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GOSPEL POWER l AUGUST 12, 2021 19th Week in Ordinary Time Gospel: Mt 18:21–19:1 21Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 23“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' 27And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.' 29Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' 30But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?' 34And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. Forgiveness is not only a transaction between an offender and the offended party, between a debtor and the creditor. Rather, it is a transaction from which God can never be absent, because forgiveness is essentially divine. An offense that is not answered back with another offense, but with mercy, is a demonstration of genuine love that can only have God as its source. Forgiveness, as the Gospel-parable shows, is the obligation to pass on to a fellow debtor the compassion one has received from the master. It is a gift that must not be hoarded, for doing so will have dreadful consequences. Lord Jesus, let not God's compassion remain stagnant in us by our refusal to pardon the offenses of fellow sinners. Amen

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

Intro: Writing personallyLet Me Run This By You: What would you say to your inner child?Interview: We talk to Ed Ryan about surviving two theatre schools, surviving 9/11, and interrupted grief.FULL TRANSCRIPT (UNEDITED):I'm Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina Polizzi. We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? And I'm scared. Like, I think partially 1 00:00:34This is this, the main character is based on me. Like all our character. I think every writer writes about themselves. I don't care what you say, aspects of themselves. So I'm like, man, would I do this stuff? Would I, how far would I go to people please? Like that? That is what I'm wrestling with. That is what is, is, how far do we go? And how far would I go to people please? Now I don't think I'd go that far, but people do go far. 2 00:00:59People go far and feel like they're in a few state and feel like it wasn't them. That was making the choice. And, and I believe that I believe that that can happen. I also just think it's interesting in the lens of like, feeling, having felt for a long period of your life, that you weren't allowed to have certain emotions. It makes sense to me that you would be surprising yourself with where you can go in your imagination, but that would also lead to, you know, surprisingly like our, we had a conversation one time on here where I said, I don't feel like I've ever seen you angry. So, and you, you said you do get angry, but I just wonder if maybe there's just a lot of unexpressed anger and this is a great way to get it out. 1 00:01:42Totally. And I, and I think you're right. I think you're right on. And so, and I also think, and I wonder how, you know, how you feel about the idea that writing, right? Somebody, I wonder if people write and I don't know how you write, but if people read, I mean, I know a little how you write, but if peop, if people can ever write fully devoid from their own person, you know, like, like where they don't put themselves in their characters or their, if they're writing, I guess maybe if you're writing non-fiction I don't know. But when you write, do you agree that like each part of you and every, oh yeah, 100%. 2 00:02:24And I, I, in reading the Stephen King book about writing, you know, he, he realized like years after the fact about the way that he was writing himself in his stories, like, I guess famously and in misery, he is when he was at the height of drug addiction. And he, at the time he did not feel that he was writing the story about himself, but that's what it ended up being. Yeah. I mean, in part, just because like, how else would you do it? I mean, you only have your own as close as you can be to anybody else. What you really stuck with 24 7 is the ruminations in your own mind, the reactions to things, your worldview, your worldview is, is so people can recognize a lot of things about their worldview, but then there's all kinds of things about their own perspective that they would never think unless they had occasion to see it, contrast it with something else and say, oh, wow, I think about that really differently. 2 00:03:21So anyway, I think it's cool. I think it's great that you're going there and I'm excited to see where it goes. 1 00:03:32Let me run this by you. I started seeing, so I had a therapist that was this Orthodox Jewish man that I stopped seeing. It was just it. I always what I, you know, and it's so blatant at the time after, but during, during, I never see, like, I'm looking for like a father figure. And, and he started to say things that were, and it's all I'm on the phone, you know, but like he has six kids and he wanted to, he started saying things like, do you think that this is because you never had kids kind of like why my emotions? 2 00:04:13And I said, you know, 1 00:04:15I don't know it could be, but I, and you know, it was it's interesting. So I just had to say, you know what, I'm so-and-so, I think that I'm going to take a pause on this. I just don't feel that were, I was proud of myself. I said, I just don't feel like it's a good match right now for me, a good fit. I couldn't just say it's so funny. I have to qualify it. Like, I couldn't just say this isn't a good fit. I was like, not a fit right now for trying to soften that. Just ridiculous stuff, but that's how I did it. And yeah. And so I, I was like, okay, well, do I want to get another therapist? Or do I want to, so I do see like a coach, like, what do I want to do? 1 00:04:55So I started seeing, I had a first session with a coach outside in a park. Who's a, she coaches, she does a lot of career coaching, but I just, like, I've known her for a while. And I liked her and we got to some interesting stuff like, you know, and you've said some stuff about like inner child stuff. Like I never really felt like I could connect with the idea of making peace or taking care of my inner child. And I couldn't understand why. And I think I got to the point where the reason I I'm afraid to things that my inner child will hurt me or that I will hurt it. 2 00:05:35Her. Yeah. 1 00:05:37So, so I thought I'd tell you about that. 2 00:05:41Hurt you. Any idea what you mean by that? Like 1 00:05:44Sabotage, like my inner child is so angry at the way that my parents, and then I have been treating her that she will fuck things up. Hm. 2 00:05:54Yeah. By misbehaving. Yes. 1 00:05:57Misbehaving sabotaging. So there's not a trust there. There's not a trust. And I wouldn't have ever, whenever I, in the various forms of therapy and schooling that I've done in this area, I always felt really, it's not even that I bristled with when we did inner child work. It's like, I thought, well, I don't even know this is weird. I don't even know what this is. 2 00:06:23Yeah. I totally, I can totally relate. And I think I have had the same exact opinion, this very cynical sort of point of view. It all seems so I would just want to roll my eyes talking about inner child, but I think it's like that thing that I was telling you about when I did that thing on clubhouse and everybody was playing and I was just afraid of it. I think it's just that I think you learn to hide the parts of yourself that get you in trouble in the world for whatever reason. And then if there are parts of yourself that you first identify when you were very young, they're locked away. Good. They're locked away. Real good. And there's a real, I mean, just intense fear about going there. 2 00:07:07And I guess like the best signal that I have about that is that every time I start to think about it or talking about it, I start to cry, which, okay, well, there's obviously a lot there. I, I don't believe, see my thing about it is like for a long time I did therapy. I did. I've I'll total in total. I've probably done therapy. I'm going to say for like 10 years between different therapists. I, it's not that I think I'm done. It's not, you know, it's not that I don't want to be in therapy. I, there are reasons that I'm not in it right now, but I just very quickly be talking about my childhood became like, okay, but I talked about it and now I'm just complaining. 2 00:07:56Or, you know, now this is just, when are you going to get over? And that's the voice of like everybody in my family, like get over it. Everybody's everybody hurts. Like not even, not, not even everybody hurts, just like, get over it. You're your grownup. There's no time for that anymore. And I, that is the voice that I cannot quiet in my own head. So, whereas at one point in my life, I thought I had done all that. Cause I did 10 years of therapy. Now I realized I just never even approached it. I stuck with things that were more happening in my life now. Or like I would spend a lot of time like crying about my dad or whatever, but it wasn't like it's, you know, that was about him. 2 00:08:37It was about me talking about him. It wasn't really about me talking about me because I think when I started talking about myself, that's when all the walls and defenses went up and I was like, you know, and I, and I couldn't do it. And Aaron has said to me, a number of times, like you've never really dealt with this stuff and I, and I've just been so incredulous, like, of course I have, I've done, I've dealt with it a ton, but I really haven't. I haven't, I've done like layers of it, but I haven't, I haven't done all the layers. 1 00:09:06Yeah. And I, I could totally hear that and I can totally relate to not feeling, to feeling like I haven't really touched on it. And the reason I know that I haven't gotten to the core of sort of any inner child work is that yesterday when I was, when she had me doing an exercise outside in the park, like just trying to approach my inner child, the only way I could make contact with her was across a field with loud noise in the background with me yelling and her yelling back. So like not screaming at each other, but like there was, had to be a barrier. Like I couldn't the intimacy of approaching her straight on was too much. 1 00:09:46So I was like, Hey, I'm over here. And she said, hi, I'm over there. And she was like, really suspicious of me and stuff. But I knew like, oh, I'm really having, I have a lot of trepidation about approaching this part of myself. And so I have to have a separation, like a barrier. It has to be, it has to be moderated. It can't be like, I can't just walk up to her. There's no way in hell. There's no way. 2 00:10:13What's it. Like when you look at pictures of yourself, when you were really young, what did you think? 1 00:10:17I feel like I don't even know who that person is. Yeah. 2 00:10:21I have the same exact, whereas I know this just could be the difference between thinking about yourself and thinking about another person. When I look at even very, very young, young baby pictures of my kids, I think, oh yeah, their personality was there. You know, from the beginning, this is who they still are. And sometimes I'll share, I'll show them something and they'll say, you know, it seems like they kind of recognize. Yeah, that's me. Whereas I look at that person and I think, I mean, I've seen this picture before, but I, I have what, who is that per yeah, I've just have no idea. I think I, what I basically did, starting in theater school is just form a whole new set to start over. 2 00:11:05I just formed a whole new identity. I was just like, not to the point that some people get like my sister where they tell everybody that our parents are dead. But to the point of just, yeah, I'm this person now. And you know, and I'm, and I'm done with that other person, whoever she was, I hated her no matter what. And of course the realization realization I have recently is no, but I still hate myself. So I really haven't a changed divorce. And I, and there's a, you can't walk away from who you are, you have, you have to. 1 00:11:37Right. And, and, and I, I, my coach, Deanna, was like I said, I don't know who that person is. And she said, she's you, you just haven't integrated her yet. Like there it's you. And I was like, whole, I saw it as a separate sort of. So it's interesting. And she said, trauma, you know, we talked about neuroplasticity of the brain and trauma and, and how it's rewiring. Like, so, and she's like, I don't really believe in, well, I don't know if she said this, but I got, kind of got the feeling. She was like, she didn't really believe in mantras and all that, but she said, what happens? What do you start telling yourself when you are scared? 1 00:12:19Or when you have an audition, that's scary. I say, I'm going to screw this up. That's my mantra. I'm going to somehow screw this up. I'm going to, she's like, all right, we have to cut that off immediately. She's like, I don't care what you say, but you can't say that to yourself anymore. So I was like, okay, what can I believe? Like, what can I get stand behind? Because I'm not going to say, oh, I'm the greatest actor and everything. No, no, no. I don't believe that. I don't believe that at all. But what I do believe it, I do have evidence to show in my heart and in my bones that things have that everything is happening at the time it's supposed to be happening. I do believe that I do. I can stand behind that. I can't say it's good. I can't say it's awesome, but I can say, so she said, all right, we're just going to go with that. So now, like, you know, I think, oh, what if I get a call back for this role I really want, and I know I'm going to fuck it up. 1 00:13:04And I said, Nope, it's going to happen. If, if I do fuck it up, it's going to be, because it was the time to fuck it up. Like I have to believe in the timing of things, because I can't really believe in the goodness of things, is that, you know, 2 00:13:17Right. And sort of similar to that is how I'm always just thinking in my mind that I'm just starting over at that. I'm always just putting the other the past behind me. It's, that's not you that you can't really do that. And, and it's all, it's every failure in every experience you go through every part and every iteration of yourself is a part of whatever it is now. It's not. So what's what this is making me think about is when I was in private practice, I became sort of known for treating really severe trauma cases. And so almost all of them had did. 2 00:13:58And the technique for integration when a person has multiple selves and just for people who are listening, it's not like civil, civil, and bark, like a dog, whatever. It's really a lot more subtle than that. Now in severe cases, people have these few states where they go and they're just doing something else. I mean, I had, I had clients who would get themselves. They would go into a few state and then do terrible things that really dangerous, dangerous, terrible thing. But the technique is you have them all sit around a conference table. 2 00:14:38You have, what's amazing to me is if, if you're talking to a person who suffers with us and they've never heard this technique before, they never go conference table, they go, okay. Yeah. They're, I mean, they're just immediately, oh, that's a good idea. They can all come together because of they're in their experience. They feel or see. And they all have very often, they all have different names and different ages and they have different things and they fight with each other about what they're doing. So I say, let's just do the conference table thing. Let's have everybody meet together and we can work on the agenda. But like the underwriting overriding thing has to be we, whatever we do, we want to do it United. 2 00:15:20And what it gets tricky is when you're, you're not doing it United and everybody's, and that's the sabotage thing. That's what you get a lot of it. The sabotage thing is like this one is, and it's all because it was all a coping strategy for not being able to, you know, the parts of yourself that were rejected by whomever get shunned. They don't go away. They just get shunted off into another part of you. And it's funny because I really see a lot of my dysfunction feels splintered like that. Like I can say, I can click into a mode. That's happy, happy, and positive. And, but then if I'm not feeling happy and positive, then it's like, I'm not that person anymore. 2 00:16:03I'm just this other sad, depressed person. Or sometimes I'm, you know, we all have it to some degree and I feel it a little too. It doesn't feel like different parts of me that have different names, but it still feels like it needs a lot more integrating. 1 00:16:18Yes, I totally agree with that. And the other thing I worry about, and I think, and I, I don't know if you've ever worried. I worry that might the, that part of myself, the small, vulnerable, whatever, I would say five or six year old part of myself is going to disclose some, even more deep trauma happened. 2 00:16:38Okay. There you go. That's probably exactly right. 1 00:16:41And I don't want to, and I am like, I don't know if I can handle that. Like I, so she is the keeper of secrets of when I was young and who knows what the hell really went on. Like I could have been worse than I thought is the, is the, is the, is the overarching fear 2 00:16:59I can see why you would be afraid then. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if I wonder if part of your way it is going to be instead of, or like in addition to fearing that is like, yeah, that's scary, but she needs help. She needs, yeah. 1 00:17:14Yeah. That's what, that's what Deanna said too. It was like, yeah. She needs to be seen and heard. Yeah. And that's your way to freedom. And I was like, what? Because whenever someone says the way to freedom, like that interests me because freedom from such self doubt, freedom from such self-loathing or fear, you know, self like freedom from that seems amazing. So if someone tells me, you want to get free from this, you know, as long as they're not telling me some wackadoo stuff, but you, you want freedom from this thing, then it's going to take a certain amount of work. I'm like that, that I'm curious if I will do that word, which is just to say 2 00:17:58To our listeners, that the experience of doing this podcast has people are always reporting to us. Oh, I've reconnected with people. I'm, I'm healing things and remembering things, but that's true for us too. And I have reconnected with people that I haven't spoken to in a number of years. And it's so gratifying. I mean, that, that's actually another piece of this disintegration thing is like the person I was when I was in theater school and the friends I had. And I just basically with the exception of you just moved on from that and never looked back and you know, these are people that I love that I loved then, and that, you know, as I'm reconnecting with them, I'm like, oh yeah, you're amazing. 2 00:18:48And I'm just so grateful that we're having the opportunity to do this. I, this is what college reunions are meant to do, but they don't because it's kinda like one, you know, it's just, it's all because you just get through one layer of like, well, what do you look like? And what are you doing? As, you know, as an and, and I guess social media has changed that for people, like they get a better sense, but, but that's even, that is not the same as actually talking to somebody who you haven't talked to. And then now I'm like texting with people and it's fun. It's and then the other thing, which I've mentioned to you at least once before, but I'm still thinking about a lot is the people who I don't remember, but who remember me to me, that means I have just been so self absorbed that w that to, to a great degree. 2 00:19:43When I think back about that time, I, I almost can only think about myself and how I felt about things and whether I was getting treated well, or, you know, instead of like the fact, I mean, I guess that's human, but I just feel like if there's somebody who remembers me, then there's a re then the reason that I don't remember them is not anything other than I was just paying only attention to myself. And I, and I have compassion for myself about it because I, you know, it was just doing the best I could, but I'm interested in going back and healing those riffs too, because I, I think that something happens that has happened to me over time is like, I was never the most popular or the least popular. 2 00:20:37I was always in the middle, which meant that I ended up looking down on the people who were less popular than me and, and looking up to and resenting the people. So it was, I was just seeing everything in terms of like status status. Yeah. That's what it is. I have been entirely status obsessed in a way that is a complete surprise to me. I had no idea that I was status obsessed and it makes sense because that's how my parents are. That's how everybody, I mean, that's how a lot of people are. Why would I be unique? Why would I be exempt from 1 00:21:10Them? Well, that's the thing. I mean, I think that we, that I get get, so I get so trapped in thinking I'm uniquely where I'm at, and that is garbage. I am a unique human because everyone is to a certain extent. And then we're all the freaking same. We're all worried about what we look like, what we sound like, who, what, what other people think of? What other people think of us and how we're coming off. And, you know, that's part of being human, but I think you're right. I think for me as well, when people remember things, I don't remember, people were like, yeah, we were friends and I'm thinking we were friends. And that is because I was too busy probably thinking about myself and what else I could do, or why it's, it's what they say in 12 step programs, really about self centered fear. 1 00:21:55It's like, I'm so self-centered, and, and 2 00:21:59She'll warm. I'm I'm shit, but I'm, but I'm 1 00:22:03Yeah, shit. Or I'm the special warm and a, not a worker among workers, you know, like it's, it's, it's an interesting thing. And we come by and see the thing that's really also interesting to me is that we come by it, honestly, that is the part that I have to remember. It's that the people come by the shit, honestly, including me, I'm not so special that I don't come by it, honestly, it's not right. You know? 2 00:22:26Yeah. I mean, right. Yeah. I think it is. It's completely amazing. I'm completely great. I, I'm an apropos of our conversation that we had a while ago about like constantly evaluating our progress. Like when I can get away from doing that, I'm just full of gratitude for, for, for what we're, what we've already done. Even if we never did it again after this, what we've already done has been so personally helpful. Yeah, 1 00:22:54Me too. And I do see it as a way also as, as we move forward as artists, as a way of building allyship with people that I once looked at as not nemesis, maybe, but like as adversaries or doing better than me or doing worse than me, or now it's, it just seems more they're equal. Like I feel more equal with people and I think that's a better way to go, because the other way is like, 2 00:23:20It's also just the truer way to go. Like, it's just a lie. We tell ourselves when we think we're so sped. It's like, okay. But I mean, among other things, it's simply a false, 1 00:23:31Which is why, like, things like the like organized, like army and stuff works because you all get put in basic training and no one is better than the, there were, you're all lower, lowest on totem pole. And I think that builds some kind of comradery. And yeah. So anyway, I just, I just, I don't know why I was thinking about that, but I liked that idea. 2 00:23:55I, I started to watch some of the showcase this year is DePaul theater school shows. I was just curious if you had seen any of them. I 1 00:24:07Have seen it. And you know, it's interesting. I, the, the way that they filmed it, for the most part, it's the same camera shots, right. Of each I'm like, okay, okay. I think that we could have been a little more original with that, but I think they were trying to be equal to everybody and not quote you. And, and also 2 00:24:30It's not a film school. I mean that, you know, I, I, for that reason, I give it a lot of credit because it's like, oh, wow. I wonder if somebody had been tasked doing that in our year. I'm, I'm not certain we would have gotten anywhere. It would've been 1 00:24:44In video camera shaking and like, yeah, yeah, 2 00:24:47Yeah. So it's cool. I'm happy for them that they have this. I mean, I'm happy for them that they have this access. It's probably has the same effect that it did when we did the in-person thing, which is like, not a lot, unless they're going to move to LA. But what I felt was interesting is looking at the acting and just remembering, like, talk about not being special. We all did bad acting in the same way, you know, which is to say not connected, not real, very, very self-monitoring of like, how is this coming across? You can see people thinking that, how is this coming across? Versus there was a few people who was like, oh no, they're in it. 2 00:25:29They're totally there. They're there. It's just ed. And I say, this was so much compassion because I think probably the entire time I was just looking, I was just observing myself. I'm sure I did a terrible job. Yeah. And 1 00:25:41I can see it too. And I, you, it sticks out when someone's really in it. And it is so hot. And we said this, and I, I think we've talked about this on the podcast. It's so hard to get there. It's hard to get, to stop the self-monitoring to be in the moment and just tell the story or be in the it's so hard. So what it happens and you see it, you're like, oh, that's gold, that's gold. And it's not to say that, you know, we all get there at different times and we have different moments of it, but yeah. 2 00:26:09Yeah. What's hard to account for, I mean, you know, to a certain degree, there is only so much teaching that somebody can do of actors, because what you really need also is just these life experiences that either do, or don't lead you in the direction of really understanding yourself. And if you're a person who is not interested in understanding yourself, you're probably pretty limited as an actor or, or like, or maybe even very successful, but just that one, you know? Yeah. Right, 1 00:26:39Right. You might, you might make a million dollars, but as we talked about it, that not equal being in the moment and being it truly like for me in an experience, just because you made a million dollars doing it does not. I, I is a recent, recent, recent discovery that worth and money are not necessarily the same. Oh my God. Oh my God. 2 00:27:04Me too, girl. Me too. I'm just like, yeah, because actually there are other, I've heard the phrase. It's not always about money, but I really have never lived it. I have always been like, no, no, no. It's always 0 00:27:26Today on the podcast, we're talking with Edward Ryan, Edward is someone who went to the theater school at DePaul university and then left and then went on to have many adventures and different incarnations as an artist and is still on that adventure. And he's thoughtful and kind. So please enjoy our conversation with Edward Ryan. 3 00:27:47I was, I was a year below you guys. Okay. Okay. Okay. Edward, 2 00:27:52Ryan, congratulations. You survived theater school. I did twice. Twice. Yeah, because you just went back a few years ago to get your degree. So tell us about 4 00:28:03That. That was a very different, yeah. So you know what I did do some local theater, like a while ago I met a costumer and his name was Frank and he wound up teaching at a really small private school in Springfield, Massachusetts. And he's basically started a theater program there that's called American international college. And he said to me one day, like, how come you never finished your degree? He was like, give me your transcripts. And I, I, I got my transcripts. And he was like, you could be done in like a year and a half or two years and have a decree. 4 00:28:47Well, I didn't know I was going to be so, you know, affected by, was it, it's a school that serves a lot of sort of underserved communities. So there's a lot of first-generation Americans, a lot of first-generation college students. And in contrast to a place like DePaul, although we complained about the building on north Kenmore, the facility, there's nothing. I mean, they have nothing, these kids and, but their like passion and their drive is really what you know is so inspirational, you know? And they're like, we can make theater out of anything, you know, out of nothing. And it was kind of a strange situation because Frank and I were very good friends, you know? So all of a sudden he was like my professor and I mostly had to do academic classes to graduate there. 4 00:29:33You know, they took all my credits and I re I did a history of theater. I was like for like the third time, like all of, you know, this time I wasn't able to cheat. As I remember 2 00:29:46Cheating, I did cheat, oh 4 00:29:48My God. Anaconda make us, had every test that doc, whatever his name was, Jack O'Malley gave us. Oh, hilarious. And I've always been really studious, but like second year I was like, oh yeah. You know, give them up. 2 00:30:05That's funny because I don't actually remember the cheating thing, but when Dave was on, he, he referenced that, I guess it was widespread. I mean, you know, in a way, I'm sure they were like, oh, these kids they're so dumb. Just something easy. 4 00:30:20Get the same test every year, year after year after year. And luckily I lived, I lived with second years. So it was like, and you know, and she had them all, like, she was a stage manager, dramaturgy, Jenna, all a file. I just had to go in every week and pull it out. Yeah. 2 00:30:35I mean, are you the, one of the people who just got a brochure from DePaul and that's how you went 4 00:30:40With, yeah. With this gesture on the front, I never went to visit the school. I auditioned in New York and it was, you know, I had applied to NYU and I had an audition set up, but their auditions for summer, I didn't audition at the same time. And it was like really late. And I applied to Providence college. That was, if I wanted to like go the more academic route, dammit. And I remember going for my audition and I, I like heard really quickly that I got into DePaul and I just decided I never even went on my audition for NYU. 4 00:31:21I, I thought that the city would probably be a little too, you know, I was, I lived near the city. So it was like always my grandfather lived in the city and I thought that's going to be too much of a distraction, you know? And I really wanted to, you know, get an education. So I went to Chicago and I flew out and my parents drove all my stuff out. 2 00:31:42What, like, what did you make of it? Day one. What was, where was your head at with it? 4 00:31:47I was like, Chicago is so clean compared to New York. Yeah, it really is. I lived in Seton hall and I lived on the fourth floor in the corner room that was like ginormous with Cedric was Cedric steins was my roommate. And we had this other third roommate that we never liked. And then he got kicked out of the dorms, like halfway through the year. So we had this great big room and it was right above. I felt like the blues brothers, cause he looked at our window and they're like the El tracks by, but it was really close to taco burrito palace. Oh 2 00:32:24My God. I forgot all about TVP. Okay. Well they have many, you know, there's like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I think that one is actually still there. 4 00:32:39That place like on a Friday or Saturday night was like, you couldn't get near it. And Rose's Tavern is like hole that the Mesopotamian woman who was like, let anybody drink. Okay. If you could walk, you choose giving 2 00:32:53Toddlers shots of you guys 4 00:32:56You'd be surprised. And there was some sort of characters in that joint. I mean, I remember like winding up at some apartment and being like, I shouldn't be here. What am I doing? 2 00:33:10So, but you left, you left after your second year. Okay. And it was rough. You said you had a rough, 4 00:33:16It was, I was, I was planning on living there. So I was living there for the summer. I was living with Cedric again and then Noel wrath. Yeah. And we were living like sort of west of everything, like up Armitage. It was like desolate. It was like this really weird apartment where I had the closet as my room. And I just remember like taking out the garbage, had to go out the back doors to this garage. And there was like this Harley biker who was always hanging out in there. I don't know if I was just like, this is where children get molested. I can't, you know, it was odd and Cedric left and he went to Africa, there was a trip to like Africa. 4 00:33:56And I remember Susan Lee was on that trip because he was like, he called us and he was like, oh, I met Susan Lee and wait, 2 00:34:07Susan Lee was just randomly in Africa with this girl. Don't you remember? That's when she came back and said to Erica, oh, I've got to teach you African dance. Okay. 4 00:34:18But, you know, I really, I really want, I was like, you know, I was kind of shocked about it and you know, I think it was a lot for me to go there. You know, I'm the youngest of five. And then my mother had remarried and I have four step kids. So my parents had like nine kids under the age of like 30. And you know, financially that no matter how much money you make, I think it's, it's a burden. And I was really committed to like the theater school. And I didn't have a warning that was sort of, you know, productive. I remember going to Rick Murphy's office and not having any morning, my first year of going in and sitting down him being like, you're fine. 4 00:34:59Get out of here. You know? And then my second year he was like, what the fuck is going on with you? You know? And he's like, what's up a tree Kessler. And I was like, I don't know if she hates me. And he was like, get your shit together or something like that, you know? But there was no like sort of actionable steps. And then when I left and asked back, I was like, wow. And you were talking about mushrooms. So for the first time I ate flushes and I wandered around Chicago and I found all these incredible places. I was like, oh my God, like a Paul said and all that. I was like input. And like I realized, I was like, in my own backyard, I thought I was lost. But I, you know, I have like some journal entries about Sundays are the best day in the world. 4 00:35:40Everybody does what they want. Even God rested on Sunday. And it was so much fun. Yeah. All by myself, just wandering around the city. But you know, people were like, oh right. Speaking of that, I remember I was dying during Eric Slater's interview because we got a phone call at like 6:00 AM, one day at apartment two downstairs. And it was Eric and he was, he had been arrested. And it must've been when you guys were doing Andrew CLIs and the lion, because he was like walking home. It was really late. He was walking home from our house, I guess. And the cops stopped him and arrested him. 4 00:36:21And we were like, he had to be like at the Merle reskin theater for this purport, like that morning. And I think we wound up calling John Bridges and it turns out they had just taken and he looked like a shady character. 3 00:36:38I don't know. But I wanted to ask 2 00:36:43Total digression, but I always thought in lineups, they got other criminal, like people that they know, they know and they can just random. Yeah. They get rent. I don't know about now. But you used to do this random ass people for lineups. Yeah. But the way you get them there is by arresting them. Well, I think you can, apparently in Chicago, 4 00:37:05I think he was drunk. He was probably stumbling. Maybe he was like, had a few beers and they were just like, oh yeah, public drunkenness let's go. But that was like one of the funniest. And it was like the day that my mother called me late, it was like crisis. You know, we went into crisis mode and it was like, she got out her clipboard and like gave us all the assignments. And then my mother called me that morning and she was like, is everything all right? And I always thought, I was like, you know, my mom just says that like intuition, you know? And I was like, everything's fine. You know? Like, and I remember saying to her, I'm like, I think your psychic should always, so you're, you're saying, so 2 00:37:47You didn't, it was, there was no, I mean, there was a warning without any information in it or 4 00:37:55Yeah, there wasn't really anything specific, you know? And like I had truly Kessler my second year for voice and speech. And I had had Ruth's Rupert who you, she was there for a really short period of time. And then she left, she came back and she was like, oh, I got a contract. I'll be here next year. And then she came back like the next week and was like, I'm leaving. And she got a job at Yale and she went off to teach at Yale and she taught Christian Linklaters work. And then Trudy, our second year. And I was sort of excited to, I guess, first she taught LSAC and other things and was doing Linklater again. 4 00:38:37So it was sort of like the same class again in a row. And I think Ruth was a really great Linklater teacher. And I don't know if I don't know Trudy and I just had something. I still tell, I, I S I'm still in contact with Ruth. She's my Alexander technique teacher now. And there was a 13 year gap in our relationship, but she'll always say like, oh, I'm going to this conference, Judy. I said, hi. You know, cause when I got my letter, it said that I had three absences from voice and speech. 4 00:39:18And to this day I say, no, I didn't, I would have never done that. Like I was pretty committed. She, I had a full freedom, so I was born like tongue tie and she was like, I want you to go. I never had any speech issues, but she's like, I want you to go see this doctor. So I went to see this Dr. Bastion. And he was an ear nose and throat guy that worked with actors in Chicago. And he was like, oh my God, let me clip it. And he's like, I've never gotten to do it. And I was like, so it's a little thing underneath your tongue. So it's, it actually tells your tongue behind your bottom teeth. Like everybody's develops that way when you're pouring it recedes. 4 00:40:00If you're not, they usually just clip it when you were born, but they never discovered mine. And so I wound up letting this doctor like do it. And then I had rehearsal for like my intro with Trudy. And I just remember meeting her in her office and her being like sticking her thumb in my mouth and being like, oh yeah, you have a significant overbite. Like, and just saying like, you know, you don't have a speech issue, but maybe if you got your tongue released, it would change your speech. You know, it's, I would love to see what it does. You know, I just felt like I was pretty committed to it. And David was my acting teacher second year. 4 00:40:40And in David's class it was like, I could do no wrong. You know what I mean? I remember like almost hating it, like him being like some like, okay, you know, you critique each other's like scenes or improv or whatever you were doing. And he would say, so who saw what ed was doing? And somebody was critiquing it. And they were like, what are you? He was like, you know, what are you talking about? Like, he was like, he was fine. Like, he was like, my opinion is the only one that matters. So, you know, and just being like, okay, so now they hate, 3 00:41:14I have to say I'm shocked that, you 2 00:41:16Know, usually the story is that the second year acting teacher hates your guts and then you get cut. Like, that was my experience. Cause I was cut and then asked back crazy, crazy. But, but it's interesting that David, that thought you could do no wrong in your, as your acting teacher? 4 00:41:39Well, it was really weird because I had David and first quarter I was in David's intro and he gave me a better grade in my intro. Then he did an acting class and I remember him saying to me, do you know why I did that? And me being like, yeah, like, and really having no clue. But I remember, I remember getting into a fight with him in that rehearsal for that intro and him saying something to being able to like, okay, well what, what, what do you want? And he was like, I don't know what, you know, just, you better try something else. Cause that's not working. Like he yelled at me and everybody was like, oh, and David and I used to take these, walks around the block at the theater school and have these little chats. And he was like, you know, he, he, he gave me every indication that he thought I was talented. 4 00:42:22And then I remember my second year of him saying to me, do you really want to be here for another two years? And I was like, well, yeah, you know, I really want a degree. And he was like, what are you going to get out of us Shakespeare classes? And I remember, and I was like, oh. And then I remember telling him about my issues with Trudy and him being like, you know, Trudy he's like, I'm the head of the voice and speech, which I didn't even didn't really even know at the time, you know, it was odd to me that he was, and, and then, but then he gave me, but then he gave me a bad grade, like enacting class. And so it was sort of like this. I was like, what the fuck? 4 00:43:02Like what, you know? And I just, you know, and then in my intros I was always like a middle-aged alcoholic. Like every single one, you know, or that I was like the alcoholic vicar in that horrible, a farce that thought it'll coat did where my, like I walked in the room in my pants, you know? And Corpus, yeah. It was like, first of all, farce is tough. You know, it's a tough, and for some reason they thought, you know, I heard this a lot about our class. Like, oh, these guys could do it. Like they could graph it. Well, guess what we couldn't and it fucking sucked. It was just like Riddick. 4 00:43:43I was like, Betty Hill, is that what I'm doing? Like, it was just like, it, it, 2 00:43:50It, it's hard to be funny care, but like the experience it makes you funny 4 00:43:59Is that I remember seeing David's like intro second quarter. It was like bomb and Gilliad. And I was like, why don't I get to play one of these like transvestite hookers? Like I can do that. And then it just wasn't, it, it was like the autumn garden, my last one. And again, it was like, I mean, Eric Yancey, I drink so much peach tea my second year of, cause the dining room was my first one. And it was like all of these like waspy, you know, I played like one little boy, that's the scene. We, we, we sorta had a yelling match about, but it was so I don't know. I mean, I was, I was, I remember Noel being like I got in and you didn't. 4 00:44:43I was just like, I didn't really, the thing was, I thought they stopped going to New York for the, I didn't ever have a desire to be on television or in the movies I wanted to be in the theater. And I went to the theater school and I sort of saw that transitioning transition happening. It was kind of like, I have no desire to live in LA. I just think it's like the new years and fake foods. Like, that's all I could think of when I'm thinking of LA. Like it was a desert, everything there is artificial. Like every, every blade of grass is like planted. I don't know. And I thought I was okay with it for a while. Cause when I moved home and my stepfather died kind of suddenly like that summer and you know, it was one of those things like, okay, everything happens for a reason, you know, it's really hard. 4 00:45:34Yeah. My mom, my father had passed away, but he was sick for a really long time. And so I think she was like prepared for that and she wasn't really prepared for my stepfather dying. And so I was okay with it for a long time, but I really, till recently we realized like, I think it really, you know, I remember somebody calling me and asking me to do it a play and not wanting to do it because I had to a lot of musical theater. And I was like, when I did the first play, I was like, wow, musical series is so hard. I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, you know, I sang a lot, but I was like, I hate singing. 4 00:46:14You know, I really don't even like it. And I just, so I, you know, I never saw myself as any Shakespeare characters. Like I was like, you know, I had to read every male part in high school and English class. I read every like male part while the teacher read every female part. And I was like, I hate Shakespeare. Maybe this isn't the place for me. What was disappointing about it is that I wanted it to agree, you know? And I was a good student and I think that my circumstance, this is just sort of allowed me to sort of flounder a bit and not really have a, a footing, not really have any direction, you know? 4 00:47:01So I had some great mentors and I did do some more things and, but very little. And then I moved to New York and it was really not about that. You know, it was about just see what else was out there. I just excited. I was like, okay, I'm moving to New York. And I had worked for J crew for a couple of years and I had left and I called them up. It was like a move to the city. I needed a job and they gave me a job and I started going out in the city. Somebody took me to a nightclub and it was like the first time ever. I was like, you know, we would go see, I, I saw the last grateful dead show in Chicago. 4 00:47:45Like we went to fish, meaner Bana when we were out there. And when I went into this like sort of world of these nightclubs and sort of saw all of these like characters that were present, I sort of became one. You know, I was, it was like my job to go out and, and have fun in sort of a clown. And it was, it was an interesting time in my life. I like to call it the turn of the last century, but it was like from, so I guess I, I moved to the city from like 98 till 2000, or I guess it was 99 till 2003 is when I moved here. 4 00:48:37So I was there for about four years, you know, I worked at the world trade center that was, you know, and I think that compounded things. And I think it sort of made me realize that I was having a lot of fun in New York. You know, I had this, I had great roommates. We had a great loft in Brooklyn, these crazy parties that were like before Brooklyn was cool. I say like, we've priced ourselves out of it. You know, we made it cool. And then, but it was nothing I could sustain or really even monetize. 4 00:49:20You know, there was always like the job that I had to maintain to with, I really had no desire to do theater and I didn't for about another 10 years till I moved here. And, and I was okay with that, you know, I was sort of working in retail and I realized, you know, later that the whole going out and becoming this like character, which I didn't really think I was doing at the time, but I really was, you know, doing things that I'd never done before, or, you know, even these parties were like insane. 4 00:50:02We would like wear like Russian military uniforms and have 200 people in a Japanese go-go band at our house and fill up, we would like fill up kiddie pools with water. We had a great space. And so we did, and I lived with a caricature artist and all these kids from Vassar and it was just, you know, we'd get like a sitar player and, and have like an opium den. And I just 2 00:50:40Have a question I have to go back to, what was your character like? What was your, your nightclub character? Sure. 4 00:50:48So I always joke that I looked like, like huckleberry Finn, you know, I was working for J crew, but I was, I was just myself, you know, I, I would, I had my baseball cap and I had this baseball cap that said ack, which is actually the three letter code for new work airport. And I'm sorry for Nantucket airport. My initials are the Newark airport and people. And so ack people. And I would like, have my pants rolled up different, you know, I worked for J crew. So I was like a walking, like, you know, the J crew like twist that, how it used to be pants rolled up at different lengths and like maybe, or I'd wear like a crusher hat or something. 4 00:51:29And I'd get in line with these people who were like going to bang, bang, and buying their like, you know, tight leather pants and stuff. And it just became like this. I was, you know, I was kind of like a quirky, you know, I dressed, I danced a little funny. I, I attribute movement to music to that. You know, I sort of just followed these impulses that had me sort of stomping my feet a lot. And I danced with my face a lot and I would show up with like a big bunch of gerbera daisies and a couple inflatable sunshines. 4 00:52:08And, you know, I had one friend Franco, who's the only person that I ever went out with. I could always go out by myself and, you know, leave by myself. And I would just, you know, do these fun things. Like, you know, I wrote like a Valentine to the world and like, you know, we put on red paper and pass it out to everybody. Or we would, we'd bring junior mints to junior, was the DJ and pass them out to everybody. Yeah. And people, you know, I was talking about the hat. People would say like, like, what does ack stand for? What does ack stand for? And I got, you know, and that goes to the three letter code for Newark airport. 4 00:52:52And I got so sick of it. I started this thing, like the hairball remover that Cass asked for by name, you know, like, and I didn't really, I never, you know, I still sort of felt like I didn't belong there. You know, it was kind of like this secret thing, but you know, you cold places all the time. And then people start, you know, recognizing you and, you know, you start like getting in for free or, you know, and I found these places where it just seemed, I was appreciated, you know, people would, and I met a lot of such interesting people. I mean, everybody from people who were, you know, Sharman to, there was some pretty, you know, crazy shenanigans that went on, you know, at the time. 4 00:53:44And some people that, I mean, everyone from Tonya Harding and then it comes out and she was interesting to me, but that's like the funniest story I ever time, I let her Newport cigarette for her. Like I do the Catholics, I would see it. Evan am, you know? Okay. 2 00:54:01So I'm just, there's like a theme here, which is that you went to the theater school for two years, and then all of a sudden you had to leave while you might have otherwise been processing your grief about that. You had to go all of a sudden process with your mom because she lost her second husband. And then you moved to New York to get that life going. And then nine 11 happened and you were working at the world trade center. So you have had major Griffis interruptus. 4 00:54:36It's true. Yeah. I, I think, and, and, and I've recognized in my life that I have a hard time, like getting things done that are in my normal routine. Like say, like getting my car inspected, you know, it's like once a year and it's like, whoa, you know, so when things like that happen, it takes me a long time to regroup. And you know, I'm not gonna, you know, sit here and say that I'm, that it, you know, these things like ruined my life in any way, shape or form, you know, I I'm, I'm so lucky that I, you know, I've been in the circumstances that I've been in and that I have a great family and that, you know, I always had a bit of a safety net. 4 00:55:25Not like some people, like, I didn't really have a safety net. Like I felt like in New York, I couldn't do theater because I wasn't independently wealthy. And I, and there was just no place to, you know, you really, it just doesn't exist anymore. You know, if you notice people who go to New York and become directors and, you know, actors are either, you know, inherit that position. I have 2 00:55:52Another way of making money, even though even this Celia Keenan Bolger's of the world. I mean, it is, you cannot, you cannot make a living, even if you're on Broadway. 4 00:56:04Right. It's true. You know, and it's, and it just became, I just became disenchanted with it. You know, I was like, I mean, I still love the theater, you know? And I was, like I said, I was really lucky. I had, you guys were talking about those monologue books, know like Jocelyn Baird is the woman who edited all of those books, which I didn't know, but she was someone who I did theater with when I was like in high school, she's who she picked my audition monologues. And she, you know, I'm still in contact with her. She's a playwright. And she went to Yale. She coaches kids on how to get into programs now, stuff that I was like, what is my brand, that kind of thing. 4 00:56:54But it's like, I, commercial theater I guess, was exciting to me in a certain way, but it was, you know, it was other theater that I liked too. And I don't think it was just theater. I think it was just art, you know? And I think it was like art in life is what I've discovered. You know, like everything is art, you can make anything artistic. And I think that's kind of what I do. I just haven't shaped it in a way, like, I need to write a book. 2 00:57:28You haven't been able to shape it because you've had suspend a lot of time in reaction mode, you know, to various losses 4 00:57:35That, yeah, like the whole nine 11 thing. I, you know, I remember, I didn't tell anyone that for years, you know, it was just something that, I mean, my friends knew there was, there was an Edward Ryan who died that day, who was from Westchester and star. And so there were people like my old boss, Alyssa, who was a harpist and a composer who I worked for as a personal assistant. And, you know, she just heard like names bred off. She knew that's where I worked. You know, we didn't have very few people had cell phones. I ran into one of her three sons and he was like, we got to call my mother. 4 00:58:16I was like, she literally was, she was afraid to call my mom. She was like, that was the only contact number I had for you is your house phone. And I didn't want to upset her. And I was like, oh my God. I just thought I was Ted. I, I will, could been, you know, it was, yeah, it was, it was a rough, it was a rough day, you know, I've had better. And it was my first day back after like 10 days of vacation. And we opened, there was a mall in the building six where the big divot down to the path, trains wound up, you know, the, the second tower that fell. 4 00:58:58And luckily, you know, we were really lucky. We, I, we locked ourselves in at first. I mean, we didn't have any sort of clue what was going on, you know, when you were sort of in it, even it wasn't until we got to the Seaport that we realized that there was planes being flown into the building. You know, I was like, we heard the second plane and we crossed the street and we saw the second building on fire. But at that point we thought somebody was like dropping bombs or shooting missile. You know, we couldn't, you know, come up with the, the idea of someone flying planes into the building. And, and I was like, you know, what do I, what do we do? 4 00:59:41You know, I was like, we're dead. And I was all right with it actually, you know, it was a, it was a strange feeling, but I was like, I'm okay with that. Like, I'm not going to spend my last moments here, screaming, yelling, running, like, you know, there's like this peacefulness about it. And I remember my nephew had been born, my sister's second son who lives here and I had never met him. And so that was the only like little thing I thought about as a regret. And then luckily we were okay, you know, and it was a long, you know, process of sort of also from my loft, I could see this, you know, smoke stack for the next, you know, three weeks. 4 01:00:29And I, even that day, I didn't really process anything until I got to a friend's house. And I, I, they were all there watching the news and I laid down behind them. They were like sitting in my futon and I like fell asleep. My adrenaline like finally ran out and then I woke up and I went home to my loft and the two girls that lived there, Lily and Rebecca were there and they just like grabbed me. And I don't think I stopped crying for like two days. Like I didn't leave the house. I didn't do anything. You know, I talked to my mother, but it was sort of like I was at work. 4 01:01:09So it was like, you know, and I was responsible for other people. And I, I felt like I also have to advocate for those people in the moment, you know, where they were like, oh, you know, well, you can come work at, you know, fifth avenue that day. And I was like, yeah, they're not going to work anywhere today. You know? And it was so I didn't tell anybody because people's reactions were so strong and I didn't want to like tell the story all the time, you know? And so I just didn't tell anybody for a long time. And I realized when I did that, it was actually helpful, you know, to talk about it and to talk about the, the impact of it. 4 01:01:54And I think that it, you know, made me a little more, maybe maybe careless or in a living, but also really living like really living, you know, in the moment, you know, and knowing what that meant, nothing like a little, you know, little flying a plane into your buildings to wake you up. Yeah. Yeah. So that was 2 01:02:22Yet the third or the fourth thing, which is that you graduated from school three years ago. I don't know if you were what you were planning to do when you left, but then the pandemic happened. 4 01:02:34Oh yeah. Not even three years ago. It was a year ago. Oh, that's when you were done was a year ago. Yeah, it was may. I went back to school in 2000, I guess it was 2019. I went for, so I got a bachelor's degree, but I went to Nepal for two years and I went there for a year and a half. So I somehow finished a four year degree in three and a half years, but yeah, I had enough credits. So I was like, bye. And yeah, I was stage managing for them a production. They were doing a little shop of horrors, which was really interesting stage managing and just sort of doing everything for them, for these kids. And I felt so terrible for them. 4 01:03:14And I mean, everything is still there. Like all the props we made, everything is just, I keep thinking of the Titanic it's frozen in time because they decided that even in spring, they were going to be fully remote because they didn't, they didn't think it was fair to leave it to the last minute to decide they wanted people to be able to kiss those sort of ducks in a row and, and know what to expect. Cause I think that was really one of the hardest things on any students or kids during the whole pandemic was like every, you know, the, from month to month, they didn't know what was coming next. You know? 2 01:03:49I mean, I kind of feel like that's how I had spent sort of the stopping and starting of Edward Ryan you've sort of stopped and started and stopped and started. And, and now you, you, you started school, you finished school and you were, and so the kids too, but also you stopping and starting. Yeah. 4 01:04:07Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that, you know, I have a little more, I have some more skills to deal with it. You know, I have a little more, it's like my work at school, you know, just cultivating creativity with this class that really affected me and sort of made me realize that I was more than just a theater artist probably. And do you remember those photographs in the like nineties of like different, like the Beastie boys are run DMC and they were on the rooftops of buildings. So this guy, John Nardell was that photographer. He worked for all these different it's, he's not the person you would expect to be taking photographs, but he was a teacher at the school and he taught this class and this class is so annoying. 4 01:04:55Like it's going to really drive me crazy. And all the kids were really like, he railed against like every assignment does a lot of work and we weren't allowed to buy anything. We had to make everything. And, you know, he gave us a lot of art supplies, but we had to like build vessels to like carry them in and incorporate every handout somehow creatively into this, into this book. And I mean, it was a lot of work and I would, I stay up till three o'clock in the morning, like, you know, making these things and doing the stuff. And he was like, you know, your work is like, incredible it's so it's, it's so much beyond, you know, what were some of the kids are doing here? 4 01:05:36And I was like, well, it shouldn't be, you know, like I have a little, few more resources than they have in their dorm and, you know, but, but the kids too, they were sometimes inspired in that to, you know, these kids to inspire them was like such a, a great thing because they were, so some of them were so disenchanted. And by the end of this class, you could just see that they had all found like what they were good at, like what sort of creative, artistic thing that they really connected with and that they loved and that they were just excelling in. And it was so exciting. Like it was really a, it was a great class. 4 01:06:18I 2 01:06:18Love that it was called cultivating creativity. 4 01:06:21Yeah. Good class. And I mean, you know, we either studied artists or, or, or techniques from Zen, Zen, Zen doodle, or 2 01:06:35Zen doodle. Yeah. There's 4 01:06:36Dan tangles. Yeah. Like he was a Venn tangle instructor. So, you know, we started with that. We did, like, we studied like in Stein and like, it is like sort of pop flags. And we each took a, a country. We were assigned to country and their flag and we, you know, created, you know, work from that. It was a really a great class, but hard, you know, these kids were not used to being asked to do to actually like work. I mean, the school itself knows who their students are. I think a lot of them have, you know, different accommodations and different, you know, struggles or opportunities. 4 01:07:18And, you know, they come from, like I said, an underserved communities and places, and it's like one of those places where, you know, if like Frank, the guy who ran the program was like, I couldn't let, just kidnapped graduate, you know, you know, like there's no way. And you know, whether it's paying his tuition bill or, you know, or raising money, whatever needs to happen. And, and, you know, he got me ready and Frank got me writing again. I directed, I took a directing class, which was a great read life, you know, so great books. 4 01:08:01And it was fun. You know, I really sort of was inspired to just be creative. And I looked at some MFA programs and I auditioned at Yale and I, I think I realized I did not get in, but I realized before that, that I, and Ruth was like, do you really want to go there? And I was like, you know, it's yeah. You know, and she's like, Hmm. And when I went there, I realized what she meant it, like, first of all, it's a shithole about bad facilities, you know, while you're waiting in an old computer lab with like broken computers, stacked in the corner, going this girl from West Virginia, she was a young girls high. And from what I was like, oh, this is what you thought. Yeah. You know, and I sort of felt like they had given the keys, you know, it was like the opposite of the theater school. 4 01:08:48It was like the kids were running that place. I mean, they held all the power and I think it's, it's sort of the way things are going these days, you know, with the me too movement teachers are one of the teachers at Yale said we are the only teachers that have to teach our students naked sometimes. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? We are the only teachers that have to teach their students naked. Sometimes 2 01:09:15The students are naked or the teachers are the students. What for, for zoom? I mean, on zoom, they're naked. 4 01:09:21No. I mean just different productions where, you know, they are directing a student who is nude and that's why there's intimacy coaches and all of that now, you know, to protect them. Because I mean, you can obviously see working in close proximity with a naked student that could open you up to problems, say like at the school, like what did Kat call it a spontaneous sex of study naps. I mean, there was a loud groping and touching going on that was like, you know, probably, you know, innocent, but you know, could certainly have been a trigger for some people. Sure. You know, like Trudy shoving her thumb in my mouth. 4 01:10:03Yeah. Not good. Not good. Yeah. So that was the day I had three, sorry, three absences. And I was, and I, myself use was damaged by habitual use was the other thing on my letter when I got cut from the theater school, self use was debt is damaged by habitual. You understand what that means? Well, neither did I. I mean, but as I think at that age, I just thought, well, I'm damaged. 2 01:10:31I also can tell you that Rick Murphy, when we were doing set, a very similar thing that David said to you, so I'm doing space work. Rick comes up to me, whispers in my ear. What are you doing? Drop out and go see the world. 4 01:10:48Yeah. 2 01:10:49And I'm like, I'm like doing work first year, second year. I don't remember. He whispered in my ear, why are you here? Go, go see the world or something. And I was like, what is happening? 4 01:11:02You know, I loved Rick Murphy. I mean, he was just like magic, right? I mean, this is not a pipe dream was like, so in captivity it was called freewill and one lust back then. And that was the other thing I wanted to tell you 2 01:11:20That it changed names. Oh no, no, no

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Alex Ross is the co-founder & CEO at Gregarious, Inc. Gregarious is the company behind Greg, an app dedicated to helping people grow healthier and happier plants. Greg's community has grown from 100 beta users in August 2020 to over 50,000 monthly active users today.Alex graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied data science and statistics at MIT. Alex has worked for companies such as Cisco, The Daily Aztec, and Cannon Trading.Prior to founding Gregarious, Alex spent 4 years as Director of Engineering at Tinder. Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year.In this episode, you'll learn: The two critical steps in making a successful app An ingenious strategy for partnering your app with retail companies Why you should involve your customers in content creation Links & Resources Tinder Enplug fitbod app Y Combinator (YC) Alex Ross' Links Greg app Alex's Twitter: @AreteRoss Job opportunities at Gregarious Alex's LinkedIn Gregarious, Inc. on LinkedIn Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingRevenueCat: https://twitter.com/RevenueCatSub Club: https://twitter.com/SubClubHQEpisode TranscriptAlex: 00:00:00The two steps in making a successful app business are make something worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it.If you have a plant, and you don't know what to do with it, we solve that problem.So, what we did is we reached out to a bunch of plant retailers, “Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product.”Can you put in our little QR code? And now when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.It led to our first 15,000 users, I'd say. David: 00:00:30Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I'm your host, David Bernard. And with me as always, Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:53Happy to be here. David: 00:00:55You sound incredibly happy.Jacob: 00:00:57It's great. It's a Friday, David. The sun is shining. They're grilling a bunch of chickens in my hometown. I got nothing to complain about. It's gonna be great.David: 00:01:05Our guest today is Alex Ross, founder and CEO at Gregarious, makers of Greg, an app to help you grow healthier and happier plants. Prior to founding Gregarious Alex spent four years as director of engineering at Tinder.Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year. Welcome to the podcast, Alex.Alex: 00:01:27Thank you guys. Good to see you. Thanks, David, Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:29Hi. David: 00:01:30So, I'm going to try really hard this whole podcast and not call you Greg, but I've made that mistake.Jacob: 00:01:36I was thinking like, I get like annoying company name questions. Sometimes. I'm like, I'm sure you get more worse than me.Alex: 00:01:43But I'm considering just legally adopting Greg as alias or something. Jacob: 00:01:48Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a news cycle right there. A little bit of earned PR. David: 00:01:55So I wanted to ask you, so obviously, you know, director of engineering at Tinder that's, I mean, what a rocket ship that must've been quite a wild ride. So, tell me a little bit about, about how you ended up at Tinder and then, you know, if you do have any fun, war stories from there, that'd be great to hear. Alex: 00:02:16Yeah, definitely. It was a rocket ship. Definitely some war stories, some wins, some losses. So, I came across Tinder and I was looking to get into like a consumer application. so I was interviewing with Uber and Twitter, and then I came across Tinder on an angel list. Actually the head of recruiting at the time reached out to me and I kind of took it on a whim.To be honest, I had not used the app before, before even interviewing or anything. that's kind of a challenge for Tinder is like, do you, how many of the teammates need to use Tinder? Because a lot of people are married and in relationships, and those are great people to have on the team. And so it makes it odd, and kind of difficult or complicated. But, basically I joined when it was around 70 people, if I recall. So, it was a pretty small team. There was already a global user base, so it was one of the scrappiest, global brands I think probably has ever existed. Because this was all right before Tinder or right around the time that Tinder launched its first monetization efforts.And so there wasn't really awareness as to like, great, there's this like large, global, many millions of people are using this thing, but is it going to make money? Right? That was still an open question at the time that I joined. So, yeah, basically I joined and it was very, it was definitely still a startup.And, so there was not a lot of structure and I think my manager changed on the first day, like the person I was talking about working with's desk changed, but I had a great time and basically I ended up creating the growth team. So I became very focused on, growing the international user base.One of the coolest things that that team did is we decoupled Tinder from Facebook. And this was from Facebook login because like Tinder came to, came to fame by having, you know, you tap one button, it imports your Facebook photos. It basically made online dating as easy as it possibly can be because like you push a button you're in and then you're dating.Right. And by making it that simple, it made it so you felt less than desperate by using it. I think it was like one of the important psychological dynamic, because if you feel like you have to work to start using that application, then maybe it means that like you aren't having as much success in dating in the real world.So, by making it simpler, it made it less stigmatized. More cool. Right? And so when we decided to then allow people to create accounts with a phone number that introduced all this complexity around like, well, are people going to want to do that? Then they have to add profile photos. They have to type in their name.You have to introduce an onboarding process. You have to worry about spam. So, in any case, my team led that decoupling of Facebook and Tinder, and this was like pre Cambridge Analytica, pre GDPR. So it was definitely pressure. And it was like, it was a lot of good foresight and it did lead. It was a very successful project.So, that was kind of what I cut my teeth on it Tinder. And then from there, I ended up creating the trust and safety team. So we then kind of took on anti-spam, which is a major problem for any global consumer or especially a brand that you're introducing people to each other. Like you're introducing strangers to each other.That is a spammer's dream.Jacob: 00:05:32There has got to be just so much abuse on Alex: 00:05:34So much, and it was all stuff. I agree. Yeah. 24 7. and so we ended up creating a team kind of bottoms up. This is a cool effort. Cause it wasn't like an executive side, like, oh, Tinder needs to needs to create this team. But rather. A collection of engineers that were very motivated to solve this problem.So, we created a trust and safety team again, before, before GDPR, like this was before the world was really focused on, privacy and data security and protect users. Very consciously.Jacob: 00:06:01It's it's interesting. Cause now, you know, even with like clubhouse recently have had issues here. I think now the expectation is you need trust and safety from day one, which even five or six years ago, wasn't really the case. It was kind of like, well, I'll just grow and then you'll solve it later.So, that was, I would say early days for even that concept of like a whole dedicated team to those, those, those aspects of, yeah. If you're meeting people in public mind, God, like you need good Alex: 00:06:28Real. Yeah. You really need to continuously try to protect people. Cause there are, there's a rare selection of people that are not great. Right. SoJacob: 00:06:36Yeah. David: 00:06:37So then, tell us a little bit about the transition from being a tender to founding a company, because you had founded companies before and plug, and been at, other large companies before Tinder, but Yeah. What, what led you to, to found Gregarious? Alex: 00:06:54Yeah. I actually saw Jacob and I shared an experience interning at Cisco systems. Is that right? Did you, yeah, Jacob: 00:07:01Wait, when were we at the same? Like onboarding. Alex: 00:07:04No, no. I was actually in the finance organization, so I was doing internal auditing. it was crazy. I was on a team that like investigated other people for like, you know, abusing their corporate cards and stuff like that. So there'd be likeJacob: 00:07:19Interesting. internally. Alex: 00:07:21Internally. yeah. it was a very, Jacob: 00:07:23We've had interns on that team. Alex: 00:07:27It was a unique, it was definitely the only inboard,Jacob: 00:07:29Yeah. Wow. I was testing, I was testing phones, so I'm actually not sure which one of those is more boring. I think actually you might've had me. So Alex: 00:07:38That's for sure. yeah, so I got exposure is Cisco is interesting for anybody who doesn't know cause you have to drive between meetings. Right? Cause the campus is so large. Jacob: 00:07:48Campus. Alex: 00:07:49Yeah, Yeah, Talk about, oh my gosh. Culture. Yeah, so the, the process leading up to, to starting Greg was very deliberate. because I had done a startup before and that company had gone to success a successful outcome, but it was a lot of hard work was honestly grueling.Definitely like, hardest challenge of my life. And so I knew that I wanted to be involved in starting a company and building a culture from the ground up again. but I knew that I wanted to do it differently. and so basically there was a lot of preparation thinking about really the main thing I was thinking about is what is the industry that I want to be working in, because I think that startups often don't go the way you expect.But you can learn so much. And so I was really thinking like, okay, what do I want to become an expert at? Right. Like what do I want, if it doesn't work out in the way we expect, what would I like to have learned four years, five years, seven years worth of information about.And, I really kept coming back to science. and I wanted to, to kind of use my engineering experience and pivot that into, more real world, like physical phenomenon. Right. And like learning how the universe works. David: 00:08:59That's amazing. Alex: 00:09:00And so that's really, a lot of the thesis of Greg is that we apply computer science and software engineering to this specific domain of how to plants work.Right. And, and basically the, the dots kind of connect looking backwards, but it was a process of discovery of like, what's an area that's emerging and like kind of changing, like where is there an opportunity, right. Because I think it's helpful to position yourself at a place where either you can cause change or this change already happened.And, right now, like a lot of people know there's climate change. and there's also a lot of, rapid things happening in plant science world, specifically around like CRISPR and plant genetics and stuff like that, really at the deep end of it, which we can get into, but it's like way deep. but, but basically, this was before the pandemic.So we were actually looking into plants before COVID and already there was like the rate of people bringing plants into their homes was growing by 50 to a hundred percent per year. And we wanted to validate like, Jacob: 00:10:03I really like, that seems like that seems like a thing that would be fairly stable, like, is it, is it, is it a, is it a generational trend, like millennials or younger folks being? I have a lot of people on Twitter. I follow that seem very interested in plants more than I've ever been. Alex: 00:10:20There's a couple converging trends. Yeah. I think that part of it it's associated to like the mental wellness movement. So it's kind of this trend line follows a one that's very similar to like meditation and yoga just five years later. So I think it's a very, it's a lot of adjacent interests there, but then there's also an aesthetic component to plants where like, people are kind of decorating their spaces and they're getting more like trendy in how they, you know, how they, even people who are eating, like you want to have like a space that you invite someone into and it's very nurturing.Right. so yeah, there was definitely a generational kind of tailwind already happening. And then COVID just like crammed that up. Right. Cause then everybody's on zoom and you look in the background, some people have plants and you're like, oh, that looks kind of nice. Like I'd like that.Jacob: 00:11:04I have this. I have, I still have this like barren white wall back here. That is embarrassing. Yeah, I need, that's why I was excited. I, I, I installed Greg today and I was disappointed. I couldn't buy the plants in the app yet. So we'll have to talk about that as we get a little Alex: 00:11:17That's something that is coming. That is the client segment. Yeah, definitely. yeah, so we kind of saw an opportunity and we did some due diligence, some interesting things I think, to identify like, is there a revenue opportunity in my favorite stat that I like to share that blew my mind when I learned it is home Depot, is a publicly traded company.So you can look up their, you know, annual statements and you can see how are they making money. And if you look up their statements, you'll see that they make more money on indoor garden than on any other product segment. Like home Depot sells lumber, paint appliances, all these other the Jacob: 00:11:54That's like, that's like actual revenues. Is that also margin con? Cause I would imagine these are high margin items as well, I would guess. Alex: 00:12:01Yeah. Depending on where you fall on them. But yeah, they're, they're, they're pretty hard margin. and no, we only looked at revenue, but they make like last night, like $11 billion per year in revenue. Which is, and, and they're like 10 or Jacob: 00:12:15Store, right? That's, one. Yeah. And there's like, every town has four of these. Alex: 00:12:19Exactly. Yeah. And home Depot is like 10 or 15% of the plant retail market. Probably. It's hard to estimate.Jacob: 00:12:26Okay. Yeah.So, it's like roughly like a hundred, a hundred billion dollar a year kind of thing in the US. Wow. That's it. That's the size of in-app subscriptions for anybody. Who's curious, like, roughly like in that ballpark.Alex: 00:12:39Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like Apple's app store, subscription Jacob: 00:12:42Oh yeah. Sorry, app store. It's not even subscriptions. I think that's the app store broadly. Yeah.Alex: 00:12:47So we combined the plant Tam with then the app store growth in subscription revenue. And there's our business model.Jacob: 00:12:56There you go. Did you, did you, I mean, yeah. You mentioned like wanting to get into something physical into something science related. Did you have like a passion for plants or was this something that is like deep in you or, or was it more like me and an app subscriptions, which is like, wow, this looks like a good thing I can work on and I actually care about it and know a little bit about it.Right. So how, how did it, how did you go? Like, Yeah.This is what I want to do. Alex: 00:13:17That's a great question. It was like 75% the ladder. So the same as you, where I was kind of, I got exposed to it cause I started getting plants and I realized I did like them, but there was no brand to guide me. And there was definitely no science to help me keep them alive. Right. but I, I grew up in the mountains and so like, I, I, my family, I lived in Mammoth Lakes, California for any of the listeners know where that is.And so I, you know, I, I went on like a solo backpacking trip, like shortly before starting all of this and kind of communed with like being in nature with no people around me. And maybe that put me in touch with the plans a little bit more. but it was mostly, kind of identifying, this is a realm of science I'd like to work in because plants are mostly.Physics-based, this is something a lot of people don't don't realize, but because they're stationary, you can almost view them as like, like a civil engineer would a bridge. so there's not, so you can kind of really think about like the water physics, the light physics. And so they're a really great vehicle for learning, just physics generally, and also how like the sun and earth orbit matters to that plant and that location.There's so much science there that we learned that there's a depth. That was, we were very interested in diving deeper intoJacob: 00:14:31Yeah. Not to mention, not to mentioned biology, right. Alex: 00:14:33There is, but Jacob: 00:14:34As an intersection, right? Yeah. Alex: 00:14:37Yeah. Biology is difficult though, right? Like if you're like an engineer, who's trying to approach it,Jacob: 00:14:41Right. Yeah. Alex: 00:14:42it's messy, you know, I Jacob: 00:14:44Yeah, exactly. Alex: 00:14:46Yeah, yeah,Jacob: 00:14:47But if you think about it, it was a closed system, right? Like yeah. You have it. It's potted, it's planted, you know, lumens in, you know, water in, you know, nutrients in, you can, yeah, you can, you can make some approximations, right. As we like. Alex: 00:15:02The closed system is really important. I can. so what Greg does is Greg predicts when a given plant is going to need to be watered. And that's like the super simple, like simplified functionality. It's one of the main things you need to know. And the way we figured that out talking about closed systems is kind of a fun fact. you can very accurately measure the amount of water that a plant loses by weighing it on one day and then weighing it the next day. And the change in weight is the water lost in grams. And it turns out, so what we did is we did that for like 700 plants for like six months. And we, we then graft what was the grams of water lost per plant per day?And you get this beautiful pattern. It's like it random, like this is a very clear, like almost a heartbeat of a plant, which is a great fit for like machine learning.Jacob: 00:15:56Yeah. So, so, so how did, how did you pull this off? Like practically, did you have like a big garage or warehouse or something like that? That's, that's more work than I usually do for software. So tell me what that process was. Alex: 00:16:09It definitely did. So at one point I had like 150 plants and they all had a plastic, little pots and I had like labels. I named them like a one through nine and then C one through whatever. Cause I had to keep track of it. Right. It's all in our progress database. And but that didn't scale. And so like me and my co-founders, we were all measuring every day, every single day, hundreds of plants, but that didn't scale.So then we went on Craigslist and we started saying like, Hey, we're looking for people to weigh their plants every day, twice per day for a couple of months. And we had hundreds of responses, like people, people care about their plants and they thought that it was cool to be doing like citizen science.Right. And so we ended up with people in Berlin and, and you know, Sydney.Jacob: 00:16:48All right. Cause it doesn't have to be local, right? Yeah. Alex: 00:16:51And actually it needs to be in like Southern hemisphere versus Northern hemisphere because the location of like the sun and solar radiation effects that. Yeah. So we needed a global distribution for sure.David: 00:17:01This is like way off topic for, for subscription apps. But, but if you, if you squint it's, there are a lot of similar problems in understanding user patterns and user life cycle. And like, there's so many hard to understand variables. Alex: 00:17:18Yeah, David: 00:17:18But one thing I'm curious about on the plant science, like how much does like humidity and other things play into that.So if you, if you have, you know, 40% humidity, one day and 60%, the next does that actually impact things. Alex: 00:17:31No humidity. We don't really need to model humidity very much. it's actually, there's a couple of things that are misconceptions. You don't really need to worry about missing or humidity and you don't need to worry about fertilizing. Like all of that is overdone. for the most part, like there's some cases where it, matters, but, I'd say for like 99 out of 100 plant types that you're likely to own doesn't matter.And even more people don't realize that the humidity reading that we see in the weather is what's called relative humidity. And it, it not actually like super scientific way to measure, like how the water in the air relates to a plant. You need to look at absolute humidity, the whole totally different calculation.There's basically relative humidity changes according to the temperature. And so I see as humidity, you can almost, and to be honest, like, ignore, except for a couple of plants, like really evolved to be in, like, you can picture it. you know, in England, like, United Kingdom, like BHAG, right. Where it's just so much water, like, okay, well does like some, some ferns like are from like the Pacific Northwest, like Washington area where it's like constant rain forest, those types of plans.Yeah. You're going to have a hard time if you're not, in a very human environment, but the vast majority of EBI don't have to worry about it.Jacob: 00:18:47I have, I have more questions on the plant physics, but I think, I think I will let, I will, I will have to like save my curiosity.David: 00:18:55Well, we'll have to do the, we'll have to jump on your podcast and talk, talk points. Jacob: 00:19:00Plant Club, just invite V2 to newbies on there. Just to ask questions. We'll be there. David: 00:19:05So from, from all of this, you, you started to alluded to it a bit, but one of the things I was really impressed talking to you a couple of months ago, was just how I'm vicious. Your plans are with Greg. So you're, you're kicking it off with a consumer subscription app. but tell me a little bit about like, where you want to go from there.Alex: 00:19:25Yeah, definitely. That's a part of like, going back to like how we started it, why we started it. I have seen, or like I've worked at companies and like not naming names that are very, very revenue focused. Like just purely prime directive is we just need to make coin and as much of it as possible. Right.And then the question is, well, if you get there, then what do you do? Because if you do accumulate a level of avenue and a lot of influence, you kind of inherit a social responsibility, right? Because like you're accumulating all these resources. If you're like a Facebook or an Instagram, I think there's like general consensus.Like you kind of need to think about the impact that you have. Cause you're too big to not think about it. Right. And so with Greg, like we really thought about if we manage to navigate this very challenging process of getting to scale. Well then what? Right. And our goal what's really interesting that people don't realize is that plants in our homes are just plants that were taken from various places in the world and put in our homes, right?Like there there's no such thing as a houseplant, it's actually just like a giant jungle tree that somebody took a cutting from and then transported it to England and then ended up the United States. Right. so the physical principles that govern, being able to predict how to keep those plants alive is, are the same as the physical principles required to predict how to keep like crops alive.Right. like plants that are grown for our food system of which there are like billions. Right. And those plants, like it turns out plants are really like an infrastructure piece of our planet, right? Like plants are our like big support system on spaceship earth. And it's kind of interesting. Jacob: 00:21:10It's, the, it's the first stage of catalyzing, the sun's resources, right? Like, Alex: 00:21:15That's exactly it. And a lot of people don't realize this, that basically all of life gets its energy from the sun. Like that is the input of all of energy into what we know as life, as you know, maybe there's more on other planets that works differently. But as far as we know, all of life depends on solar energy.Jacob: 00:21:31Yeah, Alex, you're leaving out some very, very, sensitive, bacteria that live by vents. Okay. That, that Alex: 00:21:40I love that you noticed.Jacob: 00:21:43I'm D I'm disappointed in myself that I can't think of what they're called. They're extremophiles some kind of, I Alex: 00:21:47Yeah. Jacob: 00:21:48All, it's all, it's all discovery documentaries, so Alex: 00:21:51There's a vanishingly small number of, like living things that, thrive on geothermal energy from the earth score. Right. But that's like less than like 1% as far as I know. What people don't realize as an example is that like plants. A lot of people think that plants are just taking things out of the ground that is sucking nutrients out, sucking water out. They're actually also putting things back into the ground at all times. And so plants, like, for example, they photosynthesize. So they take energy from the sun and they are the only thing on the planet that takes energy from the sun and then converts it into energy that all other life can use. And it's not only insects and birds and mammals like us, but plants are also depositing sugar into the soil.So it's a bi-directional flow and that sugar feeds the bacteria. Jacob: 00:22:38Is that an active process while they're alive? Is it, or is it during decomposition? Alex: 00:22:42No, that is an active process. Like plants are actively depositing sugar into the soil and that, that those sugars feed the bacteria and fungi and those bacteria and fungi are responsible for breaking down the, inorganic, nutrients like nitrogen into a format that plants can absorb because plants can't just like stop nitrogen.Now they depend on. Those organic, you know, facilitators. And so it's a very symbiotic relationship and there's growing awareness now that like having a quote unquote, living soil is crucial for our planet. And I'll tell you like an example of how, how much awareness there is around this. during my due diligence for Greg, I went to a plant genetics conference.This is like for any engineers in the call, like imagine like AWS reinvent, accepted the geneticists. Right. And so they're like presenting, like how they run their projects. And it's, it's a really cool parallel world, but half of this conference was dedicated to soil like microbiomes, because that's how important it is.It's like truly like a resource. It's an infrastructure for our spaceship earth. Right? David: 00:23:49That's amazing. So, so one of the things, yeah, you and I talked about was not just, you know, consumer subscription to then like funding science, which is kind of what you're talking about now, but then also the potential to take this from, from B2C to B2B. So like you have, nurturing these who have to manage the planets before the people buy ‘em.You have office buildings that have thousands of plants. You have, you know, commercial facilities like there's, you know, plants existed on so many different layers of are of, of, of use, So tell me a little bit about kind of the long and short term plans of potentially transitioning or not transitioning, but, but kind of building on top of what you've done for consumers to then expand into more B2B, use cases.Alex: 00:24:42Yeah, definitely. Some other examples. people don't realize that cities have to like municipalities have to maintain the plant inventories, right? Like there are people who manage the inventory of plants. Exists, you know, or there are small businesses. there are people in most towns, I grow food for their farmer's markets, for example.And so those are like smaller scale farmers and then there's large scale farmers, right? And there's a real dearth of like talented software teams, writing applications for any of those parties. And that's really the long-term opportunity to be spotted. If we can pull together a talented team to make products for those people, that's a longterm opportunity.And my, my thesis on this, which I think we're aligned on is that, like delightful, simple consumer user interfaces, like simple software is appreciated by everybody. Right? Jacob: 00:25:35Okay. Alex: 00:25:35like enterprises don't want to use complicated integrative Jacob: 00:25:40There's tastes now in software, right. And all levels of, employment. I think it's, it's a bit of like our gen my generation aging into the, the enterprise buying world. And, also just like people have enough software experiences in our lives. They've learned to discern like, oh, this is good.And, oh, this is bad. and I think there's, yeah, I think it's really, I mean, we I've, I've done it a ton in making revenue count. I came from the compute super subscription world. I learned a ton of lessons about onboarding and, and, and, and creating delightful experiences and like, you know, playing, playing against and into people's like, you know, habits and things like this that you carry into the enterprise world or B2B world, and it can really supercharge software.And it's probably what we're going to see. Yeah. I think. I think there's still, there's always this like technical leap or not technical in the sense of computers, but technical in the sense of processes and whatnot, when you leap from consumer to, to selling to businesses. But as you said, you bring those teams together, you, you build your data set, you learn more about Alex: 00:26:45Right, Jacob: 00:26:46Act of growing plants, then someday you, you, you can, you Alex: 00:26:49Right. And there are some, some famous examples of this. I definitely see it with RevenueCat. Cause like you compare the UI to a SAS that was created 10 years ago and it's just more of delightful. Right. It's like simple. And I know to use it. I'm not like getting a headache while I'm on it, but it's nice.Right?Jacob: 00:27:05It's very nice. Very nice of you to say Alex: 00:27:07Yeah. Bye-bye But, but like some examples like strike became famous, right? Because like they had a good Jacob: 00:27:14Same. Yeah, yeah. Say my mindset. Right. Just like, make it easy, make it simple, make the, make the shortest possible path to value. Right. Alex: 00:27:25Or, slack would be another example. Right. Whereas it was almost a consumer level application that just took off like wildfire because individuals liked it. Right. Jacob: 00:27:34And then they added enterprise grid, whatever they have now, or whatever to sell it to, to, to Alex: 00:27:39And then nothing is things, Jacob: 00:27:41Need that to begin with.Alex: 00:27:42Right? David: 00:27:43Yeah. So it's just, it's really cool that there's, there's just such a direct path from selling to consumers right now, and then selling to municipalities who are managing their plants in a few years, and then selling to, you know, the, the company should have to manage this at scale and then selling to farmers.That's really cool. One of the things that, again, that you're not talking about, you and I talked for like two hours a couple of months ago. And so there's, there's so much that I would, I would've loved to have recorded that and released it as a podcast. But, Jacob: 00:28:20Glad I can glad I can contribute. David: 00:28:23Yeah, one of the, one of the fascinating things that you talked about was kind of your view on marketing. And so I'd love for you to talk about that more broadly, but then specifically what you're doing with nurseries is just such incredibly smart marketing. Like, I mean, it, let me say tangent for a minute.So it's just so obvious talking to you that you're not the average like app founder, you know, like none of my apps have had even, even like when, when hundredth of the due diligence and market Jacob: 00:28:55Why I was gonna say, I've never, I've never bought some, like, I've never had a physical warehouse of plantsDavid: 00:29:02Yeah. and so it's just, it's just so clear that you, you think about things in a way that, that most, you know, at people don't most software people don't most even founders don't. and, and so I think, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast before, is it just so many apps are trapped in this?You know, we just, we have to advertise on Facebook to grow. We have to do this. And like that clay book, I've just, you know, dumping money, a bunch of money in ads, I think leave so much on the table. And so I just love that you're, you're going to do that. And that we've talked about that, you know, you've got to do paid marketing and, and maybe I've already started experimenting with it, but, but yeah.So tell me about what you're doing with nurseries and then just kind of, you know, some of your thoughts on, on marketing and virality and stuff. Alex: 00:29:51Yeah, definitely. I think broadly, like what I would, I think I'm definitely aligned with that where, your broader point is that like building an app is half technical and UI design and getting the product really, really, really right. Right. But the other half that people are often uncomfortable about is needing to get it in front of the right people.Right. And so in my mind, the way I break this down is the two steps. Like I have a theory that like the two steps in making a successful app business are make thumping worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it. Right. And it's like remarkably hard to do either one of those, but, Once we had, the beginning signs of retention.So we got our first, like, I don't know, 5,000 users by like posting on Facebook and on Reddit and like that kind of stuff. Then we started thinking about, what is like the most optimal time for people to be introduced to grade. And what we came up with is, well, we solved the problem of, if you have a plant and you don't know what to do with it, how to keep it alive, we solve that problem.And so the most natural moment would be when you get a new plant, right. Because it's like, that's a moment. And you're like, oh crap, I have this thing. What do I, how do I keep it alive? And, so what we did is we reached out to a bunch of, plant retailers, like online in-person brick and mortar all over the place.And we basically said like, Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product. Right. And so let's do this trade where like, we will give them. at this point we had a subscription tier. And so we said, we'll give them free subscription tier for N number of months. At first it was six.And now it's three. and in return, can you put in our little QR code flyer, like nicely designed four inches by four inches recycled paper card that has a QR code and it takes you to download. Great. Right. And so we did that and now like when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.And it's almost like a digital companion to your unboxing experience. Right. And so that was definitely like a very natural fit and it, it led to our first, probably like 10 or 20,000, 15,000 users, I'd say.Jacob: 00:32:10So can I ask, like, did you do that yourself? Did you have somebody on your team? Cause like, yeah. I'm, I'm in the camp that that's outside of my experience. I don't like calling the pizza person. Like I, you know, I, I don't know how to do that. So how, how did you, how did you delegate that and, and Alex: 00:32:24Yeah. Jacob: 00:32:24The resources and a small team to pull that off. Alex: 00:32:27Definitely. so I I'd say I provided the, the oomph behind it. but then I have a good friend, who I've worked with in the past named Colin, who does like growth marketing stuff and that's his comfort zone. Right. And so I definitely did reach out to a bunch of the biggest partners in the beginning.Because the thing is that like with early stage stuff, founder led sales can be great, right? Like you don't always need it. It's better if you don't need it to be Frank. but, we were so early and we had no partners at all that I was like, I ha this is crucial for us. Like, we need to have a better source of user acquisition.That's like our next major challenge to solve. And so I did reach out to them and then call in kind of like took over and scaled that. Right. Cause like, I, I ultimately like I needed to be writing code and stuff. and so now he owns that relationship and he's been able to keep that going further.Jacob: 00:33:22Yeah, it's just one of these unique channels. you know, I don't know, you can, as a, B to C app founder, I think David's points exactly on, I think we've a lot of us have settled into this world where there's one or two channels to like get growth and that's paid, paid marketing.There's a lot of good, growth resources out there. oh yeah, there's a lot of good growth books. I've read, moving into the B2B world that say there's like seven channels or whatever. There's only like so many like ways to get and in and in, and in B to C we tend to be like, well, yeah, there's these two, essentially, but it's not really true.Like you can try seven, I guess the trick is finding stuff that two things, one is approachable. Like, that's why I asked about you. How did you make it happen? Well, you were able to start it off and then you had somebody to work with you to, to, to bring it to scale. But then the other thing is it has to move the needle. Right. And so, and so you have to figure out and like for a price that's reasonable, right? And, and that sometimes is hard to find as well. Because I think with this, you have this adjacent high velocity market of users. You have a place, your users are going every day, which isn't maybe always the case for all apps.Right. It's hard to find there's no meditation store that people are going to day. Right. Alex: 00:34:33Yeah. I thought about this. Jacob: 00:34:34That's your, that's your advantage? You know?Alex: 00:34:37I thought about parallels. Like I wonder if like fitness apps have tried partnering with gyms. I'm thinking like fit. Jacob: 00:34:44I'm sure the gyms wouldn't be as eager maybe. Right? Alex: 00:34:48Well, I mean, possibly I'm just thinking like, if, if like, Jacob: 00:34:51This also like there's also this like benefit right from the, for the Alex: 00:34:54There has to be. Yeah, yeah. But I would just, I just like theory, graph, like I'm thinking if there's an app That helps you track your workouts. Like I use football, I'm a user, it's a great app and, and it's a complete compliment or a gym. Like I can't do gym without, I can't do football about gym. I don't really do gym about that.So, I, there might be a thing there, or like with meditation, I'd be curious if, like yoga studios. Cause here's the thing is Jacob: 00:35:21Find the adjacencies right. Alex: 00:35:22Yeah. And so here's the thing about a mobile app business that I have found is that one of our strengths is that we're building an audience, right? Like mobile apps only really work with retention.And so you're like building up this audience of people that are committed to your app and your brand over time. And these smaller businesses are looking for ways to get audiences. Right? And so in the scale of a mobile app is such that you might actually be able to accumulate an audience that is valuable to those small businesses.That can be a part of that trade. And so we've actually talked about that with our partners where we basically say like, well, you're referring users to us. We can refer users back to you. And our scale is large enough that it could actually be a meaningful number. so I think you can kind of get, it's definitely a B2B strategy where it's like, I'm thinking of the strategic value I can provide to my partners in return for them providing value.Which might be why it's less common in the, in the B2C, like mobile app world, right.David: 00:36:16Yeah. Any other, experiments that you've done or kind of things that you're working on in the, in the marketing realm that you've seen fail or things that are being successful right now Alex: 00:36:27We really want to tap peer to peer referrals and that has not been easy. And so that, that is one Jacob: 00:36:33Have you seen, have you seen the new store kit to stuff? Alex: 00:36:36Not Jacob: 00:36:36Yeah, they did. This is, I don't know when this is going to go out, but they, they dropped in, in, in the dub DC, this, this, this week they announced there's a new API. That's going to make that kind of possible. Now you'll be able to, you'll be able to like extend somebody else's subscription, based on some sort of like action. I think I, I, I don't know if they made it as like, for extending, for like a customer support use case. So there might be a case maybe Apple's like, no, we didn't want you to use it for incentivized referrals, but it could Alex: 00:37:09Yeah, Jacob: 00:37:09Make incentivize referrals work and like a really smooth way. Sorry, I'll derail. But, Alex: 00:37:14I love it. Jacob: 00:37:15It's, kind of a change.Alex: 00:37:17Well, it's probably useful to listeners. we have definitely hacked around incentivizes invites using promotionals that will say RevenueCat has been helpful.Jacob: 00:37:26Oh, so, and so you guys are, you guys are pushing folks, but they have to go through like this, like a user-driven process, right? Alex: 00:37:33They do. Yeah.Jacob: 00:37:34Is friction.Alex: 00:37:35It's friction. It has been fine, but it's not quite as productive as we like. So that one. Jacob: 00:37:39Have a lot of users that get confused about the process. I would imagine. Alex: 00:37:42Yeah. And it's like a deep Linky thing. So it's like not super transparent. the thing that's worked better, the one that I'm most excited about is I love this one. we, created, user generated content loops. so, basically people, there are certain things you can do in our app that like publish web pages on the web.And so for us very specifically, People like Greg, we don't have a database of like every plant in the world yet. Right. There's like 400,000. It's really complicated. And like, that's actually, one of our core IP is, is developing that database. And the only way we can do it is if we allow users to contribute to it.Right. and we need to be like a crowd source, like model and we get really good at curation so people can create new species in Gregg. And then we curate that and then we publish that page on the web and then it starts showing up in Google search traffic for other people searching for information about that species.Right. And so I love the theory of this and like check back in, in a year to see how it turns out. But I love the thing. Because it's like, okay, a user publishes a web page, which then more users find our app through. So then they join the app and then they publish more webpages. And then so more users find the app and then they publish more web pages.Right. And so it's like a very like positive reinforcement loop. And I think those types of recursive positive reinforcing user growth loops can lead to very healthy, growth curves, right?Jacob: 00:39:08Yeah. I mean, that's the, the challenge of these apps. You said it with retention is the big thing. I think you, you you're you're you're you've got some tables. Keeping a plant alive plants live a long time. Therefore, hopefully your app gets used a long time, but then, finding these things that can take what is inherently like a decaying process, which is people leaving your app and turning it into something more stable, which is how you build this, like yeah.Long-term business. And then, you know, for, in your case, like use this as a platform to move into other segments and whatnot. but, but but moving away, from this, like get them in, monetize them, let them go. Right. Model, which like, it seems just like the whole world is pointing us against right. With, with the way that ad tracking is getting less easy to do and all this stuff.Alex: 00:39:54Yeah. Jacob: 00:39:54So I was gonna say SEO, that's one of the seven good channels. Right. So you've hit at least three, Alex: 00:40:01Do end up dependent on, on Google. AndJacob: 00:40:05It's something can change in Alex: 00:40:06Yeah, Jacob: 00:40:07Or. Alex: 00:40:07But like I've been wanting, I've been watching SEO for a while and I think that generally, as long as you're not doing shady things, you don't have to worry about much. Right, Jacob: 00:40:16Content that people click on and find useful it will work. Right? Like, but when I did our blogs for revenue cat, initially the ones that got really good traffic for us kind of got us off the ground. Like I didn't, I didn't think, like I thought a little bit like, oh, what are people going to Google?Whatever. But no, I was just like, I'll just make plus that people will read and spend time on and share. And like that's all it took. And you'll find the posts that some of the posts that I did that were intentionally like, I'm trying to be like, SEO smart. Didn't do that. Well, the ones where they were just really good posts and like contained a lot of really good content and get referenced a lot. Those are the ones that still generate traffic for us. So like, which is nice because you don't have to be like an SEO master anymore. You can kind of just make good stuff and do Alex: 00:40:56Yeah. Jacob: 00:40:56Things. Yeah, David: 00:40:57Yeah, I was going to ask, I think we talked about this, but have you, have you done some paid marketing and how's that gone for you? Alex: 00:41:05Yeah, definitely. We did use paid marketing to like, scale up, by like a two X factor. So did that add a little bit of extra? And, so we've been running on Instagram and Facebook, and it's been pretty productive to the point where it's almost NetSpend zero. it's like we spend a dollar in advertising and then we make a dollar in revenue.We're still very early. And so we haven't had enough months. Like the, the, the pain point is if you do a trial. It's actually a much longer, payback period or like what finance people would call a float. And then a lot of people expect, because let's say you have, we're generous. We have a 30 day trial, which is like a bit much for a mobile app, but we do it.And so 30 days, and then the user subscribes, and then you get paid and then apple will pay you a month later. Right. So you actually end up with like up to a 90 day float. and so that's not as tight as I would like hope for, but it's better than nothing. And I think that's the key is that like, because we're a revenue generating app we're able to do the ad spend in like a reasonable way.I think if that weren't the case, then it'd be very difficult.David: 00:42:12Yeah. And, and at some point, I mean, with, with your other strategies of referrals, of SEO, of building a base of users, that then you can get more and more partners, you know? So, so if you went to home Depot, 10 million active users, then that's a much more attractive proposition to them. so at some point, you know, spending at a loss might actually make sense, but it's amazing that the subscription, model enables you to even spend break even, but keep that flywheel going, which is it's.That's incredible.Alex: 00:42:52And I think the NetSpend break, even that creates an interesting exercise because then it's like, it becomes, we didn't get into like financing, but like if you fundraise That's then a good reason to fundraise because then if you have more capital, you can put that capital to work. Because if you know, you'll make, if you have a dollar, now you'll have a dollar again in 90 days, as long as you can carry that float.Well, then at the end of 90 days you have a dollar and a user Jacob: 00:43:17Yeah, which is like, has, has value, right? Like you've increased the value of your user base has adult, you know, dollar per user active value essentially in the venture market or revalue reevaluate. Right. So, it, it does make sense. So yeah, I w I want to ask, like, You guys, it seems like your apps pretty developed for how long you've been working on it a year and change.Right. and you mentioned, you mentioned this, like finding iterating to like a retention goal. Like how did that go? Did you start with just like the basic function, like the most basic thing and then add stuff until you got, and what, what I guess specifically, like what metric were you looking at to say like, okay, retention is good now. Alex: 00:43:58Hmm. Yeah, that's a great question. So we did start with the most basic core functionality, and I think one of the things that we did that I would do again, We just solved our own problem. So like I, so we, we started at the beginning of COVID, so like New York where I live, locked down basically the day, almost the day that I left Tinder.Right. And so and so I remember I'll never forget things were shutting down. So I ran to the nursery nearby plant nursery, and I bought like 30 plants. Cause I was like, I need to have the problem in order to be deeply motivated to solve it. Right. Cause like, if you actually have like over 10 plants, keeping track of them kind of socks a little bit, it's hard.And so I knew that I needed the problem and that motivated us and, and our whole team really, we basically just wrote like a prototype app to solve our own problem. and once it was working for us is when we started bringing like beta users in, we did like a test flight, version for a month brought in like maybe a thousand or I think it was 2000 beta users total and there in like August, 2020.And. Jacob: 00:44:59Did you, how did you get that list for the beta? Just Facebook and Alex: 00:45:04Facebook. It was, it was mostly Facebook like groups and stuff like that. Jacob: 00:45:07Mm. Alex: 00:45:08Yeah. and it posted on Reddit. Reddit is hard. but, we did a little bit Jacob: 00:45:15Rip off middlemen made easy. That's my favorite. We posted, I posted right. It was where we launched two and I have this, this favorite hater quote that I have like screenshot it on my desktop that I will hold on to until we IPO. Alex: 00:45:27The hater codes or something people should be prepared for, I think,Jacob: 00:45:30Yeah. Alex: 00:45:32But let's see. So we solved that. Here's the key is that we specifically, for our app, we wanted to solve the retention piece first. And so he chose the behavior in the app that would be associated with retention because the way that I personally think about retention is that right.What happens is you have a trigger. So a person needs an external trigger to think about opening your app. Right? So it could be a feeling that they have like Tinder, it's a feeling I'm bored or I'm lonely. And I want to see people, and that's an external trigger that causes a person to think about your app.Then you need value to them to actually open your app. Right? Like, okay, I have this trigger in this app can adjust that trip. Sure. So for us, we didn't have like an emotion, but we did have, the need for reminders. And so basically we, leveraged push indicator very heavily. Our whole app is like a water reminder app right now that's the core value.And so we built that specific functionality, water reminders before anything else, because we wanted to validate, is that a sticky behavior? Is that something that people will actually want to do and use over like six months? Right. And because we knew we wanted to get six months of data, we had to build it first.Right. Because you have to really think about how long it's going to take to get that validation. and we were bootstrapped. And so we knew that like, well, we can't bootstrap for forever. Right. And so we needed to front load the questions that we knew investors would be asking when we went out to fundraise.David: 00:46:57So speaking of which you just raised $5.4 million seed round, how, tell us about the process. It sounds like you were, you know, having been at Tinder and been in Silicon valley and in the industry, that was your goal that you didn't come into it thinking you were going to bootstrap this forever. and you were specifically kind of building up some of those retention numbers and other things that you knew investors would ask for.So, how did fundraising go having kind of iterated into that direction? Alex: 00:47:35It's definitely hard as hell. I don't know, like you don't ever say that it's not. but it wasn't, it wasn't like excruciating. I think recruiting is actually probably a little bit more difficult, especially right now. There's a lot of, a lot of movement in the, in the why people are working, how they wantJacob: 00:47:51It's easier. It's easier. to write a check than it is to take a job. I think, you know, like to give it to somebody to do, do Alex: 00:47:57You can write multiple checks. Right?Jacob: 00:47:58Yeah. It's not your, it's not your every day, you Alex: 00:48:02Exactly. Yeah. So, let's see. We actually, to go back to your first point, we weren't, completely, we hadn't decided that we were definitely going to raise VC capital. and so there was like, like we did work through that as a team and we ended up deciding, various specifically. Our mission is one that we believe would benefit from us being good at raising capital, because we think that if we can bring capital and talent to this industry and this problem domain, that's a good thing.And then even from a life perspective, like we wanted, we want to move quick, we want to be able to grow. You want to be able to like, build delightful things for lots of people. and so that was, that was the main motivation behind the VC capital. I think it's a big trade-off. so we, we definitely did not take it lightly and we did deeply evaluate Jacob: 00:48:49Closes, off a lot of paths, Alex: 00:48:51It does. Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:52You kind of really narrows what your future, I mean, Alex: 00:48:55Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:55You on a trajectory to something potentially much, much bigger, but it Alex: 00:48:58Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:59Of like brings down your, your options. Alex: 00:49:02It does. Yeah. And I think you just have to think about like, am I okay with needing to focus on eventually providing an exit to these people who trusted with their capital, right. Yeah. And I think maybe something that people don't think about is like the CEO, whoever is fundraising. Like you, you build a relationship with your, your, your VC partners, right?Like I consider them like life journey partners at this point. And so it's not that like, it's certainly not an adversarial relationship. It's more like I have a true responsibility to these people because we had a clear, like, this is the agreement is like capital and then they have obligation to their investors too.And so, you know, I'm aligned with that and I think you're right. You just have to think about like, is that, is that aligned with my vision for this, this journey, right. David: 00:49:45And then speaking of, of an exit, you shared with me, you have a very unique approach to employee equity. I'm actually curious to hear at, Jacob's take on this, having gone through the whole thing, himself, but Yeah. Tell us about your equity structure. Alex: 00:50:05Yeah. We, we definitely are, experimenting and trying something different and I think there's pros and cons.Jacob: 00:50:12Investors love that, by the way. I'm sure those were easy conversations. Alex: 00:50:17Surprisingly most investors were, were okay with it. I definitely had a couple that were concerned about, the implications in the medium term, but here I'll get to what it is. So, yeah. Okay. So basically, like we, wanted to distribute as much of the financial ownership of the company across as many of the early teammates as we could.And the reason for that is like the real thought that I had that whether or not other people think about this kind of thing, I would, I would encourage people to ask the best, which is, if I have an exit, how big of an exit would I really want to feel very fortunate about. Right. And like, really think about like how much money do I actually need.Right. Because I think that there's a lot of people who get caught up with like, I want a billion dollars, right. Or like, I want like a hundred million dollars. I've been fortunate enough. Like we pointed out earlier, my first company was acquired for like a fine amount and then Tinder totally exploded. I didn't own as much of it, but it is still a positive outcome.And I can say that like they didn't change anything. And I know it's a very cliche thing to say, but I think it's a productive exercise that if anybody was founding a company, I would recommend asking, at what point am I again, feeling fortunate about the outcome, right? And then what we really thought about is our ability to recruit a great team.And basically the decision that we made is that, there's really two aspects to equity. and I'd be curious again, Jacob's take on this there's there's compensation for risk. So early teammates take more risks, quote unquote. Right? And so that, that's a typical, like reason for, founders taking a large, large Jacob: 00:51:52Costs risk mostly. Right. But Alex: 00:51:54Opportunity cost and risk.And then the other dimension that I think about is. Where, early stage companies are hard for everybody who's involved. And my prior experience pointed towards like the first 20 people who joined the company, or at least definitely 10 or 15, all worked, pretty much as hard. And definitely at least not like 10, it's impossible to work 10 times harder. Right. And so, Jacob: 00:52:19And with less M with less glory, to be honest, Alex: 00:52:22With less boring. Yeah, Jacob: 00:52:23Don't, they don't get all the likes on follows on Twitter or whatever. Right. Alex: 00:52:27Exactly.Jacob: 00:52:28Try to distribute it, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a grindy place to be for sure. Alex: 00:52:33Not getting the glory is like a, it's definitely a double edged sword because I think that that glory is also a responsibility. Right. But, yeah. And so basically we decided to try this approach where we wanted to do this exercise of distributing that equity as equally as possible. And so he set up a mathematical curve where whenever I make an offer, I just look at this math equation.What is the amount of equity that this next person gets. Right. and, and so, and we did that and basically projected out like, okay, each person gets to like, like if we reached a billion dollar company, each teammate should have an outcome of something like $10 million or more, right. Like something, something above that number.And it was really important to map that out because otherwise it can go forward. And, yeah, basically that, that was our exercise. I mean, basically they decided like, okay, can we, can we turn that around a little bit? And, the side effect that I like, so again, we're, we're early in this, like, we're, we're an eight person team we're in a 15 and it may turn out to be complicated.And again, we check in in a year, but what I like about it is it, did enable a completely transparent cap table. Right. And that's nice. Cause like, I don't think it's like maybe required, but I do like being able to show people like this is who owns this Jacob: 00:53:50Who owns with you? Right? Alex: 00:53:53Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that's a positive side effect.But there's definitely it's complicated.Jacob: 00:54:00Yeah, I well, so David, my take is actually we do something very similar that's I like also like, so interestingly and, and inside, inside baseball, I think, it it's it's we, we did, something similar. No, we weren't as scientific with it for the first, like we had like a rough rule, but it was like the same, like X, each number, like the number like decreased, like, but this backoff curve, I've found it a very, it's a very hard problem to reason about, because you want, you want to think about this, you want the hundredth employee to have some skin in the game.Right. But you, you need to balance that with like, Hey, like come join this company that you've never heard of. And like probably has like worst benefits and you know, who knows it's going to be, it's going to be a mess. Right. And so like, finding that balance is really hard. and, and, you know, Looking at where we're at 30 people now, and the complexity definitely grows. And then I think also you start thinking about like recruiting leverage and like, what, you know, what, how much equity do I need to offer to be able to like, recruit these different types of roles and things like that. And your systems get more complex, but, but, but it's still, did you guys, did you do something special on special on founder equity to create like more, more room on the cap table?Or did you ha how many co-founders do you have?Alex: 00:55:11That's such a blurry line. I don't know if this is just me by name or no, like, well, is that the fourth person? Like, I mean,Jacob: 00:55:18I guess that's true. yeah. Alex: 00:55:20Yeah. Jacob: 00:55:21A, maybe that's a, it's a YC thing is where they're like very clear, like who are the co-founders and who are not But, but yeah, I, I agree. It's probably mostly a, a label.Alex: 00:55:32I feel like we have six co-founders. realistically there were, there were two of us that were like, thinking about this, you know, like that's not true. There were three of us that were thinking about this, like two years ago. so we, I, I called them co-founders and so we're all on this same plans.Like we have this graph where like, I am the first black. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, It's Jacob: 00:55:51Interesting. Alex: 00:55:53Like as much as possible. And so the hardest, this plan is definitely hardest on the first three people and it requires incredible cultural buy-in to that because it means that the outcome, like, I, I definitely worked on this for a lot longer than like the people who are joining today.Right. And like, it was stressful and hard, but here's, here's my, my, my personal take. And, is that I actually think the risk of doing startups and I feel like YC, you may agree with us. The risk of doing startups is like so much lower than most people realize for people who have the fortune of having a safety net.Right? Like if you're, if you, if you have a family and you don't have savings, then like, of course that is a, that is a risky proposition. for people who are relatively early or mid stage in their careers and they have savings and they're not actually gonna end up in a really dangerous spot, then I think that startups are almost always a net positive.If you really apply yourself, because the amount that you learn and grow by solving that many problems, only accelerates your career. Right. And so going back to the risk versus there's also opportunity costs, and then there's effort. I personally discount the risk for people who are fortunate enough to have that safe space.I discount that risk almost to zero, because I think that it's just such a, even this time around for me, my second startup, I have learned so much and it's been such a good life experience that even if it didn't work out tomorrow, net win. For sure. Sure.Jacob: 00:57:17Yeah. David: 00:57:18So part of the reason I brought it up was that I, when I joined and I've told Dick at this, when I joined revenue, this is way inside baseball. Goodness a open, an open enough on the podcast. But when I joined Romney, I thought more along the lines of you, Alex. Like I thought, well, why is Jacob getting so much more of the company and, and revenue Katz, like the first 10 employees and then the next 20 it's actually, it's very generous compared to the industry, like take a, did an incredible job and has been great with equity.So, but, but early on you, you're at a startup and you're like, wow, I'm working really hard. He's working really hard. Like why, why, why is the outcome going to be so different? But honestly, 18 months in and Jacob having raised a series B and like taking a lot of the hardship, like you as a founder are going to have to do things and be under amount of stress.And like, there, there really is. And I, I don't, it's probably somewhat true for maybe those, you know, those first early employees, how carry a little bit of that load, but the F but a founder just has to carry a different load. And so. Jacob: 00:58:29It's always going to fall on that first two, you know, whatever people on the cap table. Right. Whatever it's going to keep rolling until it hits you at some point. And, you know, as it gets bigger. yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know. It's an, it's an interesting, this could very easily devolve into like the nature of capitalism and ownership.Right. Because it doesn't, it plays very much against this, like, you know, constant, like Marxists debate about like labor versus capital and like, what are the value and what is like value and like, cause you know, you like, you had this whatever period it was one month, one year or whatever. That's like such, you know, if you

 Pre-order Michele's book! https://deployempathy.com/order Follow Nicole on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NicoleBaldinu Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Recut. If you make videos or screencasts, Recut could help you cut your editing time by half or more. Recut removes the awkward pauses, the gaps and the silent parts so you can stop spending hours slicing and dicing with the razor tool. Recut makes a cut list that you can import into your favorite Mac-based editor, like Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut, or ScreenFlow. You can get 10% off with the code SoftwareSocial, or download the free trial at GetRecut.com.  Michele Hansen  Hey, welcome back to Software Social. I am so excited about what we have going on today. We have Nicole Baldinu, Co-Founder and COO of WebinarNinja joining us. Welcome, Nicole.  Nicole Baldinu  00:51Hey, Michele. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.  Michele Hansen  00:54I'm so excited to have you on. First of all, I mean, you guys have built such an incredible company. Just to give a little bit of background. So, WebinarNinja was founded in 2014. You also produce the $100 MBA Show, which won Best of iTunes in 2014. 23 full-time team members, 100% customer-funded, an amazing business. I am so excited that you're joining us today. Nicole Baldinu  01:24Aw, thank you. That's, that's really nice. It's almost like sometimes you forget, you know, where you've been. You just keep going and charging forward. It's like, yeah, we've been around since 2014. Must be doing something right. Some days, it doesn't feel like you're doing anything right, you know. Michele Hansen  01:43When in 2014 did you guys launch? Because we were also 2014. Nicole Baldinu  01:47Oh, WebinarNinja, like, around April.  Michele Hansen  01:51Okay. Nicole Baldinu  01:52It was around April, yeah.  Michele Hansen  01:53Wow.  Nicole Baldinu  01:54I know. It's crazy. Michele Hansen  01:56It's kinda, so, we launched in January of 2014, and we are still just the two of us. And you guys have like, 23 people, and I mean, it's so interesting how many, like, different paths you can take. Nicole Baldinu  02:14Yeah, and the number of iterations, I think, like, yeah, I don't even remember version one, you know. It feels so long ago. But that's true. Like, I don't think we in, like, even intentionally set out to just grow, grow, grow. You just kind of take one, one step forward, and you just keep moving. It's like, yeah, we need help, like, you know. You're answering all your customer support queries in the beginning, and then it's like, no, you need some help. And then you hire your first teammate, and then it just, just keeps growing. Michele Hansen  02:47So, let's fast forward a little bit to, I guess, would be five years into it for both of us. We met at MicroCon in 2019 and were basically instant friends. Um, and I remember what, I think, I think you might have come up to me, and you were really interested in learning how to do customer interviews, which is, like, my jam. Nicole Baldinu  03:17Yeah, I loved that conference so much. It was, it was such a, I think for me, that was the first time, it was kind of the first SaaS-focused conference. I think a lot of the conferences I'd been to before were very, I don't know about you, if you've attended like, other conferences outside the SaaS space, but a lot of podcasting conferences, you know, I remember the first, do you remember NMX? New Media Expo? Michele Hansen  03:45The name sounds familiar, but I didn't, I've never been a huge conference attender, so I haven't been to a lot. Nicole Baldinu  03:52That was my first conference, and that was January of 2013. And that was literally when I, you know, that was my first kind of foray into entrepreneurship, and so meeting bloggers and podcasters, and it was all just such a new unknown, like world. But I remember like, MicroCon being just really special because I just felt like, that it was, it was kind of like, I felt people were really honest and vulnerable and authentic when it came to talking about, you know, the pitfalls and the challenges of SaaS. businesses. And yeah, and I remember I loved your talk because I just felt like, you did, what was it like a chat, like it was a 10 minute tactic or something, or?  Michele Hansen  04:41Yeah, it was an attendee talk.  Nicole Baldinu  04:43Yeah. Michele Hansen  04:44Yeah.  Nicole Baldinu  04:45And, and I still have your notes. I shared this with you last time we spoke. I still have your notes because I just thought it was so helpful, so practical, and the, the crazy thing is though, when was that? So that was MicroCon 2019, right?  Michele Hansen  04:59Yeah. Nicole Baldinu  05:00That's the first time I heard, I think that's the kind of the first time I really thought, oh, you can do, like, you can talk to your customers. You can do, like, this kind of user research. And I've only done my very first customer user research this year, three years on, but I still have your notes. And it was, yeah, it was just super inspiring. I just thought it just seems like such a cool thing to do. And, yeah, so I finally, finally took the plunge. Michele Hansen  05:28So, let's dive into that plunge a little bit because I think it's, I think it's totally normal that it would take you some time from from like having that moment of being oh wait, I can talk to customers, to then sort of, not just like, sort of working up the courage for it, but also the time and, like, fitting it into your schedule and thinking it really, really through and so, like, could you kind of take us back to earlier, I guess, earlier this year, when you really started to hit the ground on it? Nicole Baldinu  06:03Yeah, and I mean, I should, I should also say that we had done user research and customer interviews, but it wasn't me that had done it. So Omar, who's my Co-Founder, the CEO, also my husband, business and partner in life and business, he had done the first user interviews, and kind of, because he's more customer has been always more customer-facing. He had done user interviews, but it was something that I never felt that I could do. Like, I'd kind of be behind the scenes and reading Intercom, like support, you know, conversations and seeing what, you know, customers were saying and replying. But it was all very much chat and email never like, let's get on a call and let's talk about it. So recently, we've kind of wanted to, the whole reason behind starting to do this is because we wanted to kind of refine part of our offering and also look at a potential MVP out of this, this offering. And so I just thought, I don't know, and all of a sudden, I just felt like I want to do it. I don't even know what, like, why I just woke up one morning and said I'm going to do these, which is, like, really unlike me. But um, but I just decided to, yeah, I think I made that decision, like, I'll do the interviews. And then as soon as I took that decision, I literally went for my notebook from the, to look for the notes that I took from MicroCon. I then went and looked at all your blog posts and everything that you had on, you know, on the topic, as much as I could like, digest in like, I had a week, I think, before I was like, I scheduled the first one. And, and then yeah, and then I was just like, okay, I have got my questions now, thanks to like, you know, I looked up some of the sources that you had, you know, referenced. So I went in, you know, okay, I've got my questions. Now I know what I want to do, I want to know what I want to ask. And then it was literally the mechanics of okay, get a Calendly up, send out the blast, like, the blast out on Intercom to actually invite people to, you know, to be interviewed. So then all those little pieces, too, that I think, like, I was kind of procrastinating on, they just all fell together really quickly. It's like, okay, you just got to invite people, people reply. You just got to have a, you know, a sequence to, you know, send them your Calendly then it all gets done, then you've got your questions. And then it just, then they just started. And then as soon as I did my first one, I was really upfront with the first. She was she was lovely, my first interviewee. And that was great, because I was very nervous and I just basically said, you're the first person I'm interviewing. And so that kind of just made me feel a bit more at ease. And, and she was just lovely, and just easy to talk to and just answered all my questions. And then I just realized, after that call I was like, this is so much fun. I love this. I think when we talked last time, I was like, totally geeking out on just how much fun it is and what a positive experience it actually ends up being talking to your customers. Michele Hansen  09:08I think last time we talked, which was about a month ago, I remember you said that it had basically become your favorite part of your job. Nicole Baldinu  09:19Did I say that? Yeah, it's true. It's weird. It's totally taken me by surprise. I was thinking a little bit more about that, though. Why? I feel like it's a very positive experience. Because initially, I thought oh, you know, there's the potential that you know, the conversation could just turn into like, this is one of the things I thought it would turn into. I thought it would turn into a let's, let's ask about, you know, support for WebinarNinja, like, show me how to do this or complain about something that's not working as expected. I thought it would go down that path, but it didn't. It just ended up being very much focused on the questions I was asking and, which was really focused on what they do, like how they deliver their content, and, and about their business, and about why, I mean, the, my favorite question, and this, I think comes from your blog post, and I think this is what kind of, I see them light up and kind of lights me up is when I asked them, what's the big picture? What are they trying to do? And that question is just, it's, it's just my favorite question on the interviews, because it just brings out, yeah, it just gives them an opportunity to really share, oh, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. And they get to just, I don't know if I'm like rambling a little bit, but I don't know, would, have, you've asked that question before, right? Michele Hansen  10:55Yeah, I'm curious, can you ask me that question as if you were interviewing me? Nicole Baldinu  11:02Okay. So, Michele, what's the big picture of what you're trying to do? Michele Hansen  11:13And that's it.  Nicole Baldinu  11:14That's it.  Michele Hansen  11:15Like, that's only a couple of words. They're not very big words. Like, it's a such a simple question, yet you have found that that just lights people up. Nicole Baldinu  11:28There's only one person that kind of asked for clarification, and then when I had to reframe it, I just said, why are you doing what you're doing? Oh, my why? Oh, okay. But everyone, everyone else kind of, it was interesting, like, everyone else got it. And it all comes around to you know, they want to help, they want to share, they want to empower. It's just, it just brings out, yeah, it brings out their why, but without asking it in that way. Because I think if you say what's your why, I think if it's all, I don't know why that feels a bit more daunting than what's the big picture? Because the big picture, because sometimes I would actually expect from that answer that they would talk about what they're trying to achieve in their business. I actually didn't know originally where that question would go. That's kind of probably what surprised me. I thought it would be more focused on the business. Like they would tell me what they're trying to achieve maybe financially, or, you know, what their goals are. But it did kind of step back, for some reason it did actually generate the response of this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. That makes sense?  Michele Hansen  12:38No, it does. I've actually been, I was thinking about this a lot the past couple of days, because one of my, my subject matter editors for my book was, they made a note in the, in their edits, that I had a couple of why questions, and they reminded me that those need to be what questions, and I've been thinking about what's and why's all weekend, actually, so I'm so glad you brought this up. Because when we ask someone a why question, we're asking, in some ways we're asking for causality. We're asking why they do something, like, and asking them to sort of think through the reasons why they do something. But if you ask someone the same question, but you rephrase it as a what, it's a much easier question. Like, why are you here versus, what led you here? They're basically the same question, but if I asked you what led you here, you walk me through the different steps that you went through, and the causality can sort of come through the details of that. Versus if I said, why are you here, then you have to sit and be like, why, why am I here? And like, like, you get lost a little bit in the question. And so asking a what question instead is usually cognitively much easier to answer. And, you know, maybe, as you said, some people may, you know, they may appreciate being asked a why question after the initial what question. But for most people asking, you know, I mean, I do this with my daughter, too, right? Like, you know, instead, instead of saying, like, you know, you know, what, like, why aren't you down here for dinner yet? Like, being like, be like, so what's your plan? Like, dinner is on the table, what's your plan? And then that opens up to, oh, well, I'm actually getting this ready. Or like, you know, this weekend, she's like, oh, I'm making a card for daddy for Father's Day. Okay. Alright, cool. Like, you're not, this isn't an intentional thing. But so, rephrasing as a what I think gives it also, as you said, it gives people options to where to take that question. And I think, I think kind of as sort of both of us just had a moment of earlier on when we were talking of like, wow, I guess we have been doing this for a long time, and it's pretty awesome, and how cool is that? Like, we don't really step back and think about that very often, and I wonder if when you asked that question it like, it sounds like you are prompting that same kind of reflection in people, which, in turn, makes them really excited to talk to you because you're making them feel good about themselves and what they do. Nicole Baldinu  15:25Yeah, I'm just blown away by that, just that little explanation about the difference between the what and the why, like, it just takes the whole process, the whole, asking those questions to another very sophisticated level, and just realize sometimes, like, I don't want to, I don't, sometimes I feel like I don't want to think too much about it, but I think it can be so sophisticated and so refined, the actual process of asking these questions and learning more about people. I guess this is my first run at it, and, yeah, like, even if it's, if it's not at that level, whatever I'm getting out of it, I feel is worthwhile. And I know that I can take it to another level because I love what you just explained, and I think it makes so much sense. But yeah, there's, there's so many layers to it. There's so many layers to it. And it's true, I do feel that it does, I do feel that sense of like, it's fun, like they don't mind, like the crazy thing is it's like, I don't know how long the tick, a typical interview should be, I should ask you that, but, you know, I said, you know, I don't want to take up too much of people's time. So I just said, okay, I'll just keep it to 20 minutes. They've all gone overtime. And there's not a sense of like, I need to get off this call. I have to initiate that let's get off this call, because they're very happy to continue talking because we're both actually having, I feel like it's an enjoyable experience on both sides, which is really cool.  Michele Hansen  16:56Yeah. Nicole Baldinu  16:57That really surprised me but, Michele Hansen  16:59So that that makes a lot of sense to me, because you are, like, you're hearing about how your product helps them and, which, you know, you mentioned you, you know, pop in on intercom support tickets and whatnot. Like, I think for, you know, us founders who do, like, talk to our customers a lot just by default, because you know, there's customer support their sales, like there's, there's all those other things. But interviewing someone is so, so different, because they tend to, like,, it's much more appreciative environment than, than like, hey, there's this bug or whatever. But then also for that person, like they get to talk about what they do, and they're actually, like, MRI studies they've done of people when they are, when they are talking about themselves or their experiences to another person, like, the parts of the brain related to motivation and enjoyment light up way more than they do, than if you were, than you were listening to someone else talk or you're talking about something that isn't directly related to your own experience. So it's, like, it is enjoyable for people to, to be asked these questions. I think as you kind of, as we were sort of talking about a little bit with the what's and the why questions like, there's, there's a lot of, like, levels here, but you don't necessarily need to know all of those levels in order to get started. You just need to be, I think, kind of like you did, to just sort of being willing to take the jump, which, you know, I think the first time feels a little bit like a polar bear dip and jumping in a freezing cold ocean, and you're like, okay, here we go. And then the next time you're just like, sprinting towards the ocean and excited for it. Nicole Baldinu  18:48Have you ever been, this is just going sideways now, have you ever been stood up on one of these interviews? Michele Hansen  18:53Yeah.  Nicole Baldinu  18:54Okay. Lots, or just? Michele Hansen  18:56So I noticed that that, like, it used to happen a lot when I was a product manager working in a company. Um, and I think that so, but when I'm from recruiting as the founder, like, people tend to show up. Like, it seems like it's more important to them. Like, when I was working in a company, we had someone who was coordinating all of the interviews, and so we had never spoken to them before we got on the phone with them, even over email. And I think it's easier to blow off, like, an anonymous person, rather than the person they're going to talk to, nevermind somebody who has a title, whether that's Co-Founder, or like, I mean, sometimes we actually invented titles just for the purpose of interviews, like,  Nicole Baldinu  19:42That makes sense, though.  Michele Hansen  19:43Like, I think we had some, like, Head of Customer Experience, which wasn't even a title at the company. And actually, Cindy Alvarez in Lean Customer Development talks about doing this, too, that like, it's much easier to know show when, when you don't feel, like, an attachment to that person. Um, so I think these days, if someone doesn't show up, it's usually because like, something, like, something legitimately like came up. Nicole Baldinu  20:12Yeah, no, I totally feel that because it's literally been just one person. And I do feel like there would be something that, you know, because I do recognize that sometimes I feel like there's an element of not intimidation, but like, oh, wow, I'm actually getting to talk to the Co-Founder, so it is a bit more special for them. And I do feel the first part of the interview might be a little bit stiff, but, yeah, maybe a little bit stiff until we kind of, you know, until I think a big picture question really breaks down the, let's forget that, you know, we're just literally two people talking. And then I think they do forget the interview setting. But yeah, I'd say like, you know, just one out of how many I've done, and it's not that many. I've done 13, so one out of 13. That's not bad. You can do the math. I haven't got a calculator, what ratio percentage that is. But, uh, yeah. Yeah, I definitely think, and the flip side of that, too, is the, the recognition at the end, which I get to feel really kind of special or feel so, it's so rewarding for me when they'll turn around at the end and say, you know, this is so good that you're doing this. Like, they really appreciate that a company would actually listen, take the time to talk to their customers. And they, you know, I've had people wish me the greatest success, and you're gonna do a great job, and this is gonna be amazing. And it's just, and you can, and I feel, I like, I genuinely feel like they're being authentic, because they felt like I've listened to them. I've, you know, taken the time to, you know, give them an opportunity to share what they need, what their pain points are, you know, learn a little bit more about themselves. And then I do feel there's that reciprocation of, like, I wish you well, and no, I wish you well. It's kind of cheesy, but it's kind of sweet at the same time. Michele Hansen  22:17You know, I find that people who I do interviews with, even though it's really not intentional, like, they will offer to do a testimonial for us. They will offer to be a reference like, like, or I'll notice on Twitter, like six months later, like, they're the one who's like popping in on threads when, when people need what we do. Like, it really creates this, like, incredibly valuable connection. Nicole Baldinu  22:42Yeah. Do you have any, like, do you do any follow up? Like, what's the next step? Because literally, I'm at like, stage one right now, where it's like, doing the interviews. And I've just hardly just, you know, started the analysis, and I haven't gotten very far. And then I'm thinking, well, what's the next step after that? Is there some other sort of, invite them to a focus group with, you know, and like, what's, what have you done? Michele Hansen  23:08So I actually, I want, I'm going to come back to asking you about the analysis because I'm super interested to hear about that. Um, it depends really on what it is. So for example, if they like talked about something that, let's say that we ended up deciding in the future might be a new product, for example. Like, I might come back to them and be like, hey, you know, this thing we talked about, and it might have been, like, three years ago, like, we're exploring this now, like, can I talk to you specifically about this particular element again? Or maybe we have a prototype of something, asking them to run through it with us or, you know, if there was sort of something that was unclear, or we needed to follow up with them about. Um, but sometimes there is no follow up. Very often, actually, they will follow up with me and be like, hey, like, you know, like, you guys seem really open to feedback, and so we're, you know, we're working with this other piece of data, like, is there any chance you guys could support that or whatever? Like, they will come back to us very often. But there doesn't, you know, beyond a thank you note, really, there, there doesn't have to be, there can be as much follow up as you need, right? Like if you're doing something early, like it might make sense to, you know, to ask them hey, like, can I come back to you for further questions if our prototype or maybe to help us prioritize different things, like, to go back and do card sorting with them? It really kind of, like, it sounds like you're talking to people who have been customers for a long time. Do we actually talk about that targeting you did to decide who to talk to? Nicole Baldinu  24:40I didn't, I just ran, no, they might not be customers for a long time. But they definitely are users and have an, I would say that the ones who've replied are all you know, they've had, they've used the product for some time, but it could be as little as like a month. It doesn't, Michele Hansen  24:59Yeah.  Nicole Baldinu  25:00Not longer than that. And then yeah. Yeah, we've had, I've had some more longtime users, but generally it's, yeah, just people that, because the question was quite targeted and asked a very specific question when I did the call out, like, do you do this and this? I'd love to talk to you. Michele Hansen  25:19Oh, yeah. What was, what was the exact question? Nicole Baldinu  25:22The exact question was do you run live courses or live training?  Michele Hansen  25:27Oh.  Nicole Baldinu  25:28I want to talk to you. And then so, that was the, yeah, that's how I got them in. So I think that specific question helped as well. I want to know if it helped. Michele Hansen  25:45You picked that question because you said you're exploring an MVP of something, and also sort of potentially repositioning or sort of tweaking your positioning towards that specific market? Nicole Baldinu  26:00Yes, because its current usage, it's a current way that the customers are using, you know, WebinarNinja to deliver live training and live courses. So I wanted, I want to learn more about how they're using it, and where their pain points are, and, yeah, and what we could do better in that, in that kind of space. Michele Hansen  26:23It sounds like it was a question most people would answer yes to. Nicole Baldinu  26:27If they do it, yeah.  Michele Hansen  26:28Right. Yeah.  Nicole Baldinu  26:29But not all our users. So because I suppose you know, there's a lot of WebinarNinja users who are, you know, using webinar ninja for marketing. Michele Hansen  26:39Right.  Nicole Baldinu  26:40And they're not necessarily delivering training.  Michele Hansen  26:43Right. Yeah. So the analysis, before we talk about what you do after the analysis. Nicole Baldinu  26:51Oh, my God.  Michele Hansen  26:53Like, what are you doing? Like, like, what does this process look like for you right now, and it may not be sort of conceptualized as a process. Nicole Baldinu  27:04Okay. So so far, it involves printing out the transcript. Step one. Step two is reading it with a highlighter. And, and so I guess where I'm struggling, or where I kind of want to refine the analysis is, what am I looking, because I'm looking for a few things, I suppose. I'm looking for, you know, words that they say or things that they actually do, actions they perform, things that are concrete. Then there's also the oh, I wish something that they don't do, but it's kind of aspirational. So. you know, how much weight can you put on, on, on on those kinds of, you know, it's like, oh, we should do this. But it's like, what, have you ever done that? You know, would, how likely are you, they don't know. They wouldn't know, right? If it's something just like, you know. And then it's also, yeah, looking at it through the filter of like a marketing message. How would I then communicate to resonate with people who are doing the same thing so that I could, you know, attract the same type of people as customers? So there's kind of like, three buckets, I suppose. And so yeah, and then so there's the highlighting. And then it's, because of there's these, kind of, three kind of areas, and I'm just kind of have columns, and I'm just writing out, you know, things that fit under those columns. Michele Hansen  28:45Do you feel like you're getting out of that what you were hoping for? Nicole Baldinu  28:52Um, well, I have to say so far from just the interviews themselves, I feel like I've gotten a lot out of it. But I want to see, I, I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know. This is a little bit like, I don't know, early stages. Michele Hansen  29:08Have you, have you tried diagramming the process for them, like, trying to sort of identify what, you know, what their big picture is, and then just all of the different pieces of that? Even if they're not, you know, sometimes we think of a process as like a bunch of linear steps, but sometimes it's also sort of an ecosystem of steps that kind of sometimes all sort of happen in a jumbly sort of order at the same time. And I'm curious if you've been able to sort of figure out what that looks like, for even, for each person. Nicole Baldinu  29:43No, but you're obviously saying that I would do that diagrammatic kind of visual for each one, right? And then later, look at all the similarities.  Michele Hansen  29:55Yeah. So some, I mean, if you're looking at people who are going through the same Sort of overall goal, then it would make sense to, to split out all of the different steps per person. And then to break them out by, did we talk about the different dimensions of problems? Like, the functional, social, emotional dimensions? Nicole Baldinu  30:16You, yes. But I was very, like, new to everything you were saying, so I was like, one process to everything. Michele Hansen  30:24That's okay. So, um, so I find this helpful, especially for, like, pulling out relevant parts that can be used for marketing or like, you know, sort of, wouldn't, like, quote them exactly, but like, the can inform like copy and whatnot. So there's a functional dimension to a problem, which is, you know, they, they want to run a sales training because they need their salespeople to sell more, or something. Like, so they need a tool that allows them to connect with their sales people remotely, for example. There's a social element, which is they are running this training, and there may be 10 people that they are training, and those 10 people have different levels of technology experience, and some of them have been with the company for a very long time, some of them are very new. Like, what are the different social factors going on, and how might they express that? Like, I want my team to feel like they're on the same page, like, for example, might come through and a quote, and then you say, so you hear that word team? And you're like, okay, well, what do they mean by team? Who exactly is on that team? Like, what, what is the story of all of how all these people came to be working together? And there might be an emotional perspective, as well, of like, how, how do they feel about the tool they used before? Was it frustrating for them? Did they feel like they were, you know, banging their head against the keyboard trying to get it to work, or to get their team members to install it? Or did they feel great when they get off of these trainings? Like, does this, do they find the tool, you know, easy to use? Like, and like, those are like, those also can come out in the quotes, too. And so what I find helpful is to kind of diagram the different steps, and they may be they may be linear steps, they may be, you know, concurrent, like, and then, and then, but for each one of those pieces of it, breaking out the functional, social, emotional components of it.  Nicole Baldinu  32:23Okay. Okay, yeah. Wow. This is so cool because there's just, there's so much to unpack in, you know, in one person's experience. And then I suppose, as you see the commonalities, I guess, that's when you, you know, across more people saying, if they're saying the same thing, I guess that's when you get validation, that's when you get, yeah, the understanding that this is affecting, this could be affecting more people. So I suppose I've gone, you know, the experience of actually talking to one person becomes very, like, it's just you and that person, and it becomes very much restricted to that world. And then you've got to step back and go, okay, I've got all these people now, they've said all these things. Now I've got to make sense of it. So it's just, I feel like I'm still, I'm enjoying the first stage so much. Like, and I feel like I've gotten a lot out of that first stage. But now it's like, okay, now this data is so valuable. What do I do with it? And I want to make sure that, yeah, it's unpacked. And then obviously, I know this information, I'm going to be unpacking it, but then I've got to communicate it to the rest of the team, as well, so putting it in a way that's like, you know, I can share it with Omar and the product team and now CTO. So there's just so many levels to it, but it's you know, it's all doable. It's exciting. Michele Hansen  33:59I think the more people you talk to, too, you're gonna start seeing those commonalities in in processes. So like, last episode, I was talking a little bit about activity-based design, which is basically the idea of going a step beyond human-centered design and thinking about the different processes that people are going through, and then you can start seeing the, the commonalities there. So for example, when I'm talking to someone, and it turns out that they're using us because they're doing, you know, US government Home Mortgage Lending compliance, like, their experiences of that are going to be very different than somebody who is you know, working with getting the timezone back from tractors that are in fields. And, but if I talk to somebody who's doing the compliance, like, generally like, like, as I when I hear that I'm like, okay, now I have a better idea of what this process is, from an overall perspective. How can I learn more about this person's, like, their company's specific functional elements, their specific social elements, like, their specific emotional pieces? Like, what do they think of the other options that they've tried compared to the other people I've heard and getting more and more depth each time. But there can be a huge breadth and, especially as I think you guys also are a horizontal SaaS, right? So you're, you're selling across many different industries, and, and I think this is where customer interviews are so fun, because I get to learn about so many industries and like, I'm like, I didn't even know that was a thing.  Nicole Baldinu  35:45I know, so varied.  Michele Hansen  35:48Versus, you know, someone who's selling horizontally, sorry, vertically within one industry, like they might not have that sent, you know, it might vary based on, you know, company size, or stage or whatnot. Um, I'm really curious, you mentioned bringing your team into it, which, you know, as a two-person team, we don't really do as much, but so like, how have you been able to bring other team members into this, or like, involve them in what you're learning?  Nicole Baldinu  36:16Well, so far, like, the first step I thought would be just okay, I'll put it, I'll make sure that I share the recording, the transcript, the details of the person I've used, you know, in like little folders on Basecamp. I've just basically organize it into little folders. And then as soon as I, you know, put up a new, a new interview, then I make sure that I share it with, so far right now, it's just me, oh my and our product, UX-UI designer, Maria, so I just share it, I say, hey, guys, there's a new interview. And I know they've been watching some of them. You know, I've highlighted a few that I thought, oh, this is super interesting. This person is definitely someone we'd go back to. So that's been just the extent of it so far. I feel like if I'm going to then, you know, share it, say, with our CTO, when it comes to more development time or, you know, when it starts to be a thing that's going to be fleshed out, or you know, if there's any development work, then I feel like there would have to be more, kind of, maybe a bit more of a traditional kind of a report where it's like, you know, X percent of people said this, or the majority are saying this, this is what, you know what I mean, it would have to kind of be backed up a little bit more by statistics. Michele Hansen  37:29I think they're, you know, I like to use qualitative and quantitative data together. And, you know, I, thinking back to when I was working in a bigger company, you know, we would say, like, for example, we see, you know, you know, 35% of users drop off on this page, and, you know, and then having a sort of data that like, this is important to the business for, you know, x millions of dollars reason, right? Like, if fewer people did that, then hello, money. And, but then we have like, quotes from people like, oh, well, it turns out that, like, they find this really difficult because that x, or they're looking for this other piece of information that isn't there, so they click the back button. And then here's a quote from someone that says, I really didn't know where to go, like, and then, and it's like, okay, so like, here's the picture, like, and now here, okay, great. Like, here's a project, like, here's something that a team can work on of, like, you know, the bounce rate from here is 35%. Like, let's get it lower because we have the, you know, we understand why people are doing that. We also understand why it's important to the business. Like, statistics, I find will not really come out of interviews, but interviews, explain why the statistics are what they are. Like, a spreadsheet of data will tell us what is happening, but it will never tell you why. Only people can tell you why, but you need both. Like it's, it's, I think there's sometimes people sort of think about, like, that you only use, you know, quantitative data, or, you know, I talk about interviewing and I think you only do interviewing, and it's like, no, like, porque no los does, like do it all together. Nicole Baldinu  39:10Porque no. Definitely los dos. Definitely. Well, yeah. It makes sense. And I think that's just, I think, why the process of actually, you know, literally doing a very manual printing out, highlighting actually gives you the opportunity to, to read because, you know, you're going to get one kind of experience when you're listening the first time and, you know, you're asking the follow up questions. But there's so much probably that's missed, even in on that call, until you actually go and read and, and highlight and just, yeah, analyze word for word, everything that was said. And there's a whole other layer there to unpack. Michele Hansen  39:15Yeah, I wouldn't, have you asked Maria, your UI-UX designer, to also read through them and do her own highlights?  Nicole Baldinu  39:42No, not yet. But that, is that something you, Michele Hansen  40:00That might be interesting. And, and there is research that says that when, like, multiple people are analyzing an interview, they pull out more of the problems. So the, the sort of like the paper on customer research was in the, is in the context of usability testing was called The Voice of the Customer. It's from 1993, or 1994, and they did all these different tests on how to pull out customer problems and analyze them. And they found that multiple people analyzing an interview tends to bring out many more of the user needs than just one person doing it.  That makes so much sense. Yeah. Because then, like, the way I'm thinking, obviously, I'm trying to do this as fast as possible, too, right? Let's get to like, analysis and presentation of like, here it is. This is what we need to do. I am trying to, like, speed that process up. But yeah, the risk there is that it's really then just my interpretation.  Nicole Baldinu  41:02Right. Michele Hansen  41:03Right. And some, they might just watch a video and, yeah, I remember that. But that deep level of analysis is, yeah, is going to be missed if we don't give that opportunity. So, yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, we did that, I believe, like, with the first user interviews. We gave those to our marketing teammate. So, that's how those were used, I feel. But I definitely think if it's, you know, we're starting, you know, if it's an MVP, then yeah, you're right, like someone else needs to go, I think this is actually the problem, or yeah, I agree, or no, I disagree. That's not the problem. And I think, you know, organizationally, giving somebody else the chance to discover something, too, like, they're not just being told what the learning is, but they have it, like, chance to discover it for themselves and maybe see something that somebody else missed. And one thing I love in Erica Hall's Just Enough Research is she talks about how powerful it is to bring other team members into the process because they're, you know, when we do interviews, and then bring them to other people and we're so excited about what we've learned, sometimes people can feel threatened or intimidated by that. Because all of a sudden, there's this new information coming in, and now it's on them to learn it rather than they didn't get to experience the joy of discovery themselves. And, Nicole Baldinu  42:29Oh, my God, you're blowing my mind. Sorry.  Michele Hansen  42:30And so it's more, like, if you can allow them to be in on the discovery process, whether that's as, you know, a silent listener on the call, or as part of analyzing the transcripts, or even, you know, collating transcripts, which is when you find, you know, let's say you find five common quotes, and then you're putting them all together have different commonalities. like they're part of the process, they're part of what's being learned, and they feel more invested and aligned with like, like, I just remember when, what like, when we, when I worked in a bigger company and we started bringing in the developers into just sitting in on usability testing, and not even asking questions or anything, just just listening, like, the level of team motivation and alignment, like skyrocketed because all of a sudden, everybody was learning. Nicole Baldinu  43:23So was, I just, yeah, I hear you. Like that, it makes so much sense, but I suppose it's one of those things that we just feel like, oh, we don't have time, you know, we got to move on. We got to keep, it's one of those things that does take time. But you're right, like, that excitement that I think is, like, this is so awesome. I'm having so much fun. This is so important. I'm learning so much. Just by sharing it, it literally is just my experience at that, at that point, unless somebody else gets to discover it for themselves now. Oh, man. How long, this whole process is gonna take three times as long. No, no, but it's good. It's good. It's so it's so valuable. But yeah. Michele Hansen  44:06And also the, in, the process doesn't have to ever stop. You know, it sounds like you're sort of in an intense phase right now, where you've been, I mean, when did you start doing the interviews?  Nicole Baldinu  44:20Oh, my gosh. Would have been like, not that long. Probably just like, three, four weeks ago.  Michele Hansen  44:29Okay. And you've done 13 in the past month, basically.  Nicole Baldinu  44:33Yeah, less.  Michele Hansen  44:34Yeah.  Nicole Baldinu  44:34Is that a lot? Michele Hansen  44:35That's, that's a lot. Like, that's a really good number, like, um, you know, I guess you are doing a specific like, project. So I mean, usually the, what I, like, the general guidance is to do five and then sort of stop and pause and analyze and see if you need to change your targeting. So, it sounds like you're consistently hearing different things from different people, so that warrants talking to more people. But also making research not just something that happens when you have a specific question, but just as a general sort of, I think, I tend to call it, like, maintenance research, like just sort of, on a general basis. But like, that's, that's really good, 13 in that amount of time. And so it makes sense that it would feel a little bit like, okay, now I have to analyze all of this, and this is going to be a lot of time and like, where am I going to find the time for this, in addition to everything else, but I think, I hope that eventually, you can find a place where you're just kind of doing like one or two a week, and maybe you're doing one and your UX person or a marketing person or somebody, a developer even, like, they're doing another interviews, and then you've got just like two a week, and then it's like, okay, like, what did we learn? Like, you know, does this does this match what we've heard in the past? How does it differ? Like, what new have we learned? Like, is there anything else we should kind of, you know, consider digging, digging on in the future? Nicole Baldinu  45:59Hmm. I love that. I wish, I mean, frankly, like, the five would have been helpful if you'd told me that last time. Five? No, I'm just kidding. Michele Hansen  46:12I mean, you also don't, you don't have to limit yourself to five, right? Like, it's just sort of, that's like, the kind of goal. And again, that's, that is also based on research, too, that you can surface in the context of usability studies, but like, surface 80% of customer needs with five interviews, but that assumes a pretty defined scope. And where you started with a broad scope, it makes sense that you would need more until you feel like you're starting to hear patterns. Nicole Baldinu  46:41Yeah. And I love what you said, like, that it definitely, and I'm so passionate, I think the more I do this, and the more, like, I talk about this, and geek out on this, and just love this whole process, the more I realize how much it should be a part of just regular in processes within a company, like,  Michele Hansen  46:57Amen. Nicole Baldinu  46:58Like you said. Yeah, I know, right? Like, I'm gonna spearhead the user research of the company. Well because it is, I mean, I don't know, like, like you said, we said at the beginning, it's like, it's one of those things, I think, as a company grows, you end up doing a lot more management, and, and that's great, because if you're working with great people, it's okay to you know, to do all those management duties. But this just becomes, you know, and then, you know, there's obviously always the putting out little fires here and there, whatever. But this, this has just been such a positive experience that I think, just really enjoyed it for that reason. So having this as an ongoing thing, I think is, would be great. Michele Hansen  47:44It sounds like you are I, I can just, I feel like I can see how inspired you are by doing, like, by how motivating it is. I am, I'm so excited to continue hearing about how all this goes. Um, and I feel like, I feel like I could talk to you about this all day because, like, talking to people about talking to people is my favorite topic. Like, like for my book, I interviewed 30 people because I just, it's just so much fun. But if other people want to stay in touch with you, what, what is the best way for them to do that? Nicole Baldinu  48:26Oh, like, to reach out? Just reach out, Nicole@WebinarNinja.com. There you go. You got my email. Michele Hansen  48:34And you're on Twitter, too, right?  Nicole Baldinu  48:36On Twitter. I'm on Instagram as well. You know, they can contact our support team and ask them to call me. Yeah, I'm in there. I'm in there every day. Michele Hansen  48:49Awesome. Nicole Baldinu  48:51Yeah.Thank you so much. This has been so much fun. Like, like, like you said, I could talk about this for days, days on end. Michele Hansen  48:59Alright, well, that's gonna wrap us up for this week. If you liked this week's episode, please leave us a review or tweet at Nicole and I. We would absolutely love to hear what has made you think about. 

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

Disciple Up #193 The Disciple's Identity Part 3: The Mighty Meek By Louie Marsh, 1-6-2021   INTRO: What's happening, where from here? Etc. 200th episode coming up! I am on Parlor - @discipleup.   Previous Disciple's Identity – Episodes 185, 188.   “5“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5, ESV)   Meek Not Weak   The meek (οἱ πραεις [hoi praeis]). Wycliff has it “Blessed be mild men.”   The ancients used the word for outward conduct and towards men. They did not rank it as a virtue anyhow. It was a mild equanimity that was sometimes negative and sometimes positively kind.   But Jesus lifted the word to a nobility never attained before. In fact, the Beatitudes assume a new heart, for the natural man does not find in happiness the qualities mentioned here by Christ.   The English word “meek” has largely lost the fine blend of spiritual poise and strength meant by the Master.   It is the gentleness of strength.  -  Real tough guys don't act tough, they don't have too. Special Forces guys I know – Marine Raiders!   Robertson, A. T. (1933). Word Pictures in the New Testament (Mt 5:5). Nashville, TN: Broadman Press.   My strengths are my weaknesses.   The Christian word, on the contrary, describes an inward quality, and that as related primarily to God. The equanimity, mildness, kindness, represented by the classical word, are founded in self-control or in natural disposition. The Christian meekness is based on humility, which is not a natural quality but an outgrowth of a renewed nature. To the pagan the word often implied condescension, to the Christian it implies submission. The Christian quality in its manifestation, reveals all that was best in the heathen virtue—mildness, gentleness, equanimity—but these manifestations toward men are emphasized as outgrowths of a spiritual relation to God. - Vincent, M. R. (1887). Word studies in the New Testament (Vol. 1, p. 37). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.   1) Meekness is great strength under the total control of another.   “29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29, ESV)   “3Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12:3, ESV)   All of His great strength - the power of God - was under the control of another - the Father!   2) Meekness is the result of confessing our spiritual poverty, mourning it, and receiving in power God's Kingdom and Comfort.                                 a, Remember the Spirit is the Comforter.   3) The Meek – I RELY on & LIVE THRU God's Power alone.   5  “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5 (ESV)   11  But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace. Psalm 37:11 (ESV)   I find God's Power in the HOLY SPIRIT ALONE.   4  And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5  for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”…8  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:4-5; 8 (ESV)   14  And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. Luke 4:14 (ESV)   Inherit the Earth:   By “the earth” (την γην [tēn gēn]) Jesus seems to mean the Land of Promise (Psa. 37:11) though Bruce thinks that it is the whole earth. Can it be the solid earth as opposed to the sea or the air? - Which brings us to the promise of verse 5 - inherit the earth.   Meek get it because we'll still be here after all those not in the Kingdom are long gone!   Meek have the earth now, because they're the only ones who really know how to enjoy it.   These pre-Christian meanings of the word exhibit two general characteristics:   They express outward conduct merely. They contemplate relations to men only.   A huge Theme of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus Ministry and Christianity in general is going below the surface.   We are always tempted to use only measurable items -outward, things that can be seen – to gauge growth.   Jesus drives straight into the heart.   “21“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' 22But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:21–22, ESV)   “27“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.' 28But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.   Keep the Context of heart in mind    29If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” (Matthew 5:27–30, ESV)   “34And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”” (Matthew 18:34–35, ESV)  

Choose To Make It A Great New Year! Louie Marsh, 1-3-2021   INTRO: Three slides of polls, top 5 Resolutions - 3   1) I choose to FORGIVE ALL who wrong me.   “34And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”” (Matthew 18:34–35, ESV)    “While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.”  - Ben Franklin   2) I choose to FOCUS ON what’s really important.    No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven. Philip. 3:13-14 (NLT)   3) I choose to FIND GOD in every situation.   “2looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2, ESV)   Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! Hebrews 12:1-3 (Mes)   I can be a … PESSIMIST OPTIMIST REALIST or I can be a CHRISTIAN   “8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8, ESV)   4) I must choose to DEAL WITH my flaws.   “8But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” (Colossians 3:8–10, ESV)   But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk. Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Col. 3:8-10 (Mes)   5) I must choose to FOLLOW JESUS no matter what!   “23And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23, ESV)  

Acts 16:25-40 – Mercy Received, Mercy GivenDecember 6, 2020Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)Right Attitude about Yourself9Now He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, crooked, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to raise his eyes toward heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other one; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost. (1 Timothy 1:15)Right Actions towards Others23“For this reason the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. 24And when he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25But since he did not have the means to repay, his master commanded that he be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment be made. 26So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ 27And the master of that slave felt compassion, and he released him and forgave him the debt. 28But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe!’ 29So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ 30But he was unwilling, and went and threw him in prison until he would pay back what was owed. 31So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their master all that had happened. 32Then summoning him, his master *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ 34And his master, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him. 35My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:23-35)Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. (Matthew 5:7)Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost sinner Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:16)

FAITH PUSHES THROUGH MARK 5 24...all the people followed, crowding around him. 25A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. 26She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. 27She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. 28For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”Matthew 9:20 ESV “came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment”Mark 5:29-34 29Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition. 30Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”31His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”32But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. 33Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. 34And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”PUSH THROUGH DISAPPOINTMENT12 Years Gotten Worse When I Young… Why tired, sad, angry | PUSH THROUGH DIS-EASEConstant bleeding. Unclean. Leviticus 15 Suffered from Doctors, Spent Everything, Leviticus 15:19,25,27 v19″If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening.v25 “‘If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, other than at the time of her customary impurity, or if it runs beyond her usual time of impurity, all the days of her unclean discharge shall be as the days of her customary impurity. She shall be unclean.'”v27 “Whoever touches those things shall be unclean; he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.”According to the same account in the Gospel of Mark, she had an issue of blood for 12 years (Mark 5:25). According to Leviticus 15:28 “‘But if she is cleansed of her discharge , then she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean.” Matthew 9:21 “…”If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.”” What was it about the garment of the Lord that she had such faith, that if Jesus was really the Messiah that she would receive healing?Malachi 4:2 “But to you who fear My name The Sun of Righteousness shall arise With healing in His wings’…” The word “wings” used here is the same as the word “borders” seen in Numbers 15:38. So the woman knew that if this is the Messiah, then surely if I can just get close enough to touch the hem or the borders of His garment, I can surely receive healing. She was embracing the promise that the Messiah had healing in His wings. She looked upon Jesus and believed that He was who He claimed to be. When she had touched the hem of His garment, it was the same as touching Him. She looked to Him by faith and when her faith touched His grace she was healed.

Renewal – Life Lessons From Nehemiah, #7 Covenant– Neh. 9-10 By Louie Marsh, 10-25-2020   5 Pics as Intro.   When the wall was finished Israel renewed their COVENANT WITH GOD.   “32“Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day…38 “Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.” (Nehemiah 9:32, 38, ESV)   WHAT IS A COVENANT?   COVENANT (Heb. berît, “cutting”). The term applied to various transactions between God and man, and man and his fellowman. In Obadiah it is rendered “allied.” In the NT the word diatheke, “disposition” or “will” respecting a person or thing, is used; sometimes it is translated “Testament”, at other times “covenant.”   Application of the Term. Properly used of a compact between man and man; either between tribes or nations or between individuals in which each party bound himself to fulfill certain conditions and was promised certain advantages. - The New Unger's Bible Dictionary.   In The New Covenant God Has Promised…   1) A new HEART AND SOUL – Regeneration.   This would involve the giving of a new heart (a new inner control center where the issues and direction of life are determined) and the new nature (a new favorable disposition toward God consisting of the law of God in the heart).   “33For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV)   “26And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26, ESV)   2) FORGIVENESS of sin.   “34And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”” (Jeremiah 31:34, ESV)   “25I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.” (Ezekiel 36:25, ESV)   3) The indwelling of the HOLY SPIRIT.   “27And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:27, ESV)   4) The Spirit POWER.   “13May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:13, ESV)   5) Jesus will never  LEAVE ME.   “19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”” (Matthew 28:19–20, ESV)   6) Freedom From THE LAW   “1For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you…4You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:1-2, 4–6, ESV)   7) Every SPIRITUAL BLESSING in Christ!   Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Through Christ, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing that heaven has to offer. Ephesians 1:3 (GW)   HOW CAN I ENTER THIS COVENANT? B = Believe Jesus died on the Cross for me and showed He was God by coming back to life again. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, (1 Cor. 15:2-4) A = Accept Christ as Lord of My life and His free forgiveness of my sins. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- (John 1:12) In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace (Eph. 1:7) S = Switch to God’s Plan for my life. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15) I = Inform others of your decision. That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9) S = Submerge yourself in Christ. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3:26-27)  

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.

Matthew 18:21-35 The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant 21Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how oftenwill my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?As many as seven times?22Jesus said to him,I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. 23Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wishedto settle accounts with his servants.24When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed himten thousandtalents.25And since he could not pay, his master ordered himto be sold, with his wife andchildren and all that he had, and payment to be made.26So the servantfell on his knees, imploring him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.27And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him andforgave him the debt.28But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundreddenarii,and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe.29So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you.30He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.31When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.32Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.33And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?34And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers,until he should pay all his debt.35So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brotherfrom your heart.

Come on in and check out this interview with the Clicks and Mortar Queen Donnalynn Riley. Donna tells an amazing story of how she went from being the CEO of a retail chain to becoming a Spiritual Coach who is helping entrepreneurs bring ALL of who they are to their businesses. Connect with Donnalynn here at her site: https://www.donnalynnriley.com/ Also, Donnalynn has a 5 Day Masterclass you can sign up for in order: Get Out Of Your Head, Embrace Your Imperfections & Get On Track With Your Business! https://www.donnalynnriley.com/5dc-reg brandon handley00:02All right, 54321 Hey there, spiritual dope. I'm on today with Donna Lynn Riley, who is a licensed spiritual health coach who helps people develop evolve and grow. 00:17The answers they find that their journey, bring them to a new level clarity and emotional adjustment to help them develop their expertise in business systems management and marketing. 00:25And addition to her 12 years as a licensed coach her background is the CEO of a multimillion dollar corporation. 00:31informs her ability to help her clients navigate the inner workings of business systems Operations Management and Marketing so they can successfully put it all together themselves. 00:42I'm going to cut it down because that, that's great. And I'm so excited because, as we're going back and forth a little bit here earlier. This is exactly what this podcast is about. So thank you for joining me today. Donnalynn Riley00:53Oh, it's my pleasure. It's great what you're doing. It's great that you're talking about this. It's really good. brandon handley00:58Thank you. Thank you. So you mentioned that you'd call it a couple of podcasts. So what I always like to say is you know you're here today. We're using this podcast as a vehicle to send somebody out there a message, what is it that they need to hear this coming through you today. Donnalynn Riley01:17Well, I always think people need to know that life can be a lot easier than we're making it. I think that that's a place where 01:29Almost invariably people don't believe that. Right. They just go like, nah, couldn't be that I got to work harder. I gotta do more. I gotta you know think more 01:43I have to put out more effort. It's got a cost more. There's got to be a big, you know, emotional or financial cost to the things that I want in life and really 01:54Life can be so much easier than we make it. And I think that that's the benefit of of this approach of a spiritual practice that supports. 02:06Business life and certainly family life, when I know lots of coaches who do that as well. And, you know, really kind of make it better, just make your life better. brandon handley02:16Yeah, no, absolutely. So the idea is that life doesn't have to be so hard. Donnalynn Riley02:21Really doesn't brandon handley02:23And and also throw out there. I think in the first person that I know that's worked on Broadway. Right. And this is this is a story that you tell 02:30In one of your one of your videos right and helping once you tell people use that story real quick here right now. I love that story about just what you said there. 02:41Do you remember so so I'll take it away. So you were around 19 your brothers like 10 years old or new 02:47Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah 02:50Yeah yeah Donnalynn Riley02:50Okay, okay. I gotcha. Sorry about that. 02:54I was like I was there a long time. I don't know. brandon handley02:58Just getting into it right and 02:59How easy how easy sometimes 03:01For you. Donnalynn Riley03:01Yeah. So what I love about that is that, um, so. Okay, so let me let me kind of lay it out here so I'm like 19 years old I 03:11You know, I'm just out the gate. Right. But I'm 10 foot tall and bulletproof because so was everybody when you're 19 brandon handley03:18Right. Yeah, absolutely. Donnalynn Riley03:19And so when you're not very dinged up 03:22You know, you just think like everything's okay and it's going to work out for me and I kind of lived my life like that really clearly I wanted, and I got things I wanted them and they lined up. 03:35So, um, I found myself on on Broadway, which I totally expected right because I wanted it. So, and I didn't know any better, and 03:46And my brother who's 10 years older than I am. He, he knew better. And he is a he is still actually a scenic artist. And so I was a sound designer. He was a scenic artist and 04:01He was working down the block. So I was working on Angels in America, and he was working on City of Angels, which I love that. But there were all these angel references. That's kind of brandon handley04:14Sure, yeah. Donnalynn Riley04:15And. And he said, Oh, let's, um, he was like down the block. And I hadn't seen him in months. It wasn't like, you know, we were spending Sunday night dinners together or something. 04:24And he said, Let's go for lunch. And I was like, yeah, this is great. Yeah, owning the town, you know, in my, in my own head, right. 04:32Sure. And he said, you, you. He's walking me to the to the place to get something to eat and 04:40He said, You just don't have any idea what it costs to get here. You don't have any idea what these people around you have had to do to get where they want to go and in typical sort of 19 year old fashion. I thought, nope. brandon handley04:59Right. Donnalynn Riley04:59I don't care. 05:00Sure, you know, really, for me, I realized that it is a story that's centered around entitlement. Right, so it's not very popular this moment, but 05:10Being able to see yourself. 05:13In the position that you want to be to be able to know that these are things that can happen for you as well as somebody else because 05:24You put the work in and you are talented and you did you know you met the right people and you were in the right place and you took the all the steps to get there. brandon handley05:32Right. Donnalynn Riley05:33There by choice. You don't get to be on Broadway. If you suck. 05:37You do not need. All right. 05:39All right, but they send you home. brandon handley05:42Well, you know, I think. 05:43I think that um I love how you're hitting on entitlement in this insane and in this way because why should it not 05:53Backup people like people bash millennials for kind of having like that kind of entitlement thing. Right. Well, what I admire about that, you know, I think that they would say you got Moxie kid right like kinda back in, but 06:07You know what you want and you're not settling for something that you don't. So is that entitlement, or is that knowing your worth. Donnalynn Riley06:17Right. It's really tricky. It's really tricky and it is a lot about alignment and I've been fortunate to hear you talk about alignment on the podcast previously and 06:28It's a really crucial step in that process. So, 06:34Of course, if we want to get kind of 06:37Cultural about it, then we can we can sort of back it up a little and say, Well, some people have a lot of things that support the belief already in their lives when they're born, and when they're, you know, one and two and three and so it, it becomes 06:55There becomes a divide, but it's a divide in belief. brandon handley07:00100% Donnalynn Riley07:00You know, so it's a it is a really tricky thing. And the important thing for me in the work that I do with people. 07:09Is to whether you've ever experienced that belief or not before is to help you to find that belief because without it is very, very, very difficult to get where you want to go. I, I know people who have done it. It's like they kind of stumbled into their success and that's okay. brandon handley07:25That's true, but it's not very reliable. Donnalynn Riley07:29And so, you know, doing the inner work to create a system of belief for yourself so that 07:36It doesn't sound crazy that you're going to have a successful business or that you're going to get a client that you want to or that you're going to get employees that work out well for you and things like that. I'm doing that inner work makes 07:51All the outer stuff kind of 07:52Line up real quick, like the story I just told where I went from two years or three years I spent in sound design, we're learning from the best in the business. I was already learning from the people who were there, right. 08:06And and and and so I was able to do that very quickly, where a lot of my classmates in college got there 1015 years later, and they worked a lot harder for something because they didn't believe 08:23They didn't know 08:23They thought, oh, I have to go out and do something else first brandon handley08:27Right. We listen, even me today, right now with this podcast. I love it so much. I want to put this, I want to put this 08:36Nice polish on, I want to make it feel so good. I want it to be inviting you know 08:40That, you know, and this isn't wrong to hire somebody in marketing, but I like I really want these pieces I wanted to look so I want it to be so accepted because it's so 08:48meaningful to me right so I'm putting these blocks in 08:53For myself, right. I'm just putting these. Oh, I gotta do this like nothing can happen until this happens and all these other things and and literally that is in my own mind, nobody else's. I mean, nobody nobody else cares. That's just me. Right. 09:07Right. So when you're out there. 09:11And your clientele and and you're working I do they seek you out for one or the other, do you introduce like you know 09:20To the business pressure, like, well, if you just loop in some spirituality, then this might be better for you, like, tell me a little bit how this process of working with you, looks Donnalynn Riley09:30Yeah, so I kind of stand between that space right I stand between entrepreneurs and small business people who are 09:40That's what they do. That's what they've learned. They have a strong background or they have a strong desire but they don't necessarily have any spiritual practice at all. 09:49And I sort of stand between that and the people who are very spiritually open but can't figure out how to turn the computer on right 09:59And rent like can't figure out the details of, like, how do I charge people. And why would they pay me and 10:06These kinds of like nuanced things that, of course, they have a lot of talent and they have a lot of 10:13Value in the world, but so I do kind of stand in between those two spaces, I would say that for the most part, most of the people that I work with are 10:26Are on the business side but are open. brandon handley10:30Okay. 10:31Because okay you can Donnalynn Riley10:32Sort of insert and this is not you know there are a lot of really involved spiritual practices. 10:39And they have value that is beyond what I'm about to express right so this is not to disparage any spiritual practices. I think they all have a lot of value and 10:51But you can in a very short period of time with with not a ton of work right. You don't have to go and study with the monks for 18 years right with with putting a practice into your life. You can attain a lot of result and a lot of ease in your life. 11:12A lot less frustration, a lot of movement forward right so you can start to assess your situation better and access yourself in moments that are stressful better and all of these things lead to better businesses. 11:30But aren't always they're not really taught too often. brandon handley11:35I mean, if you have the capability to kind of calm yourself down in the moment, or just realize what you're about to say or 11:43If you're feeling tense right so what I'm hearing you say is like you're giving them some of these tools to to really kind of ease into themselves and what they're about. Donnalynn Riley11:51Yeah, there's bigger work that we do in order to make lasting change. And that really happens inside one on one trainings that I do or or inside group work that I do with people, but 12:08There are so many little what we would call hacks right there, little, like, oh, if I do this, I feel a little better. 12:16Right. And those are emergency hacks, you know, and they're really useful. They're a great way to get started. I think because 12:26Getting a little relief reminds you that you're probably going to get more relief. If you keep going in that direction. And I think that's a great place to start, particularly for people who are 12:41Who don't have a strong spiritual background but know that like there's something going on in my mind set or those kinds of words are being used a lot recently. Right. brandon handley12:51Right I yeah for sure. For sure. Right. Well, I mean, it's funny because, you know, I think I started off in the mindset space right but now in this 13:01Next level space right where you do this practice, like you said, For doesn't have to be 18 years but you do it repeatedly and you start with like the mindset. You start with the small pieces and 13:13You keep just kind of growing into these other spaces and these other practices that are available to and sooner or later you like I guess they were all right. Donnalynn Riley13:26I love that. Right. brandon handley13:30Right. 13:31Right. So, I mean, I guess you know there's something in those things and what they're saying and what they're doing. 13:37But, you know, so what what led you into this pace yourself. Donnalynn Riley13:43Well, 13:45You know, that's a good question. I, when I look back at my life. I see all these moments like the one that I just described when I'm like very young. 13:54That fit into this kind of way of thinking and this way of being. But I was really pretty unaware of myself and my spirituality until actually my husband got a life threatening disease. 14:15And or problem he got a tumor in his brain cavity. 14:20And he when he was very young. He spent a lot of time in hospitals. And so we went to the first doctor and it was a big emergency and he said, I'm getting a second opinion. And then we went to the next doctor who you know we we finagle their way into the good doctors and all of that and 14:43We went and he described it. And he said, Oh yeah, you have a little time because I'm very good at this. But, you know, you got to get in here in the next month or something. So it was no longer like a huge emergency we have little time. 14:56Sure, and 14:59We were driving home. It was in New York City. We live in Massachusetts. It was a long drive home. We were driving home and my husband said to me. 15:06Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not doing that I'm not doing that. I don't know what we're going to do, but I think you should find me another solution because I don't, I'm not going to do that. 15:17And that being that you just that just have him for you have been for me. I was like, oh, 15:23Wow, okay. That should be my job. 15:25Okay. Donnalynn Riley15:29No question. 15:31In fairness, I'm sure he was very overwhelmed in that moment. brandon handley15:35Right out Donnalynn Riley15:36Here and and so that was the beginning. That was the kickoff for me to really 15:45Take a look at what is possible. So, and be completely outside the box. Yeah. So once I sort of had to be completely outside the box. Then the possibilities became very, very different. 16:00So it kicked off a series of involvements with people who could help his health and who could do it in very untraditional ways 16:11And also, who required of both of us that we change drastically that we, the concept that we had gotten ourselves into this mess, and that we were going to get ourselves out of this mess was not one that I heard in the doctor's office. 16:31Was and it was really clear and so 16:34And within 16:37A few months, we were both licensed spiritual health coaches, we probably took, I don't know, six months, nine months, something like that for that process and we said, Okay, this is this, we're leaning in because we are not going where that other train was going 16:59Okay, so. So that's really the beginning of when I became a much, much more aware of myself of my thoughts of my 17:09Relationship to the world of my discomfort that I had become just completely accepting of right I had just said, Oh, well that's the way life is, you know and and really be in that awareness, I found new answers. brandon handley17:28So, um, you know what, I guess the one thing is right when you're we're 19 and your earlier years before you 17:37had developed an awareness, you would be, what would we call you know 17:43Was it 17:45Unconscious competence, right, like you and I were you, you were already aligning yourself and you weren't aware that you were doing it. And then once you kind of develop this newfound awareness. 17:56You were able to do this with intention and purpose. Donnalynn Riley18:00That's exactly right. brandon handley18:02Now, so, and also throw out like when you know so I was raised by a hippie mom grew up you know out San Francisco and she was always kicking the word awareness around right when I was growing up, I was like, I'm aware. You see me run into 18:15I've ever run into a thing. 18:18Right, I use it everything outside of me right everything outside of me. I was I was completely aware of. I didn't miss a beat. Yeah didn't miss a beat. But the awareness that I think that you're talking about today is the awareness inside. Is that fair Donnalynn Riley18:32That's exactly right. 18:33That is exactly right and very hard to articulate. You did that quite well that 18:39People, most of the time, feel like they are aware when they start working with me, they're like, Yeah, yeah, I got that part, I need the accurate assessment. Come on, let's get to the good stuff here. 18:49And and that awareness that inner awareness and that ability to kind of be with yourself for periods of time in order to deepen that awareness is very important to the next steps. And so you're absolutely right that people are like, I'm aware. Let's fix my landing page. brandon handley19:16It's all 19:17It's all marketing has nothing to do with what's happening. 19:19Right, right. 19:21Nothing internal happening fixed that. Donnalynn Riley19:23I just had that targeting right we would 19:25All set. So, what what is what is like when when somebody first brandon handley19:29Starts off what's uh what's like one tool that you like to start them off with to 19:35Begin to develop that inner awareness. Donnalynn Riley19:39One of my favorite 19:42Sort of 19:47Let me go back a second here in my thinking. One of my tools that is the easiest for me to sort of give in this kind of a space. 19:59Is actually 20:00A little bit of mirror work. Now some people will know mirror work from different varieties of, you know, mindset work and spiritual work. 20:10The mirror work that that I find is the fastest path to to becoming present 20:22Which is really that first goal is just start being in your body. 20:29Is a piece where you literally just sit with the mirror and look in the mirror in your eyes and say I am here. 20:42Over and over and over. You're sort of calling to yourself. Right. So there's a lot of work that we do after that that involves breath and 20:53Other types of awareness that we can 20:55We can bring in 20:57But 20:59But that's really the the space that I find people kind of are able to bring themselves into the room a little bit and say, oh, OK. I am actually here. Let me give this a shot. I'll be president now. brandon handley21:12Well, I mean, cuz it's, there's still the physical aspect of it right, they're still doing a physical activity, but then they're also acknowledging that it's them right right there in front of them and pulling themselves kind of gather right there. 21:27Right, so I love that. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley21:29And it's deliberate. It's deliberate. So even though a lot of times when people start that process, they don't know. It's deliberate 21:37They, they go like, well, I said the words and then I felt different. I don't know what happened. Right. But in fact it there. There is a deliberateness to it. That is really important that you are impacting you 21:53In that moment. brandon handley21:57Well, that, you know, being deliberate again, you know, intentional, knowing that you're making this choice. I know that I kind of 22:04laughed a little bit about it earlier, but you know, you get to wherever you are today. And I think this is what the spiritual coaches were probably telling you before you guys set the course that 22:13You guys made the decisions to be in that situation right as as a collective even and you you guys when you first heard that you were just like what that's done, nobody's ever said that, you know, kind of that way right to us before 22:29So, I mean, I'm assuming your husband still alive. Donnalynn Riley22:32Oh, yeah. brandon handley22:35Like I hope the story has a good idea. 22:37Because, you know, so 22:39What happens right i mean you go in and he jumped into all this stuff, how, you know, how does it clear up on it never gets checked out again and somehow he still is what happened. Donnalynn Riley22:48No, no. So what happens on that story is that we do the work we do the inner work and we do the emergency inner work and it is kind of emergency at that 23:02Maybe for a year or so as you still feel like what's happening. 23:07And we he gets checked out again. And it's shrinking. 23:12Okay, and we have do have, I will say a spectacular doctor who's actually a doctor. brandon handley23:20Sure, sure. And 23:22It's always handy to have one on standby. Donnalynn Riley23:25WELL KNOW WHO DOES THIS WORK. Oh. brandon handley23:27Okay, that sounds even better yet, Donnalynn Riley23:29He's a trained Western doctor but functions in an Eastern paradigm brandon handley23:35Love it. Donnalynn Riley23:36And so he his toolkit is very, very large. And he honestly I've seen. I've never seen a problem he hasn't been able to impact positively and I have seen him deal with a lot of stuff now. 23:53So, so we had the guidance we had long distance guidance, because he's not right here in our backyard and 24:01We had long distance guidance and we did the work. And that I think is the, the key to that is to sort of have somebody who's ahead of you who can say, yeah, no, no, no. You're going in a direction. You'll be all right. 24:14Sure, sure. And so eventually that tumor went away. brandon handley24:17That's amazing. I love it. And so 24:20You would attribute that almost all to the air work was there like a dietary change. Donnalynn Riley24:26There were other changes. Yeah, absolutely. There were dietary changes, and we think there was 24:35Well, in his particular case, it had a great deal to do with a inability to deal properly with pesticides and with wheat. brandon handley24:46In the Donnalynn Riley24:46On the dietary front. So there was that and 24:54I think there was juicing and there was a lot of things. brandon handley24:57Which are look at 24:59Things. Right. 25:00Body. Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. So, and I think that's, that's interesting. The two right you know so change a die with this practice. I'm the things that are inside of you are the things that are outside of you know that this 25:15Miracle doesn't kind of happen on its own. You gotta, you gotta put it together and you got to maintain it and you know the things that do happen to it. Your body's a miracle. Right. It's amazing. 25:28And it's something like that's happening in this story right you have the ability to change that without getting i don't know i'm guessing he was getting a laser to the back of the head or something right was Donnalynn Riley25:39Wasn't. No, no, they wanted to do full 25:41On surgery. 25:43can address and take goop out 25:47And put goop in from other part. brandon handley25:52Was Donnalynn Riley25:53Unbelievably scary. brandon handley25:55Sure, sure. So, but, I mean, the what's amazing too and your story is that a lot of people would have just gone ahead and gone that route. Right. Donnalynn Riley26:03And they would have tried to talk to your spouse into it. It's their spouse said no. And that I think is something that is I, I have been very fortunate to be able to have that reciprocal relationship with my husband, where if one of us says, No, no, this is how I really feel about the thing 26:20Yeah, even if the other one thinks like, ah, you're just scarred, we should get you over that. 26:26But there is enough space. And this is an important concept in in business in the way we live our lives in general. Right. 26:35Is that there is enough space for us to be scarred and still have full and wonderful lives. It's kind of I think of it a lot about 26:45How you know how certain trees grow and they get these scars in them. And then we cut them up and we make them into coffee tables and we call them beautiful world would 26:54Say. Isn't that spectacular right 26:57Well, that's what we're making yeah in ourselves, we have experienced life and things haven't gone right and we have changed the way that we deal with things F, day after day after day and tried new approaches and had new experiences. 27:14And all of those things are brought into this present moment. And if you allow them then finding a new answer that. That doesn't mean you have to like check out your whole personality becomes somebody else right brandon handley27:32Right, right. Donnalynn Riley27:32No, no, it's okay. You can go spend time in the hospital. 27:36Right show. You don't have to be someone else. You can be you and you can be successful. brandon handley27:41Right. Well, yeah. And in regards to write the 27:46Merging all this together. Right. 27:48But I'll say it. I love Maplewood like the birds. I'm April, right, that's kind of one of the one of the times, you're talking about right and it does become so beautiful. Right. I'm like, I'm over you're sitting right now we're turning ourselves into beautiful maple tables but 28:02I love, I love the story that you're telling about that. I think that that's great. 28:09So let's just I want is, what if some of that wasn't working at any point would didn't feel like, you know, because I don't want to get the impression that 28:19You shouldn't keep a doctor nearby. Right. I mean, because you guys kept the doctor nearby that right live as he was a Western medicine doctor that yes also specialize in this space. Donnalynn Riley28:29I think that the the message that should not be taken from my experience is, go do something extreme like I did right and that the message that should be taken, I hope people take from my experience is be true to yourself and find your own answers. 28:54Because they are there, but they're only there if you calm down long enough to allow them to sort of become revealed. They weren't there in the doctor's office right only the first step, which was no I know what I don't want brandon handley29:10To Donnalynn Riley29:11But there wasn't the step of, like, I know what I do want. Right. Yeah. 29:16Yeah. And in fact, I think that something very important happened there because it was life threatening. Right, it's not 29:23It's not the same as in business where things can go right or wrong and we can find our own alignment. Right. But in this scenario. I think one of the most 29:35impactful things that happened was that my husband had someone to turn to and say, You figure it out because he then could go about the business of lining up with becoming well 29:51He didn't know how, but he had faith. 29:53Yeah, leaf. He said, This person loves me and they're relatively smart. They'll figure it out. brandon handley30:02Well, I think you bring the other one up to which I always love you don't have to know how you don't have to know how you just have to know that that's what you want. That's right. Right. And us where they can just 30:16Move forward in that direction. You know, as if it's not Nestle like I i get i get a little caught up in between, like Law of Attraction with like, you know, 30:28Spirituality space, right. I don't think that they're one the same. I think they're very close, but I don't I don't I don't like to make a sandwich out of, I guess. 30:37Um, Donnalynn Riley30:38But so many ways to look at life you know 30:41It would be a shame to sort of collapse it into only one way 30:46Hundred percent I think that's one of the reasons that the concept of spirituality so appealing to me is that it's big. brandon handley30:53Right, it's yours. Donnalynn Riley30:54I can be a part of this energy and I can be a part of that energy and I don't have to really understand it intellectually. I just have to decide that I'm willing to be a part of that. brandon handley31:05Right. No, I see ideas. Do you even know how you're here. Right. I mean, we don't even understand how we're here to begin with, I mean. So where does that leave us so 31:19Let's talk a little bit more about the outside of the story. Thanks for sharing that. That was Donnalynn Riley31:22My pleasure. Thanks for bringing it up. I, I had 31:26Was I was gonna tell it. brandon handley31:27Yes. I mean you know that, but that's that's kind of how you got into this space. And then, you know, I'm guessing that you kind of incorporated. Now some of this spiritual practice modality. And you were seeing the benefits that it was having in the business space. 31:41So at Donnalynn Riley31:42That time 31:43I was actually the CEO of a corporation. 31:46Okay, so 31:49This was what my life was like, like my every day was going to work as the CEO of a corporation. 31:56Right, so, you know, to, to become to to shift perspective in this massive way and then go back to work the next day and be like, 32:08Oh yeah, I'm gonna do it, just the way I used to do it. 32:11Let them work out. 32:13Right, so there had to be for me a re assessing a real understanding of the business world so that and the end the specifics of my business involvement with people so that I could find peace with the 32:36The 32:38Pathway that we were on brandon handley32:40Okay. Donnalynn Riley32:40So I had many years to do that. I didn't leave that world until 32:452014 and I that the story I told. And when I got my licensure was well 32:55The story I told started in 2007 32:58Okay, so it was putting a time in their 33:02Right to Try concepts out to go to work and to feel differently about things and then see what happens. And now have to take action right away. 33:12To decide that your solution to this relationship problem with an employee with the board of directors with it. Whoever whoever you're dealing with with with the clients themselves. 33:27That you are going to shift that but not by going in and saying something different or doing something different and being like, I am different. Now, now you behave differently, right, which is how people love to approach it. 33:38Sure does not work doesn't work, just 33:42But to really be able to take the time to say okay I am willing to to try everything that I have learned out on myself and to teach it to my staff and to pass it along to people who come and ask for it. 34:02There was a lot of opportunity right now. I'm seeing a lot of people in a day. And there's a lot of opportunity and people will ask you the wildest things 34:10Sure. And so 34:14Yeah, so I had that I had that. And so that was a way for me to really shift the way that I saw business. And what I knew for a fact would work in business. 34:27I had a lot of knowing what didn't work. And some of what did work. I had attained a position and, you know, was filling that position. Well, and all of that. But I really was able to sort of AMP that all up by 34:40By being able to try these things and not know 34:45If they were going to work. 34:47And do them anyway. brandon handley34:49What would be an example of that. Donnalynn Riley34:55Well, there was at one point there was a time when the board of directors was not happy with me. 35:04Man I know, it doesn't mean it doesn't even make sense. 35:06No, it doesn't. It kind of in this world. 35:09And and was not happy with anyone in my 35:15In my purview at all like not like there was no one. And so there was one particular board member who would come in and 35:24Kind of create difficulty. Right. It was a time of change. And I was directing the, the company in a direction that was scary and different and new 35:36And that was not really okay for that board and so that member would come in and and sort of undermine what was happening or stand in the way of what was happening. 35:49And I don't think that was the intention, but I think that it was really to look out for the company and to like really well founded. But really bad idea. And so this went on for 36:05Several weeks several weeks and different members of my staff kept coming to me and saying, what are we going to do this can't go on and I would have a chat and, you know, it still went on and that was the way it was. And I had tried a lot of business solutions for this. 36:23But one day I decided that I was going to just focus on the inner work and I spent all of my off time 36:34Doing that inner work and it was a process it. A lot of times people like me to sort of distill it down into one thing that I did. And certainly, I could name some things that you can do in that scenario but 36:48Really, the important thing was that I was no longer tied to the outcome based on yesterday. 36:56So that we had been through it right. This has been going on for weeks, we had tried everything we know what didn't work. We know. No, no. Right. But we didn't really we didn't because today is a new day. 37:09And this is a new moment. 37:11Right. And so once that happened once there was a disassociation with the past, then 37:19The process of becoming holy present and allowing the other people to become wholly present other this person in particular. 37:29Then the, the issues that are around, it can be dealt with and the attitude can shift. And there can no longer be. It doesn't have to be an aggressive situation, which is what had developed 37:41Right. But once that all dissipates. Then you can have the real conversations about the work that really should be being done in those in that scenario. 37:52Right, I should be held accountable for that in my position and that person should be able to say what they have to say. But there was no space for 38:00Any of that. 38:02And to east and east and east and about two weeks later, one of the gentlemen that work for me came to me and said, What did you do 38:13What did you do 38:14Well you fixed it for you, but you didn't fix it for me. 38:19And I said, Well, I could teach you what it was like, why can't you just fix it. brandon handley38:26That's funny. That's funny. So one of the things that you kind of, you start out there to with the is not having to take action right away, right, because we feel that 38:36We need to take this action immediately to for some type of corrective measure like 38:42Where the like where the savior of whatever is happening, they're like, well, there's no we got to fix this. Right. But you're saying though, you just kind of step back. Yeah. But some of the things just play out on their own and right Donnalynn Riley38:55Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. There's actually a three step process that I teach that 39:02Is a called the triple a method of transformation and that three step process is really important. Some people get one step. 39:12Some people get two steps, but rarely do we hear people talk about the third, the middle step right 39:18Right. So the first step in that is awareness and we've talked a lot about that today, which is 39:23Wonderful. And the third step in that is the action stage right the adaptation. What are you going to do, usually people kind of jump from one to the other and they go, they go like, yes, I'm aware there's a problem. Now I have a solution. 39:38And it's the middle step that is the most important and that really isn't an accurate assessment, you can't make an accurate assessment, unless you're in a receiving mode you're in a 39:58Listening period. A watching period a learning period right it's you can't assess something. If you think you know everything about it already. 40:09So you have to do the exploration that is that middle stage that's between Awareness. Awareness of yourself awareness of your situation and then 40:21Learning so that you can be accurate in your assessment. And that's, I think, really where most of the time it all falls apart is that the assessment is not accurate. 40:33Hmm. And so that's how you jump from the one step to the other step is that you go like now I got this move on. 40:43But you don't know yet. But there's like a guy behind the curtain run and my thing. You know what I mean. 40:48Sure. 40:49So that's brandon handley40:51That's more than you know awareness of your thought process awareness of the, you know, conscious choices awareness of doing these things. 41:00With purpose and intention, but also, you know, I like how you bring up this you know accurate assessment piece because it was just yesterday as matter of fact I sat down with a transformational coach and 41:14It was what you're saying here is you can assess, but kind of like a and I feel like this is what I had done right I assess the situation quickly. 41:24And felt that was good enough. Right. And then he goes, Well, I think, actually, you need to go one more layer deeper. Yeah. And he took me one more layer deeper. And I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, Donnalynn Riley41:35Totally different answer to. Right. brandon handley41:37Well, totally different answer. Totally different feeling totally different space in place and you know 41:44Therefore, ergo my assessment initially was not accurate. Yeah, that's right. Right. 41:53And you know we're here. We keep learning and this, this is even has to do with just, you know, if you're working with a client, they feel like they know who they are. All right. And you've got it you what you're doing is you're helping them to slow down and 42:07Truly learn who they really are. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley42:09That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I think that was true for me. So I think that one of the things that makes it easier for me to 42:18To talk to people is that I've stood someplace. Very, very similar to where they're standing and so that feeling like I know especially having some early success. 42:30Right, sure. No, I do. No. 42:33No, I did it. I know how to do it. No, no, actually you don't 42:39Because you did it, but you didn't know how you did it. 42:41Yeah, you did it, but you can't repeat it, and 42:46Source, all of that. brandon handley42:48Sure, yeah. 42:50But it's looking those steps and and and i think that we've been fortunate, right, like a laughed at the beginning how there's, you know, 43:00There's pathways for us to take you know that the plenty of people have done this before us. We're not the first people to show up like I got this. 43:08Follow me like there's no whole whole society is built on this and 43:13We're lucky that we've got that available to us right that framework, the possibility to kind of 43:18Go to even you right or you know your spiritual coaches to run them in the first time, like there's a whole nother way. 43:25And it fits into this and, oh, I can get the same results by but but by doing it this way instead of this other brash like I'm going to take the bull by the horns and crush everybody mentality. Right. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley43:40Yeah, I, I, actually, when I first kind of got that there was another way and that it was actually more effective I so I had been into herbs, my whole life where I felt like I i liked spices in my food, and I 43:54I knew some of the properties of things. And I would you know give myself cold medicine by eating the garlic or whatever it was. Right, sure, and and 44:03I got that there was, I knew about herbs and spices that there were in different parts of the world, they would do the same things, but be totally different plans. 44:13And I was like, 44:14Oh, I don't really get why that's true, that you can take turmeric from India and you can take, you know, yarrow from North America and you're going to get a similar thing and happening for you. 44:29And I, I knew that it was possible, but I couldn't make any sense of it until we got to this concept, this concept of being present and being aware 44:44And showing up in a new way and then taking action. Then I got, oh, there are just so many ways, right. I could have said 10 different things in that moment. 44:57And gotten a really similar response to that, or maybe my relationship problem, like I've, I've worked with people a lot with 45:07business relationships where they're particularly with employees, where they're not getting the results they want with the employees and they feel like it's the employees problem. 45:18And that works. The first or second or third employee, but it does not work after that. 45:23To face a few things. 45:26And you can try all the techniques you want, right, there's a lot of management techniques and those i'm sure can be effective in under certain circumstances. 45:37But really when you're willing to do that work inside you and the technique, doesn't matter anymore because 45:45The result can happen regardless of the technique that you're using, sort of like that plant it's planted in a, you know, different sides of the earth, but it's helping your body because the world is meant to support us for sure that's what that's what is here for brandon handley46:01At least from our perspective. Hundred percent hundred percent Donnalynn Riley46:05Plant feels like it's there for them. brandon handley46:08But what I just I just saw like you know I think somebody talk. I think I was listening to Wayne Dyer right and he's talking about like if you lift the seeds or whatever and you plant them that they take in that your DNA, and they grow to to you. 46:21Yeah, so 46:22So I'll always always something interesting. 46:26Always something interesting. Geez, you said something there that I wanted to hit on but uh what you know. 46:34So what are some. What are some that's what's gonna say, so you're, you know, the techniques become 46:42More like a again a vehicle for what's inside of you, right, and that's your focal point, you're like, All right, you know, 46:49It's the techniques, not working. It's because I look I take to jujitsu right and oftentimes the, the deal is, I'm using a technique, but I'm also trying to put all this force power behind like 47:04Running grown in 47:06But it's when I relax and just simply apply the technique. 47:11That it works. I'm like, why, what this doesn't make any sense. Right. So again, it sounds like you know if you do the inner work and you figure out kind of what's in you just you just kind of let that out, Masha, but you focus it gently on the technique, it works. Donnalynn Riley47:23Yeah, we're back where we were when we started right life can be a lot easier than we make it brandon handley47:30And and so you know what what are 47:34What are some of the other things that you're finding with your clients right. How are they, what's their reception been to their new selves. Donnalynn Riley47:44Reception to their new cells. Fantastic question. 47:48Wow. I like I'm pretty good. brandon handley47:54Sure. Donnalynn Riley47:55You know, it feels a lot better to be not frustrated and not irritated and have a new way to accept your imperfections and to say I can be whole and I can show up and I can shift my life in these ways where I get the result that I want and still be may brandon handley48:18Not have to Donnalynn Riley48:19Turn into somebody else. I mean, I think these are the kinds of things that a lot of times people really feel like, all right, I want to go there. So I'll just be someone else for a while. 48:33They 48:34Got themselves off from themselves, right. brandon handley48:36So, Donnalynn Riley48:37And this is how people end up to be older and more bitter. 48:43And then eventually at some point they say I'm not doing that anymore. And sometimes that's at retirement age sometimes that's a lot earlier. 48:52You're really lucky if you don't have a lot of patience for that kind of thing in your life. brandon handley48:57Well, you know, you know, recently, my wife, she she hit that point right she just said this is enough. This is too much and and she's now you know we come from two different types of backgrounds. Right. 49:08Where she came from, you know, the you work hard, you get a job you keep that job for as long as you can, it's safe. It's good. They watch out for you. 49:16But at what cost, right, I think you'd mentioned that to like what costs like you're the costs. 49:22Is you your life, your, your whole, you know, they call it grind it out for a reason. You're losing each day to the grind. So I don't want to keep you too long, but this has been, I've had a lot of fun with this conversation. 49:35A lot of fun with this conversation. 49:37Where, where should and we did talk about you do have something coming up. I want to make sure people know that you've got this, you've got this challenge come out to us talk on that. Donnalynn Riley49:45You. I do. I have a five day 49:49Workshop, or I'm 49:53Just loving the words just scramble away from you. brandon handley49:56Absolutely, it says all day every day. 49:59To Donnalynn Riley49:59Day challenge coming up and it, it is called get out of your head. Embrace your imperfections and get on track with your business. 50:10And so that's what we're going to do for five days, we're going to go through the process and we're going to really delve into that process. We talked a little bit more 50:19Earlier about the AAA method of transformation and get to apply some of that and really see what kind of 50:29changes we can make in such a short period of time for lots and lots of people to to quiet the noise to to find that space that we've been talking about and to still be wholly yourself to really embrace that you're okay, as Your imperfections and then apply that process. 50:51It's a very interesting process, I think. 50:53It will be really great to see how everybody does. brandon handley50:56That's awesome. So what type of people should be attending this event. Donnalynn Riley51:00Anyone who's interested in business. 51:05Who is open. Yeah. 51:07Yeah, so this is this work is not easy. It's not like, you know, kind of, you were talking about this with talking about your wife's background and a lot of people come from a background where it's kind of supposed to be hard. And when life is not fun. They say, what is it they say they say brandon handley51:27Oh my lemonade. 51:31Life's not supposed to be fair, I don't know. Donnalynn Riley51:33Yeah, all that brandon handley51:34All that stuff. Donnalynn Riley51:35So what, like, I get that. And there are people who need that kind of structure in their life, and they're not ready to let go of that that's okay with me. brandon handley51:43Yeah. Donnalynn Riley51:43Don't come to mind. 51:47But anyone everyone. I hope Pro has a business involvement writing particularly I work for the most part with entrepreneurs. 51:57So you're the driver of your business boat, it makes it much easier. And who wants to work on something and knows that the answer is somewhere in them might they're willing to do some work for it. That is personal. That is development personal development work. 52:20And and really you show up with willingness and I'd be happy to guide you all the way through the process that would be great. brandon handley52:30Awesome and listen. 52:32You know, you've had you been a successful CEO, you started off successful businesses you sold businesses. 52:41And, you know, for anybody, which website. Again, Donald in Donnalynn Riley52:46Donnellan Riley calm. brandon handley52:48Down. So head over to the site shine house or for videos yourself, you will be able to see 52:53That she knows what she's talking about. So I think that that's really exciting. And, you know, we didn't dig too deep into the business aspects of today. We just had a really great. I felt like conversation. 53:03But you clearly know you know what it is that you're doing. You've done the work you contains to do the work. And you know what you're putting out. I think there's no top notch really really quality stuff. Donnalynn Riley53:13Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure to be here and to get to talk about this topic in such depth. So that's really nice. It's great that you're talking about this in a in a really deep way this sort of spirituality and business and in that space. brandon handley53:28You know what, you got to be able to like you keep saying, and that's what it means to bring all of who you are right, they're not two separate things. If you keep your spiritual self over here and your material or reality over here, you're missing out on the one, two punch you know 53:44You really you've really got the opportunity to kind of blend you're you're working at 50% of capacity. Yeah, right. So he can 53:51You know blend those two which which I know you can teach how to do what you get to bring to your workplace or wherever you decide to show up after you learn about who you are. It's just, it's that much more powerful. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley54:04It really is. brandon handley54:05Yeah. Hundred percent. Thanks again. Donnalynn Riley00:59:18Thank you.

Tread more lightly and create a beautiful sustainable spaces by using repurposed materials. Annie and Shane from Salvage Merchants show you how to repurpose materials for your next renovation or home improvement project.In this episode we discuss:What sort of materials you can use for renovation and home improvementTips you can use for your DIY repurposing projectsBiggest mistakes people use when they use repurposed materialsCreating bespoke pieces using items with sentimental value and salvaged materials**This episode of the Dream Home Movement was recorded live at the RPPFM**Follow the Salvage MerchantsWebsiteFacebookInstagramFollow the Dream Home MovementFacebookInstagramFollow Carl and Jo VioletaFacebookInstagramWebGuest bioHusband and wife team, Shane and Annie Brereton quit their jobs in 2017 and went searching for adventure. They dreamed up Salvage Merchants on a trip down the East Coast of Australia. A desire to tread more gently led them to repurposing. With too many combined skills to mention, this dynamic duo create unique, authentic living spaces using salvaged materials. They value doing more with less, driving change through example, connection without competition and open hearted engagement with their clients and they don’t mind getting their hands dirty to create something truly beautiful for their clients!Transcript00:00:00 - 00:00:05Welcome to the Dream Home movement. This's your weekly dose of home00:00:05 - 00:00:11and property inspiration. Bring you clever tips and advice from the very best00:00:11 - 00:00:20experts. And really like Renno storeys with your host, Joe Violeta. Welcome00:00:20 - 00:00:23back to the Dream Home Movement. You're here with me, your host job,00:00:23 - 00:00:29Violet. And tonight we are talking about repurpose ing materials for your00:00:29 - 00:00:35renovation and for home improvements. So to help me of that topic, I have00:00:35 - 00:00:41Anne and her husband, Shane, from salvage merchants in the studio. Now00:00:41 - 00:00:45their business specialises in renovating and making over space is using00:00:45 - 00:00:50salvaged and repurpose materials. They offer a solution beginning from design00:00:50 - 00:00:54right through to implementation and everything in between. They're00:00:54 - 00:00:59completely hands on from beginning to end, and they don't mind getting their00:00:59 - 00:01:06hands dirty to truly crypt create beautiful, sustainable spaces for their client.00:01:06 - 00:01:12Welcome to the studio. It's lovely to have you here, and I think what we might00:01:12 - 00:01:16start off where before we get stuck into the nitty gritty because we're going to00:01:16 - 00:01:20look at what sort of materials you can use when you're repurpose ing for00:01:20 - 00:01:24renovation. Home improvement. We're going toe. I'm going to pick anyone00:01:24 - 00:01:33Shane's brains for tips that you can use and also look at mistakes that people00:01:33 - 00:01:37make when they're using repurposed materials. We're going to look at all that00:01:37 - 00:01:42stuff is loads of value in this episode. But before we get started, what led you00:01:42 - 00:01:47to create a business that uses repurpose ing for renovation and home00:01:47 - 00:01:53improvement? So why salvage merchants? Joe, we didn't really have a plan,00:01:53 - 00:01:58to be honest almost two years ago, we were both feeling pretty dissatisfied00:01:58 - 00:02:05with the 9 to 5 grind, and we just had a desire Teo work together. We've got00:02:05 - 00:02:10what we consider a pretty unique combined skill set, and we work really well00:02:10 - 00:02:15as a team. And so this was something we wanted to have a go it. We weren't00:02:15 - 00:02:18exactly sure what salvage merchants would look like, and it has certainly00:02:18 - 00:02:26changed in the two short years we've been going. But at the rial heart of our00:02:26 - 00:02:31business was a passion to churn a little more gently on this earth and which we00:02:31 - 00:02:37are doing in our home life. But doing it our business life as well. I absolutely00:02:37 - 00:02:42love that, and there does seem to be a riel movement at the moment towards00:02:42 - 00:02:48more sustainable living and particularly it comes to crew creating homes with00:02:48 - 00:02:53here on the peninsula. There's definitely a move towards using more00:02:53 - 00:02:58environmentally friendly materials. Ram Jeff Walls, for example. So I love00:02:58 - 00:03:04that. That's one of the inspirations behind your business. So what kind of00:03:04 - 00:03:12materials do you repurpose anything from furniture? Anything from building00:03:12 - 00:03:18materials, doors, windows. There is so much out there to be used, and I see it00:03:18 - 00:03:22every day because we look for it and it sze everywhere and everyone's00:03:22 - 00:03:30backyard or so one of the main basis off our business is to reuse repurpose. So00:03:30 - 00:03:33find something that you've already got or something that already exists instead00:03:33 - 00:03:38of going out and buying the new all the time. So we work around sourcing00:03:38 - 00:03:43materials. That would be, as I said, furniture from antique shops, vintage00:03:43 - 00:03:48shops, anything that takes your fancy, and you, Khun with the styles, he says00:03:48 - 00:03:51you can mix all that up so we look for that and we also looked for building00:03:51 - 00:03:54materials from wrecking yards, houses getting knocked down, a ll the time we00:03:54 - 00:03:59see them beautiful houses knocked down and then something a big box built00:03:59 - 00:04:03back up there and nothing reused, and it's quite sad to see it all go to waste.00:04:03 - 00:04:07So anything from anything from furniture at the end of the smallest piece,00:04:07 - 00:04:12right up to a whole house full of full of gear that we use, that's it. Basically.00:04:12 - 00:04:19Wow. So it Khun Bay furniture. It could be building materials like tiles.00:04:19 - 00:04:22Would trials are hard won. Yeah, and it's one of the hard ones to get up. But00:04:22 - 00:04:28timber flooring, skirting boards, doors, windows A ll, that sort of thing. Yes,00:04:28 - 00:04:32yes, they're pretty much anything. Get out of the house without breaking it is00:04:32 - 00:04:38reusable. Wow, that's amazing. And I greet is really sad. You do see a lot of00:04:38 - 00:04:44beautiful mid century homes, older homes, beautiful with sometimes a00:04:44 - 00:04:50beautiful art Deco features and they just ripped down on. We put four town00:04:50 - 00:04:55houses on top of where they, which is fine, like, you know, I totally get that.00:04:55 - 00:05:01We want to develop affordable housing and invest in property and all that sort00:05:01 - 00:05:06of stuff. But it is sad if that's right down and then nothing is. It's just gone00:05:06 - 00:05:13completely. Yes, so do you have any tips for people who would like to use00:05:13 - 00:05:18repurpose and up cycled materials in their homes that they want to do a bit of d00:05:18 - 00:05:24I y Yeah, look, I think for a lot of us, we all think everything's too hard, and00:05:24 - 00:05:28so there's a lot of procrastination and nothing happened. So my advice, really,00:05:28 - 00:05:32just like our business is, Just have a go. You know, there's so much to be00:05:32 - 00:05:37learned out there. We're so fortunate with the Internet, with Pinterest YouTube00:05:37 - 00:05:44all those avenues available, asked to us tto learn and to explore different uses S00:05:44 - 00:05:49O if you've got something that you love and you cherish but sitting in a carbon00:05:49 - 00:05:53, it's not being used. Just jump on Pinterest, jump on some of those online00:05:53 - 00:05:58sites and have a look for some ideas and you'll find tutorials. You find all sorts00:05:58 - 00:06:05of things. Teo learn how how to do things. But yeah, I guess my main advice00:06:05 - 00:06:10is just have a go. Just give it a crack. What have you got to lose? And00:06:10 - 00:06:21Pinterest is a great source of inspiration. It's also Rabbit Hole. You can get E00:06:21 - 00:06:26and I can actually track my life through my boards. You know, 10 years ago it00:06:26 - 00:06:34was wedding staff and then it's like baby staff. And now it's like cleaning stuff00:06:34 - 00:06:44, eyes happening to my life. Thea Pinterest is great. Ah, lot of because I get a00:06:44 - 00:06:50lot of real life. You know, people on the show is just ordinary people that have00:06:50 - 00:06:59done their own renovations and love them like YouTube. U e. But I really love00:06:59 - 00:07:05that. Just give it a go. Give it a go. You offer a service where you create00:07:05 - 00:07:09among your other services. You offer a service where you create bespoke00:07:09 - 00:07:16pieces for your clients. What does that process involve? So, Joe, usually00:07:16 - 00:07:22what happens is a client will come to us either with an idea or potentially a00:07:22 - 00:07:29problem that they need solving and to give you an example way really00:07:29 - 00:07:34encourage our customers to reuse things they've got. And we have beautiful00:07:34 - 00:07:37customer that we've done quite a few pieces for. And she had her00:07:37 - 00:07:44grandmother's vintage mix up bench mix up and she'd seen Shane had made a00:07:44 - 00:07:50similar lamp out of an old mixer in store. We used to have a little retail store,00:07:50 - 00:07:54which we no longer Joe on DH. She came one day and she said, Look, I've00:07:54 - 00:08:00got this in the cupboard and I don't use it But I love it and it has great sentiment00:08:00 - 00:08:03And I said, What? You let us turn it into a lamp on DH? She was just thrilled00:08:03 - 00:08:09. It just is incredible to see how people feel and the connexion that they have.00:08:09 - 00:08:14Teo really simple pieces. They don't have to be expensive, but they create true00:08:14 - 00:08:18meaning. And that's really what we're about. ATT. The moment chains00:08:18 - 00:08:24building a beautiful outdoor table for some clients who were doing it a big00:08:24 - 00:08:29outdoor renovation for and they haven't existing table. But they don't love it00:08:29 - 00:08:34and said, What can we use and way happen? Tohave instructs, um, old00:08:34 - 00:08:42timber palate pieces. Once of a better word, they were packing pieces of00:08:42 - 00:08:46packing timbered. These we've little pieces of hacking timber and Shane's00:08:46 - 00:08:51laminate them all together and made this incredible table on bench seats,00:08:51 - 00:08:55which they haven't seen yet. So, George, if you're listening, just stand by00:08:55 - 00:08:59because it was really exciting. Further it, it's just it's beautiful and, you know00:08:59 - 00:09:03, these are pieces of timber picked up off the side of a road actually by another00:09:03 - 00:09:07customer of ours who saw them and couldn't let them go to waste loaded them00:09:07 - 00:09:10up in is you brought them down to us and he said, Hey, guys, could you we00:09:10 - 00:09:14use them We said, Well, not now, but we will and we have. And that's00:09:14 - 00:09:20fantastic. Well, so that they would have ended up in landfill. Correct. And00:09:20 - 00:09:27now can we just go back to the mix up? Hold on What? The mix. It became a00:09:27 - 00:09:36lamb mixture like a MENSA and then e a nick so that you make cakes. We do00:09:36 - 00:09:41that, um, insight still into elect. You know, the ones that used to be, oh,00:09:41 - 00:09:45handled. It's great looking pieces, but no one knows what they're doing00:09:45 - 00:09:51because it's all electric these days. So turned into a lamp so you could have00:09:51 - 00:09:56something at home that has great sentimental value. But there's no riel00:09:56 - 00:10:03everyday use for it. You'd like to be able to see it or use it or borrow, and you00:10:03 - 00:10:07could go. We could got come to you and just say, this is what I've got what00:10:07 - 00:10:14can what do you believe that one of the favourite lance that chains made was a00:10:14 - 00:10:19old silver tea set. So the coffee part in the Sugar Bowl and Crema and hey00:10:19 - 00:10:24stepped it all up into a beautiful, beautiful lamp. And you know that that was00:10:24 - 00:10:27something that belonged to somebody that was sitting in a cupboard not being00:10:27 - 00:10:34used. And now it's enjoyed every day. I love that. That is so very clever. Are00:10:34 - 00:10:40there any other very special bespoke pieces that you've created for a client that00:10:40 - 00:10:47really stand out for year? Look, the ultimate is a complete cottage. So we00:10:47 - 00:10:53were very fortunate, really Early in our business, Tio have been contacted by00:10:53 - 00:10:59some some people that we knew through through other connexions and they00:10:59 - 00:11:02asked us for some input into little cottage. They have down here on the00:11:02 - 00:11:08Mornington Peninsula on their property and we're looking at ways Teo utilise00:11:08 - 00:11:12that space and I don't think either of us. We're quite sure what we're going to00:11:12 - 00:11:16do. And we put together some ideas and basically they turned around and said00:11:16 - 00:11:22, Yes, Tio, what we propose, which was back in that day, a Pinterest board00:11:22 - 00:11:28and with great faith and trust in us. These incredible people literally and00:11:28 - 00:11:34figuratively handed us the keys to their property and said, Do what you like00:11:34 - 00:11:40and we delivered them. And Airbnb business full off completely bespoke00:11:40 - 00:11:44pieces. So speaking about Lance being made, they've got a beautiful little old00:11:44 - 00:11:51bell in the on sweet that's made from a light Sorry, that's made from a bell.00:11:51 - 00:11:57The vanity sink in the bathroom is an old jam, copper posh on DH. Pretty00:11:57 - 00:12:02much everything in that cottage was either secondhand or actually belonged to00:12:02 - 00:12:08the clients and had been repurposed or part from mattresses and linen, which00:12:08 - 00:12:15we really don't go second hand on fair. Everything else was created by us, so00:12:15 - 00:12:21it's a complete bespoke solution for them, and we're just so incredibly proud of00:12:21 - 00:12:26it. And so, you know, thrilled that somebody would have that trust Eunice00:12:26 - 00:12:32Teo build a business for them like that. Have I seen photos of that little Jack00:12:32 - 00:12:40cottage? So if you're listening to the live show head on over Teo, either goatee00:12:40 - 00:12:46instagram and go to either the Dream Home Movement page, the latest couple00:12:46 - 00:12:54of posts the Jack Cottage or go to is it salvage merchants. Yet on Instagram,00:12:54 - 00:13:00and I'm pretty sure that was one of your most recent posts as well was the Jack00:13:00 - 00:13:05If you go on overto ira, go to both instagram accounts and have a look and you00:13:05 - 00:13:11you will see just how gorgeous this piece of I think it's like livable artwork. To00:13:11 - 00:13:15be honest with you, I was really quite stunned. You may have noticed I went a00:13:15 - 00:13:21little bit over the top with Instagram storeys that cottage this week. It's00:13:21 - 00:13:25gorgeous and people can stay. There certainly can, eh? So what, They just00:13:25 - 00:13:31look up Jack Cottage Instagram. It's Jack Underscore Cottage and got the most00:13:31 - 00:13:36beautiful garden surrounds Just down in Somerville on DH. It's a really00:13:36 - 00:13:40beautiful place to start. Hell over. There we go. You just get your clients a00:13:40 - 00:13:51little Ah, that sounds amazing. And to be given creative licence is amazing On00:13:51 - 00:13:56the topic off Airbnb Tze and bed and breakfasts and that sort of thing the00:13:56 - 00:14:02peninsula is brimming with holiday rentals. I just stayed in a gorgeous one in00:14:02 - 00:14:07German or a couple of weeks ago, but there's just so many Airbnb. He's on the00:14:07 - 00:14:13peninsula, and I was doing a bit of research for this episode, and I noticed that00:14:13 - 00:14:19you've got a service called the Elevate BNB service, which I think would be00:14:19 - 00:14:24perfect for the peninsula. All these Airbnb he's on the peninsula. So can you00:14:24 - 00:14:30tell us about that that service? What? What does it involve? Sure, So it's a00:14:30 - 00:14:35service that we provide. And Jack Cottage was really eye opening for us and00:14:35 - 00:14:41was footing the door to the short term rental market. And we just absolutely00:14:41 - 00:14:48love it and very keen to provide experiences for people and help people that00:14:48 - 00:14:54already have event. These short term rentals really elevate their experience00:14:54 - 00:14:58because there are some horror storeys out. There s o the service that we offer00:14:58 - 00:15:05provides. It's going to have a look at the property and really looking at every00:15:05 - 00:15:09aspect of the property, from online presence, social media presence,00:15:09 - 00:15:17photography and imagery of the cottage pricing structure right through00:15:17 - 00:15:25everything to do with with house manuals, all sorts of tips and tricks that we00:15:25 - 00:15:29know. We've spent a lot of time on a lot of energy and researching thiss field.00:15:29 - 00:15:35So we go and we then compare this property with other comparable listings in00:15:35 - 00:15:40the immediate area. So if it's a two bedroom sleep, small people, we would00:15:40 - 00:15:44We would present a really comprehensive report of recommendations based on00:15:44 - 00:15:48comparable process properties where where we feel your property could sit00:15:48 - 00:15:52pricing wise. And you know what? Your occupancy should be sitting out,00:15:52 - 00:15:56what sort of returns you should be getting. And from there we provide a really00:15:56 - 00:16:00detailed list of recommendations of what we could do to really get you up to00:16:00 - 00:16:05that stage. Because, as I'm sure you're an Airbnb user, I'm sure you've looked00:16:05 - 00:16:10at lots of properties online, looked at an image, and I never stayed there. Yeah00:16:10 - 00:16:17, and imagery really is the first thing, and it's an easy thing to solve. And so00:16:17 - 00:16:22we help clients right through every step of that process through the having, as00:16:22 - 00:16:27we say, having the pantry stopped ready to go. So that's what we offer. We00:16:27 - 00:16:31provide a report. We come down, we have a look. We provide a report, and00:16:31 - 00:16:35then you can choose which recommendations you like to pursue from there.00:16:35 - 00:16:42Wow, that's like a four consultancy services. Well, that's amazing. And so00:16:42 - 00:16:47needed because the competition is fierce on the peninsula. Yes, a lot of people00:16:47 - 00:16:53like to holiday here, but there are a lot of being based to compete with. But I00:16:53 - 00:17:00still think you can make great money if you've got the right product. And yet00:17:00 - 00:17:06imagery is just so important, isn't it? Absolutely. It's gotto feel like you're00:17:06 - 00:17:11having a break from reality. You know, you're providing an experienced, you00:17:11 - 00:17:15get experience. It's not. You're not just doing in somebody's home, you know00:17:15 - 00:17:19you are or rental or whatever. It's an experience. That's what people want.00:17:19 - 00:17:22And that's what they should be demanding for the money that they're spending00:17:22 - 00:17:27something out of the ordinary, something different and unique and spoke on00:17:27 - 00:17:31DH. That's what we help our clients create. And then they choose the00:17:31 - 00:17:36recommendation, and then you go and we do and then do it all case. It's00:17:36 - 00:17:41consultancy, and then it's the actual implementation that's correct, so they can00:17:41 - 00:17:45take on board a ll the ideas and tips that we give them and do it themselves if00:17:45 - 00:17:49they work. Ideally, we like to get in there and, you know, get it looking,00:17:49 - 00:17:54looking good online style, A little bit, you know, with a reasonably low00:17:54 - 00:17:59budget actually just boost the sales, boost the accommodation and that's what00:17:59 - 00:18:03it's all about. You wantto you want your business to go online and be00:18:03 - 00:18:09successful. But if you haven't got a ll these little boxes ticked. It's really hard.00:18:09 - 00:18:13A CZ, you said with with all the other ones around. It's just so hard to get into00:18:13 - 00:18:20the market. And the competition's pretty and you're styling is on point as well.00:18:20 - 00:18:26Who's in charge of the styling? E. Try really? D'oh! And I'll put something00:18:26 - 00:18:29on or move something. Sure, she'll look at it and I go, What do you think?00:18:29 - 00:18:34And she just gives me this little look and I go, It's no good. So I just leave that00:18:34 - 00:18:38to her most of the time. You know, right from when I get up in the morning00:18:38 - 00:18:42and I'll set up the pillows on the bed and all that sort of thing and ensure00:18:42 - 00:18:46passing. Just look at it and I just still haven't got It just happened. So that's a00:18:46 - 00:18:50no on the duo are put things together. I screw things together and now things00:18:50 - 00:18:54and paint things and and she does to you. We both get into the into the tools00:18:54 - 00:19:02and all that sort of thing. But stylist Shane you and I like birds of a feather00:19:02 - 00:19:07soon because I just don't know what looks good with what? That's why I think00:19:07 - 00:19:10that's why I started this show so I could make friends. Have lots of stylists like00:19:10 - 00:19:16send them photos of my housing. Is this right with you on? And he says, I00:19:16 - 00:19:20want this make this like the last year she said to me, I want a Christmas tree00:19:20 - 00:19:24made out of fence pickets like, you know, the old style. Oh, cool. And she00:19:24 - 00:19:29said, He's the pickets and Christmas Trail. Okay, sat down and come back00:19:29 - 00:19:32and see. What do you think of this? You know, you're not too bad, but00:19:32 - 00:19:36changes and change that took it away again. Come back. What do you think?00:19:36 - 00:19:40I think that's really close. But you just need this and then it'll come together.00:19:40 - 00:19:46So I'm on the tools, but she's got putting himself down a lot. He has an00:19:46 - 00:19:50incredible creative. Yeah, that is honestly the real reason why we wanted to do00:19:50 - 00:19:55something together. He's got He may not know how to fluff a pillow or use00:19:55 - 00:20:01your room. That's so he does have a really great creative eye on. So00:20:01 - 00:20:06everything we do really is a combined effort way bounce ideas off off each00:20:06 - 00:20:11other all the time, and I just I just want to add about that elevates service, You00:20:11 - 00:20:16know, what I really want to say is at the heart of that whole service is the ethos00:20:16 - 00:20:21of our business, and it is reused. And so we don't come in and go and get rid00:20:21 - 00:20:26of every piece of furniture. That's just not who, Where about where about00:20:26 - 00:20:29what else have you got? What have you got hiding in the garage that I can use00:20:29 - 00:20:34? What can I say? You know, throw a lick of paint on to completely transform00:20:34 - 00:20:40that. So it's very much of the core of everything we do is our reuse repurpose00:20:40 - 00:20:44philosophy. I love that, and I just love how complimentary you are of each00:20:44 - 00:20:54other as well. I wish everyone could see in the studio that is like smiling. But00:20:54 - 00:20:59I do really appreciate the fact that you can transform and Airbnb or a home, for00:20:59 - 00:21:04example, and use stuff that you already have. We don't realise what treasures?00:21:04 - 00:21:08We've got it. You can buy it anymore. You just can't find all this stuff. You00:21:08 - 00:21:12can go into your stores so the name but and you could get a piece of furniture.00:21:12 - 00:21:17But if you go put that piece of furniture out on the front lawn and it rains on it,00:21:17 - 00:21:22it's gone. You know where some of the old stuff is just so good. And it's00:21:22 - 00:21:26coming back in, and we are. There is a turn. There's a really big shift, I think00:21:26 - 00:21:30. And we're right at the start of it because, you know, the planets all going Tio00:21:30 - 00:21:35, you know, and we're all going to get in and work out ways of doing it. And00:21:35 - 00:21:40it'll happen. It's all goingto have tto happen where we all have to actually think00:21:40 - 00:21:44about what we're actually doing day to day. Yeah, yeah, we do. Yeah, And it00:21:44 - 00:21:50is I feel like that shift is happening. I d'oh, it's very slow yet, and we're really00:21:50 - 00:21:56at the start of it. But for a long time, I didn't make a lot of changes and we00:21:56 - 00:22:00didn't as a family make a lot of changes because we all feel so overwhelmed by00:22:00 - 00:22:04how much we should be doing. And then we just made a decision as a family,00:22:04 - 00:22:09you know, progression over perfection, progression over perfection every day00:22:09 - 00:22:15. You know, if I'm better than I was six months ago, Better than I was child00:22:15 - 00:22:20months ago. We all still got a long way to go. But we've just got to try. Yeah,00:22:20 - 00:22:26I love that message. I did have Andrea from roving refills Frankston in the00:22:26 - 00:22:31studio a few months ago. She and she has a blood caught on wasteful Andrea.00:22:31 - 00:22:37And she has that same message that we get too caught up with trying to be00:22:37 - 00:22:42perfect when it comes to sustainability and reducing waste that then people just00:22:42 - 00:22:48do that. Then they become paralysed and do nothing but small changes. They00:22:48 - 00:22:53do actually add up, and they are quite significant. Don't worry. Andrew is not00:22:53 - 00:23:05. She's not perfect. No one. Every day we're still changing. We're still00:23:05 - 00:23:08becoming aware of what we're doing, and we still may. We can change that00:23:08 - 00:23:13now and, you know, and what a lover. And she'll go out and forget to take the00:23:13 - 00:23:16shopping bags with their and she'll come home with a plastic shopping where00:23:16 - 00:23:20get again and you know, you just come on and you know, the younger00:23:20 - 00:23:25generation of you got to save themselves a cz well, but yeah, and we do. We00:23:25 - 00:23:28keep making those mistakes, and sometimes you have to. You can't bring00:23:28 - 00:23:34them 20. Apple's a bag. That's fair enough. You just gotto practise it. I think00:23:34 - 00:23:38we're all gonna practise, and we'll get there eventually. What are some of the00:23:38 - 00:23:42mistakes that people make when they are using repurposed materials in in their00:23:42 - 00:23:46home? And how can they avoid those mistakes? I think one of the biggest00:23:46 - 00:23:51ones is people think it's going to be cheaper, which is not always going to be a00:23:51 - 00:23:58it. Generally it is. But if you're going to go out and buy a sticker timber from00:23:58 - 00:24:02Bunning's, it's quick. It's easy. It's reasonably cheap, and it really is. But it's00:24:02 - 00:24:06not about saving money for us. It's more about saving the earth at the end of00:24:06 - 00:24:11the day, so don't make that mistake. You think it's going to be cheaper because00:24:11 - 00:24:14quite often you'll go out and buy a piece and have to bring it back and modify it00:24:14 - 00:24:19and change it or sand it back or painted or whatever it is S O that's that's the00:24:19 - 00:24:26first thing it's never, never, never, always cheap. So that's one of the other00:24:26 - 00:24:31thing would be If it's out of your depth, just don't do it way. Can't do00:24:31 - 00:24:34everything. We can't do everything but have a go. If it's something that is00:24:34 - 00:24:38qualified tradesman like Electrician's or plumber and all that sort of thing,00:24:38 - 00:24:42they're the things that don't like to touch. I do a little bit of election electrical00:24:42 - 00:24:48work, but it's all well within my scope of skills and always get it checked by00:24:48 - 00:24:51an electrician's anyway. So I'll get it tested and tag in the light special with my00:24:51 - 00:24:58lamps and things like that s o that sze another thing have ago. But, you know,00:24:58 - 00:25:03make sure you're not well, you know, out of your depth on I think the third00:25:03 - 00:25:08more third thing, I think, was if you really need it done, if the biggest mistake00:25:08 - 00:25:16is if you haven't called us, that's a really I think that's a thing call and we'll get00:25:16 - 00:25:21it sorted for you. You know, the D I Y things is massive. Now it's you see it00:25:21 - 00:25:25on TV. Everywhere people are getting in, getting their hands dirty and having00:25:25 - 00:25:31go and it sze really a big achievement when you do something yourself and00:25:31 - 00:25:35there's plenty of help that out there A said YouTube. Get on there, you learn00:25:35 - 00:25:39how to do anything. I taught myself how to play the piano off YouTube, you00:25:39 - 00:25:43know, all rose sorts of things. And the other day I was out there learning how00:25:43 - 00:25:47to fix my car. There's something broke on it, and I fixed it. You know, it's I00:25:47 - 00:25:53didn't have to send it off and pay top dollar to get it fixed. So there's things00:25:53 - 00:25:58like that. So I have a go at it on DH. Enjoy what you do, Teo. That's what it00:25:58 - 00:26:02comes down to us. We really enjoy fixing things, and I'm Mr fix it. I just love00:26:02 - 00:26:05getting in there and getting something sold in solving problems for people. I00:26:05 - 00:26:11love that. So the biggest mistakes. Number one, not having an understanding00:26:11 - 00:26:15of your budget. When you when you embark on these projects, it just just cost00:26:15 - 00:26:24it up. So you understand how much it's going to cost and number two is trying00:26:24 - 00:26:27to do things that are actually out of your depth, and that's a message that we00:26:27 - 00:26:32share a lot on the show is that day. I was great, but there are certain things that00:26:32 - 00:26:37you actually need a qualified trades person. And also, I think, something that00:26:37 - 00:26:43I see when I watch shame, work, a cz his apprentice. But I would quite often00:26:43 - 00:26:47say to him, are We're just, you know, we just need to pop that door on there.00:26:47 - 00:26:50Or I think sometimes people underestimate that, particularly when you're00:26:50 - 00:26:55working with salvage materials. You're starting with something that perhaps00:26:55 - 00:26:59not the correct size to go in that area. It's it's not the correct think nurse. The00:26:59 - 00:27:04hinges air in a different spot. All those sorts of things that you think way have00:27:04 - 00:27:08a bit of a joke amongst ourselves. He always says, Yeah, I'll just put it in. It's00:27:08 - 00:27:16just four screws, darling e like No, it's not, is it? And Weigh replaced a door00:27:16 - 00:27:23for a client recently in her home, and it was a full day's work because we00:27:23 - 00:27:28bought a second hand or for her, and the whole jam had to be modified and00:27:28 - 00:27:32that's fine. That's exactly what we love doing. But I think people sometimes00:27:32 - 00:27:37under Estrada, underestimate how much time and effort is involved in using00:27:37 - 00:27:40salvage materials. Which brings us to mistake number three, which is not00:27:40 - 00:27:47calling. So before we get to our signature questions, let's just tell people how00:27:47 - 00:27:51they can fix mistake number three, which is how would they get in contact00:27:51 - 00:27:56with you so you can jump on? All our socials are at salvage merchants on00:27:56 - 00:28:00Facebook and Instagram, or you can find us on our website salvage merchants00:28:00 - 00:28:03dot com dot you. We're just based in Maadi, Alex. So we're just up the road00:28:03 - 00:28:06from the peninsula and we do a lot of work down this way, and we always00:28:06 - 00:28:11enjoy hopping on Peninsula linked to come down here for the day. So, yeah,00:28:11 - 00:28:15just give us a call. We'd love to chat when love to visit people's homes. We'd00:28:15 - 00:28:19love to see how people live and listen to their ideas and their concepts, and we00:28:19 - 00:28:24just really enjoy working. Their business attracts the most incredible people,00:28:24 - 00:28:29and we're really fortunate in that way really like minded people. So, Richard00:28:29 - 00:28:33Yeah, the results are stunning. Do make sure that you pop on over and cheque00:28:33 - 00:28:39out those socials and the website. All right, signature questions. What is your00:28:39 - 00:28:44favourite? Thiss question was made for you. Thiss question was made for you00:28:44 - 00:28:48. What is your favourite interior design or architectural style from a bygone era00:28:48 - 00:28:56? Well, I'd have to say as owners are very owners are. What's a CZ?00:28:56 - 00:29:02Custodians of 150 year old church would have to say. It's a Victorian era. We00:29:02 - 00:29:07have very fortunate to have a beautiful little church out past Bella Rat that00:29:07 - 00:29:16we're currently renovating to be an Airbnb for people and just that era off. It00:29:16 - 00:29:21was a really tough time in Australia, the gold rush, and we look at our little00:29:21 - 00:29:28church that is five metres high, the roof at the lowest points, five minutes high00:29:28 - 00:29:35, and this was all built by men from ladders with hand tools. And so just I00:29:35 - 00:29:41guess for me it's the appreciation off that the love and the dedication and the00:29:41 - 00:29:46care that went into buildings of that time and they are beautiful and detailed,00:29:46 - 00:29:51and it was done by hand. And that's just incredible to may. So with all that00:29:51 - 00:29:56preserving that it is incredible, isn't it? You know, we need to preserve those00:29:56 - 00:30:01sorts of buildings and that history we cannot lose that it's so important. What00:30:01 - 00:30:08does the phrase dream home mean to you? Oh, he's looking at May E May.00:30:08 - 00:30:13Well, certainly a dream. Hofer may. It's not for walls, and it never has been.00:30:13 - 00:30:19I've lived in beautiful homes. I've lived in plane, home, small homes and my00:30:19 - 00:30:27dream home is the people within a on the people that I cherish. And the items00:30:27 - 00:30:31within that means something to me that have value. Having said that, though,00:30:31 - 00:30:34Joe I have it. I have got a bit of a Pinterest board going because we have a00:30:34 - 00:30:39mutual prince Pinterest, love and Shay and I worked very hard on our Pinterest00:30:39 - 00:30:42board for our dream home property that, you know in the future will look00:30:42 - 00:30:48something like a rambling country estate with workshops being held and00:30:48 - 00:30:52community gatherings. And that's what our plan for our dream home is. But00:30:52 - 00:30:58you know, right now we live in a factory and it's unreal, and it contains00:30:58 - 00:31:04everyone that I love. That's my dream Home contains everyone that I love. I00:31:04 - 00:31:14can't wait to see your rambling one well again. If you want to find any in00:31:14 - 00:31:20Shane, you Khun, go to salvage merchants on Instagram and Facebook or all00:31:20 - 00:31:26the W's salvage merchants dot com dot a. You got that right. Great. Thank00:31:26 - 00:31:31you so much for coming in to the studio that was so informative, super00:31:31 - 00:31:36valuable and really inspiring. Thank you, Joe. It's been a real pleasure to be00:31:36 - 00:31:42here, and we just love being able to get a message out to people. Thanks for00:31:42 - 00:31:46joining us on the Dream home movement. Be sure to come over and say hi on00:31:46 - 00:31:51Facebook and Instagram. I hope that your dream home projects are going well00:31:51 - 00:31:54and I look forward to chatting with you again next week.

We would love for our audience to avoid the mistakes that we've made where possible. Because it's not just a mistake like it's all about failures and learning how to fail. and failure is a good thing. But we're talking here losing money because of failures. And I mean, obviously, we want to avoid that where we can. You can find Jason here: https://www.lasertunedconnections.com/ Joy can find Joy here: https://www.joynicholson.com/00:00Hi everyone, we are back with another episode jam-packed with information today, I and Jason are going to talk about the five ways to start a business right? And how to actually not start a business. Hi, Jason, how you doing?00:14What's up Joy doing good, how are you?00:15I'm doing good, thank you. We have both been burned with businesses in the past while like you know, like the wrong and the right ways of actually starting a business. And we know what you should not be doing. And we want to help you guys to potentially avoid the mistakes that we've made. Because it's not just a mistake like it's all about failures and learning how to fail. And you know, finally, failure is a good thing. But we're talking here losing money because of failures. And I mean, obviously, we want to avoid that way we can. So Jase can you tell us something like, what is your biggest mistake that you did the first time you did a business you know, like, what was your biggest the wrong way that you started? What was your biggest thing?00:56First, I just want to add on to what you just said. Yeah. Starting out of business. It can be very intimidating. I mean, not only you trying to figure out what business to get into, well, let's just assume we're doing an online business. Yeah. What we're going to be selling or promoting? Who do we listen to? Who do we know? To listen to or not? I mean, there's just so much information out there, nevermind the stuff that you're going to get online. You're going to get stuff from every avenue in your life, especially from the people that don't even know how to turn on a computer. You know, what do you listen but some of these people maybe like people that you respect the most in your life, your parents or whatever people that you think, well, these are the more intelligent people that I know in my life, I value what they have to say, very, how do I defuse what's right what's wrong what direction. So this is very important. So back to your question, the biggest mistake that I ever made in starting an online business or starting a business in general, because my first business wasn't completely online is chasing the cash and making that primary making money the first and only objective. Yeah. That is quick to lead you down some ugly, ugly paths, they will lead you down these five huge mistakes that we're going to talk about today. So that would be where I started off wrong, I think. But of course, when you're, maybe you've come to a point now you've decided to start an online business because it hasn't worked for you in brick and mortar business or wherever you were and you know, you're in a tight spot right now, money might be the driving force. But this is not where your thinking should I start for a successful business.03:11Yeah, I completely agree with you. And that's exactly the mistake that I made is that I want to make money, see the quickest way to make money. And it was the biggest mistake I made. Because yes, that is a drive for people when they start out, because it's like, normally what is it is like, either quit my job, or I lost my job and I need to figure out how to make money because there are not other companies that I can apply for or for work, or whatever it is, right? There's always something that money is a driving factor. But if you apply, as we say, we're going to talk about five things today that is the wrong things, basically, that you should not be doing starting a business and if you just change your mindset, a little bit about this, you will understand and realise that there is a right way to do something and yes, you will still earn money, but the money is going to come automatically because you've just you know I've done it the right way. So let's talk about this Jase because I think this is something that really struggles and I mean, I've got I know people that are really struggling to start an online business because I literally got I'm not even joking they are not even on Facebook like they don't know anything online or tick because I've just never been in that space. But you know, it's incredible there is a range of people out there that really wants to start a business and they have no clue because everything out there is so overwhelming. You know, there's just so much information out there. And what do you do if you have no clue? So number one, is basically being interested in the product, what's your feeling on that Jase? Like if you're not interested in a product, what do you think will happen?04:40Listen, if you're not remotely interested in what you plan on selling or promoting, you're not going to care. You know, I'm not interested in salt shakers. There are hundreds of different kinds that kinds of salt that they dispense how they dispense the salt, the types of salt that you use on different meats? Is it Himalayan salt? Is it pink salt? Is it salt with 64 of the major vitamins? Or is it the salt with the A? Is it NACL sodium chloride, which is just table salt, which is garbage. I mean, and I don't love anything about salt and I'll just wrap that off to you. If you don't have an interest in the slightest about what the hell you're going to sell. Number one, you're not going to want to learn about it because you just don't care. I don't care what Avenue the information is coming in, whether it's magazine or online, or whatever it is, you just don't give a shit. I don't care about salt. I love to cook so I do care about salt in some ways, but definitely not enough to sell it. So number one, you're not going to be interested in learning about the product. And number two, if you actually have to make a video or get in front of somebody to sell them a product that you don't like. It's gonna come up people buy you first.06:11I'm laughing so much because I can just imagine Jason sitting there trying to sell salt shakers because06:17it's just not going to happen. I have this thing when I teach my students is that if you're a man, you're not going to sell bally dresses. I know this is a weird analogy but you know, it's like if you're not going to sell bally dresses if you're not interested in bally if you like love camping or you love fishing or sell things related to what you love, you know, even if you don't have a passion, it's okay to not have a passion you know, but at least sell that interesting product. I mean, me and Jason started off selling a mutual product and we both love the product. But this is the other side of it. Even though we love the product. We don't make money selling it because we just don't sell it. Which is the ironic part right?06:58We've put out so much information on this shit, it's amazing.07:04We have a Facebook page of like, hundreds of posts, like literally, and this is like a failure in itself    because we put Facebook ads into this Facebook page and just like teaching people about, you know this product and are we making any money?07:21Yeah, looking at the numbers at the end of the month, it's like 20 posts 500 what do we sell? Nothing. I have none. Do you? No nothing.07:36It needs to be we had some inquiries, but and even though but this is the thing, even though we like the product, you know, it's like a thing that we enjoy. It's not something that we really interested in. It's like you said like, I like salt I cook with salt but I'm not interested in salt. There's a difference, guys. So, I mean, if you love to fish, but you're not really interested in fishing, then it's not the same thing I don't want to buy a lower from you.08:06It's hugely important and it sounds funny but you know, when you're promoting something that you like or remotely interested in, when education about that product comes your way, you will naturally want to listen. Exactly. To take in that information. You know, if it's something that you're not interested in, you're going to let that go in one ear and out the other. So when you're choosing this product, if you haven't already, make sure it's something that you can get into and get behind and speak intelligently about for God's sake, if I am talking to you about salt, let me know that you've had some in your life, you feel it's important.08:48And it's true like I said to Jasen before we started actually recording this episode, I had somebody that approached me on driving organic traffic to my Facebook because he's selling this but I'm looking at his Facebook profile and it's got like two or three people liking his posts and I'm like, dude, how can you teach me to drive traffic if your traffic sucks and I'm not knocking the guy's obviously just bought into this opportunity. And then I asked him like, I didn't really care to drive traffic and I'm like well then don't sell this product because you can't sell something that you don't have the interest to do. I mean like it just doesn't make sense. You can't do it. And this is the thing so just be interested in a product you know, even if it and like I said, we had a mutual product, we sold this product, and we didn't make money selling this product because we weren't interested in it. And it's a great product. We both have it we both love it. We both use it every single day. But do we are we interested in it? 09:43We promised ourselves once we hit X amount of sales, we would go on an amazing vacation with our families. Guess where we never went? On no vacation.10:00That's a failure in itself, right? Think about this, I, we talked about failure before, that's a failure, but we can laugh about it because we actually appreciate and understand where it comes from, you know. So funny. Okay. It's very true. Also, remind you guys, please subscribe to the channel if you like our videos. Number two is that what we have is the site where your weaknesses in the process? So, you know, where is your struggles, you know, if you start an online business, think of where is your weakness is it technology is a piece of product information, you know, whatever that weaknesses, what is your weakness? So, I've got a programme, which is called four pillars, which is our Facebook group and all of that stuff, which is teaching people how to be time management and teaching people funnels and marketing and traffic. So think of your weakness, you know, you might have a weakness in something completely different. You might have a weakness where you didn't even think it was a thing until you started an online business. What's your feeling on this Jase your weakness?10:57No, no, I agree. I mean, and, and for every one of these it's fair to look at it as you know, not only what are your weaknesses, but what are your strengths. And though I mean, if you're coming into an online business and you know, you know quite a bit about a product, that doesn't mean that you know how to market it, it doesn't mean that you know, how to keep a schedule about how to keep on to that marketing. And it doesn't mean that you know how to talk, it doesn't mean that you know, how to talk to somebody else about it to get them interested. That's something completely different. You might know a lot about salt. Do you know how to present to me all the facts about Himalayan pink salt to get me to buy an ounce of it? Or do you just know that it tastes good, and it's good for me? There's a lot that goes into not only knowing about the product but how to market the product, how to keep on on a daily basis with growing this business. And so it's important to know where are your weaknesses in the business cycle revolving around this product?12:04Mm-hmm, exactly. And I mean, I coach students and I've got quite a few students that they really suck with messaging people and getting themselves out there and having that persuasion. This is how Joy talks about you.12:19No, but the reality is, I was the same not as funny, right. But I was the same. You know, before I did, like, I'd had sales before. But before I had my sales thing, I didn't want to speak to people about anything like my product knowledge was off the charts. I knew so much about it, but it's like, ooh, how do I actually approach this person to talk about all my product knowledge, you know, and this is the thing there's so much there are so many different components in actually selling a product and people think I'm going to start an online game, one man, I'm going to make my first million dollars and when am I going to buy my island, but the reality is, it's not that simple. And yes for some people it is I mean, I know people that started and within like the first month, I'm making 100k. But if you look at it, the reality is that they know how to do it because they actually have no weaknesses as in how to sell it. They know how to have time management, they know how to be focused and know how to set goals, they know marketing they know how to market themselves. They know how to sell to people without them even maybe they didn't even know that they know how to sell to people. They have the right you know the system in place, maybe they've bought into a problem where they have the right system in place, like a funnel or, you know, really good website, they understand how to drive traffic. These are all very important things to actually helping you in this whole process that you know, to actually be successful in this game.13:39And at the same time, you might be coming from a brick and mortar business. And now you're getting into the online thing. You might have more knowledge than you know about how to sell or market a product, you might be missing just one piece. That's making everything go down the drain. Yep. And the connection between you and that one piece might be a coach to just point it out to you. So getting everything out about what you know, and what you don't know about that product is equally important about how do I make others feel the way I feel or want them to feel about this product.14:30Yeah, and that actually ties in with number three that Jason is saying it's like how do I actually get help with this weakness? And I used to identify the weakness Okay, so you've identified maybe your issues on a marketing right? Now you've identified that you know most of the things but how do you actually then do the next step? So identifying your weakness Jase what is the best way that you can actually then help yourself once you've identified the weakness you know, like, how do you  help you know, how do you get help on this?14:58So you might need some help getting to the point where you can identify that weakness. And we can go over how to figure that out. I mean, you and I are both people that we base our businesses on getting people, these types of information are not the amount of money that you will see out there people charging, and we'll get into that, but that's just who we are as people. And that's how we base our business. And so it is going to be crucial that you start to speak to people or get into groups that are either semi lightness, am I liking this or talking about the same things that this product is asking questions, reading, taking it all in, which goes back to have some kind of interest because the information that you're going to take in it's going to sink in and it's going to help you realise with some help where your missing piece if you will. 16:07Yeah, I completely agree. And I mean, you get things like paid, you know, like coaching things. And this is kind of like with the next one also comes, like educating yourself about the product. And you know, it's not necessarily time-efficient, you need a coach for that, but also just diving into that, like, for example, I am part of two paid Facebook groups. And it is fantastic. You know like, it's really good because it's kind of secluded, or exclusive, and exclusive to be in groups, right? But I've also been part of paid programmes where it was useless, you know, so, you really need to understand like, if I pay $50 a month to be part of this group, am I getting the value that they promise because you would you can get that or you can be part of a $40 coaching a month programme, which basically teaches you nothing, or you can be part of the thousand dollars or $5,000 a month programme, which also again teaches you nothing. And I mean like I said I'm part of, and I mean in total, these two Facebook groups a month cost like 70 bucks, which is nothing, and I learned so much from them every single day because the people actually pump you full of value, right? So I guess you need to understand and realise that when you educate yourself what is the value if you can't afford like a full-on one on one coach, which is expensive right because you pay for the hour or you pay per month whatever is it then worth it for you to go into a group coaching on the topic that you're not sure about, you know, and I personally found that both works like I mean, I've got a coach and I've got my group coaching and what my coach lack in, you know, the things that I'm needing I'm finding it you know, somewhere else, you know, because generally your coaches on a specific field, but if your business is different, I would say almost pillars to it then it's better to get education from somebody else, you know, it just makes sense that way.18:05Now I come from a little bit of a different position. So you're going to get a little bit, two different perspectives here. When I was life coaching in another area before I started doing what I'm doing now, the price would be an MIU none of this was online it was always one on one was thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for three months. The information 100% worth it will change your life. So not everybody has that money, especially when you're starting out. So my new business model is to provide that information for people while we're rate because that's what I feel is right. And I know in the end I will be compensated  tenfold for the information I'm getting, so it's finding the right people to provide that information. That's is critical. There's a lot of shit out there.19:08Yeah, no, I completely agree with Jason and this is a thing like, I'm not knocking please make sure that you understand I'm not knocking a $10,000 a month programme. I'm not doing that at all, because there's a lot of value. I've seen a lot of value in programmes like this, but just be careful, you know, be careful of when you actually pay $5,000 is a $97 a month programme, you know, like, because there can be the same exact value, you know, and it depends on person to person to person coach to coach to coach programmes to a programme to programme it depends on what you're buying into. And again, it boils down to like, you know, the number one and the number two the weakness and the progress or sorry, not the progress that the product you know, the interest in the product.19:55So, right here right now, I mean, before we even move on you have two different, very different perspectives of what you want to know. As you're looking out, I was on a ridiculously high end, did very well. I recognise what is wrong with that. She is providing information that is, you would pay that money but decided that that wasn't the way for her to go with the information that she's giving, so you're getting the best of both worlds, right? I mean, you see, when we have our videos, it's no rocket ship, Jason and Joy coming at you for another five grand. I mean, it's just not necessary. The purpose of this is to give you honest, simple information from two very different we come from two very different worlds. But we met on the same plane, where most of you will find yourself when you start out and so  it's a very unique area that we both meet on and can provide information for you both, which is why we do what we do here. Exactly.21:09And the thing was exactly what Jason is saying is because the thing is with us, and this is what I appreciate about him being my business partner because we think the same, we have the same belief in things. And the number one thing that like really connects us on this level, is that we both believe that knowledge and like, I mean, what Jason is doing is like fixing your mind, right if you've got issues, but obviously there's more to it than that but that's the concept, but we want to charge as cheap as possible I mean, the reality is, we're all in it to make money. But our number one goal is to serve people first, before getting a big amount of money. That's the number one thing we want to see people succeed and have success and then the money is a byproduct of that. You know, and this is the same but realistically speaking we have to pay the bills, but we don't care to make a million dollars, yes, it will be nice eventually sure whatever, but it's not our goal. Our goal is to serve and help people and charge them $97 for something instead of five or $10,000 because we just don't believe in their business module. And that's what makes us I guess different, right?22:14Yeah, that's right. But when we both started out, essentially, it wasn't all like this and online and so now we have the ability to present a product to a large number of people without having to take up all of our time because things start getting really expensive and people start getting really greedy when their greatest asset starts to be used up. Now, what's our greatest asset as a human? We only have so much, that's when it starts to get expensive, but now, you find a way to deliver your product to the masses and you're coming from a good spot. Correct. This is where you're gonna see returns and it's going to make you feel good. So that's what we're doing here.23:06Yes, exactly that. And that is basically then you know number four but we just talked about this number four you know, it's like educating yourself about the product and being time efficient about it. You know if it means getting into group coaching, and you're going to save 10 hours a week trying to figure this stuff out on your own, do it. If you feel like if you have the money in your bank account to buy a one on one coach, that is the right coach for you then do it. You know it all works. But we have been saying just be careful you know, just be careful with what you do. And that brings us to number five, which is talking about fake gurus, guys, there are fake gurus out there and they charge you thousands of dollars for things that are just doesn't exist. You know, you point the finger back at you you're a funny bunny. Serious, serious topic.23:59But it is because I mean, I'll do yourself a favour guy and I just told Jason this before I started recording this episode go to YouTube and on YouTube search fake gurus exposed, there is so many of them. And it is a thing. And I mean, maybe some of the people that they expose isn't really fake gurus, I don't know. But what I have seen is that most of them are fakers because they charge people. Okay, so what is the difference between a faker and a real girl? I was just gonna say let's talk a bit about how you spot a fake guru.24:29Exactly. I love it. And the fake guru is really just charging you thousands and thousands of thousands of dollars. Like I'm talking anything between 1000 and $5,000 per month for something which is like sure you can pay that but the fake guru doesn't actually tell you that you're going to have results. And you know if you have results that kind of have this weird way of wording it that it's not really their fault that you're not getting results it's your own fault because you're not putting in the time and effort and all of that stuff. And that is a problem with the fake guru because they make you feel like you are the person that did this wrong and it's not a programme, but this is the thing you don't see the results. You don't see your money back. You don't actually make money. No, you want to listen to I don't mean to cut you off. No, I'm done. Okay,25:20So fake guru. So when you're listening to somebody and you're searching online, how do I who do I learn about such and such with or what have you?  A person that knows what they're doing will tell you exactly what you're going to receive where you are before the programme and what you're going to get afterwards. Now what I mean by that is like, for example, coaching, I'm a mindset coach, and so you can get caught up pretty heavily there's a bunch of people out there that are that have paid for a three-month life coaching course. And now line certified by life coaches of the universe, or whatever it is. Yeah. And I couldn't just make you smile. That's amazing. For 10 grand? No, no.26:18Where are you now? Where are you going to be once you've bought this course? Even if it's $100? Where am I going to be once I've done all the modules or the learning, right absorbed all the education, etc,26:36What are the results? What can I expect? If I don't get these results, is there any reimbursement? This is big. Because if it's a well, every person that you see and then you hear these are not typical results, well, that might be so, but what if my results aren't at least what you say I'm going to have at the end.Correct.27:04If you're not going to get your money back in some sort of way, shape or form, in any capacity, get out of there. Exactly. Get out of there. The other thing is you can talk to people who know about what's going on in the business. And you'll start to learn who these people are, as you talk, get into your niche group chats and things like this, you'll find people like Joy, and I have been around for a little bit.27:30You can come to and say, this is what I got, this is what they're offering, what do you think? And then we will be able to tell you because we've been around and we're around it every single day. Yes. Do you know what I mean? So you have to be very careful about what people are offering you $12,000 I'm gonna make you smile in four weeks. No,that's not worth it.27:53And it's, you know, it's a little bit harder for me with coaching as far as mindset Well, somebody like Joy, she's very, very specific on what you're going to get from when you start to where you end up. This is huge,right.28:13It's the same with you. Yeah, exactly. So when people start with me with coaching, it's like, well, you're gonna go from having zero cells to potentially having a cell. And I'm saying potentially because it depends on how they actually put it in. But I've had a hundred per cent success rate with people when they complete my coaching that they actually do have a cell. And I've actually got students where I should probably not say this out loud on a YouTube video, but I have given them an extra coaching session for free just because it was that one coaching session that might the difference between them not having a sale because they learn a bit slower, or they didn't quite understand the process, or it's nothing to do with them, but it's about the product that they're selling. And it's a little bit trickier to market it, you know, so, and I mean, that happens to me every other day with my coaching and I recognise that and if I can't help somebody in three sessions to do a sale, then I don't feel right about that. Because my goal is, again, as we talked about to serve people and see them having success. And I would rather spend an extra hour of my time helping them to get that sale because Jason, you know, once you've made your first sale online, that's all you need. And then you're like, ah, I can just repeat that process and just make more and more sales right. And that's the thing is like, once I have that satisfaction of giving them the first sale, that's it, like I would say, Bob, 's your uncle and Jason and like that, or like that, but that's the thing you know, in South Africa is that Bob's your uncle, and that's the thing and you know, you're on your way, because then you just repeat the process, but getting that sale is hard. Sorry. No, you're fine.29:50Also, something that is hugely important, at least with Joy and I in our respective businesses is that I'll only speak for me but I know because I know what Joy does and how she does it. I want to make sure that once we've spoken and you've gotten everything that you learned, you don't need to come back. There isn't a need for you to need me on a weekly basis for another thousand dollars, be careful of that. That's not the same as we will have a once a month check-in or audit for a specific cost or whatever. That's different from at the end of every session that we meet, or at the end of all the information that you get you to need me time and time and time again. That's garbage. For me, I'm going to give you everything that I have so that one you don't need me anymore and two you'll be on your way to help somebody else. Yeah. That is a business model that you're not going to see ever. But just be wary of that be cognizant of it because that is somebody that actually cares about how you're doing in business and your future and not about their own if that makes sense.31:16I agree with Jase, like a big part of it but also, it is good to have a coach, like, you know, I'm speaking with somebody that has a coach, it is good to have that somebody that you pay X amount of dollars for a month that you can just. I didn't say it wasn't wrong to have somebody to chat or something like that.31:36I agree. Yes. And that is what you said. But it's also just being mindful because it depends on the field that you're in to, you know, this is the thing, it depends on the field and also the person like, you might have somebody that's very needy and they need your help because that's just the way they're wired. You know, they want to have somebody on standby to ask questions for and that's okay, if that's them and they are willing to pay for that on standby thing, then that's fine. But you know, it is good if you can have if you can bind to a programme that gives you everything you need and you just maybe pay like I have a Facebook as I said, a paid Facebook group, I have the programme, but then you just pay to ask questions, really, you know, which is great because you don't have to go to YouTube to go and figure things out. Right. Again, it's saving the time thing. Yeah.32:23And that's the thing for me for you know, I do the mindset coaching, but I also have, I have clients that I do their website work for them, and help them with their wording on their websites to help bring in more clients. And if somebody pays me, you know, 300 a month or $250 a month to always make sure that their website and the language is always there so they can call me at any time and say, I need to present this to the public this is what I'm trying to get across. There might be very specific language there I'm a master in or I've I know about, and to pay two or 300 bucks a month to have me be able to make those changes for you to bring in sales. That's well worth it again. And if you're not sure if it's worth it or not, or prices, find people like Joy and I that is honest that will say to you, that's worth it. Or stay away from that. Do you know what I mean?33:33And it's about serving people. And I mean, we are just saying to us because we on this, but I mean, find anybody else. We're not saying come to us, right? But it's like, this is guaranteed if you find somebody that is there to serve the people and not serve their pockets, you'll be fine. I could not have said that any better.33:51Yeah, you know, and that's the difference between a guru and somebody that just genuinely wants to help you. You know.33:59You  know guru it's funny people call themselves guru where people say this one's a guru. Guru means going from dark to light. That's what guru means.34:12Yeah. If you're not talking to somebody who's trying to bring you from a dark place, and I don't mean like you have to be dark, but a place of less to a place of more to a place of fear to a place of love. If that's not their primary focus, that is not a guru.34:32Exactly, exactly. That's a thing. Well, I think that covers all of them. So I'm just going to quickly recap the five. So number one is to make sure that you're interested in a product or a service or something that you're going to sell. You know, if you're passionate about a great profession as a strong word, you're not always passionate about something, but it is an interest. Okay? Number two is deciding where your weaknesses, okay? If it's going to be marketing or product knowledge or you know, whatever your weaknesses and then number three is how do I get help for that weakness? Do I get a coach? Do I go to the Facebook group, whatever that is four is educating yourself on the product, but also do it in a time-efficient way, you know? And then number five is basically a guru. What is a guru? And, you know, do I bind to a guru programme or, you know, who do I really listen to? That's really what number five is, you know, who is the person that's going to help me on this journey?35:23Also, and I just want to say, maybe you don't know what it means to you know, maybe you've watched this and please, if you've watched this and you're interested, watch our last episode because a lot of this stuff here, it all intertwines. It's, it's all connected. And so maybe you're thinking to yourself, well, what does it mean to have a coach? What does that look like, in my daily life or weekly life or monthly life? Like, what is this person to me? And how does this fit in my life? Especially if I have kids or I'm doing different things like how does this incorporate into my daily being actually reach out to us.36:00We will tell you exactly what that looks like. A lot of it can be based around you and what you do, and how your schedule is. But it also is based upon what our schedule is. I mean, this is we meet in the middle here, you know, I mean, this is not so, so ask us questions about what that looks like.36:20And we've got Facebook groups, you know, so if our personal time is not in there, we've got a Facebook group and I mean, we each have our own Facebook groups and just, you know, join the Facebook group pop questions in there and you will get answers and at least you'll get a straight honest answer. Every time36:34And not some dodgy weird like, oh, we're gonna sell you this or wait I can't answer you but buy my $500 $1,000 programme, and then I'll answer your question as much as you don't need to do that. So true. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Jason. That was like, I think a quite an informative episode I would say.36:54No, thank you, Joy. And I  know, what I love about these episodes that we do is that and I said it in our previous episode is, you know, Joy and I come into these recordings with an idea of what we're going to talk about. But largely what you hear, and I'm sure you can tell, it comes straight from who we are as people, and who we are as people directly reflects on who we are as business people. And I'm sure you can see that. So that's very important to us.37:22Yeah, we are always there to help and if you have any questions, and you know, as I said, we always there to, to lend a helping hand. And we both me and Jason are both working on coaching programmes, it's going to be so dirt cheap. So we're going to bring something out in the next I would say two or three months or so. And it's going to be dirt cheap, you know, it's not going to be your next thousand or $5,000 programme. And it's because we want to do this purely because we want to help you and we want to see you succeed. So watch the space on that but we will obviously announce it when it's close to being finished. But um, yes, this is going to be all about the mindset stuff. I'm going to help you set up a business and eventually I am sure Jasin and I will meet in the middle somewhere. Now on that, yeah, we will. All right. This is awesome please subscribe don't forget to subscribe and we appreciate you.38:13Yeah, everybody is safe. Great to see you guys, please check out our previous episodes they've all been well received so far. We'd love to see you there. Reach out to us at any time for any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, whatever you got. We're ready.38:26Awesome. Thanks so much. Thanks, Jase. Bye, everyone. Peace

View the Bulletin for Wednesday February 5, 2020Service Time: 7:00 p.m.Bible Study: 7:35 p.m.View LIVE STREAMING versions of the Sunday and Wednesday Service on YouTube.View and Subscribe at Zion’s YouTube ChannelJob 2:1—3:10Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. And the LORD said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the LORD and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.”So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said:“Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it.Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry enter it. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan. Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning, because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.John 1:19-34And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

What does it mean to be “unlovable”? Unlovable -- “not deserving of love or affection, not having attractive or appealing qualities” Are there unlovable people? Or just unlovable behaviors? Luke 15:11-32 We are to love “unlovable” believers and unbelievers. Loving difficult people is difficult, but that is what God has called us to do. At some point in our lives, we can probably see ourselves as both brothers: the wayward and the judgmental and selfish. We have all been unlovable. Romans 5:6-8 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died in place of the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous person will one die; though for a good person perhaps someone would even be brave enough to die. 8 But God shows his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died in our place. Galatians 6:10 Loving the unlovable requires selfless giving, but such an act of kindness will yield the greatest reward in the Kingdom. Luke 6:32-38 And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34And if you lend to those of whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive the same amount. 35But love your enemies, and do them good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. 36Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. 37“And do not judge and you will absolutely not be judged, and do not condemn and you will absolutely not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38Give, and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will they give into your lap. For with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you again.”

The scriptures are full of advice to forget ourselves and let God take care of our daily needs.“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” -Matthew 6: 25“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” -Matthew 6: 31-32” Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient ” -Matthew 6: 34And that’s just one chapter in Matthew!Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs demands that we have our own needs taken care of before we can fully serve people in the highest capacity possible. maslow’s hierarchy of needsIf we try to jump over any of the lower steps, we will eventually slide back down to the level we are able to provide for ourselves. For example, we cannot give or receive respect, recognition and status (in the Esteem category), authentically long term, until we can’t easily feel friendship, intimacy and a sense of connection (in Love and Belonging).Many people try to be self actualized, being the most that they can be, while still struggling to maintain employment, or have enough resources (Safety Needs). This is why so many people feel depleted when they serve.But, if we are struggling in an area, does that mean we can’t help others?If you will notice, the bottom level is very self-focused – all these needs are for me alone. And in reality, God has provided for them all. It is only when we can look beyond these basic needs that even the basest civilizations are able to provide for themselves, that we begin to think of others.Mary, on our call today shared an experience when she was inspired to volunteer. After fighting the thought for 3 weeks, she finally followed through with her inspired message. The outcome proves that God knows what we need. And that forgetting ourselves to notice the needs of others, creates joy and abundance beyond anything we could imagine.There is always something we can do. Inspired actions steps are never convenient and they are never logical. AND, they are always perfect. Jesus always acted immediately when he was moved by compassion.As Felicia on our call suggests, all of us have great abundance in something. As I give my piece, and you give your piece, we are building a big jigsaw puzzle that is not a picture of giving and receiving, but of LOVE.This call today was such a perfect confirmation of the Gateway of Abundance we’ve been studying in The Seven Gateways – Your Map to Integrity in Life and Business.Freely giving in a way that you are immediately paid back is the essence of perpetuating the flow of abundance.Today’s Gratitude Call is replete with a vast abundance of wisdom. Serving humbles us to stop focusing on our own problems, and begin to see that we are not, after all, helpless.When we give, the mind gives way to the spirit.How can we ever forgive ourselves if we are so focused on our own faulSupport the show (https://wylenebenson.com)

In the second episode of Beneath the Subsurface we pick back up with a deep dive into onshore seismic technology in unconventional plays. Wayne Millice, Mike Perz, and Jason Kegel dig through seismic technologies, pre-stack seismic attributes, acquisition developments, and our predictions for the future of seismic and the unconventional realm. Erica Conedera, your host, new to the onshore seismic world, explores the challenges and sometimes over-hyped solutions with onshore acquisition and processing with our guests. TABLE OF CONTENTS0:00 - Intro1:51 - Onshore TGS History2:35 - Acquiring Onshore Data5:00 - The Migrated Stack7:28 - Resolution: The Bug Bear of Processing8:38 - Pre-stack Migration9:55 - Pre-stack Attributes; The Good and the Bad12:05 - Pre-stack: The Secret Sauce13:48 - Noise, Noise, Noise15:38 - The Future of Unconventionals; ARLAS, AI, and ML18:35 - Joint Study with FracGeo: Pre-stack Depth Migration20:39 - Analytic Ready LAS (ARLAS) and velocity Models24:33 - Acquisition Technology; Surface and Subsurface27:10 - Azimuthal Sampling - AVO and Velocity Inversion28:22 - The Q Problem (Anelastic Attenuation)30:08 - Frequency Problems35:21 - Interaction with Acquisition and Processing37:42 - The Future of Seismic in Unconventionals41:24 - ConclusionEXPLORE MORE FROM THE EPISODE:Advances with Land Seismic for Characterizing Reservoirs Workshop with Christof Stork, Mike Perz, Bruce Hootman, Rodney JohnstonARLAS and tgs.ai Subsurface Intelligence A Candid Look at the Value of Pre-Stack Depth Migration for Unconventionals with Mariana Roche Davies at Geophysical Society of Houston TGS Data LibraryEPISODE TRANSCRIPTErica Conedera: 00:12 Hello and welcome to Beneath the Subsurface a podcast that investigates the intersection of geoscience and technology. In our second episode, we'll deep dive into seismic technologies, pre-stack seismic attributes, acquisition developments, and our predictions for the future of seismic and the unconventional realm. From the software development department here at TGS. I'm Erica Conedera, your host and complete newcomer to the world of onshore seismic. I hope you'll find our discussion today as informative and enjoyable as I did.Erica:00:45Um, so let's start with introductions to my left.Jason Kegel00:49Yeah. My name is Jason Kegel. I've been with TGS for six years. I'm a geologist. I've worked on almost every one of the onshore US seismic programs that we have.Erica:00:59Awesome.Wayne Millice:01:00I'm Wayne Millice. I'm the gray beard of the group. I've been with TGS only about 11 years, but are, sorry, eight years. But I've been in the business about 35 years I'm the VP of onshore multiclient. And I'm here to hopefully teach some people about the value of seismic in our business.Mike Perz:01:19I'm Mike Perz. I am the director of technology and the onshore group. So I'm responsible for looking after all matters technical in support that group. And I'm not quite as gray bearded as the gentleman sitting to my right, but I have been in the industry for about 25 years. So I'm kind of blondish with whisps of gray, I guess you'd say. (Laughter) No spring chicken.Erica:01:42Awesome. So let's kick off the discussion for today. If you will Wayne by giving us a brief description of TGS' involvement in onshore.Wayne:01:51Sure. TGS was primarily an onshore-offshore company. Up until about 2011 and 2011, we started the onshore business, January I believe, if I remember correctly. And that's how long I've been here, since January, 2011. In 2012, we acquired a company called Arcis in Canada that gave us an instant library of about 15,000 square kilometers in the western Canadian sedimentary basin. And in 2012 we started our first project in the US. And, we have you a since grown the library from the initial 15,000 square kilometers or so until about a 34,000 square kilometer based our database based in the US and Canada. So it's been a, it's been a fun run and it's going well.Erica:02:35Awesome. So Mike, can you take it over for seismic technology? What do we do with the data once we get it?Mike:02:44Sure. So the first thing that happens is that data has to be processed and I always like to call a seismic processing the Rodney Dangerfield of the E&P chain. And the reason I say that is as you might predict, it gets very little respect, certainly in terms of the almighty buck and the price, the price point'sWayne:03:04Very little budget.Mike:03:05Yeah, very, very little budget. And it's kind of ironic because as Wayne and I have discussed a lot, it's the seismic processing step where we have maximal client engagement usually during the course of a multi client project and reputations are won and lost on the processing. But again, very little dollar value flows with it. I don't fully understand why the valuation isn't higher, but it's a problem that I certainly can't fix. So we kind of, in a way, we try to almost leverage that fact that it's a fairly, fairly cheap technology and we take it very seriously at TGS. So with that preamble about why it isn't the most highly valued element of the, of the chain, let's talk about some of the key outputs from processing. So the thing called the migrated stack is probably the single most important processed attribute in an unconventional play in say, offshore environments like the Gulf of Mexico seismic technology is no one buys CEO's of a big oil companies as an important de-risking tool for say sub salt plays the, in the case of unconventionals, I would not say that seismic has that same kind of universal traction whereby everybody in the c suites on down know about seismic. Nevertheless, it is gaining a lot of momentum.Erica:04:34And when you say unconventionals, can you elaborate on that?Mike:04:38Yeah, I'm talking actually we're all going to be restricting the scope of this discussion to the shale plays onshore shale plays. In a, well North America primarily, primarilyWayne:04:50Our primary focus on probably the Permian and the scoop and stack too. But there are several, several basins in the, in the US market that you could consider unconventional.Erica:04:58Okay.Mike:05:00Right? Yeah. So back to this business of the migrated stack, it is well accepted that it's a very useful thing in unconventional, development. And the primary reason for that is it helps in a delineating landing zones for the lateral wells and also geosteering and hazard avoidance. And I don't know, Jason, if you wanted to expand on a geological perspective of why those things are so important in the, in the depth domain. With seismic, you can start really understanding how to land your wells and doing geosteering in the unconventional world. That's one of the most important things that people are doing right now with their seismic.Jason:05:41Geosteering in particular and finding these landing zones has been important because these reservoirs are, we're looking for is the conventional reservoirs can be anywhere from 10 to 50 feet, which is a lot of times right around the [Clears throat]. The area of seismic resolution, what we found to be more difficult is sort of calibrating everything together. So when we have the data, so calibrating the well logs, the tops, some of the understanding the differences in the different tool parameters your measured while drilling tool parameters versus your after drilling parameters and how that relates back to a depth calibration has been very important in the seismic industry. bringing all those things together to geosteer real-time to actually find these landing zones has been something that a lot of different softwares have attempted to do. And bring this into a multi-client aspect where the operator can instantly get a depth to calibrate and volume that they can geosteer on or look at their regional area of interest onshore has been very different than offshore seismic, which has traditionally had that depth migrated volume to begin with.Wayne:06:53I can expand on one thing that Jason said too when we're talking about regional views on the petroleum systems. So our TGS has a strategy to date has been to get assets that are contiguous within these, with these within these basins so you can understand the regional view of it or of an oil producing basin or hydrocarbon producing basin. So it's important in our opinion that we get a large regional view. That's why you'll see you somewhere databases online. When you look at our, when you look at our projects, they're very contiguous and very focused on one area.Mike:07:28Yeah. Jason gave a nice description of of why we might want to use migrant stacks, for geosteering. And he touched on something important. You brought up resolution and you talked about thin beds on the order of 10 feet to 50 feet. And one of the real bug bears are an unfortunate reality in the seismic processing world is the fact that we really cannot dive down to smaller resolutions than, than those beds. In fact, we're probably operating in, in the order of like, wavelengths of hundreds of feet. So resolving those beds is pretty tricky. We can detect them sometimes but not resolve them and we're always being pushed on the processing side to do a better job. And it's disappointing because all, sometimes all the acquisition equipment in the world isn't gonna help you through that. Mother Nature is cruel in a way and she chews up the high frequencies and there really hasn't been a breakthrough in seismic processing technology to allow us to bash through that, that limitation. So resolution is an ongoing issue and we're always squeezed by it in the unconventional context in the, especially for this geosteering. So that's worth noting. And one other quick thing, Jason mentioned pre-stack depth migration and that's an important new technology in unconventionals. Technology has been around forever for 20-25 years in the Gulf of Mexico, but it's really gaining ground in unconventionals and in in fact, TGS, shameless plug for a talk. TGS is going to be hosting a talk in early June, June 6th. Mariana Roche Davies is going to talk about pre stack depth migration and why it's valuable in unconventional plays.Wayne:09:07We should be plugging a lots of things here, shouldn't we all sorts of-all sorts of shamelessMike:09:11shamelessly plug. (Laughter)Mike:09:13So, so if, if I could move away from the migrated stack, I just want to talk about the second big thing that seismic data is used for on the and the processing side. And that's the, the pre-stack data are used for generating attributes and we sometimes call this AVO analysis or Pre-stack and conversion. And the interesting thing here is that while the migrated stack has quite a lot of acceptance as a, as a really good de-risking tool for the reasons we mentioned, there is less universal acceptance o- the, these pre stack derived seismic attributes.Mike:09:55Some I can think of one really technically astute interpreter from a Permian player who's very successful and they don't touch the pre-stack attributes because there are too contaminated by noise. On the other hand, you go to the SEG or URTeC and all that, there's tons of talks on using these pre-stack attributes. So it depends on who you talk to. Some people use them, some people don't. My hope is that they're going to be used more and more down the road. We're kind of pinning a lot of our own technical direction on that, on that premise.Jason:10:22No pre-stack attributes have always sort of been the holy grail for, for people to find their, find their sweet spots. Right. I mean, looking at AVO in context, I mean that's the, the number one thing, right? And people are always absolutely to define their bright spot, right? And there's been tons of wells drilled just on that. But then to bring in rock mechanics and what they're doing with, with more pre-stack attributes in rock Brittleness and actually trying to look at Poisson's ratio and Young's modulus. When we start to look at those, we start to actually correlate the actual rock properties to what we're getting from our are sound frequencies. The more we can, we can do that and the better we can actually accomplish that is in the academic world has always been the, the, the driver. Right? And you can't talk to hardly any anybody that's teaching geophysics or rock mechanics or geology nowadays that doesn't want to talk about how to correlate your, your wells to your seismic. And it all comes down to understanding densities and shear wave and you're, you're compressed wave wireline tools and bringing that back to the, to the seismic world. unfortunately Mike is correct in saying that a lot of operators in these unconventional zones don't necessarily don't necessarily use it. They'll use it on their, on their own. They'll use a proprietorially, they'll use their own individual softwares to do that. But in a multi client aspect, it hasn't really caught as much traction as is, I think it will. And I think one of the big things that might push that is, regional is that, that's something you guys think the idea to have more regional studies of pre-stack attributes in pre stack, volumes.Mike:12:05Yeah, I think, I think that's a good idea. I mean what one of the nice things with our huge well database at TGS as we can, we can leverage that massive information source into these regional studies. And one thing I forgot to mention was that this pre-stack conversion or attribute business, it does very well to have a lot of well control and we've got lots of that here. So that would, that would certainly help garner interest. One of the big problems, I think that that detracts from acceptance is just that there are not kind of generic workflows for what to do with the pre-stack attributes. Once you, once you have them, it's quite easy to, stare down a migrated stack and figure out, I steer here, I land here.Mike:12:49That's it. You know that that protocol is easy to understand. What do you do with all these attributes? And different companies have their own secret sauce for that and sometimes they're quite tightly guarded about what they, what they do. So I think that may change in the future. We hope it does.Erica:13:02Why do you think it might change?Mike:13:04I just, I just think it will behoove everybody to leverage the seismic more everybody would win from, from thatErica:13:12To be more transparent with their methodologies or?Mike:13:16Possibly, I mean I think as as technologies emerge that-Wayne:13:19Or we push or we push the methodology, for instance, we have the data points internally that we need to start pushing those to those new solutions so to speak or so push them out and then our customers will create their own secret sauce from hopefully some of our solutions that we're aware of or a team.Mike:13:34And even as they push their secret sauce as the years tick away, typically people give up, they cough up their secret sauce to make a bad extended, a lousy metaphor. But they tend to divulge it and public domain and we all benefit from it.Wayne:13:46It's another paper at URTeC.Mike:13:48Exactly. So yeah, I guess this seismic technology thing is my bailiwick. That's why I'm doing a lot of the talking here that I was going to move on now to future future looking at data processing first of all and take a stab at what what I think are important technologies of the future. One is an old thing, it's noise, noise, noise, getting rid of noise, especially in places like the Permian. The Permian is so nasty as regards seismic soundings. You've got these horrible near surface layers, of anhydrites and salts interspersed and then you get these, these fills zones where the salt collapses and it, it kind of bedevil's all your seismic tools in many ways. And so that's why that one operator I was telling you about is reluctant to look at at their pre stack data for fear of the noise, screwing up their analysis. So we've got to do a better job at noise. We've got to do a better job at eliminating multiple energy. Full wave form inversion is a fairly well established technology offshore. We need to leverage that knowledge and get it going. Working better onshore for us, gets a nice velocity models among other things. Those are good for feeding this pre-stack depth migration technology.Erica:15:02What are the challenges of leveraging that?Mike:15:04Good question. The data are noisier on land typically. And so that isn't totally compatible with the full waveform inversion model toErica:15:13So you have to adapt the model.Mike:15:14Adapted, got adapted to handle topography, things like that. And there are people are, people are doing that. We were certainly very active in that, in that space at TGS. Some of our competitors are as well. But again, I don't think there was this sort of routine commercial use at this point. I mean I know there's not just yet, but we're getting there. So yeah, those, those are kind of the big, the big things.Mike:15:36Now the last thing I was going to ramble on about a bit was taking a future look at interpretation. So where would interpretation be going for for unconventionals? Cause I mean, Jason, check me if I'm wrong, it's really a different beast than conventional plays where interpreters have, there there special ways to stare down data and pick sweet spots and bright spots. This is not that, that same thing. I and I could be off base here. I'm just prognosticating. I think that, one important thing in the future we'll be using machine learning and at TGS we could leverage our data and analytics group for this stuff and basically use machine learning to tease out complicated relationships between seismic attributes and production and completion data points with the view towards being able to predict from the attributes alone where the next landing zone should be the next well.Erica:16:32It's shameless plug. Our first episode was all about machine learning and AI. So please check it out if you haven't already.Wayne:16:38on there. So there're interesting conversations that our AI summit to sort of speak about who would be picking the next location. Would it be AI being confirmed by a human or human confirming AI. So there was a, that was pretty interesting discussion of that, that ti's a good point to bring up.Mike:16:57Yeah, for sure.Jason:16:57And when it comes to interpretation in particular with seismic and how machine learning can help having all of that data readily available in the cloud is, or the first step, right? So when it comes to machine learning, it's just a matter of the more data you have the in the, in the machine, the better you're going to have it coming out. But that's everything that TGS does have, right? The well data start including tops, production completion techniques, different attributes for seismic. Then you actually get the machines starting to actually tell you where your reservoirs are going to have sort of different permeabilities, right? If you could start understanding where these different permeabilities come in and these shales, very slight variations can lead to huge benefits in production. So that's a, that's a very big thing that we would love to be able to do, but it's not quite there yet.Mike:17:48Yeah, I mean I think you've raised a good point. We feel like we have all the ducks in a row here at TGS and it's, it's interesting because there- others before us have played around with multivariate analysis too to try to fit these attributes to things like production. They don't have the breadth of data that we have at TGS and they don't have as ready access to a lot of these things. So we're, we're poised to do some, some pretty cool stuff. So watch this space as they say. The only other thing I was going to say on on future looking interpretation wise, and I again I - disclaimers cause I could be wrong, but I believe that that combining seismic with geomechanical modeling software, may be an important thing to that end. And again, what is this our third shameless plug?Wayne:18:32Well we keep doing it because that's what we're here for. (Laughter)Mike:18:35So we're undertaking a joint study with FracGeo, a Geo mechanical modeling software and Services Company in the Permian Basin on our west Kermit Dataset in the Delaware. And we're going to be reporting back on that soon. But basically we're just, we're taking our seismic data and post-stack attributes like curvature to predict fault locations and that becomes feedstock for their Geo mechanical modeling stuff. And also the stuff you brought up, Jason Poisson's ratio and all the things we glean from inversions, those will go into their geomechanical modeling process as well. So that you know, hopefully that's a new sector in which seismic can be used.Erica:19:11We realized that we missed something, We need to circle back around to the topic related to pre-stack depth migration gentlemen.Mike:19:20Yeah. Pre-Stack definite migration in unconventionals. We kind of give it short shrift. I just wanted to add a few more more things. I had mentioned that it's a very established technology pre-stacked depth migration in offshore plays, Gulf of Mexico and such, and it's only been over the last couple of years that operators are using pre-stack depth migration a lot for unconventionals.Mike:19:40It's interesting to note you don't get the jaw dropping improvements on the migrated stacks that you do in the Gulf of Mexico because the data are not nearly as structured. Right, Jason?Jason:19:50Right, in most areas when people say railroad tracks, they're not kidding.Mike:19:54Yeah, yeah. So, so you don't get these amazing glossy brochure image improvements on the stocks, but the, the benefits come in subtler but still important ways. For example, you get natural output and in depth is one, one really important thing and another thing you get better fault definition after pre-stack depth migration. Sometimes I think the real prize can be the actual velocity model itself. One really important difference in velocity model building for pre-stack depth migration in the unconventional onshore case compared to offshore is that in the former case, in the onshore case, we've got so much more well data to constrain or lock down our velocity models, especially at TGS with our massive well database.Mike:20:39And so that's, that's a really, really good thing. So that's why I feel quite confident at the end of the day the velocity models are so responsibly constructed that you really can trust those depths and you get this natural depth conversion after depth migration that's as good or better than what an interpreter would do using his favorite or her favorite method for for depth converting time process data and on that well topic are TGS so-called ARLAS synthetic, well construction using machine learning. That's really gonna help our depth model building. We've yet to exploit it, but we're going to basically be able to get way more sonic wells through this ARLAS process to constrain interval velocitiesJason:21:24And that's, that's a big benefit in the shallow, we start looking at the, the shallower area for drilling hazards and drilling risk. we also start looking at that for water, for water. So in the Delaware, it's a big issue, not only just produced water and injected water and saltwater disposal, but making sure that the, the drinking water in the aquifer water that's usually in the shallower intervals is safe. So it's an environmental concern that we look into having that velocity model better structured in the upper sections that we normally don't look too much into and we're looking at exploration per se onshore, helps quite a bit with that, both environmental and with, with hazard mitigation.Mike:22:05And the ARLAS construction will help that process, right?Jason:22:10Oh, absolutely. The ARLAS dataset- any type of velocity model that can improve on the, the prior velocity model is of big concern. So you can get back to geosteering. Anything that helps that velocity model. A lot of times when they are geosteering, they'll have realtime velocity model building as the mud loggers are providing new information. They cross different faults, they notice different things that can instantly update the velocity model they're using to help steer that well. So it just goes back to the fact that having the best velocity model up front is going to help the, the final piece of the puzzle, which is landing that well on the, the zone where you can get the most oil or gas out of it.Jason:22:53And that's been shown there. There's been a bunch of studies that have shown this, but there was one in the Balkan a few years ago that showed that using 3D depth seismic helped reduce their costs with 75% just by having their geosteerers use seismic. So that's you know, it's a known value for, for the, the seismic industry and the oil and gas industry to, to geosteer with depth migrated volumes. And it's nice to see that and the multiclient aspect that starting to really catch hold.Mike:23:26Absolutely. And let's just push it onto those pre-stack attributes.Jason:23:29No, I know, we just need it in the attributes.Erica:23:33Okay.Jason:23:34Particularly with faults. All right, so you're talking about some of the coherence studies with the post-stack, but when we can take some of that pre-stack ideas about Brittleness and Poisson's and Young's modelists and looking at those pre-stacks, bring it to the post-stack to where we can start identifying the fault structures and how those faults work. If you're interpreting those faults on your seismic before you go into your completion plan, then you have a much better idea of how you can track that well horizontally. So these wells nowadays, are a mile two miles long, some cases, I mean there, there they go for quite a ways going over some of these faults that have 20 feet to 50 feet to throw can greatly throw off where you're steering that well. So any type of better velocity model, will help you guide that. And a lot of times these faults, they're under seismic resolution. Again, so any type of fault or any kind of deviation that you can see in the seismic or with that velocity model is going to help you with your, your drilling plan and your completion plan.Erica:24:33Okay, so to pivot a little bit; acquisition technology?Wayne:24:36Well, I can chat a little bit about that. So I was in the contractor community for many, many years and back in the day we are pretty happy with, if you take it up from a spatial sampling standpoint, we were pretty happy at the end of the day when we were getting 100,000, 200,000 traces per square mile.Mike:24:56How long ago was it? How long have you been? 55Wayne:24:58Long time, yeahMike:24:59when did you enter the industry? 65 years?Wayne:24:59At least 65 years. Yeah, (Laughter)Wayne:25:04I was still microfilming, right? (Laughter)Erica:25:04Sick burnWayne:25:04I've been getting- yeah, I get that usually from him, so that's okay. But now, the contractor community has made significant investments in equipment and we're actually acquiring datasets that are, millions have millions of traces per square mile, not just 1 million, but millions of traces per square mile. Now they've been doing this quite a bit in the, Middle Eastern markets because of the terrain. The train's fairly simplistic over there. So the ability to put several thousand source points in one square mile or one square kilometer or whichever you choose to measure by Canadian or US, has- is quite simple. Whereas in the US, or the North American market per se, there is a lot more, what do we call, obstructions and they come from several people from several things. Mostly people I didn't slip there. That was a purposeful-Mike:25:58Freudian slip.Wayne:25:58Freudian slip yeah, But, so now that technology that high trace density wide azithmuth fully azimuthly sampled, that technology or that product is now available in the North American market. So, and it's getting more prevalent. We're starting to see a new acquisition techniques mostly with surface source because you're still limited in what you can do. Subsurface source, for instance, a dynamite, right. But with a vibroseis or any or other surface sources, you're able to acquire data probably for about the same amount of money. It was, like I said, I was getting 250,000 per square mile in 1996 and I'm getting millions for the same number today. Right. So it's a, they've seen significantly increased their their traits count, unfortunately haven't increased their profitability so that that's still a problem in the industry for the most part. But they're working on that. Hopefully at some point we can hopefully at some point we can, (Laughter) we can, get to a 10 million traces per squad or mildly because, go ahead.Mike:27:10I was going to say, you brought up the azimuthal sampling and that, that reminds me, I, I've been conspicuous by my silence on azimuthal AVO and velocity inversion techniques and these techniques are, are in use today using surface seismic to help characterize horizontal stress anisotropy and the presence of fractures and I kind of on purpose didn't get into it too much. I'm bringing it up now because I know that some, some of the, some of the listeners are probably wondering why we're not talking about it, that these things can be, can be useful and unconventional plays. But I'm avoiding too much mentioned because there's somewhat controversial and they have a, in my opinion, limited realm of applicability when they work, they work very well, but they have been oversold in over-hyped. So like I could, I felt I had to, I had to go there cause you brought up azimuthal. I'm going to turn you back to your, to your, your comments though.Wayne:28:01So as Mike, as Mike mentioned earlier, denser is better, but, as we've seen and we've tested and we've done all kinds of things in the field that mother nature has different ideas no matter how dense, we shoot these things. Once we drive that sound signal into of the ground, we don't know what's going to happen to it at the end of the day. So,Mike:28:22Yeah, for, for example, Q, I like to say Q can rear its ugly head Q mean is my proxy for anelastic attenuation. And I don't care how, how many sources and receivers you deploy, you can deploy them every, every fraction of an inch and you're not, you're not gonna change the fact that you lose your high temporal frequencies. And so that you know that that's a real problem. And then certain brands of noise are really well suited to being crushed or eradicated through dense spatial sampling. So that's wonderful. But some things like random noise, sorry, like, like really, really tricky linear noise. that's heavily aliased. If it's complicated enough, then you might need really, really fine sampling to deal with it. And that's still kind of a research topic. Random noises, easier, random noise. The denser, the denser it is, the more you'll, you'll beat down the random noise. No quibbles about it..Erica:29:12Maybe this is overly simplistic, but what causes Q, where does that come from?Mike:29:18Oh no, that's, that's a good question. It basically, every time the earth vibrates because a seismic wave is passing through it, the vibration has some loss to heat. And so it's not a pure elastic phenomenon. There's an energy bleed off and that, that basically that, that, that effect winds up, it's been, it's fairly, fairly straight forward and demonstrate that that kills the high frequencies of your seismic waves.Erica:29:45Okay.*Mike:29:46So yeahErica:29:48If it's straight forward, then what-Wayne:29:50It's straight forward for Mike (Laughter)Mike:29:53It's straight forward from the viewpoint of the textbooks. I not going to derive that in real time, are you kidding me? No. My mind is mush over the years as I become more managerial and sales focused. So, but it's, it's well appreciated. It's well established in the community.Jason:30:08So how can new acquisition technologies help to mitigate some of those issues? Like are there other things on the horizon that there we're doing or you think that might, that might be out there to increase the frequency spectrum both low and high?Mike:30:20I, well maybe, let me return to the, the noise thing that first before I forget to reiterate, some of the spatial sampling might help to, to kill coherent noise that's alias. If you get a sample, fine enough to remove the alias. So that's, that's a good thing. But back back now to acquisition and the spectrum, the temporal frequency spectrum. Well on the high end with this Q effect or anelastic attenuation, honestly I don't think all the acquisition in the world is going to help you. If we need, we need to break through in other ways. Then there are some ideas about sparse spike deconvolution that had been around for a while. Maybe those will, those will improve over the years. On the low frequency side we are doing tangible things in the field. I don't know, Wayne, if you wanted to speak to them on the source and receiver side or,Wayne:31:11Sure. We're starting to do some, some experimenting, I think it's actually become more than experiment. We're actually acquiring projects with what we call either low frequency or low dwell sweeps, so we're starting in a real low frequencies and moving, moving slowly through the lower frequencies and then ramping up through the high frequency. So we're driving that spectrum a little bit wider so to speak. Right. So there's a lot of analytics going on on whether that works or not right now. Like you can comment from the processing side, but-Mike:31:40well it's interesting. Yeah.Wayne:31:42The equipment's there to do it as always. There's always been the equipment to do all this neat stuff, but stuff we create the data. Three C's a good example. We create three component data, but a lot of times we only use the p wave and not the transverse and the inver- and the, the, the, the three. So we don't use the three, we just use two and we create these volumes, but we got other stuff that sits on the shelf. But now we're starting to utilize some of these, low frequency start points, so to speak with a vibrators.Mike:32:09Yeah. Right. And same ditto on the receiver side, right?Wayne:32:11Yep. Yeah. Oh yeah. We're trying to, trying to go with the five hertz damp and phones instead of 10 hertz. We're trying all these things, but have we gotten there and put it into production mode yet? I think we're on the cusp.Mike:32:23Well, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting because a lot of clients are very interested in these technologies and there's definitely theoretical promise and we've demonstrated on synthetics that, you know, you can get good results by, by caring a lot about the low end. And we ran it a fascinating test that hopefully we're going to publish at an upcoming SEG workshop. Shameless plug number five, right?Wayne:32:42Four or five?Mike:32:44Five, six, I can't remember. So, so I'm a co organizer. Christof Stork is, is the chief organizer and along with Bruce Hootman and Rodney Johnston and myself work organizing this SEG workshop on land processing and acquisition. And we're gonna, we're gonna dive into some of these, some of these, some of these topics. And one of the things we're talking about is, are we actually really enjoying the benefits of this low frequency attention that we're, you know, that we're foisting on the soundings in the field. Are those low frequencies coming out at the end of the day after all our inversion products? And Are we really reaping the benefits? It's not clear. We ran an interesting internal tests where we, we acquired data with the low low hertz or low frequency phones and I think we had low dwell sweeps. We certainly had have lots of energy on the source side, on the low end and after preliminary processing the result, cause we had a control experiment where we didn't do all this low frequency attention and the preliminary processing showed that that when you were really attentive in the field to these low frequencies, you got a better answer. But guess what? After we got to final processing and we're able to use a second pass of something called deconvolution to really widen the spectrum, we found very little difference between the conventional acquisition mode and the and the the low frequency effort. This is at odds with some of the, some of the literature, and I'm not disputing other people's findings, but there might be a subtle effect with an area dependency to it. We'll see.Wayne:34:13But is a subtle effect enough to justify asking one of our contractors to go spend x number of dollars on equipment to upgrade their crews, right? Or it's,Mike:34:24I know it's a, it's a tough, it's a tough question. Tough question. You know, I guess if price points on the cruise side drop enough, sure it's Gravy, why not? But if not it might not be worth it. You might spend your money on other other things. I'm not sure.Jason:34:35Was it not the low frequencies that help you differentiate liquids in, in some of the inversions that you do further down the road? Is that the, that's the the biggest benefit, right?Mike:34:47That's I believe, I believe it's very helpful. The low frequencies certainly helped to, to lock down the low frequency model for the inversion they give you support. Where are you, at low frequencies, where you don't typically have such support with conventional surface seismic and, and I'm not an expert in inversion, but my understanding is some of the fluid effects do tend to show themselves better when you've got the right answer for the low frequency model. And that's facilitated by having some of these low frequency acquisition techniques in play.Jason:35:21You had mentioned earlier how the seismic technology and processing is the sort of the, the biggest area where we get interaction with our clients. Right. And it seems to be undervalued in that sense with acquisition. Is that a way we can of push that to, to fill that gap so we have that interaction and on both sides?Mike:35:44So interaction on the acquisition side?Jason:35:46Yeah.Mike:35:46Well it's a good question. I mean, my understanding is there's typically not a ton of engagement at the field acquisition stage yet. There's obviously some,Wayne:35:54Actually I would say yeah, there certainly is our one, our pre funders, write a check, they want to have some, implement some, some say so to speak what's going on. But mostly once we've made an agreement, on parameters, all that stuff is pretty much on us to deliver what we said we'd deliver. So, but we do where we really interact with our customers, we help them, we take problems off their plate so to speak, by taking on the acquisition piece, the acquisition piece is the most labor intensive, right. And, but where we really start to get in with our customers and when we, after we get the data, we've done the field acquisition, we interact with our customers from the processing side a lot. So it's important to us that like we said processing's a small piece of our AFE, but it's the most important because that's what we deliver, and that's what they see. Right. So, the, the nobody, no, I always say this to my guys to say nobody remembers the farmer that shot at you. Nobody remembers the vibrator they got stuck in the field, but they always remember if you're AVO volume was crap when they delivered it. Right. So they always remember that. But none of us other than other stuff that went on the field ever matters when they're looking at and looking at data on that workstation. Right? Yeah.Mike:37:07So this, the poor sister in the E&P chain is the processing somehow is, it seems to continually be this, this critical, critical engagement point for, for the client. I mean, I guess the client, they don't, they don't like having to deal with permitting and stuff.Wayne & Mike:37:29No, they only pay - like you guys - take the load off.Wayne:37:31We're taking that load off them. That's a big load. Trust me.Erica:37:34So jumping ahead, what do you predict for the future of seismic in the unconventional space?Mike:37:42Well, I think I state this without proof of course, but I believe that there's going to be an increased use of seismic, including outside-Wayne:37:51Well, the, the data that there's a lot of, there's a lot of data that's been acquired in the US and Canada for that matter. But a lot of it's getting dated, right? So when we're talking about, just like denser is better. We mentioned that earlier, right? Denser is better. So we're finding that a lot of these processing techniques that, Mike has been mentioning earlier, don't apply very well to older data data sets that don't have high resolution and aren't sampled very well. So we're finding, probably a lot of these older servers, you're going to get over it or getting acquired again, right? So that's, that's one marketplace. But as the unconventional space goes on, I think you're going to find, find it. A lot of these, like I said, a lot of these older datasets and a lot of the, are you going to make some discoveries within these data as the processing techniques get better and as we use the attributes better and all those things.Mike:38:42Yeah, 100% yeah. And I was going to say, I believe from my conviction that there'll be an increased use of seismic for that to reach for that to actually come into play. I think that we need to, as an industry use these pre-stack attributes that Wayne just mentioned more and more. And we also, I believe need to start using 3C converted wave data more. We didn't get into converted wave data at all on this Chit Chat.Wayne:39:06That's another, maybe that's another podcast.Mike:39:08It's - it could, in of its own, but you know, there, there's some great promise with that technology, like so many technologies, it's been oversold and over hyped to some degree. But there's some really interesting case studies in western Canada that show that it's got great potential. We had awesome converted wave soundings.Wayne:39:24Yeah.Mike:39:24On the loyal survey. Yeah. And that's so, so that might help to propel the increased use of seismic as well as increased use of these attributes. So that's, that's what I think is going to, it's going to happen.Jason:39:35One other thing, I really think that seismic is going to help in completion engineering. I'm going, I think that's sort of where it's going to now and where it's sort of, we've seen that happen with some of the pre-stack attributes and just to use seismic first off and understanding exactly where to perf and exactly where to make your completion intervals and where you're going to get the best production, on top of all the regional work you do to, to start out.Wayne:39:58And that'll impact the funding cost per barrel for our customers. So that's going to, we hope that that's the, again, the value of seismic, right? So how's that going to drive our business? How it's going to drive our customer's business at the end of the day.Mike:40:11Yeah, absolutely. And I mean one fundamental thing I forgot to mention, and Jason, you check me if I'm wrong, but I think what's happening in the unconventional spaces that there's a a slowly growing recognition that's actually probably accelerating right now. That to the tune that hey, we can't just go factory production style with completing all of our acreages there's enough geological heterogeneity that the production in this set of laterals here from this pad is kind of different than over here or even among the laterals in a pad. Why is this one so different? Parent Child Interactions, let's understand them better and all these burning questions, they're demanding some sort of better gaze into the subsurface and that is seismic.Jason:40:53That is seismic and that's where I think that's where you're absolutely right. That's where the future is driving it. If you can understand the parent child relationships between your multi well pads and pads next to you and how you're going to complete the entire basin on a stacked play basis, using seismic is going to be your, one of your only real tools to help out. And the better you have the air velocity models hammered down, the better you have your pre-stack attributes that can be involved in that study, the better off we are and I think we're well on our way.Erica:41:24Awesome. Well, thank you gentlemen for being here for our second episode. This was a really, educational discussion for me as someone who is not from a seismic background. And I'm sure I've heard listeners as well.Mike:41:37Been our pleasure, Erica. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Jason:41:39Thanks Erica.Wayne:41:40Yup. Good for-Thanks for dragging us all in here.

In the inaugural episode of Beneath the Subsurface, we delve into the exciting realm of AI and Machine Learning as a blossoming new part of the energy industry. Arvind Sharma and Robert Gibson discuss and debate the impacts of disruptive technology, the importance of robust data libraries when building AI solutions, and the future of our industry with AI and ML solutions. With your host for the episode, Erica Conedera, we explore the factors that pushed our slow moving industry to this tipping point in technology and where it could be leading us.  TABLE OF CONTENTS:0:00 - Intro1:03 - Factors that brought AI to O&G5:32 - Job creation with AI12:05 - Career paths and team compositions in the industry15:30 - Industry pain point solutions with AI and ML21:32 - Clouds, open source and democratization24:24 - Kaggle and crowdsourcing Salt Net30:51 - Kaggle challenges with Well Data33:58 - Catching up with silicon valley36:49 - Approaching solutions with AI44:18 - Disciplining data and metadata to get to the "good stuff"EPISODE TRANSCRIPTErica Conedera:00:00Hello and welcome to Beneath the Subsurface a podcast that investigates the intersection of geoscience and technology. And in our first episode, we'll be diving into the dynamic field of AI and machine learning as it relates to the oil and gas industry. We'll be discussing the impact of disruptive technology, the importance of robust data libraries when building AI solutions, and exciting possibilities for the future oil and gas. From the TGS software development team. My name is Erica Conedera. And with me today are Arvind Sharma, our VP of data and analytics, and Rob Gibson, our director of strategy, sales, data and analytics. Thank you gentlemen for being with us today for our first episode.Rob Gibson:00:48Glad to be here.Arvind Sharma:00:49Thank you Erica.Erica:00:51So let's start our discussion today by talking about the factors that brought the industry to AI and machine learning. Why now? Why not sooner? Why not later?Rob:01:03Well I'll start. Um, so thank you for the introduction, my name's Rob Gibson. I've been with TGS for almost 20 years now. And in that time, the thing that I have kind of seen over the 20 years in this company, , and probably another eight or nine in the industry, is that we've always been a little slow to adopt technology. And I come from the IT side of the world, software engineering, database design - so from my perspective, it's always been a little bit slow to bring in new technology.Rob:01:34And the things where I've seen the biggest change has been fundamental shifts in the industry, whether it's a crash in oil price, or, or some other kind of big disruptor in the industry as a whole, like the economy, not just our industry but the entire economy. But in middle of 2014 with the current downturn, that's really where I finally started to see the big shift toward AI, toward machine learning, towards IOT in particular.Rob:02:00But it seems like it took a big, big change in the industry where we lost hundreds of thousands of people across the industry and we really still needed a lot of work to get done. So technology has been able to kind of fill in the void. So, even as the downturn happened, we kind of started to level off at the bottom of the downturn and that's when companies started to see that we really needed to inject some more technology to get those decisions made. So generally speaking, I would say that this industry has been a little slow to move to adopt technology even though the industry has got a lot of money to invest in those kinds of things.Arvind:02:34Um, so thank you Erica for that question. And, I'm going to slightly disagree, more broadly, I agree with rob that um, oil and gas industry is historically a little slow in adopting technology, but, the reason I think is a slightly different, I think a oil and gas work in very difficult area where we need to have very robust proven up technologies to work. And in general, we wait a little bit for the technology to prove itself before adopting into, um, more difficult areas. So if we look at a little bit historical view, um, we have been on the leading edge of technology for a very long time. Um, some of the early semiconductors were built by your physical, um, companies. Um, then, as we moved to, PC revolution, we started actually PC, um, we started to actually pick up PCs into office very quickly, not as good as the silicon graphics people, but, soon afterwards, and then when the technology evolution started happening more in the silicon valley, then we started to regress a little bit. We continued on the part of what we were doing, whereas there was a divergence somewhere between mid nineties where silicon valley started to actually develop a little bit faster and we started to lag behind. And I think as Rob said, that, 2014 was a good time because at that time there was a need for us to adopt technology to increase our efficiency and, fill the gap that was created due to capital constraint. And as well as fleeing of, some of the knowledge base, employees - from our sector.Rob:04:39That's a good point on the technology side because you said that we kind of diverged away from where silicon valley really took off in the mid nineties. I entered into the industry in '94. So for me, my entire career has been that diverging process and just now it feels really good. Like we're finally catching up, not only catching up, but we've got customers, we've got employees who are sitting inside of the top tech companies in the world sitting at Google's facilities, even though they're an oil and gas company, sitting and working with Amazon, with Oracle, with IBM, with all these top names. And yet they're doing it in collaboration with the industry. Where in the past, it was almost like the two things were somewhat separated and now they are on a converging path. They've got the technology, we've got the data, at least in our space. And those two things coming together is kind of the critical mass we need to see some success.Erica:05:32So on that note, what kind of jobs do you think are going to be created in the future as the industries continue to convergence?Rob:05:40You know, that's a, that's a great prognostication. I mean, it's kind of interesting when you look back at like airbnb and Uber and those kinds of things. Nobody saw those coming and nobody knew what that was going to look like five years into their business, not to mention 10 or 15. I think that's what we're looking at in the oil and gas industry as well. We still have to find oil and gas. We still have to explore. We still have to be technologists, whether it's IT technology or G&G technology, we still have to operate in those spaces. But the roles may be very different. I'm hoping that a lot more of the busy legwork is a lot easier for us to work with and it has been historically, but we're still going to have to do those core G&G jobs. I just don't know what they're going to look like five years from now.Arvind:06:29I mean the way I see it is that it will be high-gradation to, like it will be more fulfilling jobs. The future jobs hopefully will be more fulfilling. So because a good portion of the grunt work, the work that everyone hated to do, but they had to do it to get to the final work, like final interesting work. Hopefully all those things will this machine learning and AI and broader digitization will help alleviate that part. And even whether you are technologist, whether you are a geologist, whether you're a geophysicist or whether you're a decision-maker. Like in all of those, um, you will start moving from the low value work to high value work. The technologist who was looking into log curve, they will actually start evaluating the log curve rather than just digitizing it. And that's, in my view, it's a more fulfilling job job compared to just doing the mundane work. And I, so that's the part first part is that what kind of job it, my hope is that it will be more fulfilling.Arvind:07:43Now the second is how many and what type of job, um, as Rob said that, the speed at which this is moving, we, it will be very difficult for us to do the prediction. Is that like if we sit here and say that they are, these are the type of job that will be created in five years, we'll be doing a disservice. We can actually make some guided prediction in which there will be need for geologist or geophysicist or petrophysicist and other people to do in what form will they be a pure geophysicist or a geophysicist who is a has a lot more broader expertise, a computer science and geophysicist working together. Those are the kinds of roles that will be needed in future because for a very long time we have operated in silos because it's not just technology is changing is the way we work is also changing is that we have operated in silos that we develop something, throw it over the fence. They, they catch it most of the time and then actually move into the next silo, and so on and so forth. Is that what-Rob:08:58You hope they do anyway.Arvind:08:59Yeah. I hope that they do anyway, but so that's the sequential process now. Some of them will be done by machines. Some of them will be done by human. And then you have to actually create a workflow which is like fulfilling as well as efficient for the capital investor.Erica:09:19Perhaps less siloed off?Arvind:09:21Less siloed off. So there will be team of teams and the team will actually move very frequently. So it will be almost like a self organization is that these are the four people needed to solve this problem. Let's take those four people and work on that problem. And then when that problem is solved or productionized, then they actually go solve the different problems.Arvind:09:43And so it will rather than back in the days or even today, hi- fully hierarchy of system, it will still be there, will be CEO (Laughter) and but there will be more, um, team of different group and different expertise, um, very quickly building and dismantling and those, that's the agile methodology that will be needed to take this technology and use it for, like basically doing things better.Erica:10:18So to kind of hone in on where you're saying, your background is in both geophysics and um, software engineering, correct?Arvind:10:26Okay. So sorry, I didn't actually talk about myself. (Laughter) So, um, I joined the TGS a little more than a year back, um, started as a chief geophysicist and then moved into this role. But before that, most of my career has been with BP and before that for a software company. So I have worked as a software engineer for some time and then got my PhD in geophysics and then worked for a little more than 10 years in BP all the way from writing imaging.Arvind:11:01So basically fundamental imaging, algorithm writing to drilling wells. So, in my short career I have seen a lot of things and what I do see is that, there has, there is a lot of silos in BP as well as in TGS. And BP is also working on it - breaking. I have a lot of friends there who are saying is that there is a significant effort in technology and modernization is happening in changing the culture rather than- it's not just about changing PC from going from a laptop to iPad. That's a- that's a tool. But the fundamental change will happen in the thought process. And if we want to actually use machine learning and these kinds of digital technology then it needs to be very integrated and the silo mentality is not going to work. You have to look at the problem as a holistic to solve it.Erica:12:02Yeah.Arvind:12:02So, so that's the background. So that's my background.Erica:12:05Yeah. So I asked because I wondered if you think that your career path is going to be the future of the industry, do you think that there are going to be more people with a dual background in both computer science and geophysics?Arvind:12:19So that's a very polite way to say that. My, I am actually looking at that my career is the right career. So, no and yes and no both. I do think that people will become more generalist and they will have deep expertise. And it's counter intuitive - is that generalist and deep expertise is not the same. Like we are used to someone who has a very deep expertise and that are not generalists about other topicsErica:12:57Narrow and deep.Arvind:12:57So very narrow expertise. But very deep and they have shallow expertise, very broad. Those are back in the days I think we are moving towards a deep expertise in several different narrow fields. So you need like, so to truly get good collaboration and innovation, you have to have deep expertise in several different fields to integrate them together.Erica:13:27So Rob, it looks like you're chomping at the bit here. (laughter)Arvind:13:30Deep and broad. So like what we need is deep and broad.Rob:13:34Yeah. When, when Arvind was talking about, kind of the career and, and some of the other topics, two things came to mind on the technology side of things. If you look back at AT&T, they had a choice and they did investigation and some pretty deep research on whether or not they needed to move into mobile cell phone technology. And they made the choice. They did a big expensive study and spent hundreds of millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars to identify that they needed to be prepared for an industry of say, a million cell phone users by a certain year. And that number was, I don't know, 150 times wrong. It was way, way higher than that. And you could use the same thing with Kodak. They invented the digital camera and then lost the digital camera battle. And struggled in the industry. We want to make sure that we're looking broad enough to understand what's coming down the pipe and can adapt and change to that. Not just from the individual roles in the company, but the company direction as a whole.Arvind:14:34To give a concrete example is that , I have a background in geology or physics and computer science or Rob has background in geoscience and computer science and the data analytics team. It likes our TGS data analytics team. They have, we have people who have the um, physics backgrounds. They have PhD in physics and then they have worked in geophysics and then working on well logs. Then, the other one, Sathiya - he is a geophysicist who now is working on more of a deep learning problem. And a Sribarath is the team leader. He is a geophysicist. Who is it more of a computer scientist who is working on these two problems. So, our team composition itself, the TGS data analytics team composition itself is built in a multidisciplinary fashion.Erica15:30Yeah. So I'm glad that you brought up are our current team here cause I kind of wanted to pivot to the problems that we're using AI to solve for right now. You know, like what, what are the pain points in the industry and how are we using AI for that?Arvind:15:46So, so the pain point in the industry, are I'll talk about one, is it one which is very close to my heart. I was a, so in BP I did a lot of salt interpretation. So anything which requires a lot of human intervention is a big choke point because our data set is getting bigger, larger and larger with a lot more volumes to it are a lot more information to it and we have limited human resources and we want to actually take those human resources and mobilize them to do more high value work rather than doing a lot more um, grunt work. Salt model building is an example. And where we, we actually, our data analytics team started working there. So I'll, I'll work, I'll talk about that later. But that's an example where a lot of judgment call is made early, which don't require a lot of human judgment call early interpretation. Is the true place where automation and digital transformation can actually help.Erica:17:04Rob, what's your take on this?Rob:17:06Well, the Nice thing about what we're doing with salt picking is we're really helping us and our clients reduce the time it takes to get to the indecision. On my side of,of the house, my background with TGS has largely on the well data side of things. So it's not so much about reducing the amount of time of processing the data as it is getting a higher value data set in the hands of our clients. So historically, especially in the onshore U.S., there's a significant lack of data that's reported to the regulatory agencies. So we source that data as do a lot of other people. We source data from our, our, our customers, our partners operators. We process that data, but the most important thing that we can do with that is take that huge volume of data, the largest commercially available in the industry and add more to it so that the operators are able to get to that decision making process. So like Arvind said, if we can avoid the grunt work and get them to the point where they're actually making business decisions, that's what we're doing with our analytics ready LAS Dataset. We're in-filling the gaps in the curves because they either weren't run or weren't reported. We're predicting what the missing curves would look like, based on an immense volume of data. So it's not so much about getting the product created faster, although that is another goal that we've got. Of course, we're a commercial company. We're trying to get products to our customers and make money like anybody does. But the ultimate goal with our current analytics ready LAS product is to get the most complete dataset available so that the operators can make better decisions in the subsurface; drill less wells, drill more productive wells, drill wells faster. All of those things go into why we chose to go down that that path.Arvind:18:50So, looking at a higher level. The question that you asked was like what are the choke points and how we had actually using digital transformation in machine learning and AI to help that. Um, I think we published something like our CEO talked about that in the um, few months, a month back, Norwegian Energy day. There was a nice plot that, shows that most of the time we are acquiring data for a purpose. Like we are acquiring data to solve a geologic problem so that we can actually make a decision whether to drill somewhere, or not drill somewhere whether to buy acreage or not buy acreage by our clients. So when you take that data, you have to convert that into information, that information need to convert it into knowledge. And that knowledge is what enables our clients to make better, faster and cheaper decisions.Arvind:19:51And that cycle converting from data to knowledge to decision and enabling their decision is actually is the big choke point. If you want me to say one, this is that your point is that how to actually take data and convert to knowledge fastest way and cheapest way. And that's where most of our effort is. So salt, model building is an example where we right now it takes us somewhere between the nine months to a few years when we acquire data to provide the clients with the final image that they can do interpretation and make decision. This is too long of a time. In this day and age it needs to be compressed and a good portion of that compression can happen, by better compute. But some of them cannot happen without doing a deep learning where humans are involved in like for example, salt models building where like you can actually throw as much computer it as possible. But since the cycle time requires human to drill that model, it will be the limiting cases that, so there we want to actually enable the interpreters to take our salt net, which is our algorithm and accelerate the early part of it so that they have more time to do high quality work and build and build that model faster, reduce that cycle time so that our clients can make better, faster and cheaper decisions.Rob:21:32It's been interesting to watch the transition too with our industry and the technology at the same time we've moved to the cloud, right? All of our data's now sitting at a cloud provider and if you would have looked at the oil industry five years ago, there's a very security minded mindset around the industry that says, I need to keep that data because it's a very, very critical and I want to make sure the only, I've got access to it. So there was a lot of fear about putting data in the cloud several years ago. Now you look at the cloud providers and they're spending literally billions of dollars on things like security and bandwidth and access, things that didn't exist five, 10 years ago. So that transition to be able to go to the cloud, where all, where, all of our data sits today. More and more of our clients are going there as well. And the nice thing about that is you can ramp up your needs, on compute capacity, on disk capacity, on combining data sets across partners, vendors, other operators, and collaborate and work on that data set together to come up with solutions that you couldn't possibly have done before. So it's, it's fun actually to watch that transition happen.Arvind:22:43It is going a little tangent to the question that you asked her, but, because there's a very important point about the cloud services the the biggest cloud platform is Kubernetes by Google and that's actually open source. So Google developed that and made it open source available for anyone who wants to build a cloud infrastructure. They can have it. That's the, the most to use open source, platform that, available today. So that's changing the way people work. Like red hat or Linux, Unix, Sun, Sun, microsystem or Microsoft or apple. They are very, like, even in technology sector, they are very controlling of what they are providing to their consumers. They control that environment. Whereas now things are changing in which the open source systems like, which is publicly available is becoming one of the most dominant form of a software platform. Um, if you look at android for machine learning, it's tensorflow, Pi Torch. Those are open systems software that is a democratizing the technology so that anyone and everyone can, is able to take that next step and the solve complex problem because the base is available for them. They don't have to build the base. They can actually focus on solving the high value complex problem.Erica:24:24Speaking of both Google and open source and democratizing, problem solving. So TGS recently had a Kaggle challenge, correct, can you speak a little bit about that?Arvind:24:35So, yeah, that actually, so when I joined TGS, I had, one data scientist that we, we were working with, like we were still building the data science team and we started working on the salt net problem. We had an early, um, success. We were able to do some of those things and then we realized that there is like ocean of data scientists who are across the world. We don't have actually access to that Google actually open source and they have, they're working on their problem, they're working on Apple's problem, they're working on very interesting problems. So why they're not working on it at two different reason. One is that they don't have access to it in a second, the problem is not interesting enough for them. So Kaggle was our effort to make it accessible to everyone and make it interesting so that people will work on it.Arvind:25:30So just for the, um, description of Kaggle, Kaggle is the world's largest, data science crowdsourcing platforms. So crowdsourcing is a, um, where you put the problem and it's a platform or website where the, um, the problem description is given and data science scientists to work on their like on their spare time, nights and weekend or that's their hobby or that's their job. And they solved that problem. They submit to submit on that platform and they get instantaneous result that, how a good their solution was. So that's the Kaggle is the one of the largest world's largest platform for that recently acquired by Google. So we actually approached Kaggle that- can we actually put the one of the complex problem that we have on this website or this platform and they worked with us. And so we partnered together to host the oil and gas first serious problem for the automatically building salt model. And we actually, so to Rob's point, um, the hardest problem was getting the data rights that are convincing our management that it's okay to release a certain portion of data. We had to work really hard to create an interesting problem and that once we released that data, um, this competition was very successful in the sense that if they were around 80 plus thousand different solutions, just think of the scope of itRob:27:06From almost 3000 different teamsArvind:27:093,800. So close to 4,000 people. Oh yeah. 3000 team and comprise of almost 4,000 data scientists across the world work on this problem for three months and gave us more than 80,000 different solutions. We would have never got anything like this working day and night with whole TGS working on this problem.Rob:27:32I, I found it interesting because I like did a search on Google for our, TGS salt net.Arvind:27:39Yeah.Rob:27:40And if you look at the results just on Youtube, you'll find probably 20 different videos of PhD students, data scientists getting their master's degree who are using that problem that we posted out there as part of their thesis or as part of their Grad student work to show that, that the data science process that they went through as part of their education. And now that's out there for everybody to use.Erica:28:02So this is a major disruptor isn't it, to the industry because we have basically non geologists, non geophysicists solving problems for-Rob:28:12Yeah it's, it's definitely, we, there was a lot of teams, right? So there was some that had geoscience backgrounds, some that didn't, but most of them, they just come from a data science background, right? So they could have stats or math or computer science or anything. And when they applied this, it was interesting to see the collaboration on the Kaggle user interface where the teams were out there saying, hey, I tried this. What did you guys try? And the whole idea of crowdsourcing and, and the idea that we're kind of in somewhat of a unique position where we can do that. We can, we own the data. We don't license it from somebody else. Um, it's the data that we own that we can put out there. So we've got a huge volume that we can leverage and put it into a community like that where we can actually see some of those results come in.Erica:28:57So to kind of put you on the spot-Arvind:28:59Can I- one thing to say after that to is not just about data owning the data because there are several different companies who own data, even oil and gas company, they have their own data library. I honestly think that, it says volume about TGS, that TGS was willing to take a bet on this kind of futuristic idea and like go on a limb. But, and this is, I'm just giving credit to the senior management here, that they were, they're allowed us to actually go with this. That was one of the bigger hurdle than just to owning data, that management buy-inRob:29:39Second only to data preparation for the challenge itself.Arvind:29:42Second only to the data preparation, it took us a lot of time to build-Rob:29:45YeahArvind:29:45an interesting problem. It's not just about like you have to create an interesting problem to-Erica:29:51to attract the right talent.Arvind:29:52So the winner was a group from a Belarus and the Japan. They have never met. They have never seen each other other than the Facebook.Erica:30:02Wow.Arvind:30:03And did they actually met on this Kaggle platform? They were working on this problem. They found out that there they are approaching with the two different ways and they actually teamed up so that they can combine this to create a better solution. Combining both of their effort and that that's actually happens to be the winning combination. But a traditional method won't allow us to tap into this kind of resources or brain power. That to someone from Belarus and Japan working together whom we don't know solving our problem and that is going to be a disruptor and we have to be ready to capitalize on it rather than be afraid of it.Erica:30:51Right. And that's why I wanted to go to rob, not to put you on the spot here, but as someone coming from the well data side, do you see any potential future Kaggle challenges using well data?Rob:31:05Yeah, the, that could absolutely be in our future. I think at this point we're really trying to frame the problems that we're trying to solve for our customers. And if we decide that one of those problems deserves, some time in the public, like on Kaggle, then we can absolutely go that direction. Not a problem whatsoever. At the moment though, our real focus is trying to figure out where can we provide the most value to the clients and we're kind of letting them steer us in a, you know, a way we have got our own geology department internally so we know what we need to do with our internal well data in order to high grade it to the next level product. However, we're really taking direction from our clients to make sure that we're moving in that direction. So yeah, I could see us having a problem like that, especially if it's starting to get into a Dataset that, , needs to be merged with another data set that maybe, we need support from, somewhere else in the industry. We're in a different industry.Arvind:31:59Just a few minutes on that is,the next problem I think that Kaggle need from oil and gas is a more on the solution side. So the knowledge to- like information to knowledge site in which you are all taking very different type of data set. For example, success failure database for the basin. And building a, prospect level decision that requires a, as Rob said, that collaboration, that the TGS collaborating with one of the E&P company or someone else, like those two or three companies and now bringing their data together because at the end of the day, this integration is what everyone is looking for. Can we actually create an interesting integration problem and put it on the Kaggle competition. So, any listener, if they're in, they have a good problem, they can actually contact Rob, or me. That, because we are always looking for good partners to solve complex problems. We can't solve all the problem by ourselves, neither other people. It does require teams to build the right kind of Dataset, interesting problems in to, to get into the board.Erica:33:22Okay. So we've talked about how we got here to this point in the industry with AI machine learning and we've talked about what we're doing today with the, um, let's move on to the future where we think AI will take, um, the industry. So to follow up on something that Arvind had said earlier, so you had said that we sort of fell behind silicon valley at some point. How, how far behind do you think we are right now in terms of years if you can make that estimation?Arvind:33:58Oh, that's a tough question but I'll try to answer it in a roundabout way. Is it that when I say that we lag behind, we lag behind in the compute side of it, like the AI side of it and some of the visualization and web-based technology when it comes to high performance computing, we were still leading up to very- probably in some of the spaces we are still leading. So storage and high performance compute which is both, oil and gas defense and Silicon Valley. All three are working. Um, we are not that far behind actually we might be at the cutting edge of it. And that was one of the reason that we didn't actually focus on the AI side because we were solving the problem in more high compute way and we are using bigger and bigger machine solving, more complex problems more physics based complex physics based solutions.Arvind:35:04So when it comes to solving physics based solution, we are still, at the front of the pack. But when it comes to solving a heuristic auto machine learning or AI based solution, we are behind, we are behind in robotics and things like that and we are catching up. So when you think of a mid midstream and downstream where there's a lot of the internet of things, IOT instruments, so things are getting is like instrumentized and there are a lot of instruments which are connected to each other and real time monitoring, predictive maintenance. Those are happening and happening at a very rapid rate. And that will actually, we'll, we'll catch up in a few years in, in midstream and downstream side or mostly instrumentation side where we are truly lagging is subsurface because it's not the problem that Ian, and like, silicon valley was trying to solve.Arvind:36:05A subsurface problem are complex. They are very different type of problem; that someplace you have very dense data, someplace We have very sparse data. How to actually integrate that and humans are very good at integrating different scale of information in a cohesive way, whereas that problem is not the problem that silicon like, technology sector was trying to solve. And so we are trying to actually take the solutions that they are building to solve different problem and integrating it or adapting that to solve our problem. So that's where like I see like, so I think it's a non answer but that's what the best I have. (Laughter)Erica:36:49It was a very good answer. So how does this change the way that we're building our products then our approach to getting our products out there?Rob:36:58Well, one of the, one of the things I'll start with is we're actually seeing our clients adopt analytics teams, analytics approaches, machine learning. there's a lot of, there's a lot of growth in that part of the industry. and they've gotten past the point where they don't believe that a predictive solution is the right solution. You know, with our ARLAS product, we're creating an analytics ready LAS dataset where we're predicting what the curves would look like, where there's currently gaps in the curve coverage. The initial problem the customers had was, do they believe that the data's accurate? We're starting to get past those kinds of problems. We're starting to get to the point where they believe in the solutions and now they're trying to make sure that they've got the right solutions to fit within their workflows in their organization. So I think the fact that they've actually invested in building up their own analytics teams where they've injected software engineering, geology and geophysics, a data science and kind of group them all together and carved them off, or they can focus on maybe solving 20% of the problems that they actually, attempt. That's kind of where the industry has gotten to, which means we now have an opportunity to help them get to those levels.Arvind:38:10You see that a change in conferences, and, meetings and symposiums that, like for example SEG Society of exploration geophysicists and, that, conference three years back there was one session about machine learning and last year, machine learning has the largest number of sessions in that conference. So you're looking at a rapid adaptation of a machine learning as a core technology in oil and gas and at least in subsurface, but most of them is at the very early phases, people are trying to solve the easier problem, the problem they can solve rather than the problem that need to be solved. So that's where there's a differentiation happening that everyone wants to work on machine learning and most of the people are actually taking solution to your problem rather than taking problem finding solution for a problem which is relevant. So,Rob:39:21I think that's pretty fair because,you've got to get some sort of belief internally and if you can prove that you've got kind of a before and after, here's what I did to make this decision or the wells that are drilled in the production I've got and here's what I predicted was going to happen. And you can start to see those two things align. Then you start to get belief in something. If you just use something that's predictive only and you've got nothing to compare it to, it may be the right solution. But do you have the belief that your company is going to run with it? So that's why I think we're starting to see them solve problems that we know can be solved initially rather than the big problem of say, if I shoot seismic here, I can predict how much oil I'm going to produce. That's a big problem and it's at different resolutions and scales than we believe we can solve and, and be definitive about it today. but I think that, I think I agree with you that they're, they're really focused on, on proving that this technology, that analytics that AI/ML is going to work for the problems that they know about.Arvind:40:24Agreed only up to a point is that, the reason and why I think it ML/AI solutions are different is because, in physics, one of our basic assumption is that, if we solve a toy problem, you can scale the same way is the same solution will apply on a bigger problem. That's not the case for machine learning solutions. The solution that is applicable for a toy problem is not going to scale. You need to actually retrain the data and the solution becomes different as the scale of the problem increases. So although it's, interesting to see that a lot of a small problem are very easy problem people are taking to- people are solving a lot of easy problem using machine learning. To show that machine learning works, that's good. But to truly take advantage of machine learning, you have to actually solve, try to solve one of the complex problem because you already have a solution for those easy problems.Arvind:41:40Why do we need machine learning? So for example, ARLAS is a good example. Our analytic ready LAS in which we are predicting well logs from the available, well logs. Now if I have only one well, or a few wells then I actually want my petrophysicist to go through the physics based modeling and solve that problem. I don't need AI to solve that problem. I have actually solutions which works there. If the solution that I need is that how to solve this problem on a scale of Permian basin or a scale of U.S. So like what we have done for ARLAS that the first basin we started was Permian is where we took all the data that we have as a training data or actually a good portion of that data as a training data set. We build that model, which is actually based in scale model that can actually ingest all the like 320,000 wells we have. So we used thousands and thousands of well as a training build a very robust model to actually solve that problem and now that solution is available for the whole basin. That's the kind of solutions that are problem that AI is good at solving and has actually best potential not for solving few wells. Learning about AI by solving a few wells is great, but as a product or as a true application of AI, we need to actually look at tackling the big problems.Rob:43:11Yeah, I agree. There's been a lot of, shall we say analytics companies that come out with a claim of being able to perform some sort of machine learning basis and they've got a great interface and everything looks really good. And the story behind it is that it's been taught on five wells or 10 wells in our learning set was in the tens of thousands of wells, which is why I believe in the data set that we've built.Arvind:43:40At a very high level, machine learning is like teaching a kid, like someone has come out of graduate school and they want to actually learn something and you are showing them this is how we actually do. The more things they see, the better they will get, the more experience they will have and the better their capability or work will be. So it requires the, the whole concept of machine learning or AI is that you want to actually train with massive amount of very high quality data set and that actually solves more complex problems.Erica:44:18How do you discipline data?Arvind:44:22So you are saying that did- have you talked to our lead data scientist and he calls him to himself a data janitor, that most of the time he spent is cleaning of the data and organizing the data so that he can actually do the high quality like the machine learning AI work. So if he spends his time like out of a hundred hours, 60 or 70 hours- so he's actually organizing, categorizing data set so that he can do the fun stuff in the last 30 40 hours. I mean that's actually, that's better than a good, most of the places where people spend 90 hours doing the curation and 10 hours doing the fun stuff. And that was one of the reasons why we had to build the data lake because one of the thing is that we need all the data to be readily available in a kind of semi usable format that I don't need to spend time learning about the 2003 data is different than 2015 data versus 2018 data.Arvind:45:34I need to actually consume it as one big dataset. So last whole year we spend actually considerable, considerable amount of time and effort in building our data lake in which we actually took all of our commercial legacy, data set and moved it on cloud. The two things that we did is one we standardized the data set so that lead data scientists don't have to spend on doing janitorial of data janitorial work and a second is creating metadata. So what Metadata is that aggregate information.Arvind:46:06For example, Arvind Sharma what is the Meta data about Arvind Sharma um, that he is five feet 10, I don't have a lot of hair. (Laughter) He drives some car and he, he has gone to- he has a PhD like so some aggregate information like out of her, like rather than cell by cell information about Arvind, what is the minimum, set of aggregate information that you can use to define Arvind. So that's the metadata about any data set. So what we did when we are moving this a massive amount of data set into our data lake for each of these data set, we extracted this aggregate information that where it was recorded, when it was recorded, what are the basic things done to this data set? What is the maximum amplitude in this volume? What is the minimum amplitude in this volume? What does the average amplitude in this? So those things we actually use it because a lot of analytics is that some of the higher level analytics will be about integrating the information about data set, like Facebook uses information about people to make some of the decision. We are not that creepy as that Facebook, but (laughter) it's, it's like taking the information about the data set and actually learning creating knowledge about the basin.Rob:47:37It's interesting when you were talking about the data janitorial work and how we've kind to standardize our data set on the, on the cloud because it kind of brings it full circle back to something you said early on. And that was that we want our customers to be able to get to that decision making point sooner without having to do all that data, janitorial work. I've been going to data management conferences for 25 years and I hear the same thing every year for 25 years. I spend "fill in the blank" percentage of my time, 60 70, 80% of my time looking for data and the remainder are actually working with it. That's what an analytics ready data set it's going to allow us and our customers to be able to do is not have to do all that janitorial work, but actually get to the point where I can actually start interpreting what that data means to me to make decisions.Erica:48:30So looking towards the future of the industry, do you think we're going to continue to ramp up in terms of speed and getting to the good stuff, the fun part? Do you think that's going to continue to logarithmically increase?Rob:48:44Probably faster than we can ever imagine. I think the, I think the change that we saw with companies moving to the cloud companies going toward, service based solutions, companies moving toward high volume, normalized consistent datasets, all of these things have been moving at light-light speed compared to what they were, the, the past 25 years. Up until today, every day about probably about every three weeks. We basically, have got some new technology that's been released that we can start adopting and putting into our workflows that wasn't there three weeks, three weeks prior, open source. It comes back to that topic as well. More and more of these tech firms are putting the data out as open source means we could leverage it and get to solutions faster. So to answer the question, absolutely faster than we can possibly imagine.Erica:49:28Well, awesome. I cannot wait to get to this future, with both of you.Erica:49:41Well, thank you so much for talking with us today. Being part of our first episode of Beneath the Subsurface, it was an absolute pleasure. If our listeners want to learn more about what TGS is doing with AI, you can visit TGS.com You can visit our new TGS.ai platform and, we'll have some additional show notes on our website, to go along with this episode.Arvind:50:06Thank you Erica.Rob:50:07Yeah, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.Conclusions and plugs:Check out the newly launched tgs.ai to dig deeper in to the data with subsurface intelligence. Gain detailed subsurface knowledge through robust analytics with our integrated data and machine learning solutions at tgs.ai Discover Geoscience AI solutions, Cloud Computing, Data Management, and our Data Library. Learn more about TGS at tgs.com

Luke 6:27–38     27[Jesus said:] “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.     32“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.     37“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Mark 7:24–37    24From there [Jesus] arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. 25But immediately a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” 30And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.    31Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 34And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Personhood: Man in the image of God Previous messages: i) Prophet (our truth) ii) Priest (our anointing) Truth + Anointing  Experience iii) King (our activities and choices) A. Body Mind Spirit i) Personhood Dr. Wilder Penfield (neurosurgeon): “The patient thinks of himself as having an existence that is separate from his body.” Professor J.P. Morehouse: “A scientist could know more about what is happening in my brain that I do, but he cannot know more about what is happening in my mind that I do. He has to ask me.” ii) Gift Psalm 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. iii) Sanctity Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Romans 12:10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another…. B. Created (special creation) i) Accountability ii) Dependence iii) Relationship C. “In the image of God” i) Of great capability. Psalm 8 3When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: ii) With moral sense. iii) Of great value. Closing remarks  our equipment  our attitude  our efforts, use of time Jeremiah 31 33But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

The Hebraic source of this quote is from over 2000 years ago. Luke 32-35 = The kingdom of God is nigh at hand. 32Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. 33Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. 34And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. 35For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Rebbe Meir  

Alice Gerrard, a living legend herself, wrote a song about another musical legend, Elizabeth Cotten, who she knew and whose conversation with her inspired this song, released on Alice's CD Bittersweet. As I listened to the CD this song moved me to attempt it on banjo and I've had the delight of learning more about these two amazing women. As the lyrics say, "And won't you sing to me as I take my leave, you're going to miss me when I'm gone."

Alice Gerrard, a living legend herself, wrote a song about another musical legend, Elizabeth Cotten, who she knew and whose conversation with her inspired this song, released on Alice's CD Bittersweet. As I listened to the CD this song moved me to attempt it on banjo and I've had the delight of learning more about these two amazing women. As the lyrics say, "And won't you sing to me as I take my leave, you're going to miss me when I'm gone."

Acts 8:26-40: "26Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." This is a desert place. 27And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot." 30So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 31And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. 33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." 34And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" 35Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. 36And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?" 38And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. 39And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 40But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea."

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 Forsaken Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" _________________ York Minister Why would God the Father forsake Jesus, the Son of God? I find it interesting that today I published a blog consisting of a passage that's been sitting in my drafts from reading Exodus. The interesting thing is the contrast with this passage in Mark. Many have noted over the years that in every way Jesus is the perfect Israel. Jesus is the obedient son. Jesus kept the law fully as no man or woman had ever done and he did this without stumbling once. He is faultless in all ways. Yet here on the cross he is forsaken by the Father. Here on the cross Jesus assumes the position of the guilty. Jesus is suffering the full wrath of God. He faces death, mocking, torture rejection. But further, where we can not observe, Jesus is carrying the weight of our sin. All the evil of humanity past, present, and future is crushing Jesus. All the guilt, all the fear, all the pain is rending God's soul. Somehow Jesus the God man is actually suffering so that we can be made free. He is punished so we can be accepted and more than accepted we are imputed, attributed and blessed with the merit of his righteousness. Till the moment he dies it seems all humanity is hurling upon Jesus scorn, mocking, and abuse because he had made himself vulnerable. When in fact he is the all powerful, all knowing, compassionate, merciful, gracious, exacting, just judge of all mankind. And after he dies there on the cross people say he must be the Son of God. Why this change? Maybe we see it partially in Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph it says was looking for the Kingdom of God. This small commentary on the man who buries Jesus I believe is meant to say he found what he was looking for in Jesus. Joseph wasn't running away like the disciples earlier, nor standing at a distance like the women. Joseph found courage on Jesus' death. We too can find courage in the obedient son's ultimate act of courage. We can identify and let Jesus' death in fact be our own. When Joseph places Jesus in his tomb could it be he is saying this man died in my place so I have nothing to fear and no need to further prepare for my own death. Jesus had done it all. Mark 15 The Crucifixion 21And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. 22And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull).23And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. 25And it was the third hour when they crucified him. 26And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews." 27And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. 29And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30save yourself, and come down from the cross!" 31So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we maysee and believe." Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. The Death of Jesus 33And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 35And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Elijah." 36And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." 37And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" 40There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. Jesus Is Buried 42And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.44Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. 46And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid. Posted by William Bode at 6/26/2013 07:49:00 am Labels: cross, crucifixion, death, Jesus, Joseph, Kingdom of God, sin Location: 4 Cruise Road, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S11 7EF, UK Lavish Love Exodus 20:1-6 NLT Then God gave the people all these instructions : “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. “You must not have any other god but me. “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands. ____________________ Jesus was obedient Israel but on the cross he was forsaken.