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Our setting for this episode, Sheffield's Endcliffe Park seems like many other popular green spaces, but it has a hidden history: its waterways once helped fuel the Industrial Revolution in the ‘Steel City'. We discover how Sheffield's past intertwines with trees as local urban forester, Catherine Nuttgens, explains how nature and the city have shaped each other through the centuries, and why people here are so passionate about trees. We also meet Stella Bolam who works with community groups and schools to plant trees, and learn about the nearby Grey to Green project that's transformed tarmac into a tranquil haven for people and wildlife and tackles climate change too. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people, for wildlife.  Adam: Well, today I am in Sheffield, known of course as the Steel City renowned for steel production during the 19th century Industrial Revolution. But despite that historical heritage, woodland and green spaces were, and still are, the lungs of the city and seen as vitally important. In fact, it is now, according to Sheffield University, the UK's greenest city, with 250 public parks and over four and a half million trees. That's more trees per person than any other city in Europe and in 2022, Sheffield was named as a Tree City of the World. And I'm meeting Catherine Nuttgens at Endcliffe Park. That's a 15 hectare open space opened in 1887 to commemorate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. And interestingly, it isn't in the middle of the countryside; it is two miles from the city centre, the first in a series of connected green spaces, known collectively as Porter Valley Parks, all of which lie along the course of the Porter Brook. Well, although it really is coming to spring, we've been hit with some rather unseasonable snow, and I thought we were going to start with some snow sound effects, but actually this is a very fast-moving river that I'm standing by and I am meeting Catherine. Hello. So, Catherine, just explain a bit about who you are first of all.  Catherine: OK. Yes, I'm Catherine Nuttgens. I used to be the urban lead for the Woodland Trust, but I've just moved into independent work as an urban forester, an independent urban forester.  Adam: Fantastic. And you have. We've arranged to meet by this. I was gonna say babbling brook. It's really much more than that, isn't it? So is this the river? The local river.  Catherine: This is the River Porter, so this is one of five rivers in Sheffield. And it runs all the way up the Porter Valley, which is where we're going to be walking today.  Adam: Let's head off. So I have no idea where I'm going.  Catherine: Going that way. OK, yes, let's go. Let's go this way.   Adam: OK. You sound already confused.  Catherine: I was going to look at that. I was going to look at that tree over there. Cause we planted it. Is it still alive?  Adam: We can go have a look at that. It's still alive.  Catherine: Which tree? This tree? Here it's just so a total aside for everything that we're doing.  Adam: We're already getting sidetracked. You see, if a tree was planted.  Catherine: So yeah, I mean, this was one of... my old role at Sheffield Council was being community forestry manager and our role was to plant trees around the city. So one of the things that we planted were these War Memorial trees and it's very hard if you plant a tree to not go back to it and say, how's it doing? Is it OK? This is it, it's looking OK.  Adam: This looks more than OK and also it's still got three poppy wreaths on it from Remembrance Sunday. And a dedication, lest we forget: to all the brave men and women of Sheffield who gave their lives and those who hereafter continue to give in pursuit of freedom and peace. 2018 it was planted.  Catherine: One of the reasons I want to check it: it's quite a challenging place to plant a tree as there's an awful lot of football here. So the ground is really compacted, I think it's a red oak.   Adam: A red oak.  Catherine: That should be the right tree for this place. When they go in, they need so much water and it's 60 litres of water a week when it's dry, so keeping them alive, especially when the ground is so compacted is quite a challenge. It's something that happens all around the country is that people think ‘I've planted a tree and now I can walk away'. But actually the real work goes into sort of making sure trees have got enough water. So that they can, you know, for at least the first sort of two or three years of planting. So that they can survive to the good.  Adam: Brilliant. Alright. Well, look, we've already got distracted. We we've, we haven't even started. We've gone the wrong direction. But anyway, your oak is doing very well indeed.   Catherine: I'm sorry. It's it's, it's good.  Adam: So tell me a little bit about where we're going and why, why you've taken me on this particular trip.  Catherine: Sheffield is actually the most wooded, well, it's the most treed and wooded city in Europe. There are more trees per head in Sheffield than there are in any other city in Europe. So I thought the Porter Valley is quite good because there's quite a lot of cafés on the way. So that's quite good. But also it was a great way of describing about how the, how the landscape of Sheffield has kind of shaped the city and how how kind of people are shaped by the landscape also. The landscape is, you know, is is shaped by the people and, and here's a real case in point, because although it all looks very beautiful now and as we go up the valley  you'll see, you know it, it gets more rural. Actually it's all artificial. This is a post-industrial landscape.  Adam: So I mean when you say that, I mean this is this is a creative landscape this, so that I don't really understand what you mean. I mean they didn't knock, you didn't knock down factories. This must have been natural ground.  Catherine: Well, it was natural, but basically Sheffield started Sheffield famous for iron and steel, and it's also on the edge of the Peak District. So there's there's these five very fast flowing rivers that actually provided the power for the grinding holes are places where they made blades and scissors and scythes and all these different things. And so along rivers like this one, there were what were called the like, grinding hulls, the little factories where they they use the the power of the water to sharpen those blades and to you know, to forge them and things. As we go further up, we'll start to see how the Porter kind of has been sort of sectioned off. It's been chopped up and made into ponds. There's what we call goits that go off and they would have been the little streams that go off and power each, each grinding hull along here.  Adam: I mean you you say Sheffield is the most wooded city in the UK per head, and yet it hit the headlines a few years ago when the council started chopping down trees. And it wasn't entirely clear why, but the the local population were up in arms. So why was that? Is was that an aberration, or was that a change in policy?   Catherine  No, I mean people call Sheffield, the outdoor city. People in Sheffield have always been really connected to their trees. But I think when we got to the, you know, for the street tree protest, you know, the vision was beautiful, flat pavements and there were just these annoying trees in the way that were lifting all the paving slabs and everything. We thought what we need is lovely flat pavements, all the people that are complaining about trees all the time, they'll be really happy. But obviously that wasn't the case because people actually do quite like the trees. So what happened here was that the the council decided to send to send a crew to fell in the middle of the night, and then so they knocked on. Yeah. It was, yeah, honestly. Yeah, it was mad so. The the policemen came, knocked on people's doors, said ‘sorry, can you move your cars? Because we want to cut down the trees.' And now obviously if a policeman knocks on your door in the middle of the night, you know, it's it's pretty scary. So the ladies that they did that to said no, I think I'm going to sit under this tree instead. And it was just mad. Just think, what are they doing? Because it was in the Guardian, like the morning, it got international by the sort of lunchtime. And it was if, if you wanted a way to create an international protest movement about trees, so that's the way to do it. So. But I mean, that was the thing Sheffield is, so it's not an affluent city, but people do stuff in Sheffield, you know, something's happened, someone's doing a thing about it, and they're really good at organising. And in the end, thank goodness the council stopped. If there are things going on in your city, dialogue is always the best way, and consulting and co-designing with the public is so important because it's that's what these trees are for. They're here to benefit people. So if you're not discussing kind of the plans with the people then you know, it's not it's you're not properly doing your job, really.  Adam: And you said there's lots of choice of places to go with trees in and around Sheffield. And the reason you've chosen this particular place is why? Why does this stand out?  Catherine: Well, I think I mean, first of all, it's quite it it, it is a beautiful valley that's kind of very accessible. We've got, I mean here the kind of manufactured you know the Porter has been Victorianised, it's all got these lovely little rills and things. Little rills. You know where little rills kind of maybe that's the wrong word, but the kind of.  Adam: No, but I do. Teaching me so many new words. So what is the rill?  Catherine: So you know, just kind of little bits in the the stream where they've made it, you know, kind of little rocks and things.  Adam: Like rocks. Yeah, that is beautiful. They're like tiny little waterfalls. It's wonderful. I love it.  Catherine: So here for example, I mean looks lovely like these ponds that we have. I mean there's always there's things like the, the kingfishers and and there's the kind of Endcliffe Park Heron that everyone takes pictures of. And there are often Mandarin ducks. I think we passed some Mandarin ducks earlier on, didn't we? But this is actually. This is a holding pool for what would have sort of, how would the grinding hull that now has gone. So it's actually a piece of industrial heritage. Yeah, it looks, I mean, it has now all been kind of made nice. In the ‘30s some of these pools were were kind of put over to and probably in Victorian times as well. They're actually swimming areas. They converted them into swimming.  Adam: I mean the water, I mean, you can't see this if you're listening, but water's super muddy or or brown. It's not appealing to swim in, I'll just say, but OK, no, no one does that these days.  Catherine: No. Well, they they do up at Crookes, actually. There are people going swimming that that's a, that's a fishing lake. So it's much deeper, but it's a little bit.  Adam: Are you a wild swimmer?   Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. Let's go out into the peak a bit more and out into the the lovely bit.  Adam: Ohh wow, you said that's the way to. I mean, I can't get into a swimming pool unless it's bath temperature, let alone.  Catherine: It's lovely in the summer. I'm not a cold swimmer, right? But I do love it in in the summer. It's not. I mean, that's what's great about Sheffield, really. And that, like, there's so much nature just within sort of 20 minutes' walk. I mean, some people just get on their bike and go out into the peak and whether it's you're a climber or a wild swimmer or a runner or just a walker, or you just like beautiful things. You know? It's it's it's kind of here.  Adam: And there is an extraordinary amount of water, I mean. It's, I mean, you probably can hear this, but there seems to be river on all sides of us. It's so we've been walking up the Porter Brook, which you can hear in the background and we've come across Shepherd Wheel a water powered grinding hull last worked in the 1930s.  Catherine: Come this way a little bit. You can see the there's the wheel that they've put together. So inside. I'm just wondering whether we can through a window we can look in. But so so Sheffield say a very independent sort of a place. The what used to happen is the the little mesters there were they hired. They were men.   Adam: Sorry that's another word. What was a mester?  Catherine: That is another word. A mester. That is. I mean. So I think it was like a little master, so like a master cutler or whatever. A little master. But but in in there there were there were individual grinding grindstones right with the benches, the grinding benches on and they hired a bench to do their own piece work. So so it was very independent, everyone was self-employed and you know they they. So the wheel actually sort of was important for probably quite a few livelihoods.  Adam: We've come up to a big sign ‘Shepherd's Wheel in the Porter Valley'. Well, look at this. Turn the wheel to find out more. Select. Oh, no idea what's going. You hold on a sec. Absolutely nothing. It's it's it's, it's, it's, it's a local joke to make tourists look idiotic. Look, there's another nutter just turning a wheel. That does nothing.  Catherine: And actually an interesting well timber fact is that up in North Sheffield there's a wood called Woolley Wood there and all the trees were a lot of the trees are hornbeam trees. Now hornbeam is really good, as its name might suggest, because it it was used to make make the cogs for for for kind of structures like this, because the the wood was so very hard and also it was quite waterproof. There's actually when the wheel bits were replaced here they used oak. But one of the I think one of the problems with oak is that it's got lots of tannins in that can actually rot the iron work. So so actually. There's kind of knowledge that's been lost about how to use timber in an industrial way and and.  Adam: So if you happen to be building a water wheel, hornbeam is, your go-to wood. I'm sure there's not many people out there building water wheels, but you know very useful information if you are. All right, you better lead on.  Catherine: I think we can head unless you want to go, won't go down that way or go along along here much. There we go. We'll cross. We'll go this way. I think. Probably go down here. Yeah, this has got a great name, this road. It's Hanging Water Road, which I'm not sure I would think. It must be a big waterfall somewhere. I'm not sure whether there is one right so. It's just a a good name. So yeah, so this is more I think going into more kind of established woodland. Still see we've got the two rivers here.  Adam: So tell me about where we're heading off to now.  Catherine: We're going up into. I think there's a certainly Whitley Woods is up this way and there's one called Bluebell Woods, which would indicate you know, ancient... bluebells are an ancient woodland indicator, and so that would suggest that actually these are the bits where the trees have been here for much a much longer time. I think there's still kind of one of the things that they try and do in Sheffield, is kind of bring the woods back into traditional woodland management, where you would have had something with called coppice with standards. So the coppice wood was cut down for charcoal burning cause. So the charcoal, these woods, all these many, many woods across Sheffield fuelled all this steel work. You know they need. That was the the heat that they needed. So charcoal burning was quite a big industry. And and the other thing is that's good for us is that actually having kind of areas of open woodlands, you know, open glades and things, it's really, really good for biodiversity because you have that edge effect and you know, opens up to woodland butterflies and things like that.  Adam: We're just passing an amazing house built on stilts on the side side of this hill, which has got this great view of the river.  Catherine: There's. Yeah, there's some incredible houses around here.  Adam: Where? Where so which where are we heading?  Catherine: We'll go back down that way.  Adam: OK. All right. You may be able to hear it's not just the river, it is now raining. And actually it's all making the snow a bit slushy, but we're on our way back. We're going to meet a colleague of yours. Is that right?  Catherine: That's right. Yeah. So Stella Bolam, who. She's a community forestry officer who works for Sheffield City Council. She's going to be joining us. And yeah, she worked with me when I was working for the council and is in charge of planting trees with communities across Sheffield.  Adam: OK, so Stella, hi. So, yeah, so. Well, thank you very much for joining me on this rather wet day on the outskirts of Sheffield. So just tell me a little bit about what you do.  Stella: Yeah, of course. So our team, community forestry, we basically plant trees with people. It's our tagline, I suppose, and so we we work with community groups and schools to plant those trees and provide aftercare in the first three years, two-three years.  Adam: Aftercare for the trees. Yeah, yeah.  Stella: Yes. Ohh obviously for the people as well I mean.  Adam: What sort of? Give me an example of the type of people you're working with and what you're actually achieving.  Stella: Yeah, yeah. So I can tell you about a couple of projects I did. When I first joined a couple of years ago. So one was in an area called Lowedges, which is quite a deprived area of Sheffield. In the south of Sheffield. And we worked with a couple of local groups that were already formed to build, to plant a hedge line through the park. It's quite long. It's about 2000 whips we planted, and we also worked with a group called Kids Plant Trees, who advocate nature-based activities for children, which obviously includes planting trees, and we work with a couple of local schools. So we map all the trees that we plant and so for our records.   Adam: And how did you get involved in all of this?  Stella: I a couple of years ago I changed careers.   Adam: You were a journalist. Is that right?  Stella: I was a journalist. Yeah.   Adam: What sort of journalist?  Stella: I did print journalism and that.   Adam: Local through the local newspapers?  Stella: No, I worked in London for at least 10 years. I worked in London. I moved up to Sheffield and I was a copywriter.  Adam: Right. So a very different world. So it wasn't wasn't about nature. You weren't. You weren't the environment correspondent or anything.  Stella: It was very different. No, no, not at all. It's human interest stories, though. So I've always been interested in in people and communities, and that that's the thing that I've tried to embed in my work in forestry as well and trying to sort of help people connect to nature and understand that that connection a bit more.  Adam: You've moved around the country and we've been talking about how important trees are to people in Sheffield in particular. Is that true? Is that your experience, that it is different here?  Stella: Yes, they're very passionate about trees and that can go either way. So you know there's people that love them and people that are actually quite scared of them.   Adam: Scared? Why? Why scared?  Stella: Yeah, I think because a lot of people don't understand trees and they think they're going to fall over. They say things like, oh, look at, it's moving in the wind. And I sort of say, well, that's natural, that's how they grow, right? But obviously I wasn't taught that at school. So people don't have that general understanding about trees. So I try to sort of, I suppose, gently educate people if they do say negative things. Because I obviously do love trees and you know, I think they give us so much,   Adam: And you said you work with a lot of schools.  Stella: Yeah.  Adam: Do you feel young people have a particularly different view of nature and trees than older generations? Do you see any distinction there at all?  Stella: Yes, I think though, because of the climate emergency we're in, I think kids now are much more attuned with what's going on with you know, are the changes that are happening in our climate. So we do incorporate a little bit of education in our work with schools. So we talk to them about trees, why they're important, and we'll often let them answer. We won't tell them they'll put up their hands and say, well, because they give us oxygen or, you know, the animals need them. So I didn't know anything about that when I was at school. So I think that's probably quite a major change.  Adam: You must know the area quite well, and there's lots of different parts of woodlands in and around Sheffield, so for those who are visiting, apart from this bit, where would you recommend? What's your favourite bits?  Stella: Ohh well I I like the woods near me actually. So I I live in an area called Gleadless and Heely and there's there's Gleadless have have got various woodlands there. They're ancient woodlands and they're not very well known, but they're absolutely amazing. But the other famous one in Sheffield is Ecclesall Woods. Yes, it's very famous here. It's kind of the flagship ancient woodland. It's the biggest one in South Yorkshire.  Adam: And you talked about getting into this industry in this career, you're both our our experts, both women that that is unusual. Most of the people I I meet working in this industry are men. Is that first of all is that true and is that changing?  Stella: It is true. Yeah, I think it's currently about I'm. I'm also a board member and trustee of the Arboricultural Association, so I know some of these statistics around the membership of that organisation and I think there's. It's between about 11 and 15% of their members are women. So yes, it is male and it's also not very ethnically diverse either. I think it is changing and I think I can see that sometimes even when I'm working with kids. And you know, young girls who are you can see they're like really interested. And I sort of always say to them, you know, you can do, you can work with trees when you when you're grown up, you can have a job working with trees. And like a lot of sectors, I think traditionally men have dominated. And I think a lot of women sort of self-select themselves, edit them out of their options, really, cause you you're not told about these things. I mean, I'd never heard of arboriculture five years ago.  Adam: We've we've just rejoined the riverbank. It's quite wide. So this is the Porters River? Porter Brook been told that so many times today I keep forgetting that the Porter River, no didn't quite get it right. Porter Brook. Is it normally this high? I mean it's properly going fast, isn't it? Think that's amazing.  Stella: Yeah. So I was going to just have a chat with you a little bit about a project called Eat Trees Sheffield.  Adam: Yes, OK.  Stella: Yeah. So this is a project that was initiated by an organisation called Regather Cooperative, but they also are massive advocates of supporting a local sustainable food system and as part of that, it's harvesting apples. And they make a beautiful pasteurised apple juice from apples locally.  Adam: From an actual planted orchard?  Stella: No so well, they actually have just planted an orchard, but no, they basically accept donations from the community.  Adam: So if someone's got an apple tree in their garden. They they pull off the apples and send it in.  Stella: Yeah, well, they have to bring them in. Yeah. And they have to be in a certain condition that they're good for juicing, but yes. And then they get a proportion of the juice back the the people that have donated get some juice back.   Adam: A fantastic idea. Fantastic.   Stella: Yeah. And then they obviously sell the juice as part of their more commercial offering. But yeah.  Adam: That's wonderful. So if you, if you've got a couple of apple trees in your garden, and you live around the Sheffield area, what's the the name of the charity?  Stella: It's called Regather Cooperative. So, we're trying to create a network of people that, basically, can be connected to each other and build skills to look after these orchards because they do need looking after and valuing. They're very important, so yeah.  Adam: Yeah, sort of connects people to their very local trees. It's interesting. I have a a very good friend of mine in London. Who does sort of guerilla gardening. And on the the street trees has just planted runner beans and things coming up so so you know it just grows up. You can see people walking down and going oh, are those beans hanging off the trees? and you she you know, just pops out and grabs some and goes and cooks with them. And you know I'm not. I always think. I'm not sure I'd want to eat some some stuff from this street tree because God knows how. What happens there? But I I love the idea. I think it's a really fun idea.  Stella: So it's just it's been nice meeting you.  Adam: Well, same here. So we're back, we're back by the river.  Catherine: By the river all along the river.   Adam: All along, so yes. Final thoughts?   Catherine: Yeah. So I mean, it's been so great to have, you know, have you visit Sheffield today, Adam. Like, it's always such a privilege to to show people around kind of the bits of our city that are so beautiful. Well, I think, you know, just this walk today in the Porter Valley and the fact that there's so many trees where there used to be industry is something that Sheffield's had going for it I think throughout the whole of its history. The the woodlands were originally so important to be the green lungs of the city - that was really recognised at the turn of the 20th century. But now if you go into the city centre, there's projects like Grey to Green, which is basically where they used to be a very, rather ugly road running round the back of the city centre, which has now been converted into 1.5 kilometres of active travel routes, and there the space has been made for trees. So instead of roads now there's kind of special soil and trees and plants and grasses and things like that. They're like, they look amazing, but also they help to combat climate change. So when the rains fall like they have done at the moment, the trees slow down all the flow of the water going into the River Don, it stops Rotherham from flooding further down. But it also helps well it also encourages people to visit the city centre and enjoy the shade of the trees and, you know, takes up some of the pollution that's in the city. And I think it's, you know, this kind of new kind of thinking where we're actually not just looking after the woods we've already got and letting it grow. Actually making new spaces for trees, which I find really exciting and you know, hopefully that's going to be the future of not just Sheffield, but lots of cities around the country.  Adam: That's a brilliant thought to end on. Thank you very much for a fantastic day out and I was worried that it would be really wet and horrible and actually, yet again it's been quite pretty, the snow and it's only rained a little bit on us. Look, a squirrel.   Adam: Well, I hope you enjoyed that visit to one of Sheffield's open wooded spaces, and if you want to find a wood near you, you can do so by going to the Woodland Trust website woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Until next time, happy wanderings.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special. Or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. 

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We welcome the one and only Drag King superstar Adam All to the podcast to tell us all about their latest appearance in Meta's Queens of the Metaverse. Adam is the founder and host of BOiBOX and named Best Drag king by QX Awards. With Queens of the Metaverse, Meta is showcasing how technologies like VR, AR, and avatars will help creative communities across the UK express themselves in new ways, free from the limitations that can exist in the physical world, like access to studio space or proximity to like-minded creative communities and spaces.Follow Queer Talk on Instagram and Twitter. Let us know your thoughts on the episode on socials, we love to hear from listeners!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/queer-talk-podcast. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ru Who? The Kings are swinging into town. Miri is joined by the wonderful Adam All – a non-binary founder of BOiBOX as they discuss how you can find your masculinity and how to celebrate it with the world.  And it's getting hot in here so, Miranda discusses how we can all get down to business and stay cool in this heatwave.    Make sure you follow and subscribe so you never miss an episode, and of course, give us a cheeky five star rating.       To send us your listener stories, or if you just wanna say hi, drop us an email at smutdrop@metro.co.uk     You can also find us on Twitter & instagram;     @smutdrop      @miri_kane     @adamall_drag     @boi_box     @metro.co.uk 

S4 EP6: Adam AllJoining me on the show this week is the brilliant drag king, performer and host - Adam All.Adam is the creation of Jen Powell and I loved hearing about their story and I hope you do to. Thanks. SuzixxPlease subscribe and leave a review.And if you want to get in touch with me on the show, here's how...email: hello@outwithsuziruffell.comtwitter: @outwithsuzi  A 'Keep It Light Media' ProductionSales, advertising and general enquiries: hello@keepitlightmedia.com

Max: Hello, welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster and today, on the show, I'm super happy to welcome Adam Chambers who is the founder, CEO of Applichat Healthcare. Applichat is a company I've first found about on another podcast The Chad and Cheese and was one of the first companies, along with  mine, to move into the chatbot space and applying chatbot specifically to the challenges of sourcing and sourcing on social media. Since then, Adam has focused his company on the healthcare, on the booming healthcare sector, which has gone through so much changes in the last year and we're here to talk to him about sourcing and how to source for nurses and healthcare professionals and anything else that where the conversation might take us. Welcome to the show, Adam.Adam: Thank you so much. To everyone listening, I just wanna say Max is amazing. Really helped me with my career. So, you should keep listening to the show and buy his stuff.Max: Thanks, buy my stuff, yes, and I'm not selling on this show. I'm just using it to remind ourselves that recruitment never stops, that never stops changing and that to stay abreast of what people are doing and maybe get a couple of ideas for my own business, as I hope some of the listeners will. So for the people who are new to Applichat and Applichat Healthcare as newly-rebranded, can you say in your own words what you guys do?Adam: Yeah, so, we really specialize in connecting nurses, employers in under 48 hours. So sort of means you guys pay, because whenever it comes to job search as a nurse you have four or five different options and the one that's gonna give you an offer quickest is usually the one that you're gonna take. Like they don't have a time to mess about. So what we do is we make tough application process, like you do with your chatbots, simple as possible, 60 seconds, five to ten questions. And then we immediately get them in front of a recruiter, at one of our clients. So, it's an instantaneous process.Max: Front of the panel, before it hits the ATS?Adam: Yeah pretty much, like before even they send their resume. We try and call them within one hour, get them booked in. And one we sent one on Friday, so today's Monday, we sent one on Friday and she just got made a job offer today plus two working days, we can say to the nurses that we're the best cause we have these relationships with our clients where we can move you quickly and then to the clients we say, nurses want to be moved quickly so when can I do that for them?Max: Mhm. The time element with nurses, is it more acute than you know I guess other jobs? I guess the time elements become more pressing the lower the salaries are, it seems like you know. The people who are less paid on the great you know pyramid of things, are the ones who need the money the most, and the highest time pressure, I suppose, to act on things. But generally speaking, I would imagine that healthcare workers, presently, are very well-paid, that they would be in their comfortable category.Adam: Yeah, I think a nurse could expect to get 70 thousand dollars a year, depending where they are, it's an average. The speed thing is not so much that they need the money, it's more so that the employers need them. So, they'll make four, five applications and then it's a matter of sort of who can get to them first. So, I think there is like—where like the first employee you speak to, the first one you interview to, the first facility you visit, it has an improved impression compared to the other ones. So, that's why it's so important to be the first one to get an active job-seeking nurse because here she already has four or five applications and there'll be a couple offers by the time you speak to them.Max: Absolutely. So, I think that's true for most jobs and certainly in a hot market like this, it's a race. So, the diss on social media and social media sourcing is that, yeah, you can get leads but they're not good quality leads. These people don't even pick up the phone, they're not qualified candidates. How do you work around that objection and what are your thoughts on social media versus job boards?Adam: I think, if you could get a hundred applicants from Indeed, more would get hired than the hundred that you get from Facebook. So I don't think it's a black and white diss of saying that social media doesn't work for recruiting, it's a spectrum. Social media works for recruiting, you just need to get more candidates and that's actually a good match because 70, 75 percent of nurses, at least, will go on Facebook or Instagram every single month compared to  five, ten  percent go on Indeed. So, you've got a bigger market of candidates, but less competition when it comes to employers. So, I love the spectrum ranges, from just looking to ready-to-apply on social media. The fact that there is that portion of ready-to-apply, means you can still make placements and just as many placements as from job board seem to get more people. And at the same time, that perception of rubbish leads who don't pick up the phone. I think it is ingrained in the people because they're so used to getting their candidates from Indeed or through this career site. Like people who take loose steps to find a job and they don't know how to treat a lead, like they don't even call a lead, in our space at least, they just say, as a nurse, he isn't interested. Whereas, we know, like you have to market to those people and you have to send them emails and a text every so often and like build the candidate pool and then you can use those. So...Max: So you're building the talent pool by getting their attention, but once you've got them looking, it may take a few ads, a few messages before you can activate them into a job-seeker.Adam: Yeah. It's more like a few months, and sometimes none of them will, but you have to do something.Max: You know. That's how to make the economics work is to have that re-engagement strategy. So, maybe from practically speaking, what are the initial steps if somebody says you know, well, I don't wanna create competitors for Applichat, but if somebody says, I'm a healthcare provider, I wanna hire some nurses and I haven't tried, I don't know, Facebook or Instagram, is that where you're advertising?Adam: So, we don't really talk about so much like in those presentations whenever we're selling to someone because if we say the word Facebook, like, that has so many connotations to them that it sort of distracts them away from the point, yeah. But if we are advertising there, like, we use the traffic that go onto that site, advertise to them. That's how you utilize it.Max: Okay, yeah. I think most marketplaces are the same way. Everybody goes to the same places to get traffic, which is you know you go where the people are, which is TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, and then you drive people to a website. And so, you've stopped maybe doing the whole native lead capturing where you do everything on Facebook, and now you drive them to a more, let's say, traditional website?Adam: So yeah, well it depends what channel we're advertising on. So, if for example, if we're doing it on Instagram like then, it get real easy for someone to input their information, like natively. But if it's on Youtube, it's better if you send them off Youtube, on the website. So it really depends, I think, on how people are used to using the channel and then what technology the channel provides to enable you to take advantage of the people who are using it. Not on a bad way, that sounded bad. Take advantage of their behaviors.Max: For example, with the retargeting or being able to, you know, to organize the profiles and categories?Adam: Yeah, exactly.Max: So, um.Adam: Retargeting, it comes back to, like, the spectrum I was talking about. If someone isn't ready to apply, then it would be a good idea to retarget them with an ad which acknowledges that. So, if for example, you have Talkpush as a CRM, for example, and a candidate's been stuck on a stage for a couple of weeks, then I like them to start a campaign which has a message directed to people who are still thinking about it. It's a much smarter way to advertise and just like pushing jobs to like people who aren't listening. Max: Mhm. And for example, that kind of content would be a video about, you know, career reconversion. Would you advertise directly some employer branding materials and videos about this is why it's so great to work here. How do you do it in a more subtle way than just push job description?Adam: Yeah. There's two useful ways. So, the first is what you mentioned, employer branding stuff. Stories of real people really resonate well with nurses because a lot of them have a calling to care for people, so they really value personal connection, and also they value the opinions of other nurses, more than anything. So, personal stories like that, people speaking to the camera. Or, you can just, sort of, call, what's the saying, call a spade a spade, and say like, hey we saw you clicked in our ad recently, still thinking about it,  and just sort of call that out and then revisit some of the reasons why they might have clicked the ad in the first place.Max: Right, reminders and retargeting that way. I agree with you that these personal stories would be great, sort of, bait. And for Applichat,  are you bringing stories during marketing, you bring stories from your different customers in the healthcare space, and you go straight to the candidates to share their stories or you have more targeted campaigns that are customer-specific? Is it branded Applichat or is it branded for your customers?Adam: Yeah, I think of like, you're gonna tell the story of the place of work and the people that they will work with. They don't really care so much about our process and how we help them. They care about what their life will be like in this new job. So, you wanna, like, show them what it could be like, show them that beautiful reflection could be them, if they do it.Max: That initial lead that you engage with, so if somebody wants to get started on sourcing on social media, they wanna make their own mistakes, and they wanna figure it out without going through your company, how would you advise them to get started? You know, to get more familiar with social media sourcing. What would be step one?Adam: So, step one, get a hundred dollars from someone.Max: Their parents?Adam: Just get, say, cause you always have to think like, of the practicalities first I think. So in the past I've done webinars on using Facebook for jobs, but no one ever does it. You just think about the practicalities and the settings. So, you need to get approval from someone and a hundred dollars, a small budget, from someone who has decision-making authority and say, I wanna try this new thing. And then it's just a case of starting going on Google and Youtube and looking up how to create ads on Instagram or Facebook or Youtube. Follow that through, create an ad, and I think the most important thing is your ad shouldn't be a job description, it should be an offer. Because on these sites, you're not competing with the retirement home next door or the hospital next door, you're competing with Coca-Cola, McDonalds. Everyone trying to sell everyone else's stuff. So, it's so important that you are able to catch people's eye, awaken something inside them, make them feel a bit of emotion, and you can't do that with a job description which says the working hours and the responsibilities. You have to come in with the PN points and the potential solutions. So for example, one of our ads is for relocation to North Carolina and we're targeting travel nurses. So, we will go wide with a message to those travel nurse that talks about how they might be tired of moving about so much, that talks about how they might be frustrated with the inconsistency of their lives, and then comes in with the opportunity that get like consistency, stop moving about, and still live somewhere which is beautiful.Max: Put your life in order and go watch the beautiful trees as autumn comes to North Carolina.Adam: Yeah.Max: Like a travel ad.Adam: Yeah, we need to like, recruiters need to go away from like the science of like number, well numbers are important but like, don't just say the facts, you know, tell the story as well. We need to move towards being like poets and artists and writers. I think we need to think of ourselves as higher than recruiters cause we're all doing so far more than just creating jobs and filling jobs. At least that's how I think about it.Max: Everything that you just said is quite opposite to some of the advice I've been delivering myself, which isAdam: Oh yeah?Max: You know in some market, you have very direct advertising, just don't forget to put the salary, you know, don't forget to be very specific because you don't wanna mislead candidates into not knowing what they're looking for. But, I suppose, I'm thinking more about active job-seekers. Even before that you're opening their mind to the possibility of a different career or relocation and still today, I think, Facebook and Instagram, or Youtube, they don't allow you to target specifically job-seekers, right? It's not like you have a cookie on their browser and you know that they were on Indeed and Zip last week.Adam: Yeah, you need to target them with what you say in the ad. SoMax: Yeah.Adam: That's what you need, something that's gonna make them click on it.Max: Yeah. Right. Well, I think we've got some great bits of information and advice here for our audience. So, thanks a lot Adam for sharing, and how can people get ahold of you and Applichat if they're in the healthcare space and looking for help in hiring more nurses?Adam: Yeah, just add me on LinkedIn. Adam Chambers. C H A M B E R S.Max: Great. Adam: That's it. Max: Thanks a lot. Thanks for joining.Adam: All right, thank you for inviting me. Cheers. Max: If you're sourcing on social media, the best thing to do is to tell a story more so than in other medium, a job description won't do it alone. You need to tell the story of the people whose life you're going to effect. Adam Chambers has been doing that for nurses, but the same holds true for other professions. Hope you found this interview inspiring that you got something out of it, and that you'll be back for more, remember to subscribe and share.

There are some big-ticket items that most people have and need, but absolutely hate shopping for. Mattresses fall into that category. In fact, studies have shown that people would rather go to the dentist than buy a new mattress. Helix Sleep is trying to take the pain out of that experience. Adam Tishman is the co-founder and co-CEO of Helix Sleep, and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he explains why his DTC mattress company is different from the rest, and why those differences matter. He explains the reason it was critical to spend time researching, testing, and perfecting a product before bringing it to market and how that upfront effort created priceless brand equity. Adam also dives into personalization, but he takes it beyond the need to simply give customers a personalized experience, and explains why data-collection and a personalization strategy that includes personalized products can help you expand your business more successfully when you are ready.Main Takeaways:Slow And Steady: With a physical product that is dependent on reviews, rushing to market could spell disaster. Take the time to do the research, test, iterate, and develop a product that is review-ready before you present it to your customers.You’re Not Me: With certain products, there is a specific customer set or type of person for whom the product is made. With mattresses, every person has unique needs, so the product has to be personalized as much as possible. Finding the best way to understand your customers’ needs should be a top priority, and through multiple touchpoints and quizzes, you can gather the data necessary to provide the best experience and product.The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship: By cultivating data and delivering personalized products and experiences for your customers, you are inherently forming a stronger relationship with them than a typical brand. Not only are you collecting insights that can be used to help you expand into new product lines, you are also creating a network of previous customers who are more likely to trust the brand and try something new.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone. This is Stephanie Postles. Co-founder at mission.org, and your host. Today, we're chatting with Adam Tishman, the co-founder and co-CEO at HelixSleep. Adam, welcome to the show.Adam:Hey Stephanie, thanks so much for having me.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm excited to have you. so I have never said co-CEO before, which I kind of want to start there. Tell me a bit about being a co-CEO at a company.Adam:Yeah, definitely. So we founded the business, myself and two other co-founders, out of business school. And over the sort of evolution of the company and where we've been over the past five years, we actually run it with myself and one of the other co-founders as sort of the two headed dragon as co-CEOs. And then our third founder is our CFO and COO. And it works really well because it allows us to sort of manage different areas of the business at the CEO level and also work really collaboratively together as well.Stephanie:Awesome. So you co-founded HelixSleep and that was back in 2015, right?Adam:Yeah. So it was founded by myself and, as I said, two other co-founders back in business school, back in 2015. The three of us had moved to a new city to go to school, went through the process of buying a mattress just for ourselves. And it was sort of uniquely terrible in many ways, whether it was really confusing pricing and really expensive pricing in the store, really just bad in-store buying experience. We actually found out later doing research that buying a mattress is actually rated as a worse experience than going to the dentist. And the last thing was, it was just really confusing. If you don't buy mattresses all the time, which no one really does, and it's something that you buy somewhat infrequently, people have a really hard time understanding how to buy it. And so for us, we sort of saw the problem, saw some of the solutions that others in our category were trying to fix this problem, and felt like we could sort of come in and solve it in a much better, more efficient way.Stephanie:Got it. So five years ago it feels like so long ago, what was the market like back then? I mean, who were some of the up and coming people and what kind of unique angle did you guys see in the market at that time?Adam:Yeah, definitely. So five years ago, I would say the direct to consumer, or just generally buying mattresses online, was pretty nascent. It was predominantly, people were going into stores. There was actually a while where people were buying beds on phones, but we sort of saw the market, which is very consolidated at the traditional brand retail level. So you have sort of Simmon's, Tempur Sealy, Sleep Number, Casper, which is the most well known and largest player of the D to C mattress brands head launched recently and had really done a good job at showing that this was a category that could generate interest online, somewhat of an atypical category with low, as I mentioned, low ecommerce penetration. What we saw as the issues that I mentioned earlier, we felt that Casper and a lot of the other brands that were starting to pop up were sort of maybe filling in one friction, but replacing it with a different friction.Adam:So all of us, including Helix, offer products directly to consumers at much better price points, helping out that value chain issue with traditional retailers. Everyone tries to provide a much better buying experience through a really good user experience on the website, 100 night trial, free shipping, et cetera. The issue where we really differentiate at Helix is around the product itself. So what Casper did and what pretty much every other planner space did was said, "It's really challenging to choose a mattress. So we're going to just get rid of choice altogether, and offer one type of mattress for every single person."Adam:And what we found doing a whole ton of research and talking to people, and it sort of makes sense that if you think about it implicitly, is that there really is a wide variety of needs and preferences as it relates to your mattress and to the way that you sleep, the same way that we all don't fit in the same clothing. We all don't have the same exercise routine that works best for us, the same diet. Sleep is quite personal. Adam:So one of our missions was effectively, could we help customers understand the right products for them through a sleep quiz that asks questions about things that you knew about yourself? So your body type, your height, your weight, do you tend to sleep on your back or your stomach? Do you get hot at night? Do you get cold? Do you have back pain? Do you like a bed a little bit firmer or softer? And then we take that information and effectively translate it into the best mattress for you. So the order of the layers in the mattress, the density of those layers, the types of materials, the density of those materials, are all really important for getting the best night's sleep and effectively that's what we're doing. So we like to think of it as sort of providing a technology enriched solution as a salesperson. So instead of going into the store and sort of hanging out with sales person, we do that online through our quiz.Stephanie:Very cool. And yeah, what I love about what I read about you guys was that you did a ton of research. I think I read that you went through 100 plus page PhD dissertations, and you partnered with researchers in Europe to make sure you really understood how to create this algorithm and this quiz. Tell me a bit about your thought process there, because I think that's so different than a lot of D to C companies right now who are just trying to get that quick launch, take advantage of the market, and are just going really quickly instead of taking a step back and doing the research and figuring out how to solve the problem.Adam:100%. I think for us, none of the three of us came from a traditional mattress background, right? And so we did what three nerdy guys would do, which is we started to do research. And we actually had this idea and stumbled across a PhD dissertation on sleep ergonomics, which is the study of the sort of spinal alignment of your back while you're sleeping. You hear a lot about spinal alignment and ergonomics and sort of office chairs, but this was really the first PhD dissertation on that, with bodies lying down. And we actually noticed that at the bottom of the PhD dissertation, the head author had left his email address. And so we emailed him.Adam:A couple of days later, we got on a Skype call with him. They were located in Europe and then about a week and a half later, we actually flew to Europe and met with them and effectively worked with them to translate their initial science into the crux of our initial algorithm, which over the last five years, we've sort of wholly taken ownership of, and refined quite a lot. And so it was sort of a funny story because it really was, we got on a plane and went to Belgium and had to figure out where we were going and all those types of things. But it was really important because we felt like we had a scientific base for the hypothesis that we were making.Adam:I think to your second part of the question, it's really interesting, this tension around, do I want to get to market as quickly as possible, or do we want to take a step back, feel really confident in the research, the development, the product testing? As you mentioned, we went through many, many versions of the mattress, many, many versions of the algorithm on how we matched people. And the approach that we took was that you really only get to come out to the world and present your product once, at least in physical products, that's sort of our belief as differentiated, perhaps, from a more technical product where you can have an MVP. We couldn't really sell a mattress that was only 50% as good as we wanted it to be one day, because we would get terrible product reviews, and we couldn't sort of build brand equity that way. And so we did a lot of work upfront to make sure that the product is where we wanted it to be.Stephanie:That's great. I mean, it seems like there's a lot of room to partner with researchers around a bunch of different topics, but what was that partnership like? I mean, when you went over to Belgium and you're essentially building out a model or an algorithm based on this person's research, were they like, "I want a piece of the pie, I want a little equity," or were they ready to give you all the information for free?Adam:Yeah, definitely. So we ended up working out a deal with them where effectively, they provided consulting services in exchange for equity in the business. Of course, that could have been consulting services for money. At the time, this was literally very, very early days. It was actually before we started working with them before we had raised our seed round. So there wasn't any money to pay them really. And so we went ahead with an equity relationship, which we felt made sense at the time. We still feel like it makes sense today. We don't really work with them at all and have not for a while, but it was really helpful to sort of supercharge our learning and understanding in terms of the development of the product and the algorithm.Stephanie:Very cool. I mean, have you had to iterate the model? Do you see people requesting different sleeping habits or behaviors? Have things changed for the past five years where you've actually had to change the model a couple times?Adam:Yeah, a lot actually. It's one of the biggest, from a consumer perspective, our differentiation is about providing personalization and a more custom mattress buying experience, but from a business bottle perspective, our ability to look at our algorithm or our model and effectively improve it is a really big lever to what makes us unique. And so if you think about what we're doing, is we're taking, as I said, information about yourself, matching it to a mattress. And so over the years, we've effectively, having sold hundreds of thousands of beds, we just have a lot more data. So we've been able to improve both the way that we match you, so person A with these attributes, are you getting matched to bed XYZ, and sort of edit, that as well as making physical product improvements to the beds themselves.Adam:So a lot of people talk about AB testing and talk about opportunities with using data to improve your product as it relates to your digital product, right? Your onsite conversion or your UX or something like that. We have taken that mentality to the physical product as well. And we've actually been able to reduce our return rate, improve customer satisfaction, improve average order value, all the main metrics associated with product and product satisfaction, by effectively looking at it in that light.Stephanie:Got it. And I also it was reading that the return rate, if you overemphasize how you have free returns and the 100 day, night guarantee and all that, if you overdo that, you'll be able to sell a lot more just because people have peace of mind. Even though I think I saw at least, I mean, it was a Casper stat, but it was only 10% of the people or less actually returned their mattress. Do you guys go about that same way of thinking of overemphasize things to make people feel like it's a risk free purchase?Adam:Yeah, I think there's two things there. I think that in our category, offering a fairly long return period, it's typically 100 nights, is kind of necessary, because you need to make someone feel confident in purchasing such a large, but really expensive item, right? Average order values in our category are really high. And so people want to feel really confident in the product that they're ordering. And that's why all of these brands are offering free returns, free shipping. In many cases, or in most cases, really generous policies around warranties, et cetera. It's just offering more opportunity to make someone feel comfortable with spending those dollars. So we definitely approach it that way.Adam:I wouldn't say that we necessarily overemphasize it. The reality is, most people need around two to four weeks to get used to a new mattress. And then after that, you don't really need another 70 days, but people tend to like that process. And in terms of return rates, you're right that return rates, they're honestly, I mean, Casper's return rate is probably higher than that number you said, but they're not as bad as retail, traditional apparel or something where return rates are 40, 50% or something like that.Stephanie:Yep. What happens when a mattress is returned? Where does it go?Adam:Yeah, that's a good question. So we do a few things. So when customers want to return a product, first, we work with them to see why, because there are ways we actually can improve the product experience after the fact. So we can send you a topper that adjusts the feel or other things along those lines, but in cases where mattresses need to be returned,, at Helix, at least we actually donate the vast majority of them. So we have a network of donation partners across the country where we will donate them. In some cases, we cannot donate them, either because there's state laws against it, or city laws against it, or if someone's located in a somewhat remote area. And in which case, we work with junk removal partners that end up recycling them. So all of our beds are technically, in the 100 night period, considered lightly used. So they're eligible for donation.Stephanie:That's great. So I was reading there's about over 100 companies now that sell mattresses online. How do you show how different your mattresses are and the algorithm that you have going on? How do you showcase that value proposition on your website or your advertising?Adam:Yeah, definitely. So it's a good question. And it's funny. That quote comes up a lot, the 100 plus mattress companies. It's one of those weird categories where there is a very long tail of players. So you probably have 10 to 15 players that have reached any semblance of scale, and then 80 that are very, very small. I mean, you would almost consider them, the equivalent would be like a mom and pop shop in retail world. What I will say is that buying a mattress is a long lead process. So when you decide you want to buy a bed, you're typically in market for it for a week, a few weeks, months even.Adam:And what that means is that you have many touch points with multiple brands, right? And you can imagine it's like buying a car, it's like buying anything that's expensive. And so across that journey, we feel like we do a really good job of sort of elevating our brand proposition and really personalizing our messaging specifically to consumers in ways that really speak to them so that our differentiation shines. The other thing is that, because of the way that we customize beds, and also that we really spend a lot of time on making sure that the product quality is excellent, is we just win a lot of awards. So we were named GQ's best mattress, Wired best mattress, whole host of others. And then we also get awards for specific affinity groups. So best mattress for back sleepers, best mattress for plus size consumers, or something like that. And we're able to elevate those messages on individual mattresses.Stephanie:Got it. Yeah. I saw, I think it was your organic line that won an award. How did you guys think about developing a new product that was organic materials? And also, launching like that, does it make your other products maybe not look as good? Or how did you guys think about that? Will it help or hurt us putting out an organic line? Because when I looked at it and I look at any organic products, it always makes you think, "Oh, well, what's in the other one if this one's made of natural materials and no chemicals?" So how did you guys think about that balance?Adam:Yeah, that's a great question. So we actually thought about that question a lot, and where we ended up and it's almost the core strategy of Helix is that throughout the first three and a half years of our business, we were holistically a single D to C brand Helix, right? Started out as just mattresses and then extended into other sleep products, pillows, sheets, box springs, adjustable bases, et cetera. And then about a year and a half ago, we took a step back, saw what we were building, which was this really fast, growing profitable brand, and in a category that we were sort of one of the leaders in, but what we saw under the hood was this really excellent collection of skillsets across our team, across our technology, some in-house built technology, across our supply chain capabilities and relationships. Could we view ourselves less as a single brand and more as a platform on which we could build a portfolio of home good brands?Adam:And that is the strategy that we are currently on. And so Helix is our sort of most well-known largest brand, but Birch, which is our organic line, or our organic brand, was launched about a year ago. And it is actually a sort of related, but completely separate brand. So if you were to go to birchliving.com, you would effectively see an entirely organic ecosystem with the goal of really feeling, I mean, truthfully feeling authentic to consumers that care about organic products, that supply chain is 100% sustainable. It's just a much different consumer. And so we want to make sure we talk to that niche consumer in a specific way that is perhaps different than a typical Helix consumer. And we've extended that process out more recently with the launch of All Form, which is our actually our first step out of the bedroom into the living room, which is a modular furniture brand.Stephanie:I love that. I mean, that seems so smart because it's different consumers are looking for different things and like you were just mentioning, if you're comparing the two, then you might actually walk away feeling bad if you went with the one that wasn't organic, but when you have it on a completely different site, you're really meeting the needs of the person who's coming there instead of trying to put everything on one site. So I love that.Adam:Yeah. I think it's certainly a slightly different strategy, but we just feel like consumers, especially online consumers, want niche experiences and want experiences that really speak to who they are, and their preferences. And we were sort of already doing that on the product side with Helix, but it made sense to do it in this scenario on the brand side with Birch as well.Stephanie:Yep. How do you keep track of everything that's happening under the different brands and the different websites? I mean, how do you make sure any learnings that happen at Birch are maybe transferred over to Helix and over to the furniture line? How do you keep it cohesive when you essentially have now three or four different businesses running?Adam:Yeah. It's hard for sure. I think we're currently operating under a shared services model, so we don't have a team that just does Helix and a team that just does Birch or a team that just does All Form. We're just not there. The other two brands are just not at that scale yet, but so that makes this actually a little bit easier because you have the same people that work in a functional area,, working across all of the brands, but it's certainly challenging, for sure. And we've been able to take a lot of learnings from Helix specifically, which is an older brand. It just has a lot more data. It has more customers on a daily and monthly basis, and leverage those learnings across the other brands, which it's typically in that direction from a [inaudible 00:22:02].Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, there seems like there's a big opportunity to also re-target prior customers because you already know how to talk to them. You've already sold to them before, and then showing them your new furniture line or the pillows or bed frame, even if it's on a different website, you kind of already know how to communicate that to them in a way that has converted in the past.Adam:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's the core business case, right? And from a business perspective, we like that because it allows us to acquire a customer, build a lot of good will with that customer, and then sell them more products, right? Obviously, but from a consumer perspective, we also think it adds a lot of value to the customer journey because customers that are in market for things like mattresses tend to be in market for other home good products. Maybe you're moving, maybe you're renovating, maybe you got married, maybe you had a kid. Something is predicating your reason for being in market. And in many cases, if we can sort of create a lot of good will with you and then offer you more products, it's not just good for our business. It's also good for the customer because it makes shopping easier, right? it makes your purchase cycle and shopping and all of that a lot easier. And so that's what we're starting to do now. And where we're excited to move in the future.Stephanie:Okay, cool. So I also saw that you guys, I don't know if you still have showrooms, but you did have some showrooms in New York. And the process was that a customer would come in and they would take the quiz and then they would go to the showroom and maybe hang out for an hour, take a nap, try out the mattress. How has that model changed? And what's going on with maybe not having the ability to bring people into a showroom and try it out?Adam:Yeah, definitely. So we had a showroom in New York. It's obviously been closed for the last nine months. It was a really unique experience because it felt extremely personal, because it was really personal. It almost felt more like you were getting a piece of clothing tailored because you would show up, in many cases you would actually make an appointment in advance. We would have your information. We would actually build the bed for you on the spot. You'd be part of that process. And then you could hang out, test it, et cetera. And we tried to make the experience really, really great. It's unfortunate that we've had to close it. We have plans of moving into a more aggressive thoughts around potentially showrooms or retail units going forward.  Stephanie:And so when thinking about your marketing toolkit, what are some of your favorite channels to get in front of new customers right now?Adam:Yeah, so I think that we approach marketing extremely holistically. We have a very, very diversified marketing approach. Part of the reason for that is we think it just mitigates risk. It's very scary when 80% of your marketing budget is in one single channel, especially if one of those channels is a technology marketplace, or if it's Google or Facebook, and all of a sudden the Google algorithm changes, or Facebook gets rid of a targeted audience and that's it. And that actually happened in the home goods category a few years ago on Facebook.Stephanie:What did they take away?Adam:Yeah, I think it was 2018. They took away, there was a way that Facebook could help identify new movers, and they took that away, and we weren't super hit by it, but I know a lot of home goods brands and a lot of mattress companies, it was overnight, 30% of your ads disappeared, that kind of thing. So we don't do that.Stephanie:That's interesting that we're even talking about new movers because I'm in the process of moving right now and thinking about, "Do I just want to buy a new mattress, so when we get there, it's already set up?" Because it's going to take maybe a week or so to get all my stuff there. That's very smart to target people like me.Adam:Yeah. And so we try to avoid that just being too aggregated in a single channel. And so we're really diversified. The other thing is we operate almost all of our channels in house. It's just really important to us to be internal and holistic about it. So yeah, I mean in terms of channels that we love, it's nothing crazy. We're obviously across all the digital channels, radio, podcast, direct mail, all of those. I think if there is magic, the magic for us is really around thinking through the customer funnel holistically and making sure we understand and attribute accordingly with a pretty diversified marketing stack.Stephanie:Cool. So when thinking about 2021, what kind of trends are you most excited about, or new behaviors that you've seen occurring that you guys are excited about?Adam:Yeah. I think there's a lot. I think obviously just in general, COVID has really accelerated ecommerce adoption in atypical categories. And so I think that's pretty exciting to see where that settles once, hopefully, the world gets back to normal. I think a few areas that we're particularly interested in is there's a lot of movement on payment options and better opportunities for people to pay, which is sort of exciting. Another one is really around blending products and services. So sort of offering services and attaching them to products and using those as ways to better convert customers, and the tools available to do that are pretty interesting.Adam:Yeah, and then just for us, it's really around continuing to personalize our web experience, provide better customer experience, and those types of things. So I think 2021 is going to be a really interesting year. I think it's actually going to be two distinct years in one, the first half and the second half will be just completely different for a lot of businesses. And I actually would encourage anyone that's thinking about either starting a business or budgeting for a business to think about the world that way, you might actually want to have budgets for a beginning of the year plan and a second half of the year plan, because it's just really hard to know where we'll be. I feel confident in knowing where we'll be for the next three to four months, but after that, it's going to be a completely new experience.Stephanie:Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. So I want to dig a bit more into, you were just mentioning about merging products and services, and I haven't heard anyone talk about that yet. So I want to hear more, what are you thinking around that? What kind of tools are popping up that you have top of mind?Adam:Yeah, so I think for us, merging products and services, there's a few forms of it. One, which is at its most face value, it's just offering more services as if they were products. So that would be things like white glove delivery, things like old mattress removal, those types of services, which technically aren't really physical products, but they help convert customers into buying your physical products. Perhaps the more interesting areas as it relates to customer experience, and can you empower your customer experience team to provide service as opposed to just being an answer center? Right?Adam:So I think a lot of people view customer experience or customer service as an area where people go and ask questions, but can you be more proactive in providing service, whether that service be design consultation, be helping think through answering questions, or whatever it might be that really activate almost a little bit more a sales channel. I think that that's really interesting as well for us. And then I know a lot of other people are thinking about other types of services they can offer. Obviously, this is just what we're thinking about. But I think that you're going to see a lot more web experiences that are trying to provide a service-like experience to a consumer in addition to a product.Stephanie:Got it. Yeah. And it seems like once some of those services start happening, though, a lot of times, they can become commoditized where then the consumer just starts to expect it. I mean, I'm even thinking about contactless delivery and things like that, where it might cost some businesses extra money to be able to do that, or take a mattress away or whatever it may be. But I think eventually it will become standard, and that businesses need to start planning for, what are the consumers looking for now? And what will eventually have to be absorbed into the margin because it's commoditized?Adam:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that if what you're adding is something that can be easily commoditized, it certainly will be. If what you're adding is differentiated, unique, and valuable, then you should be able to charge for that value, right? It's sort of that simple. And so I think the example I use, white glove delivery, that's not unique to us. We're not the only people that can do that obviously.Adam:And so offering that, perhaps, could be something that becomes table stakes, or something that consumers come to have a level of expectation, but offering really niche opportunities to engage with someone on our CX team to help you through the buying process, that's not a commodity, right? That's something that you can really get to an amazing place through training and through branding and through just the entirety of your ecosystem, in my opinion. And so I definitely agree that some of these things could be monetized, but if you're doing them right, you should be able to, either, it should show up in your financials somewhere, whether it's you can charge more, your conversion rate is better, et cetera.Stephanie:All right. Let's move over to the lightning round, brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Adam?Adam:I hope so.Stephanie:All right. First up, if you had a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?Adam:If I had a podcast, I mean, this is a boring answer right now. It would be on effectively what I was just talking about, which is the future of D to C. And my first guest would probably be Jeff Raider from Harry's.Stephanie:Oh, that's a good one. Awesome. What's up next on your Netflix queue?Adam:I'm about to finish the last episode of Queen's Gambit and I love it. It's really cool. I like it a lot.Stephanie:So good. I like that too, it's awesome. What topic or trend do you not understand today that you wish you did?Adam:I dabbled in high-level cryptocurrency a year and a half ago and I just don't understand it at all. So I wish I knew it better because I think there's opportunity there, but I'm not sure I'm the guy that's going to find it.Stephanie:What's the nicest thing someone's ever done for you?Adam:Wow. The nicest thing someone's ever done for me?Stephanie:I get that response a lot. "Whoa, deep."Adam:Yeah, I mean that's deep. I don't know. I mean, my wife married me. That was pretty nice. I'm pretty happy about that.Stephanie:What a nice lady.Adam:I know, right? What a nice... I guess that the nicest thing... I'll just bring it back to Helix. I don't know if that's a boring answer or not, but we had some pretty awesome early advisers that really didn't need to give the time that they gave, and it was just immensely valuable. So I'll go with that.Stephanie:That's a good one. All right. And then the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Adam:Well, the real answer is COVID and the vaccine, that is the answer. And I think that anyone that tells you it's not macroeconomic facts is lying. From an internal standpoint, I'll go back to something I said earlier. I think that the movement in payment processing is a pretty big deal and not a lot of people are thinking about it, and I think that's going to be a big deal.Stephanie:Yep. Cool. All right, Adam. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. Where can people find out more about you and Helix?Adam:Yeah, definitely. So come check us out. It's HelixSleep.com for Helix. For Birch, it's BirchLiving.com. And for All Form, the modular sofa brand, it's AllForm.com. Yeah. And that's sort of the best place to check us out and learn more.Stephanie:Awesome. All right. Well, thanks so much and have a great night.Adam:All right. Thank you so much.

Episode 15: “I didn’t care much what people thought of me because I was already doing something that was way out of my league. I just buried myself into the music, and releasing my first EP was like an opus to myself.” Adam Kim spent 6 years getting his Biology degree from UCSD, and working multiple part-time jobs before finally solidifying himself as a full-time music artist. And just a few months ago, he passed 1 million streams on a song! In this episode of Asians Redefining Their Success, we talk about how Adam realized that music was what mattered the most to him, the surprising way how he came to start singing as well as producing, and his #1 tip for how to get over the fear of putting your first creation out there.We also share the behind-the-scenes of he comes up with his famous songs (and yes, we do a music lesson right in the middle of the interview so you get to hear his songwriting process in action!), his honest marketing advice to get your music heard, and different ways you can make a sustainable living as a musician. Resources:Rhymezone for rhyming1 Million streamed song: How to live ft. Limbo Recommendations:Youtube music platforms: ambientmusic, ambition, checkvibesoundYoutube tutorials for learning music: makepopmusic, busywork beats, kennybeats, Reb bull lab with T-pain Reach out to Adam:All of his socials: biglink.to/keepitinsideWebsite: http://keepitinside.com/Email: officialkeepitinside@gmail.com Quote: “I thought: I could afford to take a chance on myself, and when I did, I felt a lot more confident and knew that music was exactly what I wanted to do.”

Adam All saka, ka viņu regulāri sajauca ar vīrieti un nolēma, ka labāk smiesies pēdējais, un kļuva par brīnišķīgu drag king. Pēdājais? Pēdējā? Šajā podkāstā runājam par to, kas ir drag, par personvārdiem, un pat Džemma uzzina jaunus veidus, kā runāt par cilvēkiem. "Education!", kā teiktu Apple Derrieres. Mēs solām katrā podkāstā atrisināt jūsu problēmas un, būsim godīgi, līdz galam to tā arī neizdarām. Šī noteikti ir epizode, kur piedāvājam ļoti zolīdu risinājumu!       Ļoti patika podkāsts? Pastāsti par to saviem draugiem un kļūsti par patronu! Piesakies jaunumiem, seko mums Facebook:  spied like un šēro.  Klausies mūs Patreon, iTunes, PodBean, Spotify,  YouTube un Delfi.  Mēs atbalstām centru MARTA un aicinām to darīt arī Tevi. A. A. Aalto, Corps Of DiscoveryChad Crouch, Wilsons SnipeDoctor Turtle, You Um I'll AhKomiku, Disco CatRoccoW, MusicisexpressionofartthroughthemediumofsoundRoccoW, Nontinde Vendor Theme17, Action Fight Foto: Krista Saberova

Elizabeth Strout won The Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for her novel, Olive Kitteridge. Ten years later, with three prize-winning novels in between, Elizabeth Strout has written a sequel, OIive, Again. The main character Olive is now quite elderly and still living in the American state of Maine. She's still cantankerous, judgemental and rude but also kind, honest, and as hard on herself as she is on others. And perhaps a little wiser. Old age, small town life, loneliness, tenderness, failed marriages, sickness and death: these are all themes that Elizabeth Strout tackles. Jade Wye and Melissa Rice are the first ever winners of the Rachel Bland Podcast Award. Rachel was one of the presenters of You, Me and the Big C, a 5 Live Podcast about cancer and after she died the podcast competition was set up in her memory. Jade and Melissa's podcast is called Hooked: The Unexpected Addicts. It talks honestly about addiction and recovery and wants to debunk myths and stereotypes. They share their story with Jane. The TV show, RuPaul's Drag Race, is half way through, so what do we think about drag queens these days? Do women see them as misogynistic or pure fun ? Historian and performer Rose Collis, drag king Adam All and artist Victoria Sin discuss.

James: Hey audience, welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast. Today, we have Adam Triple A Adams. Adam's one of the Facebook stars, I would say, in the real estate business in the multifamily space because he does a lot of things using social media and I'm proud to have him here. Adam owns, almost sounded at 770 units worth 54 million. And right now, he has been focusing on Oklahoma City to buy their deals and he's the Master Investor of the Year, nominated by Thing Realty. So Adam, do you want to introduce yourself?     Adam: Yeah, hi. Adam Adams, originally from Utah, I live in Denver, the host of the Creative Real Estate Lunch Club, host of the Creative Real Estate Podcast and very focused on syndicating deals. So raising equity and buying larger apartments, we closed on 150 units last week and we just want to keep that momentum going.     James: Hey audience, just a quick note, this is the first time we are streaming live into our Multifamily Investors Group to add value and to allow people to answer questions, real time. I mean, this is almost the ninth recording of the podcast and Adam definitely helped me here today. He helped me to set up this live streaming, which I always want to do from the beginning, but there's a lot of tricks to get it working and I'm so happy to have him help me here. And you can definitely ask questions in the comment box. So go ahead and ask and I'll try to answer as fast as possible, but thanks for joining today. This is the Achieve Wealth Podcast where we focus on value add real estate investing.   So Adam, Why don't you tell what has been your recent focus on the multifamily space?    Adam: Yeah, the main focus is trying to do what we can as a company to add value to other syndicators. So helping other people raise equity, helping other people learn how to do the business. Some of the people watching are personal friends of ours on Facebook right now, Mike Upload, Vincent John, Jesse's on here. Van2 says 'awesome'. It's what we're trying to focus on right now, is just add the most amount of value. See if we can help other people and inspire them to get into multifamily syndication. And we partnered with other people often, we'll help raise equity for deals that you're closing on so that's really what we focus on. 300 of the 700 doors that you mentioned, we personally operate every day and we're always looking for more of those deals, but we've also raised equity for other people's deals.    James: Awesome. Awesome. So, Adam, can you tell us, I mean, value add is important in value adding to other people's lives and just giving out content is very, very important as well. But in your experience, what has been the best business plan that you have seen in terms of value adding to a multifamily deal?    Adam: Okay. So when you're talking about value add to a multifamily deal, you mean the actual property, right? And you don't just mean adding value to other people?     James: No, no. We'll come to that some other time.    Adam: Yeah, we do small things. Like upgrading kitchens, flooring, the bathrooms, painting. So generally what we do for value add is that. We've also implemented what's called RUBS- ratio utility billing system to kind of make it so that the burden of paying for the utilities goes on the tenant instead of us. So we've done a few different things with five syndications that we've closed and it's always different. Just because I say I like RUBS, it doesn't mean you can do that in every single market or in every single neighborhood. Sometimes you can do it on a B class, but not on a C class. So there's not one thing that we do, but we obviously try to raise rents and cut every expense that we can and make the property run more efficiently.     James: Okay. Awesome. I mean, you have been nominated by Thing Reality as the Master Investor of the Year because you add a lot of value, right? But what do you think is the secret sauce to your success in adding value to others?  Adam: Honestly, I would say the one thing that kind of sets me apart or my team apart is that the way that we give is we give fully and willingly. A lot of folks that are doing the business either want to charge for every ounce of advice that they give or they want to not share it with other people because they feel like that's their secret sauce and they're only going to be able to make money if you don't make money. And I think that I've noticed that with some people, they're like, well, I don't want to teach people how to do RUBS because then all of a sudden they're going to make all this money. I want to buy them from them where I can start implementing this. And for us, it's a little bit different. We decide what do people need to know, what are the problems, what have we gone through? Like our own personal issues with running certain properties. And we try our best to just give those pieces of advice and not just part of them, but like in detail.     So when we share things like how we're utilizing Facebook algorithms to get our name out, like we share that. Most people would charge tens of thousands of dollars for that piece of Info on how to do that but we just want other people to grow with us. And I think because of that, people talk about us, they say: you should go to our conferences, you need to go to blue spruce conferences, you need to listen to Adam Adams or whatever because we don't hold back. And that's probably the big thing is as I see most people holding back or only doing it when they're getting charged or giving you some of it and saying, if you want to know the rest, you have to like, come and pay me or you have to do this or you have to do that. But not us, we just give freely.    James: Got It. So yeah, I think it's important to take leadership, right? I mean, not everybody wants to take that leadership. Leadership is really hard and I mean, I commend you for taking leadership and taking like what? Four different conferences in Denver, is that what do you guys do? That's hard. But I think you took the leadership and I commend you for getting that attention and the value that you bring, which is a win-win situation for you, for your investors and for the people who are attending the conference. So coming back to some of the engagement in Facebook, I think you are really good in understanding the algorithm of Facebook, right? So can you give a few tips to our audience and how can they grow their brand? How can they grow their presence on Facebook? And what should they use Facebook for? What should they use LinkedIn for? Because I think you are pretty well-established even on LinkedIn, right? So can you give us some tips on that?    Adam: Yeah, yeah. So to try to give that in a fast--- there's a lot of info there. And the reason I say that is because we have a 13-week raising money course that like teaches you. There are a lot of modules on Facebook and there are modules on LinkedIn and it just goes into tons of detail and I could never give you 13 weeks of info but the way I look at both of them is that this is how people are going to find you. I believe that one of the things that people do for vetting, vetting a new operator to go with or vetting a coach to hire or vetting a private money lender is they check out their references by going on their Facebook and scrolling through and seeing the types of content that they give. People don't do business with businesses anymore. People do business with people that they know, like, and trust.     So we use Facebook and LinkedIn to allow people to know who we are and they are different. And you said you think I'm pretty active on LinkedIn? I'm not that active on LinkedIn. I have a profile because I know I have to have a profile and Chad from our office has optimized the LinkedIn so that it has a whole bunch of keywords so that when people are looking for a syndicator that they find me instead of someone else. I have that and I need that and we use it and we do a private messaging on there and connecting with people. But where I really post the most is on Facebook. And that's one thing that I suggest to a listener is not to worry about having Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and all the other things, but to have Facebook and LinkedIn and a focus on one, where you just going to add value every day as much as you can.     And think about it like this, add value to your target audience. Now us, we have conferences, real estate conferences, and so I want to be able to sell more tickets to come to our conferences so I know who my target audiences are. It is somebody who's getting new into syndication so that's who I play to, that's who I help. I give the most amount of value as I can to teach that and I put that all over my Facebook so everybody knows exactly what we're doing. And as far as your listener, they might be only wanting to target accredited investors. So it just depends on who you're targeting. You might find more accredited investors on LinkedIn, but I find more aspiring syndicators on Facebook so that's how it works for me. Does that make sense?    James: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So that makes sense. In terms of who do you want to engage in both different platforms, right? So that's good. And also let's go to your favorite topic because you're one of the top 1% in the world in meetups, right? So tell me, I mean, I'm thinking about starting a meetup, but if I start one, what should I do to grow that meet up to the next level?You are the master of meetups.     Adam: I certainly try and as on our raising money course, there's a giant part for just the meetups and I'll give you the most I can in a short amount of time right now. Is number one, people want to be heard. This is big. So you're running a meetup and you're going to fail your people and they're going to stop coming if you don't let them be heard. So how can you let them be heard? This is how. You can allow every single person in the group to be able to share their name and what they're looking for. Why are they here today? Or what is their business? Or how can they help? Or even randomly enough to say, where do you plan to be in five years? And when people get to share, you know, I plan to be in multifamily or I need to close this, or I have a wholesale deal for you, whatever, when they are allowed and able to share that with the group, they feel like they got a ton of value.   And if you can just imagine being at one of these meetings, if you have something to say, and most people are shy, even extroverted people are pretty shy. And so if what you do in your group is make everybody, like if they want to talk to people, they have to literally go and reach out to everybody and say, hi, my name's Adam Adams. I buy apartment buildings with my friends. If you want to be my friend, come and talk to me. If they had to shake everyone's hand to say something like that, then it would be very difficult for them. They would only get a few people in the group. So when you give them a chance to be heard, hey, let's go around and introduce yourself, tell us what you're looking for. And then I get to say the same thing. My quick pitch. I'm Adam Adams. So I buy apartment buildings with my friends. If you want to be friends, come and let me know.     And if I can feel that I shared that with the whole room, I already know that the specific people in the room that resonate with that thing that I said, will come to me. So I get a ton of value by actually being able to do that. And so that's the first thing, let them all be heard. The second thing is I would say...    James: Can I ask a question on the number one?    Adam: Yeah, yeah.     James: So don't you think it's going to take up a lot of time? Let's say you have like 40 people in the first meetup, isn't that going to take a lot more time from the meetup? Because a lot of time, we want to do a lot of networking or presentation so that people learn. I mean some of the introduction itself can take a lot more, right? So how important is that introduction by everybody in every meetup?    Adam: It's extremely important. It takes time, but it doesn't take time from the meetup. It takes time, but it actually adds a lot of value to the meetup. And when you are saying, oh, I want them to be able to network instead, well, this is the best way to let them start networking. Because then somebody's going to say, Hey, I just want to lend passively. I just want to lend my money passively. Someone else is going to say, Hey, I'm an operator, I'm raising equity. Someone else might be saying, I have a wholesale deal available. Somebody else might say, I'm an fix and flipper and I need a wholesale deal. But if you don't let them share that with everybody, then they're going to have a harder time finding that right person. And if it's your group, James that they're just going to have to network just to get that out, there's a high probability, an extremely high probability that the wholesaler might not be able to find the fix and flipper and the syndicator might not be able to find the passive investor and the passive investor might not be able to find the syndicator. So you have to intentionally facilitate it.     And when we think that we're taking time away, then we're already destroying ourselves. It's not taking time away, it's giving a lot of time and value to everybody in there to be able to share that. And they're going to keep coming back and back and back and your group, instead of having 40 next week, it's going to have 45 the week after. But if you start with 40 and you don't let them share that, a lot of them are going to be like, Eh, I didn't really get value out of it so some of them won't come. So now it will be 35 and then it'll be 30 and then 20 and then it will diminish and dwindle. And I see this happen all the time. That's one of the big things that set my meetup apart is that we do a few different things that nobody does, even if they sound counter-intuitive, but because we do them and we do them regularly and religiously and continue to do them, people grow.     So we grew a group, it was a lunch club and I don't know how many people you think would go to a lunch club, but I used to think it'd be like six people, maybe a dozen people. I dreamed I was like, oh, what if I could have 30 people at lunch? That'd be crazy. And all of a sudden, we had it where it was 40 every week, then 60 every week and then we went all the way up to 176 people, weekly on Thursday in the middle of lunch, people drove, came, networked, learned, and then drove home. Spent four hours in the middle of Thursday. I would never could have imagined that we would have had a hundred people a few weeks in a row or 176 people. But we did and that's because we did it differently.     James: Okay, awesome. Continue to your second point.     Adam: The second point was to not sell. And I think it's important to sell. I mean, it's a benefit to your business to sell, but like we're talking about the conferences, which directly correlate with the meetups. I don't have anyone selling at my conferences.   You've been to one of my conferences, right?      James: No. Not yet. I need to make it to Denver.     Adam: Okay. So the conferences are no sales pitch and I needed you to say that you've been there because like most people think that obviously, you're going to have a sales pitch. How are you going to afford to have a conference? So it's just we never sell anything. We don't have a product. We don't have a service. We don't do anything. We don't have any of the speakers that are flying in on their own dime, they're not allowed to share a coaching program. They're not allowed to share a product or a service that they're going to sell. The only people that are allowed to even share that are just the booth sponsors. We have some sponsors that can sell, but the speakers are there just to add value.     And that's the same thing that should happen with your meetup groups. A lot of people, they bring in outside speakers. The REIAs that's how they make money is these outside coaches come and sell and like once you've seen the same selling speaker like two years in a row and you're going to the same REIA and it's that same no investor coming to sell more of their note course, you don't want to go anymore. You've decided, I've already gotten sales pitched by this guy twice, there's no reason to go again. So you actually stay away from it. With mine, every single attendee understands that they're not going to be sold anything and so they attend over and over and over and that's something that we've built in. We just added that or not added that, something that we built in in the beginning. We wanted to make sure that we had that when nobody else did.     Because regardless of what you're doing or what you're not doing, James and Listener, the best way to be different, the best way to get people to come to your events is to do something 100% different. So if everybody else is meeting at dinner, you need to meet at lunch. If everybody else has a free meeting and ours were free but if everyone else is just free, free, free, free, I'm sorry, but you've got to charge 200 or even 2000 a year because now, you can set yourself apart. You can say everyone in this group is more serious than anyone in any other groups because we're paying 2000 to be here instead of all those free groups. So it's not like you down-talk, talk badly about any other group, but you always set yourself apart some way.     Every other group out has a $200 a year or a $20 per day meeting. Well, then you say, hey, we don't need that, we're just going to be free. And you capitalize on the thing that makes you different. You capitalize that you're the only group in the city that doesn't sell, you capitalize that you're the only group that's 100% focused on multifamily or you capitalize that you're the only group that facilitates letting people introduce themselves. All the other places, they're so worried about being rigid and strict and nobody feels like they get heard. And that's why we do it differently.   Whatever you are doing differently and that's the third thing, is just make sure that you find a way to set yourself apart. I don't care if you charge more, charge less, charge nothing, meet at lunch, meet on Saturday, meet on Sunday, just do it differently and that will set you apart. So those are three really good points.     James: Okay, awesome. I think that's a huge value that you're giving out there. So I think apart from that, I mean, I want to go to a more personal level, right? So I mean, why do you do what you do? So I mean, why do you do so much of work and in terms of getting into real estate, multifamily, you know, why do you do what you do?    Adam:  All right, so I buy apartments and syndicate deals because I like passive income and I go the extra step and do something that no one else is doing. Like hosting conferences every year, hosting meetups. Last year we hosted over 200 events. It's insane. I'm hosting a podcast. Why do I do those extra things is because I legitimately want to add value and give back and at the same time, it's just wanting to passionately see other people succeed. I know and understand that I can partner with somebody. If I can teach you how to find a deal, but you don't know how to raise money, all of a sudden, you'll find a deal and I'll raise all the money. We'll manage it, right? If I can teach you how to raise money and I go and find a deal, well you can partner with me and now we can do this together. You get value and I get value.   So to me, why do I go the extra mile and to put out content, put out videos, podcasts? Why did I teach you today James? I hope we don't mind sharing this, but we walked through before this, we walked through a Facebook live, right? And so that benefits me a lot, right? It benefited you and it's going to continue to help you and I love that.     But at the same time, well, I get to be your very first guest that goes Live in your Facebook group, right? So I just believe that in giving first, if you always give first, somehow you'll get it back. You don't have to worry about life if you can just focus on, how can I add value to James today? How can I add value to the listener today on their own meetup groups? And all of a sudden, I helped you with your meetup group or someone else with their meetup group and their meetup become super famous because they just heard this one podcast and learn three random things. And now they call me and say, Adam Adams, I want you to be my first speaker. I want you to be one of my speakers next year at my meetup group, will you accept the invitation? And now I have the opportunity to go and grow my name across the US because a lot of different people heard this podcast guest. So it's just give first and you'll always be able to grow.    James:  Awesome. Awesome. So can you tell me a proud moment in your real estate journey, one moment where you really felt proud that you did something? Can you share it with us?     Adam: Yeah.  I'll give you one that you weren't even expecting. For two years, I grew my business. For two years, I focused on my business so much and one day my son came up to me and unfortunately, I was on Instagram trying to grow my brand. And my son said to me, hey, can you play this game with me? I said, sure, give me one minute. And I thought it would take one minute, but it took like five or 10 minutes. And so he came back up. He goes, Dad, you always do this. You're always on your phone growing your brand. He didn't say that, but he's seven. But he's like, Dad, this is what you always do. You're always working. And I looked at him and then I got a tear in my eye and I was like, holy cow. Then I went to a mastermind group with Rod Cleef. He runs this awesome Mastermind group. So I went there and Jason Peril, he's listening now, he was one of the people at the group and I poured my heart out and I just said, man, I feel like my business is going well. I'll tell you, I just got my feelings hurt and I never knew how like this impacted my kids that I was focusing on working. So James, when you say, what's something that you're proud of It's ever since then, I actually made a conscious change and I found a way to spend a little bit more time with my kiddos. When I'm with them, I'm not on my phone, I'm not on my Instagram. I'm looking at them in the eye. And I try now and it happens most of the time. One of my kids comes up, dad, can you play this game with me? I shut everything else off, I look at them in the eye and said, I'd love to, let's play that game. It sounds so good and then I play it, I put my heart and soul into it, we play for an hour. So if there's anything that I'm proud of is that the business is going fine, it's growing, people know who we are, we're getting deals, we're closing deals, we're raising money. But I finally found a way to start focusing on my kids more and that's really what makes me feel so choked up.    James: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I was in the Mastermind too, so I remembered that time when you went up there and tell that story.    Adam: And I was crying, right?    James: Yeah. You had a teary eye and very vulnerable. It's a moment. I know in social media sometimes it can be addictive and you are trying to respond to one and sometimes your kid needs that one minute and sometimes that one minute becomes five minutes and it's just not good. So that's good. So let's go to newbie questions. What are the top three to five different types of advice that you want to give to newbies who want to get started into this syndication and being operative for multifamily? What do you want to give us an advice?    Adam: All right, I think this is an important question. So I'm really grateful that on your podcast you ask this to guests. So the top three to five things that I would say to a Newbie, and hopefully these are impactful for anyone. So if you're listening and you are new, take super good note of this and pay close attention because I'm trying to give you value from the mistakes that I've made. So here's a couple of things.   Number one, just freaking start. Just start. Everybody has all this fear and it holds them back. So just find a way to get over that. That's number one.   Number two, when partnering, don't let the blind lead the blind. It's insane. So what I'm saying is, you're a Newbie and you think you're going to partner with one or two or three other brand new people, none of you have ever done a deal, but you think that like somehow this is going to work. I'll tell you, it's way too hard still to raise money. It's way too hard to get a broker to take you seriously and give you a deal. It's way too hard to manage a property with no experience. So instead of partnering and letting the blind lead the blind, align yourself with somebody who's already doing the business. Find a way to add value to James. Find a way to add value to Adam Adams. Find a way to add value to somebody and you take on a responsibility of raising equity, managing the property, finding the deal, whatever. Putting in earnest money, putting in passive money, however you want to do it but align with somebody who has a track record. Very, very important.     The next one that I would say is when partnering, it's very critical that you understand that you do not have to get married on the first date. It's critical. What I mean by that is all of a sudden you say this is a good person, I'm a good person, we should just partner. And all of a sudden, you form a team but you've never done business. What I would say instead is to court or date that person for a while. Go on a date with them with the first property, go on a date with them with the second property. And then if you just absolutely just bond so much, then get married. Then say, we've been connecting so well as we've gone. So instead of just doing this, how we've been doing this, how about we decided to form a brand new company and we really make this something special; now you get married. So those would be the three main pieces of advice that I would share with a new listener.    James: Okay. Yeah. If you guys want to start dating some experience sponsor, I mean just be more active in the group. Ask simple questions. I mean, there's so many people in the group. I mean, I'm so proud of the group. We have like 770 people right now and I just look at the stats, almost like 650 people are active in the group, which is really good. And just start asking simple questions and there are so many people help each other, right? So do that and add value to others, whatever you know you want to share and you can actually absorb as well. So you can start from there if you want to start the dating game that Adams has been talking about.   All right, Adam, thanks for joining us today. Do you want to let the listeners know how to get hold of you?    Adam: Sure. For those of the listeners who are active on Facebook right now, if you're not already friends with me, feel free to add me. But I'll tell you one quick thing; I won't accept you unless you write a message. I get so many randoms and I don't know like what country they're in, if they're real, if they're a robot. So just send me a message and an invite and I'll definitely add you if you haven't already. The other place that I would say is if you're just listening on the podcast, just go to realbluespruce.com, real like real estate and then blue spruce, the tree. And that way you can find my bio, you can find my email, you find anything about me there and you can get ahold of me. So realbluespruce.com    James: All right Adam, thanks guys for joining us. This is actually almost the ninth recording of our podcast and we are planning to launch our podcasts by the end of this month, end of April. So hopefully, I'm right now on track to launch it and it's going to be a blast because there's going to be a lot of commercial operators and people are going to be coming and sharing their real style, how do they add value in their properties? And I hope to get good reviews from everybody after we launch and that's it. Thanks, Adam for joining us.    Adam: Thank you. 

Adam: Hello everybody. This is Adam Evers. I am the CEO and founder of Believr, and this is Inside Believr, building an LGBTQ plus Christian dating app.Adam: All right everybody, this is Adam, and I have a special guest with me, Brandon Flannery. Brandon is like-Brandon: Hello. (Laughs).Adam: Brandon would you like to describe in ... Like, who are you? Who is Brandon Flannery?Brandon: Who ... That's such a, um, what's the word I'm looking for, like existential question (laughs).Adam: I can't go that deep on the podcast.Brandon: (Laughs). Um, yeah. I am Brandon Flannery. Um, I've known Adam since I was 14. Um, I, we've had some years together, and um, I am one of the co-founders of Believr, and I work with ... Kind of anything words within Believr as itself, and I also keep Adam in line (laughs).Adam: Fair, fair statement (laughs).Brandon: (Laughs).Adam: Cool. So, today, uh, what I wanted to do on the podcast is actually, um, so Brandon and I, actually the entire team, went through this massive process of really like digging through what we valued as a company. So right now, it's myself, Brandon, um, Pascal, Erika, and, uh, and Noah as well. And we all kind of went through values to figure out, like, what we wanted as our values as a company. Um, so we came together as a team, kind of talked and spit balled about all the values that we all like individually hold, and what we want, like Believr to stand for. Um, and there was like five main ones that kind of bubbled, and surfaced to the top.Adam: Um, and we're going to go through the first one today. Um, on the podcast, and kind of talk about it. Um, and then we can kind of talk to this. And like just, as a side note, Brandon and I have like, we have argued literally about probably every single word in every single one of the sentences that I'm about to read you. Um, we stayed up very late multiple nights talking about this, so these being like a tremendous amount to us.Brandon: And I'm on Mountain Time, so it was a lot later for me (laughs).Adam: (Laughs). That's fair. Brandon's like up until 3:00 a.m. in the morning, and I'm like, "We must finish Brandon." So, yeah. Um, yeah. Would you, would you add anything Brandon?Brandon: No, let's uh, well, I, I will add one thing. Um, as we go through the, the words, um, so we'll have our different values, you will notice that there are actually going to be verbs. And, the intention there is just that we wanted action around what we stand for it. Not just something like, uh, abstract idea, or um, or an adjective describing something. We really wanted to put movement, and um, action to every single thing that we're standing for. So you'll notice that as we go through these, you'll notice that within each of the words. Um, so yeah. But, w-, with the first one, as Adam said it'll be believe, and it's ... We'll be following that, um, format.Adam: Yeah, cool. Uh, and just FYI, we're only going to do believe today, Brandon. We're going to wait, we're going to build other ones, do the rest of them, just so you know. Great.Brandon: No [inaudible 00:02:54] worth, are we Adam? (Laughs).Adam: Yes. Podcast, every time. Get people excited. You got to release them, we have to get people excited, you know? One a week. One a week. We're not going to just divulge everything right now.Brandon: This is where he also keeps me on my knees, I want to say, "Here is everything."Adam: Yeah, and I'm like, "No. Build up the suspense."Brandon: Also though, I, I honestly think the one, the last one is probably the best, but that's just me. Um, and I think fourth is my favorite. Go ahead.Adam: I know, that's interesting. Yeah, fourth we fought on a lot too. Okay, anyways. Sorry. Sorry listeners.Brandon: (Laughs).Adam: Okay, uh, so the first one is believe, um, and I will read it to you now. So believe. We believe in love, we are a people of faith, and we trust that what we are doing has purpose. We believe that every person is worthy of love. We believe that God loves everyone, regardless of how they identify, and we believe what we are doing will create positive change within ourselves, the community, and in the world.Brandon: Uh, it's so good. (Laughs).Adam: I just whatever ... I don't know, I just like whenever I hear these, these values, I just get chills. Um, and I really like this one. Um, so yeah, let's talk about it. Brandon. Why was this one important to you?Brandon: I think the reason It had to be first, and the reason why it came to the surface to begin with is we knew that the pri-, uh, there'll be a lot of things that I'm really excited about with Believr, and what it's standing for, but really this came out of a need. Um, and a need was for LGBTQ people who have a faith in Jesus Christ, and so that, oh, can you still hear me?Adam: Yeah.Brandon: Sorry. My little old thing. It popped up. But, were people of faith, and um, uh, and, I, I wanted to be the, at the forefront, not just for the sake of sh-, showcasing that we are a platform that does put faith first, but more than that, um, we believe that we do believe in love, I do appreciate that Pascal really, rea-, really fought for that part of it. Because it is true that it's something that we, we do believe in, it's what we are fighting for. Um, and the fact that making a statement that says, "You are worthy of love," because I think so many of us within the community, especially growing up in, um, places of faith, um, and religious backgrounds were told that we weren't.Brandon: Um, and I think it was so important to remember every LGBTQ persons of faith. I mean, not everyone, we all have different stories, and it's nuanced, but to put that at the forefront of everything that we do, of our history, and what we are trying to, um, change, and what we believe, truly, uh, is possible, in spite of what other people have told us.Adam: Yeah. No, uh, that was good. Um, the only thing I would add is like for me, believe is, is really about like aligning just all the things that I think about Believr, so love, everyone has value. Everyone is worthy, and deserves love. Like, that's really important to me, and I think that's a big value that I'm glad that has like come through across the team. Um, the other one is like just that we want to create something different within the community, with this application. Like, we're not, just, we don't want to be like other apps, we don't want to be like other communities.Adam: We want to be different, um, and create a positive change in like society, and in ourselves, and in the community, and in the world ultimately. You know and I, what does that change, and what does that look like? I don't really know, but I think we're fighting for at least a positive change, um, moving forward and what does that, what does that look like? I think, like, we're i-, we're in this adventure, and we're going to find out, like, I think the thing that I think about first and foremost is like reconciliation with faith communities, and like the LGBTQ plus family.Adam: Um, what does that look like? I honestly, I don't know, but I think there is a growing movement, um, in progressive Christianity, and there's a growing movement just in Christianity in general to be more accepting, and, and have a broader theology than one that has been passed down, I think, for generations. Um, and I think this believe verb, if you will, kind of encompasses that a little bit, where it's like, "Hey, we believe that this is, has a purpose, and we believe that everyone is worthy of love, and that regardless of how people identify, like they are value. They are valued, excuse me.Adam: Um, that's just really important to me. So-Brandon: Yeah. I, I think also something that I'm realizing as we're chatting about it is, um, I know for us, um-Adam: Who's us?Brandon: Because we've had convers- ... Me and, you and I (laughs).Adam: Okay.Brandon: Um-Adam: Making sure.Brandon: Yeah. Uh, h-, i-, in the birthing moments of Believr, and all the way up 'til today, well there's been moments where both of us have been like, "l-, is this what we should do?" Or, "Is this right?" Or, "I got a life to live. Ow." And um-Adam: As we record this podcast, the technical [crosstalk 00:07:42] at night.Brandon: (Laughs).Adam: Or, a lot of your time 10 via my time.Brandon: Um, as life, you know, s-, the stressors of life come through, and we're trying to build this thing, I think there's been times where we're, we've been, are we ... Does this matter? Um, you know, and, um, is it worth it? Um, all the energy that we're putting into it. And, I just think of our time at GCF this past year, and the amount of people that approached us, and said how needed a platform like this is, and so it's just a reminder to me that yes, we're excited about it for ourselves, yes, we believe in the product, and we have a great team building something really beautiful. But, at the end of the day it is ... We believe that it, it really, um, is something that is needed, and we want to, we want to provide that, so-Adam: Yeah. Well, and it's the ... It's funny you say that, because I actually got a direct message on our Twitter account earlier today. Um, I won't name who the person is, because they're closeted, but I'll say, I'll read their direct message real quick. Um, the person says, "As a gay, or, as a closeted gay Christian, this means a lot to me. A community where I can be loved for who I am." And then they asked, of course, the burning, the most burning question that everyone asks, "When are you launching?" Uh, which I always think is funny. Um, but yeah. I think-Brandon: 10 (laughs).Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think like, um, uh, Brandon knows this but like, I don't think the rest of the community does, but like, um, whenever I get messages like that, or whenever we get messages like that, I, I, I screen shot them, or take them, and um, put them into our internal slack channel. Um, and, with a channel that's just called, "The why." Um, and the reason for that is because I think it helps all of us just really center on like why we're doing this. U, and why this matters.Adam: And why I think, um, you know this, this is just bigger than ourselves, and I think both of us probably ... Brandon and I both feel the weight of that. I know I do. Um, for sure, because it's just how many people have reached out, and said things, and mentioned things, and so I think believe, the verb there, actually encompasses a little bit about that too. Like, we're believing in ourselves, we're believing in the community, we're believing in something that's way bigger than either of us possibly could have imagined. (Laughs).Adam: Like, even the people that have just like reached out, or like, um, like encouraged us, or have been like, "Hey, I'm like rooting for you," and the text messages that I get, and the messages and everything it's, it's so, it's really cool.Brandon: And our, and our team, like I'm blown away by the, the people that have been sent our way. Because I am the product that is being created is amazing (laughs), and great job Erika and Pascal (laughs).Adam: I know, seriously. So, like-Brandon: It is, it is gorgeous. So-Adam: Brandon and I, we uh, we had a, we have a weekly meeting on Wednesdays, and we're recording this on a Wednesday right after, not right after, but we had a team meeting earlier this morning, and like, I, after our meeting I was just blown away with how, like good, the designs were, and like we're looking at screen designs today, and like how just smart, and how, um, thoughtful I think everybody is about like just every interaction, what we include, what we don't include, why we do it, why we don't do it. Um, I think that's just super, super cool. Um, oh, let's do something, let's do something fun.Adam: Um, what's something today that like, we talked about in the product, that we can talk about on the podcast, that we like debated on?Brandon: (Laughs). I mean, we debated about the profiles (laughs).Adam: We did. We did. So, actually this is in-, really interesting. So, one of the things that we talked about was like, how do we, how do we display people, and how do we do, um, profiles, and do them well. And like, one of the things that we thought about was like ho-, um, m-, uh, making the profile image, or the profile, like whatever, like really big in the f-, in the forefront.Adam: And so what we actually ended up deciding is, uh, making it so that you can either show your bio first, so your, like, you know, short, uh, 240 character like bio, or, um, you're able to show a picture. So it's up to you if you want to show either a bio or a picture. Which we came to ... Brandon do you want to talk to you, like how we came to that kind of decision?Brandon: Yeah. Um, I think that virtual spaces offer a unique nuance, versus being in person. So this is a point of contention with Adam and I (Laughs).Adam: (Laughs).Brandon: Uh, Adam said when you want to ask someone out, y-, y-, the first thing you notice is, is them, like how they look and things like that, and I'm just like, "You're not wrong." But, um, one thing I do love about virtual spaces is the fact of you get to, um, get to some deeper things, um ... I want to, maybe not, yeah, I'll take deeper things like than just the skin. Um, and so I wanted more data to appear more quickly about a person. Because I want to be able to read about who they are, and, um, what are, what are they passionate about? And, the, you know, within Believr, one of our number one things that we're excited about is the value space matching, you know. We wanted to see those, those values like first thing.Brandon: So, um, yeah. It was a point of contention, because I really wanted those things, and Adam really wanted a picture to be the very first thing. And so, um, I think it, what's really nice is where we're at now is you will have this really nice large picture of the person, you do get a percentage of, of values match, and then you do see the values, and then you can easily start scrolling, um, or you can do, or do the bio. So, yeah.Adam: Yeah. No, I, I think, uh, we, we definitely worked through that all together, and I really appreciated the conversation, and why, like Brandon's points, and my points, and I think we came to a good solution. And I think we'll be really, really, work really, really well for our users. So I'm excited about that. And we're doing user testing, which is kind of cool, so they can, they'll tell us whether or not it's a good idea or not. They're like, "That was stupid," and we'll be like, "Okay." (Laughs). Well, back to the drawing board. (Laughs).Brandon: (Laughs). Oh yeah.Adam: Well, I think that's about it. Anything else you would say, Brandon, before we wrap up?Brandon: Uh, thank you for your support. It means a lot, so ... To all of our listeners.Adam: Yeah. No, that's good. That's really good. Yeah. Thank you listeners, we appreciate it. Um, that's it for now. We'll be back next week with our next value. Um, I hopefully will relea-, will release it like sometime Monday or Tuesday, um, and then we'll get rolling. Uh, thanks so much for listening, and supporting us. Really appreciate it. Please feel free to, if you have any questions or comments, whatever, uh, feel free to email us, just hello at Believr.app. Just hello at Believr.app, and we'll get back to you. Awesome. Thanks guys. Bye.Brandon: Bye bye.

Adam Biehler, VP of Partnerships and BD at mParticle, and Matt McRoberts, SVP of Global Alliances at Braze, join me in San Francisco to discuss the current state of the marketing ecosystem. Matt and Adam provide a brief history on the evolution of data platforms and the shift toward customer-centric strategy.       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] PJ Bruno: Hello again, welcome back to Braze for Impact, your MarTech Industry Discussed Digest. This is PJ Bruno, and I'm also with two titans. Adam Biehler, VP of partnerships and BD at mParticle. Adam, how's it going buddy?   [0:00:32] Adam: Great, how you doing there PJ?   [0:00:34] PJ Bruno: I'm doing real well. And also our very own Matt McRoberts, SVP of global alliances at Braze. Matt, thanks for sitting down with us buddy.   [0:00:41] Matt McRoberts: PJ, always a pleasure.   [0:00:43] PJ Bruno: And now here we are a week out from MAU. How did it go all-in-all Adam, you felt good about it?   [0:00:48] Adam: Yeah, it was definitely a fire conference this week. Not a fire festival, though.   [0:00:54] PJ Bruno: Right. Not a fire fest, let's not confuse those. You guys were the presenting sponsor, right? That's kind of a big deal. That's the top-top.   [0:01:01] Adam: Yeah, yeah I mean ... You know, we want to make sure our brand is associated with some of the more up and coming businesses for consumer experience, right? And from our standpoint we look at, you know, the attendees of MAU and ... Really just the thought leadership that comes out of that conference as blazing a path for mobile and for what the next generation of the day-to-day and how we as individuals interact with digital technology and devices.   [0:01:31] PJ Bruno: It was buzzing in there, man. There was a lot of great energy. And also as the presenting sponsor, what are the perks with that, is it dinner with Diplo, did you get anything, do anything?   [0:01:40] Adam: Oh, you're looking for that type of perk.   [0:01:43] PJ Bruno: Fun times. All right well what this really is, this is a partner spotlight episode. So we're really eager to kind of like get into it with Adam and mParticle. Adam I'd love for you to just kind of like give us the backstory. Like I've heard a little bit about the Cats brothers, how you guys are kind of forging the way with CDP. I'd love to hear a little bit about that story, what took you guys here.   [0:02:01] Adam: Yeah. I mean I think that the team here all kind of come from the same belief system around, you know, a couple core aspects of what's going on in the industry today. Data is kind of at the core of everything. What we're also seeing is as cloud and SAS are just continuing to manifest themselves in multiple capacities from like, an application standpoint, that the number of silos that get created just continue to proliferate. And so we've got, you know, a team of people that just believe that business users should be able to take advantage of this wealth of customer data to create competitive advantage; as opposed to being in its place where they know they've got these tools that they potentially could be taking advantage of, but because of some of the past investments or legacy investments you may have made, you're actually more hamstrung and you're watching other businesses that are smaller, more nimble, just pass you by. So ultiMattely, kind of simplifying all that. It comes down to like we want to empower business users to take advantage of customer data they have access to, and we want to allow the developers and engineers of businesses to focus on the core competencies of their business, not worrying about building and maintaining integrations, which are, you know not necessarily the core of their business.   [0:03:10] PJ Bruno: Right. Just Band-Aids all the time.   [0:03:12] Adam: Yeah.   [0:03:13] PJ Bruno: Was that the vision pretty much from the start?   [0:03:15] Adam: I mean, again, I think like even when you look at us in day one we were mobile-centric and, you know, really most of our customers were only doing things on mobile at that point. And, you know, people talk about all the other use cases and, you know, [inaudible] and all this stuff. And it's not about that. It was about the ability to collect customer data for our customers for their ability to collect their customers' data from the place that's as close to the customer as possible, and the most relevant, and to use that to power marketing with great tools like Braze,. And the story is evolved because the channels have evolved. And, you know, web has always been there, but we saw the next generation of customer experience really stemming from mobile. And so you see a lot of investment around OTT and voice. And so all of these other places that, you know, are the next generation, the modern customer experience that we want to be delivering.   [0:04:03] PJ Bruno: It's an exciting time and people are finally starting to catch on, I think.   [0:04:06] Matt McRoberts: Yeah, no, they very much are. Very much.   [0:04:09] PJ Bruno: So Matt, this article you wrote recently "The Six Pillars of the Ecosystem", is there a reason that data and infrastructure is number one? Was there a method to the madness there, or?   [0:04:19] Matt McRoberts: Great question. And Adam addressed a lot of the rhetoric. It's like the idea of silos and keeping your data beholden to different legacy systems. It's prohibitive to really the times of transforMattion. It's now about speed to market, speed to insight, speed to business value. Where CDPs have assumed this position within the new ecosystem it becomes quite critical. Because what they allow in concert with the Brazes of the world is this idea around agility, and agility, it obviously is synonymous with speed. Being able to be agile and focused and democratize that data across all those systems. So if anyone's putting together an ecosystem strategy, they have to look at "How do they standardize data?" "How do they break down the silos?" "How are they able to pump that data into the key parts of their business?" And I think the place, the position, the power that CDPs provide is quite impressive in terms of where they sit today in this ecosystem.   [0:05:18] PJ Bruno: And last we spoke you mentioned about us being in a wash of data. And I guess a CDP could be number one because you need to get that stuff in order, you need to clean house.   [0:05:26] Matt McRoberts: Yeah, I mean think about the integrations, the depth of integrations that a provider like mParticle is going to need to promote. You know, you've got ad ecosystems, you've got martech ecosystems, you have proprietary data warehouses. And to be able to, again, is get that data to work together in concert so you can get to market faster, you can uncover insights, drive business outcomes. Without that layer within the ecosystem it becomes quite difficult. So you can see, like, you know Adam and I joke quite a bit, is the legend and lore and thought leadership and content that is come ... It's a brand new category, it didn't exist, right? And so I think it shows just how quickly this idea around breaking down silos becomes the future is here, and it's now, and we're in a wash of data.   [0:06:17] Adam: Yeah. It, I mean, putting a pin in some of this, like what the CDP ... The Brazes of the world in today's ecosystem are enabling, it's instead of building your business based on what, you know, the technology that you've decided to use, unlocks for you, it's more about build the customer experience that you want to deliver. And then, you know, work into the technology that supports your use cases. So it kind of flips the paradigm for how you actually think about what's important to your business. Not just tech for techs sake, it's tech because it supports an outcome that we know we want to go deliver. And, you know, I think, again, it's all about data, so [inaudible] CDP, CRM, whatever acronym you want to use, I don't care. Let's talk about what you want to do and which tools are going to get you there. And there's always going to be a great tool that can get you there. You know there's this notion of foundational CDP which is where ourselves and a couple others in this space play, and yeah, I think essentially it, again it kind of comes down to we're never going to have an application. We're all about making it super easy for business users to take advantage of data associated to a customer. Because that's what unlocks true business agility.   [0:07:22] Matt McRoberts: Spot on.   [0:07:22] Adam: I talk about customer data agility as a big aspect of where, you know, we help businesses kind of put this foundational piece in place that they now can respond to changing consumer behavior and not have to go, you know, unpack you know, twenty years of legacy investment. They are able to operate nimbly, kind of on top of their stack and bring in the technology that's going to get them to the next generation of growth and compete with, you know, a startup that doesn't have that legacy investment. Like, I don't care what the acronym you want to use is, like what are you here to do? Right. What's the job you perform? What are you unlocking for the business, and it's infrastructure. Some of the guys in the CDP space tend to say that like they've got built in modeling and use cases. That's great. I mean are you really unlocking agility or are you just solving a point application for somebody? And that's a lot of what we say. You know, are you focused on the right systems, the right outcomes for the business that's like ... That's what it all starts with, so let's not talk about tech for tech's sake. I'd kind of just like to get away from that in my perspective. Ecosystems are important because there's so much technology but, you know, they've got to be the right partners and they've got to be the right use cases and the right outcomes that you're trying to drive.   [0:08:29] Matt McRoberts: To Adam's point, being consumer, customer-focused, business outcomes focused, you hear about the retail apocalypse, you hear about disruption, you hear about transforMattion. And then just the associated fear mongering around that, I think we all get our fair share of subject lines that are quite startling in nature, you know, every category is under some massive disruption. And I think with any disruption comes opportunity. And I think, to Adam's, is helping customers understand and educate themselves on these literally new age paradigms around the idea of an ecosystem. I mean we've long talked, I loved Adam's point around what's the acronyms come with a tremendous amount of equity, and they also come with a tremendous amount of debt, right? CRM, right place, right channel, right time, has been around for generations, right? Decades. People have been talking about the construct of what CRM really is. I think Adam hit it on the head is like you can't deliver against that in days of old. Batch data, not in the right channel, not orchestration across channels. And now you have this expectation, especially from the consumer, is like there's all the importance of getting it right, but there's also the importance of getting it wrong, as well, as we will all talk about experiences as consumers, as well as business professionals, where we feel the experience was broken. And Adam hit it on the head. If you're data strategy is standardize, is uniform, is agile, then you're just inherently going to be able to deliver against these higher expectations with, as it relates to consumers. And so I think there is fear, right? It's like we've all seen the social amplification of a poorly executed campaign that consumers will again, is will very much put you out into their domain and talk about what went wrong. There's the idea of the death of retail and how over-pronounced that is. The evolution of direct to consumer brands, is like all that can be quite startling and scary to the traditional marketing organizations. So I think the opportunity for, that I think is incumbent upon out organizations, "How do you educate customers in a really powerful way?" "How do you make them feel informed, derive insights, so that they can start to make the best decisions, the best investments?"   [0:10:54] Adam: It's an interesting dynamic, too. Because, you know, as we look at just how this all plays out, you know. There is so much noise. And, you know, our opinion on all of this is like, we've got to just cut through the noise. Like we're going to help these businesses understand that this is not a threat or a risk, this is actually your opportunity to take your business to the next level and become the leader. It's' a competitive advantage, if done right. And so from us it's about how. We all know, that everybody wants their customer 360. You've got data silos, that's been around forever. The reasons are because the channels continue to proliferate. The platforms are continuing to proliferate. So what do you need? You need to have people that have really good understanding of the data that powers these different pieces, and great technology that can scale with your business, and then that can help you get to the end state that you want to get to. Label it whatever you want to.   [0:11:42] Matt McRoberts: Now it's a really good point is where CDPs have assumed a position of prominence is in the fallout of DMPs, right? Like [crosstalk]   [0:11:50] Adam: Take us back there.   [0:11:51] Matt McRoberts: Yeah, and like Adam, I'll kind of borrow from his story, right? Like see whether it's customer data platform or see whether it's customer relationship management. Like customer's at the forefront of that, and I think where DMPs lost their way was third party data. The world has very much calibrated around the power and the prominence of first party data. And I think, the idea of probabilistic models, that it's like "Ahh, I think maybe PJ is this person?" Is very much moved into this idea of really deterministic, and like the lifeline of that is literally around first party data. And so whether it's a CDP or a, you know, a new-age CRM tool like a Braze, is the literal lifeline is the ability to leverage first party data and it's been startling to see how quickly the concept of a DMP has distilled away into, again, the power of a CDP and again the juxtaposition is the data set. Like, how do you start to really leverage first party data, as opposed to make assumptions off dated antiquated third party data, which was historically the foundation of the DMPs of the worlds.   [0:13:01] Adam: The stakes if you do it wrong are just too high at this point. Like we talk about CX and customer experience, you know it definitely starts there. And that has business impact. But when you start talking about, you know, compliance and regularity impact and how you market to customers. And you look at GDPR and CCPA and just [inaudible] that's not going to stop either, right? So, again, when you kind of talk about the customer ... Centricity aspect of it, you have to have data at the core of how you build your business. And DMPs, they just didn't have those challenges. And again, they were great, and they still have some very applicable use cases. Not going to say like, you don't need a DMP for a lot of things. Like there's a lot of things they do do really well, but they weren't built to give you a framework for how you associate customer data to a user profile and to dynamically be able to use identities that are those customers that are provided in a compliant and regulatory safe way, with your first party marketing systems. It's' a very different challenge. And they're also not built in a way where it's like "That's going to change again". Like, what you got today is absolutely going to be different six months from now [crosstalk], twelve months from now. And so, do you want, yeah, kind of like your insurance layer, to a [crosstalk]. You've got to future proof, right? That's the move.   [0:14:14] PJ Bruno: Right on.   [0:14:14] Matt McRoberts: Yeah, no, I mean picking up on that, you know the kind of ongoing compliance environment is again is that in itself to be scary, right? Because it comes with the consumerization of that. There's a more pronounced understanding at the literal consumer level, right, like I know "Hey listen, as a consumer I want to be sensitive to what type of data is being tracked regarding me." And then you have this regulatory fear that if you get it wrong is like there's tremendous fines associated with that. So I think that kind of fear mongering, you can flip that and make that empowering and how do you help enterprises understand this ongoing onslaught of compliance evolution. And how are we all good corporate citizens to advance an all boats rise philosophy. We're dropping it.   [0:15:00] PJ Bruno: Dude, you guys are just firing shots across the table right now. So since we're in the way back machine a little bit here talking about DMPs, Adam I'd love to hear a little bit more about ... You know, what brought you to mParticle? Some of your time at MuleSoft, how did that world compare to this? Even like, three or four years ago, it seems like it was an entirely different business, right?   [0:15:18] Adam: Yeah. I mean if you look at even, yeah, probably the last eight years at this point. If you go back, this notion of you know, API led approach for how connectivity is accomplished for businesses, you know some companies were thinking about it, APIs were starting to be more proliferated in the ecosystem, but you weren't seeing the rapid adoption, you weren't seeing standardization around how people build APIs and all that. So, you know, we'll go back to that world where, you know, there's a lot of on premise technology and it's very much the world we still live in. So when I say go back, this is very much ongoing. I came from a place where as an operator I'd actually, I was doing a little bit of the marketing, we were 25 people, I was doing some of the sales, I Was doing some of the post sales. And I'm working across our marketing autoMattion system, Amarcetto, and then I've got Salesforce. Again, this is like almost pre-MuleSoft at this point. We've got ZenDesk for case management. And so I'm thinking about all these things, and, you know, I'm 24 years old, kid out of college, I don't really know what's going on here. I'm like "There's got to be an easier way to get the data to flow versus me manually sitting here." Fast-forward a couple years, I'm at MuleSoft, talking to these companies about how the challenges they have at scale, like you're an enterprise you have, you know, 50,000 people that are using employee management systems, Legacy SAP on prem ERP, right? You might have a custom database from IBM. And those challenges are very very different than the world we live in today. That challenge still needs to be accomplished. Nobody's ripping out those, you know, billions of dollars of investment where your data sat on premise and you've fell like you've got, you know, the right level of control over it. But you need to be able to augment that and compliment that. But I look at MuleSoft and you know, I think that they were kind of paving the way for what customer experience can be today, and they still do, right? Like they are helping businesses that have traditionally been very much kind of these on premise oriented businesses that didn't have a digital presence, you know, digitize their offline assets and you know make them available to the cloud through APIs. And what ends up happening is now you have a new breed of developer in the world. And the developers of today can take advantage of the assets that are in these systems that a 21 year old kid out of college would have no idea how to go program against this on premise system, to build a new cool cloud app. But because you've got these APIs that are exposed from the back end, you can now start doing that. Use that data to expose new applications. You know, fast forward a couple of years, you start thinking about "Okay, well there's this next generation of what is the customer experience connectivity challenge look like?" Because the proliferation of all the on prem systems and then these SAAS systems in the platforms that are actually where customers are engaging, it's the same kind of variation in terms of like where data's coming from, where data needs to get to. But the differences now we're thinking about it from a very customer-centric perspective. It's not about just developer re-usability. You know there's a, absolutely a place where [inaudible] compliment a company like that. Like, they're not even in the same space from this standpoint. Like, I know this better than anybody. But I get asked this all the time. Like, they're an unbelievable company and where we think about it it's about "Okay, how do you take it a step further and break down the customer data connectivity challenges?" And so insuring that the integrations that you're unlocking are oriented around the notion of a customer.   [0:18:27] PJ Bruno: It's just, it's just as silly to talk about customer centricity as kind of a new thing or like a pivot for companies as a focus. But ...   [0:18:36] Matt McRoberts: And that's been our thing, we've been saying that for years now, haven't we? You know that's been our-[crosstalk]   [0:18:41] PJ Bruno: I remember the first breakfast we had, it was like week one. Talking about customer centricity.   [0:18:45] Matt McRoberts: It seems so [crosstalk] two point, it seems so simple. Yeah. Literally our first breakfast talking about, we're BD guys, like how do you help kind of effectively, again, build an ecosystem strategy manager channel. And I thought, you know I'll give Adam the credit. It was like "Hey the lens should be what's best for the customer." Everyone wins. That's the reality. That's what's driving this growth. This kind of constant evolution of tech and kind of where it sits is like if you run it through the lens of the customer, you know, provides a natural north star, a natural compass for success.   [0:19:15] Adam: Yeah, otherwise we just make our own consumer experience shit. [crosstalk] Frankly, right? [crosstalk] Like the term CDP sounds big, it sounds scary, you know at the end of the day it's not about the acronym it's about the outcomes you can deliver for our company. And like [crosstalk] we just, we think about it very much from that standpoint. And ... You know everybody can build software today. Like, there'll be another CDP tomorrow that's claiming it. It's not about that. It's about what're you here to solve for the customer, you're here to unlock the ability to take care of data. That's ... That's what we're here to do. You know I think we've kind of blazed the trail in terms of how for this next generation of consumer facing brands they can do that. Buy you've got to start small, too.   [0:19:55] Matt McRoberts: I think you're right, though. The idea of transforMattion is a journey. It's going to be measured, and it's like it gets back to your point around agility, is like the concept of a platform allows you to fail face to iterate SAAS just inherently, because it's high growth, it's sell sell sell. But you also have to be quite realistic in terms of some of these transforMattive agendas are three, four, five years long. They're being driven by a new age services organization [inaudible] management consultancies, the next iteration of SIs. And I think you're right, you know. Again, I'd go back to that customer centricity. But being agile, being realistic, helping people to make those right decisions. Because you're right, if it's about understanding a CDP it's not the right dimension, it's about understanding how you can make your business more flexible, more agile, in these transforMattive times.   [0:20:46] PJ Bruno: Adam, Mattt, thanks for being with me today.   [0:20:48] Adam: All right, thank you.

In conversation with Adam All & Baby Lame Adam All and Baby Lame – co-hosts of the drag king competition Man Up! – join TANK's Josie Mitchell to discuss drag king culture and performance. Together, they discuss contemporary maleness, the weekly heats, and how anybody with any body can participate.

In conversation with Adam All & Baby Lame Adam All and Baby Lame – co-hosts of the drag king competition Man Up! – join TANK's Josie Mitchell to discuss drag king culture and performance. Together, they discuss contemporary maleness, the weekly heats, and how anybody with any body can participate.

The X Cast is hosted by Josh Houslander and Adam Hernandez. We air LIVE every Tuesday at 9 PM ET. On this week’s edition of the X-Cast, Josh and Adam open up with a potential preview of next week’s Politics of the EMPIRE with a quick discussion on Anarchism and Revolution. They then welcome in Glen Updike to continue the political discussion by talking about the second amendment and the incident involving the MAGA kids from this past week. Needless to say, things get a little heated between Glen and Adam… All that plus much more… Listen to the X Cast on THEEMPIREMEDIA.COM, Facebook Live, Periscope or YouTube. Follow our home EMPIRE Radio on Twitter. Subscribe on Anchor or SoundCloud. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/xcast/support

Life Updates Kyle: Life is good. WCUS was great.   Adam: All the things:  juggling 4 projects, 3 developers, all spread out..  Getting close to KitchenSink Episode 200…  WCUS was great. Launching/launched new service WordPress News Sara Dunn picked a niche! Thanks for the iTunes reviews! Nateconley123 Jordanmroth People on the Move / aka Changes…

Gentlemen start your engines, and let the best wo- Let's stop right there. RuPaul's Drag Race is all kinds of fierce, however there's far more to the drag world than shantay-ing and sashay-ing. This month, it's Asifa Lahore, Britain's first out Muslim Drag Queen, and a recently out trans woman telling us her drag journey, and how this interacts with her faith and gender. Next is drag king and all round show stopper Adam All who shows us another side to drag that is rarely given the spotlight and attention it deserves. Our final guest is Venus Demilo, a disabled, non-binary trans Queen who further challenges the norm of what it means to do drag. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Adam All is the King of Kings, Drag Kings Specifically. Adam All is a talented and polished performer in a rapidly growing Drag King scene in London. He’s been busy making sure anyone who wants to try on a fake moustache and explore the insides of a bulging suit can. He’s the man behind Boi Box, a popular night for Londoners to meet the Drag King community. Adam kindly joined us to talk about his latest venture, Man Up! at The Glory and all its success. We also talk about the attention the scene is attracting, including snuggling up to Eamon and Ruth on the This Morning couch. Adam has lots of gigs all over London and I would urge you to check him out, have a look at the dates section on his website adamall.co.uk

The show's two hosts discuss what will be covered in future episodes of the Bally Alley Astrocast. Recurring links: BallyAlley.com - Bally Arcade / Astrocade Website What's New at BallyAlley.com Orphaned Computers & Game Systems Website Bally Alley Yahoo Discussion Group Bally Arcade / Astrocade Atari Age Sub-forum Bally Arcade/Astrocade High Score Club Episode Links: Bally Arcade / Astrocade FAQ Bally Software Downloads - Cassette TapesAudio Recordings from Bob Fabris Collection Arcadian Newsletter Software and Hardware for the Bally Arcade - A Technical Description Picture of the Crazy Climber homebrew cartridge Picture of the War homebrew cartridge ZGRASS Documentation Arcade Games Based on the Astrocade Chipset Gorf Arcade Game Seawolf II Arcade Game Space Zap Arcade Game Wizard of Wor Arcade Game Full Bally Alley Astrocast - Episode 0 Transcription Adam: Hi, everybody.  My name's Adam Trionfo, otherwise known as BallyAlley on the AtariAge forums.  And I'm here with... Chris: Chris, otherwise known as "Chris." Adam: And you're listening to the zero-ith episode of Bally Alley Astrocast.  See, I barely know the name of it yet. Chris: I think me and Adam believe that we thought up the name Astrocast ourselves, and we came to find out that there had already been one, it just hadn't been started. And I guess it was Rick and Willy (I think it was only those two). Adam: Yup. Chris: And, it kinda sat there for a year.  Hopefully they will be contributing to Adam's podcast here. Adam: I don't think of this as "Adam's podcast." (And I just used finger-quotes, sorry about that.)  This is our podcast.  Chris and I are recording this right now.  Also, Paul Thacker, who is a regular of the Bally Alley Yahoo group (which we can talk about at a later time).  We're hopefully going to do this together at some point.  I wanna sound natural as possible for this podcast.  So, I'm trying to not read anything off a piece of paper.  I don't like the sound of my voice, and the fact that I'm letting you hear it means that I love you guys. Chris: It's a great level of trust he's exhibiting, you guys.  Plus, I would immediately take his script away from him if he had one because... Adam: Oh, thanks, Chris! Chris: Yeah.  Extemporaneous is more fun to do, and I think it's more fun to listen to. Adam: So, in saying that, we do have some notes we wanna talk about. For this episode we wanna basically go over what we want to cover.  Which is what people seem to do in these episodes.  Saying, "Hey, there's gonna to be an episode of a podcast called 'this'."  And, that's what we're doing here.  So, here's what we're going in our podcast number zero. Chris: It was always funny to me, like oxymoron, like: episode number zero. Adam: Right.  Right. Chris: Let's go negative one.  Let's be rebels. Adam: You may or may not know what a Bally Arcade, or an Astrocade, is.  It was a console that was developed in about 1977.  It was released in 1977, but the first units were not actually shipped, for various reasons, until January 1978.  And very few people got them.  They were first released by catalog-only, by a company called JS&A.  Those systems had overheating problems.  Most of them were returned-- or many of them were returned.  JS&A only sold approximately 5,000 units (so it says on the Internet).  I don't know where that number is quoted from.  I've never been able to find the source.  Bally eventually started selling them through Montgomery Ward.  Now, Bally also had something called the Zgrass that it wanted to release.  This was going to be expanding the unit into a full-fledged computer.  This never was released.  The Bally system itself did not come with BASIC, but it was available nearly from the start.  Many people used it.  A newsletter formed around it called the ARCADIAN.  The system has 4K of RAM and it does not use sprites, but it could move object just as well as the Atari [VCS] and other systems of its time period.  It could show 256 separate colors and through tricks and machine language, it could show all of them on the screen at once, but not normally in a game.  Although there are a few screens that did it (but not actively during a game).  The system is fun to play... if you can find one that works.  If you don't already have one, you're going to discover (if you go searching for one) they're not inexpensive.  They're becoming pricey on the Internet because of the overheating problems they had, since the beginning (with the data chip), you will find that if you own [should have said buy] one now, you're getting a unit that "has not been tested," which means, of course, it is broken.  If you find one on the Internet that says, "Not tested," please, do not buy it.  Just let it stay there and let someone else buy it.  And, when they get it and it doesn't work, if they're surprised then they did not read the "Bally/Astrocade FAQ."  We'll go into much greater depth about this system in the next episode.  I just wanted to let you know that's the system we'll be talking about.  It has a 24-key number pad.  It has a controller that is-- is it unique?  Well, I think it's unique. Chris.  Um-hum. Adam: It has a paddle built into the top knob.  It's a knob-- it's called.  And it has a joystick-- an eight-directional joystick.  It's built like a gun controller-style pistol.  It's called a "pistol grip."  It's sorta shaped like one, if you picture a classic arcade-style gun, and then just cut off the barrel.  That's basically what you have.  Something that was originally mentioned, and I think Bally might have called it that for two years, are Videocades.  Videocades are the cartridges.  These were actually also referred to as cassettes.  These are not tapes.  These are about the size of a tape, but they are ROM cartridges.  In the beginning they held 2K and later on they held 4K for Bally.  Astrovision, or Astrocade, Inc., later released some 8K games in about 1982.  Those were usually considered the best games on the system because they had more ROM to spare and to put more features into the games.  Now, BASIC was available from about the third or the fourth month after the system was released to the public.  It was originally called BALLY BASIC.  It did not come with a tape interface, but one was available for it.  BALLY BASIC cost approximately $50.  The tape interface, which could allow the user to record at 300-baud... which is pretty slow.  To fill the 1.8K of RAM, which is available to BASIC, would take about four minutes to load a complete program.  Better than retyping it every time, isn't it?  But, it's not a great speed.  Later on, the system (when it was rereleased), it actually came with BASIC.  It was still called BALLY BASIC, but today to differentiate it from the original BASIC cartridge, most people call it ASTROCADE BASIC or AstroBASIC.  The reason for this is the later BASIC has a tape interface built into the cartridge itself.  This can record and playback information at 2000-baud, which is an odd number because it's not a multiple of 300.  Because when 300-baud tapes were speeded up by a newer format later, they were 1800-baud.  Tapes were available, which meant the user community was able to grow because they could share programs.  It was sometimes a problem for them because I could record a program on my tape drive and I could send it to you in the mail.  And you'd say, "It's not loading.  It's not loading!"  Well, you'd sometimes have to adjust your read and write heads to match it.  Imagine having to do that today?  To having to... uh, I wouldn't want to think about doing it.  So, even if you can believe it, with that kind of an issue, with users having to adjust their tape systems in order to load programs sometimes, there were commercially released tapes.  These have been archived and are available and you can download them from BallyAlley.com. Chris: So, the play and record head on anybody's tape recorder... there was the possibility that it had to be adjusted to play a tape his buddy had sent him because he had a tape recorder with differently aligned play and record heads in it-- I mean, that's something else! Adam: Now, the recorders that were normally used were called shoebox recorders.  These were recommended.  If you tried to record to a home stereo, maybe Chris can understand this better and tell me more about it in a later episode, but you really couldn't record to one and then get that information back.  I'm not sure why.  But, the lower quality that was available from the low-end tapes that were less expensive were actually better.  Just like there were better audio tapes available, which you should not have used for data because... because, I don't know why!  So, ideal podcast length.  In my mind I see about an hour, or an hour and a half.  While I listen to many podcasts, among them Intellivisionaries (and others) that are not short.  And, as has been discussed on the Intellivisionaries, there's a pause button.  So, if somehow we do end up at five hours, please understand that there is a pause button.  If we end up less, you don't need to use the pause button.  Isn't that great?  Technology... right? Chris:  Well, a very good idea that you had was obviously to conduct interviews with some, I guess, what, Bally game writers, people who are really knowledgeable about it. Adam: Well, there's quite a few people I'd like to interview.  If we can find people from the 70s and the 80s, and even now, there's some people who have written some modern games-- at least written some programs for the system. Chris: It would help if they're still around. Yeah. Adam: Something that's interesting, that I wanna use, is that there's actually recorded interviews that we have from the early 80s and late 70s of phone conversations that Bob Fabris did (from the ARCADIAN publisher).  There was a newsletter called the ARCADIAN and it published for seven years (from 1978 to 1984 or 85, depending on how you view things a bit).  He recorded some conversations with some of the more prominent people of the time. Chris: That's cool! Adam: We've made WAV files of those or FLAC files and they're available for download (or many of them are already) from BallyAlley.  But, it might be interesting to take out snippets from some of those and put them in the show.  I hadn't thought of that before, but that's why we're going over this. Chris: Yeah.  Absolutely. Adam: Right. Chris: That's really cool.  We say Bally Astrocade, like we say Atari 2600, but it was never actually called the Astrocade when Bally owned it. Adam: Not when Bally owned it; no.  But after it was resold they had the right to use the name Bally for one year. Chris: Oh. Adam: And Astrovision did do that.  So, for a short time, for one year, it was known as the Bally Astrocade.  And it actually was called that. Chris:  Oh.  Okay. Adam:  But, somehow that name has stuck.  And that is what the name is called.  And many people think it was called that from the beginning.  It was originally released under a few different names, which we'll get into at a later date.  I think of it... I like to think of it as the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. Chris: Yeah. Adam: It depends on how you look at it.  Sometimes I go with either.  Sometimes I go with both.  Sometimes I call it the Bally Library Computer.  It just on how I'm feeling at the time.  So, we also don't plan to pre-write episodes.  You might have noticed that by now.  We do have a list that we're going by, and we do wanna use notes, but reading from a script is not what I wanna do.  I don't want to sound dry and humorless.  I like to have Chris here making fun of me-- well, maybe not making fun of me, but, you know, Chris here... helping me along to give me moral support.  And I enjoy that I'll be doing this with him, and hopefully Paul as well. Chris:  It is strange for you and I to sit around talking about old videogames. Adam: Oh... isn't it!  Isn't it though! Chris: [Laughing]  Some of the sections that Adam has come up with are really interesting.  They sound like a lot of fun.  And what's cool is that they are necessarily unique to a podcast about the Bally console.  For instance, we were talking about the ARCADIAN newsletter.  There's going to be a segment-- it will probably be every episode because there is a LOT of source material.  This segment will delve into ARCADIAN notes and letters that did not make it into the published newsletter.  It's kind of a time capsule.  In some ways it will be fascinating even for people who don't know a lot about the Bally Astrocade because what you're getting is correspondence from the 70s and 80s, before anybody really knew what was gonna happen with the 8-bit era, you know? Adam: There's material in the archives.  All of this material is from Bob Fabris.  He was the editor or the ARCADIAN.  Two people, Paul Thacker and I, we bought that collection from an individual who had bought it in the early 2000s directly from Bob.  It was never broken up, so it's all together in about eight boxes-- large boxes-- all in different folders.  Bob Fabris kept a really, really detailed collection and in great order.  He kept it in that shape from 1978 until, what?, about 2001 or 2002 when he sold it. Chris: Wow. Adam: So the fact that it survived and then someone else bought it and didn't want to break it up and sell it is pretty amazing to me.  We were able to pool our funds together, Paul and I, and purchase it.  All of it has been scanned.  Not all of it is available.  Oh, and by the way, BallyAlley, in case there are some listeners who don't know... BallyAlley is a website that I put together.  It's mostly from the archives of the ARACADIAN.  But, there's a lot, a LOT, of interesting material there.  If you're interested in the Bally Arcade, you should check it out.  It's BallyAlley.com. Chris: Adam is being kinda modest.  He's done a lot of work on this.  You're gonna find archived materials that will make your eyeballs pop out of your head. Adam: [Laughing] Chris: You know, he's... Adam: If you saw Chris, then you'd know that's true. Chris:  Yes.  Absolutely.  I'm recording blind.  You know, he's very picky about high quality scans (as high as possible only).  He's vey meticulous about it.  And I definitely recommend that you guys visit BallyAlley period com.  I know it's a lost battle; humor me.  They're not dots.  All right... anyway. Adam: All right.  Cartridge reviews.  The Bally Arcade... it has a lot of perks, one of them is not it's huge library of games.  I take that back.  It has a huge library of games.  Many of them, as some people may not even know who are listening to this, were released on tapes.  But the vast majority of games, that people would think of as the console games, are cartridges.  The Bally could "see" 8K at once.  It didn't have to bankswitch or anything like that in order to do that.  There was never a bankswitching cartridge that was released for the Bally.  At least at that time.  Since the library is so small, I'm not sure if we're planning to cover a game per episode, or since we plan to cover all of the games (and there are certainly less than fifty, if you include prototypes) and some of them are not games.  Some of them were... BIORHYTHM, so that you could know when it would be a good time to get it on with your wife to have a baby.  You know... [laughing] So, if that's what you wanna talk about and listen to... write us and say, "That's sounds great.  I want you to tell me when I can get my wife pregnant." [laughing]  The other day my wife was taking a look at a game I was playing for a competing console, the Atari 8-bit game system. Chris: I thought you were gonna say the Arcadia. Adam: No, not the Arcadia.  I was playing a SUPER BREAKOUT clone.  She took a look at it and didn't know what it was.  I said, "You know, it's a BREAKOUT clone."  She's like, "I don't know what that is."  I said, "No.  Look at the game for a minute.  It looks like BREAKOUT."  And she still didn't get it.  And I said, "Okay, so you're gonna have a ball that bounces off a paddle and it's gonna hit the bricks up above."  And she goes, "I've never seen this before."  And I said, "Okay.  You've heard of PONG, right?"  She's like, "Well, yes I've heard of PONG."  I said, "It's that." Chris: [Laughing] It's that... except better.  Between you and all of the people you're in contact with from the Bally era, and people like Paul.  People who actually wrote games back then... Adam: Um-hum. Chris: Information about how the console works and its languages and stuff... is that pretty-much taken care of, or are there more mysteries to be solved. Adam: There's some mysteries.  The neat thing about this system was that even in the ARCADIAN, in the early issues, you could get access, for like $30, to the photocopies that were used at Nutting Associates.  These are the people who actually designed the Bally system for Bally.  They did arcade games-- we'll go more into that in another episode.  This information was available to subscribers... almost from the get-go.  So, if you wanted to have a source listing of the 8K ROM, you could get it.  Of course, it came with a "Do Not Replicate" on every single page, but... it was... you were allowed to get it.  You could purchase it.  It was freely available and it was encouraged for users to use this information to learn about the system. Chris:  The reason I ask is that I'm wondering what the next step is.  Whenever I think of this console... do people refer to it as a console or a computer, by and large? Adam: A game system in my eyes.  I mean, it's a console.  People don't think of it as a computer.  No. Chris:  I'll start over.  Whenever I think about this system, what usually comes to mind is the fact that it is unexploited.  And that is perhaps the, not quite an elephant in the room, but that is the only real disappointment about the Astrocade is that there are these amazing, vivid, brilliant, games.  I mean, the arcade conversations on the Astrocade are, for all intents and purposes, arcade perfect.  This was a superior machine.  And yet, players were teased with a handful of astonishing games and then that was it.  So, "what could have been," comes to mind for me a lot.  And the phrase tragically untapped.  What I'm wondering is why nobody has brought up the initiative of making new games.  The last two were arcade conversations.  They were not original, but they are, of course, phenomenal.  I mean, two of the best titles, you know are WAR (which is a conversion of WORLORDS) and, of course, CRAZY CLIMBER.  You were in charge of all the packaging and EPROM burning for those.  I'm not saying... Adam:  Partially.  Partially.  For all of one of them I was, but the other one was handled by a man name Ken Lill.  I did... I came up with the package design and stuff like that, and made a lot to make it happen.  But, I didn't program the games.  No. Chris:  Right.  But I mean, somebody else did the coding, but didn't you have all the cartridge shells.  And you were burning... Adam:  I made sure it all happened. Chris:  Okay. Adam:  Yeah.  I mean, I didn't do all the work though. Chris:  Okay. Adam: It helped that I was there.  Put it that way. Chris:  We're talking about CRAZY CLIMBER, mainly, right?  Because you helped with WAR as well. Adam: Yeah.  I did both.  Yeah. Chris.  Okay. Adam:  Um-hum. Chris:  And you wrote some of the back of the box copy. Adam:  I did all of that.  Yeah. Chris:  As expensive and limited as such a run would be, that's not really quite what I'm talking about.  As having to go through all that to give people physical, boxes copies, I guess.  Another reason why people might not have written anymore Astrocade games is that the relatively few surviving consoles could be prone to overheating themselves to death at any time.  But, then there's emulation. Adam: Right. Chris:  MESS is all that we have, and it's not perfect.  So, wouldn't that be the first step for somebody to write a really good Astrocade emulator?  I would do it, if I knew how. Adam: Yes.  If there's one of you out there who's like, "Who couldn't write an Astrocade emulator?" Chris: Yes. Adam:  Please, would you do me a favor and send that to me tomorrow? Chris:  It's time.  ...Tomorrow... [laughing] Adam: Something that I wanna get at is that MESS does work for most games.  There are a few that don't work.  Some of them used to work and now they're broken.  MESS was updated to make it "better," and now some games don't work.  I don't understand why that happened.  The biggest drawback to MESS is that is doesn't support the tape.  It doesn't support-- it supports BASIC, but you can't save or load programs.  And since they're hundreds... there's probably over 500 programs available.  And there's... many, many of those have already been archived and put on BallyAlley.com.  So you can try them out on a real system, but not under emulation.  And it's quite easy to use under real hardware.  We'll get into that at another time too. Chris: In terms of cartridge reviews.  And I'm only going to say this once.  Thanks, by the way, for saying that this is our podcast Adam: Sure. Chris:  I thought I was just being a guest.   Adam:  No.  No... you're just a gas. Chris:  I'm just a gas.  So, should I help you pay for the the Libsyn? Adam: I think we'll be okay. Chris: All right. Adam: All of our users are going to send donations every month. Chris:  Oh, that's right. Adam: [Laughing] Just kidding there, guys. Chris:  So, I'm just going to say this once.  And you're welcome.  Review is a word I have a problem with when it comes to my own, well, stuff I write.  But now, apparently, stuff I talk about.  Because I associate the word review with critics.  I think I was telling you the other day, Adam... Adam:  Yes, you were. Chris:  I would never hit such a low level of self-loathing that I would ever call myself a critic.  Talk about a useless bunch.  For me they'll be overviews.  It's very picky.  Very subjective.  It has nothing to do with anybody else.  You wanna consider yourself reviews-- totally respect that-- but I don't do reviews.  So, either that, or I'm in some sort of really intense denial.  But, personal reflections on games, reviews leaves out... when you call something a review, it leaves out the fact that taste is subjective.  It's a personal thing.  I can't review food for you and have you think, "Oh, now I like that food I used to hate."  One's tastes in games, music, etcetera is just as personal.  So, Adam was saying that there's so few of them, that we're not going to cover a game every episode.  So, what we're going to do is alternate, so that you don't go completely without game "content" (isn't that a buzzword, a frequent word online now: "content"). Adam:  That is.  Yeah. Chris:  Everybody wants content.  I gotta table of contents for ya.  We're going to alternate actual commercial cartridge games with commercially available tape games and even type-in programs, because there were a lot of good ones. Adam: Most of them were written in BASIC. Chris:  Which is just awesome to me. Adam:  Yeah. Chris:  We were thinking of alternating the games stuff I was just talking about with this: Adam:  The Astrocade system, well, the Bally Arcade system, as it was originally designed for home use, it had two versions.  There was an arcade version, which came out in 1978 with the first game, Sea Wolf II in the arcades. And there was the version that was released for the home.  It had 4K of RAM, while the version in the arcades had 16K (and some additional support), but they use the same hardware (like the data chip). They're so similar in fact, that many of the systems games were brought home as cartridges.  They don't use the same code.  They are not-- you can't run code for the arcade and vice-versa.  You can, for instance, take a Gorf and run Gorf on Wizard of Wor hardware.  It'll look the wrong direction, but you can do that.  The systems are very similar in that respect.  But, you can actually take an Astrocade (and it has been done before) that is a 4K unit, and actually do some fiddling with it, change the ROM a bit, give it more RAM (there's more that you have to do)-- there's actually an article about it, it was written in-depth (it's available on BallyAlley, the website).  And you can make it into an arcade unit.  It wouldn't be able to play the arcade games, but it would have access to 16K of RAM and that sort of thing. Chris:  When you say Sea Wolf II, you mean the arcade game was running this hardware that you're talking about. Adam:  Right. Chris: Much of which was also in the console. Adam:  Yes. Chris:  Okay.  And that goes for WIZARD OF WOR, GORF, SPACE ZAP.  Well, that explains why there are so many arcade perfect home versions. Adam.  Um.  Right.  They don't share the same code, but they are very similar.  The Hi-Res machine could display, in what was considered then a high resolution.  The Bally display in 1/4 of that resolution.  I think perhaps will have the first episode cover specifically the hardware of the astrocade. Chris: So, you are saying that this segment would cover the arcade games that used the astrocade hardware, and I find that really, really interesting (because I never knew that).  I thought that they were just, you know, very similar and some of the same people created the home versions, but I didn't realize that... I never realized they were so close. Adam: So, another segment that we plan to do is called, "What the Heck?!?"  It's going to focus on unusual hardware and maybe even released items, but something that, while it was released through the Arcadian newsletter or perhaps the Cursor newsletter (and maybe even one of the other small newsletters that were around for a short time for this system exclusively).  When we're talking about a released product here, we are probably talking about in the tens-- the twenties.  I mean, new homebrew games get a wider release than games that are considered released back then.  Maybe not the games, but hardware peripherals.  There was something called the Computer Ear which could do voice recognition-- sort of.  But the software for that isn't available, I don't think… maybe it is.  I have the hardware, but I've never tried running before. Chris:  We're also gonna-- I say "we," even though Adam's knowledge about, well pretty-much all of this stuff is much greater than mine, hoping to cover the Zgrass keyboard/computer.  Is that a fair description? Adam:  Yeah.  That's what you would read on the Internet about it.  And if you can call that true, then that's what it is. Chris:  Right.  And not just on the WikiRumor page. Adam:  Yeah. Chris:  It's a very unusual system and it's worth learning about.  See, you don't hear about any of this stuff anywhere else and that's what's really cool about this podcast.  Everything you've got archived, everything you've learned, you just never read about it back then, you know? Adam:  It was available to read about, but not in the normal sources that people read about the Astrocade.  Which would have been Electronic Games and some of the other computing magazines at the time.  But they didn't talk about, I mean, it was mentioned briefly... but only as a product that was supposed to come out.  But, in a way, ZGrass did come out.  The product, the language, ZGRASS, was available.  There was a hardware system, a computer (which could cost upwards of $10,000) that used some of the custom chips that were available in the Astrocade.  It was called the UV-1.  It was-- I'll get more into that when I cover the Zgrass system in some future episode, which is why we're talking about it here.  I would like to discover more about it.  I wanna learn.  I want-- I don't think I can use it, because it has not been archived.  But, the documentation is available on BallyAlley.  I have that.  Maybe I'll go through that a little bit.  It was... something to learn about and share... Chris:  Yeah.  Really cool. Adam:  It's all about sharing, man.  And caring.  Okay.  The Bally Arcade and Astrocade history.  History of the month is something that we are going to have.  It's going to start with the "Arcadians" #1, which was the first available newsletter.  The "Arcadians" was a newsletter that published for just four issues.  And it was published-- and it was only two pages.  The first one, I think, was only front and back.  Then, I think, maybe the next one was four pages, but that was only two pages front and back.  It was really just a round-robin letter.  It predates the "Arcadian."  It was only available to a few people.  These have been archived.  You can read them online.  I'm gonna start there.  As soon as BASIC was released, it took a few months after the Astrocade came out (excuse me, before the Bally Arcade came out).  Once that system came out with Bally BASIC (which required a separate BASIC interface so that you could record to tape), then Bob Fabris, the editor, said, "We've got something we can explore together.  Let's do this.  Let's pool our resources and come up with a way to share information.  That was what they were all about.  They did this very early on.  That's something that interests me greatly about the system, and I want to be able to share that and compare it with knowledge of other systems that were out at the time. Chris:  That's really cool.  I mean, it's one of the earliest systems of any kind, that I know of, that actually did have a community.  You know, that were really trying to goad each other into doing new things and write programs and stuff like that.  I mean, I can't imagine there was an Altair community.  I'm trying to... Adam: There was an Altair community. Chris:  Oh.  Well, but they were all very rich.  And they had a lot of time on their hands! Adam:  ...those switches, right? Chris:  I hope that you're gonna to do a "What's New on Bally Alley" I know I keep going on about this, but that is just an amazing website to me.  You do a lot of updates to it, so when you do add new things to the BallyAlley website.  And, who knows, maybe this will give you a reason to add more things to the website. Adam:  It could.  The website isn't updated very frequently.  I have great intentions, everyone.  So, if you've been wanting to see updates, give me some motivation to do some.  I don't mean send me money.  We, as the two of us (and other people on the Yahoo group), we do like to BS about the system.  But, there's so much information in my archives, and there are only a few people who share it with me.  Basically, two other people.  We're thinking about putting it up on archive.org, but some of it is kind of-- I think it should, might remain hidden from viewers, even though it might be archived there.  Because, it's personal letters that, I think, probably shouldn't be shared.  Because, there's personal information there.  I mean, when I got the collection, there was actually checks still that were un-cashed in it that were written in the 70s. Chris:  Wow! Adam:  Those kind of things I did not scan.  Because I was like… what? [sounds of exasperation and/or confusion], it was very strange to me.  They are un-canceled, unused checks out there in some boxes that were people subscribing to the newsletter.  I'm not sure why he didn't cash the checks, but... they're there! Chris:  So you could have them in the archive, I guess. Adam:  Right.  But I don't think I wanna-- I don't think that sort of information should be shared. Chris:  Oh, I agree.  But, you know, I mean back then a dollar, back then, was the equivalent of fifty grand today.  Don't you love it when people say stuff like that?  It's like... well, you're going a little overboard. Adam:  Right.  [Laughing]  We had to walk up and down the hill both ways... Chris: Both ways! Adam:  ...in the snow.  Pick up the coal from between the tracks. Chris:  Any Cosby reference, I'm on!  What I'm hoping... do you think that Paul is going to take part in some way in this first episode? Adam:  I would like him to.  If we take a long time, then probably. Chris:  Well, I'm hoping we're going to hear a lot from Paul Thacker. Adam:  Paul Thacker, he will definitely join us, at least, for the... if he can't make it into this zero episode, he will be in for the first one.  He's a good guy.  He has helped me-- more than helped me!-- he has... he is in control of archiving tapes.  That is his department.  After I wasn't really updating the site too much anymore (I actually had even pulled away from it), in about 2006, Paul Thacker came forward and he introduced himself to me through an email.  He said he would like to help with archiving tapes.  And... he really, really has.  He's the leader in that department.  He has contacted people to make archiving programs possible.  He has followed up with people with large collections.  He has archived them.  Not all of it is available on the website yet, but it is... it has been done.  They're truly archived.  And, what's neat about Paul he has tapes that were available between users.  If you're familiar with growing up with these old systems, you might have had a computer like an Atari 800 or a Commodore 64.  Maybe you had some tapes that you recorded to (or disks).  You would write a "Game Number 1."   And then that was what you'd name the program-- even if the program was a type-in from a "Compute!" magazine or an "Antic" magazine. Chris:  Oh, you would save it as "Game Number 1" Adam:  This is how these tapes were.  People would write one program on it... maybe, maybe even give it a clueless name, that meant nothing to either Paul or I.  Paul would record the whole side.  Paul would go through and say, "What's on here?"  Paul would find a program.  Paul would find SIX different versions of that program!  Paul would find programs that had been halfway recorded over.  Paul made sure to archive all of that, separately (and as efficiently as possible), document it.  So, something I want to cover... there are so many topics... I should back up here, and I should say that there are a lot of topics available to anyone who is starting a podcast.  Something that has to be zeroed in on (and that's not supposed to be a pun on the zero episode) is that you have to choose.  You have to narrow.  You have to focus.  I am no good at that.  I am not good at that... I can't do it. Chris:  How many fingers am I holding up? Adam:  Chris is holding up a finger, and I'm supposed to see one.  And I'm hoping that is what he was doing-- and not giving me the finger. Chris: [Laughing] Adam:  So, I would like to cover the ancestry of the Bally Arcade.  Something that came up and about 2001, perhaps 2002, is someone named Tony Miller, who was responsible for working on the Bally Arcade when it was created, mentioned that the Bally Arcade's chipset is actually a direct descendent of "Space Invaders" arcade game's... the CPU for "Gun Fight".  Or something to that affect.  I didn't understand it then, I might be able to understand it better if I find those exact posts (which are definitely archived).  Now, "Gun Fight" used the Intel 8080 CPU, which is why the Astrocade uses the Z80.  Because it's compatible... sort of.  The Z80 can run 8080 but not the other way around.  As you can see, my knowledge of all of this is completely limited.  What I just told you, is pretty much what I know.  There's obviously a story there.  If I could find people to interview, if I can dig into this, there is a GOOD story there.  And I would like to discover it and present it. Chris:  Yeah, 'cause that would mean Taito took some technical influence from Midway.  Because it was Midway that added a CPU, at all, to "Gun Fight," right?  So... that's pretty interesting. Adam:  We'll find out, Chris. Chris:  Yeah.  So, I've already talked about writing new games as the next logical step once one has a lot of information about any game system, or any computer (or anything like that).  So, are we going to encourage activity in the homebrew Astrocade scene?  Because, there is a latent one there.  You should definitely cover the two released games that we've already talked about: WAR and CRAZY CLIMBER.  Those were pretty big deals.  The first new Astrocade game since... what?... 1985-ish?  I mean, on cartridge... Adam:  It depends on how you look at it.  There were actually some people in the community, who were just sending cartridges back and forth to each other, who were sharing code in the 80s.  They're not considered released cartridges.  Something that is available to the public… yes. Chris:  In terms of talking about homebrew programming, you can also talk about people who just play around with this system, or even interview them.  What do you find interesting about the… Adam:  Yeah.  I would like to do interviews with people who actually have a lot of experience with the system and maybe grew up with it, which I did not do.  I didn't learn about it until... the 90s.  About homebrew programming: I believe, and I would love to make you guys believe, that homebrew programming did not start in the 90s.  I would like to let you know that homebrew programming has been around since 1975 (in my eyes) and earlier.  The very, very first PCs, and by that I mean "Personal Computers," not "IBM Personal Computers," (alright?)... these systems were programmed in people's living rooms, in people's kitchens.  If that is not homebrew programming, I don't know what is. Chris:  Right. Adam:  These people were learning for the sake of learning.  They were playing for the sake of the experience of touching the hardware, learning the software-- they weren't doing this for work, they were doing this for pleasure.  This is the same exact reason people are homebrewing games today.  They were doing this back then.  An insight that you get to see very clearly is in the in the "Arcadian" newsletters, and in the "Cursor" newsletters as well, is people want to teach other people.  They are about sharing.  They are about, "Hey I wrote this.  This is great.  You guys should type it in and try it out... and if you find out anything about it, let me know what you think.  If you can add something to it… if you can cut off six bytes and add a sound effect, please do that, because there's no sound."  These people wanted to help each other, and through that it is available in archives, and we can look at this and learn today.  I would like to have that happen, so that people of today, people who have the knowledge, have modern computers that can cross-compile and create new games-- that would be neat... to me. Chris:  Yeah. Adam:  It has been neat, went two have been released already.  But, even if new games don't get created, what about MESS?  Let's make that better. Chris:  Before we go any further, I think you should "share" your email address so that you get feedback. Adam:  My name is Adam, and you can reach me at ballyalley@hotmail.com Chris:  You can private message me on AtariAge.  I'm chris++. Adam:  Now we expect to get loads of email.  We are gonna be clogged.  We're going to have to have the first episode be nothing but reader feedback. Chris:  I'm telling ya, we really got a good thing going, so you better hang on to yourself. Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  That's a Bowie quote.  Well, before we wrap this up, let's cover the obvious thing.  How did you get so involved in the Bally Arcade/Astrocade? Adam:  When I first began collecting some of these older consoles and home computers... I never stopped playing them, but when they started becoming available for a quarter, I said, "You know, why don't I just buy each one of them."  I had a very large collection for awhile, until I finally gave some of it to Chris... got rid of most of it, and... I am glad I did, because now I play the games I own.  What I don't play, I get to eventually.  In about 1994... '93... I read about this system in one of the books I had that was from the early 80s that covered the Zgrass, actually.  It was the system, I was like, "I want to get a Zgrass, that'd be neat."  I don't have one.  I did find out that it was related to the Bally Arcade.  From there... I wanted one.  I found my first one for a quarter.  I picked it up at a flea market. Chris:  Oh. Adam:  It came with a few games.  In fact, I saw the games first, and I was like, "How much you want for these?"  Each game was a quarter.  I think there was four or five of 'em.  Then I saw the system, but I didn't have that much money with me.  I had like a dollar left or something (I'd already bought some other things).  I was talking to a friend that I'd gone with, and he said, "Why don't you go back there and offer him your buck for it?"  I went back, and I said, "How much do you want for the game (the system)?"  And he goes, "A quarter." Chris:  Wow. Adam:  So, I still had change to go by another: 2600, an Intellivision... no... [laughing]  But, I didn't find anything else that day. Chris:  Those were the days before you people let eBay ruin that part of the hobby. Adam:  So, I did know that there was an "Arcadian" newsletter.  But, I was a member of an Atari 8-bit user group here in town.  It so happened, I was bringing it up... talking with someone there, and they said, "Oh, I've heard of that!"  I'm like, "Oh, you've heard of the Bally?"  They said, "Oh, sure.  You should talk to Mr. Houser" (who was the president of the Atari club).  Then he said, "I think he wrote some games for it."  I said, "Hmm.  That sounds interesting."  So, I approached him.  By 1994, there were very few users left in the Atari 8-bit group.  Who was left, we all knew each other very well (or, as well as we could-- even though some of us only knew each other from meetings).  We started talking.  He told me that he'd been involved with the "Arcadian."  He had published tapes.  He had something called "The Catalog" [THE SOURCEBOOK], which I now know was the way most people order tapes (but, back then I didn't).  He kept track of all this, and he still had all of his things.  He invited me over one Sunday afternoon and he showed me what he owned, which was... pretty-much everything for the Astrocade that was released.  We went through it one Sunday afternoon, and his son (who was in his early 20s) shared his memories of the machine.  I fell in love: I thought, "Wow, this system is great!"  While I was there Mr. Houser, his name was Richard Houser, he said, "Hey, you know what... we should call up Bob."  I said, "Bob, who?"  He said, "He was the person who used to publish the "Arcadian."  I said, "... Really?"  He's like, "Yeah, let's call him."  So, he called up Bob.  They chatted a bit (for a while) and he told him who I was-- I didn't talk to Bob.  But, he was available back then.  I thought that was great, so I wrote Bob a letter.  I said, "Would it be okay if I get some of your information..."  Later on, in the late-90s, he gave me permission to do that.  At the time, I just said, "Hey.  Here I am."  What's really neat, is I started sending him ORPHANED COMPUTERS & GAME SYSTEMS (which was a newsletter I did in the early-90s.  After three issues, Chris, here, joined me on board).  I sent them to him.  When I bought the Bally collection from him, those issues that I'd sent to him brought back to me.  Which, was, like, this huge circle... because it came through several people, in order to come back.  I found that really neat. Chris:  Yeah. Adam:  Eventually, with Chris, we discovered the system together.  We played around with it.  What was it...?  About 2001, I started BallyAlley.com.  It doesn't look great now, and it looked worse then.  Now, here I am... having a podcast.  How about you, Chris? Chris:  I never stopped playing all the way through either.  You know? Adam:  Why should've we? Chris:  Well, yeah.  I kept playing the old games through the period when they started to be called "classic" and "retro."  This happened at some point in the mid-90s. Adam:  During the HUGE crash during in the 80s (that none of us saw). Chris:  Yeah... that none of us knew about, except for the great prices (which I attributed to over-stock). Adam:  I didn't even think about it. Chris:  Well, they weren't all cheaper.  Even into '83/'84, I remember spending thirty-odd dollars on PITFALL II: LOST CAVERNS for the 2600. Adam:  Yeah, right.  I got that for my birthday, because it was $30... and I didn't have $30, I was a kid. Chris:  Right.  'Cause... that was about two-million dollars in today's money. Adam:  Also, for us, I think, we went onto computers, like many people our age at the time.  So, we sort of distanced ourselves.  The prices for computer stock stayed about the same, as they had for Atari cartridges, and things like that. Chris:  That's a good point.  Yeah.  In coming across "classic," after I hadn't really stopped playing my favorites (and discovering new favorites, thanks to the advent of thrift shops and video games at Goodwill, and stuff), I'd read that and say, "Oh, they're classic now.  Oh, all right.  If you say so."  I thought that was really funny.  So, by the late 90s, I thought I was the only person on earth (not literally, but pretty close) who is still playing these "old" videogames.  All I had when we started hanging out again, Adam, was an Atari 2600 and a Commodore 64.  That was all I wanted.  I didn't want to know about anything else, I didn't want to know about this new CD-ROM, with the "multimedia." Adam:  So, let's... this time period would have been...? Chris:  This is 1997.  By this point, I had been writing my own articles and essays for my own amusement (saving them as sequential files on 1541 floppies using the Commodore 64).  I wrote a file writer and reader program.  I thought I was the only one doing nerdy stuff like this, but I had fun doing it.  And I was still playing all the old games, picking 'em up for a buck or less, while making my rounds at the thrift shops and at Goodwills and everything like that.  I was in a subsidiary of Goodwill that was attached to the largest Goodwill store in Albuquerque.  I ran into a buddy of mine, from ten years previous.  He and I have been freshman in high school, and then I went to another high school and lost touch with all of my friends.  This guy's name, if you can believe this goofy name, was Adam Trionfo.  The store had an even goofier name: the U-Fix-It Corral, but then it changed into Clearance Corner.  Is that right? Adam:  Correct.  Yes. Chris:  Adam was working there.  So, I'm going through a box of... something... from the 80s.  He came over, "Are you Chris?"  I said, "Yeah.  Adam?"  He and I, you know, sort of shook hands.  I said, "Well, that's cool, you're working at Goodwill."  "Yup."  Then I left, and I never saw him again... Adam:  [Laughing] Untill today. Chris:  Until today.  That's why it really sounds improvised here.  He gave me a newsletter he had written about... old videogames (and they weren't even all that old yet, at the time).  He started ORPHANED COMPUTERS & GAME SYSTEMS (on paper, kids!) in 1994.  I asked him, "So, you write about video games too?"  He said, "Yeah."  We started hanging out playing games... a lot.  I didn't know anyone else at the time who liked to play Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 games.  He eventually nudged me to the Internet (or, dragged me... kicking and screaming).  When I encouraged him to start up his newsletter again, he said he would if I'd collaborate.  We did that for couple of years.  Sent out a lot of paper issues.  Had a ball writing it.  Going to World of Atari 98 (and then CGE 2003).  Using interviews that we had conducted at those to feed the material for the newsletter.  In 1999, it became a website.  We've actually been pretty good about adding recent articles... Adam:  Recently.  Yeah. Chris:  ... which is good for us.  I don't know what any of this has to do with what you asked me.  In 1982, we took a trip back East to Buffalo to visit family.  My mom's sister's best friend had a son named Robert, who was a couple of years older than me (I was ten, he was probably twelve or thirteen).  He was the kid who first showed me Adventure. Adam:  Never heard of it. Chris:  Summertime of '82 [mumbling/talked-over??] I got my mind blown by it.  This same guy, Robert, took me into his basement to show me his Atari computer (I believe).  He said not to touch it, because he had a program in memory.  He was typing in a program and he had a magazine open.  That's all I remember.  I wish I had focused on the model number or which magazine it was.  It looked like all of this gobbledygook on the screen.  I was absolutely captivated because-- who didn't want to make his own videogames?  I'd been playing Atari VCS games since February of '82.  It became an obsession with me, on par with music (believe it or not).  He said not to touch it because he hadn't saved it yet.  I said, "How do ya save it?"  You know what I mean?  I didn't ask him any smart-ass questions: "Okay, ya gonna take a picture of the screen?" Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  He said, "I save them on these."  He showed me just a normal blank cassette, like you would listen to music on.  That just entranced me: all of these innocent music cassettes hiding videogames on them.   Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  I learned how to program in BASIC that summer from a book checked out from the library.  I mean, I just really got interested in talking to this new thing.  This home computer: the microcomputer (as it was called quite often).  The "micro" to separate them from "mainframes," because, you know, a lot of our friends had mainframes in their bedrooms. Adam:  Right. Chris.  Then he brought me over and showed me one more thing before we had to go.  This was the Bally Professional Arcade.  I thought it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  We played THE INCREDIBLE WIZARD.  He let me play for a little while.  I said, "This is just like WIZARD OF WOR!"  He said, "Yeah, it is."  I can't remember if he had an explanation, or had read an explanation, of why the name was changed.  That was my only experience with the Astrocade.  I loved the controller.  To this day, it is still one of my favorite controllers.  I love the trigger thing, and I love the combination of a joystick and a paddle in one knob on top of it.  I didn't see another Astrocade until I started hanging out with you again in '97.  It figures that you were able to collect all of that amazing stuff because you worked at Goodwill. Adam:  I didn't use that to my advantage. Chris: [sarcastically] I'm sure you didn't! Adam:  I wasn't allowed to do that. Chris:  Yeah, well, I'm sure you didn't steal it... Adam:  No. Chris:  But I mean, come on!, you probably made note of what came in. Adam:  There was actually a rule that I had to follow.  When anything came in, it had to sit on the shelves for 24 hours before it could be purchased by an employee.  That didn't mean we had to show everyone where it was, but it had to be out.  And, that was true: it was out.  That didn't mean we said...  (because there were people that came in every single day, just like I used to like to go around too).  It would be on the shelf, but that didn't mean it would be right on the front shelf, saying, "Buy me please, Atari game collector."  It was in the store somewhere! Chris:  You put it in the back, near the electric pencil sharpener! Adam:  No, I didn't hide it either.  I didn't want to get in trouble. Chris:  Nah.  I know.  Adam had an original Odyssey with all of the layover-- the "layovers?"  With all the airplane stops.  No, with all the overlays. Adam:  [Laughing] Chris:  Which, is pretty amazing!  You had an Odyssey, with original 1972 Magnavox console, with everything else: an Intellivision, he had an Odyssey 2 (with boxed QUEST FOR THE RINGS)... and... Adam:  I had 43 different systems. Chris:  Holy cow! Adam:  I am so glad that I don't have that anymore! Chris:  That is a lot for an apartment. Adam:  So, now I have a few left. Chris:  Yes, folks, he does have an Astrocade. Adam:  I do. Chris:  He does have all of the original cartridge games for it.  I think you got all of them? Adam:  I had them, but now I have a multicart.  I got rid of most of them.  I feel... I kept some of my favorites.  I kept my prototypes. Chris:  Which is cool.  Obviously, you have WAR and CRAZY CLIMBER. Adam:  Right. Chris:  THE INCREDIBLE WIZARD. Adam:  I think, I have number 2's, because the programmer got number 1's. Chris:  That's pretty cool.   Adam:  Yeah.  But, honestly, I don't care about the numbers on them.  They were hand numbered, because collector seem to like that.  Personally, since I did the numbering, I found it annoying. Chris:  Well, there were fifty sold? Adam:  There were fifty each.  Yeah.  There was a run of 20 for WAR, because we didn't have any cartridge shells.  We got more, and we did the second run.  The run of CRAZY CLIMBER was always 50.  It was released all at once. Chris:  You have number two, and [sarcastically], that's a collectors item.. Adam:  Right! Chris: ...if anyone knew what it was. Adam:  I should have got number 0!  Think of this, this episode is a collector's item already! Chris:  You taught me a great deal about the Astrocade and how it worked.  You've told me some things that I just find...  so cool.  Like, you had to use the screen for code, because part of your available RAM was the Screen RAM, right?  (And still is.) Adam:  Under BASIC, that's correct. Chris:  That's how I became even more interested in the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. Adam:  We are about finished wrapping things up here.  Just for the last few things to say.  We are going to have an episode every two weeks (or so).  So, that would be bimonthly.  I hope you guys... if you have any ideas that you want to come up with, will send in some feedback.  If we get no feedback by the first one, that's okay... because we expect... a couple of people... to listen to this.   Chris:  Thanks for listening, and thanks for inviting me along, Adam. Adam:  Good to have ya! [End of episode]

Part 2 of my conversation with special guest Adam Tinkoff as we discuss diet and exercise. I've also got the Bonehead of the Week and music from The Afghan Whigs, The Alabama Shakes, Sunny Ali and the Kid, and Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra. Show notes: - Recorded via Skype - Check out Adam's new show Zen@10 and also the Slow Runners Club - Adam: Think before you eat - Jay: Hot dogs gross me out - Food processing is a nasty business - Keep track of what you eat for 30 days - Mix up your workouts - Adam: Latin dancing is a great workout - Adam's a "carousel of crazy" - He did Internet broadcasting in 2000 before podcasting was created - Taking a break from Slow Runners Club podcast because of busy schedules - Kicked off 2012 Spring Clean Reboot - Group effort to eat better - First week is easy, but after that it's tough to sustain - We need to make it easy for people to exercise - Much has changed in the last 20 years - Harder to lose weight as you get older - Body mass index (BMI) is useless - Body fat percentage doesn't need to be single digits - Adam: All diet plans fail - Change your habits, then adjustments - Getting into online fitness coaching - You don't need a gym to get fit - The Biggest Loser made weight loss inspiring - Bonehead of the WeekMusic:The Afghan Whigs - See and Don't See The Alabama Shakes - Hold On Sunny Ali and the Kid - Chai Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra - Do It With a Rockstar Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review! The Afghan Whigs song is the first new recording from the band since 2006. Download the song for free (in exchange for your email address) at TheAfghanWhigs.com.The Alabama Shakes song is on the album Boys & Girls on ATO Records. Download the song for free as part of The ATO Spring Sampler (in exchange for your email address) at ATO Records. The Sunny Ali and the Kid  song is a digital single available for free download at Bandcamp.  The Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra song is on her forthcoming album on 8ft Records. Download the song for free from Soundcloud. The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian; check out his site PodGeek.