Podcast appearances and mentions of alex what

Fisher and The Intern on a Friday evening with some news about BYOCB, plus we get some crazy voicemails and gear up for the holidays. On this show, we discuss - Some BYOCB show news - Not Bruce Springsteen is on fire - Cranberry Juice and The Cranberries - The kids are listening to Fleetwood Mac - Alex mixes Guinness with cranberry juice - Intern's trivia at Tactical - The rogue rogue and the non-ginger Alex - What's up with American Horror Story? Become a BYOCB Club member and get exclusive access to content, an annual gift, plus other perks. Sign up today! Big thanks to our friends at Mason Danger Beard Co. who hook us up with some AWESOME beard products!  Enter BYOCB at checkout for 25% off your order. Our 2020 official brewery sponsor is Tactical Brewing Company. Buying a house or need to refinance? If you're in Florida, you need to visit Streamline Mortgage Solutions and let them know that BYOCB sent you. For all your photography needs, go to Lauren Tewson Photography.  We drink. We laugh. We drink. Follow the show on Twitter @BYOCBShow check out BYOCBShow.com.  Subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts.  Be sure to follow us on Instagram @BYOCBShow

Do you want to live a healthier lifestyle but feel that you don’t have enough time for it? Do you want to know the secrets of how to get the ideal body and the lifestyle you’ve always wanted?   When you want a healthy body and lifestyle, you need to set aside myths and follow facts. You don’t need a diet, you just need the proper nutrition and the right mindset for you to get up and going, and to be one step closer to having your ideal body and a healthier you!  Alex Garcia has had over 10 years of experience in Wellness and Nutrition and is a former Economist and MBA graduate with a double Master’s degree in Nutrition and Coaching. He is also currently a Ph.D. student in Physical Medicine.  In this episode, Alex shares his insights on how you can achieve a healthier you through the proper professional help you deserve. He also shares the secrets on how to have a healthy body and mind, with a better and more powerful way rather than dieting!   What you will learn from this episode:  Discover the secrets of what you can do to have a better and healthier lifestyle for you and your health  Learn the importance of getting information from the right professional people who can further help with your health, diet and nutrition  Find out how focusing on getting the proper nutrition can do wonders for you both physically and mentally    “Diets are not good for us, it's proper nutrition.”  - Alex Garcia    Topics Covered:  01:51 - Alex defines his ideal client  02:56 - The main problem that Alex solves for his clients: lack of time for a healthier lifestyle and health  04:02 - Lack of energy, mental fog, not productive, aching body, and aging faster are some of the symptoms of an unhealthy lifestyle or poor health  04:42 - Why going all or nothing is a bad mentality in achieving a healthier body and mind  05:39 - Alex’s valuable free action: The main thing is just trying to make sure that you get your information in the proper manner and from a professional person.  07:08 - Alex’s valuable free resource: Go to Wellnessrepublic.com to check out science-based health articles   07:36 - Concept alert: I just think that awareness is something that is undervalued nowadays, and something that we need to recover. I invite my clients to be self-aware. We're always like zombies, walking around with our phone - so just turn off your phone and be aware. This is the most valuable thing that I can say. Be aware.  08:29 - Question that should have been asked to Alex: What is one thing that everyone could start implementing for free, even people that don't have time to have better health?   Key Takeaways:   “Everything is allowed in moderation. That's the goal to know what we can eat when we should eat it for our goals.” - Alex Garcia  “Trying to make sure that you get your information in the proper manner and from a professional person.” - Alex Garcia  “They need to understand that nutrition and medicine are not the same, right? So just get a trusted, professional certified person to guide you on your journey, and that looks the way you want to look because we don't, with my respect, I would never hire a fat personal trainer, right? I would never hire a dentist with rotten teeth.” - Alex Garcia  “Hire someone that leads with a body that walks the walk and talks the talk. This is absolutely important!” - Alex Garcia    Ways to Connect with Alex Garcia:  Website: https://online.wellness-republic.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgarciaphdc/   Ways to Connect with Howard Whiteson:  Website: http://www.wealthwithoutborders.net     Podcast: https://wealthwithoutborders.net/podcast/   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardwhiteson   

Hi! This is your eye in the sky Green Butterfly. Silver Vox and I are very thankful for all our superfriends and the community they have helped us build. Now it is time to turn back the clock. Let’s go back to Supergirl’s first Thanksgiving episode. We find our Maid of Steel still trying to find her way as a hero in National City. We get to explore the beautifully complex relationships of mothers and daughters. The first time we got some history of the Danvers family. Join us for a discussion of what happened when Supergirl’s high flying rescue changes the life of Leslie Willis forever. How does Eliza's relationship with Kara differ from her relationship with Alex? What is the best pie in the galaxy? We will discuss this and so much more as we continue to explore fan favorite episodes. Will a super friend stop by and say "Hi!"? I guess you will have to push play and find out.

If you think back to just a few years ago, when someone asked you to name a company that delivered food, you’d probably only be able to name a few pizza joints or the local Chinese food place. But today, the world has shifted and online food delivery is a booming business. Last year alone, Grubhub sold $6 billion worth of food, and the company delivers more than 500,000 meals per day. So how did Grubhub enable this massive shift to digital meal purchasing? On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we welcomed Alex Weinstein, the SVP of Growth at Grubhub, and he explained to us exactly how the company has been able to become a market mover. From the initial education process to then focusing on customer retention, Alex and his team have been deep in the weeds of it all, and they have built a culture of experimentation, data analytics and a focus on ROI to stay ahead of the curve. Alex explains it all here.    3 Takeaways: Measurement and incrementality are important. You have to understand whether or not where you’re putting your dollars is making a difference, and sometimes the answer will surprise you True experimentation is necessary to create new methods of measurement, marketing strategies and growth opportunities. So the question you have to ask as a leader is how can you create incentives to allow people to take risks and learn? The time is now to learn about the newly-online customers that have trickled into your business due to COVID-19. In understanding their needs, you will be able to ensure retention and set yourself up for the new reality we live in 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, co-founder of mission.org. Today, my stomach is rumbling, because we're talking all things Grubhub. Alex, welcome. Alex: Thank you for having me. Stephanie: Yeah, thanks so much for coming on the show. I just pulled up the app earlier to be like, "What should I have for lunch today?" Because it's 12:00, and it's time to order something. Alex: What did you end up ordering? Stephanie: I'm looking at pad Thai right now, we have a really good Thai place down the street. That's usually my go-to, but I started to get influenced by sushi, so if you have any advice, let me know. Alex: I don't know the restaurants in the area, but look for those that are well-rated, and look for deals. We have a ton of deals going on right now. Stephanie: Ooh, nice, that's perfect. You are the SVP of Growth at Grubhub, correct? Alex: That's right. Stephanie: I'd love to hear a little bit about your role there, and what brought you to Grubhub. Alex: Sure, sure, thank you. I've been at Grubhub for a little bit over three years. My responsibility is for the consumer business. That is, how do we get more new customers to try us out for the first time, and how do we get existing ones to order with us a little more often? And hopefully they'll return. Alex: This spans all aspects of marketing. We do a whole bunch of stuff in-house. I'd love to explore that a little bit later. But it also involves a lot of work cross-functionally, across the product. When I say product, I don't just mean our apps, but the totality of the experience that the customer has, from our apps to the delivery, to customer care, if that's ever necessary. Stephanie: Very cool. Previously, were you at, I think I saw Microsoft and eBay, or what did your past life before Grubhub look like? Alex: That's right, that's right. I actually am a very strange Head of Marketing. I'm a software engineer by training. Stephanie: Oh, interesting. Alex: I've written a bunch of code. I switched over to product management, and then darkness had me, and I somehow ended up in marketing. I indeed was at eBay before this, also for around about three years. Similar role, maybe a slightly more narrow role, focused on customer retention, marketing technologies. Stephanie: Very cool. I'm sure that was great help working at a marketplace, albeit not maybe a three-sided one, but still maybe a really helpful to transition to Grubhub with as your background? Alex: It very much was. I have to admit, I thought I knew marketplaces after eBay, then when I started Grubhub, I discovered so much complexity. Our business, exactly as you said, is a three side marketplace. Restaurants, food delivery drivers, and consumers. It is a hyper local business. People who live in Palo Alto whole heartedly don't care how many restaurants we have in San Jose, and how good our delivery network is in San Francisco, right? Alex: It has to be block by block, and we have to make sure that we have good restaurant selection there, good demand, and good supply of drivers. Otherwise, if the three sides aren't in alignment, bad things happen. Stephanie: Yeah, that seems like it would be really tricky to keep all that balanced. How have you found success keeping everything balanced? Like you said, it's so hyper local, I'm thinking there could be a driver over in Sunnyvale, and they're definitely not going to go to my local Thai place to pick up the order that I'm looking at. Alex: Yeah, this is where a lot of fun in this business comes from, and a lot of complexity in this business comes from. We have to be really good at predicting things, and predicting demand. And we have to be really good at engaging all sides of our marketplace so that drivers actually want to be online at the time when we want them to be online. Alex: Consumers end up placing additional orders if perhaps we have a little bit too much supply. Restaurateurs want to create deals. Basically, being able to influence three sides of the marketplace in a automated, personalized, hyper local way, is really the only way we can survive, right? This, to me, is super joyful, and super complicated, and where a lot of learning, personally, for me, has come from. Stephanie: Yeah, I'm sure every day it's adjusting a little bit more, and you keep have to kind of changing things up and experimenting a bit. How do I think about where Grubhub is at right now? To me, it seems like it's the market leader. How many meals are being delivered? How much is that in dollar-wise of food that's being sold? How do I think about that? Alex: We're a public company, all of those numbers are public. Quick summary for you. We deliver more than half a million meals a day. Last year, we delivered more than six billion dollars worth of food. Of course, with the arrival of the pandemic, the demand for food delivery has also increased. The expectation of all of our constituents, and of our community, all of us, have risen tremendously. Because, from something that restaurateurs really on for a portion of their revenue, they now rely on delivery as the majority of it. Alex: For consumers, where they would perhaps order delivery occasionally, now is the only way for them to order restaurant food. A lot of expectations on us have increased throughout these past couple of months, even though we already started from being quite a large company with high expectations. Stephanie: Yeah, have you had to adjust quickly with everything going on with COVID-19? What have you seen, other than increasing orders, and how have you had to pivot to meet the customers and meet the drivers in where they're at today? Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Well, most definitely, yes. First and foremost, we began by focusing on safety of all the participants of our marketplace, right? This began with our work on personal protective equipment for our drivers. We distributed hundreds of thousands of PPE sets for free for our drivers. We invested a bunch of work into enabling contactless delivery within our apps. Which, of course, is something that makes the entirety of the marketplace safer. Alex: We basically have to take our product roadmap, and, in many ways, revisit it fully, and focus on things our community demanded of us in that moment. Similarly, we had to do something like that with marketing, as well, because we had a certain strategy. You of course know that a lot of our effort is in making sure that consumers can get the best value on Grubhub. If you spend money on food delivery, your dollars will go the furthest on Grubhub. This really is our brand positioning. Alex: When COVID came, we had to take a pause, because this rewards positioning, or this value positioning, really had to take a step back, because consumer's interest... Sure, they were looking for deals, but they were looking to be safe, first and foremost. Secondly, they were looking to support their community. So we had to reposition a lot of our marketing work to make it so. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm thinking that could be a trend that stays around, even after everything's over, keeping that contactless delivery at least as an option, and thinking about how to actually prove you have the safety measures implemented, and you're tracking that every month. Are you all thinking about how to scale that and keep that for the long term, or is it more just a short term play until the pandemic's over? Alex: Couple thoughts for you. One is, I don't think that we're going to be looking at a pandemic being over and everything coming back to normal. I think we need to get used to the new normal, at least until the vaccine is here. Which means that people's lifestyles, their habits, will be fully adjusted by then. Alex: As such, it's not like we were developing a set of patches for three months, and then after that, we just turned those patches off. But also, there's meaningful, positives coming from this change, right? Like any crisis, it is both a danger and an opportunity. What we've discovered is this contactless delivery, for example, besides making everyone safe, it is actually making our network a tiny bit more efficient. The delivery driver does not need to engage with the consumer in-person. They can just drop it off, take a photo, and keep going, and keep working. Which shaves off a small amount, but in the grand scheme of more than half a million deliveries a day, this starts adding up. It helps our drivers earn more, and it helps our overall network be more efficient, which means food comes to consumers faster. Stephanie: Yep, yeah, that's definitely a good change. There's a lot of food delivery players in the market right now. How do you create an experience that's completely unique to Grubhub? Where people, they're like, "That's where I want to order through." Alex: All of this, in our minds, has to do with differentiation. And you're exactly right, maybe two or three years ago, where consumers didn't really know much about the food delivery category. A lot of what we had to do was to educate them about our existence, which is why a lot of our marketing, a lot of our product, was geared towards a first-time experience of someone who's never gotten anything delivered other than a pizza. Because really, that was the state of the world, right? You would ask an average consumer on the street, "Name a couple companies that deliver food," and they would name pizza brands. Stephanie: That would've been me a couple years ago, too. Alex: Totally. Stephanie: I'd be like, "Domino's." Alex: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Maybe Chinese food, if you've ever tried it. An average consumer didn't know that there's hundreds of restaurants that deliver to them, and that they can find them on Grubhub. So that was the focus of our messaging. Alex: Three months ago, even before COVID, if you asked an average consumer to name food delivery brands, they would name us, and maybe a handful of our competitors. In that environment, I'm prompted, right? This is unaided awareness. Not, "Have you ever heard of Grubhub?" But, "Name a food delivery brand." Alex: Our work switched from creating awareness to driving consideration. Helping consumers understand, what is it that they get if they buy from us versus perhaps one of our competitors? Last year, a lot of our focus has been on stating this extremely clearly and delivering on that experience quite precisely. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, it is all about value for us. Alex: Now that we're entering a bit of a new normal with COVID-19, we're beginning to come back to some of this foundational brand positioning. Talking about rewards and value. We have a TV spot that's actually launching today and tomorrow on national TV. We're one of the biggest spenders on TV in both the category. Stephanie: Oh, interesting. Alex: Generally we're one of top 200 brands advertising on U.S. television that talks about rewards and value. You might be scratching your head and wondering, "Why in the hell is a digital first brand spending so much money on TV?" Stephanie: Yes, I was wondering. Tell me. Alex: It actually is kind of counterintuitive. We, maybe about three years back, we started scratching our heads and thinking, "Okay, if an average consumer doesn't really know what food delivery options are out there, how do we create that awareness? And how do we do that in a way that can confidently map the efficacy of our spend?" Because creation of awareness, let's face it, is the most expensive thing a company can do. Stephanie: Yep. Everyone wants it, but then actually implementing it, tracking it, and seeing how it did, seems a little tricky. Alex: It is so very tricky. Most mechanisms for doing this are actually kind of arcane, right? You do media consumption patterns, which, frankly is a large-scale survey that perhaps an agency would run and say, "Okay, New Yorkers, they absolutely do not watch any TV. They spend a bunch of time in the subway, true. And then they're all very much on digital." Alex: So, a brand that's trying to advertise in New York then would say, "Okay, television in New York, totally worthless. And our consumers are probably just like the average consumer in New York." That's kind of how the line of thinking typically goes. We, despite having a general applicability product, right? Everybody wants food delivery, right? Everybody from 18 to my mom, most definitely could benefit from food delivery. Alex: And yet, what we discover, is that the media consumption patterns of an average New Yorker are not the average media consumption patterns of our consumer. Moreover, what we discovered three years back was even though our intuition was that someone who orders food delivery online is most likely an early adopter of technology, and most likely a cord cutter, right? I mean, if you're about to order food online, you of course are ordering your socks from Amazon. You of course are watching shows on Hulu Plus without any commercials, as opposed to on cable TV, right? Stephanie: Yeah. Alex: Of course that intuitively made sense, which is why we've been spending a lot of money through digital video channels. That intuitively made sense. We stumbled upon a set of techniques that allowed us to, with confidence, compare the efficacy of our awareness spent between digital video and the digital awareness darlings of Hulu and YouTube and Facebook for some of the dimensions, here. What we've discovered is that the bull drought of digital first is actually not as efficient, not at all as efficient per dollar spent, comparing to the- Stephanie: Oh, interesting. Alex: ... boring, stodgy, nobody watches it, cable television. Stephanie: Is it because of the audience that's there, where the digital, like you were talking about, advertising to them, they may already know about you and it's an easier conversion, whereas the people who are keeping the TV running in the background all day, maybe actually need the ad right then and there where it can put a little inception on them and they can hear about it a couple times while they have the news on? Alex: Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons. Other reasons are that, just on a per impression basis, your digital video is dramatically more expensive. Even though I'm a nerd of machine learning, and I love personalization, I don't believe that personalization can cover a five X price difference. It can make something 50% better, but not five steps better. Stephanie: So how do you think about creating that culture of experimentation like you're talking about, where most companies right now are probably not focusing on TV campaigns? How do you think about putting a budget behind that and actually empowering a team to do that, where when I think about teams who are running with marketing budgets, or just budgets in general, it's very scary to not show a great ROI, because you either aren't going to get that budget again. It's a use it or lose it type of culture, it seems like every company operates that way. Maybe Grubhub doesn't, but how do you think about creating good incentives and a culture of experimentation to come up with some of those projects? Alex: I think a culture where you ask for confidence in measurement for your spend is a good culture. Where you ask for feedback loops is a helpful culture. Now, you can take this too far, and you can start trying to map everything to revenue or [inaudible 00:16:56], and that doesn't particularly help with upper funnel marketing campaigns. But, the other extreme isn't particularly better. I see a lot of marketing organizations end up in that spot, where we say, "We demand perfect measurement," from what they call performance marketing. Alex: And the brand marketing side, the one where vast majority of dollars actually have to be spent to create awareness, is not working to the same level of rigor, and the same level of intellectual honesty with measurement. To your question about how to actually create those frameworks for the team, a couple things come to mind. Alex: The first one is, trying to pursue incentive alignment. If people on your team genuinely believe that learning and optimality of investment for the entire team is how they get promoted, is what the company actually values, they will pursue exactly that. Let me give you- Stephanie: Let me hear an example. Alex: Yeah, let me give you a counter example. A counter example is what happens if you hire an agency to manage your Facebook spend. Have you ever heard an agency that managers Facebook spend come back to you and say, "Your Facebook spend is terribly inefficient. You should spend less on Facebook." Stephanie: Definitely never. Alex: Right? That's what their incentives are, they get a portion of your Facebook spend. The same exact thing happens for your TV agency. The same exact thing happens for someone who's managing your Google spend, right? If you have a bunch of outsourced agencies, each of which is responsible for one of your channels, their survival, their ability to feed their children, depends on you being able to spend more money on the channel that they're managing for you. Alex: Of course, they don't have an incentive to try to tell you, "Hey, take money from Google and put it into Facebook." They will personally suffer. A setup like this creates a true misalignment of incentives. Let me contrast that with, let's say, an in-source structure, or perhaps a structure where you have a larger performance agency that is able to reallocate dollars between Google and Facebook without personalty suffering. Alex: In a structure where you in-source, which is how we operate, you're able to create a shared destiny, and you're able to say, "Hey, person running Facebook. Your incentives are all about learning." So if you have a current level of performance, which is a certain level of incremental CAC, and a certain level of incremental LTV. Your goal is to improve that by this percentage over the course of next quarter. Alex: Find some way to do so through whatever experiments that you're able to run. One of the potential outcomes is an improvement in efficiency by reduction in spend. They're able to raise their hand and say, "Hey, I actually want to spend your dollars. Take away some of my budget, and reallocate it over to TV, because they can spend it better. I hear they have a way to spend at a lower incremental CAC than I can." Stephanie: Have you seen that in your culture so far, of people actually being like, "Hey, you can have this budget, move it over here"? It seems like a lot of times, people are personally tied to their budgets, and whoever has the bigger budget is the more powerful one, and I haven't often, at least in my previous days at other companies, I haven't seen people say, "Hey, you can have this budget and move it here." Alex: You are exactly right. A lot of our, I guess, legacy from many of our previous jobs, associates the size of the budget with the influence in the organization, most definitely. This is where the job of a leader really is to create the right incentives and to catch people doing something right. Alex: If you hire somebody off of a company that had that culture, of course, their initial inclination will not be to raise their hand and say, "Hey, my area isn't working so hot." You need to indoctrinate them, if that makes any sense, into a world where it's okay to raise their hand and do it. The way you do it is by upholding folks who do this, and pointing at them and saying, "This person is doing it right," and celebrating their successes. And celebrating their experiments, where, perhaps, they didn't see the immediate success, but they learned something. Alex: So, as a leader, I think you have a lot of power to create these incentives. As such, structure what your team actually holds as valuable versus not. If you point to enough examples like this, you'll actually end up transforming the culture, even for someone who comes in from an organization that wasn't like that. Stephanie: Yeah, it seems like it would also allow someone to wear multiple hats, and kind of become a polymath when it's like, "I don't just focus on Facebook ads, or I don't just focus on this kind of marketing." They get to experiment with a bunch of different areas. Have you seen that happen in your organization? Alex: Oh, most definitely. My paid social folks, just like everyone's, they were super focused on Facebook. What we discovered is them raising their hands and being very creative, and being some of the first folks who ever tried TikTok, for example. This was a little while back now, but we were one of the first handful of brands to invest a lot of money into TikTok, and do large scale experimentation with them. What we've discovered is if you're one of the first ones, there's very meaningful... Effectively, arbitrages to be had, where you're able to not only get a great deal, but shape the product to your liking. As such, get a temporary advantage over the rest of the market. Stephanie: That's fun. How did you think about creating your first campaign on TikTok? When your team presented this idea to you, were you like, "Yeah, let's do it," or were you a little hesitant? What was the first campaign you had go out there, versus what does that look like today? Are you still utilizing it? Alex: Oh my God, this is quite a story, to be honest with you. The team came to me and said, "So, we're thinking about doing TikTok." My reaction at the time was, "TikWhat?" They explained this to me and I read up a little bit about it. My immediate reaction is, "Okay, you are attempting to sell a luxury product." Let's face it, ordering delivery, you're still buying food from restaurants. It is a luxury product in many of the cases, right? To, "You're trying to sell that to people who have no disposable income of their own. The average customer of TikTok at the time just could not have their own credit card." Stephanie: Yeah, they have allowances, maybe. Alex: Right? Exactly. "Why in the world could this possibly work, you guys? Our average consumer is fairly affluent, and you're now trying to go into a different demo. How is that even remotely possible?" But, luckily, at that point, I had already observed that my team knows better than me, and that they have much, much better ideas than I do. Essentially, we just did a test. We did a small test, and we experimented in earnest. Surprise, surprise, they came back and they showed me the numbers, and they were meaningfully better than Facebook at the time. Stephanie: Wow. Alex: We ended up investing more. That was genuine, true learning. Not just for the organization, but frankly, for me. There's multiple possible explanations for why it ended up being so efficient, and I can go into some of them, but the thing that matters to me most is that the crew felt inspired to pursue something new. They felt passionate enough about it to structure a test when there was no framework, really, out there. And they were unafraid enough to basically tell me that I'm wrong, and that my intuition is off. Alex: That made me feel like the culture is actually right. The culture is exactly what I want it to be. The opposite of that, where you're going with the highest paid person's opinion, if that makes sense. Stephanie: Doesn't work. Alex: It doesn't work, because all of our intuitions, no matter how successful we've been previously, we are sometimes wrong. Why hire smart people if you don't trust them to try things? Stephanie: I think there's a good mix between trust your gut, but also don't trust it, because you could be wrong. Yeah, go with other people's ideas, as well. How do you think about those efficiencies that you're mentioning when you're exploring new channels like TikTok? Alex: Sure. To me, it's indeed about being open-minded and experimenting with new types of media, and being unafraid to try things that aren't immediately, obviously, going to work. A similar type of experiment happened with Snapchat a little bit earlier, where I also was convinced that this can't possibly work for the same reason. Luckily, I, again, was wrong. Alex: I guess a pattern of learning is what inspired me to basically create this incentive structure for the team, where they're unafraid to raise their hand and say, "Hey, the way we've been doing this before is really off." If you want, I'll tell you a story of a channel that's not really a channel that I guess formed my opinion on that topic. Stephanie: Yeah, let's hear it. Alex: This is a story of a couple marketers that were attempting to turn a specific city around. Alex: As we talked a little bit earlier, we can be doing super well in one city, and not well at all in another city, or in a corner of a city. A lot of what we do has to do with how do we turn a specific city or neighborhood around? This couple folks, their job was to turn a specific city around, and I was expecting them to come to me and say, "Hey, I'm going to take the budget that you've given me, and I'm going to buy some Google ads, and I'm going to buy some billboards, and maybe I'm going to buy some Facebook ads." Alex: What they did instead, these were two marketers. What they did instead was actually really curious. They experienced the product for themselves. They placed a couple of food delivery orders, and they came to me and they said, "Hey, I don't want to buy any ads," they said. "Instead, whenever I was placing the order for food, there really weren't enough food photos. I was ordering from restaurants that I hadn't ordered from before, and I don't really know if their pad thai looks good. I don't really know if their sushi is something that I want to try." Alex: They were in your position. They said, "Screw it, I'm not going to buy any ads. I'm instead going to hire some photographers to come into those restaurants and take the photos. Then after that, I'm going to measure the incremental impact of the added photography, and see if the efficacy of that is actually comparable or high enough, comparing to the efficacy of ad spend." Effectively saying, "I'm going to open a brand new marketing channel, and that marketing channel is going to be photos." Stephanie: Photography. Alex: I'm like, "Okay, let's just do it." Stephanie: A whole brand new, the vision, of Grubhub, just photography. Alex: Exactly, exactly. These two folks get on the phones, start calling photographers, start calling restaurant owners and scheduling appointments to have the photographers come in there. That becomes basically their job for the next two months. Alex: Then they organize a really [inaudible] visitors for these specific menu pages see the photos, and others don't. They do some serious math to try to say, "Hey, here's the incrementality in here, and here's the efficacy of the spend comparing to what Google ads would be, or Facebook ads would be." They discover that those photos are actually a better way to spend marketing dollars, than any actual marketing. Stephanie: Yeah. Alex: I, at that point, am kind of floored. I come to them, I'm like, "Okay, you guys are on fire, this is amazing. Let's take your thing and give it to operations and scale up this thing." They say, "No, no, you don't understand, you don't understand. This whole project sucked. We spent our entire days on the phone with restaurant owners, trying to schedule appointments. We are going to make it better." Alex: I'm like, "Wait, what's going on?" They say, "No, no, instead of scheduling appointments with the restaurant owners to take photos, we are going to rent Airbnbs and photo studios around town, then order food from the restaurants, bring it to those Airbnbs. Our food stylist is going to make it look good, and we're going to take photos." Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Alex: I'm like, "Wait, wait, what? What?" Stephanie: That's another level. Alex: Yeah. My immediate reaction from this is, "Have you ever seen delivered food? It does not look good." They obviously told me to go pound sand, as they should have, and they showed me the first photos from these experiments. Oh my God, those first photos look much better than anything taken in a restaurant, because food stylists are really good at their jobs. If you were able to control the lighting, you're able to take much better pictures. Alex: When they actually tried it, they discovered that instead of doing two photo shoots a day, the photographer, who's the most scarce and expensive part of the whole operation, is able to do 20 photos shoot a day. Stephanie: Wow, that's efficient, that's amazing. Alex: As you can imagine, at that point, my mind was completely blown. We indeed operationalized this with folks whose day job was operations, as opposed to marketing. This was the example of really learning what learning means. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You kind of picked the markets to do that in, or you kind of see a market not doing so well, and those are the ones that you focus on getting the good imagery for, versus allowing that... UGC content to work well in other markets, or how do you think approaching that? Because it seems like something that would be really hard to scale, ordering a bunch of things all the time from every market in the U.S. How do you think about creating those campaigns? Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With hundreds of thousands of restaurants on the platform, we indeed have constrained resources to do these photo shoots when we can. We can't do all of them next month. We had to be somewhat thoughtful on prioritizing things. A few things came to mind for being able to select the right restaurants to do this in sort of the right markets. Alex: First is, conversion. If consumers land on the menu, and end up buying stuff anyway. Well, that's cool, I guess they don't need the photos. If on the other hand, conversion isn't amazing, but the number of visitors to the menu page is super high, hey, this might be an opportunity to actually add some photos and improve that conversion. Alex: By digging into the data, and looking at where the majority of the incremental impact can be, we develop this framework for allocating this constrained resource, which ended up effectively being an investment of marketing dollars into a channel that's sort of marketing, but sort of not. Is it product? Is it operations? I have no idea. Stephanie: It's something, all the above. Alex: Right? Stephanie: How do you think about, you mentioned incrementality quite a bit. How do you think about that throughout your organization, when developing these experiments and seeing what works and what doesn't work? Alex: Sure. First, if you don't mind, allow me to define it as- Stephanie: Yes, please. Alex: Because I think that's super important. Incrementality, to me, is what would have happened anyway? If you didn't do your glorious marketing campaign, or this amazing product improvement that you just rolled out. This is a difficult question, because it's really attempting to attribute the entirety of this success, or entirety of what's happening during a campaign, to the campaign. Alex: Let me give you some intuition behind this, right? Let's say you go to, I don't know, gap.com or something like that. You see a banner in there that says, "10% off." Well, obvious, a lot of people are going to click that banner, and a lot of people are going to use that coupon to get 10% off of their transaction. The key question, though, is, what portion of those people would have transacted anyway? Stephanie: Yeah, they went there directly. They probably would have. Alex: Exactly, it's clearly not zero, because before you launched that awesome 10% off coupon, some people were buying jeans yesterday. Being able to, with confidence, judge what that incremental behavior is, and what is the incremental CAC, and incremental LTV, is super important. Simple back of the napkin as to how you judge this is, let's say yesterday, a hundred people bought those jeans. Today, 110 people bought those jeans. It's not a real AB test, obviously. But all 110 people used your 10% off coupon. You can wrongly suggest that all 110 converted because of your coupon, or you can look at the truth in the eye and realized 110 used the coupon, but 10 really only needed it. Stephanie: Do you think a lot of brands are missing this when they offer these discounts, and maybe unintended consequences that could come from it? I could see a lot of consumers, if they get used to you always having discounts, then they just wait. They're like, "I'm going to wait for that next 10% off coupon," then they don't have a buyer at all. Alex: Yeah, it is super dangerous. I do think that in some industries, there's exactly that happening, right? We know of the right times during the year to buy a TV, so we don't buy a TV until then. We know when the right time of the year to buy home improvement equipment, and we don't buy it until then. Exactly what you're describing is a real danger. Alex: It's not just a danger of delaying the purchase, it's a danger of create a permanently less profitable business. Imagine is, every Friday, Grubhub was to, let's say, give all our consumers three or five dollars off. Not only are Thursday orders going to be delayed, because our consumers are going to be like, "Hey, I don't really care when I get takeout. I'll cook one night and I'll get takeout the other night." They'll delay it until Friday, but those Friday orders are going to be less profitable. Alex: So we permanently teach our consumer base, if we take that route, to not only delay their orders, but to make them less profitable. That is a real issue and something you got to be super careful with, which is why you must measure incrementality. Stephanie: Yeah, especially right now. You see so many people discounting everything, it's kind of scary to think. How are you going to come back when your entire, everything on your store online, is 80% off? How do you come back from that? Alex: Most definitely. Now, if you have physical inventory, the opportunity cost is not zero. Right? Let's say if you're selling digital goods, for example, right? Let's say you're selling access to, let's say a song, or a book, right? Your fixed costs in that situation, your cost of an action, is terribly low, right? As opposed to if you have goods in the warehouse, and you aren't able to sell them, there's very meaningful fixed costs for you that you need to deal with. Alex: It might be, actually, quite reasonable to be running these high promotions, but if you are, you better be running it as a real AB test. You better be able to confidently say that this is the true incrementality of this 80% off coupon, and that's the true value that I'm getting out of it from both not needing to keep these products in the warehouse, but also from just sheer revenue from the consumer. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you have a good platform or way that you've set up metrics and things like that to measure that incrementality in a way that's not really manual, and then you can just kind of see how the campaigns and what they're doing is performing against each other? Alex: Yeah. In lower funnel channels, it is actually fairly easy to set up a platform for this, and we have. There are tools that you can use for it, right? Google Optimize, for example, or Optimizely, right? We have a combination of in-house and these third party tools to do product experimentation, for example. Alex: For things like CRM, couponing in the apps, or issuing emails with coupons, or push notifications, really good experimentation platforms don't exist off the shelf. We had to do some math ourselves. Some of that math turned out to be fairly fine tuned to Grubhub's needs. Here's what I mean by this. We're an LTV business. It's not just about the immediate transaction, it's about what happens after that transaction. Stephanie: Yep. Alex: For example, if a consumer ends up converting at a higher rate, and then afterwards has a poor experience and doesn't come back, that actually is terrible, terrible, terrible. Your typical, immediate conversion optimization tool, would just look at the first part of this. Oh my God, they converted at a better rate, great, awesome, keep it. Stephanie: Yay. Yep. Alex: We had to build tools specifically designed to capture these long-term effects. We typically look at the results of these long-term activities over the context of a month, right? So we need to see what happens to consumers for a meaningful amount of time to have high confidence that it indeed is net beneficial or not. Alex: Of course, we're able to look at things fairly early, and if something's a terrible idea, we're able to kill it early. But, in order to be able to confidently say what is the impact on the LTVs, we had to build tools. These in-house tools for many CRM things that we do today. Stephanie: Got it. Alex: Even then, it's just for lower funnel. It's just for CRM and product. How do you judge the incrementality of TV versus billboards? That is a whole other, super complicated story. Stephanie: How do you think about the intersection between your CRM and your content management system and your actual commerce platform? How do you create a good environment where they all interact together, and people can see a holistic view of everything that's going on? Alex: Great question. I don't think I have a perfect answer for you, other than enabling as many work streams for experimentation as are possible. That is, allowing the CRM team to run experiments on their own, without involving a bunch of product people, without involving a bunch of finance and analytics people. Similarly, allowing the front end or pricing optimization team to run experiments on their own, and do very specific price optimization experiments just by themselves. Alex: The more work streams like this you have running in parallel, the more you're going to be able to learn, as an organization, per unit of time. Stephanie: That seems like a great answer to me. It also seems like you would get a lot of, you could have a customer with a negative experience, but it would be because of maybe the restaurant. It seems like you guys would have a lot of insights into maybe how to help restaurants improve, where it's like, hey, every time someone orders this thing of sushi, you always forget the wasabi, and man is that making people upset. Do you ever send that data back to restaurants to improve the products as in their food, or the customer experience, or anything like that? Alex: Most definitely, you hit the nail on the head. We are in a really unique position of knowing not just who the people were, or when they placed the orders at your restaurant, but knowing exactly what they ordered. We can see exactly that pattern, right? We can tell you that on Tuesday night, the reviews for people ordering sushi, are actually worse than on any other night. We can help you see that, so that you can train the person that's working on Tuesday night. Stephanie: [crosstalk 00:43:21]. Alex: These kind of insights... Yeah, totally. These kind of insights are exactly what we believe is what is something that we can uniquely provide to our restaurant partners, besides demand. Of course they come to us because they're interested in demand, particularly now. But we can do more, and we've been building a lot of systems specifically about that, that are effectively... you can think of this as recommendation systems in the grand scheme of the word of giving recommendations to the restaurants about how they can lend the totality of their business more efficiently. For example- Stephanie: It seems like that could be a whole different business for you guys to also operate. Alex: It's quite synergistic in our minds, right? If we're able to make our restaurants more successful, it actually makes us more successful, in turn. Because, those consumers who are placing orders and are not getting any wasabi with their sushi, they are ultimately not happy with Grubhub. We want them to have an amazing experience. Alex: Whether the restaurant wins just on Grubhub, or throughout the totality of their experience, because, let's face it, that restaurant might be serving other delivery platforms, and soon enough, hopefully, dine-in, as well. That retraining is going to help the restaurant across the board. We actually very much welcome that. That means that we're able to create the value not just for our platform, but for the restaurant, and increase the chance that this restaurant will, ultimately, be successful. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think that's a really good point, especially as a lot of brands right now are shifting quickly to the world of Ecommerce and trying to figure out how to sell online. There's going to be a lot of new touch points that they maybe aren't anticipating that could actually hurt the consumer experience. If you've got the UPS guy throwing your box over the fence, and it's getting crush, there's a lot of things that actually, you maybe wouldn't even think of, as a brand, of, "That's not my job," when really, everything form start to finish to delivery and afterwards, and the follow-up, all of that's your job. And how do you think about controlling that experience with so many touch points? Alex: You are so right. The totality of this is their job. From the first ads that they see on TV, to what shows up when they look on SEM or on paid social and discover your brand there, too. The first purchase experience to the interaction with the UPS guy, to the interaction with customer service. All of that, in totality, is what the brand relationship really is, what the product really is. Alex: As marketers, we can't just care about that ads. As product people, we can't just care about the bits installed on the phone. They, in their separation, they don't particularly matter. As you saw from my story with the photos, that really was quite profound to me, right? We kept looking for a solve to get more customers and more sales through marketing, and that solve wasn't there at all. The most efficient solve was far outside. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, such a good reminder for all brands to think about that, like you said, totality of the process. Because you have a software engineering background, I feel like I'm allowed to ask you tech questions. I saw on your, you guys have a blog on Medium, or your engineering staff does. They were talking about how they were creating discount codes using crypto. It made me wonder, what other kind of technologies are y'all experimenting with, or seeing success, or how did you think about running the platform that Grubhub's built on now? Alex: Sure. A few things are super important. One is having a scalable platform that can withstand demand, and that can withstand massive spikes in demand. As luck would have it, most people in Chicago, want to get dinner approximately at the same time. Stephanie: Yes, who knew? Alex: Right. What a pain in the butt. We've been trying to convince them to maybe come a different... No. Stephanie: Come on, 3:00's your time, come on. Alex: Exactly, exactly. Your dinner delivery window. Which, of course, creates formidable demand. Not just on the services in the backend of our systems, but a formidable demand on our logistics network. A lot of our work goes into being able to spike in response to customer demand. Let me give you one intuitive example of this. Outside of COVID, before COVID, when rain would start during dinner hours, demand would massively spike. Alex: At that moment, we're supposed to magically materialize a lot of drivers on the road doing deliveries. Being able to do so, technically, and when I say magically materialize, I'm of course referring to creating incentives and creating appropriate communication channels with our drivers so that they actually want to get on the road. A lot of our engineering work has to do with how we were talking about in the beginning, balancing the three sites of the network, and being able to respond to either a massive spike in demand, or response to a set of orders that were placed in the specific part of the city on the logistics side. Alex: Or, respond to an onboarding of an enormous partner, like Shake Shack, or Sweet Green, or Taco Bell, with their own unique needs. Remember, we work with such a variety of restaurants, right? We do point of sale integrations with a variety of our enterprise customers, which of course means that we have to have nimble systems that are able to onboard those same customers. They have to be resilient, as well. So, a lot of our work has to do with both scale and being able to deal with these spikes. Stephanie: Got it. Any favorite pieces of tech that you guys are implementing or trying out right now to help with those large spikes in demand? Or where you guys think the future is headed that you're kind of preparing for? Alex: Favorite pieces of tech. Huh. Huh. I'm going to think marketing tech. Braze has been an outstanding tool for our marketing teams. What we've discovered is it effectively enabled a whole work stream of experimentation for our CRM teams. They're able to run pretty sophisticated experiments completely independently from engineering, which increase our velocity of experimentation. Stephanie: Hmm, that's awesome. I'll have to check that out. Cool. So to zoom out a little bit, 30,000 foot level, what kind of disruptions do you see coming in the world of Ecommerce? What's on your radar right now? It doesn't have to be for Grubhub, it can just be in general. Alex: I think that the disruption is already here, where over these past couple of months, we've seen the portion of online transactions, and portion of consumers who have tried buying things online just catapult through the roof. All of those new consumers, let's face it, my 90 year old grandmother is using Zoom now. All of those consumers are a new opportunity. They have very different expectations. They don't yet know much about your brand. Alex: Being able to understand this newly online wave, and heightened expectations of the consumers that already happen online, but perhaps not as active with your service, right? Those, I think, are super important. This to me takes us back to velocity of experimentation, being more important now than ever. That is, truly learning from your customers. Observing them, creating experiments, measuring, and getting a feedback loop from them, so that you're able to focus and find the one thing that you can improve to make the whole story better. Maybe photos. Maybe it's something else. Stephanie: Yep. Yeah, I love that. It definitely seems like with these new people coming online, you have to have a bunch of different tactics to meet them wherever they are. The ones that have been working for the past year, might only work for a subset of the people because you have 50% more people that you need to market to, or develop a platform for, and it's going to be very different with how you approach those new consumers than what you've been used to. Alex: Exactly. Stephanie: All right, so, we're about to jump into the lightning round. Any higher level thoughts, Alex, that you want to share before we do so? Alex: If you're able to structure your organizational incentives to focus on learning and feedback loops, I think now you're going to see an even bigger reward for it in the form of market share, in the form of growth, in the form of being able to adapt to the world around you and leapfrogging the competition. Stephanie: Yeah, completely agree. All right, so the lightning round, brought to you by our friends at Sales Force Commerce Cloud. It's a fun and easy, quick round of questions where you have a minute or less to answer. Are you excited and ready, Alex? Alex: Very scared. Stephanie: Dun dun. All right, first one. If you are starting a podcast, what would it be about, and who would be your first guest? Alex: Whoa, what a fascinating question. What a fascinating question. I am obsessed with all things culture, and how do you actually create the right incentives for a technology/marketing organization? I love Simon Sinek. He is outright amazing. I learned a ton from reading him. I would probably to get him and if I can't, I'd get one of my former mentors in there, as a consolation prize. Stephanie: Oh, that sounds good. I would listen. I would be your first listener, and I would give you a five start review. Alex: Oh my gosh, thank you. Stephanie: You got me at least. What's up next on your reading list? Alex: Hmm, next on my reading list? I am reading Russian sci-fi novels these days, as a means of escaping from a tiny, one bedroom apartment. Stephanie: Any good ones that we should check out? Alex: I'm actually reading them in Russian, so I don't know- Stephanie: I was going to say, unless they're in Russian, then I don't know if I'll be able to read Russian quick enough to read it. Alex: Oopsie, oopsie, I do have a few people at my work who've been reading Tolstoy before the whole COVID situation started. I don't know if I'd recommend it now, Tolstoy does darkness extremely well. We have enough darkness around us now. Stephanie: That is true. Yeah, maybe not. Alright, well, what thing do you normally buy at a store that now you're just going to buy online after everything with COVID? Alex: What a great question. Only online now. Hmm. Stephanie: Tricky, tricky. Alex: I used to, actually a lot of my electronics. I used to come to the store and look at them and experiment with them. I have a feeling that I'm never doing that again. I used to come to a Best Buy and just try to look at different mice and monitors and all that. I got a new laptop and a new mouse online. I really like them, and I really like the experience. I was unafraid of returning them. That's it, online I go. Stephanie: Yeah, completely agree, especially as a lot of these companies are making the return experience a lot more seamless. Yeah, I could completely see the same thing happening. Buy things, test it out, and send it back if you don't like it. Alex: I was just chatting with a colleague about this exact same thing with returns around fashion. I think there's a lot of innovation to be had with moving the fear in fashion through that. Stephanie: Yep, completely agree, except I could see them having to now to figure out a way to resell those items in a way that proves that they've been quarantined, disinfected, and yeah. I was just thinking about that the other day. Man, that's tricky, especially for second hand market places to try and prove to the customer that these items are clean and good to go, and you can buy them. Alex: I agree. Solvable, I think, but I agree. Stephanie: It is solvable. All right, so the last final question. What's up next for Ecommerce professionals? Alex: I think we're going through a time when from being on the early adopter, early majority demand for most of the brands. We've become the critical source of revenue for every single brand. If you think that your company was going through a digital transformation, and is now trying to make digital just a better channel, hold on to your seats, because it's not the only channel, and the majority channel. So, the demand for expertise in our area is increasing very rapidly, and the demand for learning in our area is also increasing rapidly. I think this is a wonderful time to be in Ecommerce. I think this is a wonderful time to be learning and doubling down on Ecommerce. I'm excited for all of us to be right at the center of this transformation. Stephanie: I love that, love the positivity, and yeah, it's definitely an exciting time to be alive and experiment and try new things. This has been a blast Alex, thanks so much for coming on the show. This is your second appearance on a Mission podcast, so yeah, we're so thankful that you came back and joined us again. Alex: Stephanie, thank you very much for inviting me. Stephanie: All right, talk to you later. Alex: Cheers.  

Alex, 36, is a multi-discipline adventurer, since 2015 she has hiked over 9,400 miles across America and New Zealand on the Pacific Crest, Appalachian and Te Araroa Trails. Alex has cycled around 4,000 miles across Australia and Indonesia, she’s also climbed up to 6,500m on Mera Peak in the Himalayas and has rowed across the English Channel.    During this podcast Alex shares more about her most recent adventure rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. She talks about the preparation, the challenges, dealing with sea sickness and adventure blues and what she hopes to achieve in the future.    As always Alex gives lots of practical advice and tips to help you achieve your dreams and goals.   Listen to Alex on the Tough Girl Podcast!   Show notes Who is Alex What adventures and challenges she's done Getting the idea for rowing an ocean in 2016 Team mate wanted on explorers connect  Dealing with doubt - can I do this…. Why the timing the first time wasn’t right Rowing the Atlantic as a training row.. Signing up for 2 rows! Partnering with Oxford Brooks University to continue the research  Getting a taste for Ocean Rowing by rowing the English Channel Dealing with injury and sea sickness… Funding the rows Getting sponsorship Qualification and skills needed on an independent row Starting rowing on the 5th January 2020 Final weeks of preparation Starting from Lanzarote Being on the Ocean! The power of team work to get the boat ready The realities of life on the boat Being ill for the first 2 weeks with sea sickness Rowing 2hrs on 2hrs off Pooing and periods on the boat Moving from a 4 person crew to a 3 person crew The memories and moments which stand out Not believing it’s been achieved Dealing with adventure blues, Covid and planning for the next row Changes to future plans adjusting to a new normal Getting a part time job with Tesco Working with Jo Bradshaw  Final words of advice      Social Media   Alex   Website https://masonalexandra.com    Instagram @masonalexandra   Facebook @alexmasonadventurer   Youtube @AlexMason   Rowing - Monkey Fist Adventures - Mixed crew rowing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in 2020 as team Brain Waves. Supporting research into Parkinson’s Disease and PTSD   Website - https://monkeyfistadventures.com    Instagram @_monkeyfist   Facebook @monkeyfistadventuresltd   Twitter @_monkeyfist

X IS FOR PODCAST STANDS WITH BLACK LIVES MATTER. Our episode opens with a declarative statement of support for the movement, the black community as a whole, and for the efforts to defend black lives. To celebrate our 125th episode, the X is for Podcast team chronoskims back to the O5 (Cyclops, Beast, Angel, Marvel Girl, and Iceman) to examine... what if a different sibling pair replaced Scott and Alex? What if the X-Men began with a different psychic, instead of Jean? The team also ponders these questions, discusses DC's departure from Diamond, and covers a whole lot more on an exciting anniversary edition of We Are Krakoa!

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Alex: So Maria, do your parents use any of the social media sites.Maria: They do. Both my parents are on Facebook. My mum is not that active on Facebook. She has a profile and she has pictures and I think she's online whenever she wants to get in touch with her kids mostly, which is me and my sister. But my father he uses it regularly and I sometimes get weird like comments from him. It's not that bad, but, for example, when I'm traveling and he can't call me, he just writes like that looks awesome to weird pictures and it kind of gets awkward sometimes. But they do have, they are very active on the internet and my dad he's a journalist, so he's good with words, so whenever we have to write each other, I always get these long mails like that's very cleverly worded and humorous and it's so cool. He's so cool. My mum is more behind.Alex: What about Skype?Maria: Skype yes but mostly only to get in touch with me and my sister.Alex: OK, cool. What about like do they ever have MySpace?Maria: No, none of us have.Alex: No, it's a word I haven't heard in a while too, MySpace?Maria: Yeah.Alex: What about Twitter?Maria: I'm not active. My father keeps talking about it. I don't know if he wants to start a Twitter account because he keeps mentioning that it's kind of a good idea but he's not there. I'm not because I think I have Facebook that should be enough for me at least. I don't know if, they are not into social media so they will just like open it for fun. Google Plus is definitely not a solution at the moment because there is Facebook and that's like a big deal in the first place.Alex: Have you ever wanted to de-friend your parents on Facebook?Maria: Nope. I am very open about my Facebook profile. I never wanted to close it to anybody so I try not to, I'm trying to make sure that there won't be anything embarrassing on it so I manage it so there won't be any need for like de-friending them and they're not that annoying. They text me sometimes and they comment my things if it's something important but they're being nice. They're good parents.

DoiDuh's Peter and Alex Hats! https://citycaps.co/collections/Doi-Duh In this episode, we talk with DoiDuh (@DoiDuhFlower on Twitter and @DoiDuh on Instagram), the artist and animator behind Peter and Alex, Peter to the Extreme, and this very podcast! Why are non-binary characters important? How did you come up with Peter and Alex? What's it like growing up as a first-generation Mexican-American?

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.

Kristin and Jane spoke to Professor Alex Broom from the University of Sydney. Alex is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy.  We asked Alex: What is sociology, and how does it apply to studies of healthcare and illness? How are principles of sociology particularly relevant to addressing rising antimicrobial resistance? What effect does organisational culture have on the use of antimicrobials? How can sociology principles be used as a stewardship tool? You can read more about Alex’s work on his University of Sydney Researcher Page.

A cup of coffee Uma xícara de café How about a cup of coffee? Que tal uma xícara de café ? White with two sugars, please. Branco com dois açúcares , por favor. Oh dear, I haven't got any milk. Oh querido , eu não tenho (nenhum) leite . No problem. Black coffee's fine. Não tem problema . Café preto está ótimo . Here you are. Aqui está. Thanks very much. Muito obrigado . Exercise How about a cup of tea? Que tal uma xícara de chá ? White with one sugar, please. Branco com um açúcar, por favor . Tea's fine. O chá esta ótimo . We haven't got any milk. Nós não temos (nenhum) leite . Thanks very much. Muito obrigado . xxx How is your job going? Como vai o seu emprego? Alex What is it like working with sick people all day, Alex? Como é é trabalhar o dia todo com pessoas doentes, Alex? It's difficult, because many patients need a lot of care. É difícil, porque muitos pacientes precisam de muitos cuidados. Ah, you give them medicine and maybe change bandages? Ah, você da a eles remédios e talvez até troque curativos? And we have to write everything on charts for the doctors. E nós temos que escrever tudo nos relatórios para os médicos. Anything else? Alguma coisa mais? We help people get ready for tests. Nós ajudamos as pessoas a se preparar para os exames. Sometimes they are pretty nervous. As vezes eles estão bem nervosos. Sounds like a stressfull job. Parece ser um trabalho estressante. Yeah. But a really enjoy it. É. Mas eu realmente curto bastante. I feel good doing this. Eu me sinto bem fazendo isso. I love helping people. Eu adoro ajudar as pessoas. And they always thank me. E eles sempre me agradecem. Well, good for you. Bem, bom para você. xxx Instructions Come on! VAmos! Is there a problem, sir? Please don't hit the machine again. Algum problema senhor. Por favor não bata na máquina outra vez. But this machine isn't working! My money'sin the machine, and so is my candy bar! Mas esta máquina não esta funcionando. Meu dinheiro está na máquina, e também minha barra de chocolate. Press 'reject coins'. There you go. Four quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. Pressione "rejeitar moedas". Aí está. Quatro moedas de 25 duas de 10 e uma de 5. The machine only takes quarters. A máquina só aceita as de 25. Do you have a quarter? Você tem uma moeda de 25 Sure. There you go. Sim. aqui está. What about my candy bar! e a minha barra de chocolate Don't worry. Put the coins in the slot. Não se preocupe. Coloque as moedas na abertura But it isn't working. Mas não está funcionando. Put them in. then select the candy.What do you want? Coloque-as e então selecione o chocolate. O que você quer? A chocolate bar. Uma barra de chocolate. OK. Chocolate bar. t hat's ...C I. Ok. Barra de chocolate. É a C Press C then 4. There you go. Pressione C depois 4. Aí está. Thanks. Obrigado. You re welcome. De nada. Edgar: Hey! Phis is a nut chocolate liar! I don't like nuts! xxx Are you going to go out tonight? Você "esta indo sair" esta noite? No I'm going to stay home and read a book. Não eu (vou) ficar (estar) em casa e ler um livro. What are you going to do? O que você vai fazer? I'm going to go to my brother's house. Eu vou para a casa do meu irmão. We're going to watch a football game on TV. Nós vamos assistir um jogo de futebol americano na TV. Are you going to go out tonight. Você vai sair esta noite? No I'm going to stay home and read a book. Não eu (vou) ficar (estar) em casa e ler um livro. What are you going to do? O que você vai fazer? I'm going to go to my brother's house. Eu vou para a casa do meu irmão. We're going to watch a football game on TV. Nós vamos assistir um jogo de futebol americano na TV. What you going to do on Sunday? O que você vai fazer no domingo? On Sunday I'm going to rest. No domingo eu vou descansar. I'm going to be at the beach with my sister. Eu vou estar na praia com a minha irmã. Which beach are you going to? Para qual praia você vai? We're g

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/

Alex: What's the biggest driver of new tech? Mark: The Tyranny of Porn !  Please SUBSCRIBE  and SPONSOR @    https://patron.podbean.com/AlexMarkPodcasts   Thank You!    

Sightseeing Turismo Guide book. (Livro) Guia. Entrance ticket. Bilhete de entrada. Opening time. Horário de abertura. Bank holliday. Feriado bancário. Free entrance. Entrada gratuita. Guided tour. Visita guiada. Do you open this afternoon? Você abre esta tarde? Yes, but we close at four o'clock. Sim, mas (nós) fechamos as quatro horas. Do you have wheelchair access. Vocês tem acesso para cadeira de rodas. Yes. There is a lift over there. Sim. Há um elevador bem ali. Thank you. I'd like four entrance tickets. Obrigado. Eu gostaria de quatro (bilhetes) entrada. Here you are. Aqui estão. The guide book is free. O livro guia é grátis. Yes, but we close at four o'clock. Sim, mas nós fechamos as quatro horas. Yes. There is a lift over there. Sim. Há um elevador bem ali. Here you are. Aqui está. The guide book is free. O livro guia é grátis. What time do you open? close? A que horas você(s) abre(m)fecha(m)? Where are the toilets? Onde ficam os toaletes? Is there wheelchair access? Há acesso para cadeira de rodas? Sorry, the museum is closed. Sinto muito, o museu está fechado. Yes, but we close early. Sim, mas nós fechamos cedo. Sorry, the museum is closed. Sinto muito, o museu está fechado. Do you open on tuesdays? Você (s) abre(m) às terças-feiras? Yes, but we close early. Sim, mas nós fechamos cedo. At what time? A que horas? xxx At the airport No aeroporto Check in. Check in. Departures. Partidas. Arrivals. Chegadas. Customs. Alfândega. Passport control. Controle de passaporte. Terminal. Terminal. Gate. Portão. Flight number. Número do voo. Is the flight to New York on time? O voo para Nova Iorque está no horário? I can't find my baggage. Eu não consigo encontrar a minha bagagem. The flight to Sidney is delayed. O voo para Sidney está atrasado. Good evening sir, can I help you? Boa noite senhor, posso ajudar? Yes sir. Sim senhor. Good evening sir, can I help you? Boa noite senhor, posso ajudr? Is the flight to Paris on time? O voo para Paris está no horário? Yes sir. Sim senhor. Which gate does it live from? De que portão ele parte? Check in desk. Balcão de check in. Ticket. Passagem. Passporte. passaporte Suitcase. Mala. Hand luggage. Bagagem de mão. Trolley carrinho. xxx How is your job going? Como vai o seu emprego? Alex What is it like working with sick people all day, Alex? Como é é trabalhar o dia todo com pessoas doentes, Alex? It's difficult, because many patients need a lot of care. É difícil, porque muitos pacientes precisam de muitos cuidados. Ah, you give them medicine and maybe change bandages? Ah, você da a eles remédios e talvez até troque curativos? And we have to write everything on charts for the doctors. E nós temos que escrever tudo nos relatórios para os médicos. Anything else? Alguma coisa mais? We help people get ready for tests. Nós ajudamos as pessoas a se preparar para os exames. Sometimes they are pretty nervous. As vezes eles estão bem nervosos. Sounds like a stressfull job. Parece ser um trabalho estressante. Yeah. But a really enjoy it. É. Mas eu realmente curto bastante. I feel good doing this. Eu me sinto bem fazendo isso. I love helping people. Eu adoro ajudar as pessoas. And they always thank me. E eles sempre me agradecem. Well, good for you. Bem, bom para você. xxx I'm hungry. Eu estou com fome. Let's go to McDonald's. Vamos ao Mc Donald's. Yes, why not? Sim, porque não? I'm hungry. Eu estou com fome. Let's call the waiter. Vamos chamar o garçon. That's a good idea. Essa é uma boa idéia. I'm hungry. Eu estou com fome. Let's see the menu. Vamos olhar o cardápio. That's a good idea. Essa é uma boa idéia. I'm hungry. Eu estou com fome. Let's eat a hamburguer. Vamos comer um Hamburguer. That sounds good. Isso soa bem. Waiter, please bring me a cup of coffee. Garçon, por favor traga-me uma xícara de café. Waiter, please bring me a cup of tea. Garçon, por favor traga-me uma xícara de chá. Waiter, please bring me a botlle of

Alex: What happened to newsprint? Mark: Ink is obsolete!  Please SUBSCRIBE  and SPONSOR @    https://patron.podbean.com/AlexMarkPodcasts   Thank You!    

Put on your magic hats and watch out for bathtub ghosts because the #BookSquad is discussing "Doctor Sleep" this week! Join us and special guests Jen and Justin as we dig into the sequel to "The Shining" and discuss the films vs. the novels, what is “scary” in this movie, and how well the movie works overall as a sequel to the original. Head over to the #BookSquadBlog for more content on television, movies and books, and join us for our upcoming episodes! Read along with us for our next #bookpisode on "American Spy" by Lauren Wilkinson (12/2), and listen as we celebrate our favorite things of 2019 on our next #othersode (12/16). Send listener feedback to thesquad@booksquadgoals.com, and keep an eye out for our giveaway with Workspacery on social media this week!TOC0:30 – Introduction of special guests and intro questionSPOILER WARNINGGGG11:15 – plot synopsis13:45 – “a child of The Shining”24:05 – the pressure to live up to Kubrick43:22 – is anything here scary?52:46 – how about that ending, though?1:09:23 – ratings!1:16:30 – NO FEEDBACK. Where r u Alex? What’s on the blog? What’s up next?

Before we get into this week's topic, would you please take 1 MINUTE to complete this GeriPal survey! It will really help us out. We swear, only 1 minute! Click the link below to access the survey (or copy and paste in your browser). Thank you! GERIPAL SURVEY https://ucsf.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_esS7pUAOgSIbNGZ Now on to this week's topic... Alex: What do you get when you mix a doctor and an architect? Eric: An Archidoc? Alex: No a Dochitect. What do you get when you mix a gerontologist with an architect? Eric: A gerontolitect? Alex: No an environmental gerontologist. OK, so we didn't have that EXACT conversation on this podcast, but something close to it. There is a growing recognition that many of the settings where older adults receive healthcare are not designed to meet the needs of older adults. The early part of this movement resulted in the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandated such things as accessibility for persons with wheelchairs. But it so much more than that. The architecture of health care buildings can actually impair the health of older adults or people living with serious illness - think lack of windows, rooms designed around beds, and placement close to noisy workspaces. Can you say delirium??? Re-designed spaces also have the potential to improve outcomes for older adults and people with serious illness. Further, redesigned spaces can improve quality of life for healthcare providers, and those benefits may be passed on to our patients. To discuss these fascinating issues we talked with Dochitect Diana Anderson, MD, M. Arch (UCSF geriatrics fellow) and Emi Kiyota, PhD, environmental gerontologist. Click here (http://www.dochitect.com/) to learn more about Diana and links to her publications, and here (https://ibasho.org/) to learn more about Emi and her website Ibasho, Japanese for "a place where one can feel at home and be oneself." Enjoy! by: @AlexSmithMD

Alex MacCaw is the Founder & CEO @ Clearbit, the marketing data engine for all of your customer interactions, from customer understanding to prospect identification to personalising every sales and marketing interaction. To date, Alex has raised $17m in financing from some incredible people including Geoff Lewis @ Bedrock, Ash Fontana @ Zetta Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Battery Ventures and then former guest Ilya Sukhar, Naval Ravikant and Josh Buckley. Prior to founding Clearbit, Alex spent time in the engineering teams at both Twitter and Stripe. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Alex made his way from the UK to becoming one of the hottest founders in the valley with the rise of Clearbit? What does Alex believe is more important mission and vision or organisational discipline? What does Alex mean when he says he started the company as a "vehicle for growth thinking and self-actualisation"? 2.) What did Alex mean when he said, "when you hit product-market-fit, it is time to move into company making"? What does company making mean to Alex? What would Alex like to fundamentally change about the way we manage companies today? When is the right time to make this transition? What needs to be in place to do it successfully? 3.) What does Alex mean when he says, "The 6 Pillars Behind Clearbit"? What elements does Alex think the team should not have full transparency on? How does Alex approach transparency when it comes to fundraising and M&A opportunities? What have been some of Alex's biggest learnings on both delivering and absorbing feedback? What can one do to create an environment of radical candor and rich feedback? 4.) Why does Alex believe that health has to be the #1 priority for every founder? What does that look like in practice? What can one provide the team to encourage this? How does Alex respond to those that might say, "fine but we cannot afford it"? How does Alex suggest there are 3 ways you can become more self-aware as an individual? 5.) What advice does Alex give to founders on successfully negotiating with investors? What value has Alex found that VCs really do bring? What does Alex optimise for when selecting his investor base? What value do most think that VCs bring but they actually do not? When does Alex think one should establish a board? Why does Alex think your board should only have operators and no investors on it? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Alex’s Fave Book: The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Alex on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

We all know that dreams can change over time, as we gain clarity and wisdom with the experience that comes from successes and failures. My guest today readily admits that he had the wrong perspective just a few years ago, and it was only when he changed his approach that things fell into place. Join us to see how he found the right path to his most important dreams. Alex Barker is no stranger to this podcast. He appeared way back in Episode 12, in 2015. Go back and take a listen if you haven’t heard our first conversation. Today, Alex has changed a lot of things in his life in chasing his dreams. He’s sharing with us how far he’s come, how the dream has changed, and how his chase has become different from the mishmash of distraction that it used to be. What Alex has learned Have you felt distracted and torn between the things you want to accomplish? Alex did a 66-day experiment and learned a lot about himself and his dreams. One lesson he learned was that he only has a certain amount of time each week to put toward his dream. He sometimes felt a lack of dedication and focus as his attention was diverted in many directions. Overall, he felt disappointed in where he was and felt like he should have been further along. Someone asked him what was stopping him, and he realized how his attention had been going in too many directions. He gave himself an 18-month ultimatum to make the progress he expected of himself. TWEET: I felt trapped in the sense that I could never really say what was on my mind, for fear of consequences. #chasingdreams Becoming debt free Have you dreamed of being debt free? Most everyone has at some point, but have you taken definitive steps to make it happen? Alex took classes on finances and learned about investing, because he wanted to become debt free as quickly as possible. He and his wife lived off one paycheck each month and used the other to pay down their debt. He negotiated with his employer to help pay off his student loans and he made a plan to pay off their mortgage in just 3 years. It took a combination of disciplined living (it was NOT fun!) and using his business wisely to pay off the debts and fund their desired lifestyle. TWEET: There’s no such thing as a failed experiment--only feedback. #chasingdreams The future for Alex What’s next in YOUR future? Alex has some magnificent things happening in his future. He’s working on a book that he hopes will come out in a few months. It’s called Indispensable, and is about creating a fulfilling career in the world of pharmacy. He’s also looking to host an online summit soon. His desire is to constantly show people that there are other paths, mainly because of the miserable people who are in the pharmacy business. Burnout is common and suicide rates are high. Alex has a heavy burden to help these people who are broken. TWEET: Working for myself has completely changed my week and how I spend my time. #chasingdreams Guest Recommendation: ONE action for a dream chaser to take--”If you have a dream, pick a date on which you will decide to either continue doing this or give it up entirely. Pick a goal or a deadline, and the rest will happen, or it won’t.” OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE: [:10] What’s happened in Alex’s life since 2015 [3:32] Failures--feedback in disguise [13:40] Becoming debt free [17:33] The possibilities with discipline and a plan [19:34] The power in writing out your plans and dreams [21:06] How Alex’s life has changed since 2015 [22:58] What was holding Alex back [28:04] What we can expect from Alex in the future [31:34] The importance of Alex’s work [33:10] ONE action for a dream chaser RESOURCES MENTIONED: Alex’s Previous Episode  Alex’s Website Alex Barker on LinkedIn TWEETS YOU CAN USE: TWEET: Having a deadline gives you a date by which to accomplish your dream--or give it up. #chasingdreams TWEET: So many dreams don’t happen because we don’t put constraints on ourselves. #chasingdreams  

On today’s episode we sit down with Alex Roberts to create characters for her new game, Star Crossed! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Cold Open 00:03:27 - Recap 00:03:43 - Amelia and Ryan - What two things about me do I not know is attractive? 00:04:24 - Player agency and X card use 00:09:18 - Back to picking two traits for Amelia and Ryan 00:13:11 - Amelia and Ryan - Why can’t I act on my feelings? Why is that so important to me? 00:17:16 - Play what you know 00:19:46 - Can you play with more than two people? 00:25:46 - Ryan and Alex - What brought our characters together? 00:27:32 - Ryan and Alex - What’s keeping us apart? 00:29:56 - Ryan and Alex - Who am I? 00:30:18 - Ryan and Alex - What is most attractive about ourselves? 00:31:08 - Ryan and Alex - What two things about me do I not know is attractive? 00:32:31 - Ryan and Alex - Why can’t I act on my feelings? Why is that so important to me? 00:35:01 - Alex and Amelia - What brought our characters together? Who am I? 00:38:45 - Alex and Amelia - What is most attractive about ourselves? 00:39:07 - Alex and Amelia - What two things about me do I not know is attractive? 00:41:17 - Alex and Amelia - Why can’t I act on my feelings? Why is that so important to me? 00:46:49 - Episode Closer Guests and Projects: Alex Roberts: @muscularpikachu Backstory Podcast @backstorycast Bully Pulpit Games www.bullypulpitgames.com Dialect by Thorny Games www.thornygames.com/dialect-rpg/ Threadbear by Stephanie Bryant www.drivethrurpg.com/product/215255/Threadbare-RPG Sig: The City Between by Genesis of Legend www.genesisoflegend.com/products/sig/ Game systems discussed in this episode: Star Crossed! by Bully Pulpit Games Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bullypulpitgames/star-crossed-the-two-player-game-of-forbidden-love Other Games Mentioned as inspiration for Star Crossed!: Dread by Impossible Dream (amazon) (website) Kagematsu by Cream Alien Games (website) Hot Guys Making Out by Tao Games (drivethru) (website) Breaking the Ice by Black and Green Games (drivethru) (website - romance trilogy) Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games (amazon) (drivethru) (website) Character Inspired Mix Tapes: Amelia and Ryan’s Couple Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/verovladamir/playlist/7nguieqg9s4h9CqQMNifHp?si=aFX7r4HdTpaLO80McU5kbQ YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIQvSCMCGGkKn12lcNm8I3thhTK2MFvPt Ryan and Alex’s Couple Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/verovladamir/playlist/1fiectTQbuKO4d1gXOhiFd?si=WarEhAgHRUymPn4Cad94AQ YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIQvSCMCGGkLN3LhyGuLoBP9bMyNgJCNi Alex and Amelia’s Couple Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/verovladamir/playlist/5GLObBcZZxfRMjAoH8Tg3n?si=tWr0fDgPRpytAK3yVTfP-A YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIQvSCMCGGkIb1bw9OiDjDpX9ty-l8b7t Character sheets for this episode: https://blockpartypodcastnetwork.squarespace.com/completed-characters/2018/4/23/series-32-characters-star-crossed-with-alex-roberts Music: Opening: Meditation Impromptu 03 by Kevin MacLeod Clip 1: Autumn Day by Kevin MacLeod Clip 2: Backstory podcast opening theme Clip 3: Sovereign Quarter by Kevin MacLeod Clip 4: Delicate Frost by Winter Solstice used in the Star Crossed Kickstarter video created by @banana_chan_vid Main Theme: Hero (Remix) by Steve Combs Our Podcast: Character Creation Cast: @CreationCast Amelia Antrim: @gingerreckoning Ryan Boelter: @lordneptune Our Website: http://www.charactercreationcast.com

Andrew Healy and Alex French are the Co-Founders of Bizzy Coffee, “coffee for people who don’t have time for coffee.” Bizzy Coffee comes in the form of an organic two-ounce cold brew shot and can be found in a multitude of grocery stores, as well as on Amazon.   Bizzy Coffee was created by two people who complement each other well: Alex’s background is in in Finance and Entrepreneurship while Andrew’s is in Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing. After trial and error and some product tweaking, they created something that truly works -- an especially impressive feat in the competitive market that is Food and Beverage.   Some Questions I Ask Andrew and Alex: What was the worst and best experience you had during your road trip to promote and sell Bizzy Coffee? [4:05] What was involved in the process of recruiting people for the trip? [6:45] What do each of your backgrounds consist of? [11:27] What was the e-commerce business you both had at one point, and why did you decide to ditch it? [19:24] What made you choose coffee as a marketable product? [23:26] As soon as you got your cold brew recipe dialed in, what was the next step? [31:40] Were you able to secure any funding prior to applying for and getting accepted to an accelerator? [35:24] What were some of the most valuable lessons you learned from going through an accelerator? [37:19] After the accelerator program, was there a demo day? [39:23] After having gone through an accelerator program and getting that initial investment, do you think it was easier to raise money from local angels as a result? [41:12] After you raised money and your backs were against the wall, what was the next move? [42:01] Are there any other notable examples where you utilized data to make a business choice? [48:01] What exactly do you mean by “PPC”? [49:10] Since moving into producing coffee shots alone, has your consumer base further evolved? [49:52] What are some of your best marketing channels right now? [57:50] What is the next step for Bizzy Coffee? [1:00:00] Are there any books you’d recommend for entrepreneurs? [1:01:27] What other resources would you recommend for entrepreneurs? [1:02:46] What do each of your morning routines consist of? [1:04:13] What advice would you give to an entrepreneur looking to go into the Food and Beverage industry? [1:06:55]   Some Things You’ll Learn In This Episode: Where Alex and Andrew traveled to on their recent road trip What Alex and Andrew learned about the value of finding a good business partner Why their initial e-commerce product attempt didn’t work How long it took Alex and Andrew to get smart about coffee and what attracted them to it as a product How many rounds of consumer learning tests went into developing Bizzy Coffee What methodology Alex and Andrew used for manufacturing their product Why getting the first round of capital for the product was exceptionally difficult How Bizzy Coffee’s first investor came about What the pivotal first point in the business was What Alex and Andrew’s “aha!” moment was when they were figuring out how to tweak their product format One of the biggest advantages Bizzy Coffee holds as a product Get In Touch With Bizzy Coffee: Instagram: @bizzycoffee Email: alex@bizzycoffee.com & andrew@bizzycoffee.com     Website: https://www.bizzycoffee.com/

ABC’s Kenneth Moton joins the show to discuss the continuation of the confirmation hears for President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. Producer Libby also tells Joe and Alex What’s Happening around Whatcom County this weekend.

Welcome to Kid Power Radio. I’m your host Max and each week I review what’s happening on TV, at the movies, books and music I like ….You get the idea  Today we have Griffin, Alex, and Ethan!  Griffin is 12 and a sports nut. He plays football, baseball and basketball. He loves video games, movies, anything funny.Alex is 8 also enjoys sports likes riding his bikes, the outdoors, playing airsoft guns in the woods, lacrosse, video games.  Ethan is 5 and likes video games like Guitar Hero and Tony Hawke.  He is crazy about Webkins.  Welcome Griffin! Tell about yourself. Do you like sports? What is your favorite sport? What is your favorite super hero? What is your favorite movie? Why? Do you have any shout outs?  Bye Griffin!  Welcome Alex! Tell about yourself. I hear you like airsoft games. What exactly are airsoft games? How do you play lacrosse? (still talking to Alex) What is your favorite song? What is your favorite book? Do you have any shout outs? Bye Alex!  Welcome Ethan! Tell about yourself. Are you good at Guitar Hero? What is your favorite song in Guitar Hero? In Webkins how many animals do you have? What is your favorite food? What is your favorite T.V. show? Do you have any shout outs? Bye Ethan!   Listener Question...  I got 1 email this week.Thanks for writing in Terryn - hope you like your shout out.  Thanks everyone for sending in emails. You all are now official members of the Kid Power Radio Street Team. Your job is to tell all your friends about the show and if they email me they could get a special shout out just like you did. Remember, you can email me at RADIOSTARMAX @ YAHOO.COM

When the Lion Act bombs and Plan Scarface stumbles, what's a media savy lawyer to do? Duh, you become a ninja of course! Who's Cassandra tighter with: Earl or Dreamz? Do you think Dreamz could really convince anyone to vote with him against Yau-Man? Did Stacy blow her cover by reaching out to Alex? What do you think the big controversy will be? Will we finally see someone break "the car curse"? Here is the new merged tribe after episode 12. Bula Bula: Boo, Cassandra, Dreamz, Earl, Stacy, and Yau-Man Jo Ann and I think Boo, AKA Chatty Kathy, will be the next to go. Who's your pick for the next one to get voted out? Go ahead, be brave. Who's going to make final four? We've got several ways you can reach us. You can call and leave a voicemail at 206-350-JASS(5277). You can record an audio comment and attach it or just type up a quick text message and send it to us via email at joannandstacyshow@gmail.com. Lastly, there's a link for comments on the web page here. You can click that link and post your thoughts out there for everyone to see. Both songs this week are dedicated to Alex. He actually made a decent ninja/spy. When Yau-Man called requesting that outro, how could we refuse? Here's a link to the artists in case you want to learn more about them. The Spy Song by Swayze Lullaby for Lawyers by Steve Newman & Friends 00:01 Date 00:04 The Spy Song by Swayze 01:08 Introductions 06:41 Episode Recap and Observations 33:18 Next Week on Survivor 39:22 JSFL Update 43:40 Lullaby for Lawyers by Steve Newman & Friends Links for Today's Show Listener Paul's Survivor Fiji Visual Roster JSFL Results Update for Survivor: Fiji JSFL Rules for Survivor: Fiji Contact Info:Voicemail: 206-350-JASS(5277)Email: joannandstacyshow@gmail.com Enjoy, Jo Ann and Stacy

Our guest today is Alex French, ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexjfrench/ ) founder and CEO of Bizzy Coffee ( https://www.bizzycoffee.com/ ) , the #1 seller of cold brew coffee on Amazon. We discuss Alex's initial approach to entrepreneurship, how they've been able to maintain #1 Best Seller on Amazon, how he approached fundraising and was able to raise, and COVID's effects on Bizzy. Without further ado, here's Alex A couple books that inspired Alex are The 4-Hour Workweek ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307465357?camp=1789&creativeASIN=0307465357&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Tim Ferris and How To Win Friends and Influence People ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671027034?camp=1789&creativeASIN=0671027034&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Dale Carnegie. Here are some of the questions that I asked Alex - * What initially attracted you to entrepreneurship and your early entrepreneurial efforts? * What were some of your learnings when you were at General Mills? * Why did you decide to focus on Coffee? * What was the problem that you saw that you wanted to address or the particular insight? * It seems like you wanted to be an entrepreneur, but didn't have or know what product to launch. There is no right or wrong way to approach entrepreneurship but I wanted to know if you have thoughts around how you thought about it? * How were you able to validate ideas? * How did you approach your supply chain? What was the hardest part? * How did you approach fundraising? DNVBs have been out of favor with investors, did you get that sense when you were fundraising? * You've raised both from VCs and Family Offices, what has been some of the differences when seeking investment from these two groups? * How were you able to grow to become #1 on Amazon? * What are some of the benefits to Amazon and some of the limitations? * In the beginning, how did you think about brand and your differentiation when you were evaluating the market? * How has COVID affected Bizzy? * How are you thinking about post-COVID and the changes in consumer behavior? * What is one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally? * What's one piece of advice that you have for founders? You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb ( https://twitter.com/MikeGelb ). You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc ( https://twitter.com/ConsumerVc ).

Our guest today is Alex Levitt ( https://twitter.com/alexmlevitt ) , one of the heads of Yellow ( https://www.yellowla.com/accelerator ). Yellow is Snap Inc. ( https://www.snap.com/en-US/ ) 's ecosystem to serve companies at the intersection of creativity and technology with its Accelerator Program, Collabs Program, and Community Programming. Yellow is currently accepting applications through Sunday, August 23rd for its inaugural Collabs Program. If you're interested in integrating your product into the Snap Platform through Snap Minis, Snap Kit Dynamic Lenses, Scan, SnapML or more, visit YellowLA.com ( http://yellowla.com/ ) to apply and learn more. You can follow Alex on Twitter @alexmlevitt. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb ( https://twitter.com/MikeGelb ). You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc ( https://twitter.com/ConsumerVc ). A couple books that inspired Alex are Educated ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399590501?camp=1789&creativeASIN=0399590501&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Tara Westover and Creativity, Inc. ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812993012?camp=1789&creativeASIN=0812993012&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Ed Catmull. Here are a few questions I asked Alex - * What attracted you to media and technology in the first place? * So you worked at WME, rising to digital. What was your focus in the digital department? * Talk to me about Snap's accelerator. * What made you excited about joining? * What verticals do you focus on? * How involved is Snap? * How do you think about where you stand in the overall market of accelerators? * Walk me through your due diligence process. * Launching Product on Platform * How should a founder decide whether an accelerator or raising their own round is the appropriate choice? * When it comes to business models, advertising business models are a bit out of favor, social has traditionally been tied to advertising * How do you think about the early stage venture capital ecosystem? * What trends are you currently focused on and makes you excited? * How has running an accelerator changed during COVID? * What's one thing you would change about Venture Capital? * What's one piece of advice that you have for founders that are currently fundraising?