Podcasts about alex there

Jason talks to Alex Murguia and Wade Pfau, co-founders of RISA. It is an online questionnaire and tool for helping determine what an individual's retirement styles are like and specifically helping advisors steer them toward the type of retirement solutions that help ensure that they both succeed, but also that they are comfortable and their preferences on how they wish to retire or how they wish their income to be general in retirement come about.Episode Highlights01:05: The risk that people face in retirement is different from pre-retirement, with the sequence of returns, risk, and market returns.04:46: Alex shares how they took reoccurring constructs and then wondered could they quantify them that were reliable and in a manner that was valid.06:28: Jason is not a big fan of bucketing, but for some clients like visualizing and understanding that might be the difference between them panicking and being comfortable.08:41: Alex informs that they have an implementation matrix, which is how someone prefers to implement financial advice.11:07: You always have to overlay the numbers; the advisor has to help you sort of curate through that journey.19:23: As per Alex there is no annuity proposal in much the same way that there is no like government worker puzzle in the United States.22:23: The distribution of advisor preference largely comes down to licensing standards.24:38: The best salespeople are the people that get to close loss the soonest.38:12: As per Jason, people spend a lot of time these days talking about understanding client bias.3 Key PointsAlex explains how they kind of take a step back and say what strategy is the one you should begin with when it comes to retirement planning? People either need safety or they won't accept risk, and they are different degrees of willing to basically lock themselves into something, so it's static.The first step of retirement income planning is to identify your retirement style and then build your financial plan and then take your risk tolerance questionnaire and choose your asset allocation and so forth.Tweetable Quotes"With COVID after reading a certain amount and collecting notes, we realized that there were certain constructs that seemed to be reoccurring motifs." – Alex"We all have different risk tolerances. We all have different preferences for security." - Jason"I may, as a consumer, have not known that there are different strategies that there are and here is the strategy that looks like it does fit best with my own psychological considerations and makeup." - Wade"The end consumer doesn't realize that there are options available to themselves for different retirement income strategies." - Alex"There are a few things that in research frustrate me more than trying to break an advisor value down to a percentage cases per year." – JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://retirementresearcher.com/about/Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Talking about business from a non-business angle is something that I've really enjoyed being able to do,” says Alex York, entrepreneurship journalist at Insider. Alex covers business innovators who are changing the world, underrepresented founders, the future of work and how it affects the rest of us in our daily lives for Insider. If you're a female founder, it's almost guaranteed that you've read Alex's work before---even if you're just meeting her today. But today it's Alex who's in the hot seat with host, Lindsay Pinchuk, spilling the tea about how to land press as a founder. Alex shares how to stand out in a pitch, best ways to network with reporters, what to do if you keep getting turned down, and so much more. Key takeaways from today's episode include:There are many ways to pitch an editor outside of emailShow who you are as a person outside of your businessWhen pitching, show the notable moment that led to your success or a notable trend you are starting or followingInclude the metrics of success along with that notable momentPut your face on your brand and tell your storyQuotes• “There are so many other ways to really connect with people that you want to tell your story. Whether that's a DM on Instagram or an invite to an event that you're throwing, it can really make a difference to just show who you are as a person beyond what your business is.” (10:07-10:43 | Alex)• “Right now, especially, people are buying products based on who the founder is. And that's why being the face of your brand is so important.” (10:43-10:51 | Alex)• “There are so many pitches I get that are founders doing something great. Point blank. But to differentiate yourself from all the other founders in the world, it's really about how you have innovated on what a lot of other people are doing right now to directly lead to your success.That's what's going to make you stand out as a business owner.” (18:52-19:12 | Alex)Connect with Alex York:Instagram | http://www.instagram.com/alexy0rkPlease don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Dear FoundHer on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!You can now work with Lindsay 1:1 to build and monetize your community through the same method she used to grow and scale her business. Fill out the form here and set up a FREE 30-minute consultation.Make sure you sign up for Lindsay's newsletter and have all of the takeaways from every podcast episode sent straight to your inbox. PLUS, you'll get a tip every week to help you grow and scale your own business.Don't forget to follow Lindsay on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaypinchukUse code FoundHer for 50% off your first month with both HiveCast and FiresidePodcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Alex Tonsberg.Before I share more about Alex, let me apologize for the background noise and poor audio quality for this introduction.  I'm in Nepal at the moment and there's not a quiet place to be found!But about Alex…There are two things that are certain in life - death and taxes. But for Alex there was a third certainty. While still in elementary school, Alex determined that there would be nothing that would prevent her from having an interesting life.  From art student living in Australia to Registered Nurse working in austere environments and chaotic trauma centers, the desire for an interesting life never left and has been what has guided her to ask sometimes difficult questions about what is important in life.  Today Alex is an entrepreneur, owner of Dark Humor Coffee and has reconnected with her love for art by becoming an apprentice at Two Cents Ceramics. Our conversation is about courage, determination, thoughtful pursuit of being oneself, and more. We had the chance to record our conversation a few weeks ago when I was in TN and it's only the 3rd podcast I've been able to record in person, so that was a treat. It's also a special experience having a podcast conversation with someone I've known for years, learning more about their journey, hearing pieces of the backstory. It reminds me that no matter how long and how well I know someone there's always more to learn.  Thank you, Alex, for sharing these stories, for reflecting so thoughtfully on your journey and choices, and for the insightful life lessons that have become a part of who you are. I'm honored to host and share this conversation. Connect with Alex: https://www.instagram.com/at.vagabonding/Dark Humor CoffeeTwo Cents CeramicsMake Life Less Difficult

“There's now this notion that you, as an individual, are an independent agent, and you can determine what your career path looks like,” explains Alex Smith, HR executive for the City of Memphis. In today's episode, host D-Rich sits down with guests Alex Smith and Nona Austin-King, CEO of Career Catalyst Group, to discuss the future of work and how employee expectations and desires have changed thanks to technological advancements, societal shifts, generational differences, and of course, the pandemic.   Growing up, most of us were taught that we would go to college, get a job, stay with that company forever and then retire. However, that's just not the norm anymore. In fact, there has been a large shift, in part propelled by the pandemic, where employees are taking control of their career paths. Now, people are looking more for flexible and remote opportunities where they can temporarily grow a skill set rather than provide a lifetime commitment. In response, employers have an evolved understanding of what the employer-employee relationship entails and realize that people are not necessarily looking to be tied into the same role long term anymore. Thanks to this, the relationship is on more equal footing and employees often hold more power at work than they realize.    The future of work is happening right now. The expectation of a long term employment relationship is mostly a thing of the past and employees have more control than ever before over their own career paths. Join Nona Austin-King, Alex Smith, and host D-Rich on this week's episode of Southern Soul Live Stream - Podshow to learn more about how the idea of work has changed throughout recent years and what employers and employees alike should anticipate for the future.    Quotes • “The thing that I have been most surprised about is going through this process is not just about landing a role. It is helping people to build that self confidence again, elevating their mindset, and really just rediscovering the excellence that's already inside of them. There is no magic pill, it's already inside of you.” (10:57-11:24 | Nona) • “The term ‘future of work' means changing the way businesses run based on technological advances, generational changes, social shifts, but the reality is the future of career management, the future of work, is right now.” (16:42-17:01 | Nona) • “I believe that a lot of us have the skills needed in the future, but we just need to be able to identify that in a story.“ (18:27-18:42 | Nona) • “When many of us were growing up, or even when we talked to our parents, they gave us this whole adage about, you're going to go to college, get a job, and work for a company for 25 years, retire. And there was this whole sense of having this long term employment relationship with an organization of some sort, and you do your time, and you're able to retire and move on with your life. But nowadays, it is very different.” (40:26-40:54 | Alex) • “There's now this notion that you as an individual are an independent agent, and you can determine what your career path looks like, and chart that out. And you can design it the way that you want.” (41:56-42:07 | Alex) • “That's the new contract. That's the future of work now. This idea that people can move and be very transient, that they can work from home or work in hybrid environments, that they can be in an independent contracting space, or they can also be a full time employee. But they have flexibility to decide how they want to work and when they want to work.” (42:21-42:42 | Alex)   Links   Connect with Nona Austin-King, CEO of Career Catalyst Group: Website - https://careercatalystgrp.com/ Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nonaaustinking/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/careercatalystgroup/   Connect with Alex Smith, HR Executive City of Memphis: Website - www.consultalexsmith.com Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chroalexsmith/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CHROAlexSmith   About with Southern Soul Live Stream - Podshow   Witty, thought-provoking, and uplifting, Southern Soul Livestream - Podshow is the program that you'll invite friends over to watch every week, where you'll learn about fascinating speakers and get to share in their exciting experiences. Tune in each Thursday at 8 pm eastern to connect with guests from across the generations and to laugh with our "cast of characters," hosts who are as charming as they are talented!   Enjoyed this episode?  Support our hard work and exploratory journalism; buy us  A Coffee!  Join The Show Experience our live studio recording “It's a Whole Vibe!” Click here to register.     Connect with us Website: www.SoulLiveStream.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthernSoulLiveStream/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southern_soul_livestream/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/soul_livestream

About AlexAlex is the Chief Product Officer of Twingate, which he cofounded in 2019. Alex has held a range of product leadership roles in the enterprise software market over the last 16 years, including at Dropbox, where he was the first enterprise hire in the company's transformation from consumer to enterprise business. A focus of his product career has been using the power of design thinking to make technically complex products intuitive and easy to use. Alex graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Electrical Engineering.Links Referenced:twingate.com: https://twingate.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Sysdig. Sysdig secures your cloud from source to run. They believe, as do I, that DevOps and security are inextricably linked. If you wanna learn more about how they view this, check out their blog, it's definitely worth the read. To learn more about how they are absolutely getting it right from where I sit, visit Sysdig.com and tell them that I sent you. That's S Y S D I G.com. And my thanks to them for their continued support of this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate. Is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other; which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability: it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted episode is brought to us by our friends at Twingate, and in addition to bringing you this episode, they also brought me a guest. Alex Marshall is the Chief Product Officer at Twingate. Alex, thank you for joining me, and what is a Twingate?Alex: Yeah, well, thanks. Well, it's great to be here. What is Twingate? Well, the way to think about Twingate is we're really a network overlay layer. And so, the experience you have when you're running Twingate as a user is that network resources or network destinations that wouldn't otherwise be accessible to you or magically accessible to you and you're properly authenticated and authorized to access them.Corey: When you say it's a network overlay, what I tend to hear and the context I usually see that in, in the real world is, “Well, we're running some things in AWS and some things in Google Cloud, and I don't know because of a sudden sharp blow to the head, maybe Azure as well, and how do you get all of the various security network models of security groups on one side to talk to their equivalent on the other side?” And the correct answer is generally that you don't and you use something else that more or less makes the rest of that irrelevant. Is that the direction you're coming at this from, or do you view it differently?Alex: Yeah, so I think the way that we view this in terms of, like, why we decide to build a product in the first place is that if you look at, sort of like, the internet in 2022, like, there's one thing that's missing from the network routing table, which is authentication and authorization on each row [laugh]. And so, the way that we designed the product is we said, “Okay, we're not going to worry about everything, basically, above the network layer and we're going to focus on making sure that what we're controlling with the client is looking at outbound network connections and making sure that when someone accesses something and only when they access it, that we check to make sure that they're allowed access.” We're basically holding those network connections until someone's proven that they're allowed to access to, then we let it go. And so, from the standpoint of, like, figuring out, like, security groups and all that kind of stuff, we're basically saying, like, “Yeah, if you're allowed to access the database in AWS, or your home assistant on your home network, fine, we'll let you do that, but we'll only let you go there once you've proven you're allowed to. And then once you're there, then you know, we'll let you figure out how you want to authenticate into the destination system.” So, our view is, like, let's start at the network layer, and then that solves a lot of problems.Corey: When I call this a VPN, I know a couple of things are going to be true. One, you're almost certainly going to correct me on that because this is all about Zero Trust. This is the Year of our Lord 2022, after all. But also what I round to what basically becomes a VPN to my mind, there are usually two implementations or implementation patterns that I think about. One of them is the idea of client access, where I have a laptop; I'm in a Starbucks; I want to connect to a thing. And the other has historically been considered, site to site, or I have a data center that I want to have constantly connected to my cloud environment. Which side of that mental model do you tend to fall in? Or is that the wrong way to frame it?Alex: Mm-hm. The way we look at it and sort of the vision that we have for what the product should be, the problem that we should be solving for customers is what we want to solve for customers is that Twingate is a product that lets you be certain that your employees can work securely from anywhere. And so, you need a little bit of a different model to do that. And the two examples you gave are actually both entirely valid, especially given the fact that people just work from everywhere now. Like, resources everywhere, they use a lot of different devices, people work from lots of different networks, and so it's a really hard problem to solve.And so, the way that we look at it is that you really want to be running something or have a system in place that's always taking into account the context that user is in. So, in your example of someone's at a Starbucks, you know, in the public WiFi, last time I checked, Starbucks WiFi was unencrypted, so it's pretty bad for security. So, what we should do is you should take that context into account and then make sure that all that traffic is encrypted. But at the same time, like, you might be in the corporate office, network is perfectly safe, but you still want to make sure that you're authorizing people at the point in time they try to access something to make sure that they actually are entitled to access that database in the AWS network. And so, we're trying to get people away from thinking about this, like, point-to-point connection with a VPN, where you know, the usual experience we've all had as employees is, “Great. Now, I need to fire up the VPN. My internet traffic is going to be horrible. My battery's probably going to die. My—”Corey: Pull out the manual token that rotates with an RSA—Alex: Exactly.Corey: —token that spits out a different digital code every 30 seconds if the battery hasn't died or they haven't gotten their seeds leaked again, and then log in and the rest; in some horrible implementations type that code after your password for some Godforsaken reason. Yeah, we've all been down that path and it's like, “Yeah, just sign into the corporate VPN.” It's like, “Did you just tell me to go screw myself because that's what I heard.”Alex: [laugh]. Exactly. And that is exactly the situation that we're in. And the fact is, like, VPNs were invented a long time ago and they were designed to connect to networks, right? They were designed to connect a branch office to a corporate office, and they're just to join all the devices on the network.So, we're really, like—everybody has had this experience of VPN is suffering from the fact that it's the wrong tool for the job. Going back to, sort of like, this idea of, like, us being the network overlay, we don't want to touch any traffic that isn't intended to go to something that the company or the organization or the team wants to protect. And so, we're only going to gate traffic that goes to those network destinations that you actually want to protect. And we're going to make sure that when that happens, it's painless. So, for example, like, you know, I don't know, again, like, use your example again; you've been at Starbucks, you've been working your email, you don't really need to access anything that's private, and all of a sudden, like, you need to as part of your work that you're doing on the Starbucks WiFi is access something that's in AWS.Well, then the moment you do that, then maybe you're actually fine to access it because you've been authenticated, you know, and you're within the window, it's just going to work, right, so you don't have to go through this painful process of firing up the VPN like you're just talking about.Corey: There are a number of companies out there that, first, self-described as being, “Oh, we do Zero Trust.” And when I hear that, what I immediately hear in my own mind is, “I have something to sell you,” which, fair enough, we live in an industry. We're trying to have a society here. I get it. The next part that I wind up getting confused by then is, it seems like one of those deeply overloaded terms that exists to, more or less—in some cases to be very direct—well, we've been selling this thing for 15 years and that's the buzzword, so now we're going to describe it as the thing we do with a fresh coat of paint on it.Other times it seems to be something radically different. And, on some level, I feel like I could wind up building an entire security suite out of nothing other than things self-billing themselves as Zero Trust. What is it that makes Twingate different compared to a wide variety of other offerings, ranging from Seam to whatever the hell an XDR might be to, apparently according to RSA, a breakfast cereal?Alex: So, you're right. Like, Zero Trust is completely, like, overused word. And so, what's different about Twingate is that really, I think goes back to, like, why we started the company in the first place, which is that we started looking at the remote workspace. And this is, of course, before the pandemic, before everybody was actually working remotely and it became a really urgent problem.Corey: During the pandemic, of course, a lot of the traditional VPN companies are, “Huh. Why is the VPN concentrator glowing white in the rack and melting? And it sounds like screaming. What's going on?” Yeah, it turns out capacity provisioning and bottlenecking of an entire company tends to be a thing at scale.Alex: And so, you're right, like, that is exactly the conversation. We've had a bunch of customers over the last couple years, it's like their VPN gateway is, like, blowing up because it used to be that 10% of the workforce used it on average, and all of a sudden everybody had to use it. What's different about our approach in terms of what we observed when we started the company, is that what we noticed is that this term Zero Trust is kind of floating out there, but the only company that actually implemented Zero Trust was Google. So, if you think about the situations that you look at, Zero Trust is like, obvious. It's like, it's what you would want to do if you redesigned the internet, which is you'd want to say every network connection has to be authorized every single time it's made.But the internet isn't actually designed that way. It's designed default open instead of default closed. And so, we looked at the industry are, like, “Great. Like, Google's done it. Google has, like, tons and tons of resources. Why hasn't anyone else done it?”And the example that I like to talk about when we talk about inception of the business is we went to some products that are out there that were implementing the right technological approach, and one of these products is still in use today, believe it or not, but I went to the documentation page, and I hit print, and it was almost 50 pages of documentation to implement it. And so, when you look at that, you're, like, okay, like, maybe there's a usability problem here [laugh]. And so, what we really, really focus on is, how do we make this product as easy as possible to deploy? And that gets into, like, this area of change management. And so, if you're in IT or DevOps or engineering or security and you're listening to this, I'm sure you've been through this process where it's taken months to deploy something because it was just really technically difficult and because you had to change user behavior. So, the thing that we focus on is making sure that you didn't have to change user behavior.Corey: Every time you expect people to start doing things completely differently, congratulations, you've already lost before you've started.Alex: Yes, exactly. And so, the difference with our product is that you can switch off the VPN one day, have people install a Twingate client, and then tomorrow, they still access things with exactly the same addresses they used before. And this seems like such a minor point, but the fact that I don't have to rewrite scripts, I don't have to change my SSH proxy configuration, I don't have to do anything, all of those private DNS addresses or those private IP address, they'll still work because of the way that our client works on the device.Corey: So, what you're saying is fundamental; you could even do a slow rollout. It doesn't need to be a knife-switch cutover at two in the morning where you're scrambling around and, “Oh, my God, we forgot the entire accounting department.”Alex: Yep, that's exactly right. And that is, like, an attraction of deploying this is that you can actually deploy it department by department and not have to change all your infrastructure at the same time. So again, it's like pretty fundamental point here. It's like, if you're going to get adoption technology, it's not just about how cool the technology is under the hood and how advanced it is; it's actually thinking about from a customer and a business standpoint, like, how much is actually going to cost time-wise and effort-wise to move over to the new solution. So, we've really, really focused on that.Corey: Yeah. That is generally one of those things, that seems to be the hardest approach. I mean, let's back up a little bit here because I will challenge—likely—something that you said a few minutes ago, which is Google was the first and only company for a little while doing Zero Trust. Back in 2012, it turned out that we weren't calling it that then, but that is fundamentally what I built out of the ten-person startup that I was at, where I was the first ops hire, which generally comes in right around Series B when developers realize, okay, we can no longer lie to ourselves that we know what we're doing on an ops side. Everything's on fire and no one can sleep through the night. Help, help, help. Which is fine.I've never had tolerance or patience for ops people who insult people in those situations. It's, “Well, they got far enough along to hire you, didn't they? So, maybe show some respect.” But one of the things that I did was, being on the corporate network got you access to the printer in the corner and that was it. There was no special treatment of that network.And I didn't think much of it at the time, but I got some very strange looks and had some—uh, will call it interesting a decade later; most of the pain has faded—discussions with our auditor when we were going through some PCI work, and they showed up and said, “Great. Okay, where are the credentials for your directory?” And my response was, “Our what now?” And that's when I realized there's a certain point of scale. Back when I started as an independent consultant, everything I did for single-sign-on, for example, was my 1Password vault. Easy enough.Now, that we've scaled up beyond that, I'm starting to see the value of things like single-sign-on in a way that I never did before, and in hindsight, I'd like to go back and do things very differently as a result. Scale matters. What is the point of scale that you find is your sweet spot? Is it one person trying to connect to a whole bunch of nonsense? Is it small to midsize companies—and we should probably bound that because to me, a big company is still one that has 200 people there?Alex: To your original interesting point, which is that yeah, kudos to you for, like, implementing that, like, back then because we've had probably—Corey: I was just being lazy and it was what was there. It's like, “Why do I want to maintain a server in the closet? Honestly, I'm not sure that the office is that secure. And all it's going to do—what I'm I going to put on that? A SharePoint server? Please. We're using Macs.”Alex: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's, we've had, like, I don't know at this point, thousands of customer conversations. The number of people have actually gone down that route implementing things themselves as a very small number. And I think that just shows how hard it is. So again, like, kudos.And I think the scale point is, I think, really critical. So, I think it's changed over time, but actually, the point at which a customer gets to a scale where I think a solution has, like, leveraged high value is when you get to maybe only 50, 75 people, which is a pretty small business. And the reason is that that's the point at which a bunch of tools start getting implemented a company, right? When you're five people, you're not going to install, like, an MDM or something on people's devices, right? When you get to 50, 75, 100, you start hiring your first IT team members. That's the point where them being able to, like, centralize management of things at the company becomes really critical.And so, one of the other aspects that makes this a little bit different terms of approach is that what we see is that there's a huge number of tools that have to be managed, and they have different configuration settings. You can't even get consistency on MDM is across different platforms, necessarily, right? Like, Linux, Windows, and Mac are all going to have slight differences, and so what we've been working with the platform towards is actually being the centralization point where we integrate with these different systems and then pull together, like, a consistent way to create those authentication authorization policies I was talking about before. And the last thing on SSO, just to sort of reiterate that, I think that you're talking about you're seeing the value of that, the other thing that we've, like, made a deliberate decision on is that we're not going to try to, like, re-solve, like, a bunch of these problems. Like, some of the things that we do on the user authentication point is that we rely on there being an SSO, like, user directory, that handles authentication, that handles, like, creating user groups. And we want to reuse that when people are using Twingate to control access to network destinations.So, for us, like, it's actually, you know, that point of scale comes fairly early. It only gets harder from there, and it's especially when that IT team is, like, a relatively small number of people compared to number of employees where it becomes really critical to be able to leverage all the technology they have to deploy.Corey: I guess this might be one of those areas where I'm not deep enough in your space to really see it the same way that you do, which is the whole reason I have people like you on the show: so I can ask these questions directly. What is the painful position that I find myself in that I should say, “Ah, I should bring Twingate in to solve this obnoxious, painful problem so I never have to think about it again.” What is it that you solve?Alex: Yeah, I mean, I think for what our customers tell us, it's providing a, like, consistent way to get access into, like, a wide variety of internal resources, and generally in multi-cloud environments. That's where it gets, like, really tricky. And the consistency is, like, really important because you're trying to provide access to your team—often like it's DevOps teams, but all kinds of people can access these things—trying to write access is a multiple different environments, again, there's a consistency problem where there are multiple different ways to provide that, and there isn't a single place to manage all that. And so, it gets really challenging to understand who has access to what, makes sure that credentials expire when they're supposed to expire, make sure that all the routing inside those remote destinations is set up correctly. And it just becomes, like, a real hassle to manage those things.So, that's the big one. And usually where people are coming from is that they've been using VPN to do that because they didn't know anything better exists, or they haven't found anything that's easy enough to deploy, right? So, that's really the problem that they're running into.Corey: There's also a lot of tribal knowledge that gets passed down. The oral tradition of, “I have this problem. What should I do? I know, I will consult the wise old sage.” “Well, where can you find the wise old sage?” “Under the rack of servers, swearing at them.” “Great, cool. Well, use a VPN. That's what we've used since time immemorial.” And then the sins are visited onto yet another generation.There's a sense that I have that companies that are started now are going to have a radically different security posture and a different way of thinking about these things than the quote-unquote, “Legacy companies.”—legacy, of course, being that condescending engineering term for ‘it makes money—who are migrating their way into a brave new world because they had the temerity to found themselves as companies before 2012.Alex: Absolutely. When we're working with customers, there is a sort of a sweet spot, both in terms of, like, the size and role that we were talking about before, but also just in terms of, like, where they are, in, sort of like, the sort of lifecycle of their company. And I think one of the most exciting things for us is that we get to work with companies that are kind of figuring this stuff out for the first time and they're taking a fresh look at, like, what the capabilities are out there in the landscape. And that's, I think, what makes this whole space, like, super, super interesting.There's some really, really fantastic things you can do. Just give you an example, again, that I think might resonate with your audience quite a bit is this whole topic of automation, right? Your time at the tribal knowledge of, like, “Oh, of course. You know, we set up a VPN and so on.” One of the things that I don't think is necessarily obvious in this space is that for the teams that—at companies that are deploying, configuring, managing internal network infrastructure, is that in the past, you've had to make compromises on infrastructure in order to accommodate access, right?Because it's kind of a pain to deploy a bunch of, like, VPN gateways, mostly for the end-user because they got to, like, choose which one they're connecting to. You potentially had to open up traffic routes to accommodate a VPN gateway that you wouldn't otherwise want to open up. And so, one of the things that's, like, really sort of fascinating about, like, a new way of looking at things is that what we allow with Twingate—and part of this is because we've really made sure that the product is, like, API-first in the very beginning, which allows us to very easily integrate in with things, like, Terraform and Pulumi for deployment automation, is that now you have a new way of looking at things, which is that you can build a network infrastructure that you want with the data flow rules that you want, and very easily provide access into, like, points of that infrastructure, whether that's an entire subnet or just a single host somewhere. I think these are the ways, like, the capabilities have been realized are possible until they, sort of like, understand some of these new technologies.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friend EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB has been powering enterprise applications with PostgreSQL for 15 years. And now EnterpriseDB has you covered wherever you deploy PostgreSQL on-premises, private cloud, and they just announced a fully-managed service on AWS and Azure called BigAnimal, all one word. Don't leave managing your database to your cloud vendor because they're too busy launching another half-dozen managed databases to focus on any one of them that they didn't build themselves. Instead, work with the experts over at EnterpriseDB. They can save you time and money, they can even help you migrate legacy applications—including Oracle—to the cloud. To learn more, try BigAnimal for free. Go to biganimal.com/snark, and tell them Corey sent you.Corey: This feels like one of those technologies where the place that a customer starts from and where they wind up going are very far apart. Because I can see the metaphorical camel's nose under the tent flap being, “Ah, this is a VPN except it doesn't suck. Great.” But once you wind up with effectively an overlay network connecting all the things that you care about within an organization, it feels like that unlocks a whole universe of possibility.Alex: Mm-hm. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Like, a lot of people approach us because they're having a lot of pain with VPN and all the operational difficulties they were talking about earlier, but I think what sort of starts to open up is there's some, sort of like, not obvious things that happen. And one of them is that all of a sudden, when you can limit access at a network connection level, you start to think about, like, credentials and access management a little differently, right?So, one of the problems that well-known is people set a bastion host. And they set bastion host so that there's, like, a limited way into the network and all the, you know, keys are stored in that bastion host and so on. So, you basically have a system where fine, we had bastion host set up because, A, we want limited ingress, and B, we want to make sure that we know exactly who has access to our internal resources. You could do away with that and with a simple, like, configuration change, you can basically say, “Even if this employee for whatever reason, we've forgotten to remove—revoke their SSH keys, even if they still have those keys, they can't access the destination because we're blocking network access at their actual device,” then you have a very different way to restrict access. So, it's still important to manage credentials, but you now have a way to actually block things out at a network level. And I think it's like when people start to realize that these capabilities are possible that they definitely start thinking about things a little bit differently. VPNs just don't allow this, like, level of granularity.Corey: I am a firm believer in the idea that any product with any kind of longevity gets an awful lot of its use case and product-market fit not from the people building it, but from the things that those folks learn from their customers. What did you learn from customers rolling out Twingate that reshaped how you thought about the space, or surprised you as far as use cases go?Alex: Yeah, so I think it's a really interesting question because one of the benefits of having a small business and being early on is that you have very close relationships with all your customers and they're really passionate about your product. And what that leads to is just a lot of, sort of like, knowledge sharing around, like, how they're using your product, which then helps inform the types of things that we build. So, one of the things that we've done internally to help us learn, but then also help us respond more quickly to customers, is we have this group called Twingate Labs. And it's really just a group of folks that are outside the engineering org that are just allowed to build whatever they want to try to prove out, like, interesting concepts. And a lot of those—I say a lot; honestly, probably all of those concepts have come from our customers, and so we've been able to, like, push the boundaries on that.And so, it just gave you an example, I mean, AWS can be sometimes a challenging product to manage and interact with, and so that team has, for example, built capabilities, again, using that just the regular Twingate API to show that it's possible to automatically configure resources in AWS based on tags. Now, that's not something that's in our product, but it's us showing our customers that, you know, we can respond quickly to them and then they actually, like, try to accommodate some, like, these special use cases they have. And if that works out, then great, we'll pull it into the product, right? So, I think that's, like, the nice thing about serving a smaller businesses is that you get a lot of that back and forth to your customers and they help us generate ideas, too.Corey: One thing that stands out to me from the testimonials from customers you have on your website has been a recurring theme that crops up that speaks to I guess, once I spend more than ten seconds thinking about it, one of the most obvious reasons that I would say, “Oh, Twingate? That sounds great for somebody else. We're never rolling it out here.” And that is the ease of adoption into environments that are not greenfield because I don't believe that something like this product will ever get deployed to something greenfield because this is exactly the kind of problem that you don't realize exists and don't have to solve for until it's too late because you already have that painful problem. It's an early optimization until suddenly, it's something you should have done six months ago. What is the rolling it out process for a company that presumably already is built out, has hired a bunch of people, and they already have something that, quote-unquote, “Works,” for granting access to things?Alex: Mm-hm. Yeah, so the beauty is that you can really deploy this side-by-side with an existing solution, so—whatever it happens to be; I mean, whether it's a VPN or something else—is you can put the side-by-side and the deployment process, just to talk a little bit about the architecture; we've talked a lot about this client that runs on the user's device, but on the remote network side, just to be really clear on this, there's a component called a connector that gets deployed inside the remote network, and it does not have to be installed on every single destination host. You're sort of thinking about it, sort of like this routing point inside that network, and that connector controls what traffic is allowed to go to internal locations based on the rules. So, from a deployment standpoint, it's really just put a connector in place and put it in place in whatever subnet you want to provide access to.And so you're—unlikely, but if your entire company has one subnet, great. You're done with one connector. But it does mean you can sort of gradually roll it out as it goes. And the connector can be deployed in a bunch of different environments, so we're just talking with AWS. Maybe it's inside a VPC, but we have a lot of people that actually just want to control access to specific services inside a Kubernetes cluster, and so you can deploy it as a container, right inside Kubernetes. And so, you can be, like, really specific about how you do that and then gradually roll it out to teams as they need it and without having to necessarily on that day actually shut off the old solution.So, just to your comment, by the way, on the greenfield versus, sort of like, brownfield, I think the greenfield story, I think, is changing a little bit, I think, especially to your comment earlier around younger companies. I think younger companies are realizing that this type of capability is an option and that they want to get in earlier. But the reality is that, you know, 98% of people are really in the established network situation, and so that's where that rollout process is really important.Corey: As you take a look throughout what you're seeing customers doing, what you see the industry doing as a result of that—because customers are, in fact, the industry, let's be clear here—what do you think is, I guess, the next wave of security offerings? I guess what I'm trying to do here is read the tea leaves and predict what the buzzwords will be all over the place that next RSA. But on a slightly more serious note, what do you see this is building towards? What are the trends that you're identifying in the space?Alex: There's a couple of things that we see. So one, sort of, way to look at this is that we're sort of in this, like, Third Wave. And I think these things change more slowly than—with all due respect to marketers—than marketers would [laugh] have you believe. And so, thinking about where we are, there's, like, Wave One is, like, good old happy days, we're all in the office, like, your computer can't move, like, all the data is in the office, like, everything is in one place, right?Corey: What if someone steals your desktop? Well, they're probably going to give themselves a hernia because that thing's heavy. Yeah.Alex: Exactly. And is it really worth stealing, right? But the Wave One was really, like, network security was actually just physical security, to that point; that's all it was, just, like, physically secure the premises.Wave Two—and arguably you could say we're kind of still in this—is actually the transition to cloud. So, let's convert all CapEx to OpEx, but that also introduces a different problem, which is that everything is off-network. So, you have to, like, figure out, you know, what you do about that.But Wave Three is really I think—and again, just to be clear, I think Wave Two, there are, like, multi-decade things that happen—and I'd say we're in the middle of, like, Wave Three. And I think that everyone is still, like, gradually adapting to this, which is what we describe it as sort of people everywhere, applications are everywhere, people are using a whole bunch of different devices, right? There is no such thing as BYOD in the early-2000s, late-90s, and people are accessing things from all kinds of different networks. And this presents a really, really challenging problem. So, I would argue, to your question, I think we're still in the middle of that Wave Three and it's going to take a long time to see that play through the industry. Just, things change slowly. That tribal knowledge takes time to change.The other thing that I think we very strongly believe in is that—and again, this is, sort of like, coming from our customers, too—is that people basically with security industry have had a tough time trying things out and adopting them because a lot of vendors have put a lot of blockers in place of doing that. There's no public documentation; you can't just go use the product. You got to talk to a salesperson who then filters you through—Corey: We have our fifth call with the sales team. We're hoping this is the one where they'll tell us how much it costs.Alex: Exactly. Or like, you know, now you get to the sales engineer, so you gradually adopt this knowledge. But ultimately, people just want to try the darn thing [laugh], right? So, I think we're big believers that I think hopefully, what we'll see in the security industry is that—we're trying to set an example here—is really that there's an old way of doing things, but a new way of doing things is make the product available for people to use, document the heck out of it, explain all the different use cases that exist for how to be successful your product, and then have these users actually then reach out to you when they want to have more in-depth conversation about things. So, those are the two big things, I'd say. I don't know if those are translated buzzwords at RSA, but those are two big trends we see.Corey: I look forward to having you back in a year or two and seeing how close we get to the reality. “Well, I guess we didn't see that acronym coming, but don't worry. They've been doing it for the last 15 years under different names, so it works out.” I really want to thank you for being as generous with your time as you have been. If people want to learn more, where should they go?Alex: Well, as we're just talking about, you try the product at twingate.com. So, that should be your first stop.Corey: And we will of course put links to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being as forthcoming as you have been about all this stuff. I really appreciate your time.Alex: Yeah, thank you, Corey. I really appreciate it. Thanks.Corey: Alex Marshall, Chief Product Officer at Twingate. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a long angry ranty comment about what you hated about the episode, which will inevitably get lost when it fails to submit because your crappy VPN concentrator just dropped it on the floor.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

About AlexAlex Su is a lawyer who's currently the Head of Community Development at Ironclad, the #1 contract lifecycle management technology company that's backed by Accel, Sequoia, Y Combinator, and other leading investors. Prior to joining Ironclad, Alex sold cloud software to legal departments and law firms on behalf of early stage startups. Alex maintains an active presence on social media, with over 180,000 followers across Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok. Links Referenced: Ironclad: https://ironcladapp.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-su/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/heyitsalexsu Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heyitsalexsu/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@legaltechbro TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate. Is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other; which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability: it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: I come bearing ill tidings. Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code that they write, but also the containers and the cloud infrastructure that their apps run on. Because serverless means it's still somebody's problem. And a big part of that responsibility is app security from code to cloud. And that's where our friend Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are - Finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, Repos, and Pipelines. Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like code pipeline, EKS, ECR, and more! As well as things you're actually likely to be using. Deploy on AWS, secure with Snyk. Learn more at Snyk.co/scream That's S-N-Y-K.co/screamCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I've been off the beaten path from the traditional people building things in cloud by the sweat of their brow and the snark on their Twitters. I'm joined today by Alex Su, who's the Head of Community Development at Ironclad, and also relatively well-renowned on the TikToks, as the kids say. Alex, thank you for joining me.Alex: Thank you so much for having me on the show.Corey: It's always been an interesting experience because I joined TikTok about six months or so ago, due to an escalatingly poor series of life choices that continue to fail me, and I have never felt older in my life. But your videos consistently tend to show up there. You are @legaltechbro, which sounds like wow, I hate all of those things, and yet your content is on fire.How long have you been doing the public dance thing, for lack of a better term? I don't even know what they call it. I know how to talk about Twitter. I know how to talk about LinkedIn—sad. LinkedIn is sad—but TikTok is still something I'm trying to wrap my ancient brain around.Alex: Yeah, I felt out of place when I first made my first TikTok. And by the way, I'm known for making funny skits. I have actually never danced. I've always wanted to, but I don't think I have that… that talent. I started posting TikToks in, I will call it—let's call it the fall of 2020. So, after the pandemic.Before that, I had been posting consistently on LinkedIn for, gosh, ever since 2016, when I got into legal tech. And during the pandemic, I tried a bunch of different things including making funny skits. I'd seen something somewhere online if somebody's making fun of the doctor life. And so, I thought, hey, I could do that for legal too. And so, I made one with iMovie. You know, I recorded it on Zoom.And then people started telling me, “Hey, you should get on this thing called TikTok.” And so, I resisted it for a while because I was like, “This is not for me.” But at some point, I said, “I'll try this out. The editing seems pretty easy.” So, I made a couple of videos poking fun at the life of a law firm lawyer or a lawyer working for a corporate legal department.And on my fourth video, I went massively viral. Like, unexpected went viral, like, millions of—I think two million or so views. And I found myself with a following. So, I thought, “Hey, I guess this is what I'm doing now.” And so, it's been, I don't know, a year-and-a-half since then, and I've been continuously posting these skits.Corey: It's like they say the worst thing can happen when you go into a casino and play for the first time is you win.Alex: [laugh].Corey: You get that dopamine hit, and suddenly, well now, guess what you're doing for the rest of your life? There you go. It sounds like it worked out for you in a lot of fun ways. Your skits about big law of life definitely track. My wife used to work in that space, and we didn't meet till she was leaving that job because who has time to date in those environments?But I distinctly remember one of our early dates, we went out to meet a bunch of her soon-to-be-former coworkers at something like eight or nine o'clock in Los Angeles on a Friday night. And at the end of it, we went back to one of our places, and they went back to work. Because that is the lifestyle, apparently, of being in big law. I don't have the baseline prerequisites to get into law school, to let alone get the JD and then go to work in big law, and looking at that lifestyle, it's, “Yeah, you know, I don't think that's for me.” Of course, I say that, and then three days later, I was doing a middle of the night wake up because the pager went off.Like, “Oh, are you a doctor?” And the pager is like, “Holy shit. This SSL certificate expires in 30 days.” It's, yeah. Again, life has been fun, but it's always been one of those things that was sort of, I guess, held in awe. And you're putting a very human face on it.Alex: Yeah. You know, I never expected to be in big law either, Corey. Like, I was never good at school, but as I got older, I found a way to talk my way into, like, a good school. I hustled my way into a job at a firm that I never imagined I could get a job at. But once I got in, that's when I was like, “Okay, I don't feel like I fit in.”And so, I struggled but I still you know grinded it out. I stayed at the job for a couple of years. And I left because I was like, “This is not right for me.” But I never imagined that all of those experiences in big law ended up being the source material for my content, like, eight years after I'd left. So, I'm very thankful that I had that experience even if it wasn't a good fit for me. [laugh].Corey: And on some level, it feels like, “Where do you get your material from?” It's, “Oh, the terrible things that happened to me. Why do you ask?”Alex: That's basically it. And people ask me, they say, you know, “You haven't worked in that environment for eight years. It's probably different now, right?” Well, no. You know, the legal industry is not like the tech industry. Like, things move very slowly there.The jokes that made people laugh back then, you know, 10 years ago, even 20 years ago, people still laugh at today because it's the same way things have always worked. So, again, I'm very thankful that that's been the case. And, you know, I feel like, the reason why my content is popular is because a lot of people can resonate with it. Things that a lot of people don't really talk about publicly, about the lifestyle, the culture, how things work in a large firm, but I make jokes about it, so people feel comfortable laughing about it, or commenting and sharing.Corey: I want to get into that a little bit because when you start seeing someone pop up again and again and again on TikTok, you're one of those, “Okay, I should stalk this person and figure out what the hell their story is.” And I didn't have to look very far in your case because you're very transparent about it. You're the head of community development at a company called Ironclad, and that one threw me for a little bit of a loop. So, let's start with the easy question, I suppose. What is Ironclad?Alex: We're a digital contracting technology that helps accelerate business contracts. Companies deal with contracts of all types; a lot of times it gets bogged down in legal review. We just help with that process to make that process move faster. And I never expected I'd be in this space. You know, I always thought I was going to be a trial lawyer.But I left that world, you know, maybe six years ago to go into the legal technology space, and I quickly saw that contracts was kind of a growing challenge, contracting, whether it's for sales or for procurement. So, I found myself as a salesperson in legal tech selling, first e-discovery software, and then contracting software. And then I found my way to Ironclad as part of the community team, really to talk about how we can help, but also speaking up about the challenges of the legal profession, of working at a law firm or at a legal department. So, I feel like it's all been the culmination of all my experiences, both in law and technology.Corey: In the world in which I've worked, half of my consulting work has been helping our clients negotiate their large-scale AWS contracts and the other half is architectural nonsense of, “Hey, if you make these small changes, that cuts your bill in half. Maybe consider doing them.” But something that I've learned that is almost an industry-wide and universal truism, is that you want to keep the salespeople and the lawyers relatively separate just due to the absolute polar opposites of incentives. Salespeople are incentivized to sell anything that holds still long enough or they can outrun, whereas lawyers are incentivized to protect the company from risk. No, is the easy answer and everything else is risk that has to be managed. You are one of those very rare folks who has operated successfully and well by blending the two. How the hell did that happen?Alex: I'm not sure to this day how it happened. But I think part of the reason why I left law in the first place was because I don't think I fit in. I think there's a lot of good about having a law degree and being part of the legal profession, but I just wanted to be around people, I wanted to work with people, I didn't want to always worry about things. And so, that led me to technology sales, which took me to the other extreme. And so, you know, I carried a sales quota for five years and that was such an interesting experience to see where—to both sell technology, but also to see where legal fit into that process.And so, I think by having the legal training, but also having been part of a sales team, that's given me appreciation for what both teams do. And I think they're often at tension with one another, but they're both there to serve the greater goals of the company, whether it's to generate revenue or protect against risk.Corey: I think that there's also a certain affinity that you may have—I'm just spitballing wildly—one of the things that sales folks and attorneys tend to have in common is that in the public imagination, as those roles are not, shall we call it, universally beloved. There tend to be a fair number of well, jokes, in which case, both sides of that tend to be on the receiving end. I mean, at some level, all you have to do is become an IRS auditor and you've got the holy trifecta working for you.Alex: [laugh]. I don't know why I gravitated to these professions, but I do think that it's partly because both of these roles hold a significant amount of power. And if you look at just contracting in general, a salesperson at a company, they're really the driver of the sales process. Like, if there's no sale to be made, there's no contract. On the flip side, the law person, the lawyer, knows everything about what's inside of the contract.They understand the legal terms, the jargon, and so they hold an immense amount of power over advising people on what's going to happen. And so, I think sometimes, salespeople and legal people take it too far and either spend too much time reviewing a contract and lording it over the business folks, or maybe the salesperson is too blase about getting a deal done and maybe bypasses legal and doesn't go through the right processes. By the way, Corey, these are jokes that I make in my TikToks all the time and they always go viral because it's so relatable to people. But yeah, that's probably why people always make jokes about lawyers and salespeople. There's probably some element of ridiculing people with a significant amount of power within a company to determine these transactions.Corey: Do you find that you have a better affinity for the folks doing contract work on the seller side or the buyer side? Something they don't tell you when you run companies is, yeah, you're going to spend a lot of time working on contracts, not just when selling things, but also when buying things and going back and forth. Aspects of what you're talking about so far in this conversation have resonated, I guess, with both sides of that for me. What do you have the affinity for?Alex: I think on the sales side, just because of my experience, you know, I think when you go through a transaction and you're trying to convince someone to doing something, and this is probably why I wanted to go to law school in the first place. Like I watched those movies, right? I watched A Few Good Men and I thought I'd be standing up in court convincing a jury of something. Little did I know that that sort of interest [crosstalk 00:10:55]—Corey: Like, Perry Mason breakthrough moment.Alex: That moment where—the gotcha moment, right? I found that in sales. And so, it was really a thrill to be able to, like, talk to someone, listen to them, and then kind of convince them that, based on what challenges they're facing, for them to buy some technology. I love that. And I think that was again, tied to why I went to law school in the first place.I didn't even know sales was a possible profession because I grew up in an immigrant community that was like, you just go to school, and that'll lead to your career. But there's a lot of different careers that are super interesting that don't require formal schooling, or at least the seven years of schooling you need for law. So, I always identify with the sales side. And maybe that's just how I am, but obviously, the folks who deal with the buy side, it's a pretty important job, too.Corey: There's a lot of surprise when I start talking to folks in the engineering world. First, they're in for a rough awakening at times when they learn exactly how much qualified enterprise salespeople can make. But also because being a lawyer without, you know, the appropriate credentials to tie into that, you're going to have a bad time. There are regulatory requirements imposed on lawyers, whereas to be a salesperson, forget the law degree, forget the bachelor's, forget the high school diploma, all you really need to be able to do from an academic credential standpoint is show up.The rest of it is, can you actually sell? Can you have the conversations that convince people to see the outcome that benefits everyone? And I don't know what that it's possible, or advised necessarily, to be able to find a way to teach that in some formalized way. It almost feels like folks either have that spark or they don't. Do you think it's one of those things that can be taught? Do you think it's something that people have to have a pre-existing affinity for?Alex: It's both, right, because part of it is some people will just—they don't have the personality to really sell. It's also like their interest; they don't want to do that. But what I found that's interesting is that what I thought would make a good salesperson didn't end up being true when I looked at the most effective sellers. Like, in my head, I thought, “Oh, this is somebody who's very boisterous, very extroverted,” but I found that in my experience in B2B SaaS that the most effective sellers are very, very much active listeners. They're not the people showing up and talking at you. They are asking you about your day-to-day asking about processes, understanding the context of your situation, before making a small suggestion about what you might want to do.I was very impressed the first time I saw one of these enterprise sellers who was just so good at that. Like, I saw him, and he looked nothing like what I imagined an effective sales guy to look like. And he was really kind and he just, kind of, just talked to me, like, I was a human being, and listened to my answers. So, I do think that there is some element of nature, your talent when it comes to that, but it can also be trained because I think a lot of folks who have sales talent, they don't realize that they could be good at it. They think that they've got to be this extroverted, happy hour, partying, storyteller, where —Corey: The Type A personality that interrupts people as they're having the conversation.Alex: Yeah, yeah.Corey: Yeah.Alex: So anyways, I think that's why it's a mix of both.Corey: The conversations that I've learned the most from when I'm talking to prospects and clients have been when I asked the quote-unquote, dumb question that I already know the answer to, and then I shut up and I listen. And wow, I did not expect that answer. And when you dig a little further, you realize there's nuance that—at least in my case—that I've completely missed to the entire problem space. I think that is really one of the key differentiators to my mind, that separate people who are good at this role from folks who just misunderstand what the role is based upon mass media, or in other cases—same problem with lawyers—the worst examples, in some cases, of the profession. The pushy used car salesperson or the lawyer they see advertising on the back of a bus for personal injury cases. The world is far more nuanced than that.Alex: Absolutely. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, you know, you ask those questions and let them talk. Because that's an entire process within the sales process. It's called discovery, and you're really asking questions to understand the person's situation. More broadly, though, I think pitching at people doesn't seem to work as well as understanding the situation.And you know, I've kind of done that with my content, my TikToks because, you know, if you look at LinkedIn, a lot of people in our space, they're always prescribing solutions, giving advice, posting content about teaching people things. I don't do that. As a marketer, what I do is I talk about the problems and create discussions. So, I'll create a funny video—Corey: I think you're teaching a whole generation that maybe law school isn't what they want to be doing, after all there is that.Alex: There is that. There is that. It's a mix of things. But one of the things I think I focus on is talking about the challenges of working with a sales team if you're an in-house lawyer. And I don't prescribe technology, I don't prescribe Ironclad, I don't say this is what you need to do, but by having people talk about it, they realize, right—and I think this is why the videos are popular—as opposed to me coming out and saying, “I think you need technology because of XYZ.” I think, like, facilitating the conversation of the problem space, that leads people to naturally say, “Hey, I might need something. What do you guys do, by the way?”Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friend EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB has been powering enterprise applications with PostgreSQL for 15 years. And now EnterpriseDB has you covered wherever you deploy PostgreSQL on-premises, private cloud, and they just announced a fully-managed service on AWS and Azure called BigAnimal, all one word. Don't leave managing your database to your cloud vendor because they're too busy launching another half-dozen managed databases to focus on any one of them that they didn't build themselves. Instead, work with the experts over at EnterpriseDB. They can save you time and money, they can even help you migrate legacy applications—including Oracle—to the cloud. To learn more, try BigAnimal for free. Go to biganimal.com/snark, and tell them Corey sent you.Corey: It sounds ridiculous for me to say that, “Oh, here's my entire business strategy: step one, I shitpost on the internet about cloud computing; step two, magic happens here; and step three people reach out to talk about their AWS bills.” But it's also true. Is that the pattern that you go through: step one, shitpost on TikTok; step two, magic happens here; and step three people reach out asking to learn more about what your company does? Or is there more nuance to do it?Alex: I'm still figuring out this whole thing myself, but I will say shitposting is incredibly effective. Because I'm active on Twitter. Twitter is where I start my shitposts. TikTok, I also shitpost, but in video format, I think the number one thing to do is figure out what resonates with people, whether it's the whole contracting thing or if it's frustrations about law school. Once you create something that's compelling, the conversation gets going and you start learning about what people are thinking.And I think that what I'm trying to figure out is how that can lead to a deeper conversation that can lead to a business transaction or lead to a sale. I haven't figured it out, right, but I didn't know that when I started creating content that spoke to people when I was a quota-carrying salesperson, people reached out to me for demo requests, for sales conversations. There is something that is happening in this quote-unquote, “Dark funnel,” that I'm sure you're very familiar with. There's something that's happening that I'm trying to understand, and I'm starting to see.Corey: This is probably a good thing to the zero in on a bit because to most people's understanding of the sales process, it would seem that you going out and making something of a sensation out of yourself on the internet, well what are you doing that for? That's not sales work? How is that sales? That's just basically getting distracted and going to do something fun. Shouldn't you be picking up the phone and cold calling people or mass-emailing folks who don't want to hear from you because you trick them into having a badge scanned somewhere? I don't necessarily think that is accurate. How do you see the interplay of what you do and sales?Alex: When you're selling something like makeup or clothing, it's a pretty transactional process. You create a video; people will buy, right? That's B2C. In B2B, it's a much more complex processes. There's so many touchpoints. The start of a sales conversation and when they actually buy may take six months, 12 months, years. And so, there's got to be a lot of touch points in between.I remember when I was starting out in my content journey, I had this veteran enterprise sales leader, like, your classic, like, CRO. He said to me, “Hey, Alex, your content's very funny, but shouldn't you be making cold calls and emails? Like, why are you spending your time doing this?” And I said, “Hey, listen, do you notice that I'm actually sourcing more outbound sales calls than any other sales rep? Like, have you noticed that?”And he's like, “Actually, yeah, I did notice that. You know, how are you doing it?” And I was like, “Do you not see that these two are tied? These are not people I just started calling. They are people who have seen my content over time. And this is how it works.”And so, I think that the B2B world is starting to wise up to this. I think, for example, Ironclad is leading the way on creating a community team to create those conversations, but plenty of B2B companies are doing the same thing. And so, I think by inserting themselves in a conversation—a two-way conversation—during that process, that's become incredibly effective, far more so than, like, cold-calling a lawyer or a developer who doesn't want to be bothered by some pushy salesperson.Corey: Busy, expensive professionals generally don't want to spend all their time doing that. The cold outreach emails that drive me nuts are, “Hey, can we talk for half an hour?” Yeah, I don't tend to think in terms of billable hours because that's not how I do anything that I do, but there is an internal rate that I used to benchmark and it's what you want me just reach into my pocket and give you how much money for a random opportunity to pitch me on something that you haven't even qualified whether I need or not? It's like, asking people for time is worse, in some ways, than asking for money because they can always make more money, but no one can make more time.Alex: Right, right. That's absolutely right.Corey: It's the lack of awareness of understanding the needs and motivations of your target market. One thing that I found that really aided me back when I was working for other folks was trying to find a company or a management structure that understood and appreciated this. Easy example, when I was setting out as an independent consultant after a few months I'd been doing this and people started to hear about me. But you know, it turns out that there are challenges to running a business that are not recommended for most people. And I debated, do I take a job somewhere else?So, I interviewed at a few places, and I was talking to one company that's active in the cloud costing space at the time and they wanted me to come aboard. But discussions broke down because they thought I was, quote, “More interested in thought leadership than I was and actually fixing the bills themselves.” And looking at this now, four years later or so, yeah, they were right. And amazing how that whole thing played out, but that the lack of vision around, there's an opportunity here, if we can chase it, at least in the places I was at, was relatively hard to come by. Did you luck out in finding a role that works for you in this way or did you basically have to forge it for yourself from the sweat of your brow and the strength of your TikTok account?Alex: It was uphill at first, but eventually, I got lucky. And you know, part of it was engineered luck. And I'll explain what I mean. When I first started out doing this, I didn't expect this to lead to any jobs. I just thought it would support my sales career.Over time, as the content got more popular, I never wanted to do anything else because I was like, I don't want to be a marketer. I'm not a—I don't know anything about demand gen. All I know is how to make funny videos that get people talking. The interesting that happened was that these videos created this awareness, this energy in our space, in the legal space. And it wasn't long before Ironclad found me.And you know, Ironclad has always been big on community, has always done things like—like, our CEO, our founder, he said that he used to host these dinners, never talking about Ironclad, but just kind of talking about law school and law with potential clients. And it would lead to business. Like, it's almost the same concept of, like, not pushing sales on people. And so, Ironclad has always had that in its DNA. And one of our investors, our board members, Jessica Lee from Sequoia, she is a huge believer in community.I mean, she was the CEO of another company that leveraged community, and so there's this community element all throughout the DNA of Ironclad. Now, had I not put myself out there with this content, I may not have been discovered by Ironclad. But they saw me, they found me, and they said, “We don't think about these things like many other companies. We really want to invest in this function.” And so, it's almost like when you put yourself out there, yes, sometimes some people will say, “What are you doing? Like, this makes no sense. Like, stop doing that.” But there's going to be some true believers who come out and seek you out and find you.And that's been my experience here, like, at Ironclad. Like, people were like, “When you go there, are they going to censor you? Is your content going to be less edgy?” No. Like, they pulled me aside multiple times and said, “Keep being yourself. This is what we want.” And I think that is so special and unique. And part of it is very much lucky, but it's also when you put yourself out there kind of in a big way, like-minded people will seek you out as well.Corey: I take the position that part of marketing, part of the core of marketing, is you've got to have an opinion. But as soon as you have an opinion, people are going to disagree with you. They're going to, effectively, forget the human on the other side of it and start taking you for a drag on social media and whatnot. So, the default reaction a lot of people have is oh, I shouldn't venture opinions forward.No. People are always going to dislike you for something and you may as well have it be for who you are and what you want to be doing rather than who you're pretending to be. That's always been my approach. For me, the failure mode was not someone on Twitter is going to get mad about what I wrote. No one's going to read it. That's the failure mode. And the way to avoid that is make it interesting.Alex: That is a hundred percent relatable to me because I think when I was younger, I was scared. I did worry that I would get in trouble for what I posted. But I realized these people I was worried about, they weren't going to help me anyways. These are not people who are going to seek me out and help me but then say, “Oh, I saw your content, so now I can't help you.” They were not going to help me anyways.But by being authentic to myself and putting things out there, I attracted my own tribe of people who have helped me, right? A lot of my early results from content came not because I reached my target customers; it was because somebody resonated with what I put out there and they carried my message and said, “Hey, you should talk to Alex.” Something special happens when you kind of put yourself out there and say an opinion or share a perspective that not everyone agrees with because that tribe you build ends up helping you a lot. And meanwhile, these other people that might not like it, they probably weren't going to help you either.Corey: I maintain that one of the most valuable commodities in the universe is attention. And so, often there's so much information overload that's competing for our attention every minute of every day that trying to blend in with the rest of it feels like the exact wrong approach. I'm not a large company here. I don't have a full marketing department to wind up doing ad buys, and complicated campaigns, and train a team of attacking interns to wind up tackling people to scan their badges at conferences. I've got to work with what I've got.So, the goal I've always had is trigger the Rolodex moment where someone hears about a problem in the AWS billing space—ideally—and, “Oh, my God, you need to talk to Corey about that.” And it worked, for better or worse. And a lot of it was getting lucky, let's be very clear here, and people doing me favors that they had no reason to do and I'll never be able to repay. But being able to be in that space really is what made the difference. Now, the downside, of course, when you start doing that is, how do you go back to what happened before?If you decide okay, well, it's been a fun run for you and Ironclad. And yeah, TikTok. Turns out that is, in fact, for kids; time to go somewhere else. Like, I don't know that you would fit into your old type of job.Alex: Yeah. No, I wouldn't. But very early on, I realized, I said, “If I'm going to find meaningful work, it's okay to be wrong.” And when I went to big law, I realized this is not right for me. That's okay. I'm just not going to get another big law job.And so, when people ask me, “Hey, now that you've put yourself out there, you probably can't get a job at a big firm anymore.” And that's okay to me because I wasn't going to go back anyways. But what I have found, Corey, is that there's this other universe of people, whether it's a entrepreneur, smaller businesses, technology companies, they would be interested in working with me. And so, by being myself, I may have blocked out a certain level of opportunities or a safety net, but now I'm kind of in this other world where I feel very confident that I won't have trouble finding a job. So, I feel very lucky to have that, but that's why I also don't worry about the possibility of not going back.Corey: Yeah, I've never had to think about the idea of, well, what if I go have to get a job again? Because at that point, it means well, it's time to let every one at the company who is depending on the go, and that's the bigger obstacle because, let's be honest, I'm a white guy in tech, and I look like it. My failure mode is basically a board seat and a book deal because of inherent bias in the system.Alex: [laugh]. Oh, my god.Corey: That's the outcome that, for me personally, I will be just fine. It's the other people took a chance on me. I'm terrified of letting them down. So far, knock on wood, I haven't said anything too offensive in public is going to wind up there. That's also not generally my style.But it is the… it is something that has weighed on me that has kept me from I guess, thinking about what would my next job be? I'm convinced this is the last job I'll ever have, if for no other reason that I've made myself utterly unemployable.Alex: [laugh]. Well, I think many of us aspire to find that perfect intersection of what you love doing and what pays the bills. Sounds like you've found it, I really do feel like I found it, too. I never imagined I'd be doing what I do now. Which is also sometimes hard to describe.I'm not making TikToks for a living; I'm just on the community team, doing events—I'm getting to work with people. I'm basically doing the things that I wanted to do that led me to quit that job many years ago, that big law job many years ago. So, I feel very blessed and for anybody who's, like, looking for that type of path, I do think that at some point, you do need to kind of shed the safety nets because if you always hang on to the safety nets, whether it's a big tech job or a big law job, there's going to be elements of that that don't fit in with your personality, and you're never going to be able to find that if you kind of stay there. But if you venture out—and, you know, I admire you for what you've done; it sounds like you're very successful at what you do and get to do what you love every day—I think great things can happen.Corey: Yeah, I get to insult Amazon for a living. It's what I love. It's what I would do if I weren't being paid. So, here we are. Yeah—Alex: [laugh].Corey: I have no sense of self-preservation. It's kind of awesome.Alex: I love it.Corey: But you're right. It's… there's something to be said for finding the thing that winds up resonating with you and what you want to be doing.Alex: It really does. And you know, I think when I first made the move to technology, to sales, there was no career path. I thought I would—maybe I thought I might be a VP of Sales. But the thing is, when you put yourself out there, the opportunities that show up might not be the ones that you had always seen from the beginning. Like if you ask a lawyer, like, “What can I do if I don't practice law?” They're going to give you these generic answers. “Work here. Work there. Work for that company. I've seen a lot of people do this.”But once you put yourself out there in the wilderness, these opportunities arise. And I've been very lucky. I mean, I never imagined I'd be a TikTokker. And by the way, I also make memes on Twitter. Couldn't imagine I'd be doing that either. I learned, like, Mematic, these tools. Like, you know, like, I'm immersed in this internet culture now.Corey: It is bizarre to me and I never saw it coming either. For better or worse, though, here we are, stuck at it.Alex: [laugh].Corey: I really want to thank you for taking so much time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more about what you're up to and follow along for the laughs, if nothing else, where's the best place for them to find you?Alex: The best way to find me is on LinkedIn; just look up Alex Su. But I'm around and on lots of social media platforms. You can find me on Twitter, on Instagram, and on TikTok, although I might be a little bit embarrassed of what I put on TikTok. I put some crazy gnarly stuff out there. But yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me.Corey: And we will put links to all of it in the show notes, and let people wind up making their own decisions. Thanks so much for your time, Alex. I really appreciate it.Alex: Corey, thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.Corey: Alex Su, Head of Community Development at Ironclad. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry insipid comment talking about how unprofessional everything we talked about is that you will not be able to post for the next six months because it'll be hung up in legal review.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

If you look on Twitter or do a quick Google search, you'll find a ton of chatter about the foolproof DTC playbook. Everyone has ideas about the surefire ways that young DTC brands should be setting themselves up for success. Alex Kubo is here to tell you that those playbooks aren't as written in stone as you might think. Alex is the VP of ecommerce and digital marketing at Burrow, a DTC furniture brand, and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he explained how and why the Burrow team threw out the playbook when certain aspects of it fell flat. For example, Alex talks about the lessons they learned about the signals that pricing sends, and why it's critical to put the right price on your product to attract the right customer even if that means pricing higher than the playbook says. Alex also dives into what it means to actually be customer centric and how Burrow stays in constant communication with customers. Plus, we discuss why marketing toward buying events or using a spray and pray strategy across a dozen channels is about as useful as setting your money on fire. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Sending The Right Signals: How you price your product or service is one of the most significant ways you signal to customers who you are as a brand and what value you bring. If you price too low, you risk being lumped in with brands that don't necessarily fit with the type of products or value you bring to the table.More Than Words: Saying you are customer-centric and actually being customer-centric are two very different things. To be truly customer-centric requires regularly talking to and learning from your customers and then building experiences and products based on those conversations. You can't just assume you know what customers want, you have to do the work to find out.A Horse of a Different Color: There are best practices and guidelines that many companies follow to get themselves off the ground. Sometimes those playbooks work, but in other cases, you have to toss out what everyone says is the right strategy and go in a new direction. Whether that's in your social strategy, your pricing, or how you're getting feedback from customers, don't be afraid to buck tradition and do something different.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:Welcome to Up Next In Commerce. I'm your host Stephanie Postles, CEO at mission.org. Today on the show, we have Alex Kubo joining us, who currently serves as the VP of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing at Burrow. Alex, welcome.Alex:Thanks, Stephanie. Excited to be here.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm very excited to have you here. It was cool reading a bit about Burrow's background and starting at Y Combinator, and I was thinking it might be fun to start there, back in 2016. What did it look like starting the company, and then we can get into today?Alex:Totally. So, I was fortunate that I actually met the two co-founders of Burrow while were on the same business school program in Philadelphia. And back in the fall of 2015, actually, Kabeer and Stephen, the two co-founders and my classmates were both furnishing their apartments as they moved into Philadelphia for the program, and they had two very distinct but related experiences. Kabeer purchased a sofa from West Elm in Philly, and it wasn't going to arrive for about 12 to 16 weeks, which I think, nowadays, people are pretty used to seeing those timelines, but Originally, it was like, "Whoa, this is not Amazon." And so, Kabeer actually used the cart, the dolly in his apartment building and rolled it to West Elm, and picked up a floor model and brought it home, because the lead time was going to be longer than his first semester, so obviously, that was not going to be a great experience.Alex:Stephen went the classic IKEA route, right, where you don't come in to grad school with a ton of money and need to furnish your space quickly. And so he did that, and then ultimately, it's a waste down the road, right? IKEA furniture, you can't move because of the quality of the materials and that sort of thing.Stephanie:[crosstalk]. Yeah.Alex:Yeah. So, the question ultimately became, why can't you have that higher end quality that you might find at a West Elm, or Pottery Barn, or Crate and Barrel, but the convenience, the modern day conveniences that Amazon has made the default expectation of consumers, so fast, and free shipping, and easy delivery process, and be able to modularize that design so that you can set it up and not have to deal with like the IKEA hex key or any of these really cumbersome assembly processes? And so, that concept was born. And out of that came a series of product innovation that ultimately, Stephen and Kabeer got into Y Combinator with just a pitch deck and no product and used that accelerator to develop the product, to prototype the product, and ship it.Alex:A funny little anecdote is that from the time they incorporated the company to the time they shipped their first product was shorter than the period of time that West Elm quoted Kabeer to ship his first couch.Stephanie:Oh, wow. That's great.Alex:Yeah.Stephanie:And what were you doing when they were going through Y Combinator?Alex:I was actually working on my own concept in the health and fitness space and ended up calling time on it right towards the end of the summer because of a number of challenges that I was having on my end, and joined up with Stephen and Kabeer to help build out the demand side of the business. And I had a relatively intimate knowledge of the business and where they were at because we were in all the same classes working on our own businesses. And I had helped them tangentially with sourcing components during our first year of the program, because I have a background in mechanical engineering and they didn't have any background in physical hardware. And so, there was already the groundwork for relationship. And then I was trying to move my own discipline into more of a consumer facing and ground level marketing and product marketing role, so it actually made a lot of sense.Alex:So, we set it up as a brief relationship to make sure that the working relationship was there, which it turned out very quickly, it was. So, I have been tasked or had been tasked with basically just building demand and ran with it since.Stephanie:So, since then, what does the world look like now compared to when you started and you were building up demand? I mean, I'm sure you guys were trying out Facebook and all the traditional platforms that everyone's like, "Every brand should be on Instagram and Facebook, and if you're not here, where are you?" What did it look like then and now?Alex:So, now it's a much more disciplined and much more properly positioned business than it was in the beginning. Two critical mistakes that were good healthy mistakes to make in the early days were, number one, brand positioning and product positioning. We had this idea in our head that... and sort of the classic Warby Parker pricing story of like, they wanted to price it $45, but their advisors and professors advised them not to do that because it would signal the wrong value to the customer. We had a similar experience where, for some reason in our heads, we had to price our couch under $1,000. And we made that decision because we wanted to be hyper competitive on price and make it the default, obvious solution.Alex:The problem that we failed to acknowledge is that consumers nowadays have very limited time to understand the differences and nuances between products. They're not stupid, they're not lazy, but they do have very limited time. And so, you have to be very clear and explicit with them, and part of that is signaling. And one of the most powerful parts of marketing that I think is most often overlooked is a focus on pricing and what that does from a positioning standpoint.Alex:When a lot of shoppers were seeing our product under $1,000 and the fact that it shipped in boxes, which we were very forward with, because we focus so much on the attributes of the product and less on the experience around it, which is another step in our evolution, that people immediately equated those two things, low price and ships in boxes, with a more expensive version of IKEA. So, then it was us talking to IKEA shoppers, and you're not going to convince an IKEA shopper to spend another 300, $400 on a sofa, right? What you need to do is talk to the West Elm shopper, the Pottery Barn shopper, the Crate and Barrel shopper.Alex:So, we actually, for a number reasons, increased prices in late 2017, about half a year after we launched.Stephanie:How much did you increase them by?Alex:Originally, the sofa was priced at 950. By the way, much different cogs, profile as well, at that point. We increased the price to 1,095 to start. So, it was a pretty meaningful difference on a percentage basis, and especially when you talk about margins.Alex:Interestingly enough, everything you learned in microeconomics about the relationship with the supply and demand curves went out the window, because we increased the price and demand shot through the roof.Stephanie:Wow. Did you get it in front of new people? What else were you doing to get it-Alex:I mean, we were doing a lot of the same things in terms of building full funnel architecture on paid social and paid search and that sort of thing, and again, applying a lot of those early D2C playbook type approaches, which ultimately turned out to not be the best approach for us. But nothing changed substantially from a marketing perspective. We were still reaching a lot of the same people, it's just that we were now signaling to those people that we belonged in the comparison set with a higher quality piece of furniture. That helps also, because a lot of our value props, it's much easier to convince somebody who has shopped at one of these higher end brands and had to wait super long or had to go to a showroom and deal with a frustrating shopping experience with this overbearing sales associate, pay for shipping, and ultimately, have to be home to get a piece of furniture delivered, and either take a day off from work. Again, much different world back then than it was today.Alex:But it's much easier to talk to those kinds of people who've experienced those pain points and tell them, "I'm going to take all of that pain away," than it is to talk to somebody who's never experienced those pain points and doesn't need the higher quality piece of furniture, again, the IKEA shopper, and talk to them about all these future pain points that they've never experienced but that we can help them avoid. That's maybe one of the biggest lessons learned, is that people do not think much about the future. They're often very, very focused on the present. And so, as much as you want to talk about why you should go to the doctor every year, why should you should go to the dentist every six months, it's like, people are not going to react until they have a problem.Alex:So, we've experimented a bunch with what is the leading value prop. So, we talked to consumers, and one of the ones that we talked about very early was this concept of modularity and how, when you move into your next apartment, you can just purchase another seat instead of buying a whole new sofa to accommodate the new space, or rearrange the existing configuration that you have to fit the new space requirements. Problem is, people are not thinking about that. They don't really care. They can't think that far in advance of two to three to four years down the road when moving into the next apartment. And so, we've deprioritized that in terms of communication and lead with other things that are more immediate, like fast and free shipping.Stephanie:Yeah. Got it. So, you're mentioning earlier that the D2C playbook didn't work for you guys, where now, even these days, you can search that and you'll find a bunch of the playbooks and people are still saying like, "This is what you need to do to be successful." What were some other things that you did back then that you completely reversed and you were like, "This doesn't work for us"?Alex:Yeah. So, I think, first, was not acknowledging how complex and lengthy the shopping journey is for a piece of furniture online. Obviously, it's a big investment, it's also mutually exclusive with something else, your home, right? Let alone the high price, you're not going to just buy another couch when you have an existing one in your home, right? You need to think about getting that out or you have to do it right at the right moment with a moving event or something like that.Alex:So, the first thing that we had to realize is that what we can't do is architect our funnel around existing attribution technology or just rely on optimizing towards purchase events in digital channels. What we had to do is to look upstream and find correlations and causation between different upstream, midstream, and bottom stream events to really architect a healthy full funnel. And so, most of our campaigns are not architected towards purchase events, they're architected towards or optimized towards something more upstream.Stephanie:[crosstalk] for a couple examples.Alex:Yeah. I guess one interesting one that we've learned over time is there's a pretty clear correlation between add to cart and purchase, and the cart abandonment rate is relatively steady. We do things over time, obviously, to improve that, but it's not something that fluctuates wildly over time. And so, one of the things we can do is just optimize towards an add to cart versus a purchase.Alex:The other benefit of that is it often can happen in the first session. So, when you see a lot of the privacy restrictions right now and a lot of the issues with cookies going away and that sort of thing, it helps us. We've actually always been architected to bear that burden a little bit better than some of our other D2C peers.Alex:And then the other thing, besides the purchase journey, was also that we were just doing way too many things at once. We had, and we still have today, a very lean team. The difference between now and then is that back then, we thought the best approach was to spray as wide as we possibly could and activate 10 to 15 channels with me managing all of them, by the way, and not doing a good job.Stephanie:It sounds very chaotic and not fun.Alex:Yeah. Not at all, not at all. And only until we really peeled back and just focused on a handful of things and did them really, really well, that's when we actually started churning results, but more importantly, honestly, that's when we started actually learning what was working. Because previously, we were just spending a lot of money, we were generating sales, but we didn't really have a clear idea of where they were coming from, again, because the purchase journey was so complex, right? It wasn't a problem that we could solve by just putting an attribution layer in somewhere. We had to really hyper focus on one or two things and do them really, really well.Alex:The concept of growth in the past has generally been focused on the top line. And what that means, often, for a lot of companies, is to just go into as many different channels and try to tap into as many different demographics as you possibly can and then find out what's working and what's not working. I think the issue is that the broader investment community has wisened up to that, right, and they're holding us more accountable on a unit economics and customer economics level, versus just month over month top line growth, which in reality, it's just a vanity metric, right?Alex:So, it is more favorable to take a more disciplined approach, albeit potentially slower top line growth, to really uncover those median sites that you can actually build a solid foundation on and grow a real, scalable, profitable company on versus just something that's just, scaling wildly at the top one but in reality it's just lighting money on fire.Stephanie:So, for a higher priced product like Burrow and a longer buying cycle, what platforms would you advise other brands to look at and optimize for and which ones would you pull back from?Alex:Yeah. So, I think if you acknowledge that it is, there are a lot of things that people have to learn about the product, a lot of things that people have to get comfortable with and confident in the purchase. You think that a lot of these shorter form mediums, like paid social, paid search, right? It's just a quick second and a half interaction with an ad, they're not going to be as effective for a product like ours, and that's true. What we have indexed up on are things that are more storytelling mediums. So, the earliest insight into this was we partnered with a small podcast in late 2017, and it's sort of one of those micro ones, it's not on a network, and just talks about fantasy football. And we just got introduced to the gentleman that runs it, and did a small test, and the results were incredible.Alex:Part of what we've learned over time from that point, rapidly scaled the podcast program for us is that it's highly dependent on the host, and the reason that it's highly dependent on a host is because the efficacy of that channel comes from the quality of the storytelling. And that is really what benefits our brand, is that if we go and we send a podcast host a product and they have the same amazing experience that our customers have, they can talk about it in a much more authentic way, but also, a much more individual way. We've actually matured to not providing very detailed scripts to a lot of our podcasts hosts and just telling them to talk about what has been most exciting for you, and that really brings out the energy in the advocacy for the brand from the host. So, I'd say it's really about focusing on storytelling mediums. So, I lumped other video, long form video into that as well. A little bit less of authenticity, but also helps communicate a lot of these little value props that add up to the major value proposition.Stephanie:So, the other thing that comes to mind is branded content. I mean, I'm thinking about something like Formula One where now the results are out, everyone knows it worked really well for them. It was very, I would think, pretty organic, didn't feel like it was just a brand push. How are you guys thinking about other kinds of content like this?Alex:I don't know if we're at the stage yet where we can start thinking about that sort of thing. I think that Formula One is a great example of taking two powerhouses and linking them together where the sum is greater than or the whole is greater than the some of the parts. So, we're thinking a little bit less about something like that and creating more on a micro scale, I would say, brand and content.Alex:So, when you talk about something like the influencer arena, I am probably the biggest advocate against using influencers in the context that they are used today. And first of all, just to clarify, a true influencer is not somebody that says, "I'm an influencer" on their Instagram profile description, right? A true influencer is somebody that can speak to a community and elicit a response, and often, within a specific category, right? So, I'm not going to give a beauty "influencer" a furniture product and expect him or her to have an outsized impact on the sales.Stephanie:Stephanie:So, you'd focus on the niche influencer who might only have 1,500 followers or something, which is something I think I talked about early on this show, of going through the comments of Instagrammers and seeing, are the people in there asking, "Where can I buy that? Where did you get that from?" Or are they just like, "That's great. Cool. I love that." What kind of engagement are you getting will show if that person has influential power over their community or not.Alex:Totally, totally. And obviously, it's going to vary by a vertical too. This is sort of an extreme example, right? Again, going back to the very considered purchase, even our ability to measure the impact of that is going to be super limited. So, we've actually leaned into the influencer community for, more so is, partnering with actually photography influencers. One of the bottlenecks and problems with our vertical is that our products are very large and our photo shoots and video shoots require massive studios and massive crews that are very, very expensive. Meanwhile, all of these people out there that can already take great pictures and already have really interesting homes need furniture. And so, we can often partner with them in a much more economically scalable way to get a huge diversity and huge volume of content created that can showcase different styles, different aesthetics, different home types, and different personalities, and just build this library of content instead of having to book homes ourselves and go through the whole production process.Alex:So, we've actually been doing that for a while just purely based on economic reasons. But it's interesting to see that now, I think there's going to be a massive shift towards organic for a number of other reasons. When you talk about a lot of the privacy regulations that are going on right now, over the last 10 years, the control of the voice or the conversation has shifted towards the consumer and towards the user. You see like case examples of this with like GameStop, for example. The retail investor just had a massive impact on the market from such a small player, right? Because the control of the conversation momentum is shifting away from the brands that have the big budgets and towards the customers that have the voice, the authentic following.Stephanie:That's the influencer of the year right there.Alex:Yeah, totally.Stephanie:And Reddit. And that's probably where all the other influencers are, an area that I haven't even thought to go, but we've had guests come on previously where Reddit is how they figured out how to build their business, which I haven't even thought to go there. Alex:Totally, totally. I mean, it makes total sense, right? It's experts that are talking because they're passionate about what they're talking about, right, not because they have a vested interest or they are trying to make money off of it, then that's where you get that authentic content from and the actual truth.Stephanie:So, how do you go about incentivizing that or structuring it so it can come in? Because I'm sure a lot of brands are like, "I want my customers to talk about me and take pictures and do all the things," and then they just sit there and nothing comes in. So, what are you doing behind the scenes to make that happen?Alex:So, it's less about focusing so much effort on trying to elicit that response just by trying to elicit it and more about really focusing on that product innovation and that experience that will naturally have that effect on people, right? You don't want somebody to talk about your product in a positive way because you're paying them to talk about it in a positive way, you want them to really advocate, because that means that not only are they talking on the channel that you want them to talk about it, they're also having side conversations. And when people come over to their homes and they're asking, "Wow, where did you get that beautiful sofa from?" They are talking not just about, "Oh, I got it from Burrow," they're also saying like, "And it happens to have these stain resistant fabrics, and it has all of these great other materials, and it was modular, and it was super easy to get it delivered and get it set up." And that's what you really want to go off of.Alex:So, I would say the biggest focus should be on nailing that product innovation and nailing that customer experience, and that's how you can count on that customer conversation to be generated rather than trying to chase down your customers and get them to talk about it in a less authentic way.Stephanie:Yeah, I agree. I think that the days when people on Amazon are like, "I got paid for this review," or something, those will be gone very soon, because I don't know about you, but every time I go through a threat and I see that, I'm like, "Don't trust you, don't trust you." I just want to see the normal person who's reviewing it at their own goodwill, or not, maybe they're mad, but I want that. I don't want someone saying, "I got a free product for this review." That just seems like those days are gone.Alex:Yeah, totally, totally.Stephanie:So, the other thing I want to talk about is product development. I saw that your co-founder and CEO said, "Every single product we've ever launched has exceeded expectations and projections, and that's a testament to our customer-centric research-driven design process," which I want to dive into that and hear. I'm sure many brands are like, "I want every single product of mine to be a success, and I want to expand my skews." So, how do you guys go about designing and crafting new products?Alex:Well, I think one thing that we should clear up is the concept of customer centricity is used so broadly and inauthentically, I think. A lot of brands will claim customer centricity and they'll think that they're being customer centric because that's who their customer is and they just need to make money off of them, and so they'll say that they're thinking about all their needs. The problem is they're not actually talking to the customers, they're assuming on behalf of the customers that they know what that customer needs. Or they're just testing messaging, which is fine. That's been the traditional approach of, "Okay, if I play up this feature or this benefit versus this feature or this benefit, and this one does better, that's what the customer must want," right? But it almost becomes a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy there.Alex:We take it to a much deeper level, not just with our customer community but also our lead community, all of our email subscribers that have yet to join and make an actual purchase with us, and actually going to them and asking them very specific and lengthy questions. I remember the first time we sent out a customer survey about one of the next products that we were going to launch and just wanted to get their input on like, "Is this the right product?" Number one, and B, "What are those little things that really bother you about this product?" And did a ton of just open ended response analysis based on that.Alex:The biggest surprise for me from that was the response rate. For a quiz or rather survey that took probably a solid 10 to 15 minutes of someone's time to go through and really complete in depth, which they did, the response rate was astounding. And that opened our eyes to, "Wow, this needs to become a regular occurrence within our work stream."Stephanie:How quickly were you sending this to them? Was it a week after they got their product and are trying to set it up, or what did that look like?Alex:Well, there's a couple different ones. So, what we have is a couple different touch points that are automated or triggered based on somebody actually making their first purchase with us. So, we had, obviously, a post purchase survey right away, which I think is one of the most underappreciated and can be most impactful survey points that people do, or brands do, rather. We also have an NPS survey, which going back to how do you elicit a response from customers and activate customers, NPS is going to be your biggest indicator of how much of that is happening in the background. And that is actually backed up by an element on the post purchase survey where we ask, "Were you were referred by a friend? Does that friend own Burrow furniture, or do they not, or do not know?" And that can also give us a really solid indication of the impact.Alex:So, beyond the triggered survey points, we also do intermittent studies, and it's almost on a monthly cadence now, of either focuses on new categories in general, or we've already identified the category, we've already identified the specific product and we're trying to nail down colors, color combinations, finishes, specific features, doing conjoint analyses on like, what is most important to this set of consumer? I mean, we've really taken it to a super, super deep level.Stephanie:Have there been any products that you launch based off consumer feedback or maybe early launches where it's like, "Oh, they led us astray with that one"? Because I'd be like, "I want a fluorescent pink couch." And then I'd be like, "Oh, I had a little too much wine that night. Sorry about that."Alex:Yeah. Fortunately, we're pretty good at statistics and we can identify outliers and not get swayed by them too much. There actually have not been. And I think it speaks volumes for this concept of authentic customer centricity where... and you can also cross-compare between the customer set and the subscriber set, right? The subscribers are a great audience because they have not purchased anything from you, or at least the subscribers that are not customers, and there's a reason why, right? Versus the customers, they did find something that you offered already and they've already bought into the brand, and they're responding to you because they're still engaged. And so, that's one set of needs that you need to fulfill.Alex:And then there's the other set of needs, and oftentimes, there's a good amount of overlap, which is great for us, and oftentimes, there's not, and that's when we need to make choices around what does that offering look like and who are we really chasing with that?Stephanie:Yep. The other thing I think you mentioned in the past was around how you start thinking about zoning and mapping out what else a person needs in their room, which means like, "Oh, brilliant, okay, if someone got a couch, a little swivel chair, and obviously, they need pillows." And I want to hear, did that method work, and how have you expanded that since you first started trying it I think maybe a year and a half ago or so?Alex:It did, totally. I mean, you take one concrete example of this is with the advent of coffee tables for us. We first launched the sofa and then we launched our first line of coffee tables, and those were specifically designed dimensionally to work best with the sofa styles that were selling the most volumetrically. So, we knew that there was a high rate of match, right, between them. It wasn't like we were designing for something that we were only selling like 5% of our assortment or something like that.Alex:Where that took another level is in 2019, we launched the corner sectional, and then arrangements and configurations started getting a lot more varied and a lot more... opened up actually, additional demographics as well, with more suburban, satellite city homes with larger room spans. And that opened up a new category, and so what we had to do is to figure out, "Okay, well, if you have a five-seat corner sectional, none of our coffee tables really make sense for that. And so, how do we create a coffee table that works perfectly in that configuration for that customer specifically?" So, that's when you saw in late 2020, we released our Kettle and Signal collections, which are more of a round geometry versus a rectangular geometry. And that happens to work really well with things like a Double Chaise Long King Sofa, where the chaise is wrapped nicely around the round coffee table, or the corner sectional, it creates a really nice conversation pit type feeling.Alex:So, it is very much about understanding how our pieces interact. And then the next level that is, what are the types of rooms that people are using it in? What are the actual dimensions of those rooms? And what logically, could somebody need the most, given that room design and size?Stephanie:It seems like a lot of brands are missing that right now, because oftentimes, I mean, whether it's furniture or a lot of other things, I'm like, "Where is that matching dresser set? Or where is the pillow that goes with that?" And it feels like having to go around and look in different places and trying to find it myself, I'm like, "Why am I doing the work? I just want a kit which is like, 'Here's all the five things that match together.'" But why is that so hard? I don't get why can't brands do that?Alex:I think one of the biggest examples of this is that company brand list that skyrocketed, but they were launching things in such unrelated categories that there was no bond between them. And companies nowadays need to think a lot more about lifetime value than they had to necessarily, in the past. Acquisition cost is growing, and they can no longer just rely on first purchase profitability in order to sustainably scale their business, and they need to think about building a relationship with the customer. And that often comes from creating relationship and being the default brand or site to go back to when they may have that next need and finding that perfect accompanying piece, right? Versus just like you buy cleaning detergent from the company, and you come back and, oh, they're offering soccer balls or something.Stephanie:Pillows.Alex:Yeah, it's like, "Okay, well, that doesn't make sense."Stephanie:Yeah. Which makes me think, I mean, it seems like the world is headed towards a more curated world right now. Maybe back in the day, I would go to a Wayfair or something like that and I'd be like, "Cool, I'm fine with scrolling, scrolling," five years later, still scrolling and looking for what I want. It doesn't seem like consumers want that anymore. So, how do you see the consumer journey and preference adjusting now where maybe a couple years ago, that would be totally fine?Alex:Yeah. I think it's almost a byproduct of the ease of standing up a company nowadays. It is exponentially easier to start a company, a direct to consumer company than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. So, because of that, the market has just blown up in terms of the number of companies. And so, the paralysis of choice has shifted from like going to an old school Sears or Macy's and just having like a million different options, or as you put it, like a Wayfair, and just tens of millions of options, to now having to build a relationship with a brand and trust that that brand is making the right decisions. And so, that's why we offer a very select assortment of fabric colors, leg finishes, arm styles. In reality, we can house tens of component skews and offer tens of thousands of combinations to the customer, but what's ultimately the most important thing is that we do it in a way that is still a very simple and clean experience for the customer so that they get that sense of they're creating their own product, but not to the extent of being overwhelmed.Alex:I think of myself on old school furniture sites and staring at the screen from two inches away trying to figure out the difference between this gray and that gray, and I'm like... and then you request swatches from them and they come 10 weeks later.Stephanie:Yeah. I've recently been through that experience. It's not great.Alex:Yeah. No, it's not fun.Stephanie:They arrived and I'm like, "What was I trying to buy, again?" [crosstalk]. I mean, it seems like you guys could also have a very localized approach where, like you mentioned earlier, if someone is looking from a very suburban area, like my hometown in Maryland, where my expectations there would have probably been to have a huge wraparound couch, I've got this big living room, versus being in San Francisco or Austin, where now it's like a little bit more limited space, and what can I fit in these small areas? [crosstalk] think about that?Alex:I mean, the first step there that we're taking, it's more from a content driven approach. So, that goes back or loops back to the way that we're treating influencers and leaning into the photography community and the different styles and aesthetics that they have. Because what we are creating are based products. They are beautiful but they don't belong in an architectural [inaudible] editor's home, right? They're not the one-off piece that you design and custom build for 15 grand or something.Alex:And what's beautiful about that is that they stand up to any environment that you're putting them in, whether it's a very eclectic like Austin ranch style home, or the fourth floor walk up apartment in New York, or a more sprawling home in Houston or another geography like that. And leaning in with more of that stylistic approach than necessarily sub-segmenting, "Oh, we're only going to show love seats to this geography, or we're only going to show these massive sprawling corner sectionals to this other geography," because people still have varying needs, a lot of people have multiple rooms. So, we don't want to limit, necessarily, the assortment, but we are trying to diversify constantly the styles and aesthetics that our products are showcased in.Stephanie:Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. So, for the last big point, I wanted to talk about the industry as a whole, like the D2C industry, commerce, what kind of things are you seeing or preparing for behind the scenes for what's to come?Alex:I mean, we could talk about the elephant in the room, which is-Stephanie:Let's talk about it. Yeah, let's do it. I haven't really talked too much about that, because it's been so up in the air, and when's it going to go through? It's more official now, so let's do it.Alex:Oh, yeah, it's official. This is a tough thing, and I think it's a reckoning for a lot of these companies, again, where it's been so easy to start a company and just go on Facebook, and you'll generate some sales, and go to a VC and you'll show 100% month over month growth, and they'll throw a bunch of cash at you. That's changing, and I'm thankful for it as much as I curse the fact that we don't have this GPS anymore, I'm very thankful that we don't, because it's forcing us to mature as marketers. And we're fortunate also that we've had to embrace this appreciation for marketing 101 and really lean into principles and not just trust what the ad platform are telling us, because it's a whole shopping journey.Alex:So, we've built a very healthy, full funnel approach proactively, even without any of this talk about these privacy regulations. That has helped us create something that can stand up in the face of this. There are a lot of companies that have not done that, they've not invested in really understanding marketing 101 and how to build a healthy full funnel without having that very granular level of insight or having automatic triggers in their campaigns and stuff. So, I think that is the most important thing, is like there is a day of reckoning for marketers everywhere in the D2C space to take a step back and really appreciate the principles of marketing and evaluate your program architecture overall and make sure that it's in a healthy state, and not just because your add to cart rates or your conversion rates are really high from this one campaign in this one ad unit, but really, overall, how is your program operating? Where are the weak points and how can you supplement those?Stephanie:Yeah. So, if you were starting over day one today, what kind of things would you look at? What metrics would you look at? What kind of things would you put in place to start building up that healthy funnel?Alex:Yeah. I think we would look at... I'm trying to think if I didn't have all the information that I have today, but I think what you would look at is the abandonment rate through the funnel, right? Of the people who click through to your site, how many of them end up viewing a product? Of those people, how many of them end up adding it? Of those people, how many of them end up actually proceeding to step one of checkout, step two, step three, step four? And find out what that makeup looks like.Alex:And obviously, you're going to spend a lot of time on conversion rate optimization and trying to improve the outputs of each step of that funnel. But that paints a picture of, okay, how broad do you have to invest at the top of that funnel if your ultimate target at the bottom of the funnel is X? And what does that reach look like? And what are the best mediums to do that to actually elicit a response and get people onto your site or into your store or signing up for whatever service you provide? So, that, I think, is what I would take as step one.Alex:The other one is, I would just consider, for the vertical that you're in and the product that you're trying to sell, how much of a story do you need to tell? And that will help inform how much you will need to invest in more storytelling mediums than more immediate click to buy type mediums. Also, how visual is your product? That will tell you how much you have to be content driven versus leaning into things like search or audio formats or anything like that. And that can really help govern your channel choices.Alex:And then the last thing is just, don't fall into the trap of doing too many things at once. There's always something to be said to acknowledging the resources that you have and trying to build a architecture that is best for that set of resources, not just the one that happens to be doing really well for the other portfolio company that your VC backer is constantly in your ear about, you have to focus on what is going to work for your company, your vertical, your customers specifically.Stephanie:Yep, yeah, I love all that. Is there or are there any tools right now that you're very excited about that are either new or just time tested, you're like, "We're going to keep using these forever because they do wonders for our marketing efforts"?Alex:I think a lot of it is less about tools and more about information sources. So, we've partnered with a number of different companies over time to do things like customer enrichment and really understand our customers to a deeper level, again, going back to that concept of customer centricity, not just talking to them directly, but also learning much, much more about them. And I think one of the biggest traps that a lot of companies fall into is they think of their customer as an average customer, and the problem is they're failing to acknowledge that customers are not one monotonous group, they are a system of clusters and cohorts. And what you really have to do is understand what is unique and important about each of these clusters and then create a messaging architecture, channel architecture, product offering that really speaks to each of those clusters individually.Alex:So, from a tools perspective, it's more about these data enrichment, customer data enrichment type platforms, and then using those to create these clusters and cohorts and really understand those customers. Again, for us, an attribution platform, not super helpful because of the complexity and both mix of offline and online activity that it takes to get to the purchase point. Much more about really understanding the customer and then applying a marketing 101 approach to it.Stephanie:Cool. Yeah, that's great. All right. Well, let's shift over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer.Alex:Oh, boy.Stephanie:Ready, Alex?Alex:Sure.Stephanie:Oh, boy. What's one thing you don't understand today that you wish you did?Alex:Shoot. Where do I start? I think I would like to understand more about the global supply chain. I think over the last six months to a year maybe, we've seen, very intimately, the impacts of a broken or strained supply chain, and I think that there's a huge opportunity for D2C companies to innovate on the supply chain side. We focus so much on how do we innovate on the customer side that we focus so much less on the supply side of the business. So, I think that is where... and it will become increasingly important for marketers and supply ops to be speaking and working very much hand in hand to grow a company together. So, I do wish I had more of that background.Stephanie:Yeah, that's great. And you guys just raised around, and I think that money, a part of it, was to focus on international supply chain effort, right? Figuring that out better.Alex:Yes, totally.Stephanie:So, you're already right in the right spot, the right time. You'll have to let everyone else know the insight. You have to come back and tell us what you learn next year.Alex:Yes, definitely.Stephanie:What's up next on your reading list or podcast list?Alex:There's actually a couple books I think that I want to reread. I'm one of those weird people that really likes to read technical books, and so there's a couple of conversations we're having right now about pricing in this book called Power Pricing that I love to read. There's also one by a gentleman named Douglas Holt called Cultural Strategy that I think is one of the most foundational and important books, especially for the world today. And again, how the customer controls the conversation, and understanding how to position your company and your messaging around cultural movements and ride momentum versus trying to create that momentum yourself as you have in the past. The last one is Shoe Dog, actually.Stephanie:Yes, such a good book.Alex:Amazing book. This would now be, I think, my third time reading it, but it is a way to, I think... A lot of people have been talking about languishing right now and the fact that we've been in this environment for so long and we're yearning for that personal interaction, and so tired of being in the sedentary and fixed on a digital screen environment. And I think Shoe Dog can help reignite a lot of that passion, right? Because it's like, "Wow, this multi-billion dollar company started at such a microscopic level." And it really helps you understand the power and the capability you have as an individual to create something like that and can help really reignite that passion.Stephanie:Yeah, that's one of my favorite books. Actually, we have a podcast called The Story that tells the unknown backstory of people who change the world, and we highlighted him in one of the episodes because we were like, "The story is too good not to tell, and tell, and tell until everyone hears it, and gets motivated and starts their thing today."Alex:Yeah, totally.Stephanie:That's awesome. I feel like they need a movie out or something. Do they have one?Alex:I'm sure there will be. I'm sure there will be.Stephanie:There has to be one. Too good of a story not to. What's one thing you're secretly curious about? [crosstalk].Alex:TikTok, I think.Stephanie:Are you all on there?Alex:We are not. From a demographic perspective, in the past, I would say a year and a half, it hasn't made sense. The program is continuing to grow, the demographic adoption is continuing to expand, and so I am interested in what it looks like going forward. I think it is also a challenging medium for a lot of brands that are really attached to high production quality content, because what scales the best on that platform is very lo-fi content, very organic and authentic content. And it creates this shift for a lot of companies in the way that they think about creative. So, I'm curious in that we are actively learning about our potential approach to that channel, but also curious about how does that platform and program evolve over time. I've not heard great things about the ad platform that they've built so far, which is partially why we've been hesitant to really go after the channel, but that will evolve. They will crack that code. And what that looks like, I don't know, but I'm certainly curious.Stephanie:Yeah. We've definitely heard 50-50 on TikTok, some brands saying it works wonders, but they're the ones creating their own content, maybe not an ad partner programs. I also think from a consumer standpoint, how it's going to evolve, because at least me personally, I think I got signed out and I couldn't remember my password-Alex:Oh, no.Stephanie:... and I just never signed back in. I'm like, "I'm not sure I really like it then, or maybe I know that just scrolling is not good for me."Alex:Yeah. That was me with Clubhouse, actually.Stephanie:Oh, same.Alex:I loved Clubhouse for the first seven days and was on it constantly and I have not been back on it for [crosstalk].Stephanie:Yeah. I think it got crowded. I mean, now it's just so busy, so many people talking about so many things, it didn't feel curated. I started feeling like that to me too where it was 50-50 of like, "I like these videos, and next nine, I don't like." I think there has to be curation to keep at least us involved, it sounds like.Alex:Yeah, totally. I mean, honestly, that's what happened with the podcast world too, right? It became everybody launched their own podcast, and then there's so much content. The biggest problem with podcasts now is discovery. The only way you learn about what to listen to is through your friends.Stephanie:Yeah.Alex:And so, that concept of discovery is such a challenge for podcasts right now, and I think that's what Clubhouse is going through at 1,000 times faster through the learning cycle.Stephanie:Yeah. I think the next couple of years will be interesting, because I mean, they've been talking about discovery issues back to even when I worked at Google, figuring out Google podcasts, and that was an issue back in 2017. So, why hasn't this been solved yet? It should be so much easier.Alex:Yeah.Stephanie:All right. Well, Alex, it's been awesome having you on the show, such a fun conversation. Where can people find out more about you and Burrow?Alex:Burrow.com would be the easiest place.Stephanie:What about you? Are you on LinkedIn? What if people want to talk to you?Alex:I am. LinkedIn. Alex Kubo. I'm not sure if you can actually search me and find me, but I'm sure you could.Stephanie:I'll find you. Don't worry. All right. Thanks so much, Alex.Alex:Thank you so much, Stephanie.

I sat down with my yogi Alex Schimmel from LifeTime Fitness here in Phoenix, AZ. Because I believe the health benefits of yoga are too important to ignore or at a minimum, spread the word, I had to have Alex on to share his knowledge with all of you, my listeners. If there is no other exercise you ever do, you MUST do yoga to stimulate every area of your body. It's amazing how using your own body weight in various poses, can make you really strong and get you in the best shape of your life. ********** Styles of Yoga taught at Life Time Fitness FIRE (HIIT)- Experience our new high-tempo format that blends intense anaerobic exercise with recovery periods ROOT (Fundamentals) - Start here and begin to understand yoga movement while holding the body in long basic poses SOL (Guided) - SOL is a guided yoga format that provides direction throughout from supportive teachers in a dynamic vinyasa format FLOW (Vinyasa) - Try our new guided practice where your teacher provides more deliberate cues throughout class SURRENDER (Yin) - Experience long connective tissue stretches and meditative breathing for greater breathing and self-acceptance BE (Meditation) - Develop a conscious, calm mind through meditation with a focus on breathing Alex's Links:"Inspire The F*ck Out of People" - eBook Presale Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theyogageneral/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexander.schimmel.5 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-schimmel-374484a/ Email: schimmelyoga@gmail.com Alex Schimmel - Life Time LifePower Yoga Boutique Manager LifePower Yoga Teacher Training Faculty LifePower Yoga Master Trainer https://youtu.be/vo_c_5pILKU ********** Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass ********** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Subscribe, Rate & Review:I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Follow Joe:Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcostelloglobal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jcostelloglobal/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jcostelloglobal/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUZsrJsf8-1dS6ddAa9Sr1Q?view_as=subscriber Transcript Alex Schimmel: Joe: Ok. Today, my guest is Alex Schimmel. Alex and I met over at Lifetime Fitness in the Biltmore area. And Alex is the yoga manager over there. And I was super excited to take as many yoga classes as I could. And luckily, Alex is the person over there that we really fell in love with. The way he teaches is his demeanor, everything about what he does. So, Alex, I'm really excited to have you here. And thanks for taking the time to do this. Alex: Yeah, thanks for having me, Joe. A pleasure. Looking forward, Joe: Yeah. Alex: You get to know each other better. Joe: Yeah, man. So my first. What I want to do first is just get to where we are today in the sense of how you got into this. I would I would assume that, you know, you took yoga like me, and then it became more of a passion. And then you became a yogi. But what can you go to when you started? Why you did it? How long you did it? Before you decided to make the jump to be a yogi. And and then we'll go from there. Alex: Yeah, for sure. So I'll give the abbreviated version, because it could be pretty long, but so my mom's a yoga teacher, so I've had yoga in my life, like, forever. I remember being a young kid maybe like seven or eight years old, and my friends would be playing wild in my house. And my mom would like eat. Guide us through relaxation in my living room. Like, you know, just to get us to probably calm down is it's probably not just to show us yoga, but to help us chill out a little bit. And so I used to go to my mom's yoga classes and I was like a little kid. And then my teenage years kind of rebelled against it. I thought the yoga was something that just like women do. Just people my mom's age did. So I wasn't really too open to it. And then towards the end of high school, I started to just get more like into spirituality. I read some spiritual books as I was given a book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra. And there's a lot of yoga philosophy in it. And it was things that I really like. It made sense to me. And it was the first time that because I wasn't really religious, I grew up Jewish, but not really like strong in religion. Alex: And those that that book and those spiritual teachings, it just it just resonated with me. And so that kind of open my eyes a little bit. And then I had an injury. I was a baseball player in college and I hurt my shoulder just playing like backyard football. And to kind of help heal that, I started to get into yoga, go to my mom's yoga classes again and. Soon after. I noticed that yoga was like. Not only did it make me feel better in my body, it also really helped me balance my schoolwork and just help me. Like I felt like it was just making my life better. And a lot of ways. And then my mom encouraged me to do this like two week teacher training. That was when I was like 19. I was my first teacher training. And that was really for my for my own knowledge. I wasn't really sharing it yet. But it was something that I knew enough where I could practice in my living room at home. And then fast forward a few years. My senior year of college actually got diagnosed with Crohn's disease. And Joe: Allow. Alex: I was a pretty tough, pretty tough time in my life. There was a lot of challenges. And yoga then became like instead of it just being an exercise, it really became my medicine. And to this day, it's still my best, my best medicine. So that was like that was the moment in my life where yoga was no longer just like a hobby or something. I did sometimes just like it's what I needed. And it became a daily way of living again, not just what I did on my map, but like a way that I live and honor all my relationships. And then after college, I graduated and I worked a sales job in New York City and really hustled and then did the grind for about a year. And it just was not a good mix for my health. And I realized, like, I was making a lot of money, but I wasn't fulfilled at all. And I I left that job. And then for the next, like three months, I traveled around to different yoga retreats and I did my first real two hundred hour teacher training. That was seven years ago now. And. And then once I got back from that, I was like, yeah, this is my. This is my path. It's my purpose. And I just kept going from that. Joe: That's really cool. And where did you take this training? Alex: Yes, it was it was so special. I did a. It was like a three week immersion and it was twenty five days in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. So it's a little island off the coast of Cancun. And it was like a super cool kind of rustic resort hotel retreat center. Like no TV's in the room. Very, very basic. But it was it was just like super blissful. And, you know, I feel really blessed and privileged. I was able to take that kind of trip to do my teacher training. I definitely, you know, empty my savings account and those, like, months of, like, wobbling around. But it was super special. And that training, it was way different than what I teach now. But it really taught me how to be a yogi. So it taught me not just how to teach yoga, but what it really means to to live a yoga lifestyle, what it really means to be good at yoga. And it was it was really powerful. Joe: Yeah, that's cool, and people talk about going to certain places to become a yogi, right? I mean, I guess I think like even myself, you think that people that do meditation and yoga and it stems out of like being in India or something like that. Right. Is that true or is that just another fallacy that Alex: Yeah, Joe: You know. Alex: I mean, yoga's origin, like, you know, the first the first time yoga was kind of found in any text or whatever it did, it did seem to originate from India, at least the yoga exercises. Right. The poses if you look at pretty much every spiritual tradition as far as like the philosophy goes. All of them are ways to practice yoga. So that's why some people can be really religious and they can practice yoga and they can become a better or more devout Christian or Jew or Muslim. So it's it's not like yoga is not a religion, but it is a spiritual practice. And a lot of those teachings are are universal, which I think is another reason that yoga is growing so much because they realize, like, wow, this kind of goes with what what I believe in. But as far as like historically. Yeah. And India's India's the the the birthplace of it. Joe: Kind of like the Mecca. Right. Alex: Yeah, yeah, it takes Joe: Ok. Alex: A lot of people go to India for four different paintings and stuff. There's I haven't been to India before. I think a lot of yogis kind of consider it like a rite of passage. You know, once you spent time in India, maybe you get a little more street cred and some. Joe: So that's the I so I was wondering, I guess my next question was going to be, had you gone to India yet? But it sounds like not yet, but I assume at some point maybe that's a goal. Alex: At some point, I mean, it's not like the top of my bucket list. There's a lot I love from Alan Watts and I think it's really applicable to that. He says the only Zen that you'll find at the mountaintop is the Zen that you bring with you. Joe: Yup. Alex: So like, you know, India sure, you can be immersed in a culture. And I think it's cool to learn about the history, but it doesn't necessarily make you a better yogi to spend time in India. You can you can find all those teachings. They're already they're already inside you, right? Joe: Sir. Alex: That's the idea. Like, whatever, you know, whatever yoga you find in India is probably yoga that you already have. Know, it just helps you kind of uncover it. So for some people, it becomes a life changing experience. And I've heard from other yogis that, you know, it didn't it didn't do so much for them. Joe: So let's bounce back to something that you said was was when you were in high school, you rebelled a little bit against it. Right. And it was based on the stigmatism that we all think about. There's these yoga people walking around, burning incense and walk around and samples and, you know, draped clothing or whatever. I don't know. Right. Alex: Maria. Joe: But I. But the purpose of this podcast for me is to inform people and to bring subjects like this, especially when I believe in it. Like, I wouldn't do this if if it was something I didn't believe in. I know how it's helped me. And I look forward to being there in your class. So I don't think enough people do yoga. And I think it's such an amazing thing to do if you can't do anything else. Like, if I have a day where I know I'm slammed and I can't go and pump a bunch of iron or whatever, and there's days where I'll do it before yoga and yoga is like the release of all of it right from me. But I would like you for me, it's like God if there's one thing you can do. Just do yoga. Alex: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it's I think especially like the styles that that I've learned, you know, and I do feel really grateful that I've been taught the practices that I've been taught. It's really all encompassing. Like, there's some people that I know that practice just yoga and they are ripped. Strong human beings, if that's what you're going for. But then in addition to that, like in addition to the physical, you get the mental benefits of the focus and the memory and the kind of meditation aspect of it. And then I think also just moving your body and doing breath where there's an incredible emotional release. And to me, most importantly, it's it's a spiritual practice that you connect with your essence and who you really are. So, yeah, I think I think yoga is it's it's amazing to do. And I and I agree with you more people. It's growing for share. It's great. Becoming more and more mainstream. But there's still a lot of people, especially especially men, that would benefit, that would benefit from it. How long Joe: Yeah, Alex: Have you. How long have you been practicing? Joe: To be honest with you, when we got to Lifetime and started with you. That's the only time I had done it up to that point. And I think I might even said this to you is that we had the P90X disc right. From Tony Horton and that, that yoga program on that desk was pretty good. It put us through a lot of cool things, but I don't think I ever took a class until yours. Alex: Nice is awesome. Love it. You got them there. You guys been there almost every day, it seems Joe: Yeah, Alex: Like. Joe: Now I'm hooked. And so here's the thing that I want to convey about you, just to take kind of like my own little infomercial about you and the reason why it's it's such a great class and Joelle and loves it and Ashley loves it. And there's you have this combination about you that is like the perfect yoga instructor or I don't know what. Is that what you call it? Yoga instructor. What's the proper. Alex: I guess the guy's a teacher. Some people Joe: Ok. Alex: Say doctors I feel like instructors, correct? Teacher. Teachers connect. Joe: Perfect. OK. So to me, you encompass the perfect yoga teacher. Now I'm lucky that I found you as my first. And I didn't, you know, whatever. I didn't get tarnished by anything else. But you're, you're the tone of your voice. That's the first thing we all talked about when we got back, was like your. Your voice is like very soothing for the practice. And then you do ramp up really nicely through the class. And then it comes back down really nicely. The storytelling that happens intermittently throughout the class. So I encourage anyone to just go there and take one of your classes. I know that. I think. But you can only go. You can only do it if you're a member. All right. Alex: Yeah, I think that right now, with with everything that's going on, I don't think really guest, guest passes. Joe: That's right. Alex: But luckily for everybody and all your listeners, too, there's a lifetime app and you don't have to be a member to download the app. And there's recorded classes on there. And I was just in Minnesota, I just recorded like five classes. So probably in the next week or two. Everyone, if you have a if you have a phone, if you have an app and on YouTube, I believe you, you'll be able to take my classes online. It's not the same experience. I'll tell you about it really even. I made a post on my social media about it yesterday. It's different teaching to just a camera. Like I realized that I really feed off people's energy Joe: Yep. Alex: When I'm in class. And I think and this is a shift that's happened to me more lately when I teach now. I used to be like a big planner. I got a plan what I was going to say and what stories I would tell. And now I just go in there with maybe a loose idea of what I teach, but I just kind of let it flow like and I feel like the students that are in the class, in a way, bring bring what they need to hear out of me. So it feels really good when that happens. And it was just different, you know. There was no students to bring it out of me. So much so. So those online classes are a different experience, but yet still still good in a way. You can check me out. Joe: Yeah, that's perfect. So I'll make sure that in the show notes, I put the link to all of that so that everyone can get a taste. And then unfortunately, the reason I didn't want to do this episode with you is I don't want the class to get full. And then Alex: Oh, Joe: I can't get in it. So Alex: Yeah. Joe: I was this balance between I want to have Alex on and I don't want people to take my spot in the class. Alex: Make sure you get a spot to. Joe: So let me see what I had. Oh, so I want you to tell. I want you to tell a couple of stories that you've told. So I, I and I remember, too. So I want you to tell the water bucket story. If you don't mind. Alex: Ok, to that Joe: I think Alex: One. Joe: It's super cool. Alex: Yeah, so I love stories, first of all, I actually just wrote an e-book for teachers, leaders, speakers. It's called it's called "Inspire the Fuck Out of People." And. Joe: Awesome. Alex: And it's a book about it's really just a book about storytelling mostly and like themes. It's what I do a lot in my teaching. All of my students realize that, like, when you come to my class, it's going to be more than a physical. There's always gonna be there's not always a story, but there's something deeper. So I just I just wrote my book. I compiled, like, all my stories and everything together. So. So that's pretty cool. And I do love stories. And one of the things about storytelling that's really cool is, is we're wired for storytelling. That's how we like as it as through history. That's how we've communicated. And so our brains are actually wired and there's all kinds of research and studies that have been done. And one thing that's really cool is when you tell a story, your you and your audiences brains get sinks. So I kind of think about like Inception. Have you seen the movie Inception? Joe: I probably have and I don't read. I'm the worst at remembering that Alex: It's Joe: You'd Alex: A stupid. Joe: Be surprised how many times I purchased a movie on Netflix and 10 minutes into it and like, damn, that's $4.99 I just wasted because I already saw. Alex: So anyway, so it's just like the idea when you when you tell stories, you can you can like better plant seeds in your audiences mind. So it's a really powerful way to convey messages and meetings and deeper teachings. So that's where I look. What's one of the things I love about storytelling? So that that storytelling of the the water bearer. So it's a story that there's a water bear. And I think the story of the woman is in India. And every day she has to go and walk like two miles to get water for her family. And she carries this big pole on her back with two buckets on each side. And every day she fills up the buckets and or the pots. And when she gets back to her house or her family or whatever, one of the parts is always like a little bit down, like half empty because there's a crack in it and a cracked pot feels inadequate. Right. It feels like it's not enough. Very similar to how a lot of humans feel and different things, especially when we live in such a world of comparison and competition and starts to feel like upset. And tell us the woman, you know, I feel so bad. You work so hard, you know, to take this long walk. And I don't I don't carry my full weight. Right. I always, always let some water go. Norman says the tomorrow when we take the walk, just notice the beautiful flowers that are along the path. Alex: And so they take a walk in the pot sees all these beautiful flowers shining in the sun. And it's like, you know, temporary happiness school. Beautiful. They get home still, that pot is half empty and still is is upset. It's like, yeah, I noticed the flowers. But that doesn't I'm not full, you know. And the woman says to the pot, hey, I knew you had a crack. So every day I noticed that you were like dripping water out. So what I do is I planted seeds all along the path. And did you notice how there was only flowers on one side? So every day we take that walk. When you leave the water out, you're not leaking the water. You're watering these beautiful flowers. That makes my walk more beautiful. It makes my family happy when I can bring the bring the wildflowers home. And, yeah, it's just it's a really big reminder that we all have cracks. We all have things that we look at as flaws. And recently, I don't know. I heard this from from one of my teachers. But our our mess. Right. They got flaws can become our message and they can become our purpose. And a lot of times those things that we view maybe as as ugly or we hide from others can end up being the most inspiring thing that we have to offer the world. Joe: Yeah, yeah, it's it's so true. Man, this is part of why I started to share just some of the things that have gone on through my life. Just because I think you have to tell these things to let people know that they're not alone in in these struggles or these these turns in the roads or whatever might happen. It's like you were talking in class about I think you reference about, you know, getting knocked to our knees and getting back up. And it's when we're in certain poses and that you can feel the distress and that sensation. And, you know, my arms is doing the side planks today. And my arm was wobbling like crazy. And I like man and it's true in it. And it's it's the way you teach it and it's the metaphors that you bring up and and you never correct anyone in the class. You know, everyone smile. There's a slight hint like, no, raise your arms up, not for whatever. But it's it's it's you know, it's done in a very compassionate, gentle way. And that's what keeps me coming back. It's like I don't want to go to a class and not know the poses and be judged, you know. And I was lucky, like literally Tony Horton's disc taught me enough to at least initially walk into that class without feeling completely ridiculous, but. Alex: Confidence. Joe: Right. But the cool thing is that you have these classes online that people can learn. Some of these initial poses are what you call them. Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Joe: Ok, I got I don't want to say the wrong thing and go, oh, my God, it is. And then take your first class. If you do some of the basic things, you'll feel really comfortable. Right. Alex: Yeah, and I've I have begin people that have never taken yoga classes that come in and take take those flow classes that are hot and and challenging for sure. But, you know, one of the big things and one of the things that like let me rewind a little bit when I was first starting to get back into yoga that I didn't like is I would take classes that were very like alignment based where it was all like posture focused. And hopefully you get and when you take my class, it's not really about the pose. I like Joe: Correct, Absolutely. Alex: Most. OK. It's it's there and it's good to move your body, but it's it's not so important. So I use to take these classes in like the whole class would just be pretty much like you're doing it wrong. This has to be turned this way and this has to be done in this way. And I felt like it didn't make me feel empowered. It made me feel like I was just like not good and weak and that like that I really had to honor what the teacher was saying. And then I decided that I tried to teach. I want you to come in and realize, hey, if all you do is breathe for 60 minutes and that happens sometimes, it hasn't happened so much and more because it's a new community. Sometimes you just gotta come on to your mat and breathe and it doesn't matter anything else that you do. Like if that's what you mean. Beautiful. And the poses truly are secondary and they truly are just an opportunity to to have some awareness in your body. It's not about like perfecting the pose. And I really want people to know that not just for me, but for many yoga teacher, yoga teacher stressing or like or like marketing themselves on. I'm going to help you do this posture where you can get really good at poses if you if you practice my yoga. There's a there's a A out there. You know, I think that some people really like that. And I get it. For me, though, there's there's so much more. And like I say, in say in my classes, we don't practice. You're going to get good at yoga poses. We practice. You're going to get good at life. Joe: Yeah, man, it's it's so true. Like I said, I can't thank you enough for, you know, this the way you handled the classes and it's we're like we're signed up for as many as as many as we can take. I don't want to, like, dehydrate myself. Taking a high flow class every day. But, yeah, we keep signing up. We love it. So before you when you you took the training and to become a yoga and where. How did you teach and how did you get into. What did you do before you landed at lifetime. Alex: Yeah, that's a great question. So first of all, like when you do a teacher training, the kind of the introductory level is 200 hours. That's like that's the training and really 200 hours because yoga is so complex and deep and there's so much to it. Two hundred hours is like kindergarten, right. You get that that kindergarten degree and you definitely have a knowledge foundation. But then you have to become you have to continue to learn. You have to always be a student. And so for me, I finished my 200 hour. This was this was after I lived in York City. I moved back with my parents and I came home from that training and I convinced my parents to get rid of our couches in the living room and turn it into a little yoga studio. But a yoga studio at my house and I didn't I guess I didn't really feel that confident yet to apply. There was really only one yoga studio in my town and I didn't really feel that confident yet. But what I started to do is just have three classes at my house and I put it on Facebook and I invite people to come in sometimes and have three or sometimes five. A lot of times like one and a lot of times just no one would come because again, I was like new to my, you know, seven years ago even there wasn't a whole lot of people that were practicing yoga wasn't very popular where I was living in South Jersey. But I did that for like three months. And I probably had like three classes a week at my house and started sharing where I could. And then and then I felt ready to audition at a local studio and taught there. And then fast forward, like, you know, for my first year of teaching, I was teaching and probably like five or six different studios in South Jersey. They're all super spread out. Those times are I'll drive an hour to go teach a class Joe: Oh, Alex: And like, Joe: Gosh. Alex: You know, and when you're a brand new yoga teacher, you don't get paid a whole lot. So sometimes I would like, you know, drive an hour to teach a class for fifteen bucks. But if that wasn't what it was about, it's never been Joe: Right. Alex: About that Joe: Right. Alex: Night. I do feel like I've, I've been blessed and I am happy that I have an entrepreneurial mind where it's yoga. I live a good life. I'm very happy with with the lifestyle and able to live through it. But I was teaching for a while. And then what I really wanted to do was share yoga, like I wanted to share with as many people. That's been my my mission for a long time. I heard this somewhere that inspired me where they said something about like instead of focusing on being a millionaire, how about you influence a million people? So then I. So my goal for, like, I don't know, forever, when I heard that, I was like, OK, I want to be a billionaire. I want to have an impact on a billion people. That's a lot of people. And I know that the way to do that is to influence people that are influencers. So. So my my next kind of step in the process was I knew I wanted to lead teacher training. You know, I wanted to teach other people to teach yoga there. There I would have like an exponential growth on who I'm impacting. And I met someone actually out here in Arizona, which is funny, was way before I lived here. This was this is about five years ago, a little over five years ago. And they told me that they recommended a a three hundred hour teacher training. So that's like, you know, 200 hours, the kindergarten, 300 hours, like Joe: Hey. Alex: Maybe you got a high school little a little higher level. You go a little deeper in. And they told me to do this teacher training in Michigan with with my teacher, Johnny Quest. And I went there and it's funny, like the way I in life, I let things flow so. Right. That like that it felt very like just. It just made sense to me. So I didn't even do much research and I just went to this 300 hour training in Michigan. It was another immersion. It was like three weeks, three weeks straight. Joe: Wow. Alex: And when I was there, I realized that that training was the style that they teach at lifetime. And and that was. And then I was told when I was there about one of the other teachers that their friend was going to Grand Open. They were going to be the general manager of this club in South Jersey that happened to be like 40 minutes from my house. So when I get home from the training, I went to talk to the one of the managers there about just teaching that I was thinking, like, I you know, it's an hour away, 40 minutes away. Maybe I'll teach, like back to back classes. Let me see if it's worth it. And then, like, I show up one day and kind of just tell my story. And the woman who's a dear friend of mine now, she's like, well, we have a yoga manager. And you're hired like you're the you're our guy, you know, because I was the only person in that area that knew the style that Joe: Yes. Alex: We taught. So, yeah. So, again, fast forward a little bit. Got hired at that. That was my first lifetime. I was the yoga manager and we had like just a thriving community. Just incredible. You know, there would be we'd have classes where there would be 80 to 100 people in a Wednesday night. Joe: Oh, my Alex: Yeah. Joe: Gosh. Alex: Well, like, almost the whole floor was mats. You know, there'd be that maybe I would I would say it would it wasn't really a joke because it was true. I'd be like, if you don't know the person next to you, then you can have like two inches between your mats. If you do, another person next to your mats could be touching. So very different world than now. I don't think super to me people would be into that. But it was amazing. The energy was incredible. People made like lifelong friendships. And I was there for a while, kind of felt like I was without a teacher. So then, you know, and the universe provided me the next step where my teacher, Johnny, called me and said, hey, come to Michigan, learn from me, learn with me. There's no there's like we need a yoga manager at this lifetime, Michigan, when they're taught for a few years. Also, you know, is it amazing to be a part of that community because they had all really learned from my teacher. So it's just a really strong community. They just really got what we did. So a super cool. And then I got tired of the Michigan winter. So Joe: Yes. Alex: The last Joe: I don't Alex: Year Joe: Blame you. Alex: Last year, I was like I called my my boss who do directs Lifetime. I said, Terry, I need to know, like, what lifetimes are opening in the next year. And this built more. One was one of them. And, you know, I'd I'd come here on retreats. I'd led retreats in in Scottsdale, Phoenix, for three years, my first three years of teaching at lifetime. Not sure why Phoenix. Like, that's just just a synchronicity. I just happened Joe: Yeah. Alex: To have picked Scottsdale to come to you and I was again familiar with it. And now I'm here and I love it. Joe: That's awesome, man. That's a great story. Alex: Yeah, and I think that one of the things that's important about it, too, is like if you look from a from an external point of view, it might just look like, oh, like everything just fell into your lap. You're very lucky. And I don't believe it's luck. I believe that, first of all, it's blessed. I do feel very blessed in my life. My life, not my whole life hasn't been a blessing, but in a lot of ways and very blessed. And I recognize that. But also, I believe that when you are doing your work and yoga, get called Dharma, when you're doing like your soul's purpose. Doors are going to open up for you that you didn't even know existed. And and then, like the old paradigm is that you have to have, like, super hard work to live the life of your dreams. And the new paradigm is if you're on your path, your path. Right. That's important. Not what other people think Joe: So Alex: You should do Joe: Important. Alex: When you're on your path. It doesn't it doesn't feel like hard work. You know, I've had a lot of success teaching yoga. And I've been a student and I've put effort in and I've taken inspired action, but it's never felt like hard work. And I think it's. And I know it's because I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm doing my my life's work. Joe: Yeah, it's so awesome. And this is great because my audience, the listeners, this is what I preach when I don't have a guest like you on, you know, it's all about that. Even though I'm older, it's taking me all this time to finally say I just need to do the things that that speak to me, that make me happy, that make me want to wake up every day Alex: Neverson. Joe: And smile. Yeah. And so I've come to the game late, but I'm working on it, you know, and hopefully I have a few more years before I take a dirt nap and I can get a bunch of really cool stuff done. So we'll see. Alex: And really, too, like your neck, it's never too late to to to to move in the direction of your dreams and really realize, too, like it's it's not a destination. It doesn't matter how early you start. You don't eventually get to this place where you like up there. I don't care Joe: Right. Alex: Anymore because it's there's always there is always a path, a continuous journey. So it doesn't matter when you get on the path. But it's it's a beautiful thing that you've found it, you know, because for a lot of people, they don't find it till maybe they're laying in their death bed. Right. Joe: I know. Alex: A Joe: Yeah, Alex: Lot of Joe: And I. Alex: It takes lifetimes to find it. Joe: Right. And I've actually I've I've talked about this in some of the. I've done a couple where it's just me kind of spilling my heart saying you don't want to have regret, you don't want to lay me there. And, you know, you want to have it be where you feel like you really live an amazing life. And so you more people have control over this than they think. And the problem is they they don't think they have control over it. They're they're just they're letting their life become something that is being steered by other people, other things, whatever. And. And I think that's why this time with the corona virus happening, this wasn't just a localized thing. Right? It was the whole world shut down and it gave everyone the opportunity to sit back and reflect on what it is that they do and what's the next step for them. And if they got laid off or fired or whatever, you know, they might not have a job. So what do you want to do with your life? Right. So to me, this is it's a cool conversation because it's it's not just about yoga. Your frame of mind is in the same thing that I'm trying to convey to the people that listen to this podcast is that let's, you know, pick what you want to do and make yourself happy. You have control to engineer your own life to to live the fullest life that you can. So figure it out and start. Now, we're never gonna get a plan. I did a podcast on this. We're never gonna get a break like this again. Our lease? I don't think so. Not in our lifetime, where literally everything just halts. Alex: Right. And also a lot of people get it individually, right? Sometimes it comes as like a diagnosis or a we're getting fired or laid off, you know. But this is a collective where we have an opportunity as a collective to reflect on, like, how do we want to be not just on our individual life, but how do we want to live as a community, as a whole, as a collective? And I think also that's why a lot of things are coming to the surface. You know, a lot of the tension and seeing like injustices and starting to the fact that there's more awareness there. It's a beautiful thing. Weather doesn't matter. You know, there's there's a lot of different opinions on how it's been addressed. But we're going to see. And I really do believe this is like a new paradigm. Things are no longer hidden. And and we're seeing that and more and more and more and more ways, like even restaurants go to go to new restaurants. They almost always have like an open kitchen. Right. Like you Joe: Yeah. Alex: Go to because you can see the food being prepared. And that's how our whole life is starting to be, where it's there's there's nothing hidden anymore. And we don't want the hidden. So, like, whatever's been in the darkness where we're shining light on it. And it's it's arising. And like what you said. Yeah. It's so important to do what you love doing, to do what makes you feel good, because there's a lot of people that are even super and putting this in quotes against successful. Right. And usually that's like a monetary thing. That's kind of how our American dream Joe: Yeah. Alex: Then equated that are like super rich and just like so unhappy and numbing themselves. They're addicted to all kinds. All kinds of shit. Whatever it is that that, you know, everyone has different ways to numb themselves. But, you know, it's not just about money. It's not just about like working hard. It's about loving your life and living the truest version of your life. That's that's what's going to bring you the most fulfillment. Joe: Absolutely. You know what? And here's a good segue way, because you talk about community and how we're all thinking about the future together. Now it's really like a shot in the head for everyone saying what is going on and we've got to fix this. And and it's not just singular now. It's it's your your family. It's your community. It's everything. And when you were in yoga and you talk like that, can feel it in the room that everyone is is realizing that we have to make the right changes to move forward. And. And it just it's it's powerful. So this is a Segway to that really cool story you talked about with the kids lined up and the Alex: Oh yeah. Joe: Basket. Alex: The trive...yeah. So there's a there's. A phrase in African culture from certain tribes in Africa. And it's I don't know exactly how to pronounce it, I think it's Ubuntu, Ubuntu. And the idea that phrase means I am who I am because of who we all are together. So like we're a product of our environment. And an anthropologist went to this tribe in Africa that kind of lives by this ritual. And they didn't experiment where they lined up all their all the children. And in the distance, like 100 hundred yards away under a tree, they put a basket of fruit and candy and all kinds of sweet treats. And this this anthropologist explained the rules of the game. He said, when I say go, it's a race. And the first person there, they get the basket of treats. They get the basket of goods. So obviously, like some of the older kids have a big advantage, they're probably going to be a little faster. So you lines them all out and he says, "Ready? Go." And the kids, they didn't have any time to talk to each other beforehand. And as soon as he says go, they look at each other that turns had side reach out and grab each other's hand. And together they like kind of jog or skip to the basket and they get there at the same time and they shared all. Anthropologists ask one of the older girls in the tribe that that probably was was one of the fastest, fastest ones. And you said why you could add it all to yourself. Why do you do that? And she said, you want to. How can one of us be happy if the rest of us are sad? Joe: It was so powerful when you told that story as a wow. Alex: Yeah, I mean, when you get that story mixed with, like, intense, you know, physicality, transformation, that's another thing that's beautiful about yoga. What I love about this platform is when your physiology changes. So if you're doing some kind of activity, you're also more open and receptive on on all those dimensions. So then when you hear something like that, it really lands. It really impacts you Joe: Yeah. Alex: More than even just listening to this or listening to a podcast or something. It's a different level when you're getting your physical involved. Joe: Yes. Absolutely. Alex: Huge one too like that idea, because a lot of us and this is another, like old paradigm we're taught. How many times we hear it like the idea of survival of the fittest and it's a shark eat shark or Joe: Yeah, Alex: Dog eat dog world or starve. Joe: Yeah. Alex: You've got to be a shark. And you've got to know in order to be successful that you need to kind of push other people. There's there's people that you need to kind of push down for you to to rise up. And that's that's bullshit. Like that's gone. That maybe that's how it used to be. But that's not how this new world, this new paradigm that we're moving into is like now it can be rather than competition, it's collaboration or conscious competition where we can kind of grow together. There's Joe: Yeah. Alex: A quote that my teacher used, always used that all ships rise in a high tide. So collectively we're raising each other up or lifting each other up and there's enough abundance for everybody. And that's huge to understand and to really get to and believe because we believe it on an individual level, the collective starts to believe it and then we'll start to really see it in our lives that like there's enough work for all of us. Joe: Yeah, yeah, and that's why the classes are so strong in the sense of it's the it's the work out that you get and it's that all of the things that that you get out of the class, but it's you get this benefit of all of this positive energy that comes out of it. And it's just it's amazing. That's what I want to touch upon. All I want to know for people that don't understand yoga. And obviously it's new to me. But I. I just know the benefit. I can feel it. I can already twist certain ways that I couldn't twist a month ago. Whatever it is. But I want to educate the listeners who have been on the fence about taking a yoga class. What are the benefits that you can express of what yoga does and why it's so needed? Alex: There's there's a there's a lot of benefits, and it really happened in in a lot of different ways. So I'll talk about the four dimensions. I talked about that a lot in my trainings and stuff four dimensions, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. And yoga has it's going to improve your life and in all of those physically. Is gonna help you feel good, right? Like moving your body and breathing deep. It's medicine for your body. And and and like, if we're honest with ourselves, we want to feel good. And there's enough shit that we do that kind of brings us into a state of not feeling great that this will help balance it out. Right. So if you'd like to party a little bit and drink or maybe, you know, indulge in some unhealthy food, that's fine. But this will help you. This will help you be balanced and and moving your body has it has a ton of benefits and moving. You're like just body weight is really good, too. So I know that a lot of people like my age. And when you're younger or really I should say, like men, men in general, we we think and we've kind of been programmed to think that in order to be. I don't know, appealing and sexy. And we need to lift a lot of weights. Right. And it's good to be strong for sure. But there's just so much wear and tear that comes from lifting heavy weights. Alex: And in most cases, like, we don't need that kind of strength. Right. Like like in our day to day life, we're not doing things well. So then it becomes not even that functional. But yoga, moving your own body, that's it. We're constantly doing and through those body weight movements. Not only is it going to build strength, but it's not going to, like, wear you down as much as I'm doing other other types of exercise. So that's a one big one physically is just feeling good in your body, going even deeper. Like I can tell you. So I have two autoimmune conditions. I've been diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which is intestinal inflammation. Kind of throws off my digestion and diabetes, so affects my blood sugar. When I practice yoga or really now I see it more now and I don't practice yoga because I do it frequently. If I don't practice yoga, my blood sugar is way higher. So it regulates my blood sugar. And there are studies that show it helps really everybody's blood sugar, which is good. But you have diabetes or not. It's good to have regulated blood sugar, helps your body just stay in and kind of balance. And and my digestion is better, too. And there's a lot of people that that have digestive problems. So just moving your body around and a lot of the forward folds and twists, it's like a massage for your digestive organs. So those are just like little benefits. Alex: And I'd say that each person you kind of have to experience it for yourself to really get to know. Right. Like I could tell you that honey is sweet and delicious, and I could talk about it all the time. How good honey is. If you never taste honey, you're not going to really understand. But when you really do it yourself, then you'll start to realize, like, well, yeah, I do feel better. So that's physical. Mental. It's gonna help you. I think the biggest one is it's going to help you be less reactive in your lives. So reactions are like, you know, someone cuts you off in traffic and you die. You start getting crazy and like fight or flight response, start getting angry. Or maybe it's with your partner that you live with where they say something that kind of pisses you off and you you just get super agitated right away. And there's no like, there's no. There is no cause from like the stimulus to the response. It's just right away that you're super reactive. And it's really powerful to be able to increase that space. So something happens, there's some kind of stimulus, and you're able to take a little bit more time to respond with with your whole being, not just like out of emotion or not just like out of anger or you're able to more intellectually, intelligently and emotionally respond. So I think that helps a lot. Joe: That's really interesting, too. I never thought of it that way. But to have that space between between what happens in your reaction is really cool. Alex: It's huge when you can when you've made that space even bigger, when that gap becomes bigger. That's really you talk about regret a little bit. Usually we only regret things when we react to them. When you have that space and you usually have a little more time before you respond to something, then you're probably not going to regret you're probably going to make a decision that's that's going to be best for it, for all parties involved. Definitely increases your ability to focus. Right. So if you want to be more proficient, efficient at work, if you want to be able to have better conversations, be a better communicator. Is going to help you with that, too. So mentally really powerful. And it just goes to improve your mood like movement and breath helps you feel better. So you're gonna be in a better state of mind when you're not when you're in a better state of mind, in a more elevated state. You're going to attract better things into your life. That's the best law of attraction and law of attraction. Is not this like hippy dippy, crazy thing that is real. And we're all doing it constantly. Right. We just aren't necessarily aware emotionally. Yoga is a great way to express it. So it's another thing with men like men were taught that to to be a strong man, we need to be stoic and we need to not really show emotion. Alex: And that takes it takes a big toll. Right. And that's why more men have like serious health conditions, because this is a popular saying mom like wellness practitioners, our issues are stored in our tissues. Right. So if we never release emotionally, then then then we have so much stress that we're just holding in and holding onto. I think also that's a big part of why I had a disease, why I got diagnosed, because I didn't have a healthy outlet to express the things I was feeling and some of the challenges that I went through. So. So yoga like moving your body, breathing. Kind of shaking things I talk about. Like shaking. That's a way that our bodies release. So that's a really powerful thing on an on an emotional level. And it just allows us to feel right. Like, most of the time we're numbing ourselves. Yoga is like the opposite. Like, go ahead and feel. You can feel angry. It's OK. You can feel happy. You can. You can. You know, there's a lot of people that practice yoga. And they they feel emotional, like they might cry or like feel like they're tearing up beautiful and you off to try to make sense of it, just like that's a release that had to happen. Joe: Yeah. Alex: And then finally, the good news is that. Joe: Not I don't know if it's it's exc. I was just going to say that you talk about the emotion part of it and how I even said to you after one of the classes, I couldn't keep tree pose, I couldn't keep it without falling out of the pose and losing my balance. And I found myself getting mad at myself a couple of times. And over the months I've learned to to just breathe and settle into it. And then it's it's become a better way of doing it for me. But I used to get mad at myself because I want I'm one of those people I got to do everything good or I suck, you know, and it's. Alex: You know, that man and I and having the awareness of it. That's a huge benefit of the practice. I say it a lot in my classes. How you do anything is how you do everything. Joe: Yeah. Alex: And, you know, this is an opportunity to become more aware of, like what happens when you struggle. Right. Do you get pissed at yourself? Do you start to have this negative self talk? Because all that does is bring you to a downward spiral. Right. So as you become more aware of it, you go into your yoga mat and you might do something that like, OK, you're going to struggle in it, but can you still stay, like, optimistic? Can you still keep your energy up even when you're struggling? And that's going to help you so much in other areas of your life and your relationships in your in your work, in your, you know, whatever it may be. So that's really powerful. And in the final dimension where you get benefits is the spiritual and spiritual true. That's a pretty, like, misunderstood term. Couple of things that that it means to me. One of the one of the most powerful emotions or traits, I guess, to feel is inspired and inspired is that word in spirit. So it's like when you're connected to soul, right? When you're connected to your true self. Because you don't have a soul. You are so right. Every single human being is Joe: Mm hmm. Alex: A school. We have a body. We have a mind. But we are we are soul. And when we're in that place of spirit and soul, we get out of our own way. And we start to realize that we are our biggest obstacles, like our ego. Right. That that part of us that maybe gets pissed when we're not doing so good or maybe gets offended or overthinks things like we get in our own. Our ego gets in our own way all the time because we just want to be loved and we want to be appreciated. We want to be like, you know, our ego wants to be the best and recognized as the best. And when we're in spirit, we don't care about that. Like when you're really inspired, all that shit goes away. And I think everyone's experienced it in some way where they're just in the flow of life. So, like, I'm a big athlete, I love playing sports and I've had moments in life. I'm just totally in the zone. Right. I know musicians and runners. They experience it, too. And in the zone is the same thing. You could change interchange that word with being in a state of meditation or being in it in a state of inspiration. In spirit. Joe: Yeah. And it was interesting because, again, talking about the practice of yoga. And I wanted to actually ask you, what do they call it, the practice of yoga. Alex: Yeah, I love that because it's not a performance and it's not a competition, right. And it helps you realize that it's not a destination. So if you if you're not performing yoga, there's no one that you're trying to impress with yoga. Social media. Maybe there's some other things about it, because you'll see a lot of these famous yoga accounts that just pose like pretty photos. But to me, that's not really what yoga is about. And yoga for four more more of the time that it's been around, as has not been about postures, it never really was about posture. It's just in the past few hundred years, poses became became what yoga is like known for. It's never a performance and it's never a destination. And, you know, one thing about practice is like you don't really need to label or judge it as good or bad just by putting the effort in. You get the results out. And I think that's a pretty powerful thing because most of the things we do in life, we're doing to, like, impress other people or to to perform something and almost everything that we do, we do to kind of impress other people or or get some kind of recognition and yoga. It's not about that. Just you come to your mat. We just practice certain things. And what you're really practicing in yoga, not getting good postures. You're really practicing strengthening the qualities of the mind that serve you right. So equanimity, having a balanced mind, non reactivity, kindness, compassion, enthusiasm, inspiration, like those qualities, the mind you're strengthening and then you're learning to weaken by just not giving energy to the qualities of the mind that that detract from you. So like competition and judgment and negative self talk, those things. So really, that's what you're practicing. You're practicing getting better at living your life. Joe: Yeah, awesome. I want to, if you can, and I don't know I don't know how deep you want to get into it, but I want to get a little deeper in the physical part of it, because I think that that's what's important for people to understand. I don't want them to think it's like to showing like I think the other benefits will come out of it if if they understand the health benefits in a physical nature of what it can do to them. And I know that where we're in certain poses and when we're in class and you're talking about how your toes are spread out when you're let's say you're in downward dog or your fingers are spread out. And it's and they talked about us all getting more down into the earth, like sitting on the floor during the day occasionally, like feeling more connected to the earth. Alex: Yeah. Joe: And and I know that when we do these poses and you talk about how you're pushing on your ankles and your fingers and your toes, and it's it's creating this circulation in the areas that normally aren't getting that kind of attention. Alex: For sure. Yes. Love it so. So let's start by saying, like, first of all, in in our Western culture, right. In America, there's something like one in four people have chronic illness. It might even be higher. It might actually be like one and two. But we live in a culture where a lot of people have disease and disease dis Joe: Yes. Alex: Ease. So the opposite of having ease in the body is dis-ease and the cause of most diseases. And this is really according to like all traditional medicine practices that have been around for thousands of years. Right. Way longer than our modern like pharmaceuticals and what we do here in our health care system. But like traditional Chinese medicin, Ayurveda which is the kind of sister science of yoga, traditional medicine that was practiced in the Middle East for thousands of years. It all says that the main cause of disease is stagnation. Right. Like when there's just stuck, when we're stuck, they're stuck. Energy, that's the reason that we get tension, everybody. That's the reason that our digestion kind of sucks. So yoga in the poses and we work in the yoga posture to bring sensation to every single part of our body and wherever there's sensation that that's that goes hand in hand with there being stimulation. Right. So that part of your body is stimulated. And if you just, like, took your arm and you stack smacked your arm a lot. Right. This is stimulation. It's going to start to turn red. That's increased circulation. So wherever you stimulate whatever part of your body you stimulate. There's more blood flow, more energy flow. And when everything is flowing, that's when we're at a at a greater place of of health. Better place of healing. And I love using the analogy of like a stagnant pond. Alex: Right. It's like very murky. It's it's kind of nasty. A lot of mosquitoes and bugs compare. And that's that's when we're stagnant. And if you think about it, probably a lot of people that we know well, maybe people that are listening to this right now. We spend hours a day sitting in a chair. So there's a lot of stagnant energy, a lot of blockages. Tips are so tight, our low backs are so tight. That's the pond. That's real stagnant energy. And then if you look at like a stream, it's very clear. It's smooth. It's flowing. That's the. That's what yoga helps helps us get like, more circulation in our body, more energy flowing in our body. A huge one. A huge benefit of the practice is you don't you'll see that you, like, don't need to be addicted to coffee and caffeine to have energy. Right. Like, you can find weight. Just breathe deep. You'll have more energy. Do some sun salutations, which is like a basic yoga warm up super D. D series of movements. You'll you'll have more energy. And that's a beautiful thing too, because it's really empowering. You start to realize, hey, I can take my healing into my own hands. I can take my energy and my efficiency into my own hands. So that's a big part of how the physical postures work, is bringing more stimulation and therefore circulation to every little party about. Joe: Yeah, I think it's really important, so I wanted to just kind of drill that home because again, I think that the the idea of what yoga is, is you have to experience it. Like you said you can. You can tell me all day that that honey is sweet. And if I don't taste it, I'll never know. Right. So I just I want to encourage the listeners to initially if they just want to watch you online in a training, but ultimately I don't care if it's at lifetime or. I do care. I don't want anybody at lifetime. I don't want that. Alex: Save you a spot. Joe: No but I encourage people to go in and when they're ready to go take a class, because I really think it's super important. Alex: And I'm glad you said that because that it is a little bit of a blind spot for me, because if you talk to people that are close to me, like you'll see like I love yoga for definitely more than just the physical practice, like the physical to me is like really a smaller benefit to all the other practices. Like I said you don't practice yoga to get good at poses. You practice, you're going to get good at life. But I also realize it's really important for people to realize that, like, the physical is usually the introductory. Right. Most people come to yoga because they want to feel better in their body. They want to be more flexible. They want to kind of like, you know, if they have low back pain, they want to they want to help take care of that. So I think it's important for me to realize that and talk to that, too. And really, if you come just for the physical, that's fine. You'll get everything else. That's how it works for most people. They come for the physical. They want to Joe: Yeah. Alex: Be more flexible. They want to, you know, open up their hips a little bit. And then they start to realize, like, wow, this is. Like, I didn't freak out when someone just cut me off. I used to have road rage. Whoa. This is like my yoga practice is helping. I breathe. I did deep. I took a deep breath. Instead of, like, maybe yelling at my partner or yelling at my kids when they kind of pissed me off. Like, I saw that there's a little more space between my response. You don't have to. You want to go to yoga for that. But you'll get the. Joe: Right. So on top of that, this is just more of a personal question. Do you meditate also? Alex: Yes. Joe: Ok. I just that was a selfish question because I've done it off and on. And I was just wondering if it's something that you do as part of your daily lifestyle. Alex: Sure. I mean, I've I've been inconsistent over the years where I'll go and be really consistent with we're going to fall off. But that's like the seated meditation practice. And I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about what meditation is. I've had I can't tell you how many students I've had say I can't meditate. I can't get my mind to still to be still. I can't get my mind to calm down to any thoughts. And like, that's very natural. But that's that's part of being a human having a human mind. It's not about making your thoughts go away. The practice of meditation and this is ancient yoga philosophy. This is like that the eight limbs of yoga, which is a really foundational yoga philosophy teaching before you get to meditation, that kind of the precursor is is concentration. So when you're doing when you're meditating, what you're really doing is concentrating on one thing. And if your mind wanders, it's OK as part of the practice. But you just sucks instead of letting your mind go away off into the distance. You notice it wandering and you bring it back. You notice it wandering and you bring it back. So the practice is concentration. Meditation is not really a verb. It's more of a noun that you might get into. But just because you sit and sit for five minutes doesn't mean you're gonna get into that state of meditation where you're like in the zone. Alex: And that's not it's practice another you know, another thing like you want to judge it as like, oh, did I actually meditate or not just take if you. And I like to teach when I do like one to one coaching, I just teach. Hey, guys, this is like we're just gonna practice concentration and let me call it meditation. We're gonna practice concentration. And as you get better at concentration, you start to get into the zone. And some people, almost everyone meditate just in different ways. Like runners. You know, I've talked to some people, too, that work with or might you have like a concentration practice, ignite or meditate. And I was like, well, what do you do to kind of like get out of your own head like or like, you know, what do you do to kind of if you have a lot of thoughts going on it, like why I like to run when I'm running, I'm just like fully in the zone and not thinking too much. Perfect. That's your meditation. Some people meditate when they play basketball and they play music when they create art. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. And I think that's important to realize, too, to. Joe: Yeah, and it's funny because what yoga has helped me to do is to understand how poorly I was breathing because I'm definitely a breath holder type person like I. The tension from holding my breath for certain things. And so it's opened up the fact that I need to breathe deeper and longer. And it's all part and it's all these little benefits that you don't realize you're getting. And that's why I think it's so important. I wanted to have you on because of all of this, you know. Alex: Yoga changes your life does Joe: Yeah. Alex: If you commit to it. And it just it just works for everyone. The big thing is you have to find the right teacher, right? The right Joe: Yeah. Alex: To feel like I'm not everybody's teacher. I've had people that don't like the way I teach. They don't. I talk a lot to a lot of stories. Some people like that. Some people like more silence. You know, I play my music really loud. Some people like that. And that's fine. And I and I realized that, like, not everyone's going to like me. I think if people if I wanted everybody to like me, I'm probably doing something wrong. I'm sacrificing Joe: Yeah. Alex: My truth. But there's plenty of teachers. There's plenty of styles of yoga. So once you find your teacher and your style and your person, you dive in and and like, it'll it'll change your life. Joe: And you touched upon something there that I wanted to ask you, this is about the music and how. How do you think that Paris, with what we're all doing in that room and and how do you I would, knowing you

Business is simple. Good product, cash in the bank, steady cash flow, growing sales and profit margins.Dr. Ian Birkby and Alex Cairns discuss the simplicity of running a business well.Welcome to another edition of the marketing science podcast the podcast for sales and marketing professionals working within science engineering and health care don't forget to subscribe on Spotify iTunes or wherever he usually listen to podcasts my name is Frank Barker the head of marketing at eight zero network where you can also subscribe and I'm joined by not just one but two guests this week with Dr Ian Birkby, the CEO of AZoNetwork and Alex cans MD of Move Marketing, a full service B2B. marketing agency.Thanks Gents for joining us doing today, so without further ado I'd like to jump straight into the first question and draw your experience of being in the notable position of pre dating the digital era but also having the experience of working right through the digital era to the present day and seeing how do you see the change in marketing strategy for SMEs?Well, despite the fact the indicating that my working career services in the era of horses and carts Frankie I will give you my the best position on thatIAN: I think the key thing in terms of how it's changed since ninety five when Netscape came out and the internet era started, is the ability to measure what you achieve with your marketing efforts. So in the digital age it is relatively easy to measure the impact of the various campaigns and from that to calculate the return on your marketing investment - now I'd counter that by saying we are possibly getting to the stage where some people like to measure too many things and starting to get lost a little bit in the numbers but for me it's the ability to quantify the performance of the campaigns.Franky: Okay excellent, Alex so you've you're in a full service B2B. marketing agency having worked with both client and agency side for lots of multi nationals, so you've got a real mix of experience Ho have you seen the transition.Alex: I'll echo a lot what Ian says, data on 2 aspects - because we use a lot of data for market analysis; market research in the planning phase as well so not just the campaign data which is invaluable but also the research phase for the data in terms of putting together marketing plans that give you a one to three to five years focus.The other big change since 2000 is that we now have channels so it's not just a service, supply through digital channels which we can actually pick and choose from a makes amounts according to requirement so there's a lot more to you and almost test as they say something.Franky: Okay and having worked with lots of different clients for your agency what's the biggest challenge, what's the most common or the greatest challenges that you see that your clients having from a marketing perspective.Alex: I think it is the data interpretation and insight because it is a fantastic thing having all of the data of but it's not a given to know how to use it and spin into an achievable set of objectives and actions so that's when we get involved.That depth of our experience and expertise in how to use and interpret that data across multiple channels but a lot of the science industrial sectors don't specialise in understanding data and certainly statistics is obviously not the course specialismsExcellent so Ian using data and statistics as marketing challenges would you echo that?Absolutely I think you know from our perspective as a as a business we've invested heavily in building an analytics platform over the last six or seven years and prior to that we would say to our clients we've driven several thousand visitors to your site - they'd say great thanks very much but they couldn't attribute those visitors to specific actions in terms of products sales and market sector activity so yes if you can use that data to genuinely prove R. O. I. it's a massive plus point.Franky: All the way from campaign original source campaign all the way to revenue generating opportunity yesIan: I mean as you well know we quite often gets into this discussion about you know was it the last touch that really made the difference and if you're on the sales side of life you probably gonna say it was your involvement that all was actually not firsts %HESITATION campaign that first email campaign that was marked his responsibility so yeah always an interesting debate that will Frankie's you well know.Franky: Let's not get stuck into aligning sales and marketing just yet the whole point just in itself.Fantastic all right so in which ways does B2C vary to B2B in specifically reaching scientists and engineers how have you found that is different.Alex: Today certainly there are a lot more the applications the market for a lot more nature a lot more difficult to pinpointIts really trying to appeal to the types of individuals and job titles that you've got within its scientific and industrial sectors so everything to enhance the credibility or proof that products or a service works as without the case studies white papers and anything this credibility building on that side is usually a better way to go and they stop and it's much more much more different approach and be to say where you can really just pick up on a sounder craze that's going on around them I'm going to campaign on the box about us a little bit less considered in a little bit less than actually less scientific.Ian: I think maybe just to add to that one from getting the other factories with the with database quite often the price points are significantly bigger on the sales side please significantly longer. So to a certain extent if you're in the business of content marketing you need to be writing content that satisfies all stages of the buyers journey. Whereas in B2C you know if you've got a ten pound product you can put a note out on Instagram and you could probably sell it the same day where is but a lot of our customers the sales cycle can be six to nine months more involved.Okay so on that what is the longest sales cycle, the longest time you have seen a sale from initial point to close.If I go back to most manufacturing days when I was involved in the business of manufacturing ceramics we could be talking to a client for nine months before you get specifications correct, you have done some testing - for a lot of our clients if you are selling a million dollars with the kit you know a year's worth of discussion is not unusual.Franky: We ran a survey where fifty one percent of the managers said they had a sales cycle between three to twelve months and there's very few who have got less than three months and considerably more than that have got more than twelve months - you find the same Alex?Franky: It definitely makes everything from forecasting, business planning, cash flow makes lots of stuff much more difficult with long sales cycles.What are the key questions that SME science or engineering company should be asking when it comes to strategic planning, Alex?We typically take a five step approach in terms of how we walk a client through the planning process. So always starting with what they're actually trying to achieve in the first place that's most fundamental thing involved. Then taking a look at a market analysis researching what's actually going on in the market, understanding competitors, what their position statements are and the marketing techniques they use and how tat stacks up openly in the marketplace and figuring out value proposition a message sounds like an obvious one. You'd be surprised how many twenty thirty forty million pound plus turnover companies that I walked into the really have not got that value proposition or a couple key phrases. Then the fifth one is a little bit more involved obviously so it's really pulling a lot together through the available channels and budget and timescales and also setting smart objectives to sit alongside all of that.I know you've done some great work helping us with our own strategic planning as well so thank you So, next question: How has the internet levelled the playing field for David versus Goliath over the last twenty years?Ian: I got into this game with AZoNetwork in early two thousand and it was very different then.On the internet, you've got the same amount of screen space as a billion dollar market cap company. So one of the phrases adopted fairly early on was that it doesn't matter where you are found on the internet, it just matters that you are found - it became much easier as a small business to make a significant impact via the web than previously.It has passed over from kind of publisher to client, that end user, the company the manufacture. It's really just the expanse of channels but also the time that it takes to execute campaigns in the market - so twenty years ago it could have taken three to six months writing, planning a campaign which could be done in a morning these days.Franky: Do you have any benchmarks for how an SME science engineering company would define a marketing budget?Alex: There are standard industry benchmarks out there in terms of percentage of turnover that kind of thing but we typically shy away from not more the fundamentals of individual revenue lines for the company, profit lines, profit margins for products and what the channels available with us we try to make it more small bespoke.You can't really tell you when you call us at five or ten million pounds and over estimate engineering companies don't just tell you to nominal five or ten percent turnover inside dies the amount to spend %HESITATION marks in.It doesn't really fit for every every single every single kind so we tend to look at the big picture okay the competitive so they're up again so for example we go offline and we're just tossing starts with recently that they chose to compete against and two major multinational blue chips now it's not gonna be feasible to put in the same kind of purchases they will so looking on the much more Avenue case by case basis across four to five channels now we can actually get towards a level playing field among the big stuff in a level playing field against close it's become really be small about the white invest stocked up with Joe's wells announcing.Atlassian, when they started, I think for the first of six to eight years and they didn't really have a marketing budget for their product which was a collaboration tool for software developers.Predominately it was a low price point thirty dollars which sold by word of mouth in the in the development community so they had a very low sales and marketing budget.On the other hand, you've got outfits like uber for example with very big marketing budgets who are effectively buying business - how long can they continue to do that? It's an interesting business case study - So I think it really comes down to what is your products and what are you trying to achieve?What do you find is the appetite for risk in in marketing specifically from the sort of C. suite and how have people get being given license to try things?It's low to be brutally honest, when I was client side running very big blue chip budgets for some big international companies it was still quite low even ten fifteen years ago as wellThat's why strategic planning is so important from my perspective it gives some validation that the C Suite board of directors can actually sign off on. When you cn see the analysis and the data for will give us an investment for the opposite ways process without any kind of analysis or just kind of an off the cuff approach they're not going to really stop those kind of budgets – overall a low outside for absolute risk in these sectorsFranky: Do you see lots of companies using the data to justify the marketing spend or is it still a bit more gut feeling?I think it's becoming increasingly data focused - you still see some dumb comments that come out like a why are you going to this particular exhibition, well because our competitors are there. It doesn't really justify that activity. We're in an age where at least the Google Adwords has worked as part of the marketing spending on Google. I'd be a fool to sit here and say it doesn't work, it obviously does.However one of the things that we see with people setting up Adwords campaigns is that we did it eighteen months ago and it was Jack who's in the I. T. department… they just set and forget. They don't even realize that they're actually now wasting fifty percent of the budget on keywords which aren't delivering for them. So I think there's a there's a lot of slack in the marketing activity but businesses really need to recognize that the marketing is a value creator not a cost center and that's the sort of the old fashioned thinking that we need to move away from.Franky: Which specific KPIs would you use in a business context what's important to you for a marketing standpoint?I'm gonna focus on the business KPIs and say well you know what other business KPIs and then how does marketing fit into that so again I think when you're running a lot of business need a building a business and keep it as simple as possible you know when businesses start to go wrong is when people start to over complicate things so:Make sure you got a product that people want to buy. Make sure you've got enough cash in the bank to facilitate the activity and we are big fans of using a balanced scorecard approach so you can actually see you know the financial performance is going; everybody in the business has visibility on how much cash we have in the bank now, how much do we think we gonna have in six months.What is it costing us to acquire a customer etc. that sort of data. So you get everybody involved and obviously marketing feeds into this in terms of how many customers do we currently have? How are we growing those customers. What's the churn rate on those customers so for me it starts with the top down approach of business first and how does marketing fit into the economics.Any marketing specific KPIs that you'd be encouraging your clients to measure?Really it's fifty-fifty half is related to sales or profit, or sales of a certain product line. And then the other fifty percent is the raw marketing KPIs - so we'll typically have a list of say six to ten channels that we will work on for clients and so be different for every one of those.For something like a trade show for example it would simply be quite a high cost in terms of conversion of that lead into a sale compared to an email or webinar or even social media - so they're definitely very different ends of the spectrum and affects how we how we pitch those KPIs for themFranky: We use lots of different software in our martech stack what piece of software could you not live withoutfor me it would be the AZoIntel analytics platform that we built and developed over the last six or seven years. We also have built our content management system, email distribution and the whole platform that we now exist upon which is our own IP these are pieces of software that we couldn't really do without and within that, I think the ability to see who was engaging with our content, that content journey and how they're engaging with that content – that has been the bedrock of the growth of our business.so over that period of time I think all of the other aspects you know sequel server and you know the the adobe suite that you may use you can pretty much replace those with all the solutions so it's a very personal answer and I apologize for the immediate commercial plug on thatI think you're excused, for me personally it's about how the software interacts with each other. Because we are with small marketing departments as soon as you can automate certain tasks: your lead scoring for instance and lead distribution out to the sales team, it just frees up your morning.Rather than to get in and then this bottleneck of admin that needs doing. Having grown up using Salesforce and we've managed to get AZoIntel talking directly to Salesforce, we can just forget about it. I know that it happens on a fifteen minute sync, so it can happen when I'm asleep it can happen at a trade show, it's happening right now which is huge!Ian: One of the key points right here right now is going to be the use of AI in marketing. The ability to have automated transcription of meetings. The ability to work out you know which key words and phrases you should be using in content and how they're going to have the greatest impact.I was recently at the inbound show over in Boston and marketing technology and A. I. is starting to have a serious impact - It's going to have the most impact where it can automate fairly mundane, routine tasks. It has taken us several years to get to the stage where we start to get reasonable value out of Salesforce but it's because we managed to automate a lot of those manual activities.Franky: Absolutely, so what's your biggest challenge as a leader and what's are the biggest issues that you come up against in running a business?Ian: So to start on that one I think for me it's always been about getting the culture right getting the team working right - you could have one of the world's greatest products but if you've got a toxic culture within the business it's going to blow up at some stage.So you have to have a goal in life, you have to have the vision, you have to know where you going how are you going to get there and then your job is to explain that to people in simple terms. Illustrate what success is gonna look like, how they play a part in the team that's going to enable you to get that and just keep it simple. Trust is a big factor you know which plays into that team working…Staying true to your visionTrue to the vision - you know that's Simon Sinek analogy of leaders eat last, the days of the Victorian mill owners are well gone. I think the role of a leader in businesses is more of a facilitator. As I come to work, I want people to tell me what I can do to make them more productive at their jobs.Alex?Alex: It's a fast changing industry right now I mentioned that chart with the 7 thousand tech stack businesses on.You've got a very fast paced sector in terms of the different channels within it and the different approaches that you can take.It's really about the pace of change in the data that's available and not getting completely bombarded and washed over by that data but actually finding techniques and methodologies to do that as a team of marketers. It is about building a culture where you've got thinkers who can come up with the answers for both yourselves and the clients really.Franky: If you could give yourself one piece of marketing advice about me way back when in in twenty years ago when you're just starting out with a song when you're starting out with with my marketing or debateAlex: Don't believe the hype. Build the hype.Ian: If I could go back… I came out of the manufacturing industry background and on the back of that, I saw the internet could be really good for educating engineers, designers and scientists.So I thought to myself, I'll go into a totally new career which is a building websites. At the time I knew nothing about building websites and I was led by the nose by a team of developers and spent six figures on building a website that looked really pretty and was really interesting, but search engines were never going to find it so I wish I'd known about search engines back then and how significant they were so I would have definitely saved a few hundred grand by knowing that!all right fascinating.Well that ties in superbly with next week's subject matter where we'll be finding out how companies are adapting their paid search strategy in the current climate.Thank you both gentlemen for contributing today.Don't forget to subscribe in the usual places or at AZoNetwork.com we'll see you next week for a brand new edition of the marketing science podcast with Matt Rafferty the head of Paid Search here at AZoNetwork – We'll see you then See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alex: Hello, my friends in financial services welcome back to the podcast this week I've got an equity release advisor. And wow, we've talked about loads of stuff, loads of tips from Stuart probably more tips per minute than you get from your marketing expert. And so I think one thing for us as a business when we've helped people advertise equity release is a lot of negative kinds of thoughts and opinions of how things were done before a lot of people that are in situations or heard of people in situations that are not good because of equity release. And I've seen Stewart sort of on a bit of a mission to try and he's very passionate about getting this message across that modern equity release is much better. There's just so much in this episode of like how to negotiate with the press. We talk a lot about videos. So Stuart messaged me and emailed me in June about videos and him starting that video journey. We talk a lot about that. It's just such an interesting story about partnerships as well about how to focus on marketing to get partnerships not just to get cold leads. So whether you do mortgages, life equity release, or don't even work in financial services, there's so much you can get out of this episode from a marketing perspective. So, I want to introduce you to Stuart. How is an equity release at fly advisor in Plymouth used to work in banking used to work in Debenhams went out on his own after sort of a long corporate career and it's really fascinating to see where he is at now. Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast and I've got a very special guest on today. I have got Mr Stuart Powell. How are you doing today?Stuart: Hi, how are you? I’m very good. Thank you mate. Thanks for setting this up. Be nice to have a chat. Alex: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was just well, we just before we hit record, I was just pulling out an old email that you sent me and I couldn't remember the date of it. And I think I sent you an email on kind of pop my sort of email sequence about doing videos. In fact, I think it's Yeah, it's entitled, you have to make bad videos to make good videos.Stuart: Yeah.Alex: He said, you've inspired me after listening to this podcast. We now have a YouTube video and four videos on equity release. Stuart: Yeah, yes. Take a look. Give me some feedback. Alex: So that was June 2019. We're now January 2020. So what six months ago and now I'm seeing the videos that you're doing now and you've got like you see you're not hiring in a sort of production crew and things like what it looks like.Stuart: Oh, yeah, we got producers, directors, actors, we've got that now. Yeah, you know, I think where we were with the business around June and your podcast on, you know, try it. If it goes badly, that's good because you learn a lot and the rule and this is exactly what people want to see. So I think to start with Sammy, my office manager and I were at probably a simply biz seminar down in Cornwall somewhere and we were on a break, and we were just playing around with the laptop of mom now actually, and just recording a couple of videos out in the sunshine in their garden, and just talking about equity release and she was interviewing me and we were playing around and they were good enough to release but they kind of inspired me to give it more of a go and then I listened to your podcast and yeah, don't worry about it. If it's bad, just start somewhere. So yeah, I went into the office. Did I think about a five-minute video? And it got really good feedback even though it was grainy and wobbly but yeah, that's where it started. Yeah, June last year. Alex: Yeah. Wow. Okay. It's great. I love it because like, well, the thing is with having podcasts you don't get more ratio of feedback to listeners is very different to anything else. Because like on a podcast, there's no natural place to comment or anything. People have to take the time out to send you a message. So like when you're putting videos on YouTube is easy to comment and you put posts on Facebook, it's easy to come up with a podcast, there's nowhere to comment. So I only get the old kind of message pin when people do actually reach out and it normally is because they've done something so it's always like, brilliant to hear that something that we've done has kind of affected someone else. So it was really.Stuart: Yeah, no, that's good. I sent you a quick message to say thanks you've inspired me. Yeah, but I watched it and got some feedback on it. And I think the feedback was great. I love what you're doing not enough people are talking about equity release. Not enough people are trying to educate both clients or potential clients or other introduces as to why it's good for the older generation, but also why it's good for other financial services businesses to understand a little bit more about it. And I went online and went on YouTube and there's no one really being real online about equity release other than being lossy companies who and millions on production or they've got their remember to morph Sony heart and all that they.Alex: Oh yeah.Stuart: They've got those types of videos which are great. So I decided to probably shorten the videos a little bit. Because the feedback was great, I really like what you're talking about. But it's too much information in a five-minute video, why not 1-minute videos. So, so yeah, I thought, right, let's break them down and literally put something out on LinkedIn. were based in Plymouth. So put something on LinkedIn, then you will know any good videographers. And a guy called Luke Strata was recommended a couple of times and he and I met he came in the office and wow, what a setter. I mean, the cost wasn't too bad at all. But the camera equipment I know you've seen it on some of our LinkedIn vids. It looks like yeah, so being in next Hollywood blockbuster, this coffee breaks a lot.Alex: And if you're in a restaurant or a cafe and I was at Stewart's house, and they were at the tables, that's definitely a restaurant or a cafe or something. I was like, I'm in the wrong game from and if you can get a house like that.Stuart: Equity release, and you're fortunate And I know that you know that we're very near the home, which is the beautiful see parts of glimmer, the office and we go down there for a coffee sometimes and of course we're OSHA mortgages notion act to release and the cafes overlooks the ocean and you know in my brain it made sense but the cafe owner said yeah, yeah come down for the morning and then you know just to make sure you have some tea coffee and bacon buses and you can have the room for free and you know, he asked me about the buses I'm honest. Luke and I went down there Luke set up first and I came in and oh my god, he has taken over, probably half that blooming cafe. And yeah, it didn't seem like a great idea at the time I took the dog down and I don't you've seen the first video but the dogs and James Bond villain stroking the dog up on my lap. I read two minutes before the video started to shit right. So in the cafe as yes and customers are coming in for breakfast so yeah. Not quite as glamorous.Alex: Yeah.Stuart: Oh then a storm came so we were filming with the storm in the background so the beautiful ocean waves were quite as I expected but you know you laminate and you've got to do better to do it well.Alex: Well, that's brilliant. I love that so much has happened to me so much to actually put you off doing it and make it harder to work with it. Let it go baby is still peeling off and I've just found my replies to you because I yeah, I think I said yeah, so one thing I think I said was like, Don't worry about you don't need an excuse to make the video I think I was like, I think a lot of people do that they sort of when you're first doing videos, you feel natural. You need to explain why during the video. Yeah. I remember saying that as well. And then yeah, I think I said splitting it up into smaller, smaller ones. Stuart: Yeah, great. Alex: Yeah.Stuart: It was fine because the first step videos were very much okay. The clients out there don't understand about equity release. So let's tell them what the process is. Let's tell them why modern equity release is better than the old equity release. Let's tell them you know, the interest rates are lower than they've ever been. Let's tell them there's no negative equity guarantee on just about every product out there. So, you know, there's a real fear in my world is about equity release. So let's dispel some of the untruths. Let's tell people what the process actually is. And let's try and be a little bit more accessible. There are some really big companies out there doing equity release, you know, you have Vivos, Liverpool, Victoria, and there are some huge broker firms. I think the more local the more family-based business, such as ours is where local older people want to be where they want to be, you know, they want the products they want their people to be from where they're from, and understand a little bit about them and their world. Does that make sense?Alex: Yeah, no, that's exactly what we found when we've cuz we've run some x release ad campaigns on Facebook. Yeah. We've found when we've advertised the advisor, rather than a brand, and we've made it very personal, they work really well. And the cost per lead is slightly higher than what you typically get with mortgages. Yeah, we brought that down a bit. But the quality when that comes through when we're advertising the person. What we have found, though, like, you rightly say, a lot of fear, like every ad campaign, we've put out, there'll be loads of people saying this is a scam. Yeah, many of them and we don't, a lot of our clients aren't where we're trying to get. We're creating written content to dispel the myths but a lot of them don't want to do video. It would be great if we had with each comment rather than having to hide it. We could put a link out Oh, actually, if you check this, you can see the difference between what you think and what it actually is.Stuart: Yeah, you know, we played around with some men, we did some Facebook marketing last year and yes, absolutely right. The feedback you get is, you know, it's quite vitriolic. They don't hold back. But I was doing it to get that over the phone, but we've just experimented with it. And they kept deleting the comments and I'm like, No, no, no, no. If this is the comments we're getting, we need to address them. So I took over replying to the office as a scam or that you used to get things like oh, my dad took out 70,000 pounds and now he owes 180,000. And I remember one specifically who'd said but you know, you don't know the backstory, so it could have been his house was repossessed. So we need 70,000 pounds. Therefore 70,000 pounds is a great investment to keep your property or the other thing, and actually, this is what I found now, he has taken it out seven years ago, and the interest rate was 8%. So what actually happened there at the time, it may have been the right thing, but now it's not that a huge part of our education is well, we need to review it. You know, I was looking at stats the other day, and it's about 40% of the public are on a standard variable rate for their mortgage for equity release, 92% of the public have never reviewed their rates. Well, that guy went back to and said look really sorry to hear but the interest is accelerated so much more neck to release lets you pay some of the interest, all of the interest and the interest rates start from 2.8%. Why don't we review that and we reviewed it and got an array of just over 3%? So bring your critics on it. It was brilliant. Because of how many people read that?Alex: Yeah, fantastic. Stuart: Yeah, very not so much. And we try to use those case studies because that's the thing. It's, you know when we're talking about rates, when we're talking about the non-equity release being x, y, and Zed, it doesn't really mean a lot to people. But when we're saying this client came to us on an 8% interest rate, we managed to do it for three. This is how much money he saved each month, or this is how much less the interest is accruing by so. So yeah, definitely the case studies would be a tip I'd give any equity release advisors out there, you know, make it real. Use the examples you are doing for clients because that's what people want to see.Alex: That's amazing. I think you may have single-handedly helped, as I was gonna say, millions of people who don't have lots of light bulbs. Go Often in my brain, I'm sure and you're on it but I know we get a few people listening to the do equity release as well that are thinking Actually, I can use and you do well that's made me think of randomly. Have you ever seen suits theStuart: Yeah, Meghan Markel and all that.Alex: Yes. And it just reminded me of Harvey spectre saying when there's a gun pointed at you, you turn it around and you've turned that negative feedback into a positive by going into a colour, no-win situation of someone slagging you off on Facebook, into a new client, you've literally acted them, ensure.Stuart: It's good to do and you know, it's quite good for the soul because if you're putting yourself out there in any context, we started off talking about videos, but this is Facebook advertising yourself out there and people are actually not slacking off your company as such. But then you're in and you know, my Facebook has got all my friends on my family on and if people are actually seeing The industry I'm in, it's got a bad reputation, then that tells what I do. So I want people to understand the passion I have for actually getting people to understand that modern equity release actually is a very far cry from where it was five years ago, and actually is the right thing for a lot of people. It's not the right thing for a lot of people as well. Yes, they need to approach us so that we can, you know, with full integrity, sit down with them and go, actually, it is right for you, or Actually, no, let's phone your lender and just renegotiate your deal. You know, we've done that for a couple of clients where we'll come into the office, we'll look at release, and you know, they're in their late 50s. And I'm like, well, no equity release can't be right for you at your age, because we don't want to pay the interest and the amount you're learning when you get to the age you're probably going to get to is a huge chunk of the likely value of your property. So let's speak to your life. And see if they will let you continue on your interest-only mortgage, let's be about other options for you. And if none of those options work, actually, equity release might be right for you. But it has to be right for the person at the time, the wise people and says, actually, I think equity release might be suitable for you, but in five years, but in five to 10 years, so let's stay in touch over the next few years and see if your position changes. So I think integrity has to be a huge part of it, which is why we've got to get out there and talk to more people.Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I think just linking this back to video so if I put myself in. So my mom is 70.Stuart: Yeah.Alex: She wasn't elite mortgage-free debt-free. If she wasn't, and I am. I worked in a different industry and I didn't know about equity release, and I didn't know about any sort of financial services like that. I would be worried about my mom at her age sitting down with any kind of financial advisor without me being there? Yeah, because they watched too much rogue traders and stuff like that and you're very protective over your parents. So linking this back to Vivio I think the great thing about video for me, if I was looking at it for her, and I saw you doing all these videos and you come across the way you do, I would feel much more confident picking up the phone to you and saying, Can you sit down with my mom and talk to her about it? Because I've got to know you a little bit and like you say, integrity, and trust.Stuart: Yeah.Alex: Really, really important for me and I think there's a lot of people who are like me.Stuart: I totally agree. And, you know, I can hear myself saying this to clients and I've said it's a mom, dad that five years ago, I wouldn't have done equity release for my mom and dad. Today without a doubt. In fact, we're talking about at the moment I would get mum and dad to do it. And if someone can say that they would advise their parents to do something like, I think that's hugely rare of how they feel about it. And yeah, you're right that the videos do help because people see you, people get to know you a little bit and it's only a little bit isn't it because it's a one minute, but they see you, they see you with the dog, they see your family business, and that does grow some confidence. And we, you know, but it's only one part of many, I would say, you know, our reviews are fundamental to us. Both have good reviews and are vouched for and vouch for, I think a brilliant company, who have really helped our business grow with their reviews and the way they do things. I also think if you're looking for an equity release advisor for your family, or for you, your business to work with Got to be by referral. So who would someone recommend? And you know, are they a good company ethically? And that's tricky to work out. And are they a member of the equity release council? That's the one that I would look at, you know, the equity release Council have standards for our industry. If an advisor or a company is part of that to release counsel, actually, they're taking steps to almost certificate how reliable they are. So yeah, videos are important, Alex, but I think, as a part of several other issues that people should consider.Alex: Absolutely. Do you think the equity release counts or do enough to make people aware that they as a body should be you know, they are that stamp of authority because you go to a website and you see that there but I think a lot of consumers may not know what that means. Stuart: Excellent question. I had this conversation with the equity release Council, probably about six months ago, I was in contact with the chairman, the CEO and the marketing department. And it was good. I'd made the videos. And then I thought, well, let's connect to the risk councils website, see what videos they got? And check. No, no joking at all. I think the most up to date video was from 2016. And maybe 2017. I think they modernized recently and went to the marketing department. I said, Look, I don't understand. And we are trying to get across to people how modern equity release has changed how the products for everyone out there. But your videos are just not up to date. I've made some videos, how about I send them to you. And you have a look, why not use them on your website. And they've used to, I should have told you. Sorry, I haven't told you that.Alex: I think I mentioned something about the equity release count. So like you said, I got a mention in a blog or something. Stuart: They put two of the videos on their website and we've set up a YouTube channel with all of our videos and they learn this but I completely understand if they can't be seen to be promoting one company. And you know, my argument to that was no, I don't want you to. I want you to show the equity release advisers out there, what is possible, you make videos, and make them interesting, make them popular, and we'll publish yours too. They started off with it's become my famous video now. It's the Wendy Bohunan video and it's a lovely lady from Plymouth who first got in contact with me last year, who and she'd seen an advert I put up a local glossy Plymouth magazine that goes up to about $40,000 And she'd seen it and she saw the family. The family photo as I call it. My wife sent me the office manager and the dog and then said I'll, you know, bulk bloke with glasses looks like a nice chap. They think I'll get him around. So I wrote around to see her and she was in a bit of a safe state. That was a horrible phrase, but she was suffering and her son was bringing her food parcels. She told me, she was wearing a 199 Oxfam dress, or someone's bringing her food parcels each week and a half, pretty dilapidated, and she got a call while I was there, from someone chasing her for money. Fast forward six months. I went to see her just before Christmas, and she was wearing a nice outfit. She now treats herself to Marks and Spencers once a week her son doesn't bring food parcels. The property has had some improvements and she no longer gets phone calls from people. Because she took out equity release, that is it's mental health has improved as well, that is a kind of rags to riches story for me because it's real. And she blesses her. She was recorded by the local paper who got hold of the story and she gave a one-minute explanation of what had happened and it was super Android equity release council saw this and said we want to use that Stuart, it's, it's a great story as to how to release can help people in the right situation. So you have to cancel since then. I've opened up this to equity release advisors. So if you are an extreme supervisor and produce some good video footage or a good blog, they couldn't have it on that site. So yeah, a good little tip there.Alex: Lovely, brilliant. Perfect. So I want to find out the kind of like because you were we've been talking off the air, we were kind of mentioning your sort of retail background, and then you've done you were sort of your last sort of employee job was with Santander. Is that right?Stuart: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I spent seven years straight from uni with deponents. And loved it there. Yeah. through the various management roles. You know that a lot about people and service, then, yeah, just happened to get into banking and was doing branch management and mortgage supervisor roles, regional mortgage manager roles. And, and then actually, I thought I could do this and I could do it as a business and there are so many marketing things that I want to do that a big corporation looks at and goes, it's not really the brand is not really what we want to do. It's not really where we want to go and I thought, well, actually, a good friend of mine owned financial investment companies. Short financial planning. And I said to him, Look, you don't have any mortgages. And I know you don't want to do mortgages, how about I have a room in your lovely offices, and I start a mortgage company, you helped me by being my supervisor. And then we came from there. And that was, what, two and a half years ago. And last year, it changed and we wanted to rebrand. We felt that we were growing to such a size that we saw the alarm in the background. Really, we thought, yeah, it's time to go out on our own. I bought his shares off him. Then we rebranded the company in January last year, and have a look back we went directly authorized and the big thing has been all the marketing we do all the branding we do is up to us. We've got no one saying oh, no, that's not what we want to do. That's not how we want to do it. We would play in our own funnel. And, and that's really, really how we want to do things. So, yeah, as a great step for me. And as I look back on it, we're sort of done 10 years before. So yeah.Alex: Was it scary?Stuart: Hell yeah. Yeah. Because you go from a decent salary to knowing money is coming in. And I know, a lot of advisors out there. I've done similar and it is scary. My wife had to work a lot of hours to pay the bills, and what it's like there's a pipeline for business and it takes two-three months to come in. So yeah, the early days were scary. But then we grew as having a reputation. But we started off as a mortgage company, Alex, residential is only and we started getting more and more equity released inquiries, and I've done the exams. And I thought I love this. I love how life-changing equity releases. And it's a booming business. And it's a niche. So all of those things made me think, actually that's the direction I want the business to go.Alex: Yeah, fantastic. And what's the kind of the plans for the future then are you kind of thinking about this? I'm happy to sort of, as far as we are or want more advisors or you know, want to go national or want to keep it local? what's kind of in your Have you thought about it? Because we're sort of about a year over sort of Christmas. I was thinking about the next year, what you know, future and things like that.Stuart: Yeah, very much. So I think, probably about six months ago. I thought, right. Okay. So, and you notice like you get anyone gets to a stage with a business that actually this business takes over nicely. I do the things that I want, I can pick the kids up, I can drop them at school. I don't have to work weekends but don't want to or we can go to the next level. I think because I've started collaborating with a lot of businesses around the country. We've got some good institutions in London, Oxford, Bournemouth, Basingstoke, new Bri, actually, we want to expand the business. I want to be out there more and meeting new introduces. So we've got two new advisors who actually are just going through their CMPA now. They've got a week away in Bristol next week doing what the week after, and then they've got two months gap, and then they've got another week in Southampton. I think the second one is.Alex: Okay.Stuart: So yeah, we'll have three of us advisors, recruiting additional admin, but we want to grow organically. So one of the advisors has been our office manager, so that's Sammy, and other ones my wife, so it's still keeping it a very close-knit family business. Because, as I'm sure everyone out there knows, recruitment is really difficult. Getting the right person that fits in your ethos in your model in your business, given the service that you give is very difficult. Whether we go that way in the future, I don't know. But it's interesting because I've just been working on this in the last couple of weeks. What do we want the business to represent in 2020? Well, we want to continue the education we're doing around equity release. We want to continue the collaboration we're doing with Well, we've got solicitors, we've got accountants, we've got mortgage brokers, we've even got equity release advisers who don't really like doing it to lease sending us business and with commission sharing with them. Because you know, if you've got a mortgage business and your equity release qualified, but you don't do many equity releases, it's difficult to actually sit down with Brian, and go, these are your options because you're not up to speed with it. It's fast-moving, so yeah, we're working with groups like that. And that's what I want my role to be going forward. But last year, our best things we did were the things where we went to events, we ran events with our introduces with our partners. And I'll give a couple of examples. So far this year, we've got fine dining experience. We've got a gin tasting event, and we're going to horse racing, we're going to eat now but races and then they help for our partners and are introduced as where we say, thank you. We say thank you for introducing that business to us last year. And don't forget us this year. Because for us, having fun at work is really important. You know, in the past, I've had mental health issues and I've struggled getting up. So the balance of business is really important to me. So yeah that's what 2020 looks like.Alex: fantastically you have me at gin tasting I am I'm a huge draw to know what my may want to know my knees or regulation is.Stuart: Come on. Alex: Find a gene that I like more than sip Smith.Stuart: What's it called?Alex: Sip SmithStuart: I'm actually writing this down what flavour?Alex: Well it's like a London dry gin. There's nothing fancy about it. Stuart: Yeah. Alex: Every gin that I try. Alex: Yeah.Stuart: It's like it's good, but it's not quite. So my solution is to find a gene that I like better than sip Smith.Alex: Oh, you have to try and then do a lemon drizzle lemonade just have the normal the green one. It's got a swan on it. I'm on like, it's one of the gin is on my things like I'm I think I'm known for having beard glasses. Loving and drinking gin is like the key thingsStuart: So I've just written down green with swan. So.Alex: Yeah, I'm after that. Well, if you love Sip Man, then you'd have enjoyed the research that I was doing last week of places in Devon, that have good gin events. And one of them and I'm not making this up, we've got the National Marine Aquarium in clover. Alex: Right.Stuart: They got an event coming up in a few Saturdays time called Gins with Finn. I'm honestly not making that up. They somehow have managed to get the National Marine Aquarium and the gym company together, and they didn't know what to call it. So it's an evening event where they've got a company with several different gyms and obviously the sharks and the various animals they've got in the tanks are the fins. So yeah, you might have to come up with four gins with fins, Alex.Alex: Well, the other thing I love is a good pun. I absolutely love it. So that sounds like it. My event well it's a full house.Stuart: Yeah.Alex: Oh, my so I'm gonna touch for a second I'm not gonna pass away this year but my funeral should be called gin's event.Stuart: Yeah. People will be pleased to hear we've actually decided against that one as Baba has 143 different gins and now teaches you how to make them and part of the event is you get your first three as part of the deal. So yeah, I think we've got. I think 12 of our introducers and partners come into that one. So yeah, it's all part of it. It's yeah, enjoy business, enjoy collaborating and let's make up days fun, I think is the key.Alex: Absolutely. Well, we've got a I was just looking at my podcast schedule and there was a guy we recorded with Adam King who, so when yours goes live, his would have already been on the thing he talks about is partnerships. That is massive for him so yeah it just makes sense doesn't it getting those right partnerships where it's kind of a win-win for you and for them even like you say people that are qualified in an equity release but do it as an add on? Stuart: Yeah, absolutely. Alex: Getting with the right people and yeah, and the thing coming like bringing it back to the video that is building rapport but it's meeting people in person builds rapport more than ever. Giving them free Jin builds a lot more report is all about for me like relationships are like having a good life. I just think I like doing business with people that I like.Stuart: Yeah.Alex: So and then doing like videos is getting to know them a little bit first, but then that's why we do our events in peace where I can meet a lot of people that listen to the podcast and things like that, and then that builds our relationship. Even more. And that's just the same across any business especially I think if you're giving financial advice. Stuart: It is a nail on the head, I think. Yeah, the videos when we started them in June and then through July and August, we released one a week of a series of educational ones and the ones we just started releasing all the why, as a sister, accountant, mortgage broker, etc. Should you work with us? So yeah, the second one will come out this week, and then we're doing them weekly. But the last set of videos, actually, yeah, you've just made me think of a guy contacted me on LinkedIn and said, I want to collaborate with you. You know, you could really do a lot of equity release. You see a lot of clients. I haven't got the confidence to do it at the moment. So yeah, can you see my client will like I'm sending them completed on Monday, the client completed on Monday and I'm sending him a check for just over 6,000 pounds this week, but actually check is so 1980s However I send him the funds as soon as I received them. So yeah, that the collaboration thing can be lucrative and he hasn't done any of the work or taken any of the risks on that, other than he has a good relationship with the client who now has helped her three daughters out one was struggling with our business one was struggling to pay a mortgage. And the third one was just delighted that her two sisters were struggling. Now she wasn't obvious but the other way we'll be fair to divide the money equally three ways. So the third child got the same as the two others who really needed it. So yeah, it's a good story about how videos can lead to increased collaboration and how that can help a business because how does that guy who sent the client to me know how does his client feel about him now that we've helped her solve a problem. Exactly.Stuart: Exactly. Thank you so much for introducing me to Stuart. Exactly. It's brilliant. It is like it is a win-win. And so yeah, no, I think we spend a lot of time naturally in our businesses thinking I want to find new business myself, and when I'm on a market myself, just to get new business, but actually marketing to get collaborators and partnerships as well is, you know, coming massively.Stuart: Yeah, yeah. And it's something that I cottoned on to later on last year because any marketing you do for clients is actually hard work. And it needs to be very consistent. You need to do a lot of it. And finding the right niche is really tricky. Whether that is you know, because obviously, my niche is, well, probably age 65 to 75 owns my own property. But has a need for a lump sum or income, whether that be to improve their lives, whether it be to invite them, improve their family's lives, whether that be to reduce their inheritance tax liability, and they're perhaps not easy niches to find in a marketing campaign. But when you're collaborating with people who, you know will write as, as an example, whether they're a solicitor or just a will writer firm, one of the questions they ask someone when they're writing Well, do you own your own property? Oh, yes. And we're writers that say to me that the phrase we hear most is where asset rich but cash poor. And, you know, I know someone who may be able to help you with that. Let me introduce you to Stuart. And he can talk to you about being asset rich and a little bit less cash poor. So yeah, it's those collaborations and when someone finds a client for you, the relationship is virtually almost there. Alex: Yeah, exactly. Stuart: Whereas when you find the client, you have to build the relationship. So yeah, the collaboration pieces are where the future is Alex? It really is. That's a huge part of our business for 2020. And I would suggest for people out there, it should be part of this.Alex: You've been dropping value bombs all the way through this Stuart. Exactly. We've needed for 40 minutes. I can't believe it. Stuart: Wow. Alex: This is what I love. So the podcast, but amazing is nearly when it will be a year old by the time we published this.Stuart: Okay. Alex: We would have only had this conversation if I had started it. And what I love about talking to advisors is that I learn more from your perspective as well. But yes, you know, we only generally only do the marketing stuff we don't deal with the end consumer. So for me, I get loads of different ideas from, from having people like yourself on. So I've really enjoyed chatting with you. I love your enthusiasm for everything. It's really refreshing. Is there anything we haven't talked about? That could help anyone listening? Do you think?Stuart: Yeah, the only thing that I think that I was thinking about? Obviously you, you invited me to this last week and I'm thinking about well if I was listening to a podcast, what would I want to hear that we focused a lot on video and I think the video is, is kind of the symbol of what we as advisors need to do. And what I mean by that is, the video was try something outside of your box, or something out of your comfort zone. Well, in the last six months, I've been trying things out of my comfort zone, and things like contacting that journalist in the Daily Mail, who's done an article about your industry and saying really interested in your article? A couple of things that disagree with that data? How about you ask me for a comment next time. I'm going to the local press and saying, Okay, what do your readers know about equity release? What do they know about investments? Whatever your niche is, what do they know? They will try to get you to do an advertorial and pay for it. But yeah, maybe that's the right thing for you to do. That morial is how I've grown my business in Plymouth. I think my advertorial now a lot of the local newspapers are online as well. And one of the 2400 videos that I referenced earlier on that got over 6000 hits from people online. So yeah, it's trying things that are a little bit different, be open to ideas. The last one I'll say is next Saturday, I think it's the 25th we've got an advertorial appearing in The National paper in the times and national paper, and I would never have considered going national, even a year ago. But the company phoned me up. And obviously, it's a selling space advertising marketing company to say, you know, we've got a quarter-page advertorial. It's 8000 pounds. Okay, can I have two? No, no, no way. As you know, I'm a small business. There's no way we can afford anything like that. But I'm interested in the concept, talk to me about it. And he sent me the article. I hadn't looked at it. And then I said, 8000 ridiculous. And you had three and a half thousand. I said, Wow, there's a discount for you. And I said I'm really interested, when's the deadline? And he told me when the deadline was and I said, Well, I need to have a think about it. I need to have a chat with the directors on their new director. I need to have a think about it. And he came back to me: The date for deadlines ledger What are your thoughts? I said I want to do that. But what's your very best price? 1500 pounds we're going to 1.2 million homes I'm really scared now Alex. NET today because we were just trying things a little bit out of the box. We're prepared to negotiate, we want to build relationships. He wants us to advertise in the future. And I think Yeah, what's a 8,000, 1500 pound discount that's a pretty good discount so if you're out there and dealing with agencies and papers, kids sticking to your guns negotiate to be a bit cheeky and wow, you can find yourself in positions you possibly think it would be.Alex: That's fantastic, or you will have to let me know how that goes on LinkedIn because I will. I'll add it to the outro of because it will be by the time we get this published so that all you'll kind of know what's happened with our Stuart: Yes, yeah.Alex: We'll do it with a bit of time travelling. Stuart this has blown me away genuinely, the amount of value you've given. I'm really excited to get this live and share it with everyone. And it's been great to hear what 2019 has been viewed and I'm really excited to like, I don't want to wish my time away but I'm really excited to see where you are this time next year.Alex: Yeah, no it's gonna be exciting in May and yeah, I really appreciate you. You asked me to come on this because the value bombs thing I've never even heard of. But yeah, I like coming up with new ways of doing things. And I really enjoy sharing those ideas. Because, you know, we know active release advisors in this country is my enemy or my competition. The enemy in the competition is people who are saying that equity release isn't right for people and by us why it's right for people and as educated people, we will you know, what is that lovely phrase? A rising tide lifts all ships. And that is what we're trying to do here.Alex: Fantastic. Love it. Love it so much. So awesome way to end this, Stuart. I really appreciate your time. Let's definitely do this again next year if not in kind of six months.Stuart: Great.Alex: All right, Stuart. Thanks again.Stuart: Yeah, all right. Thanks again, mate.Alex: There we have it. That was my chat with Stuart, an absolutely great guy. He's the first equity release advisor to be featured on my new podcast, the equity release podcast, which will be out now as well. It's kind of out I'm recording this on the week of it launching. So by the time this is live, it will definitely be out. So check that out if you haven't already. And I will see you next time. And in fact, I'm recording this a bit early. And I'm a little bit worried about the outbreak of the coronavirus kind of outbreak affecting a lot of events. So as I record this now, our event is going ahead. And this should be published on the 23rd a couple of days before our event. So hopefully fingers crossed touchwood I'll see you in a couple of days if you come in. If, if it's not happening, and I haven't had the chance to re-edit this podcast episode, that's a bit confusing but hopefully I will be seeing you in a couple of days. See you there.

Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast. This week we have got an old friend, Jodie Stevenson. Almost a year ago when we had our first podcast interview and that went to be the number one downloaded episode of last year.For every enquiry, she gets the leads, CRM, check for notifications and will schedule a chat with her client. And to make sure that she's on top of everything she uses a blank sheet of paper and knows exactly the template and just writes everything and gets it organised. She does that for every client until she runs out of paper. Recently she bought a notepad by Rocket Book. It is reusable, can automatically scan, upload to dropbox, digitally file, and then wipe clean and use again. And again.And if you happen to look for something like a file created 6 months ago, Rocket Book can easily find it for you and locates it in your dropbox file.Cost is £34.99. They've done microwavable one as well where you write in it and put it in the microwave and it will erase everything. It's a huge impact environmentally and it helps save a lot of waste.Transcription:Alex: Hello there, welcome back. And we've got an old friend with us. This week, we're catching up with Jodie Stevenson and it was pretty much a year to the date that we had our first podcast interview. And it went on to be the number one downloaded episode of last year, and of all time, so people talk about her a lot, actually, when they've, I think it's one of the kind of the earlier episodes that people sort of pick up on because it's one of the first mortgage brokers that we interviewed, and they've come on to become the most popular episodes. So I really enjoyed catching up with Jodie. So let's dive straight in. Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast and I can't quite believe it's been a whole year since we last caught up with the one and only Jodie Stevenson. How's it going?Jodie: Thank God it's one and only. I can hear my mom saying that, thank God.Alex: We were just saying, how was it? You were like, no, it's nobody You know, it could have been a year but it has.Jodie: But then we were talking about things like, what things have had like you're like, a quarter of a person that you were then you were last year.Alex: We haven't got a video either away. But yeah.Jodie: Now you're super skinny. Don't worry, though. I'm still fat and consistent for the world. got consistent and but yeah, no, it's, that's great. There's actually been a lot of things that have really happened. So if you actually like, pile up the achievements that both of us have had in the last year. Actually, that makes sense. It's probably like a decade's worth of achievement. So yeah.Alex: It's funny, isn't it? Because you like them day by day, week or week, month or month thing you know, I haven't really done a lot. I've really improved a lot if anyone needs to literally think about doing a 360 and see Oh, this time last year I was doing this, you know, what.Jodie: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, I taught a human to walk this year, which is, technically he taught himself. I'm taking the credit. And if he was walking funny, I wouldn't be taking any other credit for it. But like, yeah, like he's actually like, he's doing the real things. Like he's really doing things this year. Like he's, he's learning words. And oddly, he's learned the word jacket. It's one of his jackets, he calls me Jodie instead of mom, which is awesome. Yeah, so shouts Daddy, and Jodie, I'm like, thank you very much.Alex: Excellent, excellent show you love that. Because I remember obviously we had theWow, it's just a sad thing. Obviously, we had the dogs barking.Jodie: Oh yeah, Thrasher and Baker. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, that happened in a bowl we got em. So they went to live with another Basset and Mum, basically, because we were part of a really good dog network. And so they went to live with this lady who's got like four others and they are just they are so happy. I don't even think the fact they're like maybe because yeah, they live on a farm now and there are loads of dogs there and they absolutely love it. And so yeah, that was a yeah, that was sad but i think i think we could be kind of at the point with you could hear how chaotic it was in the background. They were just like, they were just like, let's go for a walk. Let's go here and I was like no. And so yeah,Alex: It is. Yeah, having a child, a human is a lot I wouldn't have been able to do with pets.Jodie: Yeah, but pets that I had created my own problem with the pets because it was too small of a house, too big of dogs, and not enough boundaries between anyone you know, the dog slept in bed with me and it just wasn't, you know, it was a recipe for disaster. And luckily they've gone somewhere where they are even further mollycoddled than they were with me. So they're there, they're even better off now. I think that's really it's a really big lesson as an adult when you make a decision that's going to hurt you and only hurt you, but it's going to help someone else. So the dogs were going to be better off. I was going to be sad. And I had to make that decision and be like, Okay, well, I guess I'll just be sad then because they're gonna be happier. Real adult learning. So yeah, it was super sad like I was gutted about it, but I think it was the right thing for them.Alex: I know, absolutely. Do you know what I was just looking up while you're telling me that, so I thought I better just check because I knew yours was a very popular sewed for a while it was the second most downloaded? But you want to know something quite exciting that it was the number one downloaded episode of all time.Jodie: Really? That's amazing. That's awesome. Yeah, you know, it's my dulcet tones. It's my lovely calming accent that ASMR of mortgage advisers.Alex: Say well, I would like to say part of the credit of doing something super exciting with the title of like a mortgage broker generating their own leads doing blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'd like to take a little bit of credit for that.Jodie: That's okay. You can.Alex: I'll take 30% of the credit. Jodie: Yeah. Alex: That's the number one so you'd be there. So David Thompson. So Gary was seventh, and then you don't talk to a second, Me and Tom doing an episode were third. We should have been first you know, that's an absolute disgrace. You got ash, Ash ball and fourth. So what was interesting actually the top, the top five are not if you take out me and Tom, the top five are all brokers. Jodie: Okay, cool. Alex: So now, you know we've had a lot of marketing experts on dishing out marketing advice. One thing I've learned over this year is that actually getting people like yourself and hearing your stories is what people are interested in. Jodie: Yeah, what do you know what though it's something that I found throughout my life and we had at the bank, we have people who would come and work for us. And you were like, university graduates and they'd come in on a graduate course or something, they'd come straight into management. And the rest of the bank was just like, nope, don't I don't want to know anything this person's got to say because you haven't lived this life. You haven't come from the ground up. And this, you know, it puts there's a lot in it. There really is I can sit there and say, Look, I know how to market for mortgage advisers because I am a mortgage advisor. Alex: Yeah.Jodie: I'm marking all myself. And this works rather than someone you know, just coming in and saying, This is what and we could probably be doing exactly the same thing. Alex: Yeah., no, absolutely, absolutely. I think it's, it's being it's easy to put someone to be like, um, you know, Jodie is a broker she's doing that what you know, why can't I and then maybe they think if there's someone who's not worked in it, and it's easy for them? Yeah. It's just easier to make a connection with people that are like you. So. Yeah, that's awesome. And then you had you, as supposed you are the only one as well that we got on that was doing Google Ads themselves. I don't think I spoke to any of the brokers that have been doing Google Ads themselves so are you still on your radar? He's still doing that. Is that anything else overtaking it, or Is that still the number one.Jodie: Now, I mean, I obviously had a baby. So there was a period of time where I wound it down. And I've continued to supply leads. So I still had a handful of loyal clients who just kind of kept buying from me over that period, but I stopped taking any of my leads. And so for about six months, I kind of just backed off from it, and then came back in sort of the back end of last year, I think a little one's gone to nursery now. So yeah, I'm kind of back in it now. And, and it's, it's a blend again. So obviously the network that I'm with b2b, they provide me with leads. And, and I also have my Google AdWords, which, and they're just two very different types of leads. And they all have different conversion rates, and they all work but I don't think you should ever turn a lead source away and you know, if If you can, as long as you are meticulously recording how many times you did everything to in that lead, you know, did I pick the phone up and dial them? How many times did I literally put my hand to my phone? And because then you can figure out how much putting your hand on a phone makes you might be 74 P. But, we can take it right back to that.Alex: Absolutely. I think I saw there was someone a broker showing me their screen and it was like one of their self-employed brokers had only logged two calls. They were saying that this I've not been able to get out as person but it was like two calls a week apart both before 5 pm. And it was like they were I can't remember how long after it was the lead initially dropped. But it was they were reporting it but not doing enough. And I think there's a case of people not being as meticulous as you are with that. I'm not chasing it enough.Jodie: Wow. I would as always, I'm going to be going against the grain here. No, I don't have the needs. I didn't do it, man, I don't do it. Look, if you want a mortgage, I'm going to touch. Here's my number. I if they put in an inquiry, I mean I would the b2b, b2b have their own structure, which is you know that you make an X number of calls, and we have a system that sends them texts, etc. And those ones, you know, that's, that's James's method, and I use that. But for my own needs I when the lead lands, I try within 10 minutes and firing them it's straight off the bat. So I go straight in and I call him because speed stones and it always will and a lot of the times they answer the phone and go oh, oh, didn't expect you to ring me that fast. And I'm like, exactly. I give them a ring straight away. And the chances are they are still sat by the computer. And so they get that one call and then and then I'm never in the zone. And then if they don't answer, I send them a text and I say, Hey, it's me from this company. I'm bringing about your mortgage when good, that's all I do. That's it. I can't find them again. Nope, I bring them at the moment and then I send them a text and that's it.Alex: Do you mind sharing what percentage of contact right there is like what percentage of like, no contact is that you know.Jodie: my contact rate is I have this down the other day I've actually I'm mentoring someone at the moment. So I'm more in my own KPIs than I ever have.Alex: While you're looking at apps are gonna it's like two very different things going on because If you are buying leads or if you're marketing in a way that you're not building any rapport you've you've only got that quick window because they'll forget about you. But if you're marketing and people know you quite well and they've bought into already then you can wait. So I don't think everyone I always think older minute coders are always like you say within 10 minutes.Jodie: Oh, I love that.Alex: Yeah, well little phrase for you.Jodie: YeahAlex: While you're looking at apps are gonna it's like two very different things going on because If you are buying leads or if you're marketing in a way that you're not building any rapport you've you've only got that quick window because they'll forget about you. But if you're marketing and people know you quite well and they've bought into already then you can wait. So I don't think everyone I always think minute older minute coders are always like you say within 10 minutes so I love that. Well, little phrase for you. Yeah. It because it literally is because they'll because if they because there's a lot of things that are important to people at that moment, like mortgages, especially protection that is important at the minute and then once the laptop gets close, I will it was important 10 minutes ago it's not important now because this is happening. So you miss if you miss that window, I think you're missing out. A big one. But it just depends on a case by a case like how well are you have you? Like, do people know you for that one thing and they've already decided that only gonna deal with you.Jodie: No, my leads have no idea who I am mainly, my leads are very much advertised on an in a cold no company we are a company, we can find you the things you would like as your details to have a call and, and so yeah, just give them a ring or give them a quick call. And then I'll send them a text and send them an email. So send them a text and an email. And if they don't come back to me, you didn't want it that much.Alex: Yeah, I wonder though, I'd be so interested to see the numbers like because you're you've got personality, definitely. If people got to know you a little bit beforeJodie: I leave a voicemail, I do leave a voicemail. So maybe that's why I get a lot of callbacks and I get a lot of texts back.Alex: And I think people prefer to communicate in the text.Jodie: 100% of the day. I do.Alex: Yeah, I think my big thing for us this year is to give the end-user the person that wants the mortgage, give them as wide of options as possible to communicate. And not just say, it's only a callback, you have to have a goal, but it's like, how do you prefer to us to get back to that email? Whatsapp? Facebook Messenger? Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Text, phone, and then let them just I think there's a lot of leads being missed, because people are going through and there, and there, yeah, I need a mortgage or I need advice. I've got this situation, and then the only they'll fill all the details out, and the only option is a callback and they'll sort of agree to it and then they'll think but whereas if it's something like WhatsApp, then they don't have to set that timeout to have a call because no one wants to be sold to and the broker can go away if they've done a fact find on the website. If you've collected all that information, why maybe go back to them with something and then build-up to the call.Alex: Yeah, exactly. I something like I think it's a month ago. And I needed to do something with my energy supplier. And I logged in and there was like to write live chat or like live chat, but I always forget it's open. You know, when you open it, and then you just walk off, just forget you have live chat open.Jodie: I’m so confident. I'm terrible with it. So, it clicks on this live chat thing. And it was like, Oh, do you want to just Whatsapp? I was like, Oh, yeah. So Whatsapp. And it just opened a WhatsApp chat with my provider. And then they just kind of got back to me throughout the day. Alex: Yeah. So as a broker, like whether you've got advisors working for you or not, and some people don't want to give them Oh, by the way, you can get a prepaid SIM and you can have WhatsApp away. So you can have all your WhatsApp communications open on a browser window to the on as you and it's so much more organized than email as well when I'm doing a whole sort of project on facilitating WhatsApp Web for clients. We've been looking at WhatsApp chatbot as well, which is not as good as the Facebook Messenger stuff. But again, if people want to do it, we're on it because if we can get as much info on if someone and then the only thing is one, someone said their network won't allow WhatsApp communication despite it being the safest. And I could say I covered which network it was where they were like they ban any communication whatsoever knowing that WhatsApp is more secure than email. That's bonkers. But either way Yeah, that's definitely on our mind because I think a lot of people just don't want to have a phone call.Alex: See, very I'm sort of taking over this episode. So what so what else? So are you doing more of the commercial stuff on your ads before? Exactly it was commercial mortgages pretty much that you were doing last year my rightJodie: Yeah, yup. So my advert saw more commercials but I do get a lot of isolettes through it as well. And yeah, but mostly it's battleaxe for so it's a limited company and Alex: That does seem to be a very popular minute obviously with all the sort of tax changes and stuff. Yeah. How are you finding it like demand this from this time last year to now the B-word is kind of semi sorted is that affected anything or our market like?Jodie: I would say that pre-Christmas which normally December is my salon and the month where I don't do anything, and January is just like I'm continuing to not do much. Outrageous this December was, I mean, right up until Christmas Eve I was still dealing with clients and taking and taking upset on Christmas Eve. Crazy.Alex: We saw one on Christmas Day.Jodie: No..Alex: One every Christmas Day, there’s always one.Jodie: I don't even think I'll pick my phone up on Christmas day it's just yeahAlex: Yeah everyone's different so people get bored and they're like but yeah I mean I was cooking on Christmas Day literally in a second but yeah that that did happen.Jodie: yeah now I've been really busy and really really busy and very much and that's kind of what my year is about this year is understanding how to manage the famine and the feast know get tons of leads in and when you're very quiet and then you know talking to me building it all up and then they kind of all slowly come back in and then you end up with like if anything you end up with too many inquiries because then you've gone too many people coming back and it's kind of I'm trying to figure out what that nice even let's take this many leads a day constantly rather than taking you to know 40 leads a day for two weeks, nothing for another three weeks. So that's what my plan is this year is to find my sweet spot.Alex: of literally the number of leads per week per day. Jodie: Yeah, yeah.Alex: And what was taking the most time for you, when you're sort of dealing with inquiries? Where could it like, Is it like,Jodie: what's that? Sorry, packaging cases? And okay, so that's always the most time-consuming part. And in any mortgage, getting the leads is fine, cuz everything's automatic. And it's also CRM, and it's perfect. And the notification comes through on my phone, I click a button and get it's great. And, but then once and I have a chat with a client, and that's fine, and I don't. Do you follow me on Instagram? Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And did you see the space paper that I got delivered yesterday?Alex: Oh, God doesn't know if I've been on the last couple of days.Jodie: So whenever I get an inquiry, I have a blank sheet of paper. And I know exactly the template of my fact find a blank sheet of paper and I just write, write all and it's all organized, you know, left side for Mr Right side to miss it, and it kind of all ends up looking like a fact find. And so I do that sheet of paper for every client, and then I write on that until really, I've run out of paper and it becomes a client file. And then I take paper, clip it in, and then they become a file. And yeah, well, that is pretty, you can imagine I've got like 60 notebooks piled up next, which is crazy. And so I've actually bought a notepad by rocket book. And it's a reusable notepad. Alex: What. Jodie: Yeah, so you write in it. And then you get your phone, you get the rocket dog app, you scan it over, and it uploads it into Dropbox into a file, wherever you can put file names on it, and everything, and then just wipe the page clean and start again.Alex: Oh my God.Jodie: It's like actual paper and so yeah, that I'm hoping that's gonna save me a bunch of time because now it's got handwriting detection as well. So all my notes now get uploaded into a file. So when a client rings me back in six months time and says hey you know Mr Donovan, I can just open my rocket dog file and go Donovan and it will find that note pad that page of my notepad and go that's that client it might just say Donovan, ah avoid you know, but it will be and that'll be on the new anywhere I am. I can just click it'll be in my Dropbox and I can just search for that name anywhere I don't need my notepads anymore. And because it will all be on this. This Dropbox so I thinkAlex: Then 34.99 I'm just on the road getting a rocket book. Why not? Not mega expensive.Jodie: Yeah, and the efforts are hilarious. I mean, you'll really enjoy him. It's just two guys in there like, they're just having a blast making these books clearly they've done a microwavable one as well where you write in it and then put it in the microwave, and it just erases everything. And but that has a shelf life. And, and something I'm really conscious of at the minute is the impact that I'm having, you know, environmentally. There's a lot of paper in my job. So I'm kind of wherever I can, I'm avoiding a paper. Because everything else in my life pretty much I know I doesn't really have minimal impact with most of the things I use are usable things in most of my life but then in this just reams and reams of paper that I'm printing, I feel terrible.Alex: It's literally my desk at the minute. I've got these A3 papers where we spent sort of between Christmas and New Year like coming up with different ideas days for campaigns and what can be doing better and I've literally got a flood of these A3 bits of paper that I could have done in this. If they do an A3 version. I'm all over, I might get the small one anyway because I do use it like my notebooks.Jodie: What size is a4? So A3 is quite bigger than A4Alex: Yeah.Jodie: I think A4 is probably the biggest that they do but you could open both pages because it's 32 pages.Alex: YeahJodie: Maybe you could open both and just have it on there but you know if you do it small and then just blow it up.Alex: Yeah, well, it's my birthday coming up and the misses were like, what can I want I can kind of get you sort of you never want anything and anything you want you but I could just send you this thing.Jodie: Do it because honestly, I was saying that is such a good present for people. And it's the last one is the one I got and it when it gets delivered. It looks like a bag of space food because it comes in the old space bag. I feel very modern, very.Alex: Yeah. I love it with these things I always get annoyed that I didn't invent it myself.Jodie: Yeah, my dad, my dad has invented everything before anyone else did. And, every time a product comes out, he'll remind me of the conversation we've had four years ago where he invented that and he's right, you know, we have and I say, well, maybe it should actually do one of those.Alex: Yeah. Oh well, I used to work at an agency and this guy called Kazu came like a freelance designer and he just comes in, he sort of lives in our office. We used to work together and our old boss used to say that he invented Facebook before Facebook Like all the time.Jodie: Oh, I bet he didAlex: It’s in his head, but then never did the difference. Zuckerberg did something about it. That's the…Jodie: I think I invented iPhones and I definitely think I did. I had all the passion for an iPhone, in my mind. Alex: Yeah. Jodie: But it just was the translation that I just, you know, probably by the time they came, you know, when I'm thinking of and they were probably 10 years in development anyway. Alex: Yeah, exactly. Jodie: So though they'll be imprinted in our fingers soon.Alex: Really? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, other than digital notebooks, what else is new?Jodie: So yeah, my digital notebook is very new. I'm mentoring somebody.Alex: I was gonna say you mentioned it earlier. Yeah.Jodie: I believe she found me on your podcast.Alex: Well, do you know that happens a lot. This podcast doesn't cost me a lot of money. It cost me time. I don't make anything from it. But I seem to have made like other people. Like some really good so there's like, lots of like, pretty much every guest I've had on saying so and got in touch. We'd like to do this. Amazing. That's great. It's brilliant that I always find it bonkers that people actually listen. And they still listen. And people actually do stuff out of it. So that is.Jodie: I probably get one or two messages a month that say, Hey, I heard your podcast episode. And I'd love to have a chat with you about what you do. I'd love to buy some leads off. Alex: Amazing. Jodie: Yeah. One or two a month at least.Alex: Well, I was just looking at when I looked at your episode stats, I was like, Oh, this has had eight downloads in the last week. And I was like, well, that's like one at one a, obviously, more than one a day and it was over a year old. Least not being advertised. People are picking it out. So yeah, I mean, that is amazing. Amazing to hear. And then I say I didn't get anything out of it. I mean, we get inquiries all the time. I don't ask everyone where they come from. But that's cool. So how's that mentoring? Say what's in terms of the minute you mentoring them on, are they on like everything or just marketing? Just Google Or literally the whole, the whole.Jodie: So initially it was a marketing job really, that she just wanted something to learn. And as we kind of got talking, it just kind of organically became, we were both in a really similar position actually in our lives and her kind of wants to be in the same sustainable situation that I'm in where we can have our children and be the mums that we want to be and run a business that we want to run without having to sell Aloe Vera. Or, you know, these ridiculous shapes that people sell or anything like that. It's just a true Korea and true business. Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And which is lovely to see that people look at me and think, you know, that that's an aspirational and Korea, which is, you know, it's great. So she approached me and I said, Look, you know, I'd love to expand outwards and as well not just physically but potentially for my business. Well, but yeah, let's, you know, let's, let's do it and let's just kind of cobble through it together. And so that's kind of where we're at. She's taken a leap of faith on me and I have to leap of faith on her and we're just trying to figure out how that works. And so that's where we're at. I'm kind of guiding her through how I set up myself. And then we would slowly integrate her into her own being our own broker. And eventually, she's just been doing it a few months now. We've had Christmas, so it's been a little, you know, nonstarter over Christmas, but she's doing amazing, she's got 10s of thousands of pounds in the pipeline, which is crazy. And you know, not all of that is going to go anywhere. But you know, even if I think we've said like, you know, roughly she probably roughly banks to bank seven grand. And I would say, out of everything that she's had through, which is just gorgeous in it, you know, take this leap into like a totally new field and then get in a big pipeline like that. AndAlex: What I love about 99% of the brokers 99.99% brokers I know and speak to also just get as much satisfaction out of like, genuinely helping people as well and they and they and they get rewarded for it. It's like what it's like, I'm almost jealous of the rewards that you guys get from helping people as well as what you get in return. It feels quite a unique kind of job that it's kind of a must to be satisfying.Jodie: Yeah, it really is and do they want and I needed it as well. I really needed it because I started to doubt my own hipe last year and you know, when you have a kid you lose your identity completely for a period of time. And I came back and was like, right i mean obviously I have my group that was on your podcast which is still it still exists but it's just because I didn't know how to help these people and you know they were all asking me and I was like I don't know just how do I do this I'm a parent and how do I do it? How do I do it? And I know me and you know conversations about that and definitely minute old minute cold is, you know, plays on my mind with these people. And so when this really naturally just progressed into something and mentor wise, I was really happy because I was like, Okay, I can do this. And, and I can help and even if all I do is just give her the tools and then send her on her way and Alex: Yeah.Jodie: Because it is, I'm growing as a person, whilst I'm helping her grow as a person. And, and it might be that she goes off and does it without, you know without me in the future and that's, that's fine. And it's just something that I think I've, I've needed to do and it's a big learning for me as well.Alex: I think as well as you learn from teaching as well, she always won't feel giving advice to someone else to do something you sort of like, I find that when we're trying to I always feel like I'm looking at stuff more. So I'm not trying to help myself, I'm trying to help other people as well. So it gives me that extra edge so we've obviously got we've got the pressure of clients that pay us and we've got we've got to deliver for them otherwise we lose them and you know, lose house and family can't eat and things like that, but also that extra edge of wanting to help other people that what they do well or not And affect me, but it always finds, since doing the podcast and doing videos and things like that, that it gives it I've probably pushed myself to learn more to help share that kind of accent.Jodie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, I, I would have, I would have said I was very, you know, very efficient at my job. And I knew I knew exactly what to do, but actually, I just knew exactly what to not do. I knew what to avoid. I knew what I knew. And I knew I knew how to avoid the stuff I didn't know. And with this new, new starter, she's kind of expanded and been like, Oh, well, I'm looking at loads of stuff over here. And I'm like, Oh, no, I don't play in that court. But what I have to do now, so I've, you know, started doing that as well and funnily and, you know, growth, growth is, it's up and down and sideways. It's everywhere because I've had a really great opportunity as well as my father in law and my mother in law and Actually, I've started on the path to working for me as well. And right, so they're going to become mortgage brokers and buy their own rights, which is lovely. But also my dad is coming to work for me as well. And he's had a background like you had a family that had worked in. He's got some experience in it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. So he was a senior financial adviser for the bank that I worked for. And my sister was an advisor as well. And she's had a baby and she's going back to work in January, self-employed as well, which is lovely. And so we're all kind of doing it self employed. But yeah, my dad's come in to work with me as well. Which is great because he's the guy who kind of coached me and made me the person that I am. And now I kind of get to give a little bit back to him, but he loves me and he's going to help me from above and you No, it's going to, it's going to go everywhere. And it's going to be really nice. And it's going to build a really nice little company.Alex: Family literally a family business literallyJodie: Literally a family business. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my partner Matt, and he's always been like a rock in my company anyway. And when I have these, you know, packaging nightmares where I've got just, you know, reams and reams and reams of applications that I've got to fill in. He's just incredible. You just get straight on the computer and he's like, scans him in and, and does it all for me anyway, so I've always had him helping me. And even if sometimes it's just he just goes out with our thoughts. Leave Hello. Yeah.Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And so it's always been great and hands-on, but it's so nice that we're getting everyone else is kind of getting involved in it as well. And it's fantastic. Yes, it's lovely. It's quite a nice little family that we've got now. Really a family.Alex: Really Yeah. And I think just going back to what you said about Like growth being up down sideways my business mental talks about competitive with like climbing Everest is like the night before they go to sleep they climb up and then they have to climb back down again to like a climatized so it's always talking about the growth of that you're up and then you've got sometimes you've got to go back down to be able to push forwards again parallel so it's nobody can build a business with cute like continued growth will kill you.Jodie: Yeah absolutely. Isn't linear it's not you know.Alex: Yeah it's a graph, this graph should have these peaks where you drop down and then you that gives you the ability to then push back up again. So yes one thing is you always want like a month I always want growth, growth, growth, but the one thing he thought he taught me about was that it is normal and healthy to have no backs and I'm pushing on from there.Jodie: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's amazing what you can really beat yourself up on mean on AdWords I can, I can have a week where I look at my fingers and you know, they're costing me three times as much as they did on, you know, the month before and I will really panic. And I'll go Stop, stop the ads. And you know, it's just your instinct is to stop at that point but no, no, you need to stop because there's a reason why they're coming through at this. You know, it's because people really really want it or people you know, there's a lot of competition or whatever, but it always evens out. It always evens out over the course of a year and you always end up at the same cost per click. So there's a reason it's an average, you know, you're gonna have some weeks where it's half of your normal one that you just can't look in like that you've got to set boundaries and be like, I'm only gonna, I'm only gonna worry about it. If over the course of three months, my average cost is going up and then I'll worry andAlex: Yeah.Jodie: But even then don't leave it another three months.Alex: Yeah, exactly. Is that easy? Again, because when we do it like that with Google Ads absolute minefield in terms of like, we've got one company where the cost per click can range from like quid to four quid depending on the time of day and when other people are bidding and things like that. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: There are so many sorts of and it's difficult when if there are brokers with a small budget as well, those impacts will be felt bigger than one whether someone's spending like 50 grand a month compared some of the spending 500 pounds those ups and downs have felt much bigger with the smaller budgets definitely.Jodie: Absolutely.Alex: Have you ever kind of looked at the thought about SEO being on page one top of page one for those keywords bidding on.Jodie: You mean organically?Alex: Yeah, organically. Yeah. Is it ever like, do you have SEO remorse as in like this time last year, if there was an if you knew what to do, there was a plan in place, and you could have executed it and by now a year later, you could have been position one.Jodie: I don't know, I've never really, I've never really seen the benefit of you know what, I am the person who scrolls past the ads and goes to the organic number one result, but I feel like that's the same as buying an ad anyway now, because people just strategically do things to make themselves the number one result, but it's not. It's not really, you know when you go shopping online, and it organizes things, you know, and you can do it from price low to high or whatever, whatever the default is never price low to high, its price, whatever is gonna make me the company more money. And they do it that way. So it's, you know, I don't necessarily believe personally, that the value of being number one, organically has the value that it used to. I think it just means that you're very good at SEO.Alex: Oh, yeah. Jodie: Just means you're good at getting number one on Google. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. What we find with a lot of our clients, the reduction in the cost to acquire a new client if they're getting free traffic from Google is is is the biggest one the biggest factors inJodie: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In that sense, yes, definitely that it would be a cheaper option. But just for me, I feel like I didn't know that my audience is ready.Alex: What you’re doing now is work and I don't want your eye off the ball. So there's a lot of things in life like, don't if you've got something that is working, that's profitable unless you're obviously like, where you were their way or now. You don't want to change it. Yeah, I was just kind of interesting. If we're, if because you're getting those leads from Google, whether that was on your mind.Jodie: It is nice to know, it would definitely be nice to know. And, and, and I certainly, I certainly would be open to looking at it and seeing But I'm still in the same position that I was in before, which I know is always your favourite thing to hear from me. I don't need any more leads at the minute. I have to turn the machine off frequently. Alex: If you if we were to talk this time next year, and you didn't have to have the machine on at all, and they were all just coming in.Jodie: Oh, yeah. Yeah. be great.Alex: Yeah. So that was my I have a question. I should have asked that beginning. But ya know, it's interesting. And that's where a lot of we have all kinds of ads running literally, bar, no bar, none. All of them but they were the ones that are getting those. We work on SEO for all of our clients because of getting that free trial. And Google's great because it's people are like, well, like we said earlier about catching them within that 10 minutes. They're in the zone. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Like Facebook, LinkedIn once you're there when they are in the zone and it's They haven't made the decision to go out and look for something. Yes. You've got to be even quicker with the social ads to get them But yeah, I think we're finding Google gives the best quality and if you can get it free so obviously it reduced like the possibilities cray LAUGHINGJodie: You had a podcast with Joe Mani.Alex: The thing I haven't asked because it's we have your name is coming up on my thing is Joe Mani but Joe Mani is that a self-inflicted?Jodie: Yeah hundred per cent you know what? funny because it's difficult to nickname my name because it isn't really you can't really other than Steve Oh, yeah, all coffee bit. Oh calling me like, which I don't like Joe Go. Yeah, exactly. So it has to be something. So after a while, it just became, I just used to put myself on board, you know, couldn't fit Jody on it. So I'd write j and then we'll do like $1 sign. So I was. So yeah, it's definitely a self-made Monica and that does not need to stick. Nobody knew that nickname mom. But just to go back to what you said about LinkedIn, and LinkedIn, such a funny little place at the minute. And I mean, I've turned my notifications off because it's too much, people, I don't know who in their right mind thinks that anyone is going to read a near eight paragraph-long message from a brand new connection. Either like, Hey, how are you insert name here, comma, I would really like to talk to you about insert profession here. Let me tell you a little bit about what it is that I do. It was 25 paragraphs about it and I'm like Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just never read it.Alex: I agreed at the no who's speaking to a guy the other day. And they're kind of like an agency that does that can't that I outreach but in a very different way. And he was like talking about getting them to strike up a conversation like asking a question or something to start a conversation rather than just doing a whole sales blurb is like running up to someone in the street and just shouting about your business for like, 10 minutes.Jodie: Yeah, exactly. And I way prefer, like, I've had a lot of impact on a lot of my favourite messages on LinkedIn, or people who've listened to your podcast, and they will message me with something. And, and I'll, it always makes me laugh. It'll always be something funny in the message. It'll be like, Hey, I heard you on the podcast. And then they'll just say something hilarious. Along the lines, I think because I give a sense of like and look for a laugh. And they'll always always have a laugh. And even if all we do is just say, uh, you know, I'll say thank you very much. And I'll see Say that I mean, uh, you know, I mean a deadly baffle for number one. So please be free to download it 400 times.Alex: As much as we've done it. Jodie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'll send you all your five pounds in a minute. So we're at and, but well, you know, we'll have a laugh and we'll have fun and that's what I think that's what LinkedIn should be is a place to find like-minded business people to do business with. And to Hulu, and not to get too caught up on being everyone's cup of tea. Alex: Exactly, that's Yeah, if you're vanilla, like the, someone was asking me about, Tony, have you seen Gary Vaynerchuk?Jodie: Yeah, I love Gary Vaynerchuk.Alex: Yeah, but he is Marmite, you know. That's why if he was vanilla and trying to get everyone to like him, he wouldn't have the following that he has. So Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Pretty extreme example, obviously. But yeah. Like being yourself is.Jodie: Yeah, I'm a marmite well, hundred percent a marmite. And people literally do like me or they do not like me. And it's and you know what, I used to really struggle with that but now I'm just like, that's fine. There are plenty more people in the world and I like to be alone. I like to warm people up a bit I am a little bit of a troll by nature and I do like to sort of tickle people a bit, particularly on LinkedIn. And somebody put something at Christmas. I hate the boastful nature of Christmas. And I don't think people talk about the presence that golfing kids run said. And so I was on LinkedIn at some point. And this guy was like, What do you get the guy who has everything, and I think I responded with haemorrhoid cream. And if you say you've got everything, have you got a spare tenner?Alex: Yeah, brilliant.Jodie: Yeah. You know, I like to sort of make fun of people a bit but I think Yeah, LinkedIn has got to change to become a bit more. I think you've got to be aggressive with who you let in your circle on LinkedIn.Alex: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I've really filtered.Jodie: Yeah, remove connections, remove connections. Yeah. Are you within a geographical distance of me that we can do business if not remove connection?Alex: Absolutely. I think it is a great platform and I'm slowly being marmite like I don't I put a photo on I think was yesterday and I've got I got bought two notepads for Christmas one says the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other thought of this as a warning Bantam merchant, proper cringe but I just took a photo and said I've got a really important meeting with a top dog Fs company but which notepad I never would have done that before because it's like, oh, I should be professional or not have a but then I think I've made more a double business got more friends out of LinkedIn and connections from being myself and not worrying about not being too professional or worrying about or not worried about anything actually other than just being sad.Jodie: Just don't do it. It's, you've got to you've just got to be yourself. I mean, you really have to just be yourself. My favourite people in the financial industry are you. I can smell I can sniff out a metalhead in a crowded room. I just know him. I know the people who you know they've got like a slipknot tattoo, I just know it. And I like a Rolodex of metal you know metal aficionados who are in the financial industry, and that's one that they're my people. So I love those people. And but then also people who, who have a criminally, you know, offensive sense of humour. That's, that's Matt der max. People so if I find a particularly funny person who also listens to, you know the same sort of music as me, you know that's a relationship for us. So if you're out there and you want to be my BDM please message me on LinkedIn and if you want to talk slipknot and deals let's do it let's I'm in the market for it.Alex: I'm really looking forward to someone opening a message or connection requests or doing some sort of reference or, or something like if you get that please do a screenshot and send.Jodie: I will put it on a T-shirt. Promise. Alex: Yeah, brilliant. We have been chatting for 50 of your English minutes Wow. Wow, it was like three.Jodie: It really does. Alex: What have we not discussed?Jodie: I think pretty much it and we've done exactly what I've been taught not to do there with it. We haven't done politics or what is it politics and religion not covered? That's good.Alex: We could do that next year. Yeah. Jodie: Okay. Yeah, definitely.Alex: It's so good to catch up with you. I can't believe it's been a year. It. It's absolutely bonkers. Yeah. And it's great that people are still listening to your original one. Still getting in touch with you. I can't believe I've been involved in something that makes that happen. I find that bonkers.Jodie: It's not the first situation that's gone viral for me. And I'm sure it won't be the last. Alex: Yeah, what was, go on spill it.Jodie: I'm not going to give you my medical records. No, I'm joking. And no, I put a few in. I often go viral actually. And I did it. I did a bit of a famous post about mediums A while ago and my disdain for the role of BDM. Right. I've always said, I stand by it. I don't think it's a role that that is relevant. I don't think it's a helpful role. For mortgage advisors when it's one person I think it's unfair on the person. I used to hate BDM but now I hate whoever makes a BDM do their job. I hate them. It's and it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. You just need a call center that deals with those. But yeah, I did them almost like an X factor of BDMs. Once I put up that I don't like BDMsms and I refuse to use them. I actually completely refuse to use them now. I did have a few people who were like, let me prove you wrong Let me prove you right like so and so and a few of them did. Yeah, pretty much funny Penny Paul. But yeah, I got I ended up with quite a few connections through that who appreciated my angle which is Look, I want to know now the answer to my question, not seven o'clock at night when you've got home from I've been 16 coffees all day when you finally Got to read your emails. Like, the deal is with someone else at that point. It's, you know, it's crazy. But yeah, that was another thing that went a bit viral as well.Alex: Fantastic. So, if people haven't heard the first episode I'm following you know, I'm following you on Instagram. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Where? Where? Where is that? Where's the BDM slugging going on?Jodie: Oh, it's on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, LinkedIn it's a really old post now I think and what it did it did get some traction and but yeah, you can find it on LinkedIn my Instagram is not a professional arena in any capacity it's just me but maybe yeah, maybe that's what I should do. Maybe I should start an Instagram for work. ItAlex: It should be one on one in one on the same.Jodie: Do you think?Alex: I think people buy from people.Jodie: I still talk a lot as a business on my Instagram, I just it's not like a business Instagram.Alex: I do not use my company Facebook page, my company LinkedIn, my company anything is all via me. And I get more out of it.Jodie: Yeah, I think I think that's the I think it's the way to go. And I do definitely talk about I always throw, you know, one or two posts a month up on my stories. Just saying no, don't forget, don't get life insurance. Don't forget mortgages don't get addressed. And, and I always get a couple of leads off of that. And even sometimes it's just people saying, Oh, I'm really interested. And we just have a chat. And then I'll come back to me a little later and we'll talk about it but yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think you should keep it all as one brand.Alex: Nice. Love it. Awesome. I can't believe we're with them. I think we need to do it closer than a year. We need to catch up when I need to kind of get you drunk. You belong to one of our events as well so people can meet you in real life.Jodie: Wow definitely, definitely. I would love to do that and get the winter over with so I can come out as my winter cocoon. And yeah, but definitely Yeah, just invite me along I think you went to Did you go to u printer?Alex: Yeah, yeah it didn't just go It was on the stage.Jodie: Exactly. I think I need to go.Alex: It is an amazing event.Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Really good. Jodie: I should definitely make it to some sort of physical social interaction at some point in my life and stop the piano. Avoid at the end of the phone.Alex: We've got our events in March there's gonna be a load of brokers there in the lovely Peterborough March the 26th. I will send you a link.Jodie: March is pretty clear for me. So where I could probably squeeze you in. I’ll try my best.Alex: I will. Fantastic, awesome. All right, cool. Well, let's do that let's meet properly in March.Jodie: Yeah. Alex: Let's speak again soon. And I'm loving that you get in the family involved and things are growing and I like your partner helping you out with every I was like visualizing oh no exactly what it's like having a kid ourselves. But yeah sounds like it sounds amazing and I'm glad everything's still going really well for you.Jodie: Yes Yeah it's great. It's all a learning curve and to sayAlex: Oh god yeah Jodie: We’ll see, you never know listen if you know God but this is me on record now all of you all my family members are as fireable as anyone else and I like my coffee with sugar in it.Alex: I'm going to use that clip to promote this episode.Jodie: I love it.Alex: Fantastic. What an amazing note to leave on. Thank you so much for spending your time with us again, as amazing. And let's see if you can be the number one episode of 2020 as well. That'd be pretty cool. All right, thanks very much. Bye-bye.Jodie: See you later. Bye.Alex: And there we have it. There's my chat with Jody Stevenson. It is so good. catching up with her. And it sounds like businesses growing was great that she's kind of getting people involved now it's becoming a proper family business. So that is awesome. So she's got a lot of work to do to see if we can get her as the number one download episode of 2020. We'll see we've had a lot of amazing ones. some incredible ones coming up too as well. So don't forget our event, March 26. Only a few weeks away now I literally got a couple of tickets left. It'd be great to see you there. If you need any more information, go to the lead engineer, click on the conference tab, or details, their agendas all kind of finalize all speakers are on there. We've got loads going on. I will see you next time.

In a new TEDx talk, Alex calls for a science of UFOs ... Why Bob finds two naval sightings credible ... Alex: "There's some decent chance that these things are alien" ... Alex's proposal for a UFO monitoring system ... Might it be suicidal to let ETs know that we know about them? ... Alex: Maybe the aliens are waiting for us to figure it out ... What explains the taboo against academic study of UFOs? ... Alex's willingness to be misperceived as a crank ...

In a new TEDx talk, Alex calls for a science of UFOs ... Why Bob finds two naval sightings credible ... Alex: "There's some decent chance that these things are alien" ... Alex's proposal for a UFO monitoring system ... Might it be suicidal to let ETs know that we know about them? ... Alex: Maybe the aliens are waiting for us to figure it out ... What explains the taboo against academic study of UFOs? ... Alex's willingness to be misperceived as a crank ...

In a new TEDx talk, Alex calls for a science of UFOs ... Why Bob finds two naval sightings credible ... Alex: "There's some decent chance that these things are alien" ... Alex's proposal for a UFO monitoring system ... Might it be suicidal to let ETs know that we know about them? ... Alex: Maybe the aliens are waiting for us to figure it out ... What explains the taboo against academic study of UFOs? ... Alex's willingness to be misperceived as a crank ...

Hi everyone! We’re back with another Indie Wednesday here at One Movie Punch. Every Wednesday, I’ll be reviewing an independent or microbudget movie that doesn’t get a lot of attention. Sometimes that means we find a diamond in the rough. Sometimes that means we learn the real and/or perceived limits on filmmaking. But we’ll always be discovering something new, even if that means looking at an older subject. Today film is 2018’s SANDOW, written and directed by Alexander Cooper, who I had the pleasure to sit down with to discuss the film. Instead of including trailer segments, I’ll be running the full trailer prior to the review, then adding segments from our interview throughout the review. The full interview will be available on our Patreon feed, where we talk about his first film as producer, PARALLEL, and a little bit about Rambo. Head over to patreon.com/onemoviepunch if you want to hear the interview before it disappears behind the pay wall, and sign up to contribute at any level. All contributions go to paying our expenses and will help us grow with our audience. Subscribe to stay current with the latest releases. Contribute at Patreon for exclusive content. Connect with us over social media to continue the conversation. Here we go! ///// > ///// Today’s movie is SANDOW (2018), the epic historical drama directed by Alexander Cooper and written for the screen in collaboration with Gerard Muarez. The film follows the life of the famous strongman, Eugen Sandow (Timo Kervinen), as seen through the eyes of his pupil, Launceston Elliott (Alexander Cooper). We’re introduced to Sandow’s hopes and dreams, their fulfillment, and the often-sordid life that followed, particularly with his wife Blanche (Tiffany Ellen-Robinson). No spoilers. In our full interview, I mention how recently I reviewed a film called BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ (Episode #657), which covered not only Alice Guy-Blaché, but the rise of the fledgling film industry in Paris and the Eastern United States at the turn of the century. While Guy-Blaché was experimenting with telling stories with film, however, other filmmakers were busy capturing the wonders of the world, much like the YouTube videos of today. And one of the most famous films captured in those early days by Thomas Edison was circus strongman Eugen Sandow, the subject of today’s film. SANDOW takes a very sweeping look at Eugen Sandow, a combination biopic and documentary, from his early years dreaming of being something greater than himself, all the way to his grave at Putney Vale. He wasn’t just a circus and vaudevillian strongman, but also pioneered many major industries of today, including fitness clubs/gyms, athletic supplements, and even a form of professional wrestling, aimed more towards showmanship than actual fighting. And while we get a taste of all of that, we’re also getting a dramatized version of his larger story. ALEX: “Yeah, SANDOW is not an accurate portrayal of what would have happened in his life, but it's more like a, it's a bit of a philosophical musing on a historical figure who has had a huge impact. The whole thing about SANDOW really came from... it was an article I read on the Internet about forgotten newsmakers. I had this sort of image in my mind when I read his story and what a superstar he was. He's known by people but forgotten by most. It was a fascinating story and I found these images of these traveling circus strongmen, and I thought, these were kind of like rock stars before rock stars came about. And I thought, 'Wow! What a thing! These guys were going around with circuses and putting on shows and this was before, like, Arnie was flexing his muscles in Hollywood.'” The further we go back in history, the harder it is to really know what is and isn’t true about historical figures. History is often written by the victors, but it’s mostly captured by historians and re-presented by artists in multiple media. In the case of Eugen Sandow, many single aspects or major accomplishments could be enough for an entire movie, or perhaps an entire series about his life. Even in a sweeping drama like SANDOW, choices have to be made. ALEX: “There's all sorts of rumors and stuff. You don't... I don't know what is actually true, but you know, whether he's bisexual or had relations with men and women, and all sorts of things, which could be true. I just don't know. In this story, I didn't really delve into that. There was a lot of other stuff going on that we don't really go into. In the original script we explored a bit more into that about having this admirer who’s a man and their friendship. Yeah, we didn't really go down that path in the end.” SANDOW covers a great deal of the main character’s life, focused around three major themes. First and foremost, the film is concerned with Sandow’s motivations and accomplishments, which drive Sandow throughout his entire life. Second, it covers his tumultuous relationship with his very forgiving wife Blanche, who tends to suffer Sandow’s bad behavior despite enjoying the fame and fortune that comes with his life. And finally, the story is narrated by Launceston Elliott, who brings his particular perspective to Sandow’s entire story. ALEX: “It became a personal thing to me, because, like, my father wasn't a bodybuilder. He was another kind of builder. He liked to build properties. And he passed away five years. He had blood cancer. That was kind of this idea I had about incorporating some of my experiences into telling Sandow's story, because Sandow was the father of bodybuilding and I had this idea about this father/son kind of relation between Launceston Elliott and Sandow. He would watch Sandow and he could see his flaws and things that made him who he was, more deeply than anyone else. I wanted to play that role. I felt that I had some insight into Sandow the character, so I didn't look for anyone else for that." Rich subject material and an epic story are not enough, however. In addition to some excellent costumes and well-chosen sets, we also get a good cast for the characters. Timo Kervinen, the Big Finn, plays Eugen Sandow, and while not being a dead ringer for Sandow, does have the same physique and attitude. Tiffany Ellen-Robinson plays Blanche very well, maintaining a consistent, frustrated demeanor, with awesome costumes. SANDOW was made for a budget of $25,000. It’s pretty amazing how far that can stretch, especially for a sweeping epic. Cooper used both existing locations, in particular a Yorkshire house rented and utilized to the fullest, along with constructed sets for locations unavailable without expensive permitting and permissions, a throwback to the constructed sets of Sandow’s time. It can give a patchwork feel to the entire film, but not in an unlikeable way. It’s also not surprising when things might go wrong for that amount of money. The major complaint about SANDOW is the sound editing, which begins to fall apart towards the end of the film. Whole scenes struggle with sound syncing, which combined with some sound capture in the more metropolitan areas picking up anachronistic noises, like modern horns and bells. You don’t realize just how important the sound can be until it’s not there properly. So, I had to ask about it and here’s the story. ALEX: “What happened was, when the editor, who was in America, he had another job coming in which he wanted to do more than this one, and he kind of tossed it aside and uncompleted. The picture was edited, but the sound was not all synced, so it was only partially synced. I got this thing back and I was disappointed. But then I found a local editor who had done sound work for big companies, like the BBC and things, and they said they would be able to do this, but then when they did the job, they left it in, it was unsatisfactory state. It was less good than it is now. I found a sound mixer in Sweden and he did the bet he could to get it as good as he could. It is a shame to me, but I suppose you live and learn." For those that remember, a similar issue happened with ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS (Episode #597), except related to special effects. Work conflicts happen a lot in independent cinema, particularly if folks are donating their time, or have tight schedules. It gives the last third or so of SANDOW the feeling like you’re listening to a great interview over a crappy connection – the content is great, but the presentation suffers a lot. Cooper recognized that as well. ALEX: “If I knew what I knew now, I would have somehow got a professional sound mixer involved from the outset. I took this to Cannes film market afterwards to try to find distribution deals. There, I did meet a professional sound mixer, and what I would have done is I would have budgeted that into the overall sum, and so, probably cost about $5,000 or $10,000 more. Overall, the total product would have been better on the sound front.” The sound might struggle towards the end, but the overall film is still punching well above its weight class with a $25,000 budget. The strength of the other elements will make some viewers, this one included, wish the film was made for $25 million instead of $25,000, but SANDOW can be appreciated for what it is. Fans of historical epics, and forgiving of microbudget cinema, should definitely check out this film, along with anyone fascinated by Eugen Sandow and the many industries he spawned. Rotten Tomatoes: NR Metacritic: NR One Movie Punch: 5.1/10 SANDOW (2018) is not rated and is currently playing on YouTube. Check the show notes for links. SANDOW: youtu.be/00xSymzq0Ms PARALLEL: youtu.be/sXworTZe3kE YOUTUBE: youtube.com/channel/UC19QsHne9k5k5aWg8Rm5M_A/

RHONY 302 WATCHDOWN NOTES Previously on..  Luann is mad at mario for calling her countless.  Ramona wants to be nicer to alex.  Bethenny vs Jill  Bethenny vs Luann  ACT ONE  BETHENNY AND JASON MEET UP WITH RAMONA AND MARIO Bethenny loves Ramona’s new hair. It’s short and sassy. Ramona says, “I think my hair was like Sampson and deliah.” It sounds like she was going to say goliath and then just stopped talking.  Bethenny is going to fill Ramona in on Luann, but Ramona says she also had an issue with her on the boat. Ramona gets into it. Ramona says she was verbally raped by Jill and Luann.  Bethenny tries to school Mario on calling Luann countless. Mario says, “I didnt say it to her!” Bethenny: “Right but you said it behind her back.” Mario: I didn’t say it behind her back, I said it and she overheard.  Bethenny: Luann lost a husband and grew a penis. As Bethenny retells the story Ramona turns to Jason and says “She talks so fast I forgot how fast she talks. Ramona says she’s more relaxed now. Then she turns to Bethenny and goes “I’m sorry what?” Bethenny didnt even notice Ramona was missing from the conversation.  They drink and go dancing. Ramona and Mario are literally on top of the bar. They had such a good relationship these two, what happened!  ROSIE COMES HOME  OMG i got so excited the second Rosie showed up!  Rosie talks to the kids. Victoria broke both wrists and Luann thinks she was trying to sneak out. Luann brings out tea. Luann tells Rosie, we miss your cooking. It’s too bad nora isn’t here or i was gonna have you show her how to cook. And Luann would’ve for sure put rosie to work. Remember last season when Rosie came back from the phillippines and Luann literally made her do laundry and said she was going to go play tennis?  Luann on her new housekeeper: IT’s a lot of work to teach someone new. So it’s actually double the work.  Luann tells Rosie that she’s divorced now and then Rosie left so her world fell apart. Rosie in interview says she worries about her. Rosie is so sweet.  They actually have a really good relationship. For the most part Luann is pretty respectful of her. Rosie must know alll the dirt. Somebody find Rosie!!  As they walk back in, Luann says, “So how do I look?!”  ACT TWO RAMONA MARIO ALEX AND SIMON GO OUT TO DINNER Mario and Simon show up wearing the same white suit. Alex LOVES that ramona is being so nice to her. Ramona brought a wrap for Alex in case alex gets cold.  Simon tells Ramona that she reminds him of a young cameron diaz. Alex in bite tells us that SImon said that. Kind of genius. Ramona: Did i invite you for monday, i forgot!  Ramona: I had no planned on inviting alex and simon to my luncheon. Ramona: I dont think I told you! Things have been so crazy! Alex: Work has bene so crazy I’ve been in retail land and -- Ramona: ok. ANYWAY… and she tells them about her lunch  Mario thinks Luann would fare better if she would get off her high horse. Mario cites that Luann called her crazy eyes… so THAT’S what mario is pissed about! Simon suggests that Mario call Luann now and invite her to make peace.  You know, MArio and Luann had a good relationship. They both spoke Italian to each other!  JILL HAS BREAKFAST WITH LUANN AT LUANN’S Jill is happy at Luann’s because Luann is a great hostess. Which housewife from this season would you want to host you? I think Luann for me, though she would criticize you. Bethenny would be too anxious. Alex’s kids…  Luann plays Mario’s voicemail. Wow this is the season of voicemails!  Luann still doesn’t want to go, and Jill won’t go if Luann doesn’t go. Jill calls Ramona on Luann’s phone and says she’s between a rock and a hard place. Ramona says that Luann is rude  (on speaker.) Jill: Try to understand that Luann is single and alone! Ramona says that Luann was screwing around when she was married, she always had men in her life. Jill interrupts: I can’t do this, I don’t agree with you at all. Jill yells at Ramona, Mario doesn’t have to apologize for being born, its just one thing he has to apologize for.  My favorite is when Ramona and Jill go up against each other on other peopels behalves but really its about them wanting to stick it to each other. Jill in bite: If I had known Ramona was going to talk like that I never would’ve put her on speaker. LIARRRR.  Jill tells Luann people have issues with other peoples marraiges when they have problems in teir own house. Could be true. Is this when Mario started cheating?  Luann in bite: I was pleased with Ramona’s loyalty to me. So creepyyy.  Luann tells Jill about the drinks she had with Bethenny and how Luann wanted Bethenny’s snark to stop. Luann says Bethenny started shaking because she was in the wrong. That’s not true! Luann says then Bethenny apologized. Jill doesnt know what will happen with bethenny.  ACT THREE JASON AND BETHENNY AT DINNER They do some playful flirting. They talk about words to describe Bethenny. Bethenny: Tortured. Damaged. Mentally disturbed. My god bethenny… so intense!!  Jason says summer is ending and so they have to figure out the living situation. Jason says he wants to live together.  Was Jason planning all his awfulness here? He seems harmless! I just don’t get it. I need a full character study.  Bethenny cries to Jason because she’s so happy and the girl doesn’t get the guy and the job.  Here is what they’ve done to each other:  JASON:  “Before a judge gave us our own designated days, there was no structure. It was outright mayhem. Jason would lay in the marital bed and not get out and stare at me. … He would blast the remote as high as possible. …He locked [Frankel’s dog] Cookie in the room multiple times. He locked Cookie in a storage unit until late in the night without telling me or my assistant Jackie. He would leave negative press about me on the counter and I would see it and throw it in the garbage, and the next day … he would take it out of garbage and put it there,” she said. She also alleged that Hoppy would help Bryn get dressed and tell her, “I know you don’t want to go with Mommy.” “Face-to-face contact was threatening and verbally assaulting. They were the more regular ones that would occur at the dentist or doctor’s appointments where we would both have to go to these appointments because Jason didn’t want to alternate, he wanted to be at all of them,” she said. “Jason would say, ‘You are so desperate and pathetic.’ He would say I looked ugly and old. He would laugh and whistle in my presence and make negative comments to me. There was a more threatening event at her school yard.” Additionally, Frankel also took responsibility for her misconduct prior to their 2014 custody hearing (https://people.com/celebrity/bethenny-frankel-and-jason-hoppys-custody-case-settled/) . She admitted in court that she told Hoppy “you’ll never see your daughter again,” called him “white trash,” and splashed water on him while he was sleeping. MEDIATOR QUITS “I was able to get through to the mother to some degree,” Mosseri testified in Manhattan Supreme Court as Frankel and Hoppy’s heated child custody battle entered its fifth day (https://pagesix.com/2019/03/25/bethenny-frankel-threw-water-on-ex-called-him-white-trash/?) of hearings. “I didn’t feel at the time that I was able to get through to the father.” RAMONA PREPARES FOR HER LUNCHEON Ramona thinks that Jill will convince Luann to come, and that Luann made a mountain of a molehill. Wow she learned the phrase from last episode!  Jill and Luann are cooking with the kids back at Luann’s. They’re clearly not going. Kelly comes over to Jill’s. HIEEEEEE!! Ramona didn’t invite Kelly to her party which is why Kelly is here.  Kelly whispers that she has to talk to her. Luann: CAn’t it wait til after lunch? Kelly says something is happening tomorrow and I want you guys to know about it.  Kelly says you know how we were talking about authenticity, and you know, I value your friendships and Luann I respect you. I am so incredibly true and genuine, and I want you guys to know beforehand… I was asked by Playboy for the 30th anniversary to be on the cover and do a 10 page story.  Jill knows she has to be super supportive because her being unsupportive of Bethenny is getting her into trouble. Luann shows off her playgirl cover, which includes the article, “How to have an orgasm in your sleep.” Poor noel wanders over while the magazine is out. Jill: I’m coming to the party at the mansion! THAT’S why Jill is being supportive.  ACT FOUR BOBBY SHOWS UP TO LUANN’S Jill tells Bobby that Kelly is going to be on the cover. Bobby says that he has every issue from 1969-1998. Kelly think sthat’s weird that bobby will be looking at her like that. Bobby: “I go down in the basement to look at them every once in a while. They’re in good condition.”  BETHENNY AND JASON ARRIVE AT RAMONA’S Bethenny asks Ramona who’s coming today. Ramona tells Bethenny that Alex and SImon are coming. Bethenny says “I have to deal with that.” So Bethenny ended up going with a logo other than Alex’s. Ramona suggests that Bethenny could’ve had Alex come up with more ideas which is a really good point. Bethenny just goes “IT just… no…” I think she just didn’t like what Alex did, or she didn’t want to pay her or something.  Alex and Simon arrive. Bethenny says to Alex, I’m so grateful for all your work you did for me. Alex seems caught off guard. She didn’t expect Bethenny to cop to it.  Outside Ramona makes a toast, ‘All right here’s to like… new friendships, old friendships… whatever!!” They discuss the situation. Bethenny doesn’t understand why Jill can’t be married for her. She gets choked up. Ramona says their stories differ dramatically.  Play exchange between Jennifer and Bethenny.  Bethenny thinks its hypocritical that Luann isn’t here because Jill has talked crap about Luann too.  Alex tells Ramona she’s going to stop by Luann’s, and it’s not because they’re going to run away. Alex says they feel obligated, and Simon hasn’t seen Jill all weekend. (As if they’re THAT close.) Ramona is thinking, all th is effort i put into bringing these two on to my side, and Alex is STILL going to see her??  Ramona: We’re having fun, I didn’t want you to leave!! Which is such a lie. Alex LOVES being put in the middle. Mario tells her she has to decide which team to be on. Simon does nothing to help the situation.  ACT FIVE Alex calls Jill, it’s a small party, there’s no way we can do this gracefully without declaring war. I mean the strategy is interesting here, when the cast is split in half, who do you stick with? Obviously the side bethenny is on.  Jill: Can you give me any gossip?!? Ugh JILL. And of course Alex discloses everything. Alex There was speculation you weren’t there because you didnt’ want to be around bethenny. Alex legit reports EVERYTHING. People pleasers are dangerous on these shows. They’ll betray anything to be liked. 

Join QuantumDigital’s CMO Eric Cosway as he interviews Alex Bruno, owner of RE/MAX 5-Star Realty in Florida. Alex is a top producer who also works with banks, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Alex is HUD-certified, and has a strong network of home buyers and investors.   Eric: Alex, welcome to the podcast.   Alex: Hello. How are you doing?   Eric: So, it sounds like RE/MAX 5-Star has been around since 2016. What led you to want to start the business, or create a franchise for yourself?   Alex: Actually, over the years, I thought it was important based on the experience that I got in real estate. I wanted to have an office with a little bit of a different perspective, and being a buyer’s and listing agent for many years, I understand how difficult it is to be an agent. I wanted to facilitate the tools and the support for the agents the way that I would like to have it myself. I wanted to be able to answer their questions, and at the same time provide the tools that they need. I didn’t want to be the office that was open for 30-40 years. Things change over the years. The real estate market changed. The real estate agent’s needs changed. The buyers changed. Everything is completely different. And more and more the market keeps changing every year. We need to make adjustments constantly.   Eric: Is your primary focus on buyers in Hollywood, Florida? Or do you do both buyers and sellers?   Alex: I work with buyers and sellers, and I work on South Florida, not just only on Hollywood. From Miami Beach to Pompano Beach, we are open to working with different cities.   Eric: Was that area impacted by the hurricane this past summer? Last couple of months?   Alex: Absolutely. Yes. And we’re still seeing the damages around.   Eric: How did that impact you? You’re right there in the center of it. You have a staff. Not only were you affected, but I’m sure the business was impacted as well.   Alex: First of all, it’s something that is out of our control. We need to take it the way it is, and try to make the best of it. So, we need to just continue life because it was definitely a huge impact for real estate, and also properties they were supposed to close. They have to be re-inspected again, and appraised again. Some of the sales fall apart, but we need to continue. When the market crashed in 2007, life continued. And you have to keep going. And there were always buyers. We were a little spoiled, some of the agent. Deals were so easy, then they were no longer that easy. We need to work harder. But everything is possible, and we need to adapt to the times.   Eric: You came into the real estate business in 2007. How was that first year for you as a Realtor?   Alex: It was a little sad. A lot of people were very depressed. It was like the end of the world. It was a commotion—many people taking time off, going away. Other ones struggling to figure out how to react to these major changes. And I personally think it was easier for me because I was not that spoiled. I was new. So, I figured out there are always buyers. People are going to keep buying homes and selling homes. This is not the end of the world. Maybe the end of a good market, but there were always FHA buyers. Much better buyers than before. Real buyers that can afford these houses. Because, after the market crashed, lenders were more conscious about the capability of a buyer to purchase a home. You keep going, and you have to adapt to the situation.   Eric: Is there something specific about a buyer that you’ve learned—the one or two things a buyer always needs that you just know what to do, and just handle a buyer so they’re fully happy and satisfied with all the work you do?   Alex: One of the most important is to listen to them, and try to build in your mind and try to understand what the needs are for they buyer. Try to put time into that buyer to show them that you want to work with them. Because it’s a very competitive market. Here in Florida, a lot of people have real estate licenses. So, everybody knows a friend, or a neighbor, or a coworker that has a real estate license. But, not everyone is dedicated to this career. A lot of people think it’s easy, but it’s not that easy. What you need to do is just listen to the buyer, and try to work on what they are asking. And be available. That is one of the most important things; build a criteria for the buyer, and try to work on finding what they are looking for.   Eric: I read your customer reviews, and I have to tell you, they’re excellent. Here are the common terms when people talked about you. They said you were responsive. Always calls back. Knowledgeable. Trustworthy. Honest. Knows the area extremely well. Is available 24/7. So, does that surprise you, or is that just who you are—your DNA?   Alex: It’s who I try to be all the time for my clients. I think it’s important for all these points to be met—to have a happy client, and to eventually get more referrals and more business. To be dedicated for this job.   Eric: Tell me about the dedication in this job. You have a team of 8 people, is that correct?   Alex: Approximately, yes. With the photographers, yeah.   Eric: Are you active 7 days a week being a team lead, or can you now delegate some of those responsibilities off?   Alex: I delegate, but as a team leader you have to keep pushing to make sure that you keep the standards.   Eric: WHen it’s really tough, what do you tell your team? How do you motivate your team to keep moving?   Alex: There are many sources, and some of the sources we learn from the old school. You have to go back to what used to work before, in order to add what works now. In order to get buyer’s and seller’s business—even in the tough times—you have to do a hundred things. It’s not like one thing is going to give you the business. If you have multiple options, most likely you’re going to have better results. Prospectings, For Sale By Owners, campaigns, expired campaigns… those are the old school. Open Houses—a lot of people don’t believe in open houses. Some people don’t believe in broker’s Open Houses. You have to try everything. And believe me you have more chances, you’re going to succeed with better results.   Eric: Sounds like technology has impacted your business. Has it made things easier for you? Has it given better exposure to your buyers and sellers? How do you leverage technology as a broker?   Alex: Technology makes smarter buyers. The buyers know how to look. And it makes it more risky for the agents, because you get a chance of losing a buyer going directly with a listing agent, or going a different route with another agent. The information is more available. You just Google the address, and you can get all the information regarding that property. It definitely helps us also to be able to locate a property the buyer is asking for immediately through our phones. But at the same time, we need to keep the quality of the work going, to keep that buyer, being more proactive about finding what they’re looking for. Because they buyer will be looking for those properties, too. So, you’re working with a buyer… a smarter buyer.   Eric: Now that there’s so much content available to buyers to be smart buyers, has that forced your game and your agents games up to be even more on top of the market than you might normally be?   Alex: I don’t think so. It’s just that we need to adapt to the changes and grow with the changes.   Eric: Are you a team that adopts new technology? Or are you a tad more service, belly-to-belly, a little more old fashioned in the way you approach your buyers and sellers?   Alex: It’s a bunch of things together, and we have to keep moving forward with technology, and adopting new trends, new programs, new marketing—different types of marketing that probably didn’t exist 10 years ago—and try to be creative for your business. That way, you can stand in the market as an agent.   Eric: You mentioned your referrals. Is that mainly how you drive business today?   Alex: Referrals are very important. And also, if you work for an international company, your exposure is even more. But referrals is one of the things that really helps your business. It’s on the top of the list, definitely.   Eric: There are obviously some benefits being a franchise, but in your market what are the big 2 or 3 benefits of having that RE/MAX brand behind you?   Alex: When I was exploring the possibility of buying a franchise, I met with multiple companies. And the RE/MAX platform was clean and easy for the agent. And at the same time—one of the most important things for me, especially referrals—is seeing how big it is. In 100 countries, plus. And have 110,000 agents around the world. That makes you feel safe. It’s a company that keeps growing, that gives you the tools to be successful. And that is exactly what I was looking for. I was not looking about quantity of agents per square feet. Everybody has different perspectives of somebody who opens a franchise. I think that those were very important points to make a decision to continue being part of RE/MAX.   Eric: Let’s change course a little bit. You have a background in interior design. You’re from Uruguay. Tell us about how interior design informs you, or helps you in your career in real estate.   Alex: I didn’t finish the career on interior design, so I didn’t get a license for it. But, it definitely helped me to help sellers, or give them advice on how to present the home to be sold faster, for more money. Seeing, from a different perspective, the home from the buyer’s side, and being able to tell just the sellers what they should do to accomplish that.   Eric: It sounds like a really complementary skill to what you’re doing day to day.   Alex: Honestly, I love my job. And I definitely put my heart on every transaction. It doesn’t matter how much the sales price is. Every transaction means a lot for me. The important thing is to make it happen, and have a good presentation, a good description of the property. You need to put a little bit of your heart on every property that you list. Going the extra mile for the client.   Eric: Well, you’re definitely passionate about your career. What would be the other things you’re passionate about?   Alex: My family, honestly. It’s the most important thing in my life. And also my country—even though I was born in Uruguay—I have the American dream, and I love this country. I’m proud of being an American citizen. And my career.   Eric: Alex, what a pleasure speaking with you today. I know being a team lead, and being a broker with all the responsibilities, your time is very limited so it’s precious. I want to to thank you for your time. I hope you found it informative. We certainly did.   Alex: Absolutely. And I want to help other agents who don’t see the light sometimes of this business. And a lot of people who feel limited, because maybe they are foreign people, or they feel different… this is a job where you can can shine. And not because you’re pretty, or you drive a nice car. You can shine for talent.   Eric: Congratulations! You’ve done a very nice job. Alex: Thank you!

Alex Matchneer: @machty | FutureProof Retail Show Notes: 01:07 - The Introduction of ember-concurrency 02:15 - What is ember-concurrency? What are the problems it solves? 05:37 - Why not use observables or other alternatives? 09:49 - Could observables be used in conjunction with ember-concurrency? 12:16 - Simple Made Easy 14:23 - Coming Soon to ember-concurrency 16:04 - Communicating Changes in State; Glimmer Reference Primitives 23:09 - Using References 29:31 - Submitting RFCs; Adding Pipelines 32:10 - Pipeline Use Cases Resources: ember-concurrency The Frontside Podcast Episode 007: The Ember Router with Alex Matchneer The Frontside Podcast Episode 019: Origin Stories with Tom Dale and Alex Matchneer Introduction to ember-concurrency by Alex Matchneer from Global Ember Meetup RxJS Rich Hickey: Simple Made Easy Glimmer.js redux-saga Lauren Tan's RFC: Cancellable task pipelines Railway Oriented Programming Apache Kafka Transcript: CHARLES: Hello everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode 67. My name is Charles Lowell, a developer here at The Frontside and podcast host-in-training. With me today also is Elrick Ryan, a developer here at The Frontside. Hello, Elrick. ELRICK: Hey, what's going on, Charles. CHARLES: Now, we have with us today someone who we love to have on the show. Everybody probably already know him. I know the first time I actually heard about him was when we had him on the podcast the first time, I was like, "Who the hell is this guy?" But since then, he's become one of my favorite developers, just with all of the things that he's done, from Router.js to more recently ember-concurrency. We have Alex Matchneer on the program. ALEX: Hey, everybody. Thanks for having me. CHARLES: Hey, Alex and you know what? I pronounced your name right this time. First time out of the gate. Boom! ALEX: Nice. Which one did you go with? Matchnear? Matchner? [Laughter] ALEX: I really actually don't even know which ones correct anymore. CHARLES: Was it about a year ago that you first introduced ember-concurrency? ALEX: Yeah, I had a really embarrassing introduction of it at an Ember Meetup in January before it was really done and I just kind of botched it and didn't really introduce why it was even solving problems. Then a month later, I had some time to refine it, driven by the feel of that embarrassment. I guess around February of last year, it's been pretty much in its present state. CHARLES: I remember when it came out. I must've seen the non-botched version because I remember hitting the ground running with it and being able to refactor all of this code. I definitely know that I got the honed version because you provided in that initial blog post a whole host of examples like what are the symptoms, what are the cases where it solves and then before presenting the solution. I think that was great because I didn't even realize that I had a lot of pain. I didn't realize that at all. I didn't realize I had a problem but then you were very, very elegantly packaged the problem with the solution which is always great because otherwise, it's just complaining. Maybe we should talk a little bit about -- I don't think we've officially talked about -- ember-concurrency. Even though it's been out for quite a while, the way that you model these concurrent processes using the stack is just pretty incredible. Do you want to just very briefly touch on what the problem is and what have lead you to this solution? ALEX: Sure. It's a little bit difficult to sort of succinctly say what ember-concurrency is because it kind of hits them like five different separate but kind of related but not really pain points. At its core, it's just like a task primitive and it's definitely not the first library to ever introduce that the JavaScript, I think particularly when the generator function syntax was introduced into the spec, I think a few years back. Dave Herman who's also known as, I think a Little Calculist. I think he works on the TC39. I always get those groups a little confused in my head but he introduced a task.js library that let you use the generator function syntax and then lets you yield Promises to sort of pause where you were in that task and then continue when it resolved. It had some support for cancellation. It played well with Promises and I brought that to Ember in a way that fit really nicely with Ember more than it probably does or will with other frameworks like React or Vue. By bringing it to Ember, basically if you're implementing any feature that involves async, if it's a button that needs to show that it's been clicked while you're waiting for some response to come back from the server, instead of using Promises, instead of using actions, here's an ember-concurrency task. It makes it easier to express that operation you're trying to do and it makes it really easy to drive your UI with state that comes from the state of that operation -- Is the test still running? Is your form still submitting? -- Rather than having to manage a bunch of mutable flags and properties on a component or state yourself and likely get it wrong. CHARLES: Right. Essentially asynchronous processes is like a state machine and before, we were kind of managing that state machine by hand but I think what's so brilliant about this task-oriented programming, I guess is maybe a way to put it because I really think that some of these ideas are universal and not specific to ember-concurrency. But it almost like it uses the stack, just your normal programming stack to track where you are inside of a process, rather than what it felt like what we were doing before, which was managing this state machine by hand, if that makes any sense. ALEX: It does make sense a lot of sense. A lot of people ask me, if you're going to go into sort of async territory, why aren't you using something like RxJS? Rx is observables and kind of popularized by the Netflix crowd who did a bunch of presentations on them. It's super popular these days. But one of the things I really like about RxJS or at least one of the realizations I had is that I think you're still building a state machine. You're just expressing it using different primitives. In Rx, you're still building a state machine but in Rx, they make you think about it in terms of streams and events firing over time. In ember-concurrency, also you're still building a state machine but you're using the generator function syntax and the call stack like you mentioned as another way of expressing that state machine but with a lot less code. CHARLES: Right. I was actually talking to someone about ember-concurrency just a few days ago and they were saying the same thing, "Why not use observables," and at least from my perspective, maybe I didn't quite understand the question because I feel like observables are kind of only one of the concerns that ember-concurrency addresses. I'm curious when people talk about alternatives to ember-concurrency and put observables forward, maybe I don't understand it because I usually think you might be able to use observables to register the currently executing task state and every time it changes, emit a new state and is then observed by your observable subscribers. But modeling the actual process using observables does seem weird to me because with observables, they seem like very purely functional and not heavily stateful. I don't really have that much experience with it. What's meant by using observables as an alternative? Maybe we can get more into those like how you would construct a stream or something like that? ALEX: I think the canonical Rx example of something that's elegantly expressed in Rx that would be really hard to do in just normal JavaScript, if you weren't able to use observables, is that typeahead search where as you type characters into a text field, it's already beginning to hit the server and see what you might be searching for so it can drive the state of some drop down menu. That's probably the most popular example out there because one of the things it demonstrates is that if you want to debounce, you want to allow for the user to stop typing for like 200 milliseconds before it actually hits the servers so you don't overwhelm your server, then just add a debounce operator. You've basically transformed a stream of keyboard events into that text field into something that only kicks off after it hasn't gotten an event for 200 milliseconds. If you already had a working prototype in vanilla JS and you had to debounce it, you've got to move a bunch of stuff around, you've got extract something into a function, you've got to deal with cancellation. But all those things are kind of pretty elegantly built into Rx and if you can train yourself to think in terms of streams of events, that inspires you to think about where else you could apply that in your app. I think a lot of people have felt that it's like winning, most powerful abstraction that you could think about. That's why things like cycle.js are a thing or redux-observable or just anybody working with observables in the Netflix territory. I personally find [inaudible]. If you're going to express certain processes, Rx is the way to go but it has drawbacks which is it is really hard to learn. It took me a very long time and I'm pretty good at it but if you're going to adopt Rx in your code base, then a new developer comes on, it's going to be a pretty long time. In my experience, sharing some of the Rx code I've written with fellow very talented developer, it takes a really long time to explain how to invert your thinking and think of things in terms of events. If you can get to that point, more power to you but what I found with ember-concurrency stuff is you don't have to completely invert your thinking and think of everything in terms of events and streams of events. You can use this task primitive which feels really pretty close to the code you're already writing but gives you a lot of the safety guarantees and just makes it really easy to use this derived state to drive templates. Rx is a powerful paradigm and sometimes you need that sort of event-driven push based model but I think when people wonder why aren't you just using observables, they haven't really grasped how easy and familiar it is to use task and get it right on the first try and with a lot less code. CHARLES: Right. You're able to leverage the fact that I understand what a JavaScript function looks like and the sequencing is implicit by just the order in which you were numerate the steps, right? ALEX: Right. Because I think that Rich Hickey of Clojure popularized the divide between simple versus easy and Simple Made Easy is one of his popular talks that everyone should probably -- CHARLES: It's a great talk. Yeah. ELRICK: Do you see an area where observables could be used in conjunction with ember-concurrency? ALEX: It's kind of. It's been hard for me to find that use case. Probably, there's a handful of use cases where maybe it's a little awkward to think about to have something that would be elegantly handled in Rx would be model using tasks but it really hasn't struck me enough in some of the apps that I'm building, to really try and flesh that out. CHARLES: I would be curious to see a side by side comparisons. I build a lot of auto completes using ember-concurrency. I built a lot of asynchronous processes using ember-concurrency. What would that look like using nothing but Rx and just be able to have it on the left-hand side of the paper, then Rx on the right hand side of the paper are easy. ALEX: I'd be very surprised if you could find an Rx example that is less code than the task equivalent because as much as I think the autocomplete example is the best canonical example of Rx, once you actually start making something that's production-ready, you want to start driving the button state while it's running or to show a loading indicator. When you start deriving other observables off of the source observable which is the user typing into the text field, you start having to worry about, "I'm dealing with a cold observable. If I create another stream based on it, it might double subscribe and I might kick off two things. I actually want to use a published.ref version of the stuff." To actually get away from a toy example into something that's actually production-ready, requires a lot of code. From my own conversations with the people working on Rx, there's a lot of people that are working on it and they're pragmatic about it and don't think that you have to be just purist functional all the way. But when they actually ship production code, they usually resort to using like the do operator. With Rx observables, which is basically an escape hatch to let you do mutations and side effects in what is supposed to be this monadic functional thing. If the paradigm is breaking that quickly to do production code, I'd wonder if maybe there is something better out there. I just kind of keep that in mind but I'd definitely think there should be a bake-off or comparison of how you do things in both the task paradigm and observable paradigm but I think you'd find that in most cases, just do a lot more with a task, with a lot less code. CHARLES: I want to go back to the point you were about to make about Simple Made Easy. ALEX: On the divide, ember-concurrency is very easy. I still choose easy. In the case of reservable, I'm constantly choosing easy over simple and then it always helps me out because I've made that decision. I think most people inspired by Rich Hickey from the Clojure community, would look at ember-concurrency and be like, "At a task that combines derive state and does five different things seems kind of gross. Why don't you just use observables," and the result of that if you follow it through is that you end up writing a bunch of observable code that is a mess in streams and going in different directions and you've written something that's really hard to understand, even if it's seasons Rx developers looking at the code. It's just very easy to write things that are tangled. CHARLES: It's always good to have simplicity but also a system that simple without ease, I think is far less useful because like I said, it's always going to be a tradeoff between simple and easy but the problem is if your system is too simple, then it means that you're shouldering your day-to-day programming task or shouldering the complexity and you have this emergent complexity that you just can't shake because your primitives are just too simple. You could be programming in assembly language or something like that. That's really simple. You need to be able to construct simple primitives on top of simple primitives so for your immediate need, you have something that is both simple and easy, if that's ever possible. Certainly, ember-concurrency is easy and I think it just means there's maybe work to do in trying to tease apart the different concerns because like you said, there are five. But in real complex systems, there are five bajillions, maybe teasing apart those individual concerns that is composed out of simple primitives. I'm sure you've thought about that a little bit of how do I separate this and make these tasks compose a little bit better and things like that. ALEX: This is a nice segue because it might tie into some of the work that's going to be going into ember-concurrency in the next few months. A big theme of EmberConf is actually, a lot of people are joking that it should just be called GlimmerConf because a lot of it was talking about how Glimmer is going to be this composable subset of Ember, like Glimmer is going to be the rendering layer and then there might be a Glimmer router and a bunch of these Glimmer components that once you npm install them, you get Ember. Glimmers is a chance to think about Ember as a bunch of components working together under a really nice rendering layer. There's definitely some interest in bringing ember-concurrency in thinking what is so-called Glimmer-concurrency going to look like. Part of thinking about that is going to mean teasing apart some of these details as you were just saying. I don't have a lot of specifics to give right now, just that there is a lot of interest in making sure at the very early on, there is some sort of Glimmer-concurrency equivalent. Generally speaking, as part of that process is the question of how do we bring these magical ember-concurrency parameters to just Node or just vanilla JavaScript in general. Perhaps you could use these kinds of tasks on a server and in other environments. I think there's some questions of the way the ember-concurrency bundles together derived state with the actual tasks runner, are you actually going to use that derived state in the server setting? I think some of these pieces are going to have to come apart a little bit. I don't have very concrete ideas for how that's all going to look in the end. Just that I have faith that it will happen pretty easily and the result of it is going to be something that fits pretty nicely into Glimmer as well. CHARLES: Yeah, I hope so. It certainly seems like one of the core issues right because Glimmer-concurrency really should be universal. It should be some -- I don't want to prescribe your work for you -- ALEX: I don't mind. CHARLES: That wouldn't be cool. I mean, Glimmer is very stripped down. You have a very little bit on top of a raw JavaScript environment so if you're going to go there, it'll makes sense. What is this concurrent process builder look like using nothing but JavaScript? It seems like one of the hardest problems is to disentangle it from Ember object because the way that it currently computes that derive state is very intertwined with Ember object. You know the details of this more than I do but it seems like that's one of the biggest challenges is how do you communicate those changes in state without using that? That what I was thinking, it would be a good case for using observable for ember-concurrency, although not for probably the reason that people are thinking, which is for task composition and stuff but I'm very curious. ALEX: Likely the first stab at that direction would probably be using something similar, if not exactly these Glimmer reference primitives. Maybe it is worth talking about that. References are one of the core primitives that's used by Glimmer and it represents a value that might change over time and it's a value that can be lazily gotten, whereas observables, you have something that's firing events every time something changes and it makes the whole pipeline process it right then and there. With references, when something changes, you just tell the world like something's dirty. Then at a later time, maybe when in a request animation frame or some point where it actually makes sense to get the latest values, then it goes through and finds out everything that changes, does a single rerender. What it means is that you don't have the observe recode that's firing every time some value has changed. It's one of the guiding abstractions in Glimmer that makes it possible for it to be so fast and performant. It is very likely that a vanilla version of what ember-concurrency does uses references because those are already separate from the Ember object model and actually are used today in conjunction with Ember object model with the Glimmer that works with Ember today. I think that's probably, to me a first step. Clearly the reference attraction has worked wonders for Glimmer. I prefer to probably use that than observables and the push-based. CHARLES: Observables or something else. That is really, really interesting because there's nothing like vanilla JavaScript programming these days, like the equivalent of a Haskell thunk where you're just passing these things around but you're not actually using them until you actually want to pull a value. At that point, you kick off the whole chain of computation required to get that one value that you need. But it immediately brings to mind and I don't know if this is of concern to you but I was very, very enamored of Ember objects back in the day, in 2012. I was like, "Wow, this is amazing. This solves every problem that I've had." It has been a great companion and I've built some really great stuff on top of it. But now it's definitely turned into baggage. I think it's baggage for libraries that I've written and we're talking about it in the context of it being baggage here and being making it more available to the JavaScript community so I worry a little bit about Glimmer references. Would they possibly turn into something like that and could you counteract that by maybe trying to evangelize them to the wider JavaScript community like, "Here's a new reactive primitive," so that we don't end up in an eddy of the JavaScript community, do you think there's value in trying to say, "There should be some standard in the same way of observable, which is an emerging standard is for eager reactivity, have some lazy reactivity standard," or maybe it's too early for that. That might be a way of future-proofing or getting insurance for the future so you can say, "We can confidently build systems on top of this primitive." ALEX: If the worry is something based on Glimmer reference as it's going to turn into the same baggage or [inaudible] or whatever, that maybe Ember object has turned into some apps, some applications, some libraries. I'm not sure. I guess I don't really see that happening and I know that it's already gotten some validation from some of the people that have worked on Rx. In fact, a very useful primitives for certain kinds of workloads. As much as evangelism certainly helps. It's already off to a much better start than this all-powerful, god object that you can only interact with if you're using .get and .set functions. It's very lightweight. What I'm trying to say here is that there's UI workloads and then there's server-driven workloads and using Rx for both cases means that Rx suffers as a library because in the UI workload, you want something like references where you want to let a bunch of things change and then update stuff in one pass just a tick later or later in the micro task queue. But in Rx, they make you think about things in event-driven way, which might make sense for servers and stream processing but it's ugly when you want to actually build UIs with it. I think if we pay due respect to the fact these workloads are pretty different, I think the reference is way better of an abstraction for things that are UI-centric. They're simple and their performant and I think it's often much better foot than Ember object which is kind of bloated and huge and very hard to optimize. CHARLES: Right. I like that because you have to be precise with the server side things but ironically, with the references, you only care about the state at the point at which you observe it -- when the user observes it, not when the code observes it. The user observes stuff with every animation frame and there can be any number of intermediate states that you can just throw away and you don't care about. You don't need to compute them. I think what you're saying is Rx forces you to compute them. ALEX: Right and you wouldn't use a Glimmer reference for something if you're trying to batch. But in the end, keep all of the events that were fired on all the change events. You wouldn't use references because you're losing all that information until you do that poll and you get the latest value. But 99% of the time, when you're building UIs, that's what you want to use. CHARLES: Are Glimmer reference is their own standalone library or do they currently bundled with Glimmer? ALEX: I'm not sure. If they are not now, I believe the intention is for them to be at their separate repo. I was talking to Kris Selden at EmberConf and I got the impression that the intent, it might not be there now and if I want to start extracting ember-concurrency stuff into vanilla JS, I'd probably want to use a reference-ish thing, if not the official one from Glimmer. CHARLES: I know we talked about this so then, how will you able to use these lazy references to compute tasks state? How that might work or play out? ALEX: The fundamental problem right now is that everything in ember-concurrency is so glued to the Ember object model. What that means is that all ember-concurrency has to do is broadcast so the changes has happened to the state of a certain task so that you can, maybe put a loading spinner up on your template. All it has to do is use object.set and then the built in computed property observer change detection that is in Ember object model. It's going to sort of propagate these changes but that's a bunch of heavy Ember stuff that is going to exist and a lighter weight Glimmer or vanilla JS context. Instead of using .sets and expecting that the thing you're setting it on is a big, heavy Ember object model, you could just use references. Then whoever wants to get a reference to whether a task is running or not, it is running reference. Then just using the standard Glimmer abstractions. At the Glimmer-concurrency task runner, it would just basically kick those references and anyone who has one of those references can flush and get the latest value at some later point in time and then update the UI based on that. Already, as a maintainer at ember-concurrency, I see all the pieces work with that and I could probably just start working on that today. But there's just a handful of other things that I want to align with the vision of Glimmer and Glimmer-concurrency before I start working on that. ELRICK: What would be the referency equivalent in just plain JavaScript outside of Glimmer that you would use to build this on top of --? CHARLES: Like what would the API look like? If you're like, "I don't have a Glimmer. I don't have anything. I'm just --?" ELRICK: Yeah, you just have plain JavaScript. What would be the primitive that you will build this on top of? ALEX: Whether we use a standalone Glimmer references library or this separate reference thing, then I would use the term based on something Kris Selden said. In the end, the APIs is going to be pretty similar between those two but if one thing is requires, as far as I understand it, you've got to set up where in an event loop, your response is something that's changed and then you schedule at a later request animation frame, to actually do the rendering based on that. In order to use something like references, it implies that you've got to flush at a later tick or flush at a later call back. If you've got that in whatever app you're working on, it should be pretty easy to figure out where references fit in. CHARLES: I see, so you would basically say like new task, give it your task class or whatever -- I'm just making stuff up -- then you would just schedule, do a request animation frame and then just pull the task state or something like that? Or a new task reference or something like that? ALEX: You might have some function that's schedule render pass, if not yet scheduled. Then if it hasn't been scheduled, then use requests animation frame. If you call that function again, it's going to no op until that requests animation frame happened. CHARLES: Could you explain that again? ALEX: Sure. If you're actually thinking of a really low level vanilla JavaScript to your app, in the browser or something and you were just using references, then you probably have something where the thing that kicks off the reference or dirties the reference in some way, also run some function called 'schedule rerender', if one hasn't already been scheduled or something less verbose. That would just make sure that some request animation frame has been scheduled. When it flushes, then it will get all the changes but if more references are dirty at that mean time, it won't schedule additional request animation frames. I don't know, that's kind of blue-skying but that's when -- CHARLES: Right. Here's the other things, you see like being able to integrated with a third-party state management solution like Redux or something. Basically, I've got my ember-concurrency tasks and their state is then reflected inside a Redux store. How might that work, if at all? Or was that a crazy idea? ALEX: I don't know. I played around with Redux toy examples and Redux community and Ember is only stronger by the day. I'm not entirely sure how all those pieces fit together because in Redux, they really want you to propagate all of your state changes using the reducer in that single global atom. A lot of people asked me about redux-sagas, which is another generator function-driven way of firing these state mutating actions over some async operation and this is hugely popular but I don't think they have any concept of the derived state that I've been trying to do with ember-concurrency of just being able to ask a task if it's running. You can't just do that. You've got to reflect that into the global atom -- the global store --somehow and to be honest, I don't really know if that's fundamentally at odds with the Redux model, to take something like Ember or Glimmer-concurrency and make it work that way. But ideally, you wouldn't have to forward all that state into the global atom. You just be able to reference that task object. CHARLES: If the task object itself is immutable, it would have seemed like fairly trivial, like you could generate programmatically the reducer required to do that. If you had the state encapsulated, you could come and say, "Now, there's a new state here." It seems like you would be able to adapt that but you would need to be able to react to any time if that state changed to fire and action in the Redux store or fire the Redux action. ALEX: Actually, this will be an easier question to answer because in the Ember community Slack, there's a Redux channel and I know everyone there is already starting to talk about how are references, how is Glimmer is going to, how can we kind of tie these things to Redux and I think when they have some solutions lined up, a lot of the stuff that will be in so-called glimmer-concurrency will just fit in nicely. If they've got nice models for tying references to the state atom, if you will, then it's going to work with the new way. CHARLES: Okay, cool. One of the things that I wanted to talk about was a proposal that Lauren Tan, who put on to the ember-concurrency issues list, although it's an RFC. Are you accepting RFCs now for ember-concurrency? ALEX: I'm not pompous enough to have a separate RFCs repo. Issue approaches perfectly humble for me. CHARLES: But is this the first RFC or have there been a bunch of ember-concurrency RFCs? ALEX: There's been a few. It's definitely great that Ember have standardize on this boilerplate RFC model that everyone can fit their proposal into because it means that all the add-ons that people really like and really want to invest in, they get these high-quality RFCs versus like, "Hey man. It kind of nice if you can just like, have a pipeline." [Laughter] ALEX: Just because Ember invested in that process, the whole add-on community benefits from it and it's great. There's been a few RFCs that are like that. I'm not sure how many of them have made it but I've seen a few that are in that format but this one's definitely one of the nicer ones and a lot of effort was put into it and it looks really nice. ELRICK: I'm not familiar with the RFC. What was the brief overview of what was proposed? ALEX: Lauren was basically proposing that we add concept of pipelines, which is if you have a series of tasks that are stepping the pipeline of operations, then we should standardize that and then define all the steps in the pipeline so rather than having each step in the pipeline, call the next step in the pipeline. They just return some their portion of that work and then the pipeline infrastructure will automatically run the next step in that pipeline. CHARLES: It seems like also then you can derive state about the entire pipeline, rather than just the individual task. You have to manage that a little bit by hand. But the other thing, I guess I would add is it seems like if you're going to go with pipelines, rather than being a simple list, you might want to think about it as being a tree because can you have pipelines that are composed of sub-pipelines, so to speak? ALEX: Yeah. I believe the answer is yes. I'm not sure if it's spelled out in this RFC but really a pipeline just fits the task interface so if there's a task-ish thing or taskable object that you declare as a step of a pipeline or sub-pipeline, it should just work. I'm not sure if there's more work that needs to be done in spelling that out but that seems baked into it. There's a lot of due consideration for making sure these things compose really well and it's already in a really good state. CHARLES: Yeah. What are some of the use cases where you might want to use a pipeline? I'm sure, everyone who's been writing concurrent tasks has probably been maintaining their own pipeline so what is it that you're doing and how is this going to save your time and money? ALEX: Let's use the example that I've actually used in EmberConf, which is something based on my own app, which is in my app, you have to geolocate and find nearby stores that you could walk into and that process is four async steps in a row. One is getting your geolocation coordinates and then the next step is passing those the store, getting values and the third step is maybe some additional validation or just setting a timer so that your animations or any of these little async things that you have to do. But it's really a sequential operation where each time, fetch your geolocation or get it out of a cache and then step to the next thing, then the next thing. It looks okay as I have it in my production app code but it still feels a little gross that you can just look at this thing and be like, "What is the sequence of steps here?" You have to actually get the implementation of each task to see what happens next and where will it go after that. Basically, with ember-concurrency in general, there's a lot of opportunities for finding more conventions for building apps. I don't even know if we really talk about this so far but derived state is part of it. But generally speaking before ember-concurrency, there wasn't as much opportunity, I guess for some of these conventions for building these pretty standard UI flows without feeling that you're just building your own thing every single time, with chains of Promises and your own improvise cancellation scheme and all these things. I see pipelines as a next step. Well, we're pre-building lots of pipelines in our apps. We have these processes that go through these multiple steps and right now, the best we can do is set a bunch of Boolean variables and the derived state that comes with ember-concurrency helps but with pipelines, there's even more and it also structures your thinking so that if something like pipelines catches on, hopefully as an Ember developer, you'll see them in a few different places and already have that tool in how to visualize a problem, visualize a component, visualize the async flow. CHARLES: If I spent my entire morning reading the talk that Lauren referenced in RFC, which was the Railway Oriented Programming, which I think, maybe not quite but basically a visual explanation of a Maybe monad or the Either monad or whatever it's called. One of the greatest explanations of why monads are helpful and through explanation using like the Maybe, where you can have a computation that could have more than one result, either success or failure and how do I take these functions and compose them with functions that might always succeed or might not have a return value or whatever and show the tracks that move through a computation and be able to normalize every function to have the same number of tracks. I realized, I'm getting into the description of it without actually having the visuals in front of it so I'm just going to stop myself and say everybody go read it. It'll take you 35 minutes but it will eliminate so much like the chatter that you've been hearing in the background for a couple years. ALEX: I used to tell people that they should learn Rx because regardless of me liking the task primitive a little bit better, it's great. It just scrambles your brain and reorganize your thought processes and it's such an interesting library to learn. CHARLES: All right. I like it. I'm going to go learn Rx. ALEX: I've been getting, on the server side, the sort of Kafka-based architecture, Apache Kafka. Particularly, they've released some libraries in maybe the last year or so. It's a very Rx-familiar feeling library for composing new data and new aggregates and joins between different topics and streams of events. It just seems like they're at the forefront of solving these really hard problems in a very conventional way. You get into some of that stuff and you'll find that you're doing a lot of server side processing with step that just feels a lot like Rx and I find it very interesting. I haven't actually build anything with it yet but it is likely in my future and anybody that's into the event-driven model should definitely know what people are working on in this Kafka-streams world. CHARLES: That is cool. It's so interesting to see how all the problems that you encounter on working on the server side, you will encounter on the client and vice versa. You can build up a huge corpus of knowledge on one side of the API divide and you'd be surprised that if you were to go work on the other side for a time, you'll be able to leverage 99% of that knowledge. That's fantastic. I would love to get into Kafka but unfortunately, I think we're going to have to save that for another time. That's another one of those words like... I don't know. Is Kafka descended from Storm or something like that? Is it a similar concept? I remember everybody was big on Storm. ALEX: I think Storm process the events and decides what to do with them. Kafka is really just a giant storage that plugs into something, I think like Storm or [inaudible] or any of these things that actually process the events. CHARLES: Yeah, it's all Kubernetes to me. ALEX: Yeah. CHARLES: All righty. Well, with that, I think we'll wrap it up. Thank you so much, Alex for coming to talk to us. It's always enlightening. I love your approach to programming. I love how deeply you think about problems and how humble you are in approaching them because they are big. ALEX: Well, thank you. It's great to be on here. It's fun. CHARLES: All right, everybody. Take care. Bye Elrick, bye Alex.

Starling Tribune - Season 5 Edition – What We Leave Behind (A CW Network Arrow Television Show Fan Podcast)   The Official Arrow Podcast of the Gonna Geek Network   Episode:            “What We Leave Behind” [Season 5 Episode 9] Air Date:           Wednesday, December 7, 2016 Director:      Antonio Negret                    http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0624423/?ref_=tt_ov_dr                    2x Legends of Tomorrow | 3x Arrow | 1x The Flash | 2x The 100                    Writers:       Wendy Mericle                    http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1355890/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr4 Showrunner for Arrow | 19x Arrow   Beth Schwartz                    http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2584087/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr5 19x Arrow | 2x Legends of Tomorrow | 1x Hart of Dixie     Promo: https://www.comicbookmovie.com/tv/dc/arrow/there-are-lots-of-big-reveals-in-arrow-season-5-episode-9-promo-what-a147195      Weekly Ratings   Episode # / Episode Title / Episode Air / Date  / Rating 01 Legacy 5-Oct-16 1.89 02 The Recruits 12-Oct-16 1.94 03 A Matter Of Trust 19-Oct-16 1.79 04 Penance 26-Oct-16 1.87 05 Human Target 2-Nov-16 1.61 06 So It Begins 9-Nov-16 1.95 07 Vigilante 16-Nov-16 1.86 08 Invasion 30-Nov-16 3.55 09 What We Leave Behind 7-Dec-16 1.94 10 Who Are You TBD 11 Second Chances TBD 12 Bratva TBD 13 Spectre Of The Gun TBD   Part 1: The Plot, Themes and Characters What was the overall theme for this episode / What was the link to the ep. name Actions from the past coming back to haunt you Prometheus is the son of someone Ollie as The Hood killed We have two legacies we leave behind - the good and the bad Fight scenes & Stunts: Share your thoughts Prometheus attacks Curtis Curtis gets some hits in. Not many Prometheus and Ollie - round one Prometheus has skills; does cool special flip (Ollie recognizes it; he learned it from a woman in Russia) Wild Dog shoots weapon out of Prometheus's hand, but Artemis shoots his guns Prometheus disappears with Artemis Prometheus and Ollie - round two Action is cut with flashback from 4 years ago Prometheus has dead bodies posed just like how Ollie killed them Its super creepy and really helps to amp up the tension Fight up escalator (flashback) Prometheus able to escape; makes Billy Malone look and sound like him Similar to the Joker's hostages in The Dark Knight Flashbacks: Share your thoughts 4 years ago - Ollie as The Hood Killing people; The List Diggle knows Ollie is The Hood Ollie after Justin Claybourne, who manufactured weaponized TB in order to sell medicine for it Diggle warns Ollie that his actions could have unintended consequences Red pen! Felicity is awkward and cute when she helps Ollie find address (1852) Ollie:   Has he learned after all this time? Brings team to first fight w/Prometheus Goes alone when find Prometheus again - why? Being confronted with past makes him act like that again - he kills Prometheus instead of putting an arrow in his knee Does he have to kill Prometheus? Confesses to team the truth First instinct is to push everyone away The expression on his face when he sees HER in the Arrowcave Diggle Active in flashback Leads group hug at end when Ollie wants to push everyone away Is called by Lyla to safe house Is taken in by soldiers Thea Feels as though the Dominators dream renewed her purpose Tells Ollie that we leave good and bad legacies Suits up as Speedy! Is this a onetime thing after the reveal of Artemis' betrayal? Felicity Awkwardly introduces Billy to friends; suggest double date w/Ollie Tells Billy not to investigate Prometheus; Billy does anyway because that's his job Billy sends her photo of baby - is looping her in on what he finds Blames Prometheus for Billy's death Quentin Lance Not in episode Curtis Has lied to husband Paul - doing a start up with Felicity Tells hubby the truth - Paul gives ultimatum Realizes being Mr. Terrific gives him purpose Paul leaves b/c can't see him go off every night and risk life Wild Dog “I don't like rules or listening” Does the opposite Ollie instructs (maybe Ollie pulls an “opposite day” move) Is he a father? Artemis Gives Rene, Rory, and Diggle stockings with their code names Says guys are her only family Betrays Oliver because city needs protecting from him Ragman Makes Flashpoint joke Figures out how to sequence DNA D.A. Adrian Chase Really wants Prometheus dealt with Puts kill order on Prometheus Susan Williams Ollie's date to the Christmas party Drinks Russian vodka Russian writing on the bottle is centered on screen, is this a hint? Tells Ollie shutting people out is not a good thing to do Has sexytimes with Ollie Laurel Is this due to Barry and Flashpoint? Or maybe due to Legends of Tomorrow where Sara revealed Damian's future so now he is travelling time to avert it. Bratva Not in episode Prometheus Leads? - A whole bunch At least 30 years old Justin Claybourne's son - ???? Seems too easy if this is the case Son not publicly known - mentioned in divorce papers Has studied Oliver for four years How does he(?) know that Ollie killed his father and studied fighting in Russia? When did he(?) find out all of this about Ollie? Is it Claybourne's son? Could it be someone else who just knows about what Ollie has done when he was The Hood and was working off of The List? Tied to The List He sounds like Michael Dorn to Chris (reddit seems to agree) Michelle's List O'Suspects: (I'm keeping this active until the mask comes off) Tommy Merlyn - Not likely now. In Ollie's Dementor vision as someone proud of Ollie New: Susan Williams - if the Claybourne son thing is a red herring; then it could be her; she is old enough, drinks Russian vodka, and has finally confirmed Ollie was in Russia. Maybe her real name isn't SW Robert Queen - too old? But is the author of The List. In Ollie's Dementor vision as someone proud of Ollie. New: It's actually Claybourne's son Adrian Chase (but more likely to become Vigilante) Billy Malone - dead Helena Bertinelli (but I would rather see her as either Huntress or head of the Bertinelli family) Isabel Rochev Mckenna Hall Shado - not Claybourne's child and not really connected to The List Slade Wilson - not tied to The List Talia al Ghul (see this week's news) New: Quentin Lance (likely a red herring) (in rehab) Roy - too young and in Ollie's Dementor vision as someone proud of Ollie; also, not really tied to The List Viktor (SP's add) - too old   CURRENT EPISODE DC EASTER EGGS & POP CULTURE REFERENCES Season Episode  “What We Leave Behind” (Date: 08 Dec 2016) Article: http://comicbook.com/2016/12/08/arrow-easter-eggs-and-things-you-might-have-missed-in-the-season/      JUDAS CONTRACT - A young, female team member who is recruited into Team Arrow and then seduced to the dark side and ends up becoming a sleeper agent for the villain is pretty much exactly the plot to the classic New Teen Titans storyline The Judas Contract. OLIVER'S CHRISTMAS MOVIES - According to Stephen Amell's recent Facebook Live video, he shares Oliver's favorite Christmas movie (Die Hard) and the "Its true!" he delivered after saying so in the episode was actually a Stephen Amell-ism, not Oliver Queen's. His second choice, It's a Wonderful Life, is an interesting one considering..."I was very lucky to be able to rewatch that movie last week."...which of course is not a thing that happened. He was  subjected to a kind of custom-made It's a Wonderful Life, where the Dominators showed him a whole different timeline and how his life and the lives of those around him might be different if he had made different decisions. BIG BELLY BURGER - The mention is because the to-go bag for the DC Universe's favorite burger joint was the focus of a shot that hung on for a few seconds AND transitioned from the present day to the flashbacks. That's a lot of camera time for a fast food container. CLAYBOURNE - While Justin Claybourne's name did in fact appear on The List, we never saw him dealt with in season 1 and all of the scenes here that were calling back to the first year of the series were entirely new material. This, of course, opens up the question of whether we might see some more such stories in flashbacks for future episodes...! ALMOST EVERY WEDNESDAY - "People who are supposed to be dead turn out to be alive almost every Wednesday." Weirdly enough never during the summer or between mid-December and late January, though. THE HOOD - Oliver's season 1 costume, the kill list, the sets, the mission, his arguments with Diggle...this is what it was like when he was The Hood and not Green Arrow. THE RED PEN - The red pen is a nice callback to some of Felicity Smoak's earliest appearances, and that makes it worth breaking out to talk separately about "IT Girl Felicity," back when Oliver was still making up outlandish stories to get her help instead of just coming clean with her. AK DESMOND PHARMACEUTICAL - It seems worth noting, since Dr. Alchemy is such a big part of The Flash this season, that A.K. Desmond Pharmaceutical could plausibly be considered a wink-and-a-nod reference to Albert Desmond, a chemist who would go on to become Dr. Alchemy in the comics. Unlikely, but possible! MAKE THE CITY GREAT AGAIN - Obviously in his final moments, when Claybourne is trying to appeal to Oliver's ideas about "saving the city," he says that businesses like his can "make the city great again," which in the context of the last years' worth of public life feels suspiciously like a reference to Donald Trump's "make America great again" campaign slogan. ARROW NEWS:   ARROW FANS HAVE ALREADY SEEN SEASON 5'S FINAL SCENE — OR HAVE THEY? (Date: 05 Dec 2016) Now that “Arrow” has reached season five and has no plans of slowing down, the plan has changed slightly. As Guggenheim said, “Spoiler alert. That's (Ollie's rescue from Lian Yu) going to end up being the Season 5 finale.” Season five's flashback story arc will still end by replaying the first moments of the series, but there's now much more show to come after that moment in season six and beyond. But just because fans saw how season five will end five years ago doesn't mean there aren't surprises still ahead at the end of this season. Guggenheim added that the creators have “some incredibly clear plans for what we want to do in the Season 5 finale,” but that they always leave wiggle room for surprises and cliffhangers. Link:http://www.cbr.com/arrow-fans-have-already-seen-season-5s-final-scene-or-have-they/   Arrow's David Ramsey: "I Like The Idea Of Felicity Not Defining Herself Through Her Relationship With A Man" (Date: 04 Dec 2016) During the Arrow panel at the CCXP convention in Brazil, David Ramsey was asked to chime in on Olicity. "For me, I like the idea of Felicity not defining herself through her relationship with a man," Ramsey told the crowd. "I like the idea that she can be her own person, and she can be strong and feminine, own the company, without pining over men — Oliver or any other man." Link:http://comicbook.com/2016/12/05/arrows-david-ramsey-i-like-the-idea-of-felicity-not-defining-her/   Stephen Amell Addresses The Big Twist In Arrow's Midseason Finale (Date: 07 Dec 2016) In a Facebook video, Stephen Amell discussed the return of Laurel. Amell said that tonight's script was the first in a long time that legitimately shocked him when he turned the page to that reveal. He also said that he was skeptical at first of the idea of bringing another character back from the dead, but that they're now several episodes down the line in production and that he thinks the story that comes out of it is a good one. Link:http://comicbook.com/2016/12/08/stephen-amell-addresses-the-big-twist-in-arrows-midseason-finale/   GENERAL DC TV NEWS Four-Night DC Crossover Gives The CW Its Most-Watched Week In Six Years (Date: 06 Dec 2016) The four-night DC superhero crossover event is certainly paying off big for the CW, pulling in 2.3 million viewers for its most-watched week in six years. For the week of November 28, the CW was up 20% in total viewers versus the same week last year, up 15% in adults 18-49 (0.7 vs. 0.6) and up 16% in adults 18-34 (0.6 vs. 0.5), according to Nielsen stats. Supergirl had its most-watched (3.5M) episode of the season, and matched its season premiere ratings in both adults 18-34 (0.9/4) and adults 18-49 (1.1/4). The Flash saw its most-watched episode (4.15M) in almost two years (12/9/14) and its highest rated episode of the season. Arrow delivered the series' most watched (3.55M) and highest-rated episode since last season's crossover episode (12/2/15). And DC's Legends of Tomorrow had its most-watched episode ever (3.39M) and its highest-rated episode ever in adults 18-34 (1.0/5). Link:http://deadline.com/2016/12/dc-crossover-the-cw-ratings-supergirl-arrow-the-flash-legends-of-tomorrow-the-flash-1201865656/    MISTER MXYZPTLK TO MATERIALIZE ON SUPERGIRL (Date: 02 Dec 2016) com reports DC Comics supervillain Mister Mxyzptlk will bring his impish antics to the CW drama for two episodes in 2017.Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Ira Yarborough for 1944's “Superman” #30, Mister Mxyzptlk is a mischievous imp from the fifth dimension who delights in tormenting the Man of Steel. More fun-loving prankster than straightforward villain, Mxyzptlk's fifth-dimensional technology appears as magic to three-dimensional beings; the limits of his powers are vast and unknown. Famously, he can only be stopped and returned to his home dimension by tricking him into saying his name backward (“Kltpzyxm”).   Link:http://www.cbr.com/mister-mxyzptlk-to-materialize-on-supergirl/    How “Supergirl” And A Super-Duper Gay Comic Book Clerk Helped Save A Girl's Life (Date: 04 Dec 2016) Mary, a “super-duper gay” employee at a comic book shop in Indiana, shared an encounter she had with a young woman. The girl said she was suicidal because she's gay, and she didn't realize gay women could be happy until she saw the Alex Danvers coming out arc on Supergirl. To help the girl out through the hiatus, the employees suggested  Batwoman: Elegy, Midnighter, and Gotham Central. The girl didn't have money for all of the titles, so the employee bought them for her. Link:http://www.newnownext.com/supergirl-lesbian-sanvers/12/2016/   Mark Hamill and John Wesley Shipp On the Biggest Surprises Reprising Their Roles on The Flash (Date: 06 Dec 2016) Interesting fact: Shipp starred in The Flash in 1990 and 1991, with Hamill as a recurring villain. While Hamill was filming Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a new TV version of The Flash was coming together. Three years later, against all odds, he and the producers have found a way for Hamill to make an appearance as James Jesse in each midseason finale so far. Link:http://comicbook.com/2016/12/07/mark-hamill-and-john-wesley-shipp-on-the-biggest-surprises-repri/   Supergirl Showrunners wanted to play with Shippers (Date: 3 Dec 2016) Producer Andrew Kreisberg revealed after a screening (h/t EW) that multiple moments with Kara were ultimately cut from the three episodes, including Sara asking out the Girl of Steel (and perhaps foreshadowing a future with Alex): There was a little exchange between Sara [Caity Lotz] and Kara [Melissa Benoist] that I really liked — I don't think we even filmed it — where Sara says, ‘Hey, do you want to get a drink when this is all over?' And Kara says, ‘I think you wanna meet my sister.' Just the idea of starting the Sara/Alex [Chyler Leigh] shippers going … Link:http://comicsalliance.com/supergirl-legends-crossover-deleted-scenes/ Fallout from the Superhero Crossover (Date: 3 Dec 2016) WILL SUPERGIRL VISIT EARTH-1 AGAIN? | Now that Kara has a way to communicate and travel across Earths, crossovers are certainly “easier” to execute, Kreisberg says. “The next time we do it, it means it doesn't necessarily have to be because Oliver and Barry need Kara; it could be because Kara needs them.” However, the EP notes that nothing is in the works, seeing as how “we just barely survived this one. So we're not too concerned with what we're going to try to do next year. But it just gives us another way to come at a story.” DOES THE WORLD KNOW ETs EXIST? | A line was cut for time, in which the G-man known as “Glasses” says, “‘Cover up what? A dozen weather satellites falling out of orbit?'” Guggenheim explains: “People see the ships, but no one ever really saw the Dominators. The way we're sort of playing it going forward is that Glasses is good at his job, and when he says he's going to cover it up, he's going to cover it up.” Adds Kreisberg: “There's a mention of it in The Flash, that the threat of aliens brought out all the crazies. But we're sort of Doctor Who-ing it.” Link:http://tvline.com/2016/12/01/legends-of-tomorrow-recap-season-2-episode-7-crossover-dominators-return/ GREEN ARROW COMICS & TOY NEWS X-MEN: GOLD AND BLUE ROSTERS AND CREATIVE TEAMS REVEALED (Date: 28 Nov 2016) X-Men: Gold will be written by Marc Guggenheim with art by Ardian Syaf. The phase-shifting Kitty Pryde at long-last will become an X-Men team leader, whose squad includes Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Old Man Logan, and Rachel Grey. “Kitty is the right person to bring the X-Men into the future, to herald in the next era of the X-Men,” Guggenheim told us in a phone interview. “We are post the war with the Inhumans. The X-Men are sort of at a crossroads. They're at a point where they are trying to decide, is there a future for the X-Men? And Kitty is very much of the mindset that there is a future for the X-Men and it's a bright future.”  Guggenheim is best known as co-showrunner and writer on The CW's Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow and previously worked on the adjectiveless X-Men book in 2014 featuring an all-female cast of characters. Link:http://comicbook.com/2016/11/28/x-men-gold-and-blue-rosters-and-creative-teams-revealed/   NEXT EPISODE   Promo for Next Week: Episode - “Who Are You” (Date: xx month year) Article:Link (comicbookmovie.com) Episode:   “Who Are You?” [Season 5 Episode 10] Air Date:        Wednesday, January 25, 2017 Summary:      According to the clip on the app: Diggle is back in jail, but this time he vows to face the charges. Oliver and the team are looking for the mother of Claybourne's child. Also, they have to ease Laurel back into present-day life. Director:         Gregory Smith Writers:          Ben Sokolowski and Brian Ford Sullivan IMDB:   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5584160/?ref_=ttep_ep10   Join The Starling Tribune each week as we stream live on Thursday nights at 9:00 PM eastern or 8:00 PM Central at www.geeks.live. Join the fun chatroom and interact with the hosts live. Contact us: @StarlingTribune - starlingtribune@gmail.com - www.starlingtribune.com - www.facebook.com/starlingtribune - 612-888-CAVE or 612-888-2283.   Starling Tribune is proud to be a member of the GonnaGeek network found at GonnaGeek.com. For more geeky podcast visit GonnaGeek.com.   You can find us on iTunes under ''Starling Tribune." We are very thankful for all of our positive iTunes reviews. You can find all our contact information here on the Network page of GonnaGeek.com Our complete archive is always available at www.starlingtribune.com   This podcast was recorded Thursday December 8th, 2016.   Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoyed the show!   Audio Production by Stargate Pioneer of GonnaGeek.com.