Michele Hansen  25:40So like humans, I feel like this kind of came really into it, like, especially in, in tech in the past, like, I don't know, 10,10-15 years, like, you like, think about the human behind it. And like, this is where a lot of like, agile stories come from, is like, as an administrator, I would like to be able to update the billing page, whenever we get a new credit card, like, like, those kinds of stories that if you've worked in the corporate world, you have seen the ads of so and so like, those kind of stories. And like, creating personas, and maybe there's like a picture of a person, and there's their age, and there's like, you know, like, all of those kinds of things that's very, like human-centered designs, and you're designing for people and understanding what those people need. Then there's activity-centered design, which is designing for things that people might be trying to accomplish, but not for specific people, if that makes sense. So it's like, so if you're thinking, I just used an example of like, a billing administrator. The human-centered design approach with a persona might be you know, this is Susan, and she lives in Iowa, she has been working in insurance for 20 years, she has a dog named Charlie, like she prefers to use her iPad on the weekends, but during the week, she uses Windows like, it's like that kind of stuff. Activity-centered design would be like, when billing administrators are going through this process, they want to be able to, you know, these are the different kinds of things they're thinking about, these are the different functions that they need to be able to do. Here are the different things they might be feeling. Like, do they want to be updating a credit card? Like, how does that make them feel, like, is that, is that enjoyable for them? Is that frustrating? Like, are there other people they're working with on this? Do they need to go get a p-card from someone else? Like, what is this entire process they're going through that is independent of them as a specific person and independent of the product? And then how does the product help them get through that entire activity, either easier, faster, or cheaper.  I feel like I just dropped like,  Colleen Schnettler  27:54There's a lot.  Michele Hansen  27:54A lot.  Colleen Schnettler  27:55I'm gonna have to re-listen to that one.  Michele Hansen  27:56But basically,  Colleen Schnettler  27:57So what's the, Michele Hansen  27:58Activity-centered is kind of the approach that I take. And that's the, the approach in the book is designing a process that exists regardless of the person and regardless of the process.  Colleen Schnettler  28:10Okay. Michele Hansen  28:10The product, I think I messed that up. Colleen Schnettler  28:13Okay, so which one is better? Do you have all the answers, Michele? Tell us. Michele Hansen  28:18I am not going to throw bombs in the design world here. I mean, you know, there's, there's value in designing for specific people, right, and, and specific types of people, especially when you're talking about accessibility and whatnot. But fundamentally, you know, like, activity center design is okay, what it, what is the thing that someone's trying to accomplish? For example, 500 years ago, you may have solved, you know, entertain me at home, when I'm alone on a Saturday night with cards or dice, right. And now you might solve it with Netflix. But that fundamental process that you're going through to not be bored when you're in your house on the weekend, like, that process and that desire is relatively constant, which is the thing about activity-centered design approaches is that you're looking at a process that is consistent over time, because you're speaking to sort of broader, underlying goals. And this types of products, someone might use the different functional and social and emotional things that might be important to them are different, but the overall process is the same. And so this is what I think about a lot when we're like thinking about the process that someone is going through and designing something that's intuitive for them and building that mental model is understanding, okay, why do they need to be able to tag things and why do they need to be able to mass delete these things, and what is this overall thing they're trying to do? And it sounds like it's sort of, to feel like all of their files are organized and they can find things when they want to, and that desire to be organized is a relatively consistent desire. Colleen Schnettler  30:03Yeah, I think one of the things, one of the phrases we use at work is to surprise and delight the user. And I feel like this falls into the surprise and delight category. Like it's not necessary, but it's delightful.  Michele Hansen  30:19You just used the phrase ‘at work'. Does that mean when you are working? Or? Colleen Schnettler  30:26Oh, just when I'm, just this company that I've been contracting for for a while likes to use that phrase. Michele Hansen  30:31Okay, gotcha. Colleen Schnettler  30:32So this to me feels, Michele Hansen  30:34I didn't know if you'd suddenly gone off and gotten a full time job without telling me. Colleen Schnettler  30:39Well, I'll tell you if I do that. I may be considering that. That's like a whole ‘nother podcast episode. I feel like we don't have enough time to dive into that. Michele Hansen  30:50We'll do that in a future episode. Colleen Schnettler  30:52Colleen's life decisions. But yeah, so, this feature, I feel like, is delightful. And when we talk about like design, you know, in the context, you were just saying, I think it does fit into the, the latter category. Michele Hansen  31:10Yeah. And I can, I can understand how someone, or you might even, or probably, I feel like if we had talked about this, like, six months or a year ago, the reaction kind of would be like, this feels like we're really splitting hairs over something that's super obvious, and why don't I just go build it? Colleen Schnettler  31:29Well, yeah, Michele Hansen  31:30Which, I think it's a very understandable reaction. Colleen Schnettler  31:34Yeah, I mean, I think the problem I'm having, and I know everyone in my position has this problem. It's just, there's just not enough time to do all these things. Like, one part of me wants to take like six months and just do all the things, right? And then the other part of me wants to balance my life with building this business, and is trying to be patient with, with my constraints as a human. So I know, you know, everyone has those, that struggle, everyone who's working and trying to do this. But yeah, I'd love to add all these things. Like, I want to do all the things of course I do. Michele Hansen  32:10Speaking of which, building the business, we started this episode with my numbers update. Do you want to give us a little numbers update before we go? Colleen Schnettler  32:31So I do want to tell a little story about this. Storytime. So, someone who's kind of a prominent bootstrapper had a tweet the other day about how for his SaaS, he just implemented file uploading using some JavaScript library, and it took him like, I don't know, like a day. So not an insignificant amount of time, but not a huge amount of time. It's a long time if you're a developer to take all day. But I saw, so, like, I saw his tweet, and I was like, oh, like, why didn't he use Simple File Upload? Like, clearly my product is crap. Okay, so this happened at like 9am. So then, like, later in the day, this just happened a couple days ago, I went to see if I had any new signups. And as you know, like, I've been pretty flat for like two or three weeks now, signups have been pretty flat. So, in one day, I got $325 boost in my MRR. One day. Michele Hansen  33:19What? Colleen Schnettler  33:20That has never happened in the history of my product, like ever. I was like, whoa. Michele Hansen  33:25So did someone Tweet it, like, add it to that thread, or, like what happened? Colleen Schnettler  33:29No, no one added it to the thread. And I didn't add it to the thread because he was clearly looking for a non-paid solution. So it seems like it wasn't that he hated my product or it was bad, he just wasn't looking for this kind of solution I was offering. I don't really know what happened. But a whole bunch of people signed up. Michele Hansen  33:50These two things happened on the same day, and you don't have any conclusively linking them, but it feels suspicious that they wouldn't be linked. Colleen Schnettler  34:00It's super weird, right?  Michele Hansen  34:01Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  34:02Um, so I am trying to like, I'm just really starting to try and get into, like, Google Analytics and understand that. Anyway, so that was, my point of that story is like, you know, this is, we're never bored. I'm never bored, right? Like one day, I'm like, this thing is miserable. The next day, I'm like, I'm the most brilliant person in the world. Like, it's never, it's never boring. I guess my point of that story was it's all over the place. I'm all over the place with, with this product. And some days I feel like it's just not, not as good as it should be. Some days I feel like I'm charging too much. And then other days I have, like I realized I have, there's all this power in this thing I built that no one is utilizing. So that's something I really want to spend some time getting some content going out there and spend some time, like, showing people why it's more powerful than, than, you know, other solutions they've been using. Michele Hansen  34:58You seem really fired up.  Colleen Schnettler  35:00I am. I, I've just had like, a, it's been, like, a really good week. I mean, from a work perspective. And although I didn't get to spend the time, you know, I got, okay. I don't have a lot of time to spend on the product the next month or so, so I'm just taking it in little bits, right. And so this week, it's a tiny thing, but someone pointed out to me, and I think this also plays into psychology. Okay, so my marketing site is built in Tailwind UI. My application site is built off of Bootstrap. Bootstrap and Tailwind are not friends. I can't just throw Tailwind into my Bootstrap site. Michele Hansen  35:37If it makes you feel better, the Geocodio dashboard was on Bootstrap, and the Geocodio marketing website was on Railwind for, like, a really long time, like, like, you, like, we were on the like, 2013 version of Bootstrap for, like, a very long time. And it wasn't until like maybe six months or a year ago that we actually got them both on Tailwind. So you're not the only one. Okay, so back to yours. Colleen Schnettler  36:06So this. Okay, so if you are on my marketing site, and you click through to sign up to get the free trial, here's the thing that happens. The nav bars are different. Michele Hansen  36:17Mmm.  Colleen Schnettler  36:18Yeah, it's not good, and someone pointed it out to me. They were like, oh, I had to click back and forth a few times to make sure it was still the same application. And I was like, oh, my goodness. And so I can't, but it was like, it was, so it's just this visual thing. But this he pointed out, he was like, you know, that's, that made me think I was at the wrong place, it might make me close the window. Michele Hansen  36:40Yeah it might make them think something was wrong, or, like, they accidentally got led off to another site that wasn't the right one. And like, maybe it's, like, phishing or something, like. Colleen Schnettler  36:50Exactly, that's exactly what this guy said. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And so, so my, my Simple File Upload technical accomplishment this week, was basically like, and because I can't, my application is pretty complicated. I can't just pull out Bootstrap and drop in Tailwind. That's gonna take me forever. So I actually, like, just stole, stole is the wrong word. I grabbed some of the Tailwind styles and just over, you know, and overrode my Bootstrap styles just for the navbar. So anyway, the point is, now the nav bars look the same. And it's like, it sounds like a small thing. But like, I think the mental block for, if you sign up and I drop you to a totally different site, you're like, wait, what?  Michele Hansen  37:29Like, yeah, it's like, something is, like, the brain is a little bit like, danger, something is different. Colleen Schnettler  37:34Yeah, exactly. So, so another, so it was another big CSS week for me, which is not my forte, but I got it.  Michele Hansen  37:41I wrote JavaScript this week, which is not my forte. Colleen Schnettler  37:46Oh, jack of all trades.  Michele Hansen  37:48Well, we wrote stuff that, that's not our forte, and you're going back and forth between feeling like it's amazing and you've built something super powerful. And then, also feeling like it's, really has a long way to go, and is it ever going to get there, which, honestly, is how I feel, like, I feel the exact same way about my book. Like, every day, it's like, oh, my God, this is a hot mess. And then I'm like, actually, this is amazing and I should just publish it now. Like, I think that's, I think that's just like part of building something, whether it's a book or you know, software. I mean, yeah. Colleen Schnettler  38:31And honestly, I think it's part of the fun. Like, I honestly do, like I, it makes it interesting. Like, I've worked jobs that are really boring, and they're really boring. Like, this is way more exciting.Michele Hansen  38:52I think that's the thing I love about being an entrepreneur is that it's always different. And sometimes it's different in ways that are super boring and require a lot of paperwork. And sometimes it's different in ways that are like, super awesome, and exciting. But the fact that it is so different all the time is, is what makes it fun and makes me feel like I get to, like, feel lucky that I get to do this as my job.  On that note, perhaps we should sign off for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on iTunes or tweet at us. We love hearing what you think about it. Have a good one.

放送日：2021/5/25（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／RAISE A FLAG（レイズアフラッグ）パンクロック・スキンヘッドバンドRAISE A FLAG Official Site『難攻不落』スペシャル！！ゲスト／THE DiSCLAPTiESarai69（Vo.Gt）The-Disclaptiesgyouninvenへんみ（Main Speaker / G..

放送日：2021/5/18（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。☆パーソナリティー／鳴海真奈美（役者）鳴海真奈美 (@nrmn524) | Twitter☆パーソナリティー／晴森みき（役者）Twitter☆パーソナリティー／北垣達弘（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kitawo☆パーソナリティー／青木 奏（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kanak..

放送日：2021/5/11（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／千本 優（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@YuuYuu0322)パーソナリティー／石川 櫻（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@sakura_blossom5)【メニュー】☆フリートーク／優＆櫻の緊急発表！☆フリートーク／ゲストさんを振り返る☆おもコワ話☆いまどん..

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放送日：2021/4/27（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／RAISE A FLAG（レイズアフラッグ）パンクロック・スキンヘッドバンドRAISE A FLAG Official Siteゲスト／the Floppy-Pinkiesウチダクミコ（Gt,Vo）　セクシー鈴木（Ｂａ）floppypinkies HPfloppypinkies | Facebookflop..

放送日：2021/4/20（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。☆パーソナリティー／鳴海真奈美（役者）鳴海真奈美 (@nrmn524) | Twitter☆パーソナリティー／晴森みき（役者）Twitter☆パーソナリティー／北垣達弘（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kitawo☆パーソナリティー／青木 奏（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kanak..

What's Going on everyone! What?! two podcast in one week that's crazy.Intro: 00:00Deer's are suicide bombers: 02:00I love art: 10:10The Most Obscure Gender Reveal Party: 21:20Jeff Wittek: 28:50Follow the Podcast Instagram (@youmightbesurprised): https://www.instagram.com/youmightbesurprised/

放送日：2021/4/13（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／千本 優（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@YuuYuu0322)パーソナリティー／石川 櫻（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@sakura_blossom5)ゲスト丹羽真大（シンガーソングライター）【メニュー】☆respect choice☆ゲストバージョンチョ..

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放送日：2021/3/30（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。【伝説のだだん会1時間スペシャル！！】パーソナリティー／北垣達弘（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kitawo青木 奏（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kanakanachandゲスト／高木謙成（声優）高木謙成＠田中家放送中！(＠seizann1)・Twitter川野辺澪（シンガーソン..

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放送日：2021/3/16（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。☆パーソナリティー／鳴海真奈美（役者）鳴海真奈美 (@nrmn524) | Twitter☆パーソナリティー／晴森みき（役者）Twitter☆パーソナリティー／北垣達弘（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kitawo☆パーソナリティー／青木 奏（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kanak..

放送日：2021/3/9（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／千本 優（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@YuuYuu0322)パーソナリティー／石川 櫻（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@sakura_blossom5)ゲストトルストイ（シンガーソングライター）Twitte　Official Website6曲入りアルバム各..

★ 第305回放送放送日：2021/3/2（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／空翔ぶアリガトリオARIGATO YUINAオフィシャルサイト山下ユウタ Twitterダーマ Twitterゲスト／鈴木心理（タップダンサー）鈴木心理 (@suzukishinri) · Twitter【メニュー】☆respect choice～友達の友達はほぼ友達 ☆割とガチゲーム！☆僕..

放送日：2021/2/23（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／RAISE A FLAG（レイズアフラッグ）パンクロック・スキンヘッドバンドゲスト／Killer Queen佐藤氏（Ba）/ 岩田リョーヘイ氏（Dr）Killer Queen | Facebook【メニュー】☆メンバーフリートーク☆関口正夫の新譜紹介☆ゲストコーナー☆ライブ情報 【オンエア曲】☆RAISE ..

放送日：2021/2/16（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。今回はまなみんがお休み( ；∀；)だけどなんとサプライズが...！？☆パーソナリティー／鳴海真奈美（役者）鳴海真奈美 (@nrmn524) | Twitter☆パーソナリティー／晴森みき（役者）Twitter☆パーソナリティー／北垣達弘（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kitawo☆パーソナリティー／青木..

In this episode I talk about how I was so excited to go on my first date in over a year....but then I got stood up. I also talk about Chris Deilas "its been awhile video" and then I wrap up the episode talking about how crazy Texas is now.Intro: 00:00I got Stood up: 02:05Chris Delia Reaction: 10:27Texas: 19:08FOLLOW ME AND THE PODCAST: https://linktr.ee/youmightbesurprised

放送日：2021/2/9（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／千本 優（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@YuuYuu0322)パーソナリティー／石川 櫻（ラジオパーソナリティー、アナウンサー）Twitter(@sakura_blossom5)ゲスト樹菜里（シンガーソングライター）樹菜里オフィシャル (@kinari_official) | Twi..

放送日：2021/2/2（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。パーソナリティー／空翔ぶアリガトリオARIGATO YUINAオフィシャルサイト山下ユウタ Twitterダーマ Twitter【メニュー】☆フリートーク／自粛中になにしてた？☆割とガチゲーム！☆僕たちのオススメ☆みんなでいっとけ、面スポ！☆僕たちのお悩み☆告知せずにはいられない【オンエア曲】☆中山うり／月とラクダの夢を見た☆..

放送日：2021/1/26（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。【３００回放送記念！！】パーソナリティー／RAISE A FLAG（レイズアフラッグ）パンクロック・スキンヘッドバンド【メニュー】☆リスナーが決める 2020年RAISE A FLAG ベスト5 【オンエア曲】☆ASSEMBLY☆BEST 5☆BEST 4☆BEST 3☆BEST 2☆BEST 1本放送で使用した一部楽曲は、..

放送日：2021/1/19（火）21:00～22:00I & U-LaLa FM（83.0MHｚ） 「INDIES NIGHT」で放送されたダイジェスト。☆パーソナリティー／鳴海真奈美（役者）鳴海真奈美 (@nrmn524) | Twitter☆パーソナリティー／晴森みき（役者）Twitter☆パーソナリティー／北垣達弘（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kitawo☆パーソナリティー／青木 奏（声優・役者）https://twitter.com/kanak..

JB:Dan Tyre founding team member of HubSpot Employee #6 joining in 2007 and first sales person. Held various positions in sales, management, recruiting, training and more.  He also created the term SMARKETING to help create alignment between sales and marketing.  Dan mentors so many reps aside from asking others to go mentor others and pay it forward.  Check out his best-selling book,Inbound Organization.  Learn from his experience working at 2 person startups to organizations of 45,000 people. Dan:BOOOOOOOOM!JB:You’ve had such an interesting career working with so many different people and recently training agency partners at scale on how to sell and grow their businesses. How did you get into sales?DT:Desperation.  Sold books door to door to work my way through college. Went to Colgate university in 1976 and didn’t have a lot of money, couldn’t go back sophomore year unless he made $5K. Southwestern Corporation, Nashville, TN. As long as I can make $5 grand, I’m in! Incredible sales experience.  COMMISSION ONLY! Sent to Bellingham, WA.  95% of people quit. I couldn’t quit because I didn’t have enough money to get back home.  I had to consult with bank Presidents to gas station attendants and it was a fantastic introduction to the sales process. We read Tommy Hopkins and learned consultative selling. I was a slow percolator and it took me a while to get it.  I was out in the field 2 weeks and I was scared, would fumble through stuff and didn’t have high confidence. A lady took me in, gave me a cookie as I stumbled through my sales pitch and said SHE WOULD BUY! Took the $25 and ran to McDonald’s to eat my first meal in a week!Door to door selling carrying his Dictionaries in a rolling case. Building rapport, at the time had to “wait for my husband to come home” DAN → that’s exactly what your neighbor said….Ms Joyce said the same thing, but realized she could spend the $$ because it’s her kids education → now his customers were ready to buy showing proof of sales from their neighbors. Last month using that strategy closed 40% of people after everyone knew him and got a deposit from most people! First year Individual Contributor $5,0002nd year 9 guys recruited, got a cut from that , 7 quit, 2 stayed and made $8 grand!Junior year went to Vegas playing pokerGraduated college in 1980  from Colgate University Played bass in heavy metal rock and roll band Being a bass player is a great foundation for being a great business person1982 tired of making $25/week - 14 computer stores in BostonWalked in to Computer Store, Roger Lund gave him a shot and Dan became #1 sales person in 3 monthsRoger left for Startup, wanted to take Dan with him and would pay dan $1,500/year more. Now Dan’s a startup guy!1983 left for Business Land $3Milllion next 9 years grew to $1.4 BILLION 10:00 Dan started as Rep → Sales Manager for 9 months → General Manager → LA ran 6 locations → San Fran training reps → NYC= 35% of corporate revenueBible = ART OF SELLING by Tommy Hopkins“I got addicted to hypergrowth”Back in the 1980’s and everyone had to buy computers. Talk to accountants and they WOULD CRY seeing how easy it made their life!The way you sold computers is you would put a sign out and people would come byMarried 31 YEARS! Dan all energy and enthusiasm, his wife Amy is the smart one and she was a great sellerAfter 9 years at Business Land. Started his own company as CEO scaled to $30 Million as a professional services locationBought training company that went Bankrupt, was AWESOME (learning)! Had to tell employees and their locations and tell people he had no money.  Learned humility at 40 and to always have a contingency plan4th startup, Groove Networks, bought out by Microsoft, his VP of Sales was Brian HalliganGot a call when Brian & Dharmesh wanted to start HubSpot because he had great energy and was the best salesperson they met!Mark Roberge - Sales Acceleration Formula - VP of Sales at HubSpotDidn’t miss our number for the first 27 months at HubSpot and everything I knew about selling and business changed completely after I joined HubSpot!15:00“I am by far the luckiest guy in the world, I’ve had dinner with Bob Marley,  taught Steve Tyler how to fire his manager met Muhammed Ali,  and met with  president’s. Things happen to me and it’s because I have a positive Mindset”“You’re (enter your name here), you can do anything”  It’s my mantra, I say it to 4,000 people in the world! Do you have an identical twin? No? Well then YOU ARE THE ONLY YOU OUT THERE!You can do anything, the key is to figure out what you want to do and WRITE IT DOWNIn 2020 we set goals and work backwardsMindset- you first need to believe you can do it, then you must know WHAT you want to doThis must be written downWrite out what you wantDantyre.comSucceed: How We Reach Our Goals by Heidi Halverson Why Goals?  What Goals?Written down goals are more effective, people are healthierMindset is 99% of SalesMy Prospecting now is usually in front of 100 people down at Stetson University - gotta raise $$ for crew to get a new boat“I’m Dan Tyre, I can do anything”“This Guy is Gonna Pickup and make a donation to your crew program!” They think he’s insane for picking up the phone, let alone believing he is going to get the $$!What kind of donation do you want?  I don’t know, what are you comfortable with? $100! A tremendous and wonderful feeling!“I look at the phone and say this person is going to pick up and I have some level of skills obviously, but this is MINDSET”JB: Was there a point where that mindset came about or did you always have it?DT:What I learned selling books and in my entrepreneurial experience is 99% of success is what we call a Growth Mindset. Never had a problem speaking in front of 10 people, even when I was an average speaker I knew I was going to get there, I was Bruce Springsteen early on, because “Nobody outworks Dan Tyre”All the young people think they can outwork the old man. I don’t drink so I’m full of energyI’ve got the positive mindset while young people are still working on itWhen I was growing up, when you turned 60, you diedNow Warren Buffet is 90, so he’s my new model and I have 18 years left, it’s going to be awesome!Dan Tyre 2.0 = Smart, empathetic, willing to helpMy Mantra = Do The Most Good For the UniverseThere’s nothing that’s better than having gratitude for where we are25:00I’m still at HubSpot because I love working with these young people straight out of collegeThe key is Proper Mindset, define what you want to doI’m not the smartest, wow there are so many smart people I’ve learned from and been supported by!How to engage sales people if they need re-engagement I’m your confidence before you have confidenceEveryone goes through their twists and turns When you eat the big dog, CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES! When the big dog eats you, you can’t wallow, you have to do recovery and understand this is a part of anyone's sales lifeThe Mental Mindset is; I’m at the top of the charts all the time and Nobody is going to outwork meWe’re top 2% because we will outwork everyone At a certain place in my life it wasn’t competitive with anyone else and it was being competitive with myselfGrowth mindset, you’re always improving.  There are things I can always be doing better and learning“I’m like a teenage girl, I just talk on the phone everyday”The great thing  30:005 things  Make sure you:Take Care of the Basics; Eat, Sleep & ExerciseGet a good playlist!You have to have a Vision BoardSSP = Shameless Self PromotionFind 3 people  that will tell you 10 great things about yourself when the big dog eats you!I can be your confidence before you have it. Some people are mental giants that can do things that I can’t do. My best attribute is I’m stubborn, you can’t beat someone that won’t quit35:00JB: As you’ve had a chance to train, mentor, coach thousands of sales people over the years.  What is the biggest hurdle you’ve seen?DT:People don’t understand how important it is.  If you don’t have your mindset ready it’s hard to win. You’re gonna stink for 30,60 sometimes 6 months.  Roleplay can accelerate it. But the only way you get good is PRACTICE.Once slow percolators get it, and they have a good process, the are locked in!The whole foundation of HubSpot & Inbound Revolution is sales has changed, used to be all about sales people and now it’s all about the customerAlways Be Closing is Dead, How To Always Be HelpingIf someone calls you to sell you something, or help you with something. Which one would you like to talk to?40:00The Riches are in the nichesBack in the old days you could be OK as a generalist, now it’s time to be a specialistStart with a nicheDo your researchNow you can figure out what they needWhat’s the 3 things I can help you solve that you’d buy me a breakfast sandwich next time I’m there? If I can help with 3 things, then we’ll do business or I can send them to someone who will help betterJB: You mention empathy, how do people build that?DT: Women are better at empathy than me.  Women are better at life than men!Give $10 to a man, they buy beer and get drunk.  Give $10 to a woman they buy diapers for the whole village. Women are better listenersGuys are taught to BS and push through, women are taught to socialize and are betterEmpathy builds better alignment. You can be encouraging when you know what they’re trying to accomplish. “I don’t care if you buy.  What can I do to help?”Empathy of understanding what it’s like to be in your prospects shoes. 45:00It’s harder to be a young adult now. When I was growing up I did so many dopey things and nobody knew about it.  It’s so hard now because everyone is judging and can see everything you’ve done.“Once you get to be 62 you realize none of this shit matters!”The only thing that matters is your relationships“The secret of life is strong relationships” - Warren BuffettRealize the more you help people, the more gratitude you have for your situationI made the decision I want to help people because that turns me onIt used to be; have fun, make money and learn stuff. NOW what I want to do is doing that for others!JB: More women coming into sales is so helpful and so many that helped meDT: Sales has always paid women similar to men because it would be crazy not to!  There are so many women who are great in sales and HubSpot is working so hard to reflect the demographics of women we sell to.  The folks from HubSpot like Katie Burke and others are doing so much good for the universe. www.DanTyre.com I stole my mantra from my kid, Eli. JB: What should someone do as a first time sales manager?55:00DT:It’s like being a new parent, there are new skills you’ve got to learn. You’re working with human beingsGo back to the beginning; learn about recruiting, interviewing, motivation, management, building trust, forecasting,  product, managing up/down and there is a TON of stuff you’ve got to learn. Sales management is the most difficult position in the company because sales people are weird.  They are numbers driven, highly emotional and all in their brain. In sales I always want HIGH TRUST.  How do I build trust with you? What kind of manager do you want me to be? → GO FIGURE IT OUTOne Minute ManagerYou don’t have trust in any relationship, you don’t have squatGot a problem. Do you have good problem definition? What’s your solution? → Go figure it outNew reps MY POTHOLE LIST - 3 things getting in your way?Secret of life, define what you want to do and then work as hard as you want to do with people to get there. Links:Dan TyreInbound OrganizationDan on HubSpot BlogLinkedInTwitter: @dantyreInstagram: Dtyre1One Minute ManagerAlways Be Closing is Dead, How To Always Be HelpingHow to engage sales people if they need re-engagement SucceedART OF SELLING by Tommy Hopkins

Special Guest: Anthony EisenmanJoin the Fresh Thought Friday - Newsletter at joealexlemon.workThe Real Value Exchange podcast aspires to inspire people to lead with gratitude.  Every meaningful human interaction is an exchange of ideas, values, and experiences.SHOW SPONSOR: MailBox Power: https://mailboxpower.com/joelemonLet's Connect Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joealexlemon/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joealexlemon/SC LinkedIn Sales Culture Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sales-cultureWebsite: JoeAlexLemon.workSUMMARY KEYWORDSpeople, sales, man, deal, selling, buyer, talk, learn, years, business, absolutely, social pressures, ROI, school, product, decision-makers, continue, actual, customers, organization00:00I followed your IG, and I was just impressed by how you're moving. I saw that you definitely kind of know what you're doing in sales. You've been doing it for some years, it seems like, and then so I was like, I want to talk to all the sales experts out there for one, so I can selflessly learn. And then to sign and try to get whatever game I can back to the actual audience as well, man. Welcome on to the podcast, brother.00:43Yeah, man, I'm excited to be here. I'm the same way. Listen, I think you know, all the true sales professionals out there, they all can kind of spot another winner when they see one. I know there's many people that kind of fake the funk if you want to say it that way. And real, you know, recognize real real.So the same way as you, I'm always learning, always trying to grow. So you know, I've been able to do the same watching your content. So I appreciate you. And yeah, anything that we can give back to the audience man to help them. You know, that's what we're here for.01:12100% man 100% man, you know, so, you know, um, I just want to kind of dive right in with you, man. Because we were going down this path. We're talking about how you relocated up north, man, and you know, you're in one of the wild cities, bro. Like, I mean, LA is wild. We have a wild man, man, and we got a wild mayor, our mayor is off-chain. But Seattle's a little interesting as well. You know, you guys have exciting things. Pros and cons. Either way, right? Like, I mean, I'm not one to sit here and say 100% one way versus the other. I think there's; you can find useful and a lot of it right. But you know, trying to be at your best during this time is a challenge because you still have life. Right? You have kids, you still do other things, right? You still got a man in the household, you know, life is still happening with the other things, right? Um, you know, man, I would love to kind of press into that today. But first and foremost, you have to give everybody some background on yourself. Give us a context, man. How long have you been making sales? What do you love about sales? What do you sell?02:14Yeah, man. Yeah,02:15we'll get into all the other stuff. It's a crazy time. And, you know, give the audience a little context. We're just still in the middle of COVID-19. You know, it's what Joe's talking about? What a social injustice still going on. And we're in the middle of an election year. So it's crazy. And I am in Seattle, and we'll kind of get into that. But as far as on the sales side, man, I've been doing it for 20 years. You know, my background is, you know, I barely graduated high school. I was working at a fast-food restaurant. You know, after high school, all my friends were going to college. You know, I was a knucklehead. My dad went to jail for 13 years; you know, I was raised a single mom. So I was just wiling out, really. And, you know, it came to a point where I was like, you know, what am I going to do with my life? Right? Yeah, you know, work flipping hot dogs are the rest of my life. And I realized, like, Listen, I was at a point where I was never going to be a doctor and never going to be an attorney or whatever those quote-unquote so-called, like high-income earners what we're taught, right, so I, I tried to04:05I started selling vacuum cleaners door to door, but man talk about being in the trenches. That's where you learn, right? Where you learn04:11it man, that's how you learn it now just so the audience knows. I sell products and services to large organizations. I work with fortune 100 fortune 500 companies have a large shareholder in a privately held company that I've done that I've been with for the past ten years I managed about $15 million worth of business and work with some of the biggest brands in the world man. Now I teach people how to do personal branding and then how to you know, to manage their high income, you know, that you can earn from sales, so that's pretty much it.04:43I love it.04:44I love your background. I love the opening. I love the story. I love we're just conversations about the Go man because, you know myself, I was a knucklehead. Like I was a knucklehead born, born knucklehead stubborn, you know, did all this stuff. And at some point, I was just like, wait, and I need to make some money then and actually get this going. And one of the reasons I even like doing sales culture is because I tried to show people who didn't go to college, I went to college for eight years, because I was just cutting up, you know, I just had parties, and I was the guy throwing stuff. And then I was like the old guy in college. But, um, but but but man, I love talking to people that have that background, because people that have those exciting things that happen early in their life, you know, sales is a great profession to press into, because sales get such a bad rap man, as you know, but it's like one of those things, every business needs it. Like people get into this thing. I don't want to be like a used car salesman, like, you know, sales, you know, I don't want to be salesy.05:43What does that mean?05:44I understand what that means. I get it. But it is also a thing where it's like, but every business needs it. Right? And it's disruptive.05:54Other stigmas behind it, too, but sorry. Yeah,05:57No, like, you're not you, you hit the nail on the head, like nothing happens until something makes a sale. Those are the most critical people in any organization are the ones who can drive revenue, significantly if you can drive revenue in a in a down market or in a down climate or whatever the hell we're going through right now. Right? You know that the low top below 10% of sales reps have gotten cut, right? Because you know, they couldn't make it. So the top sales reps are going to continue to drive revenue, continue to get creative. And then yeah, man. And the second piece here of what you said is the most significant limiting belief of any sales rep is that they think they're coming off too pushy, right? And it's just for the audience. And this is a gym, it's like, Listen, you just have to flip your mindset, you're not there selling, you're not here to sell things, you're here to help people, right. And if you really believe in your product, and if you can build an ROI. And if you can help people increase productivity or, you know, lower costs, or you know, give them less stress or whatever your product service does, then you would be doing a disservice by not trying to at least educate them on how you can help them you know what I'm saying?07:02Love it. Love man 100%? i, man, I'm wrong with it. What products and services are you selling right now to be exact? This will be to have some ideas is asking. So, yes,07:12so the company that I'm a large shareholder in, we sell security integration. So if you go into a large organization, you know, like maybe like a retail store, you know, that has 1000 locations across the country, or maybe there's a large coffee shop, you may have, you know, steam that has, you know, stores on every corner and or large banks that have 1000s of locations across the country, right. So these companies, they need security, integration tools, whether those servers are cameras, and these, these are smart tools where they can integrate with their point of sale, and they can integrate, you know, with with other devices in the in the store, and then, you know, you can build analytics and help them with their operational efficiencies and things like that. But we take them, and we scale them across the entire organization. Your exponentially growing revenue, because you're not selling it into one or two locations selling into 1000. Right? You exponentially are solving more significant problems, right. And you're which exponentially increases your commissions, because you're you know, you're selling more revenue. But along with that comes, you know, more significant problems you have to deal with on the sales side.08:22100% man, so so you know, I'm curious, did you graduate from college?08:27Yeah, I did. I did. I graduated from college. And then I actually went back afterward and got a master's in business communication as well. Love that.26:15The cream always rises to the top man. You can't beat it. You can't fool the game. I've been focusing on. It's helping my customers, helping salespeople, and just you know, trying to give value to the world man, and it's it's come back you know, tenfold man I'm blessed. Grateful and you know we're doing okay man can't complain.26:46Well, Anthony, man, keep on rocking, brother but please everybody how to find you as well. I'm going to have the other link. And that's your show notes. But But it is all that good stuff.26:54Yeah, man. I do all most of my dirty work on it, man. So Anthony Eisenman is een man, you can go there. Always free content dropping daily. And then the link in my bio is a cold call Inc, which is my website. And you can go there and get all kinds of free. Free value content as well, man, so you can find me on Ig

In this episode of Wine, Women, and Revolution, Heather interviews Atlantic City activist Henry Green. They talk about everything from Henry's run for office, to cannabis legalization, to the Green Party, to Steve Young and the Expressway 7. Henry also highlights his new show AC 411 where he is back with his longtime friend and media partner Kevin Hall from The Kevin Hall Show Program. They were off the air for a little while but they are back and just as good as ever. Its always a pleasure to hear Henry's thoughts about how Atlantic City should be the shining jewel it deserves to be. Like always, it comes down to having people looking to serve the city. Henry is a true servant of the people. Transcript Auto Generated Henry Green 0:00I'm still trying to do to be passionate about the things I'm passionate about still trying to have the positive spirit that that I was that my mother instilled in me. Moving forward despite the conflicts and the battles and the ups and downs of life. Heather Warburton 0:19This is Wine Women and Revolution with your host, Heather Warburton. Hi, and welcome to Wine Women and Revolution. I'm your host Heather Warburton coming at you here on our new home of Create Your Future Productions and loving my new home here and I figured it was time to catch up with an old friend on my new network. If you followed me back in the days, you know, I had on a couple of times Mr. Henry Hank Green and when he ran for mayor I supported and endorsed him. And now it's probably been a long time since we've talked Henry. How long have you been? Henry Green 0:58Oh man, it's been too long. It's been too long. I'm happy to just feel your spirit, that feels like you feel like you happy I was looking at your pictures the other day your anniversary. That was really cute. Heather Warburton 1:09Yeah, we took I needed a vacation so badly. I just needed some relaxation. So that was good. Henry Green 1:18It was cool, though. Man. I really like those pictures of the tux Heather Warburton 1:26So everybody knows what I've been doing. I've been launching this new network, but what have you been up to? You've been a busy man too, right? Henry Green 1:33Well, kinda sorta. It's, um, it's been kind of hectic. This virus, this pandemic coronavirus, has changed our lives completely and how things have been going. And it's really, it's been really frustrating. And it's been bad, it really hasn't been good. A lot of good people that I've known. And I've passed on throughout this process. And it hasn't been good. You know, I mean, for for a lot of people that I know, and you know, things like that. But what we can do is just keep moving forward and try to move forward. I keep trying to be positive, optimistic. I mean, about what's to come in the future, something something. Oh, it's been hard man, you know, man, I've been in a depression battling depression and all this stuff. And it's been difficult. But what you know, I've always been told is that you know me, when you fall down, you know, I mean, long as you get back up, you know, what I mean? You know, that's all you can do, really, at the end of the day, so we get back up. I'm swinging again, and trying to take my best step forward and build on some things far from where I would like to be physically, mentally, and everything, At the end of the day, but I'm still trying to do, to be passionate about the things I'm passionate about still trying to have a positive spirit that, that I was, that my mother instilled in me to keep moving forward, despite the conflicts, or the battles and ups and downs of life. And, and, and just be honest to yourself, and be honest about whatever it is that you're doing. You know, I'm being honest right now. And so with that, you know, we try, I tried to do some positive things me and my friend Kevin Hall,

This Week's Topics:Why Mail-in Voting will NOT Decide the Election 4:30Why we will know the Winner on Election Day 7:00Why it is HIGHLY Likely the Trump wins BIG 9:00These Numbers Prove Trump will Win 11:00Zogby Proves the Polls are Propaganda 15:40“Trumplicans” must vote Down Ticket 18:30Go get YOUR Ohio County Slate Card 20:30Vote Early IN-PERSON at BOE 22:30Hand out Slate Cards at BOE 23:30Absentee Ballot Issues Continue 24:00Clarification on State Board of Education 26:00I will be Speaking in Newark on October 21st 27:30Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation 30:0085% of People who Get Covid - WEAR MASKS 31:00DeWine's Policies are Totally Debunked 33:009,000 Doctors Demand We Change Course 34:00WHO Says Lockdowns are WRONG 35:00Fauci is a MADMAN who needs to be Fired 38:00Joe Biden has a Hunter Biden Problem 42:00Bruce Ohr retires to avoid Disciplinary Action 44:30Trump rightfully says he may Fire AG Bill Barr 45:30Republicans are Bribed to Protect Big Tech 46:00FCC Appointment is KEY first step 47:00Watch the “Social Dilemma” on Netflix 49:00Senate Subpoenas Big Tech Execs AGAIN 52:30Wittmer Kidnap Plotters were Antifa & BLM 53:30Staten Island Trump Group Punks the Left 55:30

brandon handley00:08All right. Very cool. 00:10Very cool. Well, they'll start it off in 54321 Hey there, spiritual dope. I'm on today with Cody rain Cody rain is like he's a master of all kinds of marketing. He's got the mantas programs got this podcast visceral human 00:27He has a course creators Academy that's powered by the mantas program you're looking to get into video 00:33Code is your guy, he's got the Hitchhiker's Guide to video. He's got so much other he's got so much going on. I personally kind of wonder like how you keep it all together. But you know, it's obvious to me that you've got a system of implementation. 00:46And you just kind of rock it out because you do have your systems in place, but man, thanks for joining us today. How you doing, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program00:52Hey, thank you so much brother is such a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Man systems in life so many things that we, I love that you talk about systems because we are a system. 01:04We are a series of processes that are constantly executing. We're taking a new devil data developing it, we are processing that data, making decisions utilizing our power of choice and for me. 01:17My brain has been really scattered my whole life, because we'll just say ADHD and all these other random things. And so for me, systems and all that stuff is very, very, I don't want to say it's necessary, but it is important. 01:31And so for me, kind of having that structure is, you know, the one way you do one thing is what you do everything so 01:39I structure my life. 01:40And that reflects in my business man. So with that, yeah, I got a lot going down constantly emotion constantly thinking about the things that a lot of people tend to ignore. 01:50And I appreciate you for having me, man. Today is the best day of my life and I'm so excited. I get to share it with you. brandon handley01:55Now, man. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I always tell people I've waited my entire life for this moment right 02:01Right. 02:01I mean, because here we are. I mean we everything's everything's built up to this moment. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program02:04Yeah. brandon handley02:05As far as we know, right up until now. 02:07So, so, you know, I think you started off with something pretty well there and and i think it would tie into this piece, but I'm gonna go ahead and ask this piece anyways because it may may hit you differently, right. So, 02:19We, we agree, like the kind of universe speaks through us. Right. And that like when somebody listens to this podcast. It's gonna 02:26They're gonna hear something that you and I didn't even hear right in between our dial. I think like that these guys, this is what they're talking about. Oh my god. So to that person through you today. What, what message do they need to hear me to the universe. 02:42The universe, Dorian, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program02:43Hey, yo. Gotcha. Man, if I was to speak to anybody. My message to 02:48Everyone at all times. It is, isn't it, it is oneness to what happens when I'm sorry what's most important is what's happening right this very second right this second. 03:03In a perfect kind of will say execution of that or example is I woke up today. 03:08And pleasure to be here right woke up. It's amazing. And for whatever reason, had a song stuck in my head. I don't remember my dreams or anything, per se, but I do remember waking up with a feeling 03:19But then I also remember kind of surrendering to the thoughts and then I put on some music wasn't sure what was going to play and that first song just 03:26Just hit man, it means so well you know when music hits you, that you don't feel any pain. 03:33And so it hit me really hard and I had to kind of surrender to the moment and allow myself to remove judgment to remove you know will say the permissions. I might be asking for to express myself. 03:48And I just stood in the middle of the room in his eyes closed and just listen to this song and try to express myself, honestly. 03:57And I'm just in a moment. Man, am I thinking about what's going on for the rest of day. I'm not worried about what happened to me. I'm not worried about the projects and backlogs and clients and business. None of that stuff. 04:09I'm seriously just being one with the moments just looking at it, breathing filling my heart rate feeling this my skin. The breeze from the fan above me. 04:20And I'm just in the moment and I went to the mirror. I looked at myself and for whatever reason, I looked at myself a little bit longer than normal. It's one thing to recognize yourself. 04:31To experience your reflection. But for me, I felt like I was looking into a whole nother world but connecting at the same time. And I realized that Cody, you're not wasting time. You're seriously experiencing the illusion of it. 04:48And so it was that moment the today this morning that I was so in the moments in the expression. I was actually practicing dynamic freedom. 05:02My ability to do anything and being honest and real with who I am today right is second. And I'm thinking about these things. And I realized 05:13Cody, those, those thoughts are in your head, because that's what you actually want to do. Those are the things that you're interested in. 05:18Go outside man do these things. There's no restrictions practices, man. Get in the moment be more in the moment. And that's why once again today is the best day of my life, brother. brandon handley05:31I love that I actually, I interviewed a you know a transformational coach last night. She's been been at the work for quite some time. And one of the first pieces that she has somebody do 05:44You know she she she coaches, people who are on the business side and how and this podcast is related to this, right. Like, how, how do we integrate our spiritual self all of who we are into 05:56Our business mechanical self right like this robot and, you know, checking off the boxes piece. And one of the things that she hasn't do is just what you said there, which is to do the mirror work. 06:07Right. Look at the mirror and say I am here with myself. I am here with myself. Right. So, I love, I love that you're doing that and, you know, to, to others that are listening and I totally. I think that that's something you should give yourself a shot to right I would Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program06:21Like to express this on that notes. 06:24Sure know about mirror work. 06:26I've never done it. And so I will say this man when we feel like we're doing work. 06:33Like me we're work even having that word work and brandon handley06:37Sure, sure. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program06:37Already has that connotation, or like it's gonna be 06:40It's gonna be difficult. I don't like work right. 06:42Like doing. And so for me today. It's once again. It wasn't like I was out to study myself. I was just in a place 06:51Over the last few months, man. I've been developing and constantly evolving to be more and more and more of the person that I really am and more of the person that I actually want to be 07:03And so today, it was a natural thing that happened. It wasn't like, Hey, I'm working on myself do this. What do you notice it just, I just felt like an energy line. It just kind of pulled me there. I actually caught my own reflection and I was like, I'm going to give you a moment of my time. brandon handley07:22Now hundred percent brandon handley00:16He has a course creators Academy that's powered by the mantas program you're looking to get into video 00:22Code is your guy, he's got the Hitchhiker's Guide to video. He's got so much other he's got so much going on. I personally kind of wonder like how you keep it all together. But you know, it's obvious to me that you've got a system of implementation. 00:35And you just kind of rock it out because you do have your systems in place, but man, thanks for joining us today. How you doing, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program00:41Hey, thank you so much brother is such a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Man systems in life so many things that we, I love that you talk about systems because we are a system. 00:53We are a series of processes that are constantly executing. We're taking a new devil data developing it, we are processing that data, making decisions utilizing our power of choice and for me. 01:06My brain has been really scattered my whole life, because we'll just say ADHD and all these other random things. And so for me, systems and all that stuff is very, very, I don't want to say it's necessary, but it is important. 01:20And so for me, kind of having that structure is, you know, the one way you do one thing is what you do everything so 01:28I structure my life. 01:29And that reflects in my business man. So with that, yeah, I got a lot going down constantly emotion constantly thinking about the things that a lot of people tend to ignore. brandon handley01:44Now, man. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I always tell people I've waited my entire life for this moment right 01:50Right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program01:53Yeah. brandon handley01:54As far as we know, right up until now. 01:56So, so, you know, I think you started off with something pretty well there and and i think it would tie into this piece, but I'm gonna go ahead and ask this piece anyways because it may may hit you differently, right. So, 02:08We, we agree, like the kind of universe speaks through us. Right. And that like when somebody listens to this podcast. It's gonna 02:15They're gonna hear something that you and I didn't even hear right in between our dial. I think like that these guys, this is what they're talking about. Oh my god. So to that person through you today. What, what message do they need to hear me to the universe. 02:31The universe, Dorian, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program02:32Hey, yo. Gotcha. Man, if I was to speak to anybody. My message to 02:37Everyone at all times. It is, isn't it, it is oneness to what happens when I'm sorry what's most important is what's happening right this very second right this second. 02:52In a perfect kind of will say execution of that or example is I woke up today. 02:57And pleasure to be here right woke up. It's amazing. And for whatever reason, had a song stuck in my head. I don't remember my dreams or anything, per se, but I do remember waking up with a feeling 03:15Just hit man, it means so well you know when music hits you, that you don't feel any pain. 03:22And so it hit me really hard and I had to kind of surrender to the moment and allow myself to remove judgment to remove you know will say the permissions. I might be asking for to express myself. 03:37And I just stood in the middle of the room in his eyes closed and just listen to this song and try to express myself, honestly. 03:46And I'm just in a moment. Man, am I thinking about what's going on for the rest of day. I'm not worried about what happened to me. I'm not worried about the projects and backlogs and clients and business. None of that stuff. 03:58I'm seriously just being one with the moments just looking at it, breathing filling my heart rate feeling this my skin. The breeze from the fan above me. 04:37And so it was that moment the today this morning that I was so in the moments in the expression. I was actually practicing dynamic freedom. 04:51My ability to do anything and being honest and real with who I am today right is second. And I'm thinking about these things. And I realized 05:07Go outside man do these things. There's no restrictions practices, man. Get in the moment be more in the moment. And that's why once again today is the best day of my life, brother. brandon handley05:20I love that I actually, I interviewed a you know a transformational coach last night. She's been been at the work for quite some time. And one of the first pieces that she has somebody do 05:33You know she she she coaches, people who are on the business side and how and this podcast is related to this, right. Like, how, how do we integrate our spiritual self all of who we are into 05:45Our business mechanical self right like this robot and, you know, checking off the boxes piece. And one of the things that she hasn't do is just what you said there, which is to do the mirror work. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program06:10Like to express this on that notes. 06:13Sure know about mirror work. 06:15I've never done it. And so I will say this man when we feel like we're doing work. 06:22Like me we're work even having that word work and brandon handley06:26Sure, sure. 06:29It's gonna be difficult. I don't like work right. 06:31Like doing. And so for me today. It's once again. It wasn't like I was out to study myself. I was just in a place 06:52And so today, it was a natural thing that happened. It wasn't like, Hey, I'm working on myself do this. What do you notice it just, I just felt like an energy line. It just kind of pulled me there. I actually caught my own reflection and I was like, I'm going to give you a moment of my time. brandon handley07:11Now hundred percent Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program07:11Really interesting to think about brandon handley07:14Now, I love, I love it. I mean, you also you also hit on to you know to experiencing the illusion of time right where you were, you were talking about. 07:31You're looking at yourself as a human. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program07:33Being right brandon handley07:35Right, right, right. 07:37And I also love to, you know, you talked about, you know, the permission for greatness. It makes me think of that Banksy one right. The thing you know and it goes, you know, stop asking for, you know, stop asking for permission to be great. 07:46You know, for greatness and yeah Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program07:49It's amazing how that works. 07:50I realized today. And today, maybe is it, is it a coincidence. Is it meant to be that I have this this experience today before we had a chance to speak. I don't know, man, that's the exciting part about being 08:05Right, I'm excited for those moments. I'm really excited to explore them. More importantly, I'm excited for the experience 08:12Because I'm in a constant state of curiosity. I'm a constant state of growth and I know this, I repeat it to myself, and I know it. I feel I am it's it's a staple in my being. 08:23Is to be in a place of evolution. And then when you surrender. A lot of times people go surrender means you got to give up. No. 08:31You have to allow these emotions to set in. I remember feeling it. Tears welled up. I looked at my smile. And I was like, how I'm smiling right now. 08:39Hold. I'm just being I'm just one. I just feel good. I'm accepting these things and yeah just removing those permissions when you go, man. You're the one granting permission but you're also restricting access at the same time. 08:55Yeah, it's conflicting so today I was on that part where I recognized my restriction and I just let that let that down for a little bit so I can just be brandon handley09:04I love it, I love it. You talked about like a, you know, awareness and becoming more of who you are right. Let's talk about that. What does that mean, you know, becoming more aware of the person of who I am. So who do you know, who do you feel like you are Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program09:19You are your truths. brandon handley09:21You are what you say. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program09:22You are brandon handley09:23Okay, so, I mean, 09:25Right, right. 09:25I mean, so I mean what, what does that mean to you, right. Like I always, I think that when we were talking. I'm not sure if I hit, hit on this or not when you have me on. And thanks for having me on. It was a 09:34Great One 09:35Um, you rise to your level of thinking 09:38Right, right. 09:39So who do you think you are right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program09:42Right. That makes sense. Well, when you think of who you think you are, it puts people in a place of contrast of going, who, who do I want to be my comparing myself to 09:52There is nobody that's going to do a better job at being you than you and if someone can be a better version of you. Then you've got some real work. 10:01Some people are there. 10:02Right. But who am I right, I am what I say I am I'm happy. 10:07Yeah, that's as simple as I could possibly put it, who I am is also what I am is where I am, as well. 10:15When are you 10:16I'm happening in. Yeah. brandon handley10:17Sorry. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program10:18I'm in a place of happy, you know, brandon handley10:19Right. That's a state of being right like a state. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. And you have a great question on your podcast and almost, you know, I think that I'm gonna steal it today for you. 10:30The, you know, and you said you hadn't had the state of awareness yet, right, like, and when did you first fully become aware 10:36Right. Do you feel like you're becoming more aware and, you know, what does that, you know, 10:40What's that mean to you was me to become aware Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program10:43That level of awareness. I've noticed that I'll say over the past two months, right, because I've been surrounded by the most amazing people. 10:53Were all practicing boundaries and communication and connection and actual spiritual enlightenment on a day to day what I've noticed about self awareness is you think you got it and then you level up. 11:05Think you understand it and then you actually understand it and then you feel it, you experience it. 11:12It's a whole different level self awareness for me is coming down to, and I'm going to repeat this absolute truth. 11:21It's not this is what I'm going to say because it's going to sound good, or I don't want to hurt your feelings or I don't want to say this, I'm it's removing those restrictions and being like, Man, I don't like that it's being able to go. That's for me, that isn't for me. 11:35That's a yes for me that's a note to know your level of self awareness stems from not looking at your reflection and going this is two separate entities and I'm connecting and I'm self aware, because I can make choices. 11:49It's literally connecting to as much of your personal truths as possible. It doesn't matter what the truth is because you believe it. 12:00When you're honest with yourself and you're going, I like that. But that's not my thing. I love that because it does this for me. I really enjoy this. 12:11When you can connect with those things because of the truth because of what you've told yourself how you feel about them. 12:18You are more real with everything and everyone. And more importantly, more real with yourself. 12:25And you only do the things that can contribute to your progress through life, your happiness, man. Your success and abundance. It's amazing. So self awareness is first off, recognizing that you're in a place of growth and you don't know everything. brandon handley12:40Right, right, right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program12:42It's knowing what you like what you don't like even not knowing what you like and don't like is still something that, you know, 12:49So when you're in that place of uncertainty, then you're aware of this, it's looking at these things going. I'm unsure. I'm confused or 12:59I am really centered and focused on this and feels good to me. I'm going to use this belief to guide my behavior in a positive way. So being self aware man is is really just, I'll say complete self awareness is not having to think about this stuff ever you just do brandon handley13:18That yeah well I absolutely i mean but i mean i think that you know some of this stuff is a 13:25You gotta peel back to, you know, societal layers, right, that have kind of been been you know enforced on you right, you're like, Wait a second. All the stuff that I've been taught up into this moment. 13:37It was serving those people 13:39You know, but not necessarily me. It was serving this function, but not my function of growth right type of thing. 13:46So now, and I love it. Right. So let's talk about like how are you applying some of this to your business man like I mean how the other question is like how could you not, but like, you know, 13:57How do you not, but like, how does, how does this, like, you know, like I talked about earlier, you talked about like the robotic guy that you know shows up and just 14:05Eight. And, you know, nine to five or whatever, you know, how is your life different because of this call it a spiritual practice right of your life practice and weaving those together. Talk about that so Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program14:17What I do is build this cerebral super suit for entrepreneurs to connect more deeply with their core audience. 14:24The reality with that is you got to step into the shoes of your clients of your customers of the people you serve. 14:32I don't care if it's the homeless guy. I don't care if it's this. I don't care what solution you're providing or what you're doing in life. 14:38When it comes down to really expanding your business. It doesn't come down to the tech, that's the easy stuff. It doesn't come down to your sequences and your landing pages, all that stuff that's easy connecting with the people that you serve. 14:56comes from a place of oneness. 14:59Of understanding of self. So along the spiritual enlightenment along this journey of personal growth. You're actually opening yourself to understand and feel and have more compassion. 15:12For the people that you're most likely to benefit. More importantly, how they're going to benefit from you. 15:19So for me, I look at oneness and connection that is missing. Now I look at where I'm at. I'm paying attention to how I feel what I'm thinking. 15:29I'm going to state of curiosity. So I'm wondering why that's all that's coming in. I'm going to state of health. So I'm changing the foods have it seen how it affects my body. I'm getting rid of things that don't serve my journey. 15:41And do not serve my focus 15:43And don't really deserve my intention. So when I personally develop as a human being and become more of a human doing 15:53I am putting myself to in a place to thoroughly connect to everyone that I'll be serving which helps me 16:01Develop better wording in my copy when I'm writing an email. It helps me reach out to better people. It helps me attract better clients. 16:07It helps me build better websites helps me build stronger teams, it puts you in a place of connection to who they are in their core. So, the stronger, more 16:21Will stay connected you are to yourself, the more likely you're going to be able to connect to the people that are going to benefit from your product and service. brandon handley16:28Now, I love it, I love it. So, I mean, what I'm hearing in there. Those like you know you determine kind of 16:34How you love yourself and and what serving you. Right, letting go. The things that don't deserve your attention. I love that line, you know, you're going in with your journey and you know be being able to write better copy do better marketing. You're in my mind. 16:51You're tuning yourself. You know, like a crystal tuning. Right. You know, like a radio dial. 16:57To your clients to the people who you can serve. You're like, this is, this is what I'm transmit this is what I'm good at this is what I love to do this is if I was working with you. Oh my god, I would serve you so hard. 17:08Right. 17:09Space, right, like I'm and like you know you're going to be blown away by what I give you, because 17:14You're you you tuned in. Not only did you tuned in. But you to deal with, like, an amplifier on your side you turned it up, you're like, 17:20What's up, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program17:21Yeah, it's amazing. And lately. My clients have been going. They've been they've been reaching out to me personally. 17:27Outside of like business hours, which is the best feeling ever because now we are connected, we are comfortable 17:33We are really considering each other. We're thinking about each other outside of business hours and it's more of a real relationship and a friendship went up. 17:42And what I have noticed is especially over the last couple months is when you are in a place of curiosity and genuine growth and you recognize that you're there. 17:52You listen more you really, you don't have to speak as much, actually there's a reason why we have one mouth and two ears. 18:00were meant to listen and when we listen to people when you deliver what you actually want to say or how you can contribute 18:09Every word that you say has more impact and more value. Now when it comes to connecting with your clients, how it relates to people in a digital space. 18:18I'm telling you this man, the more self aware you are the more connected you are with the universe and how you relate to it. More importantly, how it is relating to you. 18:29When you write your copy. When you say these words when you create that video when you do those things. You're literally creating with purpose and positive intent. 18:40There are times when I will release something, and I'll type it out and I'll put it up into the digital space. 18:47And it will be the same exact words no difference. Everyone's interpreting it differently from their own level of perception, their mind state. 18:56The people that I love working with are the ones that feel the intent behind the message and pick up on the energy when I wrote it and they feel it speaks to them. And those are the people that I attract. This is why I have such a great time doing what I do. brandon handley19:12Now, I love it, I love it. So it's so funny, you brought up purpose and intent because you know I was gonna ask you about that right how to, you know, 19:17We do deliver that message and just like you said, the people that there's there's going to be the one set of people that you know just give you a thumbs up or like or be like, you know, Hey, that was cool. 19:27And then there's going to be the other set of people that are gonna be like wow that was, that was awesome. That was powerful. Right. 19:32And they get, they get kind of where you're coming from on that and it's a totally 19:37That the two different groups, but that doesn't. And what I think I like about that too is that, you know, 19:43The group that doesn't get it today doesn't mean they won't get it tomorrow or see it like you know a little bit later down the road, and they're going to go back to your content and they're gonna be like, I didn't, I didn't even realize you were into all this shit. 19:55Right. Yeah. Yeah. And because because you can. It's funny. 19:59I do that without so my own my own my own stuff. Right. Like, why go and I'll look at other people's content, who I follow it earlier, but I wasn't at my Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program20:09This mind state. Yeah. 20:10You go into through a different lens. brandon handley20:12And I've got a new job or I have a whole brand new lens right whole whole new lens on like, Where have you been, 20:20I never even saw 20:22And so it's really interesting that the content that you put out 20:27People 20:28Come back and take a look later and it'll 20:30It'll be fresh to them. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program20:31I 100% and I was just talking about this yesterday. And the reality is to put the content out. We have to realize there's entire generations of people that are moving through going to go to catch up to us. 20:42We could be saying the perfect thing right now to people that don't even exist yet. 20:47Like 20:48What we put out there is really important. And you think of your overall vibe, man. So as people become more connected and understand 20:55Their power of influence and how we are influenced and just the decisions that they make. 21:00Man, they meet someone may go, Man, I want to create a podcast called spiritual dope. I wonder if that's even a thing could click there's 21:09There is, oh my god, they're talking about all the things I didn't even know it was an idea was connected. I felt it. I mean, I took an action and this is everything I'm looking for and you spark an entire movement, based on your idea man. brandon handley21:23Simple thought simple action. Right. It's just, it's just a matter of taking that action. What's funny. I mean, it's funny you say that though I did prosperity practice before spiritual dope and 21:34Somebody else I spun up prosperity practice like afterwards, after the fact. Like I reached out to her. I was like, I was like, wow, you're doing like the exact same thing I'm doing. I was just like, 21:43So it's really interesting. I'm not sure if you've ever seen like some of those videos or, you know, I forget, like, you know, let's talk about Tesla or being connected to the Akashic Record right or Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program21:52Yeah. brandon handley21:53Hello, say like two thoughts happen at the same time, like 21:56Different receivers. Right, so you'll receive thought somebody else or received thought only one person X on it though, or maybe both people act on it the same time. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program22:04Right. brandon handley22:05And it's not until like later that they converge and and you know you see it show up. So Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program22:10That when I remember saying 22:12interprets that differently. I really never there's no such thing as original I always say this every thoughts already been funk. Like, what are the chances of you thinking of a sentence or something or whatever. 22:22As someone else hasn't already done that you're picking up on something somewhere actually look at that as alignment. 22:29If you're having this thought and it's moving you. That means you may actually be being pushed her poles. 22:34Pulled in that direction. 22:35Hundred percent old yeah brandon handley22:36Yeah. So when we talked, right. We talked about the, the, the idea of everything's already been created. It's just a job. What's your awareness of it right and it's funny that because you talked about the losing time right the future now and the past are all here right now. 22:52Right, so 22:53You've got the, you know, we'll call it the multiverse, right. We've got your, your quantum entanglement kind of guy. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program22:58So, yeah. brandon handley22:59You know you can sit there and you can think for a second, you're like, All right, well, if I make this direction, kind of like a Sherlock Holmes type you know movie right like if I go this direction. This is what will happen right 23:07Right. Or in my case, it's like, you know, the, the, the Green Hornet with like Seth right and he's like sitting there thinking, and he looks like he's gone. Fast as mine is really going five minutes. Anyways, the deal is like Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program23:16I get it. brandon handley23:17You got like all these slices of possible universes, each one of those each thought that you just had they all just happened. 23:24Yeah. He's one of those things happen. 23:26Right, and it's happening right now. So, I mean, 23:28Whichever one you kind of lock into and tune into that's the one is pointing forward. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program23:33Right, the one that you're going to resent so 23:34I'll give everybody a practice right now. I've been doing this. 23:37I've whiteboards all over the house Ivan. What do you walk into every door. There's a small whiteboard and it's it's whiteboard wallpaper. So I put it on the things that I 23:46Hang out around most often. And so what I've been doing is recognizing words. Okay. There's a reason why words stand out to you. So Brendan, I see writing stuff down rather just like this, man. I got notepads and notepads 24:02All this is not just client notes. These are thoughts. 24:04These are things that are standing out to me if I here at once and it gets my attention. It means pay attention if it gets my attention twice. It means focus on that it's get detailed with it. So you'll see random words written all around the house. It'd be like proximity 24:22Right, right. I was Moses. 24:24And then it's just random things and then later I'll go back and connect the dots. Our oneness is 24:30We're, we're basically it's inevitable that we're going to grow based on our environment or as Moses and our proximity to people who are at a higher state of consciousness. 24:38That creates this infinite loop which connects that we're just just doodling manages everything is just total 24:47Brainstorming so if you if it gets your attention once pay attention if it gets your attention twice focus on that. There's a reason why you are being pulled towards that. 24:58Get, get close to whatever that where it is, whatever that thing is if that person if they mentioned somebody towards two people on two separate days mentioned the same person get interested 25:09Yeah, that means that person or that thing is leaving an impact. And it's worth your time. brandon handley25:14Sure. I mean, the person's calling out to you right 25:16If they got what they've got like something something they've got is really, it's meaningful for you so 25:21You know, follow up on that, I love that. Thanks for sharing that. So, one more time. So if it's, you know, if you, if you see it like once you get your interest rate. 25:30See it twice, you know, focusing on that, like, you know, 25:33And then the third time, like, I mean you you're hooked right like you shouldn't be. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program25:36You, you are the third time. brandon handley25:39Right on. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program25:39If it gets your attention. Twice I say this because if we continue to go Wait I need three times right to is the coincidence three is a staple 25:50Rather, if a guy your attention to times. Why are you paying attention. Why is is getting your attention, two times. First off, you could have been thinking everything you could have been doing anything. 26:00It literally stopped you in thought and got your attention. It's there for a reason, our subconscious is very active at that 26:09Moment. And so there's the zoo, there's something you want to get from it. There's something you want to define might be something you just want to explore for understanding but somewhere along the way your mind picked up on something and it needs clarity. There's an open loop somewhere. 26:25Yeah, gotta close this. brandon handley26:27For sure, for sure. And I love that you know programmatic reference right if you've got an open loop. It just keeps going and going and going and going and going until, like, you know, there's some type of closure. Right. 26:38Or control see right Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program26:39You know, just, yeah. Stop, stop at brandon handley26:42The so um you brought up something really cool that I really enjoy too is like the idea of the subconscious always being on the lookout for what you're on the lookout for you. 26:52Programmatically said you set a filter, right, these things are popping up because you set a filter for that. Right. You said you said all right. 27:00Hey, yo, I'm really interested in something like you know give what is something that you're interested in, you know, proximity osmosis where you know and and so now you've got your, your mind and subconscious filter on that. Like for me right now I've got divine and divinity. Right. 27:17That's my thing. 27:18Right. I've got a divine framework set up as my next course right so 27:22Anytime somebody says divine. I'm like, Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program27:24Yeah, it's brandon handley27:25Over there. Amen. Amen. I'm like, What are you saying Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program27:27What do you got the coolest part that so you you look at your mind if we open with this as system. 27:33A series of processes hundred 27:34Percent computers and quantum tech and all that stuff. The quantum computing, man. It's just algorithms. It's going into this than that. If that doesn't this 27:43You're just computing data. 27:45So when you program your mind, based on your intent. This is why I always say define what happiness looks like smells like tastes like feels like 27:56Get like get just seriously go to Amazon buy a bunch of notepads for like six books in just elaborate on what happiness and success looks like to you. Yeah. 28:07Do it right, right, right, right. You're only going to spend like a half hour doing this thing. It's nothing in the illusion of time. brandon handley28:14Well, I caught the the 28:16Real quick, real quick. So I mean, would you would you make them write it down or type it out. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program28:21Does it matter personally 28:23I'm into writing 28:25Okay, now 28:26Now, and I. The reason why is because of the time it takes for me to write it out. If I still commit to that thought. By the end of the sentence, and I still feel good about it. 28:36And it's an actual thought 28:38If in mid sentence. I'm like, this isn't my thing, then it's just a thought. It's just something that popped in here. Probably for contrast 28:45And so when I write it down. I'll say this, there hasn't been a single person that I know that is working on themselves. That isn't writing stuff down 28:54Hasn't been writing a book isn't journaling isn't doing any of this man this is pages I just naturally picked it up. I don't necessarily enjoy writing 29:04But I realized that for me to be honest and express myself. I need to write these things down and go back and label them right 29:13These are all these are all staples in my, in my future, man. brandon handley29:16Now, I love it. I call it 29:18I call it looking at last. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program29:19Thought the programming brother, when we do this when we write all that stuff down or type it out. 29:26Now we get clarity. We're programming our subconscious to look for that. So when we are in a podcast and say, I got a big window right here. And if I was looking for a motorcycle motorcycles make me feel happy. 29:40Anything that's going to get my attention that may resemble a motorcycle. I'm gonna, it's going to get my attention. Oh, is it. No, it's not. It's like somebody you're waiting to arrive. Is that damn is at them. 29:51Right. Your subconscious is going to constantly go out and look for 29:55All the things that satisfy your happiness make you feel successful make you feel to find find divinity, all of those things, man. So programming is really important, but only if it's healthy. brandon handley30:07Well, I mean, I think that, uh, you know, healthy, healthy is also subjective right initially. And I think that even if you begin to 30:18Just even understand the dynamic of what you're talking about like the programming right set yourself up, you make that choice consciously to be programming yourself. Yeah, right. Because up until up until that point. I mean, I'd love to hear when you realize that 30:34You needed to program yourself. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program30:37Yeah, well I was, you know, my story. Man, I'm a liver failure survivor. 30:43Like I was on my deathbed, and I know what it's like for your body to start dying and have to sign away your life surrender to the universe. 30:51I don't know what's happening on it was going on, but all of the decisions every single thought that I've had to that point has led me to my deathbed. Yeah. 31:00And I'm still defending that for some reason, like why am I defending being here. I'm justifying my death. Oh, I lived a good life. I'm doing. Are you serious, I haven't even tried yet I'm 32 at this point on my deathbed, and I'm trying to justify that I lived a long good life. 31:18And I was just meant. That's ridiculous, man. So when I get in. When I start recovering I'm realizing all these thoughts and it wasn't until I started debating my environment. 31:29I'm not in that scene. Am I surrounded by those people am I doing those things am I interested in that stuff. I don't think those thoughts. Why am I still the same person. 31:38Hmm. Why am I still the same guy before I died. This is a whole new me 31:46Right. 31:46But is it really a whole new me, this is, this is just me. 31:51With a new opportunity. So who do I want to be. And then as I call this self auditing. 31:57Then you start to realize where your brain starts to go, you start thinking about happiness and success and these these other things that you want to accomplish. 32:03And then you start recognizing now that's not gonna work. Whoa. I just told me know what the 32:11And I believe that what happened. I just shut myself down. I can do anything. And I said no to me. Why is that a thing. Okay, I can do it. 32:24I am doing it. It's happening go okay and then that thought comes in again. No, no, we're doing this. It's happening. Got it. Go, then it starts to be less and less. And then I'm starting to realize that I have just created a healthy thought pattern. 32:40When it comes to can or cannot there. Is it just is man, you just, are you doing it. 32:45Are you focusing on your happiness. Yes, well then I'm gonna keep doing those things are you building your business. Yeah, I'm gonna keep doing that thing. 32:52I am giving myself permission, I get really good at doing that and anybody can develop healthy habits healthy thought patterns, they can easily reprogram themselves. 33:02From an actual neurological standpoint, we need at least 63 to 64 repetitions of anything to be considered good or for it to be written into our being all those veins in our brain. 33:16Those lumps and things 33:18The valleys. Those are based on repetition. Right. So developing healthy habits. It comes with practice. And once we put ourselves there, man. Then you get really good at practicing. It's not what you're practicing. You just get good at creating good habits. 33:34And then this is kind of all easy peasy. From there it's difficult with there's a lot there's less less difficulty involved right brandon handley33:43I think that it's a you know it's it's the idea that, you know, somebody as they grow older, right, they, they try something once 33:51And it didn't work out. I'll give a couple more shots. But you're saying it's like 64 tries and keep at it and you know it's not like it's you need that repetition. I also you're calling from 34:02Your computer land right I look at that number 64 and I think about like 64 bits, right, like 34:07Yeah yeah so 34:08So that's a, that's interesting. So, you know, you're on your deathbed, and and you you crawl up out of that and you start to recognize 34:18You know, you've got to make these these pattern changes and you've got to develop these healthy life patterns, you know, the challenge that I think that we see is somebody that isn't dying. 34:31That isn't you know isn't dying and has a safe life. Yeah. 34:35Right, I mean you know that they haven't they haven't drunk themselves death, but maybe they have several beers at night and maybe you so 34:44How do we get someone to recognize that they've got patterns that aren't serving them even though they've got quote unquote good are safe life and they can have more Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program34:53Is that familiar do. That's the question is this, is this what you do. Is this your thing. That's where you do these are that that okay 35:02Have you done anything else. Have you tried anything else you realize that you're back in the bar, you have this. How many times have you had this drink. You know what it is. 35:11If you keep doing the same things, you get the same exact results results. Why do you think I became an alcoholic is because I needed more and more and more to feel normal. I've never had this until like yesterday. This is amazing. I'm a 35:27New person holding pineapple. 35:30I had to switch it out, like, what is it synergy raw kombucha 35:35Love this. Right. 35:37Did a hippie. Give it to me. Yes, but does it matter. No, my point with it is that if we keep doing the same things and living in a place of familiarity. 35:46We're never going to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Therefore, we're never going to grow. 35:51Is this as good as it gets. Is this as good as you want it to be. Is this what you really want. Man Seriously, look at this point, you're just writing. Just ask yourself this question, is this what I really want 36:06Is this how I really want to feel if I can relive this my state of being for the end of my existence. Is that good enough for me. Can I achieve more goodness. Is this how you really want it to be nine times out of 10 it's know 36:24Even in a healthy place. 36:27If I asked myself, This Is this really how good you want it to be, or is this really where you want to be. It's really where I want to be right now, but it's only getting better. So know if I get complacent here I get no more results. 36:42I have to continue growing right so we got to look at that complacency and go, you know what, man. Is this as good as it gets. Is this as good as you want it to be right now. 36:51Chances are the same. And then we start taking action. And I know this because just the power of influence from three people, we were able to get an alcoholic to leave the bar. The other day on a podcast and he went home to go play with his dogs. 37:07Hmm. He made the decision to leave the bar, man. 37:11stopped drinking poison not permanently. 37:14But the power of influence is there, he made that decision. It's amazing what happens when you realize that it can be better. brandon handley37:21Yeah, no 100% you know I know when I quit drinking 37:27It has influenced many people right and you know we talked about being pulled you know I was pulled, man. I wasn't, I didn't quit drinking because I didn't like I love drinking Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program37:38Drinking. No, I haven't done it since. brandon handley37:41I have a blast. I you know do stupid shit all day long. 37:46And and but you know it fell away man fell away is something I didn't need anymore. And I found that I could do stupid shit without having to drink. 37:57And I could be there more for people. Right. And so, but but that influence is just like 38:02It's not something we're not doing any force on anybody is because I just feel great. 38:07I get to I get to drive whenever I want. 38:09I get to do and go places, whenever I want. 38:11Because I haven't had a drink. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program38:14It was one of the most interesting compliments. I've received recently is you don't need anything in your system to have a good time. You don't have to smoke. You don't have to drink enough to do anything you're just having a blast all the time right now my 38:31That whoa, you're right. 38:33Well, I know this. 38:34But now you're saying it. So you got my attention. 38:38Whoa, that's cool. And then they're going, I don't, I don't really need to do these things. It's just not really. I mean, I get 38:45You know, it's not necessary. 38:47It's not a staple of my existence anymore. Let's just say that. Yeah. 38:51Wow, man, that's, that's amazing. And people talk about high on life. I get what they're saying. brandon handley38:57Is visual rather than just Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program39:00The Scripture that brandon handley39:01That's it. That's it. That's man. That's exactly what we're here. And what we're doing right 39:07You know, talking about that. And again, you know, being able to live from that space and be successful in business right and leading leading with that right not like that's not your cover. That's not your life, you're not like I go home and I meditate, I go home and I pray. No, I read 39:25When I was with with spirit. Right. 39:27So, I love, I love, I love that you're doing that, and I love you know I see what you're creating 39:33A see the momentum. You've got new built 39:36You know what, what are some other things that you would hit on in this space that you would share with anybody. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program39:42In regards to tech or personal or just just brandon handley39:44In terms of like, you know, you know, 39:46Leading from spirituality. Was it. That's right. Yeah, I heard you say to you came from, like, a hippie. You know, you kind of came from that background to right and that was real similar to me to write hippie mom. 39:58And just 39:59For me, it ends up coming easily because that's how I was raised, I fought it 40:04For a long time, yes. Talk about that. Right. So talk about knowing that it exists, and then being like them being like, Oh, shit. It works. Yeah, I know that resistance. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program40:15Is useless. Honestly, I just posted about this. And yeah, my parents, you know, different what 6070s 40:22Yeah, you know, so they were raised, like that. My parents are definitely hippies, but not like your, your typical hippie not like will say modern day hippies, or what I i actually been thinking about and you're welcome to take this and join me. Not all hippies climb trees like 40:37I want to start a movement. brandon handley40:39Well, that's a special again. That's what spiritual dopes about there is a greatness. And if you go to my website right now says you don't have to wear like beach. You don't have to wear that. 40:47Dress. You don't have to wear sandals. You don't have to 40:50You don't have to put on this uniform to feel this way. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program40:52100%. So we'll talk about that. Absolutely. There's a brandon handley40:55Reverse it what I'm saying. And you see Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program40:57Like we're on the same wavelength. 40:58Yeah, man. And so, so here's the trip is my, my brother, my older brother, he's like a hippie is of all manly man, but he's climbing trees, he's cutting trees down building homes log cabins, he makes his own tea and coffee and everything is from the earth and He is like 100% hippie. 41:15Spiritual Empath all of that stuff. It's really amazing. 41:19Now for me, I always thought that because I'm a tech guy right at artists. I'm an artist in general. 41:25You know I connect with people in different ways, but I've been through an extreme amount of trauma before liver failure. So my trauma. 41:34I've had to process these things differently. And my viewing angle my perspective on will say the hippie approach is it's a little too flu fee for lack of better words this little to brandon handley41:46motherly soft Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program41:48It's not it do, like, just take your shoes off and just seeing one drink like okay brandon handley41:53I want to kick a door. Yeah. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program41:55You can't force this hippie just like religion or anything. brandon handley41:58Right, right, right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program41:59You have to be open to it. Oh, so on my journey. 42:04As it became more receptive more open, more compassionate towards other people, and more importantly, developed more compassionate towards myself, which I learned from my mentor asara sundry 42:16With that, I started to let down those walls and I started to break those permissions started signing off on my own. brandon handley42:24Certain he Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program42:25Recognizes my permission slip and 42:27Walk down that hall of success and happiness. 42:30And in doing so, I started to realize that people have been telling me this forever. 42:35And I've been to so 42:36Not have it. brandon handley42:38I mean, that's what we talked about earlier, though, too, right, like in writing your content right you're yourself. You're telling people, some things and 42:45They're just not. They're not in that spaceship, they're not they're not there right and it's not until it's not until you kind of come into your own awareness of being and you can look back and be like, Oh my gosh, people been telling me this my entire life. Yeah, right. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program42:59100% brandon handley42:59Now, I love it man. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:01It's amazing the way it works. And I'll tell you this, brother. You remember. Oh, sorry about posting with purpose. brandon handley43:06But 43:07I intent, but Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:08How do you think I ended up in Texas, dude. 43:10There you go right person, pick up on the intent and the power and energy behind the same message and they open the opportunity like you. We want you to come here. 43:21Right, that's how I ended up in Texas in a series of events had to happen perfectly in alignment. 43:28And I ended up here in the most incredible place I've ever been in my entire life more growth, more happiness more communication more connection. 43:36More forward progress than any other time in my entire life. And I'm beyond humbled all because I posted with purpose man right person felt it. And then we all took action make magic happen. It's really, really cool. brandon handley43:52That's cool, man. So, I mean, you know, again, this is kind of like a follow your bliss type moment right Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:57Yeah. brandon handley43:57I love it. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program43:59Though well brandon handley44:00I mean you got you got to do it for yourself. Right. Like each person. Everybody's got everybody's got to find that for themselves, you know, you talk about your truth right you could 44:07You could say, Hey, you know, for me, you know, at this moment, this bliss is my truth right if I'm feeling, you know, and again, I'll talk about that word, you know, vanity, I'm feeling 44:17Or creative source like through me and, you know, or like we talked about resonance and we look at, like, you know, somebody just plucking my divine source string. 44:26Everything has resonated and that was bliss and so I'm following that like somebody, you know, talking to me and just dragging me out and like me, like, yes, this is, oh my gosh, this is uncommon. I'm on my way you 44:37Know how this is going to end. Oh yeah, they are they aware of the path. Now look, you're always on your path right it's like you've got a you're always on your path you're never all fit. It's just, you've got to make that decision. 44:48To to recognize that you're walking. It's at your part of it that you're being it right Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program44:53You know, want to man. 44:54Like, think of it. Think of it like this in like I if I go to the doctors right now and they they put a needle in my arm. Yeah, that's gonna be my only, you know, uncomfortable. I'm not worried about the needle, man. I'm worried about the results. 45:06They want to see how unhealthy. I really am. 45:09Don't want to like surrender to that. 45:11Right. Some people really aren't. They're not good at walking through the doors, man. brandon handley45:15Yeah. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program45:15You're not good at that. That's their out of practice. 45:18And sometimes we got to kick those doors down, they gotta be receptive on the other end. You've got to kick those doors down for yourself. 45:24Man, once you open that door now. 45:27Then you can see the path. brandon handley45:29Yeah. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program45:29And know that you're on it. 45:31And then you can frolic down that bitch as much as you want. You know I'm saying, like, what are 45:34You going to do brandon handley45:36All that. Well, I mean, look, you can't make a wrong decision. You know a lot of people 45:40You know that they've got their systems in place that work for them. And if you get off of their system, they're going to come up and say, Well, well, well, you got it. You're, you're off your system and you're off your path, but 45:50That's not true. You're off of what their path would be you're off and out of their system and so have faith in yourself, man. I love what you're doing, I love, I love that. That's what you know you've developed like kind of this core 46:02Being again and you're, you know, you're, you're leading with that and you're in that space. That's awesome. Where should I send people to go meet up with you and find out more about you. Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program46:12Absolutely. So my primary focus right now is the mantis program so mantis is every single thing that I've ever learned tops mastered 46:25All in one place in regards to not just evolving as a human being but evolving into the strongest and most accurate business mindset that you could ever possibly hope to get yourself into 46:38It's the reason why I can operate at a peak state of performance for forever and cost deliver content get things done while having a family doing all that stuff. 46:48So I want to show people exactly how they can implement 46:52These specific concepts into their life. But more importantly, there's so many people who don't take the necessary steps because they go all but there's technology, there's this and I don't understand that. 47:03I cover it all, every single aspect. So you don't have to be able to business or even bill yourself without fear man like you don't have to do that. You don't have to restrict yourself. And it's basically what I now that I say I give people the permission to evolve as a human. 47:19And then, yeah, so that's the mantis program. So the mantis program com 47:24And then of course graders Academy man the CCA it's an extension of the mantas program. This is for people who want to build an online program. 47:33I have numerous clients 2020 is packed with people who are going. I know what a lot of information. The online learning industry is a $34 billion industry. 47:44If you know something, and you want to get it out there and develop a program for people to get their hands on. 47:51And I hope people evolve through that process developed a program and then also handle all the tech and all that stuff with with just with ease. 48:00Then yeah, then I'm gonna communication artist. So I help people communicate more deeply with their, their core audience, not just as a servant leader, but as a professional graphic designer 20 years in Photoshop. 48:12And yeah and then for everybody who already has a message or is looking to dominate the second most powerful website on the planet YouTube 48:21I have the Hitchhiker's Guide to video marketing and that's showing you, not just how to get video views up into the millions 48:27But I'm actually showing you how to build a complete online digital business or any product or service that you're working on. Or like to get your hands on. That's the secret behind the sauce. brandon handley48:40Yeah, man, that was Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program48:41What 48:42What is there, man. So you can also find me on Facebook or is Cody rain and then you could also go to Cody rain calm. If you guys want to learn more about me or jump on my calendar, we can have a chat about you and your business. brandon handley48:53Awesome, man. Thanks for joining into Kohdi Rayne - The Mantis Program48:56Thank you, man, I appreciate you.

How one woman helps people leverage their best selves to find success This week’s guest is someone I respect more than anyone else in the entire world. My admiration for her as a woman, wife, human, entrepreneur, and thought leader goes deep—and I don’t say that about just anyone. Cathy Savage is an incredible multi-million-dollar business owner, world-renowned wellness coach, and lives every aspect of her life in complete integrity. Listen to this episode to hear wisdom and advice on how to shift your views to abundance, how to serve in the hardest of times, how to show up as your best self when it feels impossible to do so, and how to identify the very things that make you unique—and leverage them. Listen now Recognizing her gift and an unmet need We start this episode discussing how Cathy’s entry into the health and wellness world, how she worked in corporate America and turned to competitive fitness to as an outlet. She shares how she brought dance to the gym and as it was an evolving sport, she began realizing that people needed help and there were no coaches to fill that need. Living every aspect of life in integrity She describes how this led to her first multi-million-dollar business, how she moved online to try and meet demand, and offers advice on how to always put family first while growing your own business and staying truly aligned with who you are. She shares the importance of not compartmentalizing your life and how this shapes everything when raising children. We delve into how she helps people find what their good at, what makes them unique, and how to leverage this to bring success. We talk about how putting others success in front of yours and getting rid of ego is the most fulfilling and rewarding way to run a business. She shares how she does just that, and how she helps people win in all aspects of life. Cathy Savage Cathy Savage is an internationally recognized Fitness and Life Management Strategist who is located in Boston. She has been featured on MTV, ABC News and Fox News and she has been a contributor and board member of theprestigious advisory panel for Oxygen Magazine and Strong Magazine. Since the early 1990s, Cathy has been the pioneer in successful coaching for women from allover the world. Her online nutrition and wellness program are the first and most prominent all-inclusive global training program of its kind. Cathy has coached and mentored celebrities, athletes, television personalities for lifestyle changes and business strategies as well. Her clients span the globe from the US, Australia, Asia, Europe and throughout North America. As a Boston College graduate, Cathy has used her education and experience of building a wellness empire, to develop into a women’s empowerment service where she coaches women on life strategies, and how to be money savvy. Quotes:1:49When we actually believe in somebody it is with all of our being.8:10The greatest coaches did exactly what you said, they listened. They listened for what was needed.12:32 (Cathy)It is not putting one over the other, it is letting it all flow together in synchronicity and it works.15:07 (Cathy)As a parent your child needs to know, now more than ever, that there is that safety blanket of unconditional love that you are going to be there for them.17:48 (Cathy)For some reason we think that now it’s just everything is uncertain, when in reality, nothing ever was certain.19:00I think that the strategy for everybody is to just enjoy the simplest of things right now.19:37So you really have the choice to look at this as a gift of time where clarity can happen or you can just coward down.24:36My faith is "service for others always".31:31It's leveraging our true power of, whatever makes us so unique and running with it.43:02I am not going to be a cheerleader but I'm going to be the professional coach that brings you to the finish line.

Hi everyone Joy and Jason are back. We haven't actually done this for a couple of weeks. So we're excited to bring you a brand new episode. And today we're going to talk about equipment. What do you need? Do you need it? And how much would it cost you to start a business?00:23Hello, Jason, how you doing?00:24Hello Joy, how are you?00:26I am good. Thank you. There is a reason why Jason has that green screen behind him because this is what this episode is going to be about. Alright, so Jase let's dive into this. Can you tell people a little bit? Can we start up with minimum cost as an entrepreneur? How much did it cost you to startup?00:44Yeah. So if you're going the online entrepreneur route, there are some basic needs that you're going to have to have, but it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg. So the first thing that you're going to need is a computer and I don't recommend, although I guess you could start in the very beginning with your smartphone, I really recommend that you either get a laptop, and or a desktop to work from laptops are nice because you can bring them wherever you want, obviously, and work from wherever you are. But sometimes people just have a desktop around, and that's how they're getting going. So that's absolutely fine. So let's talk more about once we have that in place, just some of the critical and functional components of the computer and or laptop that you really want to have in place. So let's talk about your RAM. Your RAM is your random access memory. And so this is important because this is where the computer is storing information as you're going between screens and downloading here and you have 55 different tabs opened. So the more RAM that you have, the more your computer can essentially do all at once and keep things up to speed, and keep things going. So I would recommend that you have at least four gigabytes of RAM. And that's a great starting point. And with the four gigs that'll allow you to have multiple tabs open while you're doing some sort of a meeting like this at the same time, you'll be able to share your screen and you'll be able to search while you're doing all these things at the same time with relative ease and fluidity. So four gigs, I definitely recommend you start there. And the nice thing about RAM is it's easy to add to it. And it's relatively inexpensive so you can buy ram sticks really cheap and they usually come in either 2 4 8 or 16-gigabyte sizes. It just depends on the motherboard on your computer, what type you need to buy and how fast it actually sticks in but for desktops, you could probably put a new stick of RAM in an upgrade about eight minutes. For a laptop, it gets a little bit more confusing, but it's not that bad. But so four gigs, so let's start there with your RAM. Your video card. So your video card.03:14The video card is really going to help with how good your videos are coming across. And if somebody's sending you video, and it's an HD or something like this, it's nice to have a video card that has that type of output. And so, I will tell you this, all the newer computers and laptops that you're going to buy today will have the minimum video card requirements that you're looking for, as long as you're not also gaming on this computer at the same time, which requires just tonnes of GPU. You're going to be good now if you have an older computer or laptop, whatever is in there, if you can see your screen, you're probably going to be okay. But as time moves on, you might want to upgrade to a better video card. And you'll know you have to do that when you go into any type of program and it says, can't run this, you need a better video card, but you're really not going to run into that too much. So I don't want to spend too much time on like gamer video cards that you might need that have a dual purpose, you know what I mean? So that's the video card. The next big huge important thing is going to be your camera. A lot of times a lot of laptops come with a camera these days, which is absolutely fine. And you can also buy a webcam or whatever if you don't have one on your laptop, or your PC monitor doesn't have one. But we really want to make sure the at least the one thing that your camera has is you want to make sure that it's 30 frames per second minimum. What does that mean?04:55It means when I'm talking to you Joy, it doesn't look like an old Chinese movie where they say something, and then that kind of thing happens and the sound comes out later. So you'll be able to the computer will be able to process as close as to real-time as possible on what's going on and outputting it to the other end. So 30 frames per second are ideally where you want to be minimal if you can get up to like 60 62 that's outstanding. It's not necessary all the time, you'll be just fine with 30. But, you know, as you're doing presentations and little things like this, and you want to seem more credible, you want to look more professional, especially if you're speaking to someone on the other end about a possible collaboration, or you're selling your product or whatever it is, the more professional you look, the better. And sometimes that's just the simple upgrade, and a spend of $25 or $30 to go from a camera that's 15 to one that's 30 frames per second, and an additional 30, or whatever to one that's, that can go up to 60. So, highly important, definitely something to think about when you go computer shopping, or you're looking at the one that you have. Also, now we want to talk about memory. Now memory is different from Ram. So RAM is the random access memory, the memory that your computer is using to run all the products and windows that you have open, where your memory is where you're going to store your files, and folders and all these types of things. You're probably more familiar with a memory from this standpoint than you are with Ram. And so you want to have in my opinion, you want to have at least 125 gigabytes of RAM on your computer minimum and memory is still another thing that's relatively cheap these days, especially on Amazon and stuff like this. You can upgrade your memory and you know, if you're buying or you know, if you're buying a computer or a laptop, it's really nice to have like a terabyte of memory because as you start getting busier and busier, and taking on more projects, and you want to save these things, and even backing up your hard drive, you can suck up a lot of memory real quick. It's nice to have, you know, Google Drive on the side, and these internet-based memory banks that you can access, but it's also really nice to have and you should have a decent size. So if you can start with 125 starts there. But if you really can go to 500 gigabytes. And that'll just be you just won't have to worry at that point which is nice so.07:49You know, investing in one of these little babies is good. I mean, this robot, it's so tiny look at it, it's so tiny I think I paid three or 400 bucks for it four terabytes. And I mean, you can take this everywhere with you. So if it's not in your budget to buy a computer that has a whole terabyte of things on it, I mean, you can always just use one of these as long as you're very gentle with it and you don't pass it around and shake it around, then you know, your information is safe on it. So08:17Absolutely. And so this is called an external hard drive. And the reason why it's called that is that it sits outside of your computer and it simply attaches to your computer with a USB cord now the thing that you have to remember about these is these are memory only you cannot operate a program from these so you can't download like a video editor and put it on your external hard drive and run it, you can but it's it takes up so much of your computer that you don't ever do that these strictly for file storage. And like Joy says you can get real cheap these days. I mean, you can pick up a cheaper one terabyte probably for around 100 bucks.09:01Oh, wow. Yeah, I get that US process but in New Zealand. I forget that. Technology stuff in New Zealand is a lot more expensive than in the US definitely. Okay. I forget that sometimes. Yeah, no right. Feel sad for us that we always have to pick up all these things so expensive.09:23Oh, I feel oh I feel terrible. But you know if you can't  get a hold of one of those right in the beginning don't worry about it because services like I mentioned before, like google drive you can get I think it's like 100 gigs for 299 a month. They give him I forgot how much they give you for free.09:46It's like $2 99 cents. Yeah, you get this I've got, I pay extra for Google Storage and it is literally $2 99 cents and it's like, I think it's an extra 30 but it comes with a 100 gigs. Anyway, the $2 99 that I've got, trust me, it's not running out. So and I'm running videos and I do a lot of video type stuff so imagine if you don't do that yet it will take you forever to get that capt. It really does.10:16Yeah, anytime you can back up your computer or your laptop or whatever it is, you feel because that shit, anything could happen with electronics and that your shit could be gone. And there is nothing worse than that feeling. So if you don't have it outside of your hard drive in your computer, yeah, I would look into trying to get that or update at least your Google Drive for the $2 99 cents a month to have that kind of storage you'll be thankful for.10:52Even just like your photos, you know, even if you just backup your personal files, like again, I'm not it's a bit off-topic, but I have a friend that lost all her photos on her phone like over 6000 photos because the phone crashed. So I mean automatically I know I like an Apple for example, you have that automatically but with Google, not necessarily so you have to set it up if you have an Android phone, so if you just go you know, make sure that you backup these things on the cloud anyway, you know, it will definitely help you and I mean if guys saying was like, obviously on your computer as well but your phone, it's so easy to backup files on your phone, because a lot of the times I actually just take videos on my phone, and that was the next thing that I was going to you know, Jason was talking about having a good webcam, which is great to talk to people that you can use your phone to, I do a lot of video recording just using my phone, three quarters of my videos are actually all my videos that I do on YouTube, that I'm not sharing my screen is from my phone, phones these days are really amazing and giving a good thing so if you do not have a webcam, or you don't have money to have a webcam and you've got a phone with a half decent camera, I mean it comes so I mean all the phones in the last year at least have really good cameras.12:00I know you do a lot of stuff on your phone more than I do and I, the phone, the camera on my phone, I have a decent phone, it's probably way better than the one that I have sitting on top of my monitor. I just don't use it as much. I don't know, I guess everyone's different like that.12:18That's the thing. Yeah. And also just to dive into so what Jason was saying with the laptop. We don't want to talk price on here because I mean, it depends on the country that you're in. Okay. So you didn't need to go and find your best option if Amazon has this option. We are in your country, whatever else. But also, if you don't have money for a laptop, a desktop is a lot cheaper in general than a laptop. So yes, you obviously don't have the portability of it, you can go and sit in a coffee shop and work or whatever else. But if you don't have the money and you're just starting out, you can get a desktop for a quarter of the price than you would pay for a laptop. So that's another option for you if you don't have $1,000, or even five or $600 for a laptop. You can get it for like two $300 for a desktop, which is the same concept, you can have your RAM that Jason talked about, you can have your memory you can have all of those things for a fraction of the price. So that's another option for you, which is obviously what laptops is better especially if you know you are then you're gonna start seeing clients and things like that but if that's not an option for you yet it's a great starting point if you don't have the budget.13:22Yeah. 100% and you know, if a desktop is where you start, you know, that could be one of your main business goals. Yeah. Monetarily wise as you move towards, you know, you move towards getting the laptop.13:38Yes, exactly. I've had quite a few conversations lately with people where they are fixated on the technology they not fixated on or if that's the right word to use on the actual starting a business. So guys, I just want to explain this to you so you understand your technology is going to help you to make money but that's not the sole reason you're going to make money, your time and effort that you put in every single day that is gonna make you money. So if you buy a $2,000 laptop, and you buy a $600 mike and whatever else, you're going to spend like five con equipment, and you're not making money, that's your own fault. So I just want to make sure that you know, people understand it because the other day I saw a price with someone saying, I've got $1,500 for a mike, what can I get for it for that? You don't need to pay $1,500 for a microphone. That's crazy. You can get like a really good Jet eye one, which by the way I'm ordering for 100 bucks and that's it why spend  worry about the content. This year, my phone on here I have an app, so sorry, Jason going on content. But I was assuming that that microphone was the next thing that we were talking about. And on here, and if you guys are on screen, you can you know if you're going to look at this on YouTube, you're going to see this. Just gonna see if I can pull this system up or this app that I've got. So I have an app called voice record. So if you, if you can see the little button there, if you can see, it says voice recording. And on that, that is how I record my podcast episodes. That actually sounds better than my microphone. And I don't have the best microphone yet. I've been slowly investing in that because it for me, it was more about the content. I am not excited about technology, but more on the content. And but this is the thing and my podcast episodes that are recorded and that act actually transcribes it for you. And I think I pay like $3 a month for it, which is nothing. And it transcribes it for you. If you upload it, you can change the speed, you can add in audio, you can do everything with it. It's literally like an editing software tool for voice over things as well. So it's amazing. So I mean, for apps like that, that's an iPhone app. I don't know if it's on Android though. But I mean, that is how simple these things can be. You know, you don't even if you want to start a podcast, all you need is your phone. You can do everything on it. You don't even need a computer, you don't need a microphone. So, videos, if you're not going to share your screen, just use your phone, you can do everything from your phone. If you're going to built software for people or built funnels or do those types of things, yes, you're going to need a laptop. But I mean, if you're just starting out, and you just want to make noise, I call it noise, you know, do marketing and advertise yourself and do you know your attractive characters, people get to know you, all you need is a phone. But then it gets into the details. And Jason has some really, really valid points, you know, as far as the RAM and the monitor, and those things go, What's your point? What's your thing on the mic? Because Jase, I know you've got a good mike because you've got a friend that recommended that to you, that is a very good podcaster so what's your evaluation?16:48So I think it's nice to be able to have a mike like this is the one I have here, which by the way I'm not using at the moment. So when you know you get one of these guys. So this mike is good you know, it's a good decent I'll say condenser mike. And so this mike with the arm was like it was less than 100 bucks. Now, I mean, but I don't have it in now because it does require an external power source that broke and I need to order a new one. But like Joy said with the phone, I think it's good to have a microphone. Because when you start as if you start doing things like webinars and things like this, you want to sound as clear as possible. And you want to be able to have a microphone that has the ability to diffuse the outside noise and getting rid of that for you. I think that's it's a good thing to have, fortunately for you to get to that point where you can get something decent is not a lot of money. So you know, it's just another thing you can keep on your list of things we're working towards, but that is not going to you know, not going to break the bank but it's a good thing.17:57Yeah. Well, my mike and I'm on a decent laptop here, I mean, this is like a couple of thousand dollars worth of laptop it's a gaming laptop. So it's like it's a really good laptop, but the sound on it is terrible. Like, if I unplug my mike, it sounds like I'm in a tunnel. It's really really bad. So and I mean, as I said, this mike was like a $60 mike. So it's not like it's a wow, like a most expensive laptop or a mike because I didn't want to invest a lot of money in it at the time when I bought it because I felt like that is not the reason you know, I wanted to invest in the actual things that I'm doing with it. And in saying that, you know, you just need a like the cheapest thing to start out with just so you can actually get going and with your content and like maybe I. Barely18:47It's terrible if I unplug it and this is a decent laptop, you know, so in saying that it doesn't matter how amazeballs your laptop potentially can be when you buy a new one the sound output or input however this it can be shocking when it comes to not having a microphone. And especially if you're going to do like what Jason said, if you do webinars and voice me out, like, you know, sharing your screen meetings or any meetings with a client, when you use your laptop, it's worth the 50 or 60 bucks if you just thought out to invest in it. I do need to get another microphone, that's for sure. But that's, that's my next thing in the next couple of days. Okay, so in saying that, Jason, let's talk about the green screen. So you've got that green screen behind you. Can you show us what that is? Because I don't have a green screen guys there you go. Jason has invested in the green screen and he thinks he and his girlfriend made it. Didn't Cam make that for you? I didn't make that.19:46That's nice. I think he crocheted that out on the deck. No. So what actually greets, you know, green screens are really cool. And I really only started getting into them recently and what they're really doing is video editing. So if you don't have like a nice place to record, or you're doing something more professional green screen is where you can manipulate your background. And if you don't know the science behind that there's a whole science you can go look that up on your own. But to get like, for example, this I bought this as a green screen, it wasn't, it was like, honestly, it was like $25, right. And what it's hanging from is like a clothes rack, like a portable clothes rack where you hang your clothes on. So I just put the clips across the clothes rack and so if I want to record something with the green screen behind me, I just simply put it behind me when I'm recording and then I can manipulate all the green screen stuff afterward.20:45Can you show us how it looks like? What? To actually have the green screen going, like is it possible or not. I'm putting you on the spot, but it's a good thing because guys, I don't have a green screen and honestly just have not felt, I haven't felt like the need like I need one. And because I'm in between offices, so this is my office on the side of the house. And then I've got my actual real office at the back which I and my husband are splitting at the moment, you see, so you can see the. So that's how it looks like if you have a green screen, so you can do any background, it actually looks good. Like with zoom, for example, if you do a virtual background resume, it actually looks like it's highlighted with a green screen. It doesn't.21:24With the green screen because so there's a setting there happens to be a setting on zoom. Yeah, where anywhere there's green screen space. So if I was sitting in front of it, you know, and I had this thing wide, as wide as the camera angle is here, I'd be on this little starship, you know, whatever it is, and then that's just an example of what the green screen is. The other thing is I bought this from a green screen place. It's just as easy to go to say target. And you go into a kid's bedding section and get like a green that's used from a Disney movie like I don't know where to start. What's the guy with the bubble on his head and then Toy Story to astronauts and beyond theirs. Buzzlightning. Thank you. I do have kids and I do pay attention to them. So you can go get a sheet that's like that color, like solid. And it will work just fine blue also work again, there's a science behind it, and you just have to go check it out, but good to have if you ever want to get there. That's the whole setup is probably $30 it's more learning the science. Yeah, that really takes up your time. So another thing and I just want to bring this up because it reminded me when Joy was talking before, all these different like programs that you can use to edit photos and to do organization and all these little tricks and to do podcasting and to upload podcasting and all these little programs that you're going to want to have most of them at least for a decent program you can get for free yet if not real cheap. I mean Joy, you're you can speak more.23:10Yeah, I was just gonna say that was actually going to be my next thing. So to start a podcast which I would strongly recommend guys, let's be honest your first 40 episodes is going to suck donkey balls it's let's be honest because you're going to learn how to do this but in saying that this is a great way for you to publish and my students know I always go on about  publish publish publish start a podcast or blog, start a blog, whatever it is, but get yourself out there and market.  Jason knows I irritate him all the time about publishing. So and this is a podcast is like the cheapest and the easiest way to start out publishing. If you are scared of videos, then do a podcast if you're not if you were terrible in writing anything to do a podcast. And I mean where the podcast is like I said, all you need is your phone to record the episodes on you don't even need much more than that. And then I use anchor when I started out, so the anchor is completely free. The nice thing about an anchor is that I distribute your episodes when you reach a certain amount of people I think I can't remember how that works. But they distribute your episodes on Apple and breaker and Spotify and Google podcasts and whatever else all the different ones I do that I upgraded now I'm not on anchor anymore. I am using simple cost, which there are so many other ones to use. You can have simple costs, you've got buzz sprout, you've got all these different ones I like simple costs simply because you can take snippets of your actual podcast and uploaded everywhere so it makes it easier, but in saying that you can do it on a normal editing tool as well, but that's just easier for me to find that. Also in saying that, I would not recommend starting out with anchor because I had issues transferring my podcast onto Apple, sorry, onto a paid version. The reason why I would not recommend anchor, but it's up to you how you want to do this because they own your content. So that makes it a bit bad because you can't because they own it you've got less control over it because it's free, you see. So that's why I think the simple cost, I think I pay, I've got their middle plan. I think it's 25 bucks a month 25 or $30 a month US dollars that are and that's what I'm on. And it works for what I'm doing. But when you start out, you can go on a minimum plan, which I think is 10 bucks a month, okay. And then what you get with that is your actual set up you get all of your, you know, you're you know how many episodes how many people have listened to it? Where are people listening to your episodes is it on Spotify than on Google? Is it on whatever else, you know, is it an iTunes, etc? So it lists all of those things. So you don't have to wonder like, ooh, you know, how many people are listening and what platform are they listening on, etc. And you can also see what episodes get the most listeners and you can see okay, this is actually what my audience needs, and you can publish more episodes linked onto that type of thing as well. And that's why I and Jason's once work well because I've noticed that me and Jason's episodes, get a lot, a lot of viewers, a lot of listeners. And that's why I know that people appreciate the episodes because we actually educate people a lot on different topics. But in saying that you don't need to go crazy if you don't have 10 or $15 a month to start out then use anchor, it's just a mission to get it transferred. It took me three weeks to actually go back and forth with people to get transferred. Other people don't have the issues but I had. And that made me really cross and I've actually lost my, my podcast was off of iTunes for a week because of the whole mess, which was really bad for me because I lost a lot of listeners. So I was not a happy customer. And that's why I wouldn't recommend anchor. But in saying that, you know, other people don't have these issues. But that's how you start a podcast. You don't need to go crazy, you're fine, and a free tool. I use Movavi for editing my things. I've recommended this to Jason as well. So sometimes what happens is I'm a tech weenie, everybody that knows me knows I'm a tech weenie, I don't do technology very well. When you buy sometimes you buy this hundred 200 $300 programs. It's very complicated to use those things. It's taking forever to edit stuff. We're like, what was that Jason 60 bucks? I think it was 60 bucks. And that's a once-off fee that's what you pay for the software. And you bought it recently. I bought mine two years ago now, so I can't remember. Yeah, I think I think mine was it was like, it was like 65 it's right there.27:29Yeah, it's like it's and that's it, that's the one so the fee you don't pay it again. And you can use that to add your audio to podcasts and all of that stuff. So it's a really it's like really one of the cheapest and that actually got recommended to me by previous coaches that I and Jason shared  like a few years ago. And it's up to that. Seriously, I use it every single video that I edit my YouTube stuff, everything. That's what I use. And I've recommended the software  to so many people. And also just note guys, we don't get any affiliation things for sharing, any of these, you know, the programmes that we use, there's no affiliation commissions for us whatsoever. We're not signed up for any of them. It's just purely our experiences and what we use and that works for us. That's what this is all about. So just to make sure you're not advertising anything because we're not getting paid for it. But yeah, so that's, that's really what I have on on the podcasting thing Jase. So I don't know,That could be a whole nother subject.28:28Just about it really can be so if you guys need more information on that just, you know, drop a comment and we can definitely dive into the details on that. As I say, I'm ordering Mojito mike, because I've been looking into getting another mike but I haven't really made it a priority because this one works. But I think because I'm getting more listeners, it's time to upgrade. So the JSR one apparently is really really good. A lot of people have recommended it. I read a post on Facebook, there was somebody that asked you to know the same guy that wants to buy an  expensive mike and then people was like every other comment was saying the same thing JSR and you can get it on Amazon apparently for like 80 bucks. So not bad29:08Yeah. So I will be able to make fun of you talking into that big red thing you got there. Jason has a problem since we started this like forever ago what was this Jase like wow probably a year in four or five months now. I think for a long time yeah, he hates this thing. I can talk to you. No, I'm just joking. Well, at least I don't look like I'm gonna go to spice like you are where's your suite?Where's your space suit? Maybe I will put on the goggles people will know.Put on the goggles. That's what you do when you go to space. Okay, and the other big thing that we need to just talk about is having an internet connection. Oh yes.29:50That is the biggest thing. Guys, I don't know where you are in the world. Because let me just put this out there when you in South Africa and I know this firsthand because I have family in South Africa internet is stupidly expensive, stupidly expensive, okay, I don't know why it's because it's like it's not a monopoly or whatever, there's not a lot of competition. So the people that have the internet can make it really expensive. We're here in New Zealand, it's cheap. And where you are, it's relatively cheap. But how does the speed work Jase I know we are on the fastest speed that you can get in New Zealand I don't know what that is? But I don't know about technology. I'm a weenie. So what is your recommendation on the speed to actually just, you know, run proper videos and those types of things?30:31You know, a lot of it depends on what in the houses using up your bandwidth, you know, is it just you by yourself? You have a family, and everybody's phone is connected to the Wi-Fi, and you're watching movies and you know, like my house here, there's usually always four, four of us. And everybody's connected. Everybody's connected to the internet. And I think that we have 100 megabytes per second here, and that does as well. But when you're just starting out if you can get at least 15 megabytes per second, that's going to take care and that's going to cover all the video stuff that you'll be doing like we're doing here right now. It's going to cover your phones. It's going to cover your movie watching so if you have a family 15 will get you through. It just depends it depends on the plan so yeah, cable companies are really good at sucking you in. So you really have to look I mean, do you already you might have TV phone and internet already bundled and it might just be quick you know, another, I don't know 20 bucks a month to get to that level of the internet if you don't have it already. But yeah, I would try to get to 15 meg's is is a really good start. If you only have 5 like an economy package or something like that you should do okay, but you might have an issue of somebody watching a movie while you're working there might be an issue there and you don't want to run into that.32:11I would not recommend that if you run zoom meetings and things like that because that eats up a lot of stuff. And a lot of bandwidth here. Yeah, and I definitely agree with that. Like you know what, like Jason saying there's a lot of good packages like you're in New Zealand for example, I'm not gonna mention the name because I just don't want to talk people but um, and we use one of the like, the bigger you know, standard marketplace people and we pay 200 bucks a month for our internet and that is including our phones internet as well. And on top of that, we get Spotify as well on the package like that really bundled it together. So and I mean we've shopped around like you're in Zealand and that's the best one that we got, you know, considering got Spotify and with what iPhones you're not intended on the as well so it's really not a bad price. In comparison to what's out there so just really shop around, if you're in a position to shop around, really shop around, see what they can offer you as a package because the package deals are normally the best ones that you can get, that's for sure.33:09And also whatever cable company you may have now, your cable provider may have hotspots set up throughout. That's very true. Whatever area that you're in that as long as you have a cable account, you can access those hotspots and if you are near them, they can be up to 20 25 you know, megabytes per second. So look into that as well.33:32That's very, very true. Also, if you don't have the internet if you don't have a connection set up at home, which is probably a more expensive option, but it's very doable. And if you can get a really good package for your phone, you can hotspot your phone to your laptop, that's another option. I used to do that a lot when I did meetings. I used to be in sales I used to take my laptop and hotspot at client's offices if you know I couldn't get set up on their server or whatever else. And that works well, it's not cheap, though, you have to have a lot of data for it. So what I used to do when I did that is the boss, the boss that I had at the time pay for it, so it wasn't a big deal, but you would get like boost packages. So you'll get like 100 megs for a day for only like three bucks, you know, little things like that, you know, so you can do that as well, depending again, on your cable company like here we just put into the package, not a cable company. That's all different in America. But yes, but that's the concept really, you know, is that you can do that. So if you know you're going to do a lot of work on just one day or maybe plan it out. If you really don't have the budget for it, then you know, to actually set up the internet and pay for the internet connection, etc. Then work outside today I'm going to work nine hours on my business and then just do that type of package and spend maybe 10 bucks to just get like a gig of data because that's normally how that works is only valid for one day. So you have to finish it within that one day and then you can do that and then you save hundreds of dollars potentially yourself.35:03If you're not doing webinars or stuff right off the bat, go to McDonald's sit in there or a coffee shop. Maybe you want to block out your time where you know I'm doing these things and I need this connection. And you can get away to a coffee shop or McDonald's or something like that, where it's free. You know, by all means, utilize those resources.35:24So guys, really the big thing here that I and Jason is talking about this, this is your setup fees on things that you need to start a business, okay? You don't need to buy crazy equipment, don't get fixated on $3,000 laptop and I need like $1,000 mike, and I need this and I need that people don't give a crap. Honestly, I'm being blunt when I started but there's a truth. They care about you as a person and what you can give them and what they need and what how you can fix the needs. Okay? That's the basics of starting a business. You don't need fancy equipment, you don't need to invest in the next best technology thing. I mean, you see me and Jason technology, we use very, I don't have a green screen. I don't care to have a green screen. It doesn't bother me. You know, for Jason it works because he's lighting is not so great in his office. But that's the thing you know. So, you know, it really depends. It depends on what you do. So, in saying that, I think that completes our episode. Jase do you have anything to add?36:17Nothing to add that's an awesome episode. And I know that's, you know, those are questions that people looking at looking to get into this business,a  have those questions, or two you use that information to say, I could never get this going and becomes one of your excuses. So now that myth is expelled. The procrastination is smashed.36:39Gone. Okay, awesome. Thank you, guys. And then I think we will actually do a whole new episode, eventually just on podcasting setups, and all of that stuff, because I think there's a lot more to it than just what we've mentioned. Definitely. And especially like, and then what we'll maybe do is we'll even do a screen share and talk more about it like that as well. You know, programs and whatever else awesomeness. Thank you, Jase.37:06Bye-bye

Transcription:Redonda Miller 0:03We have this playbook of physical capacity staffing policies. I'm thinking about all the thought that went into standing up a visitor policy or a masking policy or a travel policy. Now we can turn those on and off as needed.Gary Bisbee 0:20That was Dr. Redonda Miller. President at Johns Hopkins Hospital, speaking about the core competency of scaling up and scaling down, developed to respond to the COVID crisis. I'm Gary Bisbee. And this is Fireside Chat. Dr. Miller outlines the top three priorities of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and she speaks about the benefits and challenges of the Maryland all-payer model. Let's listen to Dr. Miller respond to the question of how the COVID crisis changed her as a community member.Redonda Miller 0:50As a community member Gary, I think this was probably the most impactful and humbled every day by the incredible appreciation from the community, the number of ways they stepped up. Whether it was school kids making cards for the healthcare workers here. Whether it was the donations of homemade masks, businesses sending food to the front line. I really feel a part of the community here in Baltimore like I've never felt before.Gary Bisbee 1:20Our conversation includes Dr. Miller's view of the need for a reliable PPE supply chain and the necessity of governmental stockpiles, how telemedicine visits grew overnight from 35 to 20,000 per week, the strategy for educating the community to return for necessary surgery and treatments, and the top characteristics of a leader in a crisis. I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Redonda Miller to the microphone. Good morning, Redonda, and welcome.Redonda Miller 1:52Good morning, Gary. It's such a pleasure to be here virtually so to speak.Gary Bisbee 1:56Exactly. We're pleased to have you at the microphone. Let's begin with learning a little bit more about you – start out at the very beginning. Where did you grow up?Redonda Miller 2:06Well, I actually grew up in southern Ohio, very rural area near Kentucky and West Virginia, where my parents still live. And in a desperate attempt to escape, so to speak, I ended up at Ohio State for college, and then here in Baltimore for medical school at Johns Hopkins, and I've been here ever since.Gary Bisbee 2:27What have you found that you liked the most about Hopkins? What's the culture of Hopkins like?Redonda Miller 2:32When I came to interview for medical school, I had this mental notion in my mind of very smart people, serious scholars, discoverers and sure, that is all true. It is. But what I found 31 years ago was this incredible warmth, and humanity and kindness and esprit de corps. And honestly, that is what has kept me here for 31 years. There is a drive toward excellence. Everyone wants to be the best. They want to be on the cutting edge, but at the same time, a sense of collegiality and family that it's really a powerful combination.Gary Bisbee 3:13Let's drop back a bit. At what point did you decide on medicine, Redonda?Redonda Miller 3:17It's an interesting story. I am a lover of math and physics and economics and finance. And I started my college career, wanting to be an engineer, an aeronautical engineer. But I quickly learned that there was a human side to what I wanted to do, probably stemmed from in high school, my parents, who my dad, in particular avid gardener, they were both school teachers. But he was an avid gardener on the side. And one evening, after dinner, they became very ill very quickly and within 15-20 minutes, were both passed out. I called 911. I was a freshman in high school, the oldest of four children. I remember vividly the sight of the paramedics doing CPR on my dad as they wheeled my mom and dad out of the house to the local hospital. And I will tell you, the paramedics, the nurses, the doctors at that local rural hospital saved my parents. And it turns out they had organophosphate poisoning, which was very common, you know, it's from insecticides that have since been banned. My parents are fine today alive and well. But I always remembered how those healthcare workers saved their lives. And it really influenced my choice later on.Gary Bisbee 4:33Sure. The fact that they were teachers, do you think that cultivated your sense of learning and excellence?Redonda Miller 4:39I do. You know, in pure teacher form they had high expectations for the children to pursue something they loved and to give it our all. So yes, and in fact, I started out my career here at Hopkins after I finished training as a clinician-educator, there's some of that love of teaching hidden inside of me.Gary Bisbee 4:58At what point did you decide then to pursue your MBA?Redonda Miller 5:01I was probably mid-career in my 30s had been doing very well. I had a typical traditional faculty role as a clinician-educator focusing on women's health but became frustrated with how we delivered care. This was back 15-20 years ago, and we were not as patient-centered as I thought we could be. We were not as efficient as I thought we could be. At some point, you either just whine or you become part of the solution. And it also provided this opportunity to enjoy some of the other subjects that I'd always liked, like economics and finance and math. So I decided I wanted to retool my career and work on clinical operations. I didn't have the right tools. So it prompted me to go back to business school and pursue an MBA. So I at least had some foundational knowledge of operations and healthcare delivery that would hopefully serve me well.Gary Bisbee 5:59I believe you're still practicing. Is that right?Redonda Miller 6:01I do. I do. I'm a general internist. And I love still practicing. Many of my patients I've known for 20 years. I have a clinic once a week. And that of course is all of the physicians who are listening might know your practice doesn't end just because the clinic door closed, so I field phone calls all week long. But it has been invaluable. To live firsthand some of the initiatives we roll out as a hospital, I have to take the same epic training, I see what it's like to care for a patient who may be PUI for COVID and wear a face mask. I also now have a cadre of secret shoppers. My patients are the first to call me with Redonda, "Did you know this happened during check-in?" or "I was in the hospital and this happened or did you realize this?" And so it's been so valuable in many ways.Gary Bisbee 6:54Unintended benefit of practice. Do you find as a leader at an academic medical center that it gives you more credibility with those you're leading that you're still practicing?Redonda Miller 7:06I think it does, because once again, anything that you say we have to do, I'm going to do it as well. And so I do understand the frustrations of clicking in an electronic medical record. I can empathize more, and hopefully, it informs decision making a little better.Gary Bisbee 7:23In terms of leadership, what drew you to leadership?Redonda Miller 7:28I'm not for sure I was drawn to leadership per se. In fact, I think more what I was drawn to was this notion of fixing things. As a true general internist, I like variety, I like diagnosing, and I like trying to fix things. And so what I liked about hospital administration is those same principles applied. Your day consists of a myriad of different problems that hit your desk, and you pull the right teams together, diagnose the situation, and try to fix it. The leadership part, I think was sort of an accidental outcome of that, that perhaps my mentors hopefully acknowledged somehow that okay, I could execute on what we designed. And then that led to greater responsibility. But I didn't necessarily go into this hospital administration route thinking I wanted to be a leader.Gary Bisbee 8:21Right. Sometimes it's referred to as an accidental leader, but you're doing a terrific job. Why don't we turn to Johns Hopkins Hospital? You've been president now I believe for four years. Will you describe Johns Hopkins Hospital for us?Redonda Miller 8:36Sure. The Johns Hopkins Hospital is a 1,000-bed hospital, roughly, with revenue of around 2.6 billion. We have about 11,000 employees, about 2,500 medical staff, and then 1,300 residents and fellows. We have the usual typical designations level one trauma center, comprehensive transplant, NCI-Designated Cancer Center, but we're part of a larger health system. And our larger health system is comprised of six hospitals – five in the Mid-Atlantic and one in Florida. We have a payer arm, we have a home care group, we have a community physician network. So that's a little bit about the hospital and how we fit into the health system.Gary Bisbee 9:17How do you relate to these other hospitals? Do you draw from them? Or do they draw from you? How do you think about that?Redonda Miller 9:23Oh, it's very commensal. And I would say that's something we've struggled with over the last decade becoming a system. But over the last couple of years, and particularly with the crisis of COVID-19, we have really done wonders to become functioning more like a system. I will tell you, I learned things all the time from my community hospital colleagues, the presidents of our community hospitals. Hopefully, they would say the same thing about the academic medical center, but it's been a great partnership.Gary Bisbee 9:55What are your main priorities at JHH?Redonda Miller 9:56I would be remiss, Gary, if I didn't tell you COVID-19 rose to the top three months ago. And for the next year or two, it will continue to be right at the top. And it's interesting how the focus has changed from “Oh my, how are we going to deal with that initial surge” to now the focus of how do we conduct our usual business and as an academic medical center, there are patients that we really specialize in and have expertise. So how do we care for those patients, in addition to caring for COVID-19? So that's priority number one. I think priority number two, we had started all kinds of good work on high-value care. In the era of patients paying more out of pocket for their health care, they are going to want to choose wisely. And so we have to hold ourselves accountable to being high value. How do we deliver high-quality care, but at a price that is appropriate? So that would be our second priority. And then interestingly, we have really shifted a lot, without losing our emphasis on discovery and innovation. We at the Johns Hopkins Hospital can never lose that. But thinking more about population health and community care, and what it means to serve East Baltimore. Historically, obviously, we focused on transitions out of the hospital, care coordination, disease management, but we've taken that to a different level. And how do we tackle the social determinants of health? We've done work on jobs and hiring. More recently, we partnered with the other city hospitals, health care for the homeless and the city to house 200 individuals experiencing homelessness, and we decided we were going to build and renovate houses, but go beyond that and provide all the supportive care one needs. Job counseling, treatment for chronic diseases, help getting to and from the grocery store. So those are really our priorities high-value care, community care, and of course COVID-19.Gary Bisbee 12:06What percentage of patients come from Baltimore and surrounding communities?Redonda Miller 12:10Right now about two-thirds of our 50,000 discharges derive from Central Maryland, and about one-third from Baltimore city itself. And then of course, the final third, given some of our areas of expertise draw from states far away and internationally.Gary Bisbee 12:28Why don't we go to the Maryland all-payer model for lessons learned there? Could you describe that for us, Redonda?Redonda Miller 12:36Oh, sure. We've had the all-payer model here in Maryland since 1977. And it was initially designed and still is today. It functions as all-payer in the sense that everyone pays the same for care delivered in Maryland hospitals, and by everyone I mean, commercials, Medicare, Medicaid. We love that about the model, it takes away any kind of gamesmanship or trying to attract a certain patient over another, everyone pays the same and the rates that hospitals are allowed to charge are set by a commission. In 2014, there was another unique component to our model that was added, hospitals were now going to be reimbursed via global budget revenue. So each hospital in Maryland knew its revenue for the next fiscal year out of the gate. And then year after year, that revenue would be tweaked, based upon volume shifts, market shifts, demographics, and so forth. So I know going into FY 21, what my revenue will be. That's been our model to date. It's highly regulated, and year to year, you're not going to have huge operating margins as a hospital in Maryland. But I will tell you during bad times, and we've looked at over the last three or four months, that model can be protective. Well, because the volumes dropped so precipitously, none of us could charge up to our full GBR. We did have some increased charging authority that provided the cash flow and liquidity we needed to survive the pandemic.Gary Bisbee 14:13As a result of COVID, one imagines that legislators in Washington DC are going to be thinking about some kind of model like the Maryland all-payer model. So we may end up with something more like it at the national level, who knows. What's the payer mix? If I could ask, what's the current payer mix?Redonda Miller 14:32Here at the hospital, government payers are about 48%, 19% for Medicaid, about 29% for Medicare. And then commercial, we are about 49%. And then self-pay about three.Gary Bisbee 14:46So that would be among a lot of health systems that country pretty favorable payer mix, actually. Why don't we turn to COVID you brought that up, and I think we all agree a crisis accelerates existing trends, but thinking about capacity, PPE and so on, how did that fare at JHH?Redonda Miller 15:06We did okay with PPE, but we have the luxury here in Maryland of learning from Seattle, learning from Italy and learning from New York. So we knew right away that we had to start conserving. We focused meticulous attention on PPE conservation. We also had help from partners. Local industry stepped up to help us. Sagamore Spirit made hand sanitizer. Under Armour made masks. Many volunteers went to our central distribution center, and we crafted our own face masks. So we really and then of course, other businesses donated N95s. So we were okay. But it wasn't without a struggle. And I will tell you we're still not where we need to be as far as PPE, but we're working on it.Gary Bisbee 15:53If you formulated a point of view, Redonda, about the reliability of supply chain, do you think we need to do something nationally about that? What's your thought?Redonda Miller 16:03Oh, of course, absolutely we do. I think we've learned about when you have a sole producer in the market or one country dominating the manufacturer of a good bet is a common good, you run into trouble. I think we saw this in the pharmaceutical industry somewhat. And we talked about the escalation in drug prices a couple of years ago, where market economics resulted in a sole source provider of certain generics that have been around forever and the ramifications. I think we see that with PPE. We need to make sure that we have the right supply chain that is diversified. I also think we need to take a look at our stockpile and rethink exactly what numbers are appropriate. And the conversation about do we do that as a nation or by individual states, we need to fine-tune that conversation and make some decisions.Gary Bisbee 16:54That's definitely being discussed around the circuit. There's no question about that. How did your ICU capacity hold up?Redonda Miller 17:02That was, even to this day, everyone here will tell you that is our major factor. We were incredibly lucky. When the COVID pandemic first hit, we decided as Johns Hopkins Health System that we would transfer the initial code of patients here, particularly those that were critically ill. So we were taking a lot of patients from the National Capital Region, Gumby county where they were very hard hit Howard County and bringing them to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. And we did that predominantly for two reasons one had to do with our physical capacity. We have new patient towers that we were able to flip unit by unit to negative pressure and keep staff and patient safe. We had the luxury of having a lot of ICU. So we had staff expertise who were gifted at critical care, nurses, doctors, anesthesiologist, so ICU capacity we did okay.Gary Bisbee 18:08It seems to lead to a new competency, maybe even a core competency to scale up and scale down quickly. Do you think about it that way?Redonda Miller 18:19What we do every day, we call it our playbook, our pandemic playbook. And honestly, I think it could be used for other global health crises or even any crisis. But so much of our initial time was spent trying to figure out which units could be converted. How are we going to redeploy staff and leverage expertise? We have very highly specialized staff at AMC, so retraining people to go back to their roots in their core competencies. So we have this playbook of physical capacity staffing policies are in the playbook. I'm thinking about all the thought that went into standing up a visitor policy or a masking policy or a travel policy. Now we can turn those on and off as needed. And some of the models of care. Thinking about testing, we know how to do community testing now and how to stand up tents. We know how to compile a Go team that will help go into nursing homes and do testing and risk mitigation at potential hotspots. So yes, I do think this has taught us that five years from now two years from now, who knows when the next issue hits, we will have processes in place that we can roll out much more easily.Gary Bisbee 19:37Terrific. What about tele-visits? Most of the health systems saw dramatic, even exponential increase in tele-visits, how about you?Redonda Miller 19:46I laugh because telemedicine was sort of on our three to five-year goal, of okay, we’re really going to roll this out. And then overnight, I mean, literally Gary, overnight. We went from around 35 tele-visits per week across our health system to 20,000 per week, overnight. So here at the hospital, we're doing 5,000 telemedicine visits a day. It's about two-thirds of our ambulatory visit volume. And I have to say it's going well. Patients like them and you know, I can tell you that firsthand. My own practice. I have patients who will say, "I was reticent to do this, this high tech stuff Redonda. I don't know about this." They love telemedicine visits, they don't have to drive into East Baltimore. They don't have to pay for parking. They can do it from their own home. I think telemedicine is here to stay.Gary Bisbee 20:38Do you think that the older generation will adapt to it?Redonda Miller 20:52That was the first thing that went through my mind is how is the older generation going to handle this? They are fine. I have patients that are in their 90s. They're doing just fine with it. I think the big challenge will be wrestling with the reimbursement. Here at hospital-based clinics, if we just reimburse only the profit part, I don't think that's going to do justice to all the infrastructure needed to conduct an efficient telemedicine visit. You still need staff to virtually room the patient and make sure that the med reconciliation has been done and all that pre-visit work, you're still going to need staff to do the follow-up and schedule appointments and tests. So I think we have to give some serious consideration about the appropriate reimbursement model.Gary Bisbee 21:38The CMS waivers on payment and physician licensure across states, no doubt were important. Do you have a feel for how important they were to accelerate the visits?Redonda Miller 21:49Very important. We still struggle because there's not complete reciprocity and licensing. So we still struggle with sometimes delivering out of state care, but hopefully, we'll get there.Gary Bisbee 22:00How did you ramp up to 20,000 visits? I mean, did you employ just a whole bunch of your doctors and nurses, or how did that work?Redonda Miller 22:08We have an amazing telemedicine team and an amazing ambulatory team. You asked me, What do I like about Hopkins? Well, people just they rally and they get it done. So everyone did their virtual online training so that they would understand how to use it. We redeployed our staff, so they can handle the volume. I don't think there was any magic bullet. I think it was just a culmination of group effort.Gary Bisbee 22:35Terrific. Well, why don't we turn to elective surgery assuming that you had to lock down and discontinue that for awhile. Have you restarted?Redonda Miller 22:43Yes, we did restart our elective surgeries. On May 18, we opened up for our ASC. And then this past Monday, we started hospital-based elective surgery. The biggest limiting factor for us is just getting our ICUs back online. We still have a decent amount of COVID-19 patients here that are critically ill. So bed capacity is our biggest limiter.Gary Bisbee 23:09How have patients responded?Redonda Miller 23:12Initially, we were worried that people would be hesitant to come back to the hospital and I think there's still some fear. But every time we've opened our schedule, we've been able to fill it. The pent up demand is so great that we've not had difficulty filling our OR schedules. Now some of this could also be due to an aggressive campaign we've launched encouraging patients to return to hospitals who've been very worried about some of the statistics in the literature about people putting off care and having heart attacks at home. And we saw it here at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Our ED visits fell to a third of normal. We knew that patients were out there and bad things could be happening. So we did launch an aggressive campaign both here at our own institution via messaging through MyChart and Epic and text messages and articles and videos and graphics. But we also partnered with the Maryland Hospital Association, who launched a broad sweeping campaign in Maryland, billboards, TV, radio, encouraging people to really seek necessary care.Gary Bisbee 24:19Why don’t we turn to economics, which is not a pretty picture for any of our health systems. How was JHH affected by the whole COVID crisis in terms of your financials?Redonda Miller 24:30As I mentioned a bit earlier, our GBR here under the Maryland payment system did protect us to some degree, I mean, we will experience losses, and I think that's to be expected. Anytime you lose that kind of volume, you're going to suffer, but we've managed okay to be honest. Capital, we had to reduce our capital expenditure and delay some of it so we took a really close look at what our plans were for capital expenditure. And what did we absolutely have to do in the name of patient safety and quality? And then put other things on hold. We're hoping to revisit that. And of course, a lot of our strategic capital plans we had to put on hold some of our larger projects. Hopefully, the numbers will continue to go down. I'm going to be an optimist. Gary, I am. I think we will have a surge in the fall. But hopefully, we can contain it and manage it and we can get back on track for some of our strategic priorities.Gary Bisbee 25:28With your optimistic hat on what are you thinking about 2021 Redonda? Will you be able to get back to "normal" by then, do you think, financially?Redonda Miller 25:37Our goal here is to really be able to resume all the essential care we did. I think about care here at the hospital, transplants, high-end surgeries, all of that work that really we rely on our AMCs to do as we don't often have that kind of expertise and community hospitals. I view we owe it to the local Maryland community toet back in that business right away. And so our goal is to really figure out how we're going to ramp up all of our usual book of business, and then still take care of COVID on top of that. That's going to be meaning adding or renovating physical capacity that's going to be looking at staffing plans. And can we bring on staff to do that to get us through the next year? Just like all of my colleagues across the country, we're looking at, you know, people who've retired do they want to come back for a year. We have some fellows who are graduating, who are worried about the job market, and they want to spend time next year being COVID hospitalists and really take a year-long break. And so we think that's going to help us on the provider front. But our goal is to try to get back to do all of our usual work and take exquisite care of COVID-19 patients.Gary Bisbee 26:49Leadership's always important, particularly magnified, probably in a crisis. When you first became aware that the COVID crisis was gonna strike, what was your first thought?Redonda Miller 27:00I think that was probably like most people. Your first thought out of the gate is, oh my, we have never faced anything like this before. This is going to be a long three months. But I have to say it was quickly followed by a little notion of, we've got this. We had already practiced. We're one of the regional centers for biocontainment. And we stepped up after Ebola to become a center of expertise. So we've already been training on a continual basis. Staff, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, you name it, who knew what it was like to step into a pandemic, and they were able to train others pretty quickly. So I figured, we'll be okay. We will manage this. And luckily, that has been the case.Gary Bisbee 27:46What is one of the most important characteristics of a leader during a crisis like this, do you think?Redonda Miller 27:51I think some of the most important characteristics are, number one, being able to pull groups of experts together and then just trusting those experts to manage. This notion that we're all in this together and having the right people around the table because no one has complete mastery of a pandemic like this. No one does. So it really was this getting the team together and building our plans in unison. And then I think, honestly, for leaders, you have to be the person who is positive. And explaining that, yes, we can do this. Yes, we're going to make decisions that we will have to rethink and maybe pivot in a different direction. And that's okay. But we will get through this. So the leader has to have some element of positivity.Gary Bisbee 28:42This has been a terrific interview, Redonda, I have one last question if I could, and that is how does the COVID experience change you as a leader and as a family member?Redonda Miller 28:54As a leader, I'm not sure it's so much has changed me as reminded me of all that is great in health care. As a physician, I trained in crisis mode. A patient would code on the unit and you stepped into action quickly and you were the leader of a team who did the CPR and the resuscitation. And so that muscle memory came back. And what I like about it as a place like Hopkins, it reminded me how every single person on the team stepped up in just that fashion. There was no wailing and whining, and it was all about, we can do this. So I think it was very refreshing to be reminded of how incredible my colleagues are. As a family member, boy, it changed me a lot. I have two daughters. They are ages 15 and 11. My husband is a pulmonary physician, who helps take care of COVID-19 patients at a different hospital here in Baltimore. So my poor little daughters became orphans overnight. They got themselves up, made breakfast, did their online school work. So I told them it was good practice for college and being on their own. But it did change me. And I realized that my daughters are growing up and they can be self-sufficient. And then as a community member, Gary, I think this was probably the most impactful, humbled every day, by the incredible appreciation from the community, the number of ways they stepped up, whether it was school kids making cards for the healthcare workers here, whether it was the donations of homemade mass businesses sending food to the front line. I really feel a part of the community here in Baltimore like I've never felt before, and I think all of them for their kind gestures and donations to support our healthcare frontline.Gary Bisbee 30:52Well, we appreciate your thoughts, Redonda. This has been a terrific interview. Thank you very much for being with us, and good luck to you and everybody else at Johns Hopkins.Redonda Miller 31:01Thank you, it was a real pleasure.Gary Bisbee 31:04This episode of Fireside Chat is produced by Strafire. Please subscribe to Fireside Chat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now. Be sure to rate and review fireside chat so we can continue to explore key issues with innovative and dynamic healthcare leaders. In addition to subscribing and rating, we have found that podcasts are known through word of mouth. We appreciate your spreading the word to friends or those who might be interested. Fireside Chat is brought to you from our nation's capital in Washington DC, where we explore the intersection of healthcare politics, financing, and delivery. For additional perspectives on health policy and leadership. Read my weekly blog Bisbee's Brief. For questions and suggestions about Fireside Chat, contact me through our website, firesidechatpodcast.com, or gary@hmacademy.com. Thanks for listening.

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In the first minutes 52 minutes I talk about ALL my experiences with injuries, what I did to recover from them and pinpointing why each injury happened. This is very important and applicable for anyone. I cover things like stressful jobs, overtraining, and genetics. 1. Herniated disc in my neck 2. Torn labrum in my left shoulder resulting in rotator cuff surgery to repair the tear 3. Golfers and tennis elbow in both elbows (tendinitis) 4. Biceps tendinitis (which I got a steroid shot for that I didn’t mention) 5. Bulging/herniated disc between L4/L5 6. Torn meniscus in my left knee. (53:00) I talk about how my training has changed resulting from these experiences and what they all taught me about myself. I also talk about how what I’ve learned has helped me with clients training programs. I give some training set up examples and talk about that set up more specifically for a leg session. This was trial and error and it can be so I talk about how I monitor recovery and adjust training. (59:50) Having an arm day is like having a calf day. (for beginners) (1:03.00I talk about training around/through sickness. I mention some Natural supplements to take when sick. (1:08.40) I talk about tips for staying on track with diet and training through menstrual/hormone cycles. Mentions: John Jewett IFBB Pro @johnjewett3 Jason Theobald IFBB pro @scoobyprep1_ifbbpro Shelby Starnes IFBB pro @shelbystarnes100 Tara Woodland NP/Homeopath/mom @tara.woodlandThanks for listening to another episode of the Women’s Maximum Fitness Podcast! For more health and fitness tips subscribe to my free newsletter at www.withmefit.com or to work one on one with me (Debra) check out www.withmefit.com and request my free assessment form. Subscribe to the Women’s Maximum Fitness podcast as new episodes drop every Monday. Please leave us a 5 star rating and a written review! Your written reviews allow more people to see our podcast!! Don’t forget to share this episode with friends or family.Coaching inquiries: email Debra at buffcake22@gmail.com and request my FREE assessment form.Check out my 3 Instagram pages @buffcake22 @womensmaximumfitness @femalebelieversinfitnessSupport the show (https://withmefit.com/join/)