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Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Andy Carvell is the Partner & Co-Founder of Phiture, a mobile growth agency. Here he has worked with some of the biggest apps on the App Store, including Headspace, Spotify, Triller, and VSCO.Prior to founding Phiture, Andy worked on the marketing and growth teams at SoundCloud. His team built SoundCloud's activity notification system, which delivered over 500 million pushes per month, and increased M1 retention by five percentage points in its first few months of operation. Andy has been in the mobile industry since the late ‘90s, when he started working at Nokia. Andy has a deep interest in technology, strategy and the execution of ideas.In this episode, you'll learn: Andy's user retention techniques The most overlooked component in marketing your app How to optimize your customer's App Store experience Andy's formula for maximizing your app's notification strategy Links & Resources SoundCloud Headspace Spotify Triller VSCO Nokia RevenueCat Salesforce Intercom Elevate KiwiCo Braze Leanplum Iterable Andy Carvell's Links Phiture Phiture's Mobile Growth Stack Andy on Twitter: @andy_carvell Andy on LinkedIn Work at Phiture Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode TranscriptAndy: 00:00:00So the impact that you can drive with notifications is reach, times relevance, times frequency. What we learned from the time at SoundCloud was not all notifications are equal, and the really killer ones that are going to really supercharge your business, have high reach, high relevance and high frequency.And then, then you're in that golden quadrant.David: 00:00:35Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I'm your host, David Bernard. And with me is always Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:42Hi, David. David: 00:00:43It's a thundering in your neck of the woods, I hear. Jacob: 00:00:46It's, you know, it's cleared up now. I think we're gonna make it.David: 00:00:50I've got a plumber. Our guests might have some construction workers. It's going to be a fun one today!Jacob: 00:00:55Is it, David? You're breaching the magic of podcasting and it's going to get audited out.David: 00:01:01All right. Speaking of our guests, our guest today is Andy Carvell, partner and co-founder of Phiture, a mobile growth agency. At Phiture, Andy has worked with some of the biggest apps on the App Store, including Headspace, Spotify, Triller, and VSCO.Prior to find founding Phiture, Andy worked on the marketing and growth teams at SoundCloud.Welcome to the podcast, Andy.Andy: 00:01:23Thanks, David. A real pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on. Excited to be here.David: 00:01:27Yeah. So, you and I were chatting a little bit about your background as I was kind of prepping your bio, and you shared a really fun anecdote. So, I think I'm like, “Old man in the mobile space,” you know, or Jacob and I both; we both had apps on the App Store in 2008, you know, we were early. But you started in mobile a little, just a few years before that. Andy: 00:01:52Just a little bit more. David: 00:01:53Tell us about that. You were at Nokia making games in 1999.Andy: 00:01:58Yeah, right out of university, I graduated computer science in ‘99. I always wanted to be making games, and I was applying for roles in the games industry, and then the agent that was kind of helping me find those said, “Hey, there's this company Nokia. They make mobile phones.”I didn't own a mobile phone at that point. None of my friends did, but it was just kind of reaching the tipping point, and they wanted to put games on these things, and I'm like, okay, that's sounds interesting.I went along to the interview. I really was very kind of amazed at the, you know, the R and D center there. It was like, like pretty space age, you know, they were working on some real next level shit.And, I was actually pretty excited by the idea of like cramming, you know, decent games into like 16 kilobytes, which is what I had to play with building embedded games on a black and white 84 by 48 pixel display.Jacob: 00:02:55So, I was going to ask, are we talking like Snake, or are we talking like Java level stuff?Andy: 00:03:00It was pre Java. It was an embedded game. So, I was coding in C in Assembly, and I basically had to like build the whole game from start to finish. We had this shared designer who did the pixel art, and I had to cram it into 16K and make it fun. Yeah.I wrote a pretty game called Space Impact there, which was released on the 3310 phone, which I think wasn't available in America. But in the rest of world a lot of people played that game. It was like the first, side-scrolling arcade, shoot-them-up, on a mobile.David: 00:03:30That is amazing. Jacob: 00:03:31Well, it's pretty incredible. Just even think like the iPhone wasn't that far behind that right? Like you were doing 16K assembly and C, and like eight years later, we were going to have like open GL driven games. So just pretty wild.Andy: 00:03:51Yeah, it's moved on a lot.David: 00:03:53So after Nokia, you spent some time at SoundCloud, and there's a couple of things you did at SoundCloud that I wanted to dig into, because it seems like you've kind of continued that work at Phiture, and it's really relevant to our audience in subscriptions. So, one of those is the mobile life cycle program, and this is something I think so much about.There's such a huge story that's hard to tell, and hard to really understand. It's something like, you know, I think we can help with at RevenueCat that I'm constantly thinking of from a product perspective, and I think developers often it's like, you get an install, you get them to start a free trial and they convert and like, but there's so many other journeys and so many parts of the life cycle that, that need to be studied.So, tell me about this mobile lifecycle program, kind of the origins, and then, you know how you see it today?Andy: 00:04:53Yeah. Yeah. I was that SoundCloud for about four and a half years in the end. I was working on various teams, but ended up actually building out a cross-functional team focused on user retention, which is where I got really into the lifecycle topic.And yeah, it's, you're absolutely right. It's, it's a pretty complex topic. It's one that we have continued to develop processes and, and, you know, best practice around at Phiture, where we're helping companies like Cisco and, yeah. Blinkist actually is a, is another one that we're working with, recently. But yeah, everybody seems to struggle with this because it is such a, a giant topic, as you say, David, there's a lot to it.There's a lot of different touch points you can have with the user. And it all comes, starts with understanding the user journey, right. And understanding users probably better than you currently do. And that, for me, always starts with asking them questions rather than diving straight into the analytics and looking at funnels.I think it's something that's really overlooked in, in tech companies. You know, we have all this data available. And so the instinct is just to dive in and look at the numbers. Now, I think quantitative tells a very interesting story and for sure you need to be tracking what, what users are doing to, to understand those users quantitatively.But, you also want to understand the psychology of the user at these different points. What are they thinking? What are they hoping for? What are they expecting? And you know, I think a great lifecycle program from, you know, actually user life cycle starts outside of the store right outside of the app, rather. So it starts in the stores.Jacob: 00:06:38Yeah. So did the need, right?Andy: 00:06:40Yes. It starts with a need or what? and then, you know, hopefully. Somehow the user discovers the app. It's either through an advert or maybe a friend has mentioned it, or, you know, there could be many ways that they come to the App Stores, but then, you know, they're all going to go through that App Store, which is why the Phiture.We also put a lot of work into App Store optimization with our clients. You know, you start the user journey there, you're setting the expectation, in your ad creative and in your App Store page. It's a great opportunity to. To sell the benefits of the app and qualify your users, you know? Well, because you're, you're really then.You know, setting, setting that expectation, which you then need to deliver on in the very first session in the app. So then you get into onboarding and activation and, you know, that can be both within the product, but also augmented by a multi-channel messaging approach, which is we did a lot of work with that at SoundCloud.Because this is like, for me, this is the kind of the hack, right? The magic bullet. Is that not that. Not that CRM is the most effective lever for, for engaging users, actually that's product. but CRM is a great way to circumvent a six month product backlog and engineering backlog and, and, and rapidly iterate on ideas.And, and also it's got built in measurement and, and segmentation. So you can do some really interesting stuff. Sorry. You had Jacob: 00:08:07So, yeah. So when you say CRM, I mean, like, I know CRM is like in my world, Salesforce, or maybe Intercom or something, I guess, but when I've heard, I've heard this used in the marketing world, but what is, what is the more, seems like there's a lot more broad context or a broad definition of that term.Andy: 00:08:24Yeah. And there's so many different terminology and definitions around it. It's a, it's very confusing as with everything in tech, but. Yeah. So when I say CRM, which is customer relationship management, and, and that goes back to the sixties and seventies, you know, classic business, you know, theory actually, it's nothing new that we've invented it just with tech, but, when I'm talking about CRM in a mobile app scenario, I'm talking about leveraging a customer engagement platform like braise or Leanplum or, Iterable maybe.And, You know, it's typically what you've got available in that kind of stack would be, something sort of rudimentary analytics enough to do sort of targeting and triggering of messages as well as basic measurement around like what the effects of those messages are. Although typically you'd want to pair that with.Your product analytics to get a deeper view on how it's affecting retention or, you know, or monetization for that matter. but yeah, you're able to sort of carve out segments of users and then craft, interaction. So, so the, the tools you mentioned there, Salesforce, IndyCar, definitely still in that mix.We don't, we don't see them so much specifically Salesforce. We see it more in enterprise. most, mostly. Let's he around email as a channel. but you know, this sort of more modern or mobile first platforms such as prays, for example, you know, really kind of built to leverage, mobile specific channels, like, push and rich push, mobile in-app messaging, which is a killer channel for engaging users who are in the app.And it's where it kind of bridges the gap between classic products. Classic marketing, because you can really kind of overlay an old man. New experiences on top of what's what's built in the product, which sometimes causes some tension with, with the designers. But, but actually you can make them look, you can make them look super native.And, yeah, you can test and iterate on them quickly, which is the real benefit I think of using a platform like that is you can, if you have testing on onboarding for example, and you're looking at day zero users, you've got a fresh cohort every day. You can run. You know, if you've got enough, big enough cohorts, you can, you can iterate every day if you want, or at least every couple of days.Jacob: 00:10:45Yeah. As long As you're getting a few thousand downloads, right. Or, you know, or even like even hundreds, right. If you're getting hundreds of downloads, like those are significant enough cohorts, especially if you're running, you know, tasks very towards that, very beginning of the experience. Right. So you get like lots of exposure, but yeah.And then it's typically very high leverage too, right? Because we found this at elevate a lot. just the nature of funnels is that. There were all these like tests and kind of experiments we wanted to do further down the funnel, like, oh, how was like the last step look and all this stuff. And it turns out nine times out of 10.It was not really that important because what really mattered was the first step or the second step, because that's just where the most people were. Right. It didn't matter. We could get half the lift there, but it mattered more because they hadn't decayed all the way through the funnel. Right. Which is, there's a lot of these like unintuitive aspects of, yeah.I guess when you think about a CRM, it's like, The pre-experience finding you getting into the app. Re-engaging right. That are in some ways, like there's an overlapping piece with products. Right. But it's broader, right. It exists like sort of outside of the, the, the specific software itself. and, and yeah.Thinking about it holistically, as David was saying earlier, it's difficult. Right. It's difficult because of the time-based aspects is to, because it's, multi-platform, it's difficult because, you know, The tooling still leaves something to be desired. but, but, yeah, I think it's really interesting to, to, to talk about using your user interviews in that process, because, you traditionally think about doing that in a product process, right.When you're like trying to talk to users about what to build, but you actually need to be talking to them about how, how do they, what do they, want? Like, why do they, why are they here? Like, why did you want to inform, like, you know, how are you contacting them communicating with them, et cetera. Andy: 00:12:32Pretty much so. David: 00:12:33Yeah. And then. So part of that, life cycle management is this multi-channel notification systems. And you've kind of already mentioned that a little bit, but, so in mobile apps and the clients that you're working with at Fisher Phiture, and then some of the work you've done, you did previously at SoundCloud. how do you kind of manage the. The breadth of available channels. Now you've got email, you've got in-app, you've got push. you know, and have you seen kind of patterns in, in certain channels performing better with these kinds of mobile audiences?Andy: 00:13:11Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think to some extent it depends on the, the, the app itself and the audience for that app. you know, we still see SMS, for example, being a really impactful channel in, in some specific categories, like, you know, SoundCloud couldn't send SMS. I think it would be a bad idea.Possibly in some markets, you know, maybe they're a slightly less developed. They have all the funds, but I'd say it's probably not a great channel for SoundCloud, for example. But, you know, we, we did some work with, with good RX, which is a, like a prescription yeah. discount service in America is huge.I think they, I think they might've had IPO recently, but, yeah, in any case, SMS is still a huge channel for them. because they're, you know, a lot of their customers are older people. With, you know, with who are not necessarily engaging with, with emails or, or necessarily in app messages. I mean, I think an app is generally a pretty great channel for anyone who's in the app, but actually with some, some apps it's not a very valuable channel at all because the users barely in the app, if you're thinking about sort of very functional experiences, like, I'd say Uber, Uber is a, is a good example.Like there's definitely some room. To even with mobility startups to interact with users while they're in the app, but you don't want to get in their way because they're there to book a ride and get in it. So you have like limited surface area. So yeah, really, you know, when we go in this Phiture, you know, our retention team goes into to build out a, an engagement strategy with a customer.We very much like to understand not just their usage. But also, you know, figure out what is the right channel mix. That makes sense. We actually put up, I think a while back a, a, a matrix, which kind of highlights the pros and cons of each channel and how they can be used in combination. Maybe a I can, I can take out the link and we can include it in the podcast. David: 00:15:02Yeah. And you know, it's funny. I feel like I see all these like threats on Twitter about like, especially from like the kind of indie developer scene about like, you know, don't, you know, do a newsletter, like email is evil and like, and then I'm always the one that's like, I kind of liked newsletter. It's like, as long as it's not like overly aggressive.And then same with SMS. I found myself lately, just ended up with a couple of apps, like a thrive market. It's like a shopping. it's kind of like Amazon grocery ish kind of stuff. And they're texting me and I kinda like it. And I never would've thought, you know, cause like they're pushing notifications, they just get lost.But like I care about when my order shifts and I care. And so it's interesting how I think, you know, sometimes we in tech underestimate. That when somebody really cares about something, they don't mind. Getting notified about it, but that's where you have to like, be really careful of where you draw these lines and how you do your messaging and what the user really cares enough about.But when they do, you know, you, you know, it's always felt to me as a developer, like, oh, SMS is like, it's just off the table. Like, I wouldn't touch that. But then like, now I'm like, wait a minute. Like if it's something I use, it really cares about like, it's a Bible platform and as a Jacob: 00:16:21For transactional stuff, right? Like your ship order shipped and things like that. And then, you know, it's becomes something you can piggyback marketing messaging or expansion or product marketing onto. Right. but I always, I was the, at that point is super validated across to you is your Twitter is not really.Right. and, and it's totally true that like the developers and the communities and the styles that we have often as people who make software and our insiders is very different from the, the median consumer, which is not even a thing. There is a median consumer, right. You're dealing with this huge distribution of users and different, they have different tastes and they have different appetites for, for marketing and all this stuff.And yeah, I always believe. Give them control. Like obviously don't do anything on tour. Don't message people. If they say not to write and give people like an opt in opt out, like, you know, as clear choice in the onboarding funnel. But yeah, you'd be surprised. Like people don't have as much stuff going on sometimes or have as much noise in their, in their feed.Really want to engage. And those are the users that you really should be reaching. Right. Because they are like, they're, they're not only installing your app, but they're willing to show some intent to engage with you. Right. Because they have a real purpose to be there. Right. As opposed to like a drive by or something like this.Right. And so, yeah. I don't know. I think that that is. Goes beyond just this one particular topic. Cause like we, yeah, we hear developers all the time. Like being like, oh, I don't want to tell. I mean, I even remember me going back to elevate again, being when we started to, we hired a growth marketer and started to work some of these new notification channels.I was very against it. Like I thought this was like disrespectful to our users. It was just growth hacking. It was whatever. Then I saw the numbers, right? Like, I don't know the retention didn't go down. All the other numbers went up. I was like, well, I guess people don't care. Right. Or at least like the people that don't care aren't big enough to matter.I mean, they matter, but like, I don't know, I'm building a business here at some point. Right. So, it's, counter-intuitive,David: 00:18:17This goes to your earlier point though. And I was just going to bring it up up is 12 south. I just bought this forte stand thing. That's like one of my favorite products I bought in a long time. It's amazing. It's like wireless charging for my phone. I can drop my AirPods pro on there and it charges a little ad for them real quick.But I went to unsubscribe to their email because they were sending me like two weeks. I was like, well, I don't want to, I don't want to unsubscribe. It's actually like 12 south lake. They make good products. I love this product. I just bought from them. I want to know what they're up to. So I go to unsubscribe because I was like, I just can't, I can't do two emails a week from these people.And then the, the email thing was like, Hey, do you want to just hear from us, you know, twice a week, once a week or once a month, I was like, once a month. Cool. Like, I'd love to hear from them once a month. I wish more newsletters would do that. And the opposite. I subscribed to Kiwi co boxes for my kids.And they email me like four times a week and I've even talked to their Twitter team and they're like, we're going to put you on the like slow thing. And they don't, and I keep getting four emails a week, so I'm just going to unsubscribe.Jacob: 00:19:21A lot. It's a lot, right? Like it's a lot to, like, we're talking about, I'm sure, Andy, you deal with this all the time. Like just getting that first version of like a marketing product marketing campaigns going, it's hard to add in like, well, okay, you'll have the, the one month and you know, it takes time to build those things up, so it doesn't surprise me, but it is.Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to, well, it's a tough choice as product and builders. Right. We always have to decide like, what are the corners we're going to cut? What are the, like the boxes we're going to shove everybody in. Right. Because we're not gonna be able to like, perfectly meet. Everybody's like appetite for this stuff where they are.Right. That's going to be impossible. and so, I mean, I feel like that's where the measurement comes in, right? Andy?Andy: 00:20:00Yeah, so you've touched on so many interesting points there. I know we don't have two hours to discuss them all, but I would love to just quickly pick up on it. before we get onto to measurement and, and personalization, I think it's all going to flow. So, first point, you mentioned like, you know, developers. Maybe not the target audience for the app. That is so true. And I mean the less, unless you get, get up, you know, for sure. But, you know, for the vast majority of like consumer apps that are targeting essentially, you know, global audiences of more or less like, you know, broad audiences, like, you know, I don't know, 18 to 30 males and females or whatever, who were into a particular.Sport or something like this. These people are not, they're not engineers. They don't hate notifications. Right? You know, the only way you can prove that as a growth marketer is by getting a little bit of surface area where you are allowed to run experiments. or as, as we, as my team tit in, in, at SoundCloud in the early days, we would run them in places like Pakistan.We would just, SoundCloud's going to kill me when they hear this, but, you know, we would just. Just just not send them to Berlin, you know, where all the engineers were based, but we tested me the rest of the world, or if it was particularly something like a bit more daring, a bit more bold and you need to run Volvo experiments.Sometimes we would run them in Pakistan. We'd get a good feel for like, you know, what the uplift was and then we'd take it to the lawyers. Cause sometimes there was, you know, there were also even legal issues about where we could tread the line with user generated content and promotion. music licensing is a minefield, but, but yeah, my point.Jacob: 00:21:45Yes,Andy: 00:21:45It's only when you can kind of come back with data and show it to, you know, the exec team and say, look, we just moved retention five percentage points. This is huge. then they kind of give you a bit more leeway to, to send a few more notifications. and yeah, like the, the, but, you know, we had so much resistance from, from the tech team and, you know, the engineers.Convinced we were going to destroy the product and it comes from a very, very good place. You know, they care about the product. They care about the users, they just, they just are not representative of the users. and that comes to my second point. Which is, I learned a lot from my time at SoundCloud and from building out a, real-time notification system that was, you know, from, was kicking out around 500 million push notifications per month.So it was, you know, we, we got there in the end with the, with the volume. but, you know, one of the things which I kind of distilled later when I was at Phiture, I kind of thought back to that time and distilled it into a formula. So the impact that you can drive with notifications, is reach times relevance, times frequency.And I'll just break that down very quickly. So reach we're talking about, you know, your overall channel opt-in rate. So how many people are actually opted in for push or in this case? I'd also like what if your segment that, that whole, audience then what stage of the funnel they're at, which is to David's point earlier about how you have a greater surface area or a greater reach as I would put it, earlier on in the funnel, because more users are still around.So. yeah, so that's your reach and that's a big lever on, on how much impact you're going to drive with any particular notification. Is that is your size of your target audience. That's addressable, second one relevance, which you've also touched on, in your examples there. if it's highly relevant, users will tolerate not just tolerate, but actually welcome a high volume of notifications, which is th th the third, parameter there in that formula that the third variable, which is pretty cool.How frequently can you send this particular notification before people start to opt out and then it like brings you a reach down. So it's basically like a, it's not a Seesaw because there's three elements to it. Right. But it's some kind of 3d sea sore, where if you get the right balance and you're able to tweak, tweak those things, there's a tension between those three variables.Right. But if you're. April to increase relevance by, by personalization, you know, by providing in SoundCloud's case more relevant recommendations for content. Or, looking at what users have listened to before and, and telling them more things about artists that they've been listening to and things like that that would increase the relevance, which means you can proxy that by click through rate, they're much less likely to turn them off and you can send more of those notifications.You can increase that frequency. And so what I learned from that, what we learned from the time at SoundCloud. Not all notifications are equal and the really killer ones that are going to really supercharge your business, have high rates, high relevance, and high frequency. And then, then you're in that, that, that golden quadrant David: 00:24:51Would imagine. I don't know if you, if y'all have built things out internally to, to Phiture, but I imagine that kind of 3d Seesaw is really hard to measure. It's really hard to understand. Which, which ones are driving relevance, which ones.And especially once you get into personalization where now you're not dealing with just massive AB tests, you're actually like almost doing user level, understanding of what's relevant and what's not SoSo it brings us to the, to the next big topic and we can kind of dive into that aspect of it later, but you got to build out a stack for this.And so, and this is something I, I, you've done a great job of, of kind of boiling a lot of this down into the mobile growth stack. And I wanted to talk through a few kind of levels of the mobile growth stack. So a lot of apps. You know, I taught as developer advocate. I talked to a ton of revenue, cat customers.So a lot of apps all the way from like, you know, Hey, we just have an idea where we're like thinking about subscriptions to Indies, to like huge companies. And, but you have a lot of people super early who are kind of overbuilding and then you have people in the middle, like, what do I do now? So let's talk through kind of a stack for, for your MVP and then onto your kind of intermediate and then to your kind of growth stage.Like what's the like, MVP I'm want to get this out, but I want to have just enough, you know, measurement just enough analytics, just enough data to, to start growing this thing.Andy: 00:26:28Yeah. Great question. And, and, yeah, it's a, it's a really good topic actually, because you know, this mobile growth stack framework, which, which, which I published originally at SoundCloud, and we continue to develop a Phiture, you know, it's, it's huge, there's loads of stuff on this. It's basically trying to encapsulate everything that, you know, Could form part of your marketing strategy and your, your growth approach to growing, growing a mobile app.So, so sometimes people misinterpret that as, oh, I have to do all of these things have to tick all of these boxes in order to be successful. no, absolutely not. Like, you know, you have to play to your strengths and also to you. So your company stage and your, your priorities, right. And for sure, if you try to overreach, you try to do everything.You're going to do it all really badly, or at least most things, so much better to focus. And, yeah, I think this could be another good, blog post actually that I should write. But, but yeah, let's, let's dive into it now. Let's let's have a go. So like early stage, right. Prelaunch or, well, Let's skip pre-launch for a second.Let's say you've just launched into the market, with your, you know, with your new app. I think what I see often is a challenge with early stage customers and frankly why we don't work with super early stage customers. Because they have unrealistic expectations. They, they think they're ready for growth.But in, you know, accepted except in absolutely like, you know, stand out anomalous cases like maybe flappy bird would be a good example, that that was ready for hyper-growth pretty much from day one, I think just, just happened to catch the zeitgeists, but you know, you can't bank on that. And most 99.9% of apps will not have that kind of success.So actually what an early stage. Team needs to work on is product market fit. Whether they, whether they think they do or not. They're probably two, two or three years away from market product market fit. That means they need to iterate on the product and they need to iterate on the marketing and, you know, meet there somewhere in the middle with some level of, you know, kind of a retention curve that flattens out at least somewhere along that curve.Jacob: 00:28:34Was thinking about this, this, this product market fit meaning, and I don't know, it's one of these words that it's, it's, it's, it's constantly an enigma to founders and because nobody can tell you what it is, right. I think because it's different for every product is different for every segment is different for every market.Like what it actually looks like in our, in this space consumer subscription space, it generally has to do. The, yeah, the, I think that's the best, a very good definition of it. The pretension curves that do flatten out because like, you don't get in this face, you don't tend to get like, exp like super stable user cohorts.They always like drop off to some level, but you want to see like some reasonable level out in some like shortest period of time, which takes a while with subscription apps to really understand like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months, or like for the annual renewals, it takes a year to really understand it. but focusing on the product.Yeah, it's really what you need to do at elevate. We actually, before we even launched and we weren't subscription when we launched, but we. We had a, an just an or, yeah, we just released on, Android. So we had an Android app. We could, it was great. Cause we could release a new version every week, and do a beta list.And we could, we, we, we curated a list or it was sorry, it was Android and iOS. And we used like test flight, distributions. But, and we measured each cohort. Right. And it's not talking about, we weren't AB testing. We weren't like driving in massive downloads or anything like this, but we were just looking like each, like some subsequent cohort, like what was their first.10, you know, what were these like how many signed up? How many finished? Like activated and we just watched and like watched we iterated on the app until we felt like that number was pretty good. And then we launched, but we didn't do AB testing. We didn't like massively like go over the top and tracking.Right. It was just like a handful, like really things. Cause the thing is you're going to score. Right. Like AB testing is really hard. It's expensive. Not because of the tooling, it's expensive because operationally it's really difficult to get. Right. And you gotta put a lot of people on it. So, that, that really starting simple mentality will save you a lot of headaches. I think.David: 00:30:37Yeah, we had a great episode with Doris Maura from reflecting on this about just, just that minimally viable, like shoot for product market fit. And, you know, don't do sophisticated AB testing. Don't do all this stuff you think you need to do. And then even some of the stuff that they, you know, you could install braise or like try and do these big things early. You can find ways around it. Like you can do simple email surveys, you can do simple user testing. You can, you can, you know, use Zapier for things to kind of like bridge the gap and don't go build a ton of internal tooling around it, but like do the simple hacky things that don't scale early on and then move on.So then let's talk about like, okay, you've reached some level of market product market fit, you know, your, You know, your, your marketing seems to be resonating. You've got some decent retention and you're starting to really pour money into user acquisition. What's kind of that next level up, that you think companies should start layering on new new services and new sophistication.Andy: 00:31:46Yeah. So I'm talking here like primarily about, you know, growth stuff rather than Phiture building. I'm kind of assuming that there's, there's always more Phitures to build, although, you know, I would actually say. Probably people generally keep building Phitures when they should probably stop. They always think that another Phiture is going to be the thing, which really helps what right.Exactly. And can I say be detrimental to a point, you know, like when, when it becomes too crowded, so, but yeah, so talking about the, you know, the, the growth stack and the, the, the growth activities that would. Appropriate as, as you've got that initial traction and you're looking to scale it, which is where Phitured can get involved.By the way like this. Typically we work with either kind of traction and growth stage companies, or actually more mature kind of increasingly like enterprise folks who maybe have a very mature product in the market. And they're looking at they're kind of plateaued and they're looking to scale it, but yeah, in, in that growth place, super exciting phase, there, I think it's really about. You know, you want to be able to start to scale. So that's. You're going to need to upgrade your analytics, probably in stock, trucking more stuff, to get a better understanding of, you know, deeper understanding of your engagement, your retention, and for sure the performance of your acquisition channels, whether they're, whether they're organic, paid or some mix.Because you'd likely to want to start adding layering in more acquisition, either scaling the channels that are working for you, or when they max out or start getting expensive, you know, layering in other channels. I would also recommend like, you know, I wouldn't build it right at the start, but in this growth phase, it's good to experiment with virality.Like, you know, I always say it's, you can't really plan for virality, but you can at least. So the seeds and see if they germinate, right? Like you, if you don't cultivate the right conditions for virality to occur, it never will. but if you, you know, if you have like, you know, the ability to share content, if there's a content app, if you put those share Phitures in, then at least you can kind of see what the kind of natural PR, prediction of, of users is to, to share to their users, to share to their friends.For example, the networks, then you, if you see something. Some traction there, you can, you can optimize it, but even if it's just doing it a little bit, it may be it's helping to keep your paid acquisition costs down and you have your blended acquisition. Costco is a bit more sustained. and maybe you see that actually you go super viral.You know, I've seen it happen. So I think like, you know, building potentially referral systems or content shares depends on your app, but I'd say if you do them in a fairly cheap way, but just at least at least put those in and see if that, you know, is going to be something that's going to help you grow.Because if you find that it is for SoundCloud, virality was huge, you know, so, but of course it, it works better with, with social apps and content apps. Yeah. Apart from that, you know, I'd say like, you know, you're going to be, you're going to be continuing to iterate on the product. I'd say ASO becomes more important at this point.Like, so optimizing your App Store page for, you know, for organic discovery, making sure that you're ranking for the right keywords. and also start to think about international. I think a lot of companies. Focus on their coal market and the one that they know best, which is often, you know, us or, you know, whatever country that, you know, the team is based in.They often start there and they know that market best. But, you know, I think one of the things which going back again to SoundCloud, what are the things they did very well was, you know, even though they were headquartered in Berlin, they didn't have this German outlook actually that, that the founders were not even from here.And they built it global from the start, you know? So they, they basically, it was available everywhere. you know, when I came into to help them level up on, on mobile, you know, we made sure that we translated the App Store page into all the languages. When I came in, it was just an idea. but even English is a good start compared to, you know, most of the languages.But you know, pretty, I'd say at this growth stage, see, it's about exploring you don't necessarily, you know where those big leavers are for scale yet, but it's about discovering them. So maybe, maybe it's virality. Maybe, maybe there's a market that you're not localized in yet, which could. You just, you just catch fire in that market, you know, so it's not about doing huge installations, the launches and doing a huge, you know, traditional kind of PR push in, in, you know, launching in us or whatever, but, you know, at least making sure the apps available there are, you know, in, in, in as many of your big markets as possible, make sure that it's translated, you know, localizing the applicant, using the App Store presence and just seeing, you know, getting a feel for.You know, are you going to be a very local app or you, do you have a global, potential you have really trying to tease out, like, what are the acquisition channels that are going to work for you? And what are the, what are the other leavers for growth, you know? And, probably you want to start doing a little bit more in terms of CRM or customer engagement at this point. you know, Which, which does also doesn't make sense when you, when you're a superstar. But you're sort of building the foundations for the next phase of growth and then leading into the things which are showing promise. David: 00:37:05Nice. And then we are coming up on time, but, can you give us a, like a 92nd, two minute, quick drill? I think, you know, I, I don't know that that many, like massive apps are going to be listening to this podcast, so maybe it's not even quite as relevant anyway. Jacob: 00:37:23David, I think I like to think every apps can be a massive David: 00:37:25Every app. Yes. Andy: 00:37:27Right. The massive apps of the future Jacob: 00:37:29Yeah, David: 00:37:30Once you get to that stage of a head space of calm of disco, you know, what, what is the stack start to look like there?Andy: 00:37:37So, when you get to that kind of scale and we're working with folks like, you know, like, like this go, like, Blinkist, Headspace folks, you mentioned, an a and a whole bunch more, some that I'm not allowed to talk about, which I wish I could name drop, but, I'll get into trouble. but some, some really big enterprise brands and some household names.And when you're at that kind of scale, you know, when you're doing, oh, I can mention Trilla trailer's is a good one. I'm going to give them a call out there. They're a customer of ours, awesome platform. anyway, when you're at that scale where you're just seeing like, Insane acquisition, just on a, you know, that becomes the norm to get like more than a hundred thousand thousand downloads, you know, like a day, which, which we see with some of the apps, when you, when you're at that kind of scale.Even incremental gains can be really, really meaningful, particularly on monetization. Right? So I would say there, you really want to then focus on subscription optimization and revenue optimization, way more than you would in the earliest stages, because you're, you've proven you've, you've got all the elements in place.You can really then start to scale. And if you can, you can increase your, you know, average subscription lifetime by a month, or you can increase your conversion rate even by like, Point one of a percent on your, you know, your subscription conversion at that scale, it's it can be really meaningful.Right. So, I think activities which maybe you wouldn't have spent so much time on before, maybe you've built out rudimentary stuff for maybe you have rudimentary tech in place for it's time to start upgrading that stuff and, and going deep on these topics. So things, again, like, you know, ASO, it's more like.You know, something which you need to keep doing. You're constantly kind of optimizing there to get as many organics in as possible. You want to be of course, continuing to optimize your, your acquisition. But I would assume at that point, you've kind of got those things more or less nailed and it's, it's almost like a hygiene factor.It's more than a hygiene factor, but sorry, you said to keep this quick. yeah, I'd say I I'd say like big focus on yeah. Retention because you know, again, it's a slow moving metric, but if you can move it even, yeah. Point five of percentage point that'll give such compound growth and also like, you know, knock on gains for monetization work a lot, you know, diligently on conversion optimization and starting to sort of segment your user base further, to provide more segmented experiences, you know, because you will have those cohorts in that scale where you can start to do really interesting stuff and, and lean into AI and personalization to, to really get to that increased relevance in your recommendations and community.Jacob: 00:40:13This is why it makes sense to really do AB testing. Right? Cause you can hire a team, right. To focus on it. You had multiple data people. You've got engineers, you've got, you've got to have an entire growth engineering and experimentation team. and that's what you need. Andy: 00:40:28Bring in Phiture.Jacob: 00:40:29Yeah, there you go. Or, yeah, bring somebody in, right? If you need it in a pinch, you know?So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a different game. This is how all of these things go, though. It's like, you gotta every incremental compounding something like a business like this, like every, every, the next 10 X is always going to just be different, because, like different tools, different mindset, there's going to be different, different returns on different actions, right?And I think, you know, when I talk to people at different stages, a lot of times folks get this, get this wrong. They, they, they think they need you. You were mentioning at the beginning, Andy, like just thinking we're ready to scale when you're really not. Right. And so it, there is a lot of value in just understanding how different a hundred thousand downloads is from 10,000, from a hundred, right?Those are very different numbers. All of those, like none of those tell me, like, you're dead, right? It's just a different stage. And, and doing the right things at this stage is super important. So I, I really like how you break this down into like, different phases.Cause I think that's how, app developers should be thinking about it.David: 00:41:36I think as a, as a summary and talking through this with you and he's really helped me kind of frame it finally is that when you're early, you take big swings that don't need sophisticated measurement to see the result. You don't need sophisticated A/B testing. You don't need sophisticated analytics.You need to take big swings that give you big results. Those obvious results. Then as you grow, you can start taking smaller swings that require a little bit more sophistication. And then as you're scaling huge, that's when you get into minutia, and too many small apps are getting into the minutia too early.So, big swings early, you can take those smaller swings later. But anyways, as we wrap up we're going to put in the show notes your Twitter, Growth Stack, great places to follow. You're constantly sharing amazing content there. Anything else you wanted to share with our fine cadre of a subscription app practitioners?Andy: 00:42:36Yeah, actually I've got a really exciting announcement. This is the perfect audience for it. At Phiture we're hiring right now for a Subscription Optimization Lead position. It's a super exciting role. You get to really be in on the ground floor, building out a team and an essentially a new P and L line that we're going to breaking out from our existing services.I'm really doubling down on subscriptions because it's like such a big topic, and we're really looking for the subscription expert to come in and lead that team, you know, a fantastic place to work, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you'll work with some AAA clients, some great names that I can't talk about today.You work with a fantastic team of experts if you can come to Berlin and work with us here, because it's obviously not in Berlin today, but Berlin is an awesome place to move to. We'd also consider remote, I think, don't quote me on that, but, yeah. Get in touch. you can find the job spec to go to the Phiture site: phiture.com, and go to the careers page. You'll find it there and to subscription optimization.Yeah, we'd love to get that out to your audience, because I'm sure there's some people there that might be really interested in that role.Jacob: 00:43:44I'm looking at the requirements, here, proficiency in IAP management, you know, it's right in my wheelhouse. So maybe I'll throw my hat in the ring.David: 00:43:53Well, Andy, it was really great having you on the podcast. And, yeah, we're going to have to have you back on there's so much more, and Phiture does such great work. And we, we share some customers and so, you know, we see the, the results of the work you do on our end. And it's really great.so, thanks for being on the podcast, and we'll talk again soon. Andy: 00:44:15Thanks for having me on. Thanks, David. Thanks, Jacob. It's been a pleasure.

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.

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Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Oh Dear, the website monitoring app. As an Oh Dear customer myself, I particularly like how easy it is to make SLA reports with Oh Dear. They're professional and sleek, and they make it easier for us to service enterprise customers. And I actually requested this feature myself last year, and I'm so delighted with how open to suggestions they are. You can sign up for a free 10 day trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app. Colleen Schnettler  00:32So Michele, how has your week been?  Michele Hansen  00:34It's good. It's good. You know, I was, I was doing some writing this morning, which is funny, I've realized it's, like, my reward work. Like, you know, when I get through all the other stuff, like it's like, oh, like, now I have some writing time. And, Colleen Schnettler  00:47That's amazing because I remember being in high school and, like, English, like whenever I had to write a paper, it was literally my least favorite thing to do. So I find that fascinating that, for you, writing is your reward work. Michele Hansen  00:59I, five paragraph essays are, I don't think anyone looks forward to writing those. Like, this is very different than, than that. Um, but so I was, I was writing and I started thinking about this framework that I know we've talked about, and it occurred to me that I have a very tangible example of that. Colleen Schnettler  01:20Which framework? StoryBrand, or something else?   Michele Hansen  01:22No, so it's a Marty Cagan framework.  Colleen Schnettler  01:25Okay. Michele Hansen  01:26So, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna back up first. So, there's this misconception, I think that people sometimes have or fear about customer research that if they start listening to their customers, then they have to do everything the customers ask them for. And they're basically, like, giving up control over the vision of the product to the customer.  Colleen Schnettler  01:47Okay. Michele Hansen  01:48And that's not true, right? Like, you'll always have to weigh it against, um, what makes sense for you to do. And so, there's this one framework that I particularly like that was developed by Marty Cagan, who is kind of, like, the the product guru, like, he's the head of this consultancy called the Silicon Valley Product Group. Like, he is like the product guy, and in order for a product to be successful, he says how it needs to be valuable, viable, usable, and feasible. Colleen Schnettler  02:26Wow, valuable, viable, usable, feasible.  Michele Hansen  02:30So let's, let's break it down a little bit. So first, it has to be valuable for the customer. Like, it has to be something that is, you know, accomplishes something for them and helps them do something, right. Because if it's something that doesn't help them do something that they would want to do, then they wouldn't use it. Like, the example I kind of think of for this is what was that startup that would, like, squeeze a bag of pureed fruit for you? Like Juicero, or, like, it was some, like, they raised like billions of dollars or whatever, for, like, a smoothie machine, and everyone is like, why? Like, not really very valuable to people.  Colleen Schnettler  03:04Right. Okay.  Michele Hansen  03:05I'm sure they had wonderful ideas, and they were great people. It has to be viable, which means it has to be, like, commercially viable, like people have to be willing to pay for it. So like, I could make something that's super awesome and useful, but if no one is willing to pay for it, then it's not a viable product, right? Like, if I'm solving a problem that no one experiences painfully enough to, to pay someone to solve it, then it's not going to work out.  Colleen Schnettler  03:30Okay. Michele Hansen  03:30It has to be usable, which may be the easiest of all these words, to understand that, like, they have to be able to figure out how to use it. So,  Colleen Schnettler  03:39Okay. Michele Hansen  03:39You may have heard this in the context of usability testing, which is basically, like, if I make a website that you can do something on, but you can't actually figure out how to do that, and it's confusing, then it doesn't matter if what the product does is something that's valuable to you. If you can't figure out how to do it, you're going to move on to something else.  Colleen Schnettler  03:57Right.  Michele Hansen  03:57And then the last one is it has to be feasible, like, it has to be possible for you to produce this product. So,  So this would be the equivalent of being, me being like, Colleen, I really need a spaceship. And you being like, that's awesome. I can see that's valuable for you. Maybe you have the ability to pay for that. I don't, but you know, let's go with it. I can build it in a way that, that you can use it. You know, you're an engineer, right? Any kind of engineer can build any kind of thing, right?  Colleen Schnettler  04:05Oh, okay. Sure.  Michele Hansen  04:25Yeah. Like, you could build a bridge. No, I'm, I'm, for all the certified engineers out there, I'm aware that they're not all transferable. But it wouldn't be feasible for you to build that.  Colleen Schnettler  04:37Right.  Michele Hansen  04:38So, so this framework of valuable, viable, usable and feasible is something that I always keep in mind when we're getting feedback from people because you don't necessarily act on every single problem and every piece of advice that you hear, and, like, and that's okay.  Colleen Schnettler  04:55Yeah, okay.  Michele Hansen  04:56And so, a specific example of this that relates to the book and to something we have been talking about quite a bit is consulting and whether I should do consulting related to the book.  Colleen Schnettler  05:10Right.  Michele Hansen  05:10It's something we've talked about, and I've gotten quite a few requests from people about. And, you know, as I thought about it, okay, so clearly, this would be valuable for people. Like they, they feel like they need help getting started with understanding their customers. They seem to be willing to pay for it. I don't know what that would be, like, I, granted I haven't told anyone, like, cool, here's, you know, an invoice for, I don't know, $500 for a 30 minute conversation, or whatever it is people charge. But like, people seem to be willing to pay for this, and they've told me that they pay other people for this. So there's clearly an ability and desire to pay there. And then usable, like, I feel like I would be able to deliver it in a way that would make it useful for them. But it's not feasible.  Colleen Schnettler  05:56Why not? Michele Hansen  05:56Time zones. Colleen Schnettler  05:59Oh. Michele Hansen  06:00And also the fact that I already have a business that I need to keep going. So I, like, I already have a pressure on my time in that regard. But I basically only have one hour of decent overlap with the US, which is from, Colleen Schnettler  06:15One hour?  Michele Hansen  06:16From nine to 10am Eastern. Colleen Schnettler  06:19Wow, because what time is 9 to 10am Eastern in Denmark.  Michele Hansen  06:22So that's 3pm. So our daughter gets out of school at 3. So, Colleen Schnettler  06:26Yeah. Michele Hansen  06:26Making anything else work requires a huge amount of schedule gymnastics for me. And I already have customers that I need to have, you know, calls with anyway. Like, and, and so if I were to do consulting, then I would have to say that I could, like, do it for everybody except North America, which totally doesn't make sense because, you know, if you assume that the audience for this podcast is a pretty good overlap with the people who might want me to consult for them, that'd be like, 80% of the audience would not be eligible, and people might find that a bit off-putting, or frustrating. But like, I mean, I just can't do it. Like I can, you know, 8am Eastern is a great time for me, because that's 2pm here, but like, that's, that's a bit early for, for business conversations. And most of the time, like, if I have to have a call with California, like, it ends up being at 9 o'clock my time. And,  Colleen Schnettler  07:21Yeah, that's rough. Michele Hansen  07:22Even 9am is a bit early. Like, I've worked in companies that, like, had like, a basically an official, like, no meetings before 10, but really not before 11 rule. Like, if you got a 9am meeting, I was like God, like why are you punishing them? So it's just, it's not feasible for me. So,  Colleen Schnettler  07:42Okay. Michele Hansen  07:42Maybe it will be in, you know, 15 years when I don't have a child at home, and I can, you know, just blow through dinner time, like, and work and like, honestly, it's probably not gonna be good for my work-life balance, like, but it's, it's simply not feasible. Colleen Schnettler  07:59Is this something you want to do? Or is this just a, like, convenient reason not to do it because you already don't want to do it? Michele Hansen  08:07I was trying to dive into like, why the thought of it was even, like, immediate, no in my head.  Colleen Schnettler  08:14Right. Okay.  Michele Hansen  08:15And I think that was kind of, and like, the reason was like, I don't have time for that. And then it's like,  Colleen Schnettler  08:20Yeah. Michele Hansen  08:21But I do, like, I, I have time to work already, so why wouldn't that fit into my existing work time? And it's because it wouldn't happen during the work time. Now, I could be like, oh, I'll just consult for people in the UK, but like, I, like, most of my network is in the US anyway. So, and I think it's just easier just to say no to everything. But again, as we kind of talked about, like, I could always do this 5 or 10 years from now. And people have asked me about courses too, which is easier to make work across time zones, but I'm not really a natural teacher. So I admit that that, like, that kind of scares me because I feel like I would not only have to learn, like, how to create a course. But I would have to learn like, how to teach, which is, you know, a skill set that people to go to school for for four to six years to learn. Like it's not a, it's not an insignificant thing to learn how to do. Colleen Schnettler  09:21Yeah, well, you already have a lot of demands on your time. So, I don't know that adding consulting would be good for you even if you were in the US. Michele Hansen  09:29Yeah, that's true. I mean, you actually used to have a course, right? Or you were starting one, or?  Colleen Schnettler  09:34Haha, yeah. So one of my many, many business ideas. I was going to do a course, and holy cow, it was so much more work than I anticipated. So I decided not to do it, and that was a good decision. Michele Hansen  09:52I think when we first met you were, like, getting that course going. Colleen Schnettler  09:58Yeah, I think I did a couple videos. I mean, my, my idea had been to do Ruby on Rails course for beginners and try to, like, incorporate some more advanced topics, so like an advanced beginner course. But, and I know some people have a lot of success with courses, but you know, I started doing it, and it was just like, because I was trying to do a video course. It was a tremendous amount of work, and I found that I, this, this was years ago, too, right? This was a couple years ago, and I didn't have any audience or network so to speak of, and I think to be successful with a course, a couple of things have to happen. You either have to have the right course at the right time, so you're releasing a course on something that is new and hot, and everyone wants to learn about, or I think you have to have a really well-established network and audience, and I had neither of those things at that time. And, and also, you know, people talk about being on, like, the content treadmill, so the thing about if your business, if your primary business is a subscription video service, or, you know, subscription courses, like, you have to constantly be producing content, and that wasn't really something that I wanted to do either. So yeah, the course was just, the video course was just so much work, like, the editing and the trying not to talk over myself, and the, oh, my goodness. So it wasn't a good fit for me. Not saying it wouldn't be a good fit for you in the future. I mean, there's tons of opportunity there.  Michele Hansen  11:33I'm curious, how long did you work on that course from like, when you had the idea to when you ended up giving up on it? Colleen Schnettler  11:41I don't remember. So, I started with a couple intro videos, and I mean, we're talking like 10, 15 minute videos, and they would take me hours. That was the first problem. And then I actually was going to do it with a friend who has a really successful Ruby on Rails template. So he and I recorded, I mean, Michele, we must've recorded 10 hours of video.  Michele Hansen  12:03Wow.  Colleen Schnettler  12:03Yeah. I mean, we have, I still have it. So yeah, for the Rails listeners, it's the guy who developed Bullet Train. And Bullet Train is like a really opinionated, Ruby on Rails, SaaS kind of template builder to start with. And he's been doing this a lot longer than I have, and so I really was fascinated in terms of like, there's some more advanced concepts that you never really get in the material that's out there. And a big one he feels really strongly about is domain modeling, and like, how to do your domain modeling. And this is a thing, I found that as a developer, like, there's tons of entry level courses, and as soon as you get past entry level, it gets harder. Like, when you get to the point where you can't Google the answer for what you're trying to figure out, there isn't a lot. It's more about, like, learning and problem solving, and there aren't a lot of courses or examples or things that can, like, draw you in to these more advanced concepts. So, Andrew and I had talked about doing a course, like, kind of teaching people about domain modeling, which was really cool, because I really love the way he's done it in Bullet Train. And I've worked on a lot of different apps, and typically, it's kind of a mess, right? Like, because you don't, you don't really think big term. I mean, things grow and things, and things evolve, and that's the nature of software, whereas Andrew's, the way he tries to handle it is it's top down, like you know, you don't think you're going to need teams and users, and, you know, join tables, but you should start there. Michele Hansen  13:36We thought that. Retrofitting that later is painful to the point where we haven't, like, fully, like, we, like, have done it, and we need to do more of it. And it's, oh god, just retrofitting, like, user access controls like that is, that's like one of those things, if I can fly back to me eight years ago when we were building this, it's like, just build that in from the beginning. People are gonna want a billing user. They're gonna, you know. Colleen Schnettler  14:06Right, that's literally exactly what, what it was about. It was about that, because when you start you don't care, right? Or you don't think about it, because you're like, I, I don't need to get that complicated. But if you start from the beginning with that framework, when you're where you guys are, it's so much easier to retrofit in all that stuff because it's already there. Anyway, now that I'm talking about it, I'm getting excited about it again. Michele Hansen  14:27I can tell. Like, you really do see a void for this. But I think, like, I think it's important to bring up though, because you, like, you tried a bunch of stuff before you found something that's kind of working, right. Like I mean, we like we launched stuff that didn't work. Like, I think people kind of you know, you listen to like podcasts like this or whatnot, and you're like, wow, like, this person has everything figured out and they're just amazing, and there's something about them that like makes them what they make successful or whatever, and I'm like, no dude, like we've had stuff that failed. Like, that's normal. Like,  Colleen Schnettler  15:04Yeah. Michele Hansen  15:04I don't think there's anybody out there who has launched something successfully and not had 10 other things behind it that were either total duds or like just completely, you know, never got off the ground or were soundly rejected, or panned on Reddit, which one of ours was. But anyway, speaking of remotely successful products, Colleen, is it time for our weekly numbers update on Simple File Upload? Colleen Schnettler  15:35Your weekly update for Simple File Upload. Yes, so this week, I crossed the 1000 MRR mark. Michele Hansen  15:42We have totally buried the lead. Colleen Schnettler  15:47I know right. Michele Hansen  15:47Oh my god! Colleen Schnettler  15:49I'm super, I mean, it was really exciting.  Michele Hansen  15:53Oh, my gosh, yes. Colleen Schnettler  15:55Yeah. So that really makes it feel like a real business, if you will. I mean, $1,000 that's like real money. Michele Hansen  16:02That is real money. Colleen Schnettler  16:04Yeah, like, even after I pay all my you know, I do have the, the hosting fees, and the, Heroku takes a cut. But yeah, it's really exciting. Michele Hansen  16:13Wait. So I think last time we, like, really dove into the numbers on it. Your costs of what, you know, what we would sort of call in business jargon the cost of goods sold, which is like, you know, servers and everything that you have to pay for in order to make the app run, that was like $200 a month, and you thought it would be pretty, like consistent.  Colleen Schnettler  16:41Yeah.  Michele Hansen  16:42Are you, is that still true? Colleen Schnettler  16:44Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's still true. Now I do, so it's, that's, that's probably an estimate of all the, the fees and like you said, server hosting storage. And then Heroku takes 30%, because I'm in their marketplace, much like the App Store. I know, it really hurts, like, you're just like, oh, ouch. But, I know, but you know what, I mean, I still will bang the drum, or whatever that phrase is on this, for ,launching this in a marketplace was just such a good idea because if I look at the users I have coming from the open internet, versus the users I have coming from Heroku, like, far and above, the majority of my paid users are coming from Heroku. Michele Hansen  17:27So, so if your cost of goods sold is $200 a month, and for purposes of this, we're pulling out that processing or like, you know, sort of marketplace fee, which is 30%, so then basically your margin is like, $500 a month. Does that sound right? Colleen Schnettler  17:47Yes.  Michele Hansen  17:48Wow.  Colleen Schnettler  17:49Yeah. Michele Hansen  17:50That's pretty good. Colleen Schnettler  17:52I know, I was pretty excited. Um, yeah. So it's, it's good.  Michele Hansen  17:58That's really interesting for when, you know, if you're able to get to a point, eventually, where you're selling outside of Heroku, like, that, you know, if we were to assume an 80% margin like that, that's pretty good. That's where a lot of software businesses are. So it's, I mean, it sounds like your, your fundamentals are pointing in the right direction. Colleen Schnettler  18:22Yeah, I think, I mean, we've talked a lot about, I think last week I was a little frustrated because I still can't really identify my ideal customer, or people who are even using it. But I think one of the huge benefits of being in this marketplace is people are signing up. So the more people I get signing up, the more chances I have that someone will actually, that I'll be able to talk to people and kind of figure out my value proposition. I'm finding a lot of people, a lot more people are finding me on the internet. So I'm getting a lot more signups that bounce when they see you have to have a credit card upfront. But I mean, on the, on the plus side, that means there's clearly a demand for this. This is clearly a thing people want because a lot of people are signing up. Now, will a lot of people pay for it is always the, the, you know, the thing you're trying to figure out, but I'm seeing quite a lot of people putting in their email address, putting in their email addresses on my non-Heroku site. Michele Hansen  19:23How, like, upfront does your non-Heroku site make it that people have to put in a credit card for the free trial? Colleen Schnettler  19:30So the way it works right now is you sign up and then, then you go to the pricing page. And then you click the button to say sign up for this plan, and then you have to put a credit card in.  Michele Hansen  19:42But like, on the landing page itself, does it make it clear that a credit card is required for the trial?  Colleen Schnettler  19:48No.  Michele Hansen  19:50You should probably do that. Colleen Schnettler  19:52Yeah, I thought about that. But I was looking at other people's landing pages and no one really, like, that doesn't seem to be a thing people do. Cuz it feels, like, where would you put it? In like, small print under free, free trial? Free 7 day trial, credit card required for sign up?  Michele Hansen  20:07Yeah, I, you know, something that I noticed with that is that when somebody has a free trial and no credit card is required, they always say that. Colleen Schnettler  20:17Right, no credit card required, right. But when they do require a credit card, they don't say anything. Michele Hansen  20:23Yeah. And that, that tells me something. Now, Colleen Schnettler  20:27Yeah, no one wants to pay, Michele Hansen  20:28A lot of big companies like, they'll you know, if you, if you are a marketing person who is incentivized for email signups, then yeah, you're gonna want to hide the fact that a credit card is required because that's how you hit your metrics. But also, the incentive should be redesigned in that case. But I think it's worth at least having that somewhere on the landing page, because as you said, then people are bouncing, and so there's no point in you having this pile of email addresses from people who aren't going to pay for it unless you want it to try to monetize them some other way. But that doesn't really seem to be like something you want to do, and also with, like GDPR, and CCPA and all of those privacy acronyms, like, it could be, you know, a liability for you. Colleen Schnettler  21:21Yeah, I was thinking about it, because I've seen so many signups recently. So I think that's a, but I, the reason I didn't put it was because I've never seen it. And I was like, is that a huge turnoff to be like, credit card required for signup. But I agree, I'm not doing anything with those email addresses. I mean, in the future, maybe I can remove it and try a different kind of, you know, when I have more time or a little bit bigger, and maybe try to learn more about those people. But at this point, it doesn't do any good, like, I'm not keeping their email addresses or anything. So I'm just seeing that there's a lot of traffic. Michele Hansen  21:54I wonder how, so I signed up for Savvy Cow recently, speaking of all of my timezone issues, like, I had to make this little redirect basically, so that when people request to have a meeting with me, if the browser detects their timezone, and then it sends them to the calendar based on their timezone, because like, I'll only do those 9pm calls for you know, people on the west coast, for example. But, so I signed up for for Savvy Cow, and they have a 7 day free trial with a credit card required, and now I'm looking at their website to see how clear that was, because I remember that, like, I knew that it would be required, and like, that, they would just automatically charge me after that point. And I'm actually looking at their landing page. Oh, okay, actually, it just, it just, just say get started for free. Colleen Schnettler  22:48See, no, no one says that. Michele Hansen  22:50But maybe they, like, maybe isn't an automatic, maybe it was an email they sent me instead that, um, oh, okay. Okay, so here's how it works. So it says what you can, zero cost to create an account, but then once you're ready to start sharing your calendar links, then the one week free trial starts, and then that has automatic billing. Colleen Schnettler  23:12Where did you get that, in an email? Michele Hansen  23:14It's on their pricing page. Colleen Schnettler  23:16Okay, I'll look at that. That's probably a good idea. I like that, like, yeah, it's, it's free to create an account. But if you actually want to upload files,  Michele Hansen  23:23Sure, you can give us your email address, but if you want to do anything, but I think that, you know that, that makes sense for like a product. Like this, where like, there, there is some amount of stuff that might need to happen before you actually use the products, like, people might need to have internal discussions or like, you know, with this, like, you have to kind of set it up, and there's also this positive effect, where, if you've done all of this work to get it set up, then you are more bought in to the product. Like, this is the approach that TurboTax uses. Like, I don't know, if you notice that they,  Colleen Schnettler  23:55I know, I know.  Michele Hansen  23:55They don't, they'll be like, well, it's free to file, but then it's you know, 19 or 29 or whatever.  Colleen Schnettler  24:00It's free to do your taxes, Michele Hansen  24:01Whatever, but to actually file your state one, or to have us automatically send it to the IRS or whatever it is, like,  Colleen Schnettler  24:08Yeah. Michele Hansen  24:09Then you have to pay for it. And all the people listening in other countries, like especially anyone in Denmark, where you can just file your taxes online, like for free and like, you know, you don't have Intuit, with this massive lobbying budget, making it complicated. Yeah, I mean, so so there's definitely some benefits to that kind of model, and I think as long as what you do, just like, making it really clear what that like, make it clear what's going to happen to people. Colleen Schnettler  24:41Yeah, I like the idea of putting it on the pricing page because I don't want it on my landing page because that's gonna look bad. But like, if you click sign up for a free trial, I like having another pricing page because again, it doesn't do anyone any good for, I don't care about your email address if you're not interested, and you are annoyed because you fill out the welcome to my thing form, and then you have to enter a credit card, and you felt you know, you didn't know. So, I, um, I like this idea. I think it's a good idea. Michele Hansen  25:06Yeah, I think, so your call to action, it says try it now, sign up for a free 30 day trial.   Colleen Schnettler  25:13Yeah. Michele Hansen  25:14And I also wonder if, you know, changing out from like, sign up to be like, you know, start free trial or whatnot, like, because I think people really do grok the difference between free trial versus free tier. And, and I saw that when I scrolled all the way down, there's a free 30 day trial, but I don't actually see that above the fold on your site. And so I wonder if making it clear that it's free trial would help with that.  Colleen Schnettler  25:46Okay. I like, I like changing it to start, start your trial or something.  Michele Hansen  25:50Yeah. Because they're actually, there's no button either, like, right below the header. There's like, there should be a button there that's like, start your free trial.  Colleen Schnettler  25:59Oh. Michele Hansen  26:00There's no call to action button. Colleen Schnettler  26:02Wait, below the header. Michele Hansen  26:04So it says add File Uploading to your app in minutes, like, integrate file uploads in your website, no service required, blah, blah, blah. Like, where's the button? Give me a button. Colleen Schnettler  26:15Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Michele Hansen  26:17But hey, while I'm looking at SimpleFileUpload.com, for anyone who is listening, there is a testimonial there.Yay. Colleen Schnettler  26:26Yay, I did. I got a testimonial up.  Michele Hansen  26:31And it looks awesome.  Colleen Schnettler  26:33Yeah. So I'm happy about that. Yeah, you're right. There should be a call to action button right here. Michele Hansen  26:39Tell me what to do, Colleen. Colleen Schnettler  26:41Oh, my gosh. See, this is, like, the stuff I don't know about. You're absolutely right.  Michele Hansen  26:44Tell me to sign up. Colleen Schnettler  26:45Tell me to sign up, start trial now. Nice. Okay, I like it. Good point. Michele Hansen  26:52And I guess, yeah, you just want to like work on that wording because like, as you know, the Savvy Cow example, like, the trial doesn't start until you actually do something. And so it's like, does the trial start like, right from the time they sign up? Or just, you know, wherever you can, like, make it clear what's going to happen to people. Colleen Schnettler  27:09Yeah, so I think, so right now, if you click on sign up, it takes you to a nice signup page. But then after you hit the signup page, it takes you to the pricing page. I wonder if I should switch those since I'm going to require a credit card, and instead of taking you to the signup page before the pricing page, sign up, pricing page, which explains that you have to, you know, pay, not pay I'm sorry, that you have to enter your credit card and then a start trial button. Michele Hansen  27:45Okay, so I'm actually going through it right now. Colleen Schnettler  27:48Yeah, okay.  Michele Hansen  27:49Um, so let's do it live. Okay. Colleen Schnettler  27:54Usability testing live with Michele. Michele Hansen  27:57F it will do it live. Okay. So, select your plan, try it out with a 30 day free trial, up, upgrade or cancel at any time. Okay. Colleen Schnettler  28:06So if you go back, though, if you start from the homepage, okay, if you go to Home. So go to home. Michele Hansen  28:10Home.  And then sign up. Colleen Schnettler  28:12Sign up. Michele Hansen  28:13Yeah. So then it's just like a login screen.  Colleen Schnettler  28:16Right.  Michele Hansen  28:17Yeah, I wonder maybe, maybe you would, you could also experiment with when you click sign up, taking people to this pricing page, and then when they click start trial, then they create an account, and then they add a credit card and everything. Colleen Schnettler  28:35Yeah, I tend to wonder if that's a better workflow because again, I don't need to collect or want to collect information for people who don't want to put their credit card down.  Michele Hansen  28:45Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  28:47So I think I'll do that. I like that. I like that idea. Yeah, and then they can go, if signup would take them to pricing, and then under where it says select your panel have something like, it's gonna be a seven day trial, but I'll fix that, try it out with a seven day trial credit. I mean, it sounds so bad, credit card required when you are ready to use the service or something. I don't know. I'll figure that out.  Michele Hansen  29:07And I also noticed you have a 30 day money back guarantee. So a 30 day free trial,  Colleen Schnettler  29:12Oh my gosh. Michele Hansen  29:12And a 30 day money back guarantee? No. Colleen Schnettler  29:15Okay. I do, but I shouldn't.  Michele Hansen  29:17Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  29:17Cuz this is like, I need to change that. Oh, my gosh, it's so funny that you said that. Because basically, like, this, the framework for the SaaS is built off of the Bullet Train app, which I mentioned earlier that Andrew and I were going to make a course for, and this is just, like, their default wording. And I literally, like forgot to take it out.  Michele Hansen  29:39Okay. Colleen Schnettler  29:40So I don't want to do that. I just, no one has asked for their money back. So that's good. Michele Hansen  29:44That's also a liability for you, so.  Colleen Schnettler  29:47Yeah, no, I need to get, where did you see that? Michele Hansen  29:49When I clicked on start trial from the pricing page. Colleen Schnettler  29:53Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I need to change that. Michele Hansen  29:57Well, it sounds like you now have a lot of work on your plate. So,  Colleen Schnettler  30:02Yeah. Michele Hansen  30:03I guess I should let you go. Colleen Schnettler  30:05Plenty of things to do. Yeah. Great. This is good, though. This is good. I haven't really thought through that onboarding workflow in a long time. So, I'm glad we took a look at it. Michele Hansen  30:15Awesome. Well, I guess that'll wrap us up for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, please tweet about it or write us an iTunes review. That means a lot to us and, yeah, we'll talk to you next week.

 Colleen Schnettler  00:00This week's episode of the Software Social Podcast is brought to you by Hopscotch Product Tours. Hopscotch Product Tours allows you to improve user onboarding with helpful product tours that guide your users to success. Also reduce frustration by helping users learn how to use your product without the need for demo calls, visit Hopscotch.club today and start delighting your users with Hopscotch Product Tours. Michele Hansen  00:28Hey, Colleen. Colleen Schnettler  00:29Hey, Michele.  Michele Hansen  00:31How you doing?  Colleen Schnettler  00:32I'm doing pretty well. I had a pretty uplifting week over here in the Simple File Upload world.  Michele Hansen  00:38You know what? That's good to hear. Because I feel like last week you were, we talked about how you were kind of feeling like you were in the void.  Colleen Schnettler  00:44I totally was. And, you know, I still feel that but I'm trying to, two things happen that changed my perspective. One, I got another check from Heroku. So that always helps. That doesn't hurt. And I'm kind of just trying to focus on my mindset as I approach this business. I have to say the check from Heroku because unlike Stripe, where you just get paid randomly when people, you know, when people pay, you only get paid once a month. So I've been telling you I have $800 MRR for like three weeks, and I haven't seen that money. So I just saw that money yesterday. So that was pretty exciting. Michele Hansen  01:21Nice Colleen Schnettler  01:22Yeah, I think I remember telling you my very first check. I got like I had enough leftover to buy a bagel.  Michele Hansen  01:28Yes. The bagel, the $20 bagel. Colleen Schnettler  01:30The $20 bagel. Well, this time it was it was quite a bit more so I could could have bought quite a few bagels. So that was pretty exciting.  Michele Hansen  01:37And I saw you tweeted out earlier this week that the Stripe payouts, I was just like payout, payout, payout. Colleen Schnettler  01:45I think what must happen is like people must have signed up, there were, like, four or five people who signed up like one day apart. And so the all of their invoices hit like right after each other. So I like signed on to my email every day, and it was like payout payout payout. It was awesome. It's very exciting. It was a lot of excitedness in terms of actually seeing the fruits of my labor on this product this week. So that was fun.  Michele Hansen  02:10Yay. Internet money.  Colleen Schnettler  02:12Yay, internet money.  Michele Hansen  02:13So where is your MRR at now? So I just checked and I'm at $975. I know. What? Oh my god, you're almost at the $1,000 MRR mark, and it's been, like, three months. Yeah, I guess it's, yeah, three, oh my god. Like,  Colleen Schnettler  02:35Yeah.  Michele Hansen  02:36That's, that's not common. Like, just for everybody else kind of like, listening like that is, that is very uncommon. Like, you're you're not like ending up on $1,000 after three months like Coleen like that's, that's normal. Like, I think it took us like six months, and even then that was kind of fast for a little project. Dude, 975. Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  02:57That's real money. It's real. That's why my last check. Because if you look at my checks from Heroku, and once again, I only get those once a month. It's not like Stripe. It was like the first one was like 150. The second one was like 250. This last one was like $570. I was like, that's like, real money. Like I could do something with that money. That's cool. Yeah, so, so from a monetary perspective, it's going great. I think I, I was struggling a lot. And I still am kind of struggling because I don't have a good feedback loop. I have been kind of unsure what to do next, and how to push the product forward. And it's funny because I like I think mid last week, I was just in a funk. And I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna build it the way I want to build it. I'm gonna develop all these features. I don't care what anyone tells me. Like, I'm just gonna do what I want to do. And you know, of course, everyone I talked to is like, that's a terrible idea. And the best way someone phrased it to me, they were like, what if you do go and you spend a couple months and you build all these features you feel like you need, you're still not going to know who your customer is. Like, I was complaining because I don't know who my customer is. And she was like, even if you spend this time to build that out, you'll be three months down the road, and you still won't know who your customer is. So have you made any progress? And I was like, oh, that's a good way to put it. So, I did a few interviews this week, which was really great. I'm really gonna take a pause on any kind of development work, and just talk to people. I mean, talk talk, talk.  Michele Hansen  03:01Colleen. Colleen Schnettler  03:02I know, I know. Michele Hansen  03:04You're done putzing around in the code garden and like, you're out there in the town square.  Colleen Schnettler  03:29I'm convinced. Like, between the, I mean, I probably five different people had to tell me this. But like you guys have convinced me that I just need to talk to more people. I just need, I don't know. Like, if you ask me who my ideal customer was, like, is, or who this provides value to, I can't identify that person, and casting a net of all developers is way too broad and too vague. So, that's really what I am focused on. In the next couple months, I think another thing is I need to calm down a little bit and slow down and be a little bit more patient.  Michele Hansen  05:21You said that you could go off and build something for three months, and it sounds like this person you were talking to, kind of helped you realize basically, like, you wouldn't know who you were building for and why you were building it and how they needed any of that to work.  Colleen Schnettler  05:39Yeah. And I think that's exactly the thing. So, so this week has been great. I spoke to three consultants, I have another one today, and I'm trying to get to five consultants, which I'm sure I can find one more person. Here's the thing, Michele, they all want different things.  Michele Hansen  05:56Oh. Colleen Schnettler  05:57So, unless I have the team and the budget of a CloudFlare, I can't build one product that fits the needs for all of these three different people.  Michele Hansen  06:09You know what this sounds like?  Colleen Schnettler  06:10No. Michele Hansen  06:11It sounds like the very beginning of a research loop to me.  Colleen Schnettler  06:15What's a research loop?  Michele Hansen  06:16Okay, so it's basically this idea that, like, you do a group of like, five interviews, and then you sort of analyze that and say, okay, of all of these different problems I've had, or rather, I've heard, which ones both sound, people are already paying for them to be solved, and they're unhappy with the way that they're being solved or in, they can also be paying in terms of significant amounts of time, like that counts. And then which of these problems do you think are relatively both feasible for you to solve, like, it would be possible for you to build something, and could also be like, commercially viable for you to sell, like, people would be willing to pay enough that would justify the time that goes into it. So basically kind of analyzing what you've heard so far, based on you know, how, how well those needs are already met, or, or not met?  Colleen Schnettler  07:07Yeah. Michele Hansen  07:08What they're already willing to pay for. And then, and then doing another round, focusing on those sort of top priority problems to figure out where you should go next. Like, it's completely normal that you would talk to five people and hear five different things. That doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, if anything, that's really exciting.  Colleen Schnettler  07:30Oh, that made me excited. I felt like crap. Now, I don't know what to do.  Michele Hansen  07:35Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And you do it kind of like a pyramid, basically. You start out with a really wide scope in the beginning because you're casting a really wide net, like, you're just talking to all software consultants, which is a pretty broad, big net. And then you just sort of narrow it down based on where your capabilities are, and where people are willing to pay for stuff, and they're not happy with what they're currently doing.  Colleen Schnettler  08:02Yeah. Okay. So that was, that was really good. You're right. It's good to hear the details of what people struggle with, what their pain points are, how frequently they have those pain points. But yeah, I was only three interviews. So nothing magical came to light, like, oh, if I just did this one thing, I would have the product everyone wants, like, there was nothing like that. Everyone was building or wanted to build kind of a specialized solution for their needs. So, I guess the answer is just continue to talk to more people in that situation.  Michele Hansen  08:38Yeah, and, you know, also making it flexible, too. Like, if you genuinely hear that everybody wants something different, then, you know, making it so that they can customize it to their own needs is another route you could go on. But, I mean, it does not surprise me at all that you would not be hearing commonalities after just three people.  Colleen Schnettler  08:58Yeah. Yeah. Michele Hansen  09:00That's totally normal.  Colleen Schnettler  09:02Yeah. So, I think, I mean, before I start, like, what, I really want to go build an integration for this thing, or build an integration for that thing, but I think before I do any of that, like I said, I'm, you know, this is, there's no finish line here, right? Like this is this is my life, like, this is what I want to do. Even if I sold my company, I'd want to build another company. So I'm just trying to be a little bit patient and take my time and really figure out who the customer is and, you know, learn, learn about what they need and figure out how I can customize this product to their needs.  Michele Hansen  09:44It sounds like that, for you, like, that is almost the opposite of your instinct. Like your instinct is to go and build for three months.  Colleen Schnettler  09:57I mean, that's what I want to do. Like, let's be clear. Like I love people, but this process of like, finding people and like the, the whole, the whole logistics of it, you know, it's a lot. It takes a lot out of your day, I found that I'm a little nervous before I talk to them. it's a lot of emotional energy to like contain my own excitement, while I'm talking to them. And listen, like, that takes quite a bit of concentration as a beginner. Michele Hansen  10:24It takes concentration for me. It takes emotional energy for me. I mean, this is why I have this rule for myself that I don't do more than two in a day because the amount of energy that's required to sort of just, you know, I picture myself like this sponge that is just there to absorb whatever the other person says. Like, that requires a lot of energy, and, you know, a couple weeks ago, when I was first starting to interview all of my readers about my book, and my very meta interviews about customer interviews, I did six in one day, out of enthusiasm for this and, and at the end of that I was like, I heard so many amazing things. But I was also like, okay, now I remember why I've had two per day rule.  Colleen Schnettler  11:10Yeah. Yeah, so I think that's kind of, uh, definitely goes against my instincts to slow down and try and identify my customer. But I think the point that I want to build all these things, but until I know who I'm going to be serving, I don't even know what is important to build, and I can't know what is important to build, until I talk to people who need this product, who I, to identify them and talk to them. So that's going to, that's going to mean that I need to be a little more aggressive in finding people. I can't just like, I mean, I put a thing on Twitter, and I found five people, but I was only looking for five people. Like, I want more than I want a lot of people. So I think I'm going to try some of those strategies, you know, go on Reddit, and the strategies you write about in your book, actually. If you'd like to, I mean, you talk about this in your book, I reference your book, even though it's not done, like I haven't, I'm looking at it all the time, just so you know. Michele Hansen  12:06You know, one thing I want to note is that doing development work and customer research work, like, they're not an either, or. It doesn't have to be this switch, where you're only doing one at a time. Like I think, you know, the best cases are when this kind of research is just integrated into what you're already doing. And, you know, it does take time and focus, and like, context switching is difficult so you couldn't, you know, just like, you know, write code for like half an hour and then interview someone then right? Like, you can't sort of just switch back and forth super easily, but integrating it into your process. And maybe it's not that you, you know, don't go out and build these features for three months in a cave, or also that you don't go out and just talk to people for three months. It's that you do you know, both, you know, it's like, in the same way that, that people often ask me whether they should talk to people or whether they should look at analytics, and I'm like, porque no los dos? Like, do it at the same time.  Colleen Schnettler  13:07Yeah.  Michele Hansen  13:08Like, you could, you know, like, for example, I remember you talking about something you came out of the interview with Drew where you wanted to pull the code pen forward on the marketing side?  Colleen Schnettler  13:17Yes.  Michele Hansen  13:18Has that happened?  Colleen Schnettler  13:20No.  Michele Hansen  13:21Oh, I don't mean to, like call you out or anything. It's like, you know, there's like,  Colleen Schnettler  13:25Developer calling me out on my own podcast, Michele. Michele Hansen  13:28I'm sorry. Like, there's development work you can do, Colleen Schnettler  13:32Yeah. Michele Hansen  13:33That you'll find in these things as you go.  Colleen Schnettler  13:35Yeah. And I think that's, that's really the key. And that, that's will keep me in like a happy psychological state, too, because I'll get to, I'll get to do a little code, I'll get to talk to a little people. I get to do a little code, I'll get to talk to a little people. So I think, I think that you're absolutely right. Like that is a good path forward. I think, I guess what I'm trying to sort out, so when I built this thing I built it like to do one very specific thing, right? Like, it was designed to help you get public files from your users onto your site, and I was actually making, I was using it for brochures. We were doing real estate brochures, and people have started using it and all kinds of different ways, and that's been really instructive. So, even that piece of information is interesting, and a good thing to learn. So, yeah, so I think it's just keeping an open mind and making those kinds of changes that are kind of obvious, like, the code pen more accessible as I go forward. That's kind of, kind of my plan. Oh, and I wanted to say, so what I've been doing, I think I read this in your book, too, is I've been recording, obviously, with their permission and then dropping it in Otter.ai to get a transcript, and it's so awesome because now I can just read. It takes me five minutes to read instead of watching the 30 minute video, and I have the information, like, right there at my fingertips. I love that.  Michele Hansen  15:07It's awesome. Yeah, and Otter makes it so easy to do a transcript. It's actually what we use for this podcast. I should totally like, reach out to them and see if they'll sponsor us or something.  Colleen Schnettler  15:19I have a paid subscription.  Michele Hansen  15:21Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  15:21Because I was like, this is so worth it. Like, it's so cool.  Michele Hansen  15:24Yeah, then you could just, like, Colleen Schnettler  15:25That's been, Michele Hansen  15:25Print it out and highlight.  Colleen Schnettler  15:27Yeah, well, that's been such a great way to collate the data, because I was like, okay, if I want to get serious about this and talk to, you know, 15, 20 people, what, am I going to go back and watch all those interviews? I really don't want to. So, that's been a really cool way to get the data. I'm, like, pumped about that. And so, yeah.  Michele Hansen  15:46Yeah, if we were doing this, like in a sort of serious, like corporate, you know, company setting, what you would do is actually like, take all of those transcripts, and then clip out like, specific key phrases and key words, and sentences where someone is really clearly describing their different use case and then, I mean, I feel like there's this sort of this meme about how much like, UX people love post it notes, and like rearranging post it notes on boards. And, like, those, you know, all of those quotes basically end up as post it notes where you're making a timeline of the user's journey through trying to do something, and you're evaluating it on functional social and emotional levels. And like, everyone in the team is like placing post it notes in all of these different areas from all the different interviews. Like you might have one color that you use for a particular customer or a particular interview, for example. It's super time intensive. It's also really fun, and yes, it brings amazing results, but even if you're not doing that, like, even the fact of getting the transcript made, going, reading through it, pulling out the key phrases, and then just, kind of, knowing where to find that information yourself, or like, jotting that down on a card, or whatever that is, wherever you're keeping information so you know what to go back and reference later can be really helpful.  Colleen Schnettler  17:03Yeah, yeah, I'm pumped to go in this customer interview journey, I think I'm going to approach it the way you kind of describe where, of course, I'm not going to not touch the code, like there's going to be, there's going to be both, I'm gonna do them in parallel. But I really want to kind of identify who, who it is I can provide the most value to, and I want to be specific about it. So,  Michele Hansen  17:22Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  17:23That's kind of my goal going forward. And that's going to take a while. I think that's the other thing I have to remember is like, that's not going to happen in a week. That's going to take me a little while. So, Michele Hansen  17:33I mean, in some ways, it's never over. And I don't know if that really, I don't know if that helps you. Like, I don't know if that's something I should tell you now, but like, you know, I'm a firm believer that research should be just part of your ongoing workflow and sort of building this bank of customer understanding that is a living, breathing organism. And it's not that we do a research project for a month and then build stuff for three months, then do a research project. Like, it's just always happening.  Colleen Schnettler  18:00Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of all the wonderful info I got from your book while I was doing these customer interviews, how is the book going?  Michele Hansen  18:09It's good, it's good. I feel like we're, we're getting into the more serious editing phase. I'm kind of, Colleen Schnettler  18:17Didn't you have a picture this morning of like, the book on your desk with a bunch of pens on Twitter?  Michele Hansen  18:21Oh, yeah, I did, I printed it out, and I started reading it, like, as as a book and editing it, and I have four different colors of pens for my editing. And I used to do editing and print layout professionally, and I've sort of volunteer edited other people's books before.  Colleen Schnettler  18:40So random. Michele Hansen  18:41So yeah, no, it was like, stuff I did when I was in college. So, um, so, so yeah, I'm really pumped, because actually, this is a phase of it that I feel like I understand the best. And I know, like I have seen where, you know, there was one book that I helped edit that went on to win a major like, international prize and like, I didn't have anything to do with that, but like it, I saw what that book was in its early stages, and so I know that like, the fact that I'm tearing this to shreds right now is like a normal part of the process, like, and even really amazing books, like they everything starts out in a rough shape. I'm really appreciating how different writing a book is from writing a newsletter, like, how much of a gulf there is between that.  Colleen Schnettler  19:27Yeah. Michele Hansen  19:28Um, but, but I'm having fun. I feel like I have torn like the introduction absolutely to shreds. I mean, I had like four introductory chapters, and like, I think that was too many. Like, I was really burying the lead. So it's good. You know, I've brought in friends who are outside of our little bubble in tech to help me edit who were people that I know who will be harsh and honest with me, and they trust that I'm not going to be offended, and so I'm so grateful to have their help. And I've interviewed about 25 ish people now as part of it. So it's, it's going along. It's good.  Colleen Schnettler  20:11That's awesome. I'm excited. And I also heard, and by heard, I mean, you told me, that you took your live chat widget off of your website.  Michele Hansen  20:22I'm so excited.  Colleen Schnettler  20:23Talk to me about that.  Michele Hansen  20:24Okay, so this, so, this is something that has been building for a while, and for a long time, not not just since we moved here, but for a long time, the pings of live chat have been really stressful for us.  Colleen Schnettler  20:43I imagine.  Michele Hansen  20:44Yeah. And even, like, when we were in the US, like, we were on eastern time, and we would stop working around 4:30 or 5 on any given day, and we would still be getting requests, you know, through eight o'clock at the minimum, because of the West Coast, if not later, because of Hawaii and Alaska. And so we were sort of used to getting pinged from customer support at all hours of the day. It was not necessarily that there's a volume problem, because, so we have this idea that every support ticket only happens once.  Colleen Schnettler  21:18I think you've mentioned that.  Michele Hansen  21:19So this is kind of this principle that we operate on that whenever somebody, whether it's a bug or somebody is confused about something, like, if there's any way that we can make something clearer, or fix something, or basically prevent that ticket from ever happening again, we do that. So nothing gets closed until it's fixed. And, and so we operate on that principle, and that has really reduced our support volume over the years. But also, but still throughout that, and I think especially being on a European timezone serving North American customers like, that gets really difficult because you know, our daughter gets out of school at three o'clock, and then our customers wake up at three o'clock, and then it's just, like, it's just chaos, and having live chat specifically, like, people don't know when they can expect to get a live response versus when they have to wait. And I have experimented with so many different versions of copy on the little live chat widget, and none of them really seem to communicate that it's, like, it may not actually be live.  Colleen Schnettler  22:30Okay.  Michele Hansen  22:31And then on the flip side, some other people assume it's a robot and like, don't even use it.  Colleen Schnettler  22:35Yeah, that's me. But keep going. Michele Hansen  22:37I've seen that come up in usability testing, like, when I've had people screen share, and go through our site. So um, you know, a couple months ago, I was telling this to some founder friends, and what, what came out of it was basically, you know, live chat was really important for our growth, especially in the early days, like, I'm thinking like, like, 2016, 17, 18, especially when we're going full time. And, but the things that you do to grow are not necessarily the things you have to do to maintain and be a stable business, right? You know, we're growing. Like, we grew 56% last year, even though we didn't really try to, but growth is not what we optimize for. We optimize for stability. And so those things that we did in the early days to grow, like, could use different tactics now, and where the live chat kind of stresses us out and doesn't work for our family, but also like, it creates this expectation mismanagement with our customers. And people are still getting a reply directly from the founders, and just this morning, somebody emailed us, and then we got back to them an hour later. And then the response we got back was, "Wow, I'm so amazed that you were able to give me a helpful answer so quickly." And like, that was an hour versus immediate, and they still had that, like, positive reaction. So, we just did this the other day, we'll see how it goes. But, but I'm kind of nervous, excited, relieved all the same.  Colleen Schnettler  24:14So you still have the widget, it just says,  Michele Hansen  24:18No, we got rid of the widget. We removed the widget.  So there's no widget at all? Yeah, I mean, it's still, like, popping up in random places. So we were like, going through the codebase and trying to find all the different places we have that launcher. But, no, but we're still using intercom and the platform, like, so all the email is still coming into intercom, but we don't have the live chat bubble in the corner, and we don't have any prompts that say, you know, contact us if you have a billing question. Like, if you click on Contact Us, it doesn't pull up intercom chat widget. It instead creates an email.  Colleen Schnettler  24:50Okay, so if I am on your site, and I want to contact you, I now have to scroll to the bottom to the footer, or wherever, click contact us, and that'll pop up in my email so I can email you? Michele Hansen  25:00It's in the header. And,  Colleen Schnettler  25:01Okay, but,  Michele Hansen  25:02And then it's,  Colleen Schnettler  25:02Okay.  Michele Hansen  25:03It lists all the different emails. Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  25:06Now tell me about some concerns you have about making this.  Michele Hansen  25:09I think I, like, a concern I have is that, you know, people will be upset, right, that they may have expected an immediate response before. But, you know, at the same time, like, most of our long term customers, like, they email us anyway. And actually, most of them have our personal emails, and like, they don't expect an immediate response. You know, our, when I was talking to those friends a couple of months ago, they were like, "You guys are providing way too high of a quality of customer service. Like, I know that you guys pride yourselves on it. Like, even doing the customer support as the founders yourselves is so far beyond what most companies do, nevermind doing it live 24/7." Like, they're like, that's that, that doesn't make sense. And like, you guys can be, you know, be gentle with yourselves, basically. Um, you know, people have been like, "Why don't you just hire someone?" And the problem with it is that because we have solved all of the easy support problems, like, the ones we do get are fairly complicated. And if someone else were to take this over, they would need to be a support engineer, who, you know, is capable of debugging people's problems, but also like, able to negotiate contracts and do billing issues and like, like, they would need to somehow be a clone of the two of us. And it doesn't really seem reasonable. So, so yeah, I think, and again, it's, it's not the volume, that it's the problem, it was really that cadence. It's when someone is, you know, chatting and saying, "Hi, are you there?"  Colleen Schnettler  26:47Right. Michele Hansen  26:48Is the API working? My API key, my API key is, you know, it's doing this like, and it's like, and it's like, every, like one like, ping every minute versus someone sending us an email that's like, hey, like, so we're trying to use it earlier, and then this is what happens, and here's the error message. Like, people tend to be much more verbose and email. So,  Colleen Schnettler  27:05Yes. Michele Hansen  27:06I'm nervous. But we'll see, we'll see how it goes. I think that this is, you know, an adjustment that we need to make. Colleen Schnettler  27:13I don't think anyone will care. I think you will get absolutely no, I think this is all upside for you. I mean, it's gonna be so good for your quality of life. I don't, I literally don't think anyone's gonna care. I mean, I think you're gonna find that it doesn't have any impact on your business.  Michele Hansen  27:29We'll see. We'll see. But, you know, we're kind of operating under that idea that the things that we needed to do to grow, are not necessarily the same things that you do to, when you have a stable, secure business.  Colleen Schnettler  27:43Yeah.  Michele Hansen  27:44Yeah. Which is kind of weird, like, also in the software world, cuz I feel like, you know, we talk about this all the time, that if you're trying to build a, you know, sort of, quote, unquote, like, Calm company, right, like, you're not going down the unicorn route. Like, like most of the advice and growth tactics, and everything out, like, business advice is geared towards those companies that want to be huge, and less so towards us little one, two person companies. Like, the things that make sense for us, or, you know, we have a totally different set of incentives and resources and constraints and goals. Like, all those things are so different, that the fact that we're all in software is, is almost sort of beside the point.  Colleen Schnettler  28:29It is complete, it is wild, isn't it? Like how different the tactics are.  Michele Hansen  28:34Like we have more in common with a small retail business, but we also don't fit in with them because we're not a physical business. Like, it's like, I don't know, small SaaS. We're like, we're just a weird breed, man. Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  28:50Well, I hope it I hope it alleviate some of that pressure and stress. I imagine, especially with the timezone issues since you guys have moved, that's got to be just challenging.  Michele Hansen  29:02Yeah, my friends who also, you know, run SaaS's out of Europe with North American customers, like, I have talked to them a little bit about this and they're like, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's tough. It's really tough. Colleen Schnettler  29:18Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Well, I'm, I'm glad. I think, I feel like, this is gonna work for you. Michele Hansen  29:25We'll see. Maybe in six months we'll be like, oh my god, we don't have any new customers and everybody cancelled because we don't have the chat thing, but I hope not.  Colleen Schnettler  29:33I mean, honestly, and I know you said they, they come in two groups, but I just assumed there will not be a person on the other side of the chat widget. So, if I hit your chat widget, I just assume I'm going to send you an email. You know what I mean? I think you'll be fine.   Michele Hansen  29:47Yeah, I think people have totally different expectations. And what we have tried to communicate is that we're not making it harder to contact us, like we're not, you know, offshoring our support. Like, you can still go to the header and click, like, contact. You can still email us, like, it's still the two founders doing the support. It's just one of the tools we use for that is going away.  Colleen Schnettler  30:13Yeah, cool. I can't wait to hear an update on how that goes. All right. Well, I guess that'll wrap us up for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tweet about it. That always makes us happy, and we love hearing what you think.

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

Content Warning Timestamps45:50 - 59:00It’s a kaiju battle royale! This episode we watched Ghidorah The Three Headed Monster (1964), an epic monster crossover featuring Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and the debut of Ghidorah. Lee shops around for a Tiny Lady Box while Sarah drops Bummers™ in her science hour segment. Plus, improbable dimensional gaps, recycled Toho actors, magic flying pickaxes, and Godzilla’s filthy, filthy mouth. NOTE: content warning for discussion of medical/psychiatric abuse and use of lethal injections between (timestamps). Sarah’s Science Hour: “What is Truth Serum?” (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-truth-serum/) Featured Roaster: Northwest Espresso, Heritage Coffee Roasting Co, Juneau AK (https://www.heritagecoffee.com/)

In the United States, there has been a renewed call for an end to systemic racism and in Nigeria, youths are leading the #EndSARSNow protest to end police brutality and unchecked power. At times of civil unrest, what is the citizen’s duty? On Episode 25, I draw lessons from Dr Martin Luther King’s epic speech titled “A Call to Conscience” where he called for an end to the Vietnam War. Perspectives on civic duty have never been as skewed as they are in recent times. I talk about what Civic Duty is and how we contribute to the governance of our nations and protect their democratic freedoms. Key Highlights:You have a responsibility. “A Time Comes when Silence is Betrayal” 8:25Respect perspectives but feel free to disagree 12:57You can make a difference. Tell your stories. Spread the word 13:39Give Grace. Treat people with honor and respect. “Men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy” 16:10“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” 18:00It is your duty and your calling. Who says peace and civil rights don’t mix? 20:50Seek first to understand. Get over semantics 23:52Think Beyond yourself. “our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional” 26:30 There are many ways to engage: in word and in deeds, with many or with few, with complaints or with solutions… that is how we build a more perfect union. There are no bystanders in nation building. Let your conscience leave you no choice today as it was with MLK and the others that bought the freedoms we enjoy today. “To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men—for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?” -Dr Martin Luther King Jr in A Call to Conscience: Beyond Vietnam.Let’s continue the conversation on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn @TheStellifyPodcast. Use the hashtag #stellified. Thank you for subscribing, listening, reviewing and rating this podcast on Apple and other apps.

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.

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PAVEMENT. STOP BREATHIN' – 4:25Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Matador, 1994 SILVER JEWS. THE WILD KINDNESS – 3:50American Water, Drag City, 1998 PURPLE MOUNTAINS. NIGHTS THAT WON'T HAPPEN – 6:05Purple Mountains, Drag City, 2019 CIRCUIT DES YEUX. FALLING BLONDE – 4:20Reaching For Indigo, Drag City, 2017 EDITH FROST. WHAT'S THE USE – 4:00It's A Game, Drag […] Cet article Errance #132 : De Pavement à Daniel Johnston est apparu en premier sur Eldorado.

How you can use the Enneagram to leverage and build wealth Are you trying to build a wall of wealth and security around your family and struggling to move the needle effectively? In this week’s episode, I dive deep into how the Enneagram can be used as the sharpest tool in your box to build profit, passion, and wealth. I discuss how using the Enneagram allowed me to understand people, their language, fears, motivations, and purpose, and how this enabled me to empower and connect with them. Listen to this week’s episode to see how the Enneagram can play to your own strengths, leverage other people’s, build your business, impact your company, and drive profit to leave behind the legacy you have always dreamed of. How the Enneagram changed my life The Enneagram came into my life when I was at my lowest, right after an unexpected loss made me realize how precious and unreliable our most important resource is--time. I had just severed ties with my entire network, friends, community, and was fresh out of rehab trying to overhaul my life and business—I knew that something needed to change. I walk through how discovering the Enneagram’s superpowers enabled me to speak the same language as my family and my new network, and how this completely transformed relationships and my business—turning it into a multimillion organization within 26 months. How the Enneagram can work for you I outline how the Enneagram allows you to work smarter, not harder, and I talk about how, when used correctly and with integrity, it can bring out the best in everyone. The key to being a good leader is not only knowing yourself, but being able to bring out strengths in those around you—to see, understand and hear them. When improving profit margin, knowing how to incentivize and motivate people will drive productivity and grow profit. In a world where everything around us is a transaction—whether emotional or physical—it’s crucial to effectively and efficiently communicate, cut down time cost, and increase how quickly you move the needle. Stop wasting time, start making money, and learn how applying the Enneagram can increase profit and fulfillment in your life, business, and relationships, so you can Become Bulletproof. Your reviews matter If you enjoyed this episode and look forward to new ones each week, please take a minute to share with friends, family, and rate the podcast on Apple Podcasts! The more ratings and reviews there are, the easier it is to discover the show, especially for those who may need it.It isn’t something you use to manipulate anybody. 1:30It brings out the best in everyone around you. 1:40When you speak to someone's language they are more likely to work with you. 1:55If you want to be effective in sales, leading, coaching, building businesses, or being the best person you want to be, we must first understand ourselves. 6:17[The Enneagram gave me] Super low attachment but super high involvement in how to use this growth map to move my life forward. 7:20The human connection is so watered down with social media. 8:00It’s important to understand this tool if we want to work smarter, not harder. 9:20Everything is a transaction when it comes to business in some way. 10:15We all just want to be seen, heard, and understood 11:00You must learn to understand yourself first. 12:40Even though I could move the needle, most people didn’t feel connected to me and at the end of the day, everyone craves connection 14:20I wouldn’t take advice from someone I don’t want to switch places with. 17:15If you are leading people it is your responsibility to help empower them to be who they are and not who you are. 20:20The world revolves around sales 22:43Profit margin is really imoprttnat and when you are trying to to get people productive and passionate about the mission its important—and when you can speak to their strengths and incentivize them in a way that works for them, you will move the needle so much faster, you will have team unity, you will have a morale and community and culture in your organization that is un-fucking-stoppable. 25:20The difference between torque and horsepower is that horsepower might get you somewhere quicker...but you will burn out. Torque is the capacity to do the work...28:33

The effort and hard work of the Gallatin Police Department in protecting our citizens is indeed priceless. In this Miracle CDJR Special Edition podcast episode, host John Haggard talks to Chief Don Bandy, Gallatin and Sumner County’s very own chief of police. Together, they talk about the following topics: Chief Don Bandy’s BackgroundGrowing up in GallatinChief Don’s HobbiesHow Don Became Chief of Police in GallatinIs There a Decrease in New Police Applicants?Tips in Protecting Cars from BurglaryDoes the Police Department Have Body Cams?How to Protect Gallatin BetterCommon Police Force MisconceptionsCombatting Crime and Drug ProblemsImproving Traffic EnforcementsGallatin Police Department Annual Golf TournamentShop with a Cop and Santa Classic ProgramsPolice Department Visits the Veterans HomeHow to Reach the Police Department for Those Who Want to Participate in Their ProgramsThe Biggest Challenge of the Police Department TodayWords of Advice from Chief Don Transcript John Haggard 0:02Welcome to the Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Special Edition podcast where we also interview community leaders on topics that are of interest to the Gallatin area. And today we’re honored to have Donald Bandy. He’s the chief of police for Gallatin, and Sumner County on the podcast. Hey, Don, welcome to the podcast. Chief Don Bandy 0:21Well, good to be here. Thanks for inviting me. John Haggard 0:23Well excited to have you here. Before we dive in into what’s going on in the police world in Gallatin these days and for people who are either new to the podcast or new to this area or may not know you, tell us a little bit about you like, for example, did you grow up in Gallatin? Chief Don Bandy 0:39I did grow up in Gallatin, born and raised here. My mom pretty much raised me from a small boy and, like I say she was from this county. But I was born, grew up here, went to school here. Graduated Gallatin High School and go Green Waves! And just like I say I’ve been here the majority of my life. John Haggard 1:06You know that’s a real advantage because, every back alley, every front alley, I mean the entire layout, probably no surprise to you where any hidden corners or anything might be, right? Chief Don Bandy 1:18That’s true, that’s true. Well for the most part with all the new growth in our community it’s starting to expand. I have to get out of the office every once a while and ride some of these new developments. And learn my way around there. But as far as the neighborhoods that have been established for years I grew up here and have a lot of great friends and memories from this town. John Haggard 1:40I bet you do. Let’s go back on some of those memories back to high school what were maybe what was the most fun thing that you did in high school? You know? Chief Don Bandy 1:48I think it would, be thinking on this reflecting, I think it’s probably the relationships are built. Playing, I played football and played some basketball and just establish relationships with some friends for life. Coaches and again your teachers, it was really enjoyable it as you grow older and mature you kind of look back, you think they really didn’t have my best interests at heart as far as our coaches and teachers. And it’s always good to catch up with friends especially with social media these days. We went to school with. But that would probably be my most fond memory is the way athletics and in building those relationships for life. John Haggard 2:27Now you said you played football. What position? Chief Don Bandy 2:31I was an offensive lineman. I wasn’t really big, I was taught to wear a lot of pads. I look bigger. But things are so different these days. They’re these kids these days are very athletic and a lot of large. Athletic kids and they’re a lot faster than I ever was. So that’s kind of funny to see that. But I did, I played that and tried to play a little basketball. But you know how that is, again I couldn’t jump that high. I always laughed at. You could put paper on my feet, but I couldn’t do that. So, I think I have a coach now, Coach Ryan Berg. Love him to death. And he always jokes with my officers that he could lock me in the gym by myself all night and I couldn’t score two points. But, I said, coach, please don’t tell everybody that. But a lot of fun, yes sir. John Haggard 3:16What do you think it is? Why are the kids so much bigger today? Is it the water in Gallatin or what is it? Chief Don Bandy 3:23I think it’s everywhere. I think, for the most part, I hear kids are playing from everywhere. I know, Gallatin is having a great season at football. But, just kids in general. I mean, they’re just, it’s just a different age. I mean, from college to the pros to, obviously high school. And I have seen some kids at the middle school game the other day, and I was like, holy cow, we were never, I wasn’t that big in high school. So it’s just, I don’t know, I really couldn’t answer that. But it’s amazing to see that, yes sir. John Haggard 3:45It is. So from Gallatin, you are. So you still have a lot of family in the area, I would think? Chief Don Bandy 3:56Well, actually I was the only child. So and of course, my mom’s she’s been deceased since 2012. So it’s me and it’s my wife’s family. But again, I have a lot of great friends that I consider family and a lot of folks that mean a lot to me in this community. John Haggard 4:15Did you go to college as well, Don? Or did you elect to go to work early? Chief Don Bandy 4:19I did. I tried the Vol State experience, right off the bat. And, it’s kind of one of those things, you gotta be dedicated to it, and I wasn’t. So I took a couple of semesters, and then I decided not to. And then that I began the whole work thing. Life, that’s what it’s like. I started doing that. And, recently in 2012 I actually finished my degree in criminal justice with Bethel University. So glad I went back finished. I wish I’d done it a long time ago. And I tell especially our younger officers, go ahead and get that while you can while you’re at it. If you’re able to. And of course, college is not for everybody, but I do encourage you to try to do that and get a skill and get into something they will help you in the future John Haggard 5:01Yeah. So what do you like to do on your time off? Chief Don Bandy 5:04I got two boys. And they’re playing basketball and baseball right now. They’re a lot better athletes than I ever was, I tell them. But I like hanging out with them running back and forth. When I can I love love to play golf. I had been playing along and pretty bad at it. But I always say my B or C player is a lot better my A player so. But I do enjoy doing that so. John Haggard 5:26When you shoot golf, what do you, what’s your best score? Chief Don Bandy 5:29I would have probably gotten the 80s maybe a couple of times so I’m still… Well with that, yeah that’s having a lucky day for me so. But I like to say I really enjoy it. When I do get to do it, they say it’s supposed to be a stress release, but sometimes I feel like it’s the opposite. But, I do I keep going back for more… John Haggard 5:52There you go. Do you have other favorite hobbies that you like? Chief Don Bandy 5:55I try to work out. I try almost every day. Sometimes I don’t make it but I do. I go to the local civic center here, the Gallatin Civic Center. And, again, it’s just trying to stay in shape and keep your body healthy I think a lot of times the older I get I know that they say the diet is more important than working out and I do believe in that because it doesn’t seem to be catching up any. John Haggard 6:19Yeah. Chief Don Bandy 6:21I gathered I just said that. But yeah, pretty much that. Golf and I enjoy, loving to do that. And of course, going to my boys’ ball games, that type of stuff. John Haggard 6:30So of course, you grew up in Gallatin, as you said. So how did you get to be chief of police for Gallatin in Sumner County? Chief Don Bandy 6:38I started law enforcement in 1992. I had a friend that was a US Marshal and he kept encouraging me to get in law enforcement. And I had no desire to but I thought I’d give it a try. So I got my start there and worked within the county and met some good friends and changed jobs kept talking back and forth and then I just got, here Gallatin. And I don’t know, I just, all those things where you just say I’m just gonna stay put and work hard. And the next thing you know, I got to Sergeant and then I get to Lieutenant. And then I was blessed and I got called upon and I put my name for Chief and I truly believe that the community was behind me 100% on that to get the job. And I’ve been Chief since May of 2011. So I’m very blessed. John Haggard 7:25You’re close to 10 years. Chief Don Bandy 7:27Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of… they say the life expectancy of Chiefs around three, four years and that… John Haggard 7:34Really? Chief Don Bandy 7:35Yeah, that’s what they say. John Haggard 7:37Why is that? Chief Don Bandy 7:38I think it’s probably a lot of things people want to… they may move on to different jobs or different careers to move up the ladder if you will. Some people may go. We had a chief from Kentucky, we had one that was here from Mississippi and you always go back home, so to speak. So, but my case, I’m not resume-building, do you know what I’m saying? I’m just here because I grew up in this community, I love it, and I want to do my best to serve it. And hopefully, I’ll be here for several years to come. So… John Haggard 8:11Yeah. Now before you became involved in police work, did you have another profession? Something else you were involved in? Chief Don Bandy 8:17I worked for a company called Rebound. It was a brain injury rehab facility. And it was one of those things where, I kind of tried the college thing and I was like, “Oh, good, gracious, I don’t want to do this.” And, at the time it spreads my got me in over there. And it was really, I think it really helps me now because you got to have a lot of patience. Because you do have some folks that have experienced the brain injury and their decision making is an obstacle for them. So it helped me to, again, have patience and learn from that. I think it helped me in law enforcement and I really do truly believe that. As I look back on that time working there. I think they met a lot of good folks there and I truly believe that helped me do this job. John Haggard 8:59How big is The Gallatin Police Department? Chief Don Bandy 9:01We have 87 sworn positions, and we are four short right now. So we just tested which will be probably filling some of those… we’re in that process. And we have, I think, another 10 as far as civilians because, I mean, there’s so much in what they do… they’re more support staff. Really we can’t do our job without them these days, they prepare records and document them and getting everything the way it should be, because everything has got to be to a tee as far as that stuff goes. We have to have that stuff. And they do that stuff on a regular basis. I mean, they’re always keeping the wheels rolling, I say because, we have officers out on the street, but there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes that they do a great job, too. So… John Haggard 9:22Do you find an interest in the career of law enforcement for a police officer? Do you find more candidates than you used to? Fewer candidates or about the same or is there any trend there? Chief Don Bandy 10:00It’s dropped off. And I think it has across the board with other agencies I’ve talked to. Other chiefs and sheriffs, and… used to you’d have 60 applicants or 80, or whatever. And now, you may have 20 or 30. And I don’t know, I hope that, to me, it’s a profession that’s a calling. A lot of people, we run towards chaos and bullets and other people run away from it. And again, I always say about our officers and our staff and myself included, we’re not perfect. But we’re doing our best to try to do the right thing and give you the best service possible. John Haggard 10:37Well, let’s talk about protection. People would like to know, are there any really good tips, or maybe the best tips. Let’s say, if someone wants to protect their car from burglary, or having a car stolen, are there are some basic tips, you would say, “Hey, based on the area where we are, here’s, here’s what you ought to do to help prevent that.” Chief Don Bandy 10:56Well, and again, that’s a great question because a lot of our crimes are burglaries of vehicles. And what we’ve experienced is especially in neighborhoods, people say well I’m leaving my doors unlocked. But a lot of folks that when they do go to do this, they will not take the time to try to break out the window. They will just check your door handle and going to the next driveway. And so I always encourage them now to… There’s always that chance they bust one out still. Especially if you leave something of value like a computer a purse, weapons. Please don’t leave anything in a car like that. Just be mindful and try to get them out of there and if you’re somewhere that you do have that stuff in there please put them in the trunk and make it as difficult as possible. Because when I see it in plain view that maybe, in a parking lot at Walmart or whatever that may be their great opportunity to bust out that window and grab your computer or your purse, what have you. But at your home when we have those burglaries that we have subdivisions that will go through at night in the past and others hit driveway to driveway. So we encourage you to lock that door because they will not take the time. They don’t want to make the noise to get them go on to the next one. And that’s the usual case. Now say that and they somehow call me and say, “Hey, by the way, I tried that it didn’t work.” But, for the most part, we do encourage you to just keep it out of sight, especially when you’re out and about. And with the holidays coming out, goodness gracious, we always have a lot of problems with that. Just be aware of your surroundings. When you were in a parking lot, or wherever you are, try to get to where the light, where it’s well lit, and just be aware of it. Keep your head up, don’t be reading your phone, walk into the car that, just the simple things like that. John Haggard 12:30Chief, a lot of people hear a lot today on the news about home invasions. Any tips or, this is kind of a big fear where you wake up and all of a sudden hear somebody in your bedroom or whatever. Chief Don Bandy 12:43Sure. One of the main things is home security. I have one myself and I encourage that and then advertise it. And there are all types of cameras you can have you have them, in your doorbell or what have you. Now I encourage you there, they’re fairly as many as out there now, yet they’re fairly cheap. And I encourage you to go out and spend the money, it would be worth it to have a little bit more security to have a little peace of mind, if you will, that hopefully the bad guy that they noticed that they’ll go on to the next one. So we do encourage that. And, the simple things… just be aware, when you come out. If you got shrubs up around your house, keep them trimmed down where you can see the simple things like that. If something doesn’t look quite right, somebody’s in your neighborhood or cars there that you don’t think, is usually there and it doesn’t look right, we would rather you call us and us to find out the hard way that they didn’t belong. So if we offend you, going to check it out. We apologize, but we just want to make the street safe. And most people that they’re in their neighborhood they know what’s right or wrong or what doesn’t look right. And you got to trust your gut feeling and your instincts and a lot of times they’re right when you give us a call we go check something out. It wasn’t up to snuff, so. John Haggard 14:03Yeah. And speaking of cameras, does the police department use body cams? Chief Don Bandy 14:08Yes, sir. We do. It’s a, I think we started in, I want to say 2014, 2015, somewhere around there. And we, we’ve always had in-car cameras since back when we had VHS tapes in the 90s. John Haggard 14:21Right. Right. Yeah. Chief Don Bandy 14:22So we’ve had those for a long time. And I just felt it was a great opportunity for us to do that. So actually, we went out and actually use drug fund money where we had gotten fines and fees and seizures off of narcotics-related offenses. Yeah. And we use that money instead of using other taxpayer money. We use that money to equip all of our officers with that. Of course, technology’s ever-changing. So we’re trying to stay up to date on that. And they are quite expensive, but to me, it’s worth it. It protects the citizen, it protects our officers, and again, it helps us. I mean even like you say when we do make a mistake. It helps us to look at that and try to get better. And then again, sometimes when, unfortunately, there are false claims against us, it sometimes in a lot of times, it shows it’s not true. And, sometimes we give the citizen the opportunity to sit down and look at it with us. And they realize that, hey, I wasn’t quite right in my recollection. And that’s embarrassing by you calling anybody out, but I think it’s just a great protection for all of us. Especially in this day and age and the citizens, they deserve the best, and that’s what I mean. To me having those is, to me a no-brainer that I think we owe that to the citizens to do our best and to make sure we’re doing it the right way. John Haggard 15:43Yes. And, you know, cameras are just everywhere today. I mean, on your cellphone, you know just everywhere. And I would sure think when people know something or somebody or a camera is photographing you it’s got to be a deterrent. Chief Don Bandy 15:56Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You would think so. And there’s another thing that we’re working on because we have red-light cameras, which are not really popular for a lot of citizens. But we have a thing that we’re implementing, and we’ve used it in the past, but we’re trying to again, funding is always a problem with these types of things. Technology is expensive, but they’re called license radars, we call it up ours and. Israel PD. is doing it, this county is doing it, and we were doing it one time. And again, we kind of get caught up in the expense of it. But we’re trying to implement those we get some we just implemented and what they do is they read a tag. Say a tag is stolen or a person is wanted that goes back to that tag. And if that’s entered into a database, it will alert our officers via computer and our dispatch via computer which will say hey, the black truck is out all for 109 South. It has tag ABC 123. And we start looking for it. And it won’t tell us exactly where it is, but it would give if they say that tag was stolen or that truck was stolen. Over the weekend, we found a stolen vehicle like that. Yeah so it… And again that’s not Big Brother watching because if your tag doesn’t show in the database as stolen, wanted or what have you, it won’t even notify us that you pass by. But if one passes by that were stolen, little bells go off and it lets us know that, hey it just passed over such a such Boulevard and we need to be on the lookout. So our guys get to obviously saturate that area. It works pretty well for us. I know, I hear Hendersonville has had a lot of success because they have a lot more than us. But it’s just another way you try to fight crime and every time you come up with something, the bad guys come up with something better it seems like. You’re staying behind the wheel you’re doing your best to stay firm but sometimes staying behind. John Haggard 17:41Yeah. So is there anything just overall that you would say that people don’t seem to understand or maybe they misunderstand about the police force in general? Chief Don Bandy 17:52Well, I would say that, you hear all the time that they gotta get the quota or the right number of tickets today and that is so far from the truth. It’s, and we preach this philosophy that any county enforcement action, whether it’s an arrest or ticket or whatever we do, it’s to deter behavior. It’s not to hurt somebody’s wallet. And I know people are hardworking and trying to make money. But, if you see us work in the areas where is, okay, we’re stopping a lot of cars, it’s probably because somebody complained. Because as the city is growing, it’s hard to keep up, you try to stay proactive, but we’re almost reactive in our efforts sometimes with traffic enforcement. And again, citizens let you know, when somebody’s speeding, they’ll let us know, let the mayor know, they let the council know. So, they pass it down the line and we do our best to work on it. So we’re not there. Just because we don’t have anything to do I promise you we have more than we say grace over but we, we’re there because, there’s been a high number of crashes recently there or somebody just said, “Hey, there there are a lot of speeders on the road. Could you please come check it out?” And that’s what we try to go out and address those especially John Haggard 19:01Yeah, and as you look out, we talked a little bit about initiatives and things that are going on that you have. If you look in the next say, three to five years, Chief, and are there just a lot, with technology? And what do we have to look forward to, I guess, in terms of fighting crime, or just kind of what’s going on? Chief Don Bandy 19:17It’s the whole thing of technology, cameras, I know we’ve really worked hard putting cameras up on our greenways and our parks and now we’re trying to do license plate readers. So, as you say, everywhere you look there’s that type of technology that’s coming up and we’re trying to keep up with that we think it’s going to be beneficial in deterring crime. And, like you say if you see that camera, you may not commit that crime. And we will let you know. The cameras there so maybe you’ll understand how you got to go somewhere else. So I think that’s going to be huge in the years to come and of course, there’s always technology of IT. And, in general, it’s just changing every day. And, we’re trying our best to keep our staff working on… that’s a totally different ball game when it comes to how to address a certain crime. Compared to the old school days of just breaking into car and stealing something, so yeah, you got to just keep rolling. And of course, I mean, we have a big problem with the opiates, heroin and getting all being put into everything and it’s, that that’s what’s scary. We’re having overdoses. I don’t know the numbers off-hand. But it’s, it’s tremendously increased over the last couple years that, and again here and not just here – everywhere. And we’re always trying to meet as law enforcement officials and trying to find out, plans of action what we can do to try to knock that down and deter it and it’s just a scary time as far as that type of stuff is out there. John Haggard 20:44So I would think that you would also have speaking of drugs and trying to suppress and get those off the street, a drug interdiction unit there or undercover people who are in that line of work? Chief Don Bandy 20:56Well, we do have, we call it a flex unit and they work Lot of narcotics situations and investigations if you will. We have two K-9s that are trained to detect drugs and also track and apprehend criminals. So we are trying and we also work and we try to work closely with our judicial district, Drug Task Force and the other agencies that are also trying to combat these types of problems. So, yeah, we’re constantly working on those things and trying to ID where the problem might be, or any kind of Intel we can gather and where we can put our resources. So it’s a constant, and right now, it’s an uphill battle, but it’s something we gotta fight that fight. So, and keep going forward. John Haggard 21:39Back to traffic enforcement for just a moment. Some people will say, you know, the speedometer on my car is three or five miles or four miles different from the officer who said, “Hey, you know, you were going 70 in a 65.” Is that possible or does is the radar, hey, it doesn’t matter? Chief Don Bandy 21:59It can, it can be in and we try to encourage our officers and tell them to give it a little bit of leeway there as far as that go. Now, I’ll say that we don’t write tickets three to five miles over. And I say that, somebody will bring one to me, but we encourage them not to just because of that, but there’s so many things. We calibrate those radars, and we have to do it by law to make sure every one of ours are calibrated. And so there’s tires and transmission roads or what not. Whatever that could make it vary. And, we we’re talking about earlier that there are all types of apps out there… I know there’s a life 360 that tells you how fast you’re going and others. Google Maps that will tell you exactly what you’re going in your car now or the exact… I don’t know, you couldn’t testify that in court. But it will maybe give you a better idea, especially if somebody has experienced getting a citation and you felt you’re only going so many miles an hour and we said five or six over so or whatever, if there was that big a difference, you could try that to see where you’re at to see maybe if there’s something going on with your vehicle, we would encourage that. John Haggard 23:12Gotcha. Is there anything that you do as a police department annually that’s involved in the community? Chief Don Bandy 23:18Absolutely. We’ve got a, of course, it’s coming up. We’ve got a golf tournament that we set up every year. It’s a Shop with a Cop. It’s for Shop with a Cop where it benefits kids. And we call it the Santa Classic and this year we’re having it at the Fairvue Country Club at the Fairvue Plantation. It’s going to be November the 11th. So if you guys know of anybody that that wants to play and wants to get the money goes, all the money goes strictly to our Shop with a Cop program, which the first week in December, the first weekend in December, we take around anywhere from 100, 120, 130 kids shopping at Walmart. We spend quite a bit on them. So all that money goes to them. And of course obviously there if there’s anybody in need during the year we try to recognize that we also take some of that money and we help out some veterans out here at the Veterans Home every year and give them a little Christmas because a lot of those guys don’t have and gals don’t have family. So that’s a good cause. If you don’t play golf, we’ll take any kind of donation but we’d love for you to come out, play golf with us. Then if you want to register you can contact our department and contact Craig Gregory here at the Gallatin police department. And if not, you come out on the day we do Shop with a Cop and you’ll get a blessing I promise we will pair you up with officer or a fireman or whoever and a child and you’ll have a big-time I promise John Haggard 24:48Sounds like a great event, it really does. Chief Don Bandy 24:50Yes sir. Also, we do, before I forget, we also take those funds and we do a backpack giveaway right before school. We give out about 200. We’ve been partnering with the West Eastland Church of Christ here in town over on West Eastland. And we’ve been doing that last two or three years and we just put some school supplies in there and we meet great kids and we let them know we’re there for them, we’re their friend. And give them something to start school with and hopefully, they’ll have a good school year. So we do that. And those are the types of things. We also do a citizens police academy yearly which is we’re in the process of right now. But it’s a chance for our citizens that are interested that, I always say, I appreciate those folks that want to know what we do for real because, you watch TV, and I promise you it’s not really like that. Yeah. Oh, it’s a different animal. Yeah, even with the commercials. It’s not like that. We can’t solve a case that fast usually, but sometimes we do. But it’s a chance for them to come in and see what we really do and see how it works. And again, we build some friends, build up some relationships that I think are very important for what we’re doing here at this department. John Haggard 25:58So what would you say, just as a general sum, the biggest challenge that you face today in that policing environment? Chief Don Bandy 26:08I hate to go back to the narcotic problems but it’s gotten to where it’s you just don’t know. People are using those substances and you’re trying to educate folks and your kids are coming up and you just worried. I mean, back in the day there was marijuana and some things like that. But these things are so dangerous and us trying to stay on top of, that means they’re just, cooking they’re just mixing some stuff in, like what you see on the Internet, that you put fentanyl and marijuana… fentanyl and whatever. And that’s what I mean, obviously, that we say there’s no boundary. I mean, you may have somebody who lives in a million-dollar home where you may have somebody living in a car, that overdoses. And there’s no rhyme or reason and that’s what it’s very discouraging and disheartening. But again we got to do our best to try to find the sources and take take them to task, if you will. So that would probably be one of the main things, is just trying to knock this problem down. To me it’s very serious and very dangerous. John Haggard 27:13Right, right. Would you say over your entire career, Chief, if you were just thinking about that, is there any one main important thing that you’ve, you know, you’ve learned personally, either about life or just it’s something that you would pass on to someone? Chief Don Bandy 27:30Well, it’s, as far as being a police officer that, we’re human, we’re people. We have bad days just like everybody else. And again, I know we’re held to a higher standard than we are to, to not that we’re better than anybody but we just try to tell our officers… Hey, you always say… well, how would you want to be treated but think how would you want your family treated your brother, your sister, your mother, your father.. How would you want to be treated and hopefully, our officers will keep that to mind and go out and do their very best job. And, take into consideration that when you call the Police Department, you’re probably not having a good day? You’re not calling to go, “Hey, How y’all doing?” I mean you’re calling because you had a crash or you had something stolen or… you’re in contact with us because of unfortunately maybe getting arrested. So I always tell officers to treat those folks with the utmost respect and kindness, because they’re people, they’re humans, and they didn’t like, say, they probably didn’t bargain for that on this particular day, but just treat them the best you can. John Haggard 28:34I was just thinking as we were talking, let’s say that you had a billboard somewhere in the city or on a county road or wherever it might be. If you could have that billboard with anything on it some saying or something there, what would it be? Chief Don Bandy 28:50It would probably be what I kind of want to just discuss. Like I say, I’m a Christian. I might say, God says look, you love Him then love each other next. And that’s kind of what it’s all about there. It’s how you treat folks and just think about it before you lash out or you might be having a bad day or say some things you regret. But just think how would I want my mom and dad treated and that’s where my family or my brother my sister. And just don’t be selfish and stay humble and go forward that’s a lot to put on a billboard, ain’t it? John Haggard 29:24It is, yes! Chief Don Bandy 29:26But it is we need to make some good rules life and we just preach to the choir when I say that time to myself looking in the mirror. So this is a great call and great profession. And we’re blessed to be in this community and serving it, so… John Haggard 29:40So let me ask you this one final question. What would be the one thing about you, Chief, that most people would not know and that someone would be really surprised to know about you? Chief Don Bandy 29:53Oh, goodness. I’m really afraid of heights. I don’t know if that would be a surprise, but I did have to admit that I tried out for a fire department one time and I got halfway up the ladder and I thought, “Man, I’ve got this leg I’m going to make it this please let me get that.” I looked up and I’m only halfway there and I had to go all, I couldn’t just stop. So I went all the way up the ladder and I said, “Lord if you just let me down, I don’t want to do this.” I did not want anybody to come up beside me. And I thought how I ever looked myself at my face in the mirror, so yeah, definitely scared of heights don’t like them at all so. John Haggard 30:29Anything I didn’t ask you that you would want people to know. Chief Don Bandy 30:32Think you covered it really well. Just, as you say, be patient with us. We’re doing best and if you have any questions or problems always say, “Hey, don’t argue by the side road. Please call my office. I’ll be glad to sit down. We will watch a video or whatever we need to do to try to work out the problem.” John Haggard 30:50Great. Yeah. So what is the best way if somebody wants to get in touch with you personally? Chief Don Bandy 30:55Yes, you could call for 452-1313 and the extension is 3219. Or you can always just send me an email dbandy@gallatinpd.org and I mean, I have this fancy iPhone with me all the time so I have it on there. I never turn it off. So, if I respond to you at 9 o’clock at night, don’t be surprised. John Haggard 31:18All right, that’s Donald Bandy folks, the chief of police for Gallatin and summer county on the podcast. He’s our special edition guest today on the miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram podcast. So join us again, right here for another special edition of the podcast. In addition to our regular topics that we do discuss each month, on the best ways to purchase and lease service and maintain, accessorize and sell your vehicle for the highest resale value possible. When you’re ready. Don’t forget the transcript of each podcast. It’s right here so you can go back anywhere and look up what it was that you missed, so you don’t have to listen to the entire podcast over again. I’m your host, john haggard, and we will see you next time. Bye

Talk the TorqueI would like to help people get through the apparent misunderstandings of torque and understand it from a scientific point of view.Why is it important to understand, what is its role for us as coaches? How is it researched?2.15It’s just energy.If you fire water through a tube it creates energy and creates pressure against the outside of the tube.3.05The scientific definition‘A torque acting on a body is created by a force acting a distance away from the axis of rotation.’Axis of rotation in a gym setting… a bicep curl is the elbow.The forces are the key component within the torque concept. Without the forces there can’t be a torque.None Contact ForcesGravityContact ForcesGround reaction forceJoint reaction forcesFrictionFluid resistanceAir resistanceInertial forceMuscle forceElastic force7.50It’s a big topic there are some many different avenues. We could talk about the biomechanical route, muscular route, length / tension … this might be two podcasts.9.20 Digital Human Modelling Paper.13.30EMG vs Torque are 2 completely different topics16.00Muscles force – Achilles tendon20.30We can see from the biomechanical studies these forces iniitate motion…Torque is the final energy.29.00It touches on strength vs techniqueThe application of squat training, the reason people do a box squat trying to keep a vertical shin… when we look at the bone motions the centre of mass has changed. The vertical shin is creating a greater torque than allowing the knee to drift forward. The reason people get stronger by doing box squats is because you have changed the torque on your body, you are overcoming more weight even though there is less weight on the bar…

Another notable name is on his way out the door in Green Bay. This time, we say goodbye to Clay Matthews. Then, we address a listener question about why NFL salary data is so hard to figure out. I think there’s a good reason, but it may surprise you. Plus, predicting who’s going to end up on the roster when the Packers break training camp five months from nowGoodbye, Clay Matthews - 0:39The Packers bade farewell to another notable name this week as Clay Matthews joined the Los Angeles Rams.Why aren't NFL contracts easier to understand? - 5:46It's really difficult to get to the bottom of what's going on in an NFL contract. Why is that?Who's going to be on the Packers' roster? - 14:47The vast majority of the roster spots on the Packers are already accounted for. Here's why that matters.Let's think about the Packers drafting a tight end at 12 - 26:00It's become popular to suggest the Packers could take a tight end 12th overall. That may not be a great idea. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today’s running partner is Jamie Alderton, who shares his personal growth tips for success.He is a world renowned Bodybuilder, Personal Trainer, Fitness Model, World Record Holder, Motivational Speaker, Author, Blogger, Instagram Legend, Retired Soldier and all-round influencer of Body, Mind and Business.Before you are getting the wrong idea, I’d like to confirm that this all refers to one person! Jamie or Jay, as he calls himself is a modern (almost) rags to riches story! As in all of these stories, it’s the main protagonist, who has to decide what they want for their future and instead of just dreaming, take some action.Jay truly did take action, holding onto his army mindset. After seven years of having someone tell him what to do, he utilised that voice - that continued in his head aimlessly - and gave it the outlet to eat healthy and right, to train rigorously. He didn’t stop there. He uses the same method to work on his Social Media accounts and on his business. He calls it – quite rightly – “continuous hard work”! start listening from: 00:04:00It doesn’t come as a surprise to see him successful I must say. Working from home myself (or from wherever I am in the world) I can vouch for the fact that it isn’t money or failure that makes you successful but consistency and regularity.We do talk about running 100 km backwards for Charity but the take away's are so much what you would do as well for marathon running plus more as well as coming back to reality and focus. “There is always only ever one person you need to convince…” – and that is the truth!If you are interested in Business, Social Media and Training in general, this is the run for you.Let’s Go!–This is day 2,900 of my personal running streak.–Runners Quote00:17:16 - “The only person you need to convince, is yourself!.” – Jay Alderton–LINKS:Purchase either of Jamie Alderton’s books:Mindset with Muscle, released in 2016or Meltdown: How to Turn Your Hardship Into Happiness, released in 2019Heard him somewhere already? It might have been on his podcast: Mindset with Muscle 2 OrAs guest with Brian Rose on London Real–AWARDS:British & European Bodybuilding ChampionGuinness World Record Holder Box Jumping the Height of Mount Everest in 22hrs 18 min.Sept 2010 Natural Bodybuilding Competition – 2nd PlaceWBFF European Championship in Iceland – 1st Place–FOLLOW Jamie on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok–FOLLOW 3 Mile Run Down on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube

One of the prime movers we have to thank for Portland’s incendiary comedy scene is Shelley McLendon. She’s the mastermind behind Bad Reputation Productions, which has staged hilarious adaptations of movies like "Road House" and "The Lost Boys." She's a member of several of the city’s top sketch groups, including the Aces and the Liberators. She’s the proprietress of the Siren Theater, a new downtown venue dedicated to the comedy and the zanily theatrical.And she's our guest curator this week, taking us on a voyage through her world of comedy.Sisters of Comedy: Shelley & Wendi McLendon-Covey - 0:00It just so happens that Shelley isn’t the only one with the funny gene in the McLendon family. Her sister is Wendi McLendon-Covey, who you might know from “Bridesmaids,” "The Goldbergs," “Reno 911,” or any number of other movies and TV shows. We got the two in the studio to talk about the roots of their comedic talents, playing Twister with Christian co-eds, making out with Nicholas Cage, and the time Shelley grew a tail (or why you should check in with your coccyx). You can hear the full interview, plus watch them perform together, here.The Aces: Sketch Comedy Kings - 12:00Shelley, along with Michael Fetters, make up our favorite local sketch duo, the Aces. They performed a scene for our pleasure about a 19th century pioneer couple sitting for a 10-minute photo portrait. Life was rougher then. All we can say is, don't eat the stew — and make sure to get Grandma out of the bear trap.Siren Theater and the Portland Performance Crises - 18:35When Shelley started her company, Bad Reputation Productions, she rented out venues like Theater Theatre. Over time, she found spaces increasingly hard to come by, so she set out to start her own. It took her two years to find something that worked and that she could afford: the Siren. And it's one of only a few new theaters to open in years.Shelly’s far from the only one struggling to find affordable performance and rehearsal space in Portland’s booming real estate market. A spate of theater and dance companies have been pushed from their homes as their rents spike or their buildings get torn down.Is it time for a new arts center? We take a look on why it's so hard to find space and what can be done about it.Leviathan: The Monster of All Improv Shows - 29:30Producer Aaron Scott tests his skill — and his dignity — at Leviathan. It's a show where a storyteller has to come up with stories on-the-fly based off of audience suggestions, and then a group of able improvisers riff off the stories to create new sketches. Aaron's stories ranged from an exotic animal menagerie/B&B in Kansas, of all places, to a group of Sri Lankan monks with a secret.Bubbles and Giggles: TOL in the Tub - 45:00Think Out Loud, In The Tub. It was a visionary idea: interviews with local chefs… in hot tubs. The first chef was Miranda Bjornsen, owner of Nooks & Cranberries. Unfortunately, she was also the last, as this was one of the best April Fool's spoofs ever, starring Shelley and TOL host Dave Miller. Full Story: http://www.opb.org/radio/programs/stateofwonder/segment/shelley-mclendon-wendi-leviathan-miranda-bjornsen/

Wesley: Hi I’m Wesley.Robyne: And I’m Robyne.Wesley: And this is, Obstructed View.Robyne: And today we will be discussing Company XIV’s Snow White at the Minetta Lane Theatre.Wesley: Company XIV’s Snow White follows the traditional German tale, rather than the Disney version of the Snow White story. If you don’t know the original tale, it is in which a vain queen consults her mirror “Who is the fairest in the land?” The mirror responds, “Snow White.” Who she then orders to have killed. Snow White flees to the woods where the queen gives chase after her, intending to kill her. Snow white finally dies by eating a poisoned apple but is revived by a handsome prince. At the prince’s wedding ceremony with Snow White, which the queen attends, the queen is punished to death by being forced to wear red-hot iron metal shoes.Robyne: Our design team for Snow White was Zane Pihlstrom for set and costumes, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew for lighting and projection design, and makeup design by Sarah Cimino. The only addition that has been made to the in house set Company XIV has been using this season was the addition of a small pop up puppet theatre.Wesley: The way that they interacted with the set, it didn’t have the sense of going up and down, up and down, all over the place that Cinderella did, where it really utilized every corner at all times. But there was such a full bodied vision for all these different stage elements. They really saw a much larger picture than I think they did in the two previous pieces, where it was really all about this three ring circus where you look at this one then you look at this place and this place, this was a much more open dance space. And you really got a good sense of that during the pre-show, in which the actors were just walking around on the stage going about their business. I loved the pre-show for this one because everyone seemed so calm, and ready to tell the story, and you were able to access all aspects of the space without treating it like an “I Spy” game.Robyne: There was so much air. There was so much space. You could breathe in this production, and in this design, and in the treatment of the space, that I found to be the real hinderance in Nutcracker Rouge, it was just so fast paced and frantic, and this was just so much more relaxed in its pre-show, and its staging, and all of that franticness was gone.Wesley: Yeah, this was a much more constructed, and much more patiently delivered piece.Robyne: And that was really paralleled in the lighting design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. It was a lot more along the lines of Cinderella, but where Cinderella was that warm amber color of champagne feeling, this was much more of a bright neon, techno-colored mixed drink. Like a cosmopolitan or an Appletini.Wesley: Yeah … uh-Robyne: Lighting wise- Wesley: okayRobyne: ...you know it’s trueWesley: So, Cinderella had this hollywood golden age feel to it. Nutcracker Rouge was a ... jewel toned Pollock painting. But this, this had that beautiful haze to it. Almost as though you were looking at an overcast day inside this jewel toned box. It was so beautiful how all these different colors mixed together, and how they really took advantage of what I think was the season. I think that this was very much a play that belonged in the heart of winter, in February. I think they really understood the mood of this audience walking into this play. I didn’t want me to be confused and think I was in summer, but they made a beautiful atmosphere with this lighting, and there were even moments where the lighting was hitting the chandelier that was so new, it was such a new idea with lighting and its interaction with set.Robyne: And it felt present. You mentioned that Cinderella felt like the Hollywood golden age, but something about this lighting design really helped this production feel young, and capture Snow White’s youthfulness.Wesley: And, we’ll get into this further later in the podcast, but while the other two productions felt like Company XIV first and their story second. I really saw this as a continuation of the Snow White mythos. I saw this as a continuation of the world of Snow White. I think they had a lot of respect for the source material.Robyne: It felt so true to form, and it was completely narrative in that sense. Something I really loved in the lighting design was that in the creation of Snow White’s glass casket which was this really beautiful scene, very slowly placed, of them unraveling cling wrap, essentially, a giant roll of cling wrap over the previously used false proscenium framework, in which she is laid on a box5:00and it is slowly, by four people, just rolled and rolled and rolled. The lighting inside of that scene work painted it this very light, almost neon, blue that was gorgeous, it worked so very well. And there is something about that tint of blue that is glasswork and that felt like that Disney style and that-Wesley: And furthermore in that moment there was something that I saw, that I didn’t witness in the other two pieces, which was a part of melancholy. This moment of meditative melancholy with its combination of this totally out of the blue Dance Theatre Pina Bausch moment with them taking the cling wrap around and around the proscenium, which I loved, and also just committing to the mood first.Robyne: That is one of the two moments of stillness in this production, that really just stuck out, and I don’t recall seeing in Cinderella, because even in moments of calm and quiet, for instance the Fairy Godmother’s entrance, there is still a very slow, decadent movement to that. Whereas, in this Snow White is dead and not moving, frozen, and Snow White lost in the snow storm was a beautiful, calm, very still moment.Wesley: It was expansive and cinematic in a way that I had not seen from this company before. It was a sense of wonder, and it made evident this sense of a German expressionist film, I had not seen in their previous work.Robyne: Hands down, maybe my favorite moment in theatre that I’ve seen this past year. That snowstorm scene. Completely transportive. And I’ve nothing else to say. It was fantastic.Wesley: And furthermore in the other two pieces by them, the quiet moments felt like spaces between the things you’re supposed to see. They felt like the “...” between scenes, rather than feeling like stand alone scenes that are supposed to be taken in on their own account. And in this, those quiet moment felt like moments that are supposed to weigh as much as the stunt, as the singing, as anything else.Robyne: And it really helped us follow Snow White’s travels. It brought us into her mind and we were allowed to breathe with her, and be afraid with her, as opposed to being shown all these ridiculous things as we were in the Nutcracker... or, almost, forced to feel in Cinderella. Along those lines restraint, something I really appreciated about this production, in comparison to the other two, was a much healthier display of the leather BDSM, which they are so fond of- which was in this instance so more properly used in the simple use of ball gags with the queen’s mirror bearers. The opening scene has the queen enter and really gorgeously displays her vanity and her cold cruelness, as opposed to the wicked stepmother in Cinderella’s very hot cruelness. With sharp whips. And while the wicked queen came out with a whip at some point it always felt like a very blue flame.Wesley: The costuming in this piece, while I agree their use of the BDSM was much better in this, I would like to start to see some more variation in the costuming that they use.Robyne: I completely agree. I love the use of near nudity. I loved the Prince’s outfit in this, it was newer than I’d seen in the other productions. But it’s still mostly corsets and nude forms, and that is absolutely fine if that is your basis. But a little more flavoring would be really appreciated.Wesley: And I remember saying, I’d like to see something on that stage that doesn’t look like it would hurt to the touch. A lot of it just seemed uncomfortable at this point in time with this level of character, and this level of world building, I’d like to see some sense of comfort in this world that they’re making.Robyne: I would love some version of Cinderella where we see her in something much simpler, like a cotton blouse. And really have an everyman be taken into this exquisite world.Wesley: A thing they added in Snow White, which we hadn’t seen in Company XIV before, was the use of projections. Projections are brought in every time the queen asks the mirror “Who is the fairest of us all?”Robyne: And I really loved that concept. I loved that the mirror was really reflecting her face, and so we saw in various forms, one time beautifully projected onto her back, the mirror which would be her face responding to her question. 10:00It happened a little too often and they went a little too long, but it was great. It worked very well and they were using it to supplement some missing part of the production, like set, and the use of projection I loved. Wesley: I agree, I think the use of projection was phenomenal, especially, as you said, when it was on her back. A lot of variation and innovation with how it’s projected. I’ll give them that this is how it works in the original piece, that these were the questions asked, and these were the responses from that source material. However, I just think it took too long to get into, and too long to get out of each of those moments in terms of streamlining the question and answer periods between her and the mirror.Robyne: Agreed.Wesley: And lastly we have sound design by the director Austin McCormick.Robyne: There’s a lot I liked about the sound design in this production. There’s a lot I loved about it. I’m a little tired of operatic singing at this point, I felt a little too much of it in this production. But the mashing up of “Toxic” with a tango flamenco dance number was, was visionary. That song, the choreography, in line with it, that music just worked perfectly for me.Wesley: I, in terms of choice of music and what’s being used, I really liked their commitment to the baroque style and classical music in this. I felt that the other two got caught in a PostModern Jukebox that was starting to bore me. But when I was ready to roll my eyes at them reconstructing Toxic, it became one of my, if not my favorite moment of the show.Robyne: Absolutely.Wesley: It was so much fun, it was not trying to be anything that it wasn’t. The costumes worked, the moment worked, and it was committed to a moment of story.Robyne: That was a climax.Wesley: Yeah, it absolutely was. I liked the use of baroque, I liked the use of classical music throughout.Robyne: Solid sound design.Wesley: Yeah, yeah, solid choices made in music and sound. Robyne: Let’s move on to cast.Wesley: So in our cast we have as Die Königin or The Queen, Laura Careless. As Schneewittchen or Snow White Hilly Bodin. As the Showgirls Marcy Richardson, Lea Helle, and Marisol Cabrera. As the Könglicher Hofstaat or The Queen’s Men Davon Rainey, Malik Shabazz Kitchen, Mark Osmundsen, and Nicholas Katen and as Der Prinz or the Prince Courtney Giannone.Robyne: Disclaimer: As previously mentioned in Cinderella, I know Hilly Bodin well and it was fantastic to see her in such a leading role so early in her career.Wesley: So something that they do in this cast that I really appreciate is that they reduced it. As much as I enjoyed seeing everyone on stage all the time in the other two pieces, more in Nutcracker Rouge than in Cinderella in this case, I liked the sense of everyone having an equal hand in telling this very simple story.Robyne: It was intimate where the others were not and the size of the cast and the amount of stage they took up helped the production breathe.Wesley: The production helped everybody have a very calm personality from having a very simple concept for themselves when they walked on stage. They’re allowed to be their own selves. The showgirls were allowed to be so calm and so goofy and fun. And the Queen’s men were so at ease. They were all so calm on stage being themselves in the moment.Robyne: And as fun as the stepsister’s one-upmanship game was in Cinderella the space and air really allowed for the characters to come through without the characters needing to fight to be heard or seen. And just having the juxtaposition of Laura Careless’s often terrifying queen and Hilly Bodin’s pure and naive Snow White, just coming into her own and discovering her power and discovering her sexuality was really beautiful. And having those two very distinct personas on stage, was fascinating to watch.Wesley: Yeah, this play really, I keep saying play because more than anything else this felt like a piece of drama, I was astonished with Laura Careless as The Queen. Having seen her simper through Nutcracker Rouge, to see her have essentially a monologue in dance form in the beginning was incredible.15:00Robyne: And her transition out of the circus scene, which replaced the farmer’s life witch scene, in which she hands the apple off, and seeing her victory in killing Snow White and reckoning with that for just long enough, some people might say too long, but it- she was so grounded and lost in that to moment, to have her immediately shift into this terrifying nineteen fifties esque cartoonish dance number.Wesley: It was- it was actually- it was a real star turn for her to take a role like that and to find all the fun you can get out of it. And she is, she was able to fascinate me with dance on the same level that other performers were able to fascinate me with singing opera upside down on a stripper pole.Robyne: And her introduction was just phenomenal. The way that her character was made completely evident by that first moment was fantastic.Wesley: Right and this really felt like a collaboration between her and Austin McCormick, in a real development of that monologue through dance. Her introduction with her queen’s men with their light up ball gags, I thought was going to be a bit much, because it was in all their advertising materials, and I thought it was going to be a bit garish and like we really jumped the shark. But she really grounded it in the world of this is a woman in charge. And then in “Mirror mirror on the wall,” her first discovery that she is not the fairest, it was done with such intensity, and such refinement, it perfectly catapulted us into the plot that followed and into the mind of a woman that would try to kill a young girl multiple times to make sure she’s the fairest.Robyne: Yeah, there was near Shakespearean loss of power by a monarch, that was handled so beautifully.Wesley: And it feels more than just bland vanity. You do get a sense that this is something this woman derives all of life’s power from. This isn’t just “Oh there’s a mole over here,” this is her work.Robyne: And to have that contrasted by Hilly Bodin’s Snow White, was beautiful, then having the trifecta of the prince arriving and being this super suave creature with that Cyr Wheel, and that Cyr wheel work, I’ve seen a Cyr wheel used so often in the downtown, off off, avant-garde scene to poor effect, but this is incredible. This made me feel like the 1950’s movies where the lead jock comes in and he’s just so cool and everyone wants to be his friend and Courtney just had that, had whatever that thing is, that charisma, that machismo that just attracted every audience member’s focus.Wesley: And I think one of the good comparisons between Laura Careless and Hilly Bodin in this performance is that Hilly’s performance, it came more naturally, in terms of how it was presented. The choreography of the queen, the way she treats people, all comes with an air of practice, and Hilly’s performance, it felt like it came to her with ease. Like she didn’t even have to try to be the “fairest in the land,” it’s just something that she was born with. And that’s not to say she doesn’t do a great job of putting in performance, putting in ballet, but a contrast there between The Queen, who has fought and has refined and refined and refined and Hilly, who’s able to just breathe into her own beauty, made for a great dynamic.Robyne: There was just so much smoothness, and litheness, and grace in Hilly, where The Queen was such sharp edges, it was incredible to have those two things together.Wesley: Right, and also looking at costuming, so at the end of the piece, when you have The Prince and Snow White, their costuming is sort of like a tapestry. Still burlesque, still showing some skin, but it’s a tapestry work. And it gives a sense to a kind of a warmth to them, and comfort, as compared to the almost drag elements of The Queen.20:00Robyne: Laura Careless’ final dress is this really gorgeous sequined evening gown that reminds me of BeBe Neuwirth or Eartha Kitt, in this kind of smokey ‘all fingernails pulling you towards her and you know you’re being manipulated but you want it anyway’. Yes?Wesley: Right, and her three torments that she pulls on Snow White, the first being the corset that’s pulled too tightly, the second being the poisoned comb, and the third the poisoned apple, which now is this bauble that’s put in the circus brought from person to person to person, they were done with inventiveness as well.Robyne: The beat structure of this production was absolutely wonderful, it fixed the issues I had with Nutcracker... in the narrative structure. The moments were very clean and clearly defined, from the queen’s entrance, to Snow White’s entrance, to The Queen ordering the woodsman to get the heart of Snow White, to that gorgeous orb of ice with the beating heart at the center the queen attacked with a knife and shot ice everywhere, which was probably unsafe for the first row, into the puppet show, without having to probably offensively solve for having seven little men, Austin McCormick has staged this puppet show for the meeting of The Dwarves every time, into the torments, the first being the corset, the second being the comb and the third being the apple which was given to her through this circus, which worked far better than the circus moments in either of the first two productions. And there was- I keep on saying there was so much space and air to breathe, during that circus performance everyone had a moment to shine without everyone being given a moment to shine, for the audience to recognize their skill and their talent. They were simply all happening, it was paced so well that the audience was given that moment.Wesley: And there was always a focus, it was never just there for stunt work. It was there to center around the apple that Snow White was doomed to bite into.Robyne: And we went immediately from there to the funeral scene with the seran wrap glass coffin into the-Wesley: The Cyr wheelRobyne: -into the cyr wheel, into The Queen’s punishment by death by dancing in the smoking hot coal red shoes as she danced to death.Wesley: The ending was- Robyne: was a little weak.Wesley: While her dancing was excellent, just in the way of framing the moral it’s trying to state something got a little bit muddled in having Snow White curious as to who is the fairest in the land. Or, for some reason, that being offered again. Rather than showing two clear viewpoints on vanity: Snow White who’s happy with her natural beauty and The Queen, who’s obsessed with her constructed beauty, and that being her doom while Snow White is able to be in love. It was all muddled, and it didn’t end with the sense of finality that could really have helped this be a piece of some poignancy.Robyne: And I’m all for corruption feed into the next generation as a moral for these kinds of stories, but there was something about not ending with the light not solely focused on the queen as she danced her death with the projection of the mirror- once Snow White was introduced to that ending instead of having her live “Happy Ever After,” it was just muddled, it got a little confusing.Wesley: Because he did do similar things in Cinderella, and Nutcracker Rouge, where they wake up from the dream, or whatever happens, and they kind of are supposed to leave mentally this bad tang in your mouth of not everything is well. There isn’t a “Happy Every After.”Robyne: It’s this tint of realism he tries to bring on to that, it, it just never lands well.Wesley: No, it worked decently in Cinderella, however here it just felt muddled as to what is this statement supposed to be. That didn’t deride in any way shape or form the power of the performance, off of its hinges. The performance still resonated very very well. But just, for a last moment, I would have preferred a bit more clarity with a piece that was just so incredibly well structured.Robyne: Agreed, so Wesley I guess the last question is, is it worth the 65 dollar full price ticket?25:00Wesley: It’s weird ‘cause, while this is my favorite of their pieces, it isn’t as easy to recommend at that ticket cost as Cinderella, or Nutcracker Rouge, because those featured stunts that were so much easier to define. However, yes I think it’s absolutely worth the cost of admission to see this. Robyne-? Robyne: Yes! It is. Spend the money. Go see the show. It’s fantastic! As always, you can find us and join in on the conversation at obstructed-view.com, or on facebook, or twitter. I’m Robyne. Wesley: and I’m Wesley. Robyne: and remember -Wesley: Everything’s perfect at the ballet.

SPARKLEHORSE. SEA OF TEETH – 5:00It's A Wonderful Life, Capitol, 2001 RADIOHEAD. NO SURPRISES – 3:45OK Computer, Parlophone, 1997 JOY DIVISION. NEW DAWN FADES – 4:45Unknown Pleasures, Factory, 1979 THE SOUND. SILENT AIR – 4:10From The Lions Mouth, Korova, 1981 THE CURE. THE HOLY HOUR – 4:25Faith, Fiction, 1981 SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES. PULLED TO […] Cet article Errance #55 : De Sparklehorse à Spain est apparu en premier sur Eldorado.