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At DoorGrow, we love showing off the awesome entrepreneurial people we get to coach and work with every day. In today's episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with DoorGrow clients Jill Lyons and Alex Platt to talk about their journey in property management and with DoorGrow. You'll Learn [03:00] Starting a journey with coaching [07:26] Finding support as an entrepreneur [12:18] The path to success is hard work [16:54] Getting out of the business [19:28] The importance of good company culture [21:20] The impact of coaching Tweetables “Done is better than perfect.” “The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is.” “If you don't mind working, you don't set up boundaries.” “Just being open to the thought and the idea is enough to make it work.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. Ooh, like that one.  [00:00:07] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:47] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win I'm your host, property management, growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow along with Sarah Hull, co owner and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:13] Our guests today... we've got Jill and Alex. Jill Lyons. Alex, what's your last name? Platt. Okay. I just know he's always with Jill, Alex. So we're really glad to have you on the show. And the topic of today's episode is like, we want to talk about your journey with DoorGrow because you've been with us for a little bit. So, why don't you introduce yourself and explain like kind of how you got into property management.  [00:01:39] Jill: Well, I must've taken an insane pill along the way, but I like it. My name is Jill Lyons and I own and I'm broker of Relaxed Realty Group in Sarasota, Florida. Currently we manage about 500 homes. We have like maybe 520 now and our rent roll, we just surpassed 800,000 this month, so I'm stoked and happy and proud. And you know, I love the business. There's never a day that's not that I feel like, "Oh my gosh, it's, you know, Monday." I never feel like that. So it's every day is a joy. Not every instant is a joy, but every day is a joy.  [00:02:12] Jason: So let's Alex, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us what is your role?  [00:02:17] Alex: So, my name is Alex and I've worked with Jill here just over a year and a half, or going on almost two years when I got my real estate license. My wife started with Jill, Miranda, and she's been with Jill for what, 10 years now? Started with a business with her and I do the operations here. So operations and BDM.  [00:02:38] Jason: Awesome. Okay, cool.  [00:02:41] Jill: So he came from a customer service background with T Mobile for the last 10 years. It's great. Corporate's a great, but there's a lot more opportunity here and oh my God, he's great with people. Of course He's not " to brag about himself. So I'll brag about him. So he will put on multiple hats and do everything that whatever needs to be done.  [00:03:00] Jason: Cool. Yeah, you guys make a good team. We've enjoyed having you in the program. So why don't we start with what problem problems were you dealing with when you first came to DoorGrow? Like what challenges were going on?  [00:03:14] Jill: So I would say my strengths are that I love to sell and talk to people and help people. So, you know, that was naturally there and I grew the business with success with growing doors. And I was in a kind of a comfortable, I would say position as. Having a good amount of owners and properties, but I want to start exiting the business and it was just way too 'me centered,' you know, what do we do? What do we do with people coming to me? You know, I don't mind working. Like I say, so unfortunately, if you don't mind working, you don't set up boundaries, you don't set up corporate structures. My flow, there was nothing corporate about me. [00:03:49] If I wanted to step away, which I did this year, hired the operations manager, but I'm like, now what? And now what do you do? I'm an engineer by education. All I know how to do is build a spreadsheet and show people returns. So I was looking for ...I always believed in coaches. I've been coached since day one of my business. [00:04:07] So coaching is definitely something I believe in, but the coaching company I used was really just real estate working with buyers and sellers. So I hadn't ever got the property management business aspect of it and setting up the business and the structure. So when you watched one of your podcasts and listened to your podcast, and I liked what you had to say, so I-- "let's let them get us to that next level." [00:04:32] Jason: Watch the podcast, listen to the podcast, and now you're on the podcast.  [00:04:36] Jill: I know, I'm like, what do I have to offer? That's the first thing, I'm still listening and learning.  [00:04:42] Jason: You know, there's a lot of people listening out there that would dream of having 520 doors, having an amazing operator, having the operations running smoothly and being on your journey, stepping out of the business, like this, that's a dream for a lot of property managers. [00:04:58] They're still in the thick of the mud and wondering if there's a light at the end of the tunnel.  [00:05:03] Jill: So they don't believe that I'm going to step out.  [00:05:05] Alex: She's a workaholic. So, you know, it's a little bit of yin and yang.  [00:05:09] Jason: You know, entrepreneurs, it's a tough thing. I've known a few entrepreneurs that have like exited their business and then they were bored and they started another business. It happens. So entrepreneurs, we want to stay busy and we want to do the things we really enjoy doing. So you just have to find something you maybe enjoy doing more.  [00:05:29] Jill: I don't know. Yeah, no, I'm not closed to what's next, but I don't know. I'm still here.  [00:05:35] Jason: So let's chat about, and maybe this is a question for Alex. So Alex what did you see when you first came into the business? Some of the challenges in how to like support Jill and how to get her out of the operational stuff. And what challenges did you see that DoorGrow so far been able to help with?  [00:05:54] Alex: So luckily with your program we got to revamp everything. I mean, your Rapid Revamp was amazing. I mean, we got to go from rebuilding and rebranding our logo and everything. So I really enjoyed your class, especially with the whole cycle of suck, making sure that you're not holding onto those owners that are sucking up all your time and, you know, using. A lot of your resource when it comes down to it. I would say those were the biggest things and especially your systems that you have. I mean, I think the Flow is going to help a lot for us to map out each and every one of our procedures that we have on an operational standpoint.  [00:06:33] Jason: Okay. So for those listening, DoorGrow Flow, our process software, which is pretty cool. So the Rapid Revamp, I mean, and you guys made a lot of changes. Yes. Changed your pricing.  [00:06:43] Alex: We changed our name.  [00:06:44] Jill: You changed the name. I said I would never, ever do that!  [00:06:49] Sarah: She's like " I'm not rebranding." I'm like, "okay, we don't have to rebrand." And then she's like, "I think I'm going to rebrand." I was like, "wow! All right, let's do it."  [00:06:58] Jason: Everybody says they don't want to do it. But what I love about entrepreneurs is that if you show them how to make more money, they're pretty okay with it. They're pretty okay with making more money. So, and I think the training, we do a good job in converting people into wanting to make more money. "Here's how it'll make you more money if you do the right things with your branding." So website. Did we help with that?  [00:07:23] Alex: We're almost there. We're on the tail end of that portion of it.  [00:07:26] Jason: So for those that have not been exposed to DoorGrow. Maybe they're just listening to this podcast. They're like, "I don't know if these guys are legit. Kind of looks like some sort of one of these Influencer sort of guys," or I don't know what people think before they become a client but what would you say to those that are on the other side of the paywall and maybe struggling?  [00:07:51] Jill: For me, honestly, if I would have found this 10 years ago, it would have happened faster, my growth and where I am now would have happened faster and more organized. I kind of wing it and I'm the type that, you know, I don't want to spend any money unless a bunch of sitting in the bank. And I probably, if I would have opened up the bank and gotten the coaching and the programs from a property management company versus just from, you know, where I got my assistance from, which I had when I did buying and selling, which I hate it. So I kind of kept my things rather than going into property management coaching and training. It would have definitely made it faster and less painful, and I would say that's the biggest thing that I wish I would have found you sooner, but you know, you always find people when you're supposed to find them and entrepreneurs tend not to be, in my opinion, people that go to business school because they just want to do it. They jump in head first. There's no rhyme or reason to how we do it. So the organization is usually where we struggle the most. And just networking and having the beginning, I just went to Google and figured everything out on my own, rather than reaching out to an organization like yours, that's more specific for us and NARPM, which, you know connected me to other property managers and how are they doing it? And why did I have to create the wheel and do it all my way? I didn't even know that there was anything like this.  [00:09:16] Jason: Yeah. And you had been in NARPM for a while before joining DoorGrow.  [00:09:20] Jill: Yeah. I'm heavily involved in NARPM. I'm the president of our local chapter. So that definitely has made helped my business, and the connection and they have a lot of tools that have helped me significantly realize that it is a business and with systems. But but there isn't the sales support, you know, they don't have you, Jason. It's not energetic and make me go, "yes! I'm going to do it!" With you and with everybody around! You know, it's just like the connections.  [00:09:48] Jason: Yeah. I know you have both really enjoyed the operational pieces as well, and you've attended quite a few of our scale calls on Friday that Sarah runs. What what things have you taken away from on the operational side of things? [00:10:04] Jill: So what would you say, because you deal with that more? I kind of say, go do it.  [00:10:07] Alex: So, I take a lot of the way, honestly, you guys definitely on those calls go over a lot of different systems that are in other people's companies, to be honest. And we try to take piece by piece and just kind of make it our own when it comes to this. I think it's developing more of the systems that we have. As far as like a specific system, I think we talked about maintenance heavily. And the processes over how other companies do it and what we do with our maintenance. So it's kind of getting every pieces of everybody's input on that stuff to kind of lay out what maybe we should change, you know? [00:10:45] Jill: I will say that as far as operational, we were in pretty good shape with that. It's not technicalogical. So you have DoorGrow flow. I'm just talking with Errol tomorrow. So it's been on my list of things to do this whole year to set up flow and get that going so that it's more clear how we do things because when we have a new employee, I can't just hand them, "these are our thing," we have to manually tell them or give them a checklist, which doesn't really help. So, I have to hire Errol cause it stays on my list every single month and it hasn't been done. That's what I'm going to pass the buck on versus the website. I'd like to do the marketing. So we need to finish all of this by the end of the year. That's on our list. Does it check the list? We're at the last, getting to the last quarter. So you give us the tools. It's just setting it up. That takes a lot of time and concentration time. And Errol seemed to be I met him at DoorGrow live, you know, in Texas. And yeah, he was talking about processes and creating them. Like I talked about property management, so he's going to be our guy. I'll see how it goes.  [00:11:47] Alex: We have a lot in our heads, obviously. So, that's getting it all down to where if somebody needs to know something, it's much easier.  [00:11:56] Jason: Yeah we're planning on doing some more stuff with Errol Allen, who Jill's speaking with, and he's currently playing around with our DoorGrow flow software and testing it out as well. [00:12:05] So I think it's going to be a game changer for the market. So Sarah's had a lot of interaction, I think, with the two of you. What's been your perception of why they do so well as clients?  [00:12:18] Sarah: Oh, well, so there's a few things that I'd like to kind of. Point out and give you guys like major kudos on. First is, I think you're just open. Sometimes we have people who are very resistant. They're like, " that won't work," and "I'm not going to do it like this," and "I can't do this," and "that's not in my market," right? And I think the difference is just being open to the thought and the idea is enough to make it work because if you go into something and you think, "oh, this won't work," well, you're probably right. Then it's not going to work. But you guys are very open and you also, I love this about you guys, you take action. You just come in and you're like, "this is what we're going to do," and then you take action, you implement and you get it done. I think, to date, they are the fastest people who have completed everything in the Rapid Revamp. Like, they get a medal for that. Like, every time, they're like, "yep, we're done with this," I'm like, "oh, wow, okay!" They just get it done. It's like they just put their heads down. They know what they need to do. They put in the work and they get it done and then they go, "okay, great, we did that. What do we need now? Like what's the next thing that we can do to either like build on top of that or like take us to the next level? And I think you guys are really great at that. And I think you, you work very well together. You know, you balance each other out. You like ping well back and forth, back together, and I think that gives you the ability to move things along so quickly.  [00:13:44] Alex: It's great to have ideas that we can bounce off of each other and make it a solid process and get it out of the way and move on to the next one.  [00:13:52] Jill: Well, and I love a checklist. So you have a checklist. I want to see checks on there. I don't want to see them open. So I think that myself, I can be more reactionary property management. Our phone is always ringing. Things are always happening. You know, I can easily not get anything accomplished in a day and be busy the whole day. So with the Rapid Revamp it has me be on track along with handling the things that come on you know all day but I have to get my things done  [00:14:18] Alex: And the nice thing about your dashboard was the fact that you could assign things, we would take them and split them up and be like, "okay, you're going to do these and they're assigned to you" and then I could assign ones to me so we can you know, handle what we needed to.  [00:14:30] Jason: Cool. [00:14:31] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. I think that was really awesome just to see you guys because every time I check in with you, you're like, "Oh, yeah, we're done with that already." Like, okay, let's see what's the next thing for you guys? And you already knew! You were never like, "Hey, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Like, you just like stayed the course. And sometimes it's hard for entrepreneurs to do because there's so many shiny objects. There's so many of them, right? Like, "Hey, I'm coming in, I'm doing this one thing and that's it," and then along the way, there's like some other little thing that's like, "Hey, I need your attention." [00:15:04] And it's so tempting to go, "Ooh, but I could focus on that." Like, " let me just go over here for a second," and like, you guys just stayed the course. You like stay on point. And I think that's that's something I really have to give you guys like a huge compliment on because it's hard to do that. It's really difficult to do that. And you guys do it really well.  [00:15:25] Jill: Thank you.  [00:15:26] Jason: Yeah. And so you've interacted with several of our team members, right? It's not just the Jason show or the Jason and Sarah show. And I think that's what a lot of people think. Could you just comment a little bit on DoorGrow's team? You don't have to remember everybody's names, but yeah.  [00:15:43] Jill: Well the two that I've probably enjoyed the most is Clint. He's like the coolest surfer dude in the whole wide world, but he's sharp as a tack. You know, "we're just going to buy a $5 million company." He's the exact person to teach you how to be cool and do acquisitions and whatnot. [00:16:03] And that you can see why he's so successful because he's a joy to listen to.  [00:16:07] Jason: Yeah, he's fun.  [00:16:08] Jill: And ironically considering an acquisition in the middle of all listening to him and he took his time out, sent me a lot of information and questions I should ask and what due diligence I should do. So, I mean, his wealth of all the years that he's done that, enticed in a few documents was, I could have never created that. And then Roya, she's a ball of energy and I'm all into manifesting and all that. So, I mean, not many people you can feel through a computer screen with their energy, you know, that's heard of talent that she has.  [00:16:43] Jason: Yeah, she's our dangerously powerful mindset coach. And teaches the advanced sales stuff. [00:16:51] She's yeah she's had quite an impact. Yeah.  [00:16:54] Jill: Yeah. For sure.  [00:16:56] I went to DoorGrow live, which was fantastic to connect with everybody. But thanks to DoorGrow and Alex being also trained as a DoorGrow. I'm taking my first three week vacation in 10 years.  [00:17:08] Jason: That's amazing. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Your business will be in good hands with Alex and and we've got his back. So. For sure. So awesome. Yep. Property managers, if you're listening to this and you have not taken a significant vacation in the last five years, when's your turn? Maybe it's time to reach out and let us help you take- this is one of the most common things that we hear, especially this summer. [00:17:36] Lots of our clients are taking vacations like for the first time ever, or in the first time in a long time, or it's a longer vacation than they've been able to take.  [00:17:45] Sarah: Brandon and Mark, they took off the majority of July, both of them, took off the majority of July, and they're like, "things were fine, like things were okay," I'm like, "that's great, that's how it should work," and if we set it up that way, then things can work that way.  [00:18:01] Jason: For sure. Yeah, one of our mentors had this quote, I don't know where it came from, but he said, the more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. Ooh, like that one. So Jill's working on making herself less valuable to the business. I've made DoorGrow less of the Jason show, and we've got all these amazing coaches and yeah, and that's the goal, right? We're able to provide more value and it allows us to be more free as entrepreneurs. To do the things that we really enjoy doing and eventually maybe to do nothing. If that's really the goal. I don't know. Jill, will have to find something to do. She's going to trap the world. She'll think we're not going to do nothing. Exactly. We're not going to do nothing. I don't think Jill knows what to do.  [00:18:43] Jill: We just want freedom to not always to be working.  [00:18:46] Jason: There you go. Yeah.  [00:18:48] Sarah: You can choose the things you do.  [00:18:50] Jill: Yeah.  [00:18:51] Jason: Well, we've really appreciated having you both in the program. You know, the, Sarah mentioned about you, but what I've noticed is Jill, you have this gift of positivity, it seems to rub off on everyone around you. We've really enjoyed having you in the program. Everyone's like, "Oh, we love Jill." All of our coaches and team members love Jill. And you can see Alex has like got a positive, you know, energy going on as well. And so you've created a really good culture on your team and in your business. And I don't know if it's always been that way, but I know that's something that's important to us at DoorGrow is making sure everybody has good culture with their business and with their team. So can you touch on culture just a little bit? [00:19:30] Jill: Well, I think connection and culture is the most important thing. If I don't have it here, how is a client going to want to be attracted to us? You know, how is that going to work? You know, if you don't have a positive look on the industry, the business... I mean, this is anybody that calls us is frustrated with property management and say, "here, we love to do property management." They're like, "I need you!" [00:19:51] you know, tenants and everybody gets to complain to us and we have to listen to them and, you know, do our job, but in these walls of this company, we don't have to do that. We can vent to each other. We can laugh. We don't complain. We more laugh about situations than we do complain. And I think I've been a good leader as far as that goes. But I think that also because I have that energy, I want to attract that energy. And so those people are, who are working here and stay.  [00:20:18] Jason: I love that. I mean, I think having a culture in which complaining is not the norm. I mean, it's easy to complain in property management. Right? And I'm sure there's a lot of you listening that are like, " I complain all the time. I complain every day," like reducing that complaining in the business and creating a culture where the team don't see that it's totally okay to just complain all the time. Because if you're complaining about your clients, they're going to feel that. They're not going to want to work with somebody that's, they know is just going to be complaining about them behind their back. [00:20:47] And so I think that's really powerful. And I think that there's a lot of joking in property management, and I think if you can't laugh about it, then you're just going to be hurt by it, and so...  [00:20:58] Jill: and the only way you make a lot of money is to do the things that nobody wants to do. [00:21:02] Jason: There you go. And they will pay you a pretty penny to do it. [00:21:05] Alex: Yeah, we don't have one person that dreads coming to work every day. That's for sure. Everybody's like, "oh shoot. It's monday. Let's go!"  [00:21:11] Jill: We're a little family.  [00:21:13] Jason: Awesome. Yeah, I love that. You have a good culture. So, cool well, anything else we should chat about? What are the biggest takeaways you feel like you've gotten from being part of working with DoorGrow for those listening? [00:21:28] Jill: I think first of all to make sure that I express my purpose to everybody, you know, start with the person.  [00:21:34] Jason: Has that changed your close rate? Has that changed how clients respond to you?  [00:21:39] Jill: Oh, just overall being brave enough to start with that, you know, I always assume they don't care, you know they're not calling for my me personally, but they are, you know, and some would get to know me on a personal level over time, but I never started the conversation with that. [00:21:54] I always started it with "I love property management" and I think they could feel our energy, but not deep down what my life purpose is. So, and how I could tie that back into having them become our client. But it gets a personal, it makes it a personal fit right away or not.  [00:22:11] Jason: Yeah. They either trust your motives and like them or they don't, but they, at least they know what your motives are. Otherwise they're just going to assume you just want their money.  [00:22:20] Jill: Yeah. The name change was a huge one. And then the third, I think final one for me is. When you did your stack deck and it wasn't like perfectly animated with all these designs and it looked great. And I'm fine with it. I stopped judging my marketing to have to be the caliber of Coca Cola. [00:22:40] I don't have designers out there. I don't want to spend design. So just produce it and get it out there and make it look kind of quirky and we're quirky anyway. So I don't know why I was thinking that we had to be this high level, corporate marketing program in order for it to work.  [00:22:54] Jason: I think done is better than perfect for sure. [00:22:57] That's one of my  [00:22:57] Alex: favorite things is like, no, just get it complete and then we'll move on and we'll get the next thing done.  [00:23:03] Jason: Yeah. Done makes money. And you've made a lot of changes. You've gotten a lot of things done that are going to help shore up leaks that make you a lot more money. And. Yeah. A lot of people get really caught up on things being so perfect. [00:23:14] They don't get as nearly as much done. So kudos to both of you for implementing and taking action. So, well, we appreciate you coming and hanging out with us here on the show. What do you feel like, what are some tangible results besides the brand? Revenue doors, any other shifts that you've seen in the business since joining? [00:23:33] Jill: Well, we've gotten rid of a lot of the properties. I had the guts to say to a couple owners, you know, "You have to either sell this property or find another manager because it's too much of a liability. And I'm scared to because X Y Z and so should you." And obviously it's a great time to sell last year. So this is the time get to get a better asset, 1031 exchange it, or let's you know, we need to drop it by the end of the year. I didn't, you know, say we're going to drop you on 30 days, but they, most of them, most of those as a consulting, they trust us and know us and they sold those properties. We have two that are closing this week, our last two that are closing and we had problems. Yeah, problems. So we've gotten rid of a lot of problems since the beginning and liability issues, you know, you know, liabilities. So that's that's, I think our biggest deal and it's allowed other doors to come in. [00:24:28] It's amazing what you let go just energetically things will fill its place. So door wise, I would say we're at about the same, but revenue has gone up 20%.  [00:24:38] Alex: We've been getting higher-end properties instead of, you know, things that were D class properties that we didn't want.  [00:24:44] Jason: Love it. 20 percent more revenue. Awesome, that does not suck.  [00:24:48] Sarah: And getting rid of the problem, right?  [00:24:55] Jason: Well, we appreciate you being clients and we're super excited to see your progression through the DoorGrow code, and this business I think that could easily be at a thousand doors in the next two to three years. It's totally doable, especially if you start doing some of the acquisition deals, like it's going to be really interesting once you get some of these systems in place, then you're ready to just scale like crazy. So excited to see what you do. All right. Well then we'll go ahead and wrap up. Appreciate you being on the show. [00:25:25] Thanks for hanging out with us, Alex and Jill. Thank you. Great.  [00:25:29] For those listening, if you want to be like Alex and Jill and make good decisions and grow your business in a healthy way, and maybe increase your revenue 20%. aNd clean up your portfolio and optimize your sales pipeline so you make more money, more easily reach out to DoorGrow. [00:25:45] We would love to take a look at your business and see if we can help you. The answer is: we can... most likely and see if you'd be a good fit for our program. You can check us out at doorgrow. com. There's a big pink button on the home page says "I want to grow." click that. Do the three steps there to see if you'd be a good candidate to work with us, and until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone  [00:26:08] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:26:35] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Alex Lawrence, Field CISO at Sysdig, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how he went from studying bioluminescence and mycology to working in tech, and his stance on why open source is the future of cloud security. Alex draws an interesting parallel between the creative culture at companies like Pixar and the iterative and collaborative culture of open-source software development, and explains why iteration speed is crucial in cloud security. Corey and Alex also discuss the pros and cons of having so many specialized tools that tackle specific functions in cloud security, and the different postures companies take towards their cloud security practices. About AlexAlex Lawrence is a Field CISO at Sysdig. Alex has an extensive history working in the datacenter as well as with the world of DevOps. Prior to moving into a solutions role, Alex spent a majority of his time working in the world of OSS on identity, authentication, user management and security. Alex's educational background has nothing to do with his day-to-day career; however, if you'd like to have a spirited conversation on bioluminescence or fungus, he'd be happy to oblige.Links Referenced: Sysdig: https://sysdig.com/ sysdig.com/opensource: https://sysdig.com/opensource falco.org: https://falco.org TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode is brought to us by our friends over at Sysdig, and they have brought to me Alexander Lawrence, who's a principal security architect over at Sysdig. Alexander, thank you for joining me.Alex: Hey, thanks for having me, Corey.Corey: So, we all have fascinating origin stories. Invariably you talk to someone, no one in tech emerged fully-formed from the forehead of some God. Most of us wound up starting off doing this as a hobby, late at night, sitting in the dark, rarely emerging. You, on the other hand, studied mycology, so watching the rest of us sit in the dark and growing mushrooms was basically how you started, is my understanding of your origin story. Accurate, not accurate at all, or something in between?Alex: Yeah, decently accurate. So, I was in school during the wonderful tech bubble burst, right, high school era, and I always told everybody, there's no way I'm going to go into technology. There's tons of people out there looking for a job. Why would I do that? And let's face it, everybody expected me to, so being an angsty teenager, I couldn't have that. So, I went into college looking into whatever I thought was interesting, and it turned out I had a predilection to go towards fungus and plants.Corey: Then you realized some of them glow and that wound up being too bright for you, so all right, we're done with this; time to move into tech?Alex: [laugh]. Strangely enough, my thesis, my capstone, was on the coevolution of bioluminescence across aquatic and terrestrial organisms. And so, did a lot of focused work on specifically bioluminescent fungus and bioluminescing fish, like Photoblepharon palpebratus and things like that.Corey: When I talk to people who are trying to figure out, okay, I don't like what's going on in my career, I want to do something different, and their assumption is, oh, I have to start over at square one. It's no, find the job that's halfway between what you're doing now and what you want to be doing, and make lateral moves rather than starting over five years in or whatnot. But I have to wonder, how on earth did you go from A to B in this context?Alex: Yeah, so I had always done tech. My first job really was in tech at the school districts that I went to in high school. And so, I went into college doing tech. I volunteered at the ELCA and other organizations doing tech, and so it basically funded my college career. And by the time I finished up through grad school, I realized my life was going to be writing papers so that other people could do the research that I was coming up with, and I thought that sounded like a pretty miserable life.And so, it became a hobby, and the thing I had done throughout my entire college career was technology, and so that became my new career and vocation. So, I was kind of doing both, and then ended up landing in tech for the job market.Corey: And you've effectively moved through the industry to the point where you're now in security architecture over at Sysdig, which, when I first saw Sysdig launch many years ago, it was, this is an interesting tool. I can see observability stories, I can see understanding what's going on at a deep level. I liked it as a learning tool, frankly. And it makes sense, with the benefit of hindsight, that oh, yeah, I suppose it does make some sense that there are security implications thereof. But one of the things that you've said that I really want to dig into that I'm honestly in full support of because it'll irritate just the absolute worst kinds of people is—one of the core beliefs that you espouse is that security when it comes to cloud is inherently open-source-based or at least derived. I don't want to misstate your position on this. How do you view it?Alex: Yeah. Yeah, so basically, the stance I have here is that the future of security in cloud is open-source. And the reason I say that is that it's a bunch of open standards that have basically produced a lot of the technologies that we're using in that stack, right, your web servers, your automation tooling, all of your different components are built on open stacks, and people are looking to other open tools to augment those things. And the reality is, is that the security environment that we're in is changing drastically in the cloud as opposed to what it was like in the on-premises world. On-prem was great—it still is great; a lot of folks still use it and thrive on it—but as we look at the way software is built and the way we interface with infrastructure, the cloud has changed that dramatically.Basically, things are a lot faster than they used to be. The model we have to use in order to make sure our security is good has dramatically changed, right, and all that comes down to speed and how quickly things evolve. I tend to take a position that one single brain—one entity, so to speak—can't keep up with that rapid evolution of things. Like, a good example is Log4j, right? When Log4j hit this last year, that was a pretty broad attack that affected a lot of people. You saw open tooling out there, like Falco and others, they had a policy to detect and help triage that within a couple of hours of it hitting the internet. Other proprietary tooling, it took much longer than two hours.Corey: Part of me wonders what the root cause behind that delay is because it's not that the engineers working at these companies are somehow worse than folks in the open communities. In some cases, they're the same people. It feels like it's almost corporate process ossification of, “Okay, we built a thing. Now, we need to make sure it goes through branding and legal and marketing and we need to bring in 16 other teams to make this work.” Whereas in the open-source world, it feels like there's much more of a, “I push the deploy button and it's up. The end.” There is no step two.Alex: [laugh]. Yeah, so there is certainly a certain element of that. And I think it's just the way different paradigms work. There's a fantastic book out there called Creativity, Inc., and it's basically a book about how Pixar manages itself, right? How do they deal with creating movies? How do they deal with doing what they do, well?And really, what it comes down to is fostering a culture of creativity. And that typically revolves around being able to fail fast, take risks, see if it sticks, see if it works. And it's not that corporate entities don't do that. They certainly do, but again, if you think about the way the open-source world works, people are submitting, you know, PRs, pull requests, they're putting out different solutions, different fixes to problems, and the ones that end up solving it the best are often the ones that end up coming to the top, right? And so, it's just—the way you iterate is much more akin to that kind of creativity-based mindset that I think you get out of traditional organizations and corporations.Corey: There's also, I think—I don't know if this is necessarily the exact point, but it feels like it's at least aligned with it—where there was for a long time—by which I mean, pretty much 40 years at this point—a debate between open disclosure and telling people of things that you have found in vendors products versus closed disclosure; you only wind—or whatever the term is where you tell the vendor, give them time to fix it, and it gets out the door. But we've seen again and again and again, where researchers find something, report it, and then it sits there, in some cases for years, but then when it goes public and the company looks bad as a result, they scramble to fix it. I wish it were not this way, but it seems that in some cases, public shaming is the only thing that works to get companies to secure their stuff.Alex: Yeah, and I don't know if it's public shaming, per se, that does it, or it's just priorities, or it's just, you know, however it might go, there's always been this notion of, “Okay, we found a breach. Let's disclose appropriately, you know, between two entities, give time to remediate.” Because there is a potential risk that if you disclose publicly that it can be abused and used in very malicious ways—and we certainly don't want that—but there also is a certain level of onus once the disclosure happens privately that we got to go and take care of those things. And so, it's a balancing act.I don't know what the right solution is. I mean, if I did, I think everybody would benefit from things like that, but we just don't know the proper answer. The workflow is complex, it is difficult, and I think doing our due diligence to make sure that we disclose appropriately is the right path to go down. When we get those disclosures we need to take them seriously is when it comes down to.Corey: What I find interesting is your premise that the future of cloud security is open-source. Like, I could make a strong argument that today, we definitely have an open-source culture around cloud security and need to, but you're talking about that shifting along the fourth dimension. What's the change? What do you see evolving?Alex: Yeah, I think for me, it's about the collaboration. I think there are segments of industries that communicate with each other very, very well, and I think there's others who do a decent job, you know, behind closed doors, and I think there's others, again, that don't communicate at all. So, all of my background predominantly has been in higher-ed, K-12, academia, and I find that a lot of those organizations do an extremely good job of partnering together, working together to move towards, kind of, a greater good, a greater goal. An example of that would be a group out in the Pacific Northwest called NWACC—the NorthWest Academic Computing Consortium. And so, it's every university in the Northwest all come together to have CIO Summits, to have Security Summits, to trade knowledge, to work together, basically, to have a better overall security posture.And they do it pretty much out in the open and collaborating with each other, even though they are also direct competitors, right? They all want the same students. It's a little bit of a different way of thinking, and they've been doing it for years. And I'm finding that to be a trend that's happening more and more outside of just academia. And so, when I say the future is open, if you think about the tooling academia typically uses, it is very open-source-oriented, it is very collaborative.There's no specifications on things like eduPerson to be able to go and define what a user looks like. There's things like, you know, CAS and Shibboleth to do account authorization and things like that. They all collaborate on tooling in that regard. We're seeing more of that in the commercial space as well. And so, when I say the future of security in cloud is open-source, it's models like this that I think are becoming more and more effective, right?It's not just the larger entities talking to each other. It's everybody talking with each other, everybody collaborating with each other, and having an overall better security posture. The reality is, is that the folks we're defending ourselves against, they already are communicating, they already are using that model to work together to take down who they view as their targets: us, right? We need to do the same to be able to keep up. We need to be able to have those conversations openly, work together openly, and be able to set that security posture across that kind of overall space.Corey: There's definitely a concern that if okay, you have all these companies and community collaborating around security aspects in public, that well won't the bad actors be able to see what they're looking at and how they're approaching it and, in some cases, move faster than they can or, in other cases, effectively wind up polluting the conversation by claiming to be good actors when they're not. And there's so many different ways that this can manifest. It feels like fear is always the thing that stops people from going down this path, but there is some instance of validity to that I would imagine.Alex: Yeah, no. And I think that certainly is true, right? People are afraid to let go of, quote-unquote, “The keys to their kingdom,” their security posture, their things like that. And it makes sense, right? There's certain things that you would want to not necessarily talk about openly, like, specifically, you know, what Diffie–Hellman key exchange you're using or something like that, but there are ways to have these conversations about risks and posture and tooling and, you know, ways you approach it that help everybody else out, right?If someone finds a particularly novel way to do a detection with some sort of piece of tooling, they probably should be sharing that, right? Let's not keep it to ourselves. Traditionally, just because you know the tool doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have a way in. Certainly, you know, it can give you a path or a vector to go after, but if we can at least have open standards about how we implement and how we can go about some of these different concepts, we can all gain from that, so to speak.Corey: Part of me wonders if the existing things that the large companies are collaborating on lead to a culture that specifically pushes back against this. A classic example from my misspent youth is that an awful lot of the anti-abuse departments at these large companies are in constant communication. Because if you work at Microsoft, or Google or Amazon, your adversary, as you see it, in the Trust and Safety Group is not those other companies. It's bad actors attempting to commit fraud. So, when you start seeing particular bad actors emerging from certain parts of the network, sharing that makes everything better because there's an understanding there that it's not, “Oh, Microsoft has bad security this week,” or, “Google will wind up approving fraudulent accounts that start spamming everyone.”Because the takeaway by theby the customers is not that this one company is bad; it's oh, the cloud isn't safe. We shouldn't use cloud. And that leads to worse outcomes for basically everyone. But they're als—one of the most carefully guarded secrets at all these companies is how they do fraud prevention and spam detection because if adversaries find that out, working around them becomes a heck of a lot easier. I don't know, for example, how AWS determines whether a massive account overage in a free-tier account is considered to be a bad actor or someone who made a legitimate mistake. I can guess, but the actual signal that they use is something that they would never in a million years tell me. They probably won't even tell each other specifics of that.Alex: Certainly, and I'm not advocating that they let all of the details out, per se, but I think it would be good to be able to have more of an open posture in terms of, like, you know what tooling do they use? How do they accomplish that feat? Like, are they looking at a particular metric? How do they basically handle that posture going forward? Like, what can I do to replicate a similar concept?I don't need to know all the details, but would be nice if they embrace, you know, open tooling, like say a Trivy or a Falco or whatever the thing is, right, they're using to do this process and then contribute back to that project to make it better for everybody. When you kind of keep that stuff closed-source, that's when you start running into that issue where, you know, they have that, quote-unquote, “Advantage,” that other folks aren't getting. Maybe there's something we can do better in the community, and if we can all be better, it's better for everybody.Corey: There's a constant customer pain in the fact that every cloud provider, for example, has its own security perspective—the way that identity is managed, the way that security boundaries exist, the way that telemetry from these things winds up getting represented—where a number of companies that are looking at doing things that have to work across cloud for a variety of reasons—some good, some not so good—have decided that, okay, we're just going to basically treat all these providers as, more or less, dumb pipes and dumb infrastructure. Great, we're just going to run Kubernetes on all these things, and then once it's inside of our cluster, then we'll build our own security overlay around all of these things. They shouldn't have to do that. There should be a unified set of approaches to these things. At least, I wish there were.Alex: Yeah, and I think that's where you see a lot of the open standards evolving. A lot of the different CNCF projects out there are basically built on that concept. Like, okay, we've got Kubernetes. We've got a particular pipeline, we've got a particular type of implementation of a security measure or whatever it might be. And so, there's a lot of projects built around how do we standardize those things and make them work cross-functionally, regardless of where they're running.It's actually one of the things I quite like about Kubernetes: it makes it be a little more abstract for the developers or the infrastructure folks. At one point in time, you had your on-premises stuff and you built your stuff towards how your on-prem looked. Then you went to the cloud and started building yourself to look like what that cloud look like. And then another cloud showed up and you had to go use that one. Got to go refactor your application to now work in that cloud.Kubernetes has basically become, like, this gigantic API ball to interface with the clouds, and you don't have to build an application four different ways anymore. You can build it one way and it can work on-prem, it can work in Google, Azure, IBM, Oracle, you know, whoever, Amazon, whatever it needs to be. And then that also enables us to have a standard set of tools. So, we can use things like, you know, Rego or we can use things like Falco or we can use things that allow us to build tooling to secure those things the same way everywhere we go. And the benefit of most of those tools is that they're also configured, you know, via some level of codification, and so we can have a repository that contains our posture: apply that posture to that cluster, apply it to the other cluster in the other environment. It allows us to automate these things, go quicker, build the posture at the very beginning, along with that application.Corey: One of the problems I feel as a customer is that so many of these companies have a model for interacting with security issues that's frankly obnoxious. I am exhausted by the amount of chest-thumping, you'll see on keynote stages, all of the theme, “We're the best at security.” And whenever a vulnerability researcher reports something of a wide variety of different levels of severity, it always feels like the first concern from the company is not fix the issue, but rather, control the messaging around it.Whenever there's an issue, it's very clear that they will lean on people to rephrase things, not use certain words. It's, I don't know if the words used to describe this cross-tenant vulnerability are the biggest problem you should be focusing on right now. Yes, I understand that you can walk and chew gum at the same time as a big company, but it almost feels like the researchers are first screaming into a void, and then they're finally getting attention, but from all the people they don't want to get the attention from. It feels like this is not a welcoming environment for folks to report these things in good faith.Alex: [sigh]. Yeah, it's not. And I don't know what the solution is to that particular problem. I have opinions about why that exists. I won't go into those here, but it's cumbersome. It's difficult. I don't envy a lot of those research organizations.They're fantastic people coming up with great findings, they find really interesting stuff that comes out, but when you have to report and do that due diligence, that portion is not that fun. And then doing, you know, the fallout component, right: okay, now we have this thing we have to report, we have to go do something to fix it, you're right. I mean, people do often get really spun up on the verbiage or the implications and not just go fix the problem. And so again, if you have ways to mitigate that are more standards-based, that aren't specific to a particular cloud, like, you can use an open-source tool to mitigate, that can be quite the advantage.Corey: One of the challenges that I see across a wide swath of tooling and approaches to it have been that when I was trying to get some stuff to analyze CloudTrail logs in my own environment, I was really facing a bimodal distribution of options. On one end of the spectrum, it's a bunch of crappy stuff—or good stuff; hard to say—but it's all coming off of GitHub, open-source, build it yourself, et cetera. Good luck. And that's okay, awesome, but there's business value here and I'm thrilled to pay experts to make this problem go away.The other end of the spectrum is commercial security tooling, and it is almost impossible in my experience to find anything that costs less than $1,000 a month to start providing insight from a security perspective. Now, I understand the market forces that drive this. Truly I do, and I'm sympathetic to them. It is just as easy to sell $50,000 worth of software as it is five to an awful lot of companies, so yeah, go where the money is. But it also means that the small end of the market as hobbyists, as startups are just getting started, there is a price barrier to engaging in the quote-unquote, “Proper way,” to do security.So, the posture suffers. We'll bolt security on later when it becomes important is the philosophy, and we've all seen how well that plays out in the fullness of time. How do you square that circle? I think the answer has to be open-source improving to the point where it's not just random scripts, but renowned projects.Alex: Correct, yeah, and I'd agree with that. And so, we're kind of in this interesting phase. So, if you think about, like, raw Linux applications, right, Linux, always is the tenant that you build an application to do one thing, does that one thing really, really, really well. And then you ended up with this thing called, like, you know, the Cacti monitoring stack. And so, you ended up having, like, 600 tools you strung together to get this one monitoring function done.We're kind of in a similar spot in a lot of ways right now, in the open-source security world where, like, if you want to do scanning, you can do, like, Clair or you can do Trivy or you have a couple different choices, right? If you want to do posture, you've got things like Qbench that are out there. If you want to go do runtime security stuff, you've got something like Falco. So, you've got all these tools to string together, right, to give you all of these different components. And if you want, you can build it yourself, and you can run it yourself and it can be very fun and effective.But at some point in your life, you probably don't want to be care-and-feeding your child that you built, right? It's 18 years later now, and you want to go back to having your life, and so you end up buying a tool, right? That's why Gartner made this whole CNAP category, right? It's this humongous category of products that are putting all of these different components together into one gigantic package. And the whole goal there is just to make lives a little bit easier because running all the tools yourself, it's fun, I love it, I did it myself for a long time, but eventually, you know, you want to try to work on some other stuff, too.Corey: At one point, I wound up running the numbers of all of the first-party security offerings that AWS offered, and for most use cases of significant scale, the cost for those security services was more than the cost of the theoretical breach that they'd be guarding against. And I think that there's a very dangerous incentive that arises when you start turning security observability into your own platform as a profit center. Because it's, well, we could make a lot of money if we don't actually fix the root issue and just sell tools to address and mitigate some of it—not that I think that's the intentional direction that these companies are taking these things and I don't want to ascribe malice to them, but you can feel that start to be the trend that some decisions get pushed in.Alex: Yeah, I mean, everything comes down to data, right? It has to be stored somewhere, processed somewhere, analyzed somewhere. That always has a cost with it. And so, that's always this notion of the shared security model, right? We have to have someone have ownership over that data, and most of the time, that's the end-user, right? It's their data, it's their responsibility.And so, these offerings become things that they have that you can tie into to work within the ecosystem, work within their infrastructure to get that value out of your data, right? You know, where is the security model going? Where do I have issues? Where do I have misconfigurations? But again, someone has to pay for that processing time. And so, that ends up having a pretty extreme cost to it.And so, it ends up being a hard problem to solve. And it gets even harder if you're multi-cloud, right? You can't necessarily use the tooling of AWS inside of Azure or inside of Google. And other products are trying to do that, right? They're trying to be able to let you integrate their security center with other clouds as well.And it's kind of created this really interesting dichotomy where you almost have frenemies, right, where you've got, you know, a big Azure customer who's also a big AWS customer. Well, they want to go use Defender on all of their infrastructure, and Microsoft is trying to do their best to allow you to do that. Conversely, not all clouds operate in that same capacity. And you're correct, they all come at extremely different costs, they have different price models, they have different ways of going about it. And it becomes really difficult to figure out what is the best path forward.Generally, my stance is anything is better than nothing, right? So, if your only choice is using Defender to do all your stuff and it cost you an arm or leg, unfortunate, but great; at least you got something. If the path is, you know, go use this random open-source thing, great. Go do that. Early on, when I'd been at—was at Sysdig about five years ago, my big message was, you know, I don't care what you do. At least scan your containers. If you're doing nothing else in life, use Clair; scan the darn things. Don't do nothing.That's not really a problem these days, thankfully, but now we're more to a world where it's like, well, okay, you've got your containers, you've got your applications running in production. You've scanned them, that's great, but you're doing nothing at runtime. You're doing nothing in your posture world, right? Do something about it. So, maybe that is buy the enterprise tool from the cloud you're working in, buy it from some other vendor, use the open-source tool, do something.Thankfully, we live in a world where there are plenty of open tools out there we can adopt and leverage. You used the example of CloudTrail earlier. I don't know if you saw it, but there was a really, really cool talk at SharkFest last year from Gerald Combs where they leveraged Wireshark to be able to read CloudTrail logs. Which I thought was awesome.Corey: That feels more than a little bit ridiculous, just because it's—I mean I guess you could extract the JSON object across the wire then reassemble it. But, yeah, I need to think on that one.Alex: Yeah. So, it's actually really cool. They took the plugins from Falco that exist and they rewired Wireshark to leverage those plugins to read the JSON data from the CloudTrail and then wired it into the Wireshark interface to be able to do a visual inspect of CloudTrail logs. So, just like you could do, like, a follow this IP with a PCAP, you could do the same concept inside of your cloud log. So, if you look up Logray, you'll find it on the internet out there. You'll see demos of Gerald showing it off. It was a pretty darn cool way to use a visualization, let's be honest, most security professionals already know how to use in a more modern infrastructure.Corey: One last topic that I want to go into with you before we call this an episode is something that's been bugging me more and more over the years—and it annoyed me a lot when I had to deal with this stuff as a SOC 2 control owner and it's gotten exponentially worse every time I've had to deal with it ever since—and that is the seeming view of compliance and security as being one and the same, to the point where in one of my accounts that I secured rather well, I thought, I installed security hub and finally jumped through all those hoops and paid the taxes and the rest and then waited 24 hours to gather some data, then 24 hours to gather more. Awesome. Applied the AWS-approved a foundational security benchmark to it and it started shrieking its bloody head off about all of the things that were insecure and not configured properly. One of them, okay, great, it complained that the ‘Block all S3 Public Access' setting was not turned on for the account. So, I turned that on. Great.Now, it's still complaining that I have not gone through and also enabled the ‘Block Public Access Setting' on each and every S3 bucket within it. That is not improving your security posture in any meaningful way. That is box-checking so that someone in a compliance role can check that off and move on to the next thing on the clipboard. Now, originally, they started off being good-intentioned, but the result is I'm besieged by these things that don't actually matter and that means I'm not going to have time to focus on the things that actually do. Please tell me I'm wrong on some of this.Alex: [laugh].Corey: I really need to hear that.Alex: I can't. Unfortunately, I agree with you that a lot of that seems erroneous. But let's be honest, auditors have a job for a reason.Corey: Oh, I'm not besmirching the role of the auditor. Far from it. The problem I run into is that it's the Human Nessus report that dumps out, “Here's the 700 things to go fix in your environment,” as opposed to, “Here's the five things you can do right now that will meaningfully improve your security posture.”Alex: Yeah. And so, I think that's a place we see a lot of vendors moving, and I think that is the right path forward. Because we are in a world where we generate reports that are miles and miles long, we throw them over a wall to somebody, and that person says, “Are you crazy?” Like, “You want me to go do what with my time?” Like, “No. I can't. No. This is way too much.”And so, if we can narrow these things down to what matters the most today, and then what can we get rid of tomorrow, that makes life better for everybody. There are certainly ways to accomplish that across a lot of different dimensions, be that vulnerability management, or configuration management stuff, runtime stuff, and that is certainly the way we should approach it. Unfortunately, not all frameworks allow us to look at it that way.Corey: I mean, even AWS's thing here is yelling at me for a number of services not having encryption-at-rest turned on, like CloudTrail logs, or SNS topics. It's okay, let's be very clear what that is defending against: someone stealing drives out of a data center and taking them off to view the data. Is that something that I need to worry about in a public cloud provider context? Not unless I'm the CIA or something pretty close to that. I mean, if you can get my data out of an AWS data center and survive, congratulations, I kind of feel like you've earned it at this point. But that obscures things I need to be doing that I'm not.Alex: Back in the day, I had a customer who used to have—they had storage arrays and their storage arrays' logins were the default login that they came with the array. They never changed it. You just logged in with admin and no password. And I was like, “You know, you should probably fix that.” And he sent a message back saying, “Yeah, you know, maybe I should, but my feeling is that if it got that far into my infrastructure where they can get to that interface, I'm already screwed, so it doesn't really matter to me if I set that admin password or not.”Corey: Yeah, there is a defense-in-depth argument to be made. I am not disputing that, but the Cisco world is melting down right now because of a bunch of very severe vulnerabilities that have been disclosed. But everything to exploit these things always requires, well you need access to the management interface. Back when I was a network administrator at Chapman University in 2006, even then, I knew, “Well, we certainly don't want to put the management interfaces on the same VLAN that's passing traffic.”So, is it good that there's an unpatched vulnerability there? No, but Shodan, the security vulnerability search engine shows over 80,000 instances that are affected on the public internet. It would never have occurred to me to put the management interface of important network gear on the public internet. That just is… I don't understand that.Alex: Yeah.Corey: So, on some level, I think the lesson here is that there's always someone who has something else to focus on at a given moment, and… where it's a spectrum: no one is fully secure, but ideally, you don't want to be the lowest of low-hanging fruit.Alex: Right, right. I mean, if you were fully secure, you'd just turn it off, but unfortunately, we can't do that. We have to have it be accessible because that's our jobs. And so, if we're having it be accessible, we got to do the best we can. And I think that is a good point, right? Not being the worst should be your goal, at the very, very least.Doing bare minimums, looking at those checks, deciding if they're relevant for you or not, just because it says the configuration is required, you know, is it required in your use case? Is it required for your requirements? Like, you know, are you a FedRAMP customer? Okay, yeah, it's probably a requirement because, you know, it's FedRAMP. They're going to tell you got to do it. But is it your dev environment? Is it your demo stuff? You know, where does it exist, right? There's certain areas where it makes sense to deal with it and certain areas where it makes sense to take care of it.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk me through your thoughts on all this. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Alex: Yeah, so they can either go to sysdig.com/opensource. A bunch of open-source resources there. They can go to falco.org, read about the stuff on that site, as well. Lots of different ways to kind of go and get yourself educated on stuff in this space.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that into the show notes. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Alex: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.Corey: Alexander Lawrence, principal security architect at Sysdig. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this episode has been brought to us by our friends, also at Sysdig. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an insulting comment that I will then read later when I pick it off the wire using Wireshark.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Alex Gallego, CEO & Founder of Redpanda, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his experience founding and scaling a successful data streaming company over the past 4 years. Alex explains how it's been a fun and humbling journey to go from being an engineer to being a founder, and how he's built a team he trusts to hand the production off to. Corey and Alex discuss the benefits and various applications of Redpanda's data streaming services, and Alex reveals why it was so important to him to focus on doing one thing really well when it comes to his product strategy. Alex also shares details on the Hack the Planet scholarship program he founded for individuals in underrepresented communities. About AlexAlex Gallego is the founder and CEO of Redpanda, the streaming data platform for developers. Alex has spent his career immersed in deeply technical environments, and is passionate about finding and building solutions to the challenges of modern data streaming. Prior to Redpanda, Alex was a principal engineer at Akamai, as well as co-founder and CTO of Concord.io, a high-performance stream-processing engine acquired by Akamai in 2016. He has also engineered software at Factset Research Systems, Forex Capital Markets and Yieldmo; and holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and cryptography from NYU. Links Referenced: Redpanda: https://redpanda.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/emaxerrno Redpanda community Slack: https://redpandacommunity.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-1xq6m0ucj-nI41I7dXWB13aQ2iKBDvDw Hack The Planet Scholarship: https://redpanda.com/scholarship TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Tired of slow database performance and bottlenecks on MySQL or PostgresSQL when using Amazon RDS or Aurora? How'd you like to reduce query response times by ninety percent? Better yet, how would you like to get me to pronounce database names correctly? Join customers like Zscaler, Intel, Booking.com, and others that use OtterTune's artificial intelligence to automatically optimize and keep their databases healthy. Go to ottertune dot com to learn more and start a free trial. That's O-T-T-E-R-T-U-N-E dot com.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn, and this promoted guest episode is brought to us by our friends at Redpanda, which I'm thrilled about because I have a personal affinity for companies that have cartoon mascots in the form of animals and are willing to at least be slightly creative with them. My guest is Alex Gallego, the founder and CEO over at Redpanda. Alex, thanks for joining me.Alex: Corey, thanks for having me.Corey: So, I'm not asking about the animal; I'm talking about the company, which I imagine is a frequent source of disambiguation when you meet people at parties and they don't quite understand what it is that you do. And you folks are big in the data streaming space, but data streaming can mean an awful lot of things to an awful lot of people. What is it for you?Alex: Largely it's about enabling developers to build applications that can extract value of every single event, every click, every mouse movement, every transaction, every event that goes through your network. This is what Redpanda is about. It's like how do we help you make more money with every single event? How do we help you be more successful? And you know, happy to give examples in finance, or IoT, or oil and gas, if it's helpful for the audience, but really, to me, it's like, okay, if we can give you the framework in which you can build a new application that allows you to extract value out of data, every single event that's going through your network, to me, that's what a streaming is about. It large, it's you know, data contextualized with a timestamp and largely, a sort of a database of event streaming.Corey: One of the things that I find curious about the space is that usually, companies wind up going one of two directions when you're talking about data streaming. Either there, “Oh, just send it all to us and we'll take care of it for you,” or otherwise, it's a, great they more or less ship something that you've run in your own environment. In the olden days of data centers, that usually resembled a box of some sort. You're one of those interesting split-the-difference companies where you offer both models. Do you find that one of those tends to be seeing more adoption these days or that there's an increasing trend toward one direction or the other?Alex: Yeah. So, right now, I think that to me, the future of all these data-intensive products—whether you're a database or a streaming engine—will, because simply of cost of networks transferred between the hybrid clouds and your accounts, sending a gigabyte a second of data between, let's say, you know, your data center and a vendor, it's just so expensive that at some point, from just a cost perspective, like, running the infrastructure, it's in the millions of dollars. And so, running the data inside your VPC, it's sort of the next logical evolution of how we've used to consume services. And so, I actually think it's just the evolution: people would self-host because of costs and then they would use services because of operational simplicity. “I don't want to spend team skills and time building this. I want to pay a vendor.”And so, BYOC, to be honest—which is what we call this offering—it was about [laugh] sidestepping the costs and of being stuck in the hybrid clouds, whether it's Google or Amazon, where you're paying egress and ingress costs and it's just so expensive, in addition to this whole idea of data residency or data sovereignty and privacy. It's like, yeah, why not both? Like, if I'm an engineer, I want low latency and I don't want to pay you to transfer this thing to the next rack. I mean, my computer's probably, like, you know, a hundred feet away from my customer's computer. Like, why [laugh] way is that so complicated? So, you know, my view is that the future of data-intensive products will be in this form of where it—like, data planes are actually owned by companies, and then you offer that as a Software as a Service.Corey: One of the things that catches an awful lot of companies with telemetry use cases—or data streaming as another example of that—by surprise when they start building their own cloud-hosted offering is that they're suddenly seeing a lot more cross-AZ data charges than they would have potentially expected. And that's because unlike cross-region or the really expensive version of this with egress, it's a penny in and a penny out per gigabyte in most of AWS regions. Which means that that isn't also bound strictly to an AWS organization. So, you have customers co-located with you and you're starting to pay ingress charges on customers throwing their data over to you. And, on some level, the most economical solution for you is well, we're just going to put our listeners somewhere else far away so that we can just have them pay the steep egress fee but then we can just reflect it back to ourselves for free.And that's a terrible pattern, but it's a byproduct of the absolutely byzantine cross-AZ data transfer pricing, in fact, all of the data transfer pricing that is at least AWS tends to present. And it shapes the architectural decisions you make as a result.Alex: You know, as a user, it just didn't make sense. When we launched this product, the number of people that says like, “Why wouldn't your charge for, you know, effectively renting [unintelligible 00:05:14], and giving a markup to your customers?” That's we don't add any value on that, you know? I think people should really just pay us for the value that we create for them. And so, you know, for us competing with other companies is relatively easy.Competing with MSK is it's harder because MSK just has this, you know, muscle where they don't charge you for some particular network traffic between you. And so, it forces companies like us that are trying to be innovative in the data space to, like, put our services in that so that we can actually compete in the market. And so, it's a forcing function of the hybrid clouds having this strong muscle of being able to discount their services in a way that companies just simply don't have access to. And then, you know, it becomes—for the others—latency and sovereignty.Corey: This is the way that effectively all of AWS has first-party offerings of other things go. Replication traffic between AZs is not chargeable. And when I asked them about that, they say, “Oh, yeah. We just price that into the cost of the service.” I don't know that I necessarily buy that because if I try and run this sort of thing on top of EC2, it would cost me more than using their crappy implementation of it, just in data transfer alone for an awful lot of use cases.No third party can touch that level of cost-effectiveness and discounting. It really is probably the clearest example I can think of actual anti-competitive behavior in the market. But it's also complex enough to explain, to, you know, regulators that it doesn't make for exciting exposés and the basis for lawsuits. Yet. Hope springs eternal.Alex: [laugh]. You know—okay, so here is how—if someone is listening to this podcast and is, like, “Okay, well, what can I do?” For us, S3 is the answer. S3 is basically you need to be able to lean in into S3 as a way of replication across [AZ 00:06:56], you need to be able to lean into S3 to read data. And so actually, when I wrote, originally, Redpanda, you know, it's just like this C++ thing using [unintelligible 00:07:04], geared towards super low latency.When we moved it into the cloud, what we realized is, this is cost prohibitive to run either on EBS volumes or local disk. I have to tier all the storage into S3, so that I can use S3's cross-AZ network transfer, which is basically free, to be able to then bring a separate cluster on a different AZ, and then read from the bucket at zero cost. And so, you end up really—like, there are fundamental technical things that you have to do to just be able to compete in a way that's cost-effective for you. And so, in addition to just, like, the muscle that they can enforce on the companies is—it—there are deep implications of what it translates to at the technical level. Like, at the code level.Corey: In the cloud, more than almost anywhere else, it really does become apparent that cost and architecture are fundamentally the same thing. And I have a bit of an advantage here in that I've seen what you do deployed at least one customer of mine. It's fun. When you have a bunch of logos on your site, it's, “Hey, I recognize some of those.” And what I found interesting was the way that multiple people, when I spoke to them, described what it is that you do because some of them talked about it purely as a cost play, but other people were just as enthusiastic about it being a means of improving feature velocity and unlocking capabilities that they didn't otherwise have or couldn't have gotten to without a whole lot of custom work on their part. Which is it? How do you view what it is that you're bringing to market? Is it a cost play or is it a capability story?Alex: From our customer base, I would say 40% is—of our customer base—is about Redpanda enabling them to do things that they simply couldn't do before. An example is, we have, you know, a Fortune 100 company that they basically run their hedge trading strategy on top of Redpanda. And the reason for that is because we give them a five-millisecond average latency with predictable flight latencies, right? And so, for them, that predictability of Redpanda, you know, and sort of like the architecture that came about from trying to invent a new storage engine, allows them to throw away a bunch of in-house, you know, custom-built pub/sub messaging that, you know, basically gave them the same or worse latency. And so, for them, there's that.For others, I think in the IoT space, or if you have flying vehicles around the world, we have some logos that, you know, I just can't mention them. But they have this, like, flying computers around the world and they want to measure that. And so, like, the profile of the footprint, like, the mechanical footprint of being able to run on a single Pthread with a few megs of memory allows these new deployment models that, you know, simply, it's just, it's not possible with the alternatives where let's say you have to have, you know, like, a zookeeper on the schema registry and an HTTP proxy and a broker and all of these things. That simply just, it cannot run on a single Pthread with a few megs of memory, if you put any sort of workload into that. And so, it's like, the computational efficiencies simply enable new things that you couldn't do before. And that's probably 40%. And then the other, it's just… money was really cheap last year [laugh] or the year before and I think now it's less cheap [unintelligible 00:10:08] yeah.Corey: Yeah, I couldn't help but notice that in my own business, too. It turns out that not giving a shit about the AWS bill was a zero-interest-rate phenomenon. Who knew?Alex: [laugh]. Yeah, exactly. And now people [unintelligible 00:10:17], you know, the CIOs in particular, it's like, help. And so, that's really 60%, and our business has boomed since.Corey: Yeah, one thing that I find interesting is that you've been around for only four years. I know that's weird to say ‘only,' but time moves differently in tech. And you've started showing up in some very strange places that I would not have expected. You recently—somewhat recently; time is, of course, a flat circle—completed $100 million Series C, and I also saw you in places where I didn't expect to see you in the form of, last week, one of your large competitor's earnings calls, where they were asked by an analyst about an unnamed company that had raised $100 million Series C, and the CEO [unintelligible 00:11:00], “Oh, you're probably talking about Redpanda.” And then they gave an answer that was fine.I mean, no one is going to be on an earnings call and not be prepared for questions like that and to not have an answer ready to go. No one's going to say, “Well, we're doomed if it works,” because I think that businesses are more sophisticated than that. But it was an interesting shout-out in a place where you normally don't see competitors validate that you're doing something interesting by name-checking you.Alex: What was fundamentally interesting for me about that, is that I feel that as an investor, if you're putting you know, 2, 3, 4, or $500 million check into a public position of a company, you want to know, is this money simply going to make returns? That's basically what an investor cares about. And so, the reason for that question is, “Hey, there's a Series C startup company that now has a bunch of these Fortune 2000 logos,” and you know, when we talked to them, like, their customer [unintelligible 00:11:51] phenomena, like, why is that the case? And then, you know, our competitor was forced to name, you know, [laugh] a single win. That's as far as I remember it. We don't know of any additional customers that have switched to that.And so, I think when you have, like, you know, your win rate is above, whatever, 95%, 97% ratio, then I think, you know, they're just sort of forced to answer that. And in a way, I just think that they focus on different things. And for me, it was like, “Okay, developer, hands on keyboard, behind the terminal, how do I make you successful?” And that seems to have worked out enough to be mentioned in the earnings call.Corey: On some level, it's a little bit of a dog-and-pony show. I think that as companies had a certain point of scale, they feel that they need to validate what they're doing to investors at various points—which is always, on some level, of concern—and validate themselves to analysts, both financial—which, okay, whatever—and also, industry analysts, where they come with checklists that they believe is what customers want and is often a little bit off of the mark. But the validation that I think that matters, that actually determines whether or not something has legs is what your customers—you know, people paying you money for a thing—have to say and what they take away from what you're doing. And having seen in a couple of cases now myself, that usage of Redpanda has increased after initial proofs of concept and putting things on to it, I already sort of know the answer to this, but it seems that you also have a vibrant community of boosters for people who are thrilled to use the thing you're selling them.Alex: You know, Jumptraders recently posted that there was a use case in the new stack where they, like, put for the most mission-critical. So, for those of you that listening, Jumptraders is financial company, and they're super technical company. One of, like, the hardest things, they'll probably put your [unintelligible 00:13:35] your product through some of the most rigorous testing [unintelligible 00:13:38]. So, when you start doing some of these logos, it gives confidence. And actually, the majority of our developers that we get to partner with, it was really a friend telling a friend, for [laugh] the longest time, my marketing department was super, super small.And then what's been fun, some, like, really different use case was the one I mentioned about on this, like, flying vehicles around the world. They fly both in outer space and in airplanes. That was really fun. And then the large one is when you have workloads at, like, 14-and-a-half gigabytes per second, where the alternative of using something like Kinesis in the case of Lacework—which, you know, they wrote a new stack article about—would be so exorbitantly expensive. And so, in a way, I think that, you know, just trying to make the developers successful, really focusing, honestly, on the person who just has to make things work. We don't—by the time we get to the CIO, really the champion was the engineer who had to build an application. “I was just trying to figure it out the whack-a-mole of trying to debug alternative systems.”Corey: One of the, I think, seductive problems with your entire space is that no one decides day one that they're going to implement a data streaming solution for a very scaled-out, high-traffic site. The early adoption is always a small thing that you're in the process of building. And at that scale at that speed, it just doesn't feel like it's that hard of a problem because scale introduces its own unique series of challenges, but it's often one that people only really find out themselves when the simple thing that works in theory but not in production starts to cause problems internally. I used to work with someone who was a deeply passionate believer in Apache Kafka to a point where it almost became a problem, just because their answer to every problem—it almost didn't matter if it was, “How do we get more coffee this morning?”—Kafka would be the answer for all of it.And that's great, but it turned out, they became one of these people that borderline took on a product or a technology as their identity. So, anything that would potentially take a workload away from that, I got a lot of internal resistance. I'm wondering if you find that you're being brought in to replace existing systems or for completely greenfield stuff. And if the former, are you seeing a lot of internal resistance to people who have built a little niche for themselves?Alex: It's true, the people that have built a career, especially at large banks, were a pretty good fit for, you know, they actually get a team, they got a promotion cycle because they brought this technology and the technology sort of helped them make money. I personally tend to love to talk to these people. And there was a ca—to me, like, technically, let's talk about, like, deeply technical. Let me help you. That obviously doesn't scale because I can't have the same conversation with ten people.So, we do tend to see some of that. Actually, from our customers' standpoint, I would say that the large part of our customer base, you know, if I'm trying to put numbers, maybe 65%, I probably rip and replace of, you know, either upstream Apache Software or private companies or hosted services, et cetera. And so, I think you're right in saying, “Hey, that resistance,” they probably handled the [unintelligible 00:16:38], but what changed in the last year is that the CIO now stepped in and says, “I am going to fire all of you or you have to come up with a $10 million savings. Help me.” [laugh]. And so, you know, then really, my job is to help them look like a hero.It's like, “Hey, look, try it tested, benchmark it in your with your own workload, and if it saves you money, then use it.” That's been, you know, to sort of super helpful kind of on the macroeconomic environment. And then the last one is sometimes, you know, you do have to go with a greenfield, right? Like, someone has built a career, they want to gain confidence, they want to ask you questions, they want to trust you that you don't lose data, they want to make sure that you do say the things that you want to say. And so, sometimes it's about building trust and building that relationship.And developers are right. Like, there's a bunch of products out there. Like, why should I trust you? And so, a little easier time, probably now, that you know, with the CIOs wanting to cut costs, and now you have an excuse to go back to the executive team and say, “Look, I made you look smart. We get to [unintelligible 00:17:35], you know, our systems can scale to this.” That's easy. Or the second one is we do, you know, we'll start with some side use case or a greenfield. But both exists, and I would say 65% is probably rip-outs.Corey: One question, I love to, I wouldn't call it ambush, but definitely come up with, the catches some folks by surprise is one of the ways I like to sort out zealots from people who are focused on business problems. Do have an example of a data streaming workload for which Redpanda would not be a great fit?Alex: Yeah. Database-style queries are not a fit. And so, think that there was a streaming engine before there was trying to build a database on top of it, and, like—and probably it does work in some low volume of traffic, like, say 5, 10 megabytes per second, but when you get to actual large scale, it just it doesn't work. And it doesn't work because but what Redpanda is, it gives you two properties as a developer. You can add data to the end or you can truncate the head, right?And so, because those are your only two operations on the log, then you have to build this entire caching level to be able to give this database semantics. And so, do you know, I think for that the future isn't for us to build a database, just as an example, it's really to almost invert it. It's like, hey, what if we make our format an open format like Apache Iceberg and then bring in your favorite database? Like, bring in, you know, Snowflake or Athena or Trina or Spark or [unintelligible 00:18:54] or [unintelligible 00:18:55] or whatever the other [unintelligible 00:18:56] of great databases that are better than we are, and doing, you know, just MPP, right, like a massively parallelizable database, do that, and then the job for us, for [unintelligible 00:19:05], let me just structure your log in a way that allows you to query, right? And so, for us, when we announced the $100 million dollar Series C funding, it's like, I'm going to put the data in an iceberg format so you can go and query it with the other ten databases. And there are a better job than we are at that than we are.Corey: It's frankly, refreshing to see a vendor that knows where, okay, this is where we start and this is where we stop because it just seems that there's been an industry-wide push for a while now to oh, you built a component in a larger system that works super well. Now, expand to do everything else in the architectural diagram. And you suddenly have databases trying to be network transport layers and queues trying to be data warehouses, and it just doesn't work that way. It just it feels like oh, this is a terrible approach to solving this particular problem. And what's worse, from my mind, is that people who hadn't heard of you before look at you through this lens that does not put you in your best light, and, “Oh, this is a terrible database.” Well, it's not supposed to be one.Alex: [laugh].Corey: But it also—it puts them off as a result. Have you faced pressure to expand beyond your core competency from either investors or customers or analysts or, I don't know, the voices late at night that I hear and I assume everyone else does, too?Alex: Exactly. The 3 a.m. voice that I have to take my phone and take a voice note because it's like, I don't want to lose this idea. Totally. For us. I think there's pressures, like, hey, you built this great engine. Why don't you add, like, the latest, you know, soup de jour in systems was like a vector database.I was like, “This doesn't even make any sense.” For me, it's, I want to do one thing really well. And I generally call it internally, ‘the ring zero.' It's, if you think of the internet, right, like, as a computer, especially with this mode to what we talked about earlier in a BYOC, like, we could be the best ring zero, the best sort of like, you know, messaging platform for people to build real-time applications. And then that's the case and there's just so much low-hanging fruit for us.Like, the developer experience wasn't great for other systems, like, why don't we focus on the last mile, like, making that developer, you know, successful at doing this one thing as opposed to be an average and a bunch of other a hundred products? And until we feel, honestly, that we've done a phenomenal job at that—I think we still have some roadmap to get there—I don't want to expand. And, like, if there's pressure, my answer is, like… look, the market is big enough. We don't have to do it. We're still, you know, growing.I think it's obviously not trivial and I'm kind of trivializing a bunch of problems from a business perspective. I'm not trying to degrade anyone else. But for us, it's just being focused. This is what we do well. And bring every other technology that makes you successful. I don't really care. I just want to make this part well.Corey: I think that that is something that's under-appreciated. I feel like I should get over at one point to something that's been nagging at the back of my mind. Some would call it a personal attack and I suppose I'll let them, but what I find interesting is your background. Historically, you were a distributed systems engineer at very large scale. And you apparently wrote the first version of Redpanda yourself in—was it C or C++?Alex: C++.Corey: Yeah. And now you are the CEO of a company that is clearly doing very well. Have you gotten the hell out of production yet? The reason I ask this is I have worked in a number of companies where the founder was also the initial engineer and then they invariably treated main as their feature branch and the rest of us all had to work around them to keep them from, you know, destroying everything we were trying to build around us, due to missing context. In other words, how annoyed with you are your engineers on any given afternoon?Alex: [laugh]. Yeah. I would say that as a company builder now, if I may say that, is the team is probably the thing I'm the most proud of. They're just so talented, such good [unintelligible 00:22:47] of humans. And so—group of humans—I stopped coding about two years ago, roughly.So, the company is four-and-a-half years old, really the first two-and-a-half years old, the first one, two years, definitely, I was personally putting in, like, tons and tons of hours working on the code. It was a ton of fun. To me, one of the most rewarding technical projects I've ever had a chance to do. I still read pull requests, though, just so that when I have a conversation with a technical leader, I don't be, like, I have no clue how the transactions work. So, I still have to read the code, but I don't write any more code and my heart was a little broken when my dev prod team removed my write access to the GitHub repo.We got SOC2 compliance, and they're like, “You can't have access to being an admin on Google domains, and you're no longer able to write into main.” And so, I think as a—I don't know, maybe my identity—myself identity is that of a builder, and I think as long as I personally feel like I'm building, today, it's not code, but you know, is the company and [unintelligible 00:23:41] sort of culture, then I feel okay [laugh]. But yeah, I no longer write code. And the last story on that, is this—an engineer of ours, his name is [Stefan 00:23:51], he's like, “Hey, so Alex wrote this semaphore”—this was actually two days ago—and so they posted a video, and I commented, I was like, “Hey, this was the context of semaphore. I'm sorry for this bug I caused.” But yeah, at least I still remember some context for them.Corey: What's fun is watching things continue to outpace and outgrow you. I mean, one of the hard parts of building a company is the realization that every person you hire for a thing that's now getting off of your plate is better at that thing than you are. It's a constant experience of being humbled. And at some point, things wind up outpacing you to the point where, at least in my case, I've been on calls with customers and I explained how we did some things and how it worked and had to be corrected by my team of, “Well. That used to be true, however…” like, “Oh, dear Lord. I'm falling behind.” And that's always been a weird feeling for me.Alex: Totally. You know, it's the feeling of being—before I think I became a CEO, I was a highly comped  engineer and did a competent, to the extent that it allowed me to build this product. And then you start doing all of these things and you're incompetent, obviously, by definition because you haven't done those things and so there's like that discomfort [laugh]. But I have to get it done because no one else wants to do, whatever, like say, like, you know, rev ops or marketing or whatever.And then you find somebody who's great and you're like, oh my God, I was like, I was so poor tactically at doing this thing. And it's definitely humbling every day. And it's almost it's, like, gosh, you're just—this year was kind of this role where you're just, like, mediocre at, like, a whole lot of things as a company, but you're the only person that has to do the job because you have the context and you just have to go and do it. And so, it's definitely humbling. And in some ways, I'm learning, so for me today, it's still a lot of fun to learn.Corey: This is a little more in the weeds, I suppose, but I always love to ask people these questions. Because I used to be naive, which meant that I had hope and I saw a brighter future in technology. I now know that was all a lie. But I used to believe that out there was some company whose internal infrastructure for what they'd built was glorious and it would be amazing. And I knew I would never work there, nor what I want to, because when everything's running perfectly, all I can really do is mess that up; there's no way to win and a bunch of ways to lose.But I found that place doesn't exist. Every time I talk to someone about how they built the thing that they built and I ask them, “If you were starting over from scratch, what would you do differently?” The answer often distills down to, “Oh, everything.” Because it's an organically evolving system that oh, yeah, everything's easier the second time. At least you get to find new failure modes go in that way. When you look back at how you designed it originally, are there any missteps that you could have saved yourself a whole lot of grief by not making the first time?Alex: Gosh, so many things. But if I were to give Hollywood highlights on these things, something that [unintelligible 00:26:35] is, does well is exposing these high-level data types of, like, streams, and lists and maps and et cetera. And I was like, “Well, why couldn't streams offer this as a first-class citizen?” And we got some things well which I think would still do, like the whole [thread recorder 00:26:49] could—like, the fundamentals of the engine I will still do the same. But, you know, exposing new programming models earlier in the life of the product, I think would have allowed us to capture even more wildly different use cases.But now we kind of have this production engine, we have to support Fortune 2000, so you know, it's kind of like a very delicate evolution of the product. Definitely would have changed—I would have added, like, custom data types upfront, I would have pushed a little harder on I think WebAssembly than we did originally. Man, I could just go on for—like, [added detail 00:27:21], I would definitely have changed things. Like, I would have pressed on the first—on the version of the cloud that we talked about early on, that as the first deployment mode. If we go back through the stack of all of the products you had, it's funny, like, 11 products that are surfaced to the customers to, like, business lines, I would change fundamental things about just [laugh], you know, everything else. I think that's maybe the curse of the expert. Like, you know, you could always find improvements.Corey: Oh, always. I still look back at my career before starting this place when I was working in a bunch of finance companies, and—I'll never forget this; it was over a decade ago—we were building out our architecture in AWS, and doing a deal with a large finance company. And they said, “Cool, where's your data center?” And I said, “Oh, it's AWS.” And they said, “Ha ha ha ha. Where's your data center?”And that was oh, okay, great. Now, it feels like if that's their reaction, they have not kept pace with the times. It feels it is easier to go to a lot of very serious enterprises with very serious businesses and serious workload concerns attendant to those and not get laughed out of the room because you didn't wind up doing a multi-million dollar data center build out that, with an eye toward making it look as enterprise-y as possible.Alex: Yeah. Okay, so here's, I think, maybe something a little bit controversial. I think that's true. People are moving to the cloud, and I don't think that that idea, especially when we go when we talk to banks, is true. They're like, “Hey, I have this contract with one of the hybrid clouds.”—you know, it's usually with two of them, and then you're like—“This is my workload. I want to spend $70 million or $100 million. Who could give me the biggest discount?” And then you kind of shop it around.But what we are seeing is that effectively, the data transfer costs are so expensive and running this for so much this large volume of traffic is still so, so expensive, that there is an inverse [unintelligible 00:29:09] to host from some category of the workload where you don't have dynamism. Actually hosted in your data center is, like, a huge boom in terms of cost efficiencies for the companies, especially where we are and especially in finances—you mentioned that—if you're trying to trade and you have this, like, steady state line from nine to five, whatever, eight to four, whenever the markets open, it's actually relatively cost-efficient because you can measure hey, look, you know, the New York Stock Exchange is 1.5 gigabytes per second at market close. Like, I could provision my hardware to beat this. And like, it'll be that I don't need this dynamism that the cloud gives me.And so yeah, it's kind of fascinating that for us because we offered the self-hosted Redpanda which can adapt to super low latencies with kernel parameter tuning, and the cloud due to the tiered storage, we talked about S3 being [unintelligible 00:29:52] to, so it's been really fun to participate in deployments where we have both. And you couldn't—they couldn't look more different. I mean, it's almost looks like two companies.Corey: One last question before we wind up calling it an episode. I think I saw something fly by on Twitter a while back as I slowly returned to the platform—no, I'm not calling it X—something you're doing involving a scholarship. Can you tell me a bit more about that?Alex: Yeah. So, you know, I'm a Latino CEO, first generation in the States, and some of the things that I felt really frustrated with, growing up that, like, I feel fortunate because I got to [unintelligible 00:30:25] that is that, you know, people were just—that look like me are probably given some bullshit QA jobs, so like, you know, behemoth job, I think, for a bank. And so, I wanted to change that. And so, we give money and mentorship to people and we release all of the intellectual property. And so, we mentor someone—actually, anyone from underrepresented backgrounds—for three months.We give then, like, 1200 bucks a month—or 1500, I can't remember—mentorship from our top principal level engineers that have worked at Amazon and Google and Facebook and basically the world's top companies. And so, they meet with them one hour a week, we give them money, they could sit in the couch if they want to. No one has to [unintelligible 00:31:06]. And all we're trying to do is, like, “Hey, if you are part of this group, go and try to build something super hard.” [laugh].And often their minds, which is great, and they're like, “I want to build an OpenAI competitor in three months, and here's the week-by-week progress.” Or, “I want to build a new storage engine, new database in three months.” And that's the kind of people that we want to help, these like, super ambitious, that just hasn't had a chance to be mentored by some of the world's best engineers. And I just want to help them. Like, we—this is a non-scalable project. I meet with them once a week. I don't want to have a team of, like, ten people.Like, to me, I feel like their most valuable thing I could do is to give them my time and to help them mentor. I was like, “Hey, let's think about this problem. Let's decompose this. How do you think about this?” And then bring you the best engineers that I, you know, that work for—with me, and let me help you think about problems differently and give you some money.And we just don't care how you use the time or the money; we just want people to work on hard problems. So, it's active. It runs once a year, and if anyone is listening to this, if you want to send it to your friends, we'd love to have that application. It's for anyone in the world, too, as long as we can send the person a check [laugh]. You know, my head of finance is not going to walk to a Moneygram—which we have done in the past—but other than that, as long as you have a bank account that we can send the check to, you should be able to apply.Corey: That is a compelling offer, particularly in the current macro environment that we find ourselves faced in. We'll definitely put a link to that into the [show notes 00:32:32]. I really want to thank you for taking the time to, I guess, get me up to speed on what it is you're doing. If people want to learn more where's the best place for them to go?Alex: On Twitter, my handle is @emaxerrno, which stands for the largest error in the kernel. I felt like that was apt for my handle. So, that's one. Feel free to find me on the community Slack. There's a Slack button on the website redpanda.com on the top right. I'm always there if you want to DM me. Feel free to stop by. And yeah, thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun.Corey: Likewise. I look forward to the next time. Alex Gallego, CEO and founder at Redpanda. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an insulting comment that I will almost certainly never read because they have not figured out how to get data from one place to another.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Divorce is one of those things that can shatter your self confidence, leave you feeling guilty and ashamed and can wreak havoc on your mental and physical health. On this episode my guest, Certified Divorce Recovery Coach Leah Marie Mazur and I discuss how to walk through the journey of divorce and come out empowered on the other side, no matter the circumstance. Drawing on her own expereince, Leah Marie shares the steps to becoming empowered through divorce as we both share our own journey's and experiences that have led us to much healthier and happier marriages today.Leah Marie specializes in helping women release guilt, shame and feelings of failure so that they can find acceptance, rebuild their self confidence, and thrive after divorce. She also provides a safe, judgment free community for women rebuilding after divorce in her private Facebook group called Divorced and EmpoweredEpisode Transcript:[01:07] Dr. Alex: Hello. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host. Dr. Alex winson. ridley. I'm really excited to be joined today by leah Marie. I realized I didn't ask her last name, but mazor, who is a certified divorce recovery coach for women and the founder of mindfully Ready, LLC. She specializes in helping women release guilt, shame and feelings of failure so that they can find acceptance, rebuild their self confidence, and thrive after divorce. She also provides a safe, judgment free community for women rebuilding after divorce in her private Facebook group called divorced and Empowered. So, leah, welcome to the show.[01:46] Leah Marie: Thank you. Thanks for having me.[01:48] Dr. Alex: Yeah, I'm excited to it's weird to say I'm excited to have this conversation, but I think it's one that is needed for many of us. I know I have been through divorced, I'm in my second marriage, and fortunately that's all going well. But many of my clients and many of our listeners have either been through or are in that place of potentially looking at the experience of divorce. Maybe to start off, I usually start with just kind of asking your story and how you have arrived at doing what you do and then we'll flow from there.[02:28] Leah Marie: Yeah, I'll go back a little ways. When I was 16, I actually witnessed my mom have an asthma attack in our home and pass away, and she was only 41 years old. And then only five years later, my dad died of pancreatic cancer. So by 21 years old, my parents were gone. I'm an only child, and I really kind of had to just figure everything out on my own. And what I didn't realize at the time was those traumatic losses caused really deep seated abandonment issues. And I had this really big fear of being alone. So I coped with that by basically becoming a serial monogamist. I just hopped from relationship to relationship like they were my buoys to keep me afloat. I just didn't know any other way. And I was afraid to be alone. I didn't know how to do that. So after my second divorce, that was my wake up call where I was like, okay, leah, obviously there's a pattern here. There's something going on. If you really want to find happiness, you're going to have to figure this out. So that's when I faced my fear of being alone, I had to learn how to stand on my own 2ft and I did all that work on myself that really I should have done years before. The therapy, meditation, journaling, gratitude, practice, I mean, all the things to find myself again, rebuild my self confidence and know my worth and be able to feel confident just being alone. And so that changed everything. So I essentially was able to take all of those tools and strategies and create a framework for other women so that they can after divorce, they can learn how to embrace their independence and rebuild their self confidence and know their worth without having to go through all of that trial and error, essentially, that I...

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

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

In this episode, I have the opportunity to speak with Alex Hagerup who is solving the problem of using AI to take costs out of your business. Grant Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So today I have someone that I have been admiring by looking at his background, here with me today to talk about some amazing aspects of his journey to solve business problems leveraging technology, specifically AI which is quite cool. Anyway, let me stop right there. And welcome Alex Hager group. Hello, Alex. Alex Hey, Grant. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Grant Thank you. Thanks for being here today and for taking the time. I know you're getting ready to head off trans continental here pretty soon on a trip. So thanks for for jumping on this conversation here today. Alex Absolutely. It's exciting being able to travel again. So I going home to the Motherland for a few weeks is exciting. I haven't been there for more than a few days, for the last three years, actually. So I'm definitely excited. Grant Have have have the COVID situations and those numbers pretty good over there at this point. Alex Yeah, everything is fine. So Norway is completely open again. And it's all good. But But Norway was one of those countries that really looked down hard. And also since the US didn't allow non US residents to actually come back into the country. If you left. It was just a problematic situation to go to Europe in general. Wow. Grant Yeah. What a great opportunity to get home to family. Well, thanks for taking your time here with me today on this. So Vic AI. All right, who is Vic AI? What happened here? How to what are you? What are you solving? What what problem? Are you looking to address with Vic? Ai? Alex Yeah, absolutely. So I'll take a little bit of the background to set that up. So I, I've always been very interested in both accounting, finance and technology. So this is a company that lives in the intersection of those. My mom had her own accounting firm. So I grew up there, which probably influenced my interest for for accounting in general. And I built a couple of companies. But one that I spent three years with just prior to starting, Aki was a cloud ERP system, an accounting and accounting platform that was being used by about 30 40,000 companies back then it's about 80 90,000. Now, and during working there, you know, observe the sort of, let's say, the challenges of accounting and the manual, repetitiveness, the tediousness, all of that from, you know, every day you felt it? Grant Where? I mean, what is the excitement in that? Right? I mean, where's the excitement? Yeah. Did you credit that properly?  Alex Oh, gosh, yeah, exactly. So so we were we were just observing this. And then this was back in 2014 15. Just before we started with AI started having a new, you know, like a new summer or a new renaissance in a way and, and we were thinking like this has to be we can maybe like we can solve this in a better way than how the technology has solved it so far. And after some deliberation, we sort of thought that we could create AI algorithms that would be able to actually do accounting transaction processing better than humans. Grant Because that's a really key point I think you're making. So the way that we've been solving this problem up to this point has been, let me take the tasks that we do and just automate the tasks themselves. Right. In other words, let me take your actual transactional activities that you're working through, and just put some increased processing to that. That's how it's historically been done, right? Alex Yep. Correct. And that's been entirely driven by rules, right? So, you know, transaction, Uber, transportation, as, you know, rules based automation, right? And there are all sorts of problems with that. It's obviously better than doing everything manually, right? So we aren't we're progressing through stages there. If you go back before the spreadsheets, you know, everything was done entirely manually. So we are progressing here, but, but what we're building is not next face that comes off there, you know, what everyone is using today, all over the world. And, you know, AI will solve this in a more scalable and gracious way and more more effectively. So that was all right. Yeah. Grant Yeah. So real quick on that, can you articulate how is that different? Right? Because all of us come from this rules based way of thinking. So what is it that AI is going to do better? How will it do it differently than what we're used to? Alex Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a great question. It's kind of the essence as well. So when you when you look at how it happens today, it's not only rules are not only automation, it's automation, and a lot of human hours involved. So you can always ask yourself, why are all those human hours involved? If it's automation, right? So so it begs the question, right, so what happens in reality is that sort of rules and templates and RPA isn't sufficient, because there's so many edge cases, and there's so much variability in the world of accounting. So you know, rules only takes you so far. And then you have to staff up and have human cognitive reasoning step in and do the rest of it. So where AI comes in is that it can do both of those things. So it does the automation without rules, and it can do the reasoning that humans are there to do today. So I always say that AI is, is great at sort of mimicking that reasoning that humans are doing. So one of the areas that we're in is invoice processing. And when I give an invoice to any human, you know, it will always tell me, oh, that's the vendor, you know, that's the invoice number, lots of total costs. But that's not obvious to a computer. And if you're gonna write rules for every variability in the world, you can just end up writing too many rules. So it's just not a, it's not a great technology for it. And AI is way better. So it's just like in the early stages, so that's next sort of digital transformation, transformation journey that we're all. So as Grant So as you know, when you're working in the AI space, and you're saying, Oh, I'm going to apply AI to a particular problem, you end up building different models with different AI characteristics based on the nature of the problem, some more aggression based some more sort of classification based, as your people as your customers look to use your platform, do they get exposed to any of that? Are they even aware of what elements or aspects of AI are at play? Or? Or do they just jump in and start solving the problems they're used to, and then the right sort of AI model behind the scene is executing on their behalf? Alex Yeah, we've hidden all of that from our customers. So we do try to keep sort of Explainable AI in the way where our user interface is explaining why our AI predicted something. But we've kept all of the complexity, so sort of models and model training. And all of that is in the background, we decided to do like an end to end service where the customer, they don't really need to do anything technical. It's, it's, you know, just another SAS subscription that they're using, that they plug into one of their processes. And then we deal with all of the complexity of the models, both global models and AI models, specifically the same for each customer. So we keep all of that complexity hidden. Grant That's awesome. That way, I'm not touching any of that as the end user. So if I see the name Vic AI, I don't need to shy away and say, Oh, wait, I need to be an AI expert. It's more that this is the enabling technology. And it just turns out that you've made that simple for the people without needing to know that Wait a minute. So that brings a question on my use, you know, one of the challenges around AI is the whole notion around bias. And, and, and with the cognizance that's required for humans up to this point, and still largely today to do you know, counting processes. Therefore, that has the opportunity for some bias that comes in right terms of the way things get handled. How do you deal with that then in terms of applying AI so that that bias doesn't creep through? Alex Yeah, it's a great question. And it's a challenge for everything where we're data sets are involved in training, AI. So one of the ways that so one of The one of the good things with accounting data, if you start with that is that it's ultimately numbers and classifications. And you, you kind of want to have that, right? Because otherwise your your books of your business is wrong. So unless you want them to be wrong, you know, you have a very good incentive to keep this right. SO into SO, you know, I think we generally see kind of less less bias in accounting data, and then some other more like subjective data in a way. And then also we draw on data across 1000s and 1000s of customers. So we have customers in both Europe and the US and many other many other regions as well, but the little fewer and most of the concentration in Europe and US. And in all sorts of industries and all sorts of sizes, we have about 13,000 customers on the platform now. So when you start looking at such a wide data set, you also hopefully reduce some of some of that bias. And then you also have auditing processes that sort of sits at the end of their accounting. And hopefully also they'll you know, annually they'll catch corrections, and also fed in as well to make AI. So those are some of the tactics. Basically, it's all about keeping clean data, so that our predictions are accurate. That's really what we're trying to get to. Grant Yeah, boy, that's that's so critical, especially as you pointed out with the with the need to of course, be accurate for the business for sure. All right, so So let's say that you've got this data, you've cleaned it up, you've done the preparation, you're on the Vic AI platform, the question now in my mind becomes, therefore, what changes in the lives of the people that adopt this right and others, they may change? I'm supposing something about the way they do their daily work, or the way the CFO does certain things, or maybe even impact on regulations and audits. I mean, what's the impact of the organization when when this gets adopted?  Alex Yeah, I'm also in question. And I want to point out also that the beginning of getting getting live with Vicki AI isn't complex for a customer, because we built an automated system to ingest and clean their historical data, which then goes into our system automatically and train our AI algorithms so that when we go live, we have, you know, pretty good knowledge of what's going to be predicted. We know your system, we know your accounting, we know how you do things. So when you start pushing new transactions through our classification, accuracy is high. And there's no complexity for the customer. In that process, it basically happens automatically in the background. Once you are live with Vic AI, some things will will change. But it doesn't sort of change. Like overnight. One of the things with AI is it gets better and better over time. And one of the things we're driving towards is what we call full autonomy. And full autonomy is you know, the AI's version of automation. But it means that it has perceived this not to need human review. And that's when it's fully autonomous. So that's our sort of end goal with the autonomy of transactions is that, you know, the AI system is perfectly confident in the work that it has been doing. So it doesn't even ask a human to review it. So this this increases over time. So when you start with Aki, you, you have a you know, you have a better interface, you have a smoother operation, you have already probably 50% time reduction in the first month of using the system. Grant Let me stop you on that right there. 50%. So, that would be 50% of those that are doing sort of the daily operational activities, or is that of the CFO? Or who who is that, that that percent impacted? Alex Yeah, that's on the accounting team that is doing the processing. So if you're doing you know, if you have five people or if you have 15 people doing invoice processing, whether they are onshore or offshore, you know, just in the beginning, you can drastically reduce that, and then that percentage just increases over time because you're substituting the AI for for for human FTE. So basically, and and what we see is that everyone wants to do something else than just sit and do like data entry and accounting classification, right? You you, you can be more proactive, you can do more value added work than that. And we're sort of at that phase now where the AI can substitute that's partly augments and also fully run things autonomously. So when you put this in place, in the beginning, there is a little bit of effect right away but you know, you got to read the sign some of your some of your processes and some of your routines because you have a platform here now that is doing Most of the work for you, and you're just reviewing and you're reviewing the AI and training the AI to become more autonomous. So you've got a little on my mind shifts, and some sort of routines, you don't need to double and triple check, check in have four people involved in reviewing, you know, one thing because the AI can tell you how confident it is. And if it is very confident, maybe you can have one person review it in the beginning, and then eventually it will be fully autonomous. If it's less confident, then it will also tell you, and you can review it in more detail. So it's pretty, it's pretty, pretty fascinating. Grant It is dang fascinating. And I'm assuming that there are some that have run into this, and they've worried about their jobs, right? They're like, wait a minute, you're taking my tasks away from me? Do you have to help them overcome that fear and say, hey, you know, you're gonna move towards more value added activities within the organization? Have you run into that problem? Alex So it will we see is that it's, everyone is just squeezed on time, right? Everyone's trying to hit the deadline of the month, the clothes and all of that. So it there is no shortage of work to be done in the accounting piece. And, and just having, you know, having faster turnaround time having more accurate data, because AI is more accurate than humans, like it doesn't fat fingers thinks the same way. And when it's uncertain, it asked for a human verification, a human looks at it, and then you get more accurate than then all the way. So we see that, you know, there's no shortage of things to do. Everyone wants to progress their careers. And I don't really perceive that as an actual problem. But it is like a, you know, people think about that as a problem, but I don't think it is in reality. Grant So this has been several years and coming. When did you start this 2 to 3 years ago? Alex Yeah, early 2017, was 5 years. Grant Okay, that's, that's awesome. And you built this ground up, meaning all of AI development AI technology that your organization's created, right? Alex Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's been challenging. That's why it's taken taken quite a few years, as well as because you we started, you know, completely scratch, and we had to figure everything out. So one of the things that sets the KPI apart a little bit as part of our founding story, where we were able to start the company, we had access to a gigantic data sets of accounting transactions, and all corresponding documents to that. So that helped us just spend the first two years we just spent on data analysis, data science and machine learning development, because we had some thesis and theories that this could work, but we didn't know. So it just had to do that in the beginning, for for a couple of years. So when we saw that this actually has promised, like, we were predicting more and more accurately, and you know, we're gonna get to this inflection point where it's better to use PKI, that do not use PKI. And at that point, people will use it, and then, you know, continue growing more and more customers and more and more data and more and more corrections, and better and better predictions. So we realized we would get to that point. And then, you know, then we raised the seed round back in 2017. And, you know, started developing, Grant What a great journey. I love this story. So tell me about impact outcomes. So you talked about a large number of customers that are using the platform now, what is what's been the results that they've seen? Alex Yeah, so we see. So there's a couple of numbers that we that we statistically enroll from the from the customers, we see that customers have about 80% reduction in the overall time spent on the process. And that comes from two things. One is the percent of fully autonomous. So let's say you're 50%, fully autonomous, that means you spent zero time on 50% of your volume. And then that other part, we've drastically reduced the number of minutes in two seconds. For each transaction a human has to review because the AI has done all the upfront work, humans just reviewing it, rather than sort of processing it from scratch. So you're at seconds rather than minutes. This turns into sort of an 80% reduction in in time. You also have things that we do like prevent duplicate payments, and we have some fraud detection in the system. So you also have some of those benefits that can turn into multimillion dollar when you have a large enough cost base. And then we have audit trails in the system, which helps with figuring out you know, making sure that you know, all of the approvals are doing rights. If anyone has changed in amount or something. It's all logged into the system electronically. So you have some some compliance and auditing benefits from it as well. But right now the main, the main effective impact our customers have, and we typically sell to the mid market and enterprise. So these are larger organizations, they can have hundreds of 1000s, or millions even have sort of vendor bills per, per year, and a substantial amount of people and resources involved in dealing with that problem. So they see very significant ROI from it. Grant So to sell into that particular group, then I'm assuming you've got to have a decent amount of integrations into all of their incumbent systems, right, all of their ERP systems and CRM systems, etc. Right? What does that look like? Alex Yeah, that's, that's true. So we build out these connectors as we as we go, it does, for each connector, the first time we build it, it does take a little bit of time. And then once we have that connect, for instance, you know, to NetSuite or intact or Oracle, the, you know, the next customers that we bring on board, we can leverage the same connector. So it is it is some work initially to build out all of the ones that we need. And then you can grow and scale on top of that for the customer. This is no complexity like we're taking not on completely. So the only thing we need is to know what type of system they have. And we develop that connector as part of the offering. Grant So let's talk about looking to the future in terms of when I'm doing FPA, a financial planning and analysis and I'm, I'm looking at my numbers, and I want to leverage a view into the future. How does something like this help an organization with that? Alex Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful question. And a big passion of mine, actually. So what we're doing now sets us up to solve that specific problem. So if you think of where we are, now we're in accounting. And what you're talking about is more finance, which is what we'll dive into the idea and the vision that we are getting to is that we want to develop an AI that's basically is a real time cost optimization engine that serves predictions and monitors that in real time, we will be able to help you project kind of what your cost base should be, and how you could reduce spend in various categories and with various vendors. That's that's the piece that we're trying to solve as part of that equation of the of the future. So that you always have multiple pieces of the accounting equation, you have the cost side, you have the revenue side, you have adjustments and close process. And we're trying to stay within one of them for now. And make sure we sold provide real true value in that swim lane before we move on from from there. Grant Yes, I think that part's fascinating, as well, I've seen and interacted with organizations that are trying to leverage shift P and A even into capacity and resource planning, and trying to figure out what that looks like, and especially with it what's going on in the world today, right, with certainly high inflation and certainly supply chain challenges. The need for this kind of capability, I think is dire. Right. I think having the ability to provide something like this sooner rather than later is really crucial. Alex Yeah, definitely. And I think the technology has the ability to hold much more context and see data across all of the things that buck forms, like ours can do in in, in a compliant and anonymized ways, you can see data patterns, you know, across different companies. So you can inform yourself, no more than just sitting looking at your own data sitting inside your own office and their own silo. So that I will, you know, in the future greatly help with, you know, capacity planning, or, you know, cost reduction initiatives and so on. So I think that's one of the powers of sort of, like the cloud combined with with AI and big data, if it's leveraged in the in the right way. Grant And so if I go back just one moment on something, so if we take an AI model, and and we take it through a data set, and we were able to get sort of two key views at it, one is sort of more hindsight, right? One sort of looking backwards, right? It's the AI is looking at it saying here were the drivers that that contributed to the certain behavior, right? So it's more analytic Right. But then there's the other style of using it, which is looking forward, which is more predictive. And oh, okay, here's, here's where based on things we've seen, here's what the high predictive sort of correlations are opportunities are things that we expect moving in the future. When you when you look at Vic AI, and everything that you're providing, do you focus more on one side versus the other? Or you're combining both of those views together? Alex Hmm...yeah, we so in the, in the course of the work in the platform we have now, so every thing we do is a prediction on new data. So that means a new so if you sort of break it down into like, there's a new signal or a new transaction, or a new document coming in, that we've never seen before. And, and the platform then predicts what this is, Donald to vary like line item level detail, how to classify it, and so on. So it does predict this based on the algorithmic design, and the historical data that it seen both for this customer and globally. So it sort of is our engines are purely predictive in terms of what they're trying to predict what's going on. And you can extend that to two other parts, like we just discussed on the cost side as well. You can predict how how you should, you know, maybe they'll just classify this cost, but like, how, what your cost base should consist of a new look at categories. And you can sort of predict this based on your own current spend your growth in the company and maybe other comparable companies, so you can start predicting a journey based on the same technologies. Grant Awesome. So quick question for you, as COVID started to hit, obviously, a couple of years ago, and large companies have their AI models, you know, out there deployed, we're running, suddenly that disruption created an impact to the way in which business was typically being done, right. Not all industries were hit. But certainly a lot of industries are hit. And therefore, business operations changed. And the way in which people conducted business altered, which meant then, that those models were making assumptions based on former operational models, right former ways in which people executed, and therefore invalidated some of those predictive characteristics or capabilities of those models, which meant then, as you know that they had to go do some rework, right had to reduce retraining, right and update the data sets and so forth. So to what degree does Vic AI continually learn, right, so as you pointed out, you get a new document you've never seen before. At some point, I'm assuming it pulls it into its corpus, right? And it continues to learn or relearn on that. Can you talk to that? Alex Yeah. And it's a key feature of the platform, which, which is actually pretty enjoyable when you see it working in reality. So we, so for every transaction that goes through our platform, or every invoice or vendor Bill divest process through our platform, that leaves that leaves us with some learnings. So, you know, it's either it's corrected, and we made a prediction and a human chose to change it. Right? That is something that is fed back into our data set, and also our learning database of sort of, why would that ever happen? What did we get wrong in this prediction? And so for every prediction that we do, we learn something because if we predict something, and it's correct, we also learned something. So you know, we have millions of transactions just flowing through the system every month. And for each of them, we learn something so the system then improves basically, for each transaction that goes through the system. The level of, you know, transaction processing we're at isn't really affected by kind of like global changes, like you mentioned, for for COVID. Like, the only thing that could happen is you suddenly have some some new transaction because you need to do something differently, or you may have fewer transaction, which then just you know, is additive to our system. So you know, we will get something maybe we'll have lower confidence on this because this is something new. So you know, you will have a human come in there and tell the system what to do with this. And then that will be additive to the to the data sets and, and all the algorithmic design, if that makes sense. Grant It makes total sense. Absolutely. Yeah. And I loved how you tied the two together which is, well, I'm still gonna have the transaction. Although the world the macro world around me is changing the transaction occurs while may change is the rate of them. or how, or maybe even maybe even the units or the number of units, etc, right things like that will certainly or could change because of disruption. Being able to predict or understand how the organization can respond to, to disruption, I think becomes more and more critical, as we seem to continue to have more disruptions in business. Right? That happens a lot. Alex Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, what happened with with COVID specifically was also a lot of disruption in how people worked. And, you know, they were used to working from home and, you know, we have some, some of our customers, they have millions of invoices a year, which means, like, 1000s of invoices a day and, you know, suddenly you have, your whole workforce is like, not as productive as they were when something like this happens. But you know, you still need or your your system to be updated, you still need to pay your vendors on time. And otherwise, you know, you'll incur fees, and it'll so just like having an AI system in there that doesn't sort of care about those things. It has the same throughput and outputs 24/7 all year around, makes you very resilient for for sort of things like that are like workforce changes. Grant So that's the right word resilient, you want that organizational resilience, and as the point I wanted to drive out, which is, even though there's these disruptions that take place, most of which are outside of our control, getting our companies into a position to handle and respond properly or well, to that, or to pivot is what organizational resilience is about. And my experience has been AI is one of those tools to help us do that. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Okay, I want to ask you a very forward looking question. Right? You're ready? Yeah, sure. All right. So I'm not going to ask what are you going to do Norway? Or what I'm asking is tell me about blockchain? What does that mean to you in your world and things that you're doing? Alex Yeah, I mean, that's, we've been thinking about that. And, to be, to be honest, we haven't really seen yet the connection between specifically what we do and how to leverage a blockchain effectively, I like the technology of a blockchain is really awesome. And it can unlock a lot of things. But it doesn't mean that you need to use it for everything. One thing that I think could be an interesting exploration is when you start looking at accounting, ERP data, and whether the accounting systems could run and have their data in a blockchain that is verifiable, to prevent all sorts of, you know, fiddling with the data. That could be an interesting application for for blockchain in in our area. And there's clearly things around, you know, like money movement and value movements that blockchain can solve pretty pretty well. So just in the layer where we are, we haven't really found a great application that applies to us with the blockchain. Yes, but I think that technology is super fascinating. And I think that there are many areas where it is a superior technology to sort of like the trust based system that we have now. And it's an epic thing, when you can run that successfully in a resilient way. Grant When you think and that that makes a lot of sense. It's, it's got some, as you pointed out some interesting potential benefits to the industry. But I suppose at some point, it doesn't really matter where the transaction sits for you, right, in terms of the problem that you're solving, right? In other words, whether it's sitting on a blockchain or it's somewhere else and an Oracle ERP or whatever, right to it, at some point, that probably doesn't matter. Right? Alex Yeah, for us, the Store of the the sort of the store of the data ultimately is for us in the ERP system. And we are not an ERP system, we just layer on top of the ERP systems. So that is the ultimate sort of storage of the data. And that's where if, if, if at all the like blockchain technology could be leveraged to, to kind of store data in in a safe and transparent way. But there's also some new or some transparency issues with accounting data as well, that's going to be kept in mind. Grant Yeah, I would imagine that one of the greatest use cases to for what it is you provide is in the area of fraud to fraud detection, right the ability to regardless of where the data sitting, and regardless if it's on a blockchain or in an ERP system, you Your ai i would imagine would help to discover or uncover some of those potential opportunities. Is that accurate? Alex Yeah. And you have this this platform benefit as well is what if one customer sort of reports. So what happens a lot is just invoice fraud, right? You have, you have invoices that are not from the vendor that they appear to be from. And you have different variations of trying to change payment details, and you know, all of that. So when you see when you see data across 1000s of customers, you, you have a way of detecting those things, and at least flagging them for like, Hey, someone should have an extra look at this, because something may be up, if we're all good with it, that's fine. But you know, have an extra Look at this. And for people, you know, when we, as people, when we're doing something for six hours straight, you know, the last few hours, we're just like, you know, we're just clicking enter and trying to get, you know, the day over with, and, and things can easily pass by that shouldn't pass by. So this is this is problematic in two ways. Number one, your accounting data could end up being wrong, like you just have things that are misclassified. And then you can have things that are, you know, paid, or you're paid twice, or you pay the wrong thing, or you pay an extra zero, you have all of these things that are just humans are it's easy for humans to do those mistakes. And you just want to sort of get rid though those with a technology that can help you remove all of those errors. And we know how, you know, a billion dollar cost base? Just you know, half a percent is, you know, quite a lot. Grant A big number. Yeah, it is. Yeah, you'd hate to get false positives on a fraud situation, right, where you might be accusing someone that, that they've conducted fraud, when in fact it was was just a mistake. This is fascinating technology. So, Alex, where do people go to? I mean, where can you point them to, to learn more about you and your organization? Alex Yeah, I mean, the website is, is the safest place to go right now. So just go to Vic.ai. And we have, we have a good bit of marketing collateral and informative collateral blog posts, we try to educate the customers and the finance team. So finance teams are interestingly, you know, they're, they're not buying new things that often because you know, your ERP system, you have it for a very long time, which which you definitely should. So you know, you're not like a high. There's no high velocity necessarily on procuring things for the finance team. And, and we try to do a lot of educational material as well, because AI is new, but it has true effects or the finance team, and they'll find them blog, blog posts and collateral and can happily reach out to us and we'll help guide anyone through the process. Grant Oh, okay. That's, that's awesome. Alex, you've been so generous with your time here today, especially as you're getting ready to jet off into the sunrise just real quick. Any last comments that you want to share? Alex Um, I think this has been this has been a cool chats. It's been it's been really good. I love talking about, of course, AI and our company, but also the technologies in general. So I think this has been been super cool. And I think that it, you know, it's just wanted to say that we've we've spent a long time building the platform, so glad it's not complex for the customers right now, all of the AI performance, which is actually mind blowing, but you have no level of complexity. So, you know, if you if you want to get started with with AI for a function, this is a very specific function within invoice processing, where you can deploy AI, get the effects out of it with no complexities, and we'll deal with all of that for you. Grant That's actually the beauty of this, you know, to be able to get that down to a few points. Now splint clicks on a SaaS solution. They have all that taken care of, I've written my share of AI code, and oh, my goodness, the fact that you've handled that so seamlessly for the business people is huge. Nice job. Really great job on that. Yeah. Thanks. Great. Alex Thank you. Grant Thanks for taking the time today. Again, Alex. My gosh, this is awesome, everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of ClickAI Radio. And until next time, go check out Vic.ai. Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit clickairadio.com Now.  

In this episode, I have the opportunity to speak with Alex Hagerup who is solving the problem of using AI to take costs out of your business. Grant Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So today I have someone that I have been admiring by looking at his background, here with me today to talk about some amazing aspects of his journey to solve business problems leveraging technology, specifically AI which is quite cool. Anyway, let me stop right there. And welcome Alex Hager group. Hello, Alex. Alex Hey, Grant. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Grant Thank you. Thanks for being here today and for taking the time. I know you're getting ready to head off trans continental here pretty soon on a trip. So thanks for for jumping on this conversation here today. Alex Absolutely. It's exciting being able to travel again. So I going home to the Motherland for a few weeks is exciting. I haven't been there for more than a few days, for the last three years, actually. So I'm definitely excited. Grant Have have have the COVID situations and those numbers pretty good over there at this point. Alex Yeah, everything is fine. So Norway is completely open again. And it's all good. But But Norway was one of those countries that really looked down hard. And also since the US didn't allow non US residents to actually come back into the country. If you left. It was just a problematic situation to go to Europe in general. Wow. Grant Yeah. What a great opportunity to get home to family. Well, thanks for taking your time here with me today on this. So Vic AI. All right, who is Vic AI? What happened here? How to what are you? What are you solving? What what problem? Are you looking to address with Vic? Ai? Alex Yeah, absolutely. So I'll take a little bit of the background to set that up. So I, I've always been very interested in both accounting, finance and technology. So this is a company that lives in the intersection of those. My mom had her own accounting firm. So I grew up there, which probably influenced my interest for for accounting in general. And I built a couple of companies. But one that I spent three years with just prior to starting, Aki was a cloud ERP system, an accounting and accounting platform that was being used by about 30 40,000 companies back then it's about 80 90,000. Now, and during working there, you know, observe the sort of, let's say, the challenges of accounting and the manual, repetitiveness, the tediousness, all of that from, you know, every day you felt it? Grant Where? I mean, what is the excitement in that? Right? I mean, where's the excitement? Yeah. Did you credit that properly?  Alex Oh, gosh, yeah, exactly. So so we were we were just observing this. And then this was back in 2014 15. Just before we started with AI started having a new, you know, like a new summer or a new renaissance in a way and, and we were thinking like this has to be we can maybe like we can solve this in a better way than how the technology has solved it so far. And after some deliberation, we sort of thought that we could create AI algorithms that would be able to actually do accounting transaction processing better than humans. Grant Because that's a really key point I think you're making. So the way that we've been solving this problem up to this point has been, let me take the tasks that we do and just automate the tasks themselves. Right. In other words, let me take your actual transactional activities that you're working through, and just put some increased processing to that. That's how it's historically been done, right? Alex Yep. Correct. And that's been entirely driven by rules, right? So, you know, transaction, Uber, transportation, as, you know, rules based automation, right? And there are all sorts of problems with that. It's obviously better than doing everything manually, right? So we aren't we're progressing through stages there. If you go back before the spreadsheets, you know, everything was done entirely manually. So we are progressing here, but, but what we're building is not next face that comes off there, you know, what everyone is using today, all over the world. And, you know, AI will solve this in a more scalable and gracious way and more more effectively. So that was all right. Yeah. Grant Yeah. So real quick on that, can you articulate how is that different? Right? Because all of us come from this rules based way of thinking. So what is it that AI is going to do better? How will it do it differently than what we're used to? Alex Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a great question. It's kind of the essence as well. So when you when you look at how it happens today, it's not only rules are not only automation, it's automation, and a lot of human hours involved. So you can always ask yourself, why are all those human hours involved? If it's automation, right? So so it begs the question, right, so what happens in reality is that sort of rules and templates and RPA isn't sufficient, because there's so many edge cases, and there's so much variability in the world of accounting. So you know, rules only takes you so far. And then you have to staff up and have human cognitive reasoning step in and do the rest of it. So where AI comes in is that it can do both of those things. So it does the automation without rules, and it can do the reasoning that humans are there to do today. So I always say that AI is, is great at sort of mimicking that reasoning that humans are doing. So one of the areas that we're in is invoice processing. And when I give an invoice to any human, you know, it will always tell me, oh, that's the vendor, you know, that's the invoice number, lots of total costs. But that's not obvious to a computer. And if you're gonna write rules for every variability in the world, you can just end up writing too many rules. So it's just not a, it's not a great technology for it. And AI is way better. So it's just like in the early stages, so that's next sort of digital transformation, transformation journey that we're all. So as Grant So as you know, when you're working in the AI space, and you're saying, Oh, I'm going to apply AI to a particular problem, you end up building different models with different AI characteristics based on the nature of the problem, some more aggression based some more sort of classification based, as your people as your customers look to use your platform, do they get exposed to any of that? Are they even aware of what elements or aspects of AI are at play? Or? Or do they just jump in and start solving the problems they're used to, and then the right sort of AI model behind the scene is executing on their behalf? Alex Yeah, we've hidden all of that from our customers. So we do try to keep sort of Explainable AI in the way where our user interface is explaining why our AI predicted something. But we've kept all of the complexity, so sort of models and model training. And all of that is in the background, we decided to do like an end to end service where the customer, they don't really need to do anything technical. It's, it's, you know, just another SAS subscription that they're using, that they plug into one of their processes. And then we deal with all of the complexity of the models, both global models and AI models, specifically the same for each customer. So we keep all of that complexity hidden. Grant That's awesome. That way, I'm not touching any of that as the end user. So if I see the name Vic AI, I don't need to shy away and say, Oh, wait, I need to be an AI expert. It's more that this is the enabling technology. And it just turns out that you've made that simple for the people without needing to know that Wait a minute. So that brings a question on my use, you know, one of the challenges around AI is the whole notion around bias. And, and, and with the cognizance that's required for humans up to this point, and still largely today to do you know, counting processes. Therefore, that has the opportunity for some bias that comes in right terms of the way things get handled. How do you deal with that then in terms of applying AI so that that bias doesn't creep through? Alex Yeah, it's a great question. And it's a challenge for everything where we're data sets are involved in training, AI. So one of the ways that so one of The one of the good things with accounting data, if you start with that is that it's ultimately numbers and classifications. And you, you kind of want to have that, right? Because otherwise your your books of your business is wrong. So unless you want them to be wrong, you know, you have a very good incentive to keep this right. SO into SO, you know, I think we generally see kind of less less bias in accounting data, and then some other more like subjective data in a way. And then also we draw on data across 1000s and 1000s of customers. So we have customers in both Europe and the US and many other many other regions as well, but the little fewer and most of the concentration in Europe and US. And in all sorts of industries and all sorts of sizes, we have about 13,000 customers on the platform now. So when you start looking at such a wide data set, you also hopefully reduce some of some of that bias. And then you also have auditing processes that sort of sits at the end of their accounting. And hopefully also they'll you know, annually they'll catch corrections, and also fed in as well to make AI. So those are some of the tactics. Basically, it's all about keeping clean data, so that our predictions are accurate. That's really what we're trying to get to. Grant Yeah, boy, that's that's so critical, especially as you pointed out with the with the need to of course, be accurate for the business for sure. All right, so So let's say that you've got this data, you've cleaned it up, you've done the preparation, you're on the Vic AI platform, the question now in my mind becomes, therefore, what changes in the lives of the people that adopt this right and others, they may change? I'm supposing something about the way they do their daily work, or the way the CFO does certain things, or maybe even impact on regulations and audits. I mean, what's the impact of the organization when when this gets adopted?  Alex Yeah, I'm also in question. And I want to point out also that the beginning of getting getting live with Vicki AI isn't complex for a customer, because we built an automated system to ingest and clean their historical data, which then goes into our system automatically and train our AI algorithms so that when we go live, we have, you know, pretty good knowledge of what's going to be predicted. We know your system, we know your accounting, we know how you do things. So when you start pushing new transactions through our classification, accuracy is high. And there's no complexity for the customer. In that process, it basically happens automatically in the background. Once you are live with Vic AI, some things will will change. But it doesn't sort of change. Like overnight. One of the things with AI is it gets better and better over time. And one of the things we're driving towards is what we call full autonomy. And full autonomy is you know, the AI's version of automation. But it means that it has perceived this not to need human review. And that's when it's fully autonomous. So that's our sort of end goal with the autonomy of transactions is that, you know, the AI system is perfectly confident in the work that it has been doing. So it doesn't even ask a human to review it. So this this increases over time. So when you start with Aki, you, you have a you know, you have a better interface, you have a smoother operation, you have already probably 50% time reduction in the first month of using the system. Grant Let me stop you on that right there. 50%. So, that would be 50% of those that are doing sort of the daily operational activities, or is that of the CFO? Or who who is that, that that percent impacted? Alex Yeah, that's on the accounting team that is doing the processing. So if you're doing you know, if you have five people or if you have 15 people doing invoice processing, whether they are onshore or offshore, you know, just in the beginning, you can drastically reduce that, and then that percentage just increases over time because you're substituting the AI for for for human FTE. So basically, and and what we see is that everyone wants to do something else than just sit and do like data entry and accounting classification, right? You you, you can be more proactive, you can do more value added work than that. And we're sort of at that phase now where the AI can substitute that's partly augments and also fully run things autonomously. So when you put this in place, in the beginning, there is a little bit of effect right away but you know, you got to read the sign some of your some of your processes and some of your routines because you have a platform here now that is doing Most of the work for you, and you're just reviewing and you're reviewing the AI and training the AI to become more autonomous. So you've got a little on my mind shifts, and some sort of routines, you don't need to double and triple check, check in have four people involved in reviewing, you know, one thing because the AI can tell you how confident it is. And if it is very confident, maybe you can have one person review it in the beginning, and then eventually it will be fully autonomous. If it's less confident, then it will also tell you, and you can review it in more detail. So it's pretty, it's pretty, pretty fascinating. Grant It is dang fascinating. And I'm assuming that there are some that have run into this, and they've worried about their jobs, right? They're like, wait a minute, you're taking my tasks away from me? Do you have to help them overcome that fear and say, hey, you know, you're gonna move towards more value added activities within the organization? Have you run into that problem? Alex So it will we see is that it's, everyone is just squeezed on time, right? Everyone's trying to hit the deadline of the month, the clothes and all of that. So it there is no shortage of work to be done in the accounting piece. And, and just having, you know, having faster turnaround time having more accurate data, because AI is more accurate than humans, like it doesn't fat fingers thinks the same way. And when it's uncertain, it asked for a human verification, a human looks at it, and then you get more accurate than then all the way. So we see that, you know, there's no shortage of things to do. Everyone wants to progress their careers. And I don't really perceive that as an actual problem. But it is like a, you know, people think about that as a problem, but I don't think it is in reality. Grant So this has been several years and coming. When did you start this 2 to 3 years ago? Alex Yeah, early 2017, was 5 years. Grant Okay, that's, that's awesome. And you built this ground up, meaning all of AI development AI technology that your organization's created, right? Alex Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's been challenging. That's why it's taken taken quite a few years, as well as because you we started, you know, completely scratch, and we had to figure everything out. So one of the things that sets the KPI apart a little bit as part of our founding story, where we were able to start the company, we had access to a gigantic data sets of accounting transactions, and all corresponding documents to that. So that helped us just spend the first two years we just spent on data analysis, data science and machine learning development, because we had some thesis and theories that this could work, but we didn't know. So it just had to do that in the beginning, for for a couple of years. So when we saw that this actually has promised, like, we were predicting more and more accurately, and you know, we're gonna get to this inflection point where it's better to use PKI, that do not use PKI. And at that point, people will use it, and then, you know, continue growing more and more customers and more and more data and more and more corrections, and better and better predictions. So we realized we would get to that point. And then, you know, then we raised the seed round back in 2017. And, you know, started developing, Grant What a great journey. I love this story. So tell me about impact outcomes. So you talked about a large number of customers that are using the platform now, what is what's been the results that they've seen? Alex Yeah, so we see. So there's a couple of numbers that we that we statistically enroll from the from the customers, we see that customers have about 80% reduction in the overall time spent on the process. And that comes from two things. One is the percent of fully autonomous. So let's say you're 50%, fully autonomous, that means you spent zero time on 50% of your volume. And then that other part, we've drastically reduced the number of minutes in two seconds. For each transaction a human has to review because the AI has done all the upfront work, humans just reviewing it, rather than sort of processing it from scratch. So you're at seconds rather than minutes. This turns into sort of an 80% reduction in in time. You also have things that we do like prevent duplicate payments, and we have some fraud detection in the system. So you also have some of those benefits that can turn into multimillion dollar when you have a large enough cost base. And then we have audit trails in the system, which helps with figuring out you know, making sure that you know, all of the approvals are doing rights. If anyone has changed in amount or something. It's all logged into the system electronically. So you have some some compliance and auditing benefits from it as well. But right now the main, the main effective impact our customers have, and we typically sell to the mid market and enterprise. So these are larger organizations, they can have hundreds of 1000s, or millions even have sort of vendor bills per, per year, and a substantial amount of people and resources involved in dealing with that problem. So they see very significant ROI from it. Grant So to sell into that particular group, then I'm assuming you've got to have a decent amount of integrations into all of their incumbent systems, right, all of their ERP systems and CRM systems, etc. Right? What does that look like? Alex Yeah, that's, that's true. So we build out these connectors as we as we go, it does, for each connector, the first time we build it, it does take a little bit of time. And then once we have that connect, for instance, you know, to NetSuite or intact or Oracle, the, you know, the next customers that we bring on board, we can leverage the same connector. So it is it is some work initially to build out all of the ones that we need. And then you can grow and scale on top of that for the customer. This is no complexity like we're taking not on completely. So the only thing we need is to know what type of system they have. And we develop that connector as part of the offering. Grant So let's talk about looking to the future in terms of when I'm doing FPA, a financial planning and analysis and I'm, I'm looking at my numbers, and I want to leverage a view into the future. How does something like this help an organization with that? Alex Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful question. And a big passion of mine, actually. So what we're doing now sets us up to solve that specific problem. So if you think of where we are, now we're in accounting. And what you're talking about is more finance, which is what we'll dive into the idea and the vision that we are getting to is that we want to develop an AI that's basically is a real time cost optimization engine that serves predictions and monitors that in real time, we will be able to help you project kind of what your cost base should be, and how you could reduce spend in various categories and with various vendors. That's that's the piece that we're trying to solve as part of that equation of the of the future. So that you always have multiple pieces of the accounting equation, you have the cost side, you have the revenue side, you have adjustments and close process. And we're trying to stay within one of them for now. And make sure we sold provide real true value in that swim lane before we move on from from there. Grant Yes, I think that part's fascinating, as well, I've seen and interacted with organizations that are trying to leverage shift P and A even into capacity and resource planning, and trying to figure out what that looks like, and especially with it what's going on in the world today, right, with certainly high inflation and certainly supply chain challenges. The need for this kind of capability, I think is dire. Right. I think having the ability to provide something like this sooner rather than later is really crucial. Alex Yeah, definitely. And I think the technology has the ability to hold much more context and see data across all of the things that buck forms, like ours can do in in, in a compliant and anonymized ways, you can see data patterns, you know, across different companies. So you can inform yourself, no more than just sitting looking at your own data sitting inside your own office and their own silo. So that I will, you know, in the future greatly help with, you know, capacity planning, or, you know, cost reduction initiatives and so on. So I think that's one of the powers of sort of, like the cloud combined with with AI and big data, if it's leveraged in the in the right way. Grant And so if I go back just one moment on something, so if we take an AI model, and and we take it through a data set, and we were able to get sort of two key views at it, one is sort of more hindsight, right? One sort of looking backwards, right? It's the AI is looking at it saying here were the drivers that that contributed to the certain behavior, right? So it's more analytic Right. But then there's the other style of using it, which is looking forward, which is more predictive. And oh, okay, here's, here's where based on things we've seen, here's what the high predictive sort of correlations are opportunities are things that we expect moving in the future. When you when you look at Vic AI, and everything that you're providing, do you focus more on one side versus the other? Or you're combining both of those views together? Alex Hmm...yeah, we so in the, in the course of the work in the platform we have now, so every thing we do is a prediction on new data. So that means a new so if you sort of break it down into like, there's a new signal or a new transaction, or a new document coming in, that we've never seen before. And, and the platform then predicts what this is, Donald to vary like line item level detail, how to classify it, and so on. So it does predict this based on the algorithmic design, and the historical data that it seen both for this customer and globally. So it sort of is our engines are purely predictive in terms of what they're trying to predict what's going on. And you can extend that to two other parts, like we just discussed on the cost side as well. You can predict how how you should, you know, maybe they'll just classify this cost, but like, how, what your cost base should consist of a new look at categories. And you can sort of predict this based on your own current spend your growth in the company and maybe other comparable companies, so you can start predicting a journey based on the same technologies. Grant Awesome. So quick question for you, as COVID started to hit, obviously, a couple of years ago, and large companies have their AI models, you know, out there deployed, we're running, suddenly that disruption created an impact to the way in which business was typically being done, right. Not all industries were hit. But certainly a lot of industries are hit. And therefore, business operations changed. And the way in which people conducted business altered, which meant then, that those models were making assumptions based on former operational models, right former ways in which people executed, and therefore invalidated some of those predictive characteristics or capabilities of those models, which meant then, as you know that they had to go do some rework, right had to reduce retraining, right and update the data sets and so forth. So to what degree does Vic AI continually learn, right, so as you pointed out, you get a new document you've never seen before. At some point, I'm assuming it pulls it into its corpus, right? And it continues to learn or relearn on that. Can you talk to that? Alex Yeah. And it's a key feature of the platform, which, which is actually pretty enjoyable when you see it working in reality. So we, so for every transaction that goes through our platform, or every invoice or vendor Bill divest process through our platform, that leaves that leaves us with some learnings. So, you know, it's either it's corrected, and we made a prediction and a human chose to change it. Right? That is something that is fed back into our data set, and also our learning database of sort of, why would that ever happen? What did we get wrong in this prediction? And so for every prediction that we do, we learn something because if we predict something, and it's correct, we also learned something. So you know, we have millions of transactions just flowing through the system every month. And for each of them, we learn something so the system then improves basically, for each transaction that goes through the system. The level of, you know, transaction processing we're at isn't really affected by kind of like global changes, like you mentioned, for for COVID. Like, the only thing that could happen is you suddenly have some some new transaction because you need to do something differently, or you may have fewer transaction, which then just you know, is additive to our system. So you know, we will get something maybe we'll have lower confidence on this because this is something new. So you know, you will have a human come in there and tell the system what to do with this. And then that will be additive to the to the data sets and, and all the algorithmic design, if that makes sense. Grant It makes total sense. Absolutely. Yeah. And I loved how you tied the two together which is, well, I'm still gonna have the transaction. Although the world the macro world around me is changing the transaction occurs while may change is the rate of them. or how, or maybe even maybe even the units or the number of units, etc, right things like that will certainly or could change because of disruption. Being able to predict or understand how the organization can respond to, to disruption, I think becomes more and more critical, as we seem to continue to have more disruptions in business. Right? That happens a lot. Alex Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, what happened with with COVID specifically was also a lot of disruption in how people worked. And, you know, they were used to working from home and, you know, we have some, some of our customers, they have millions of invoices a year, which means, like, 1000s of invoices a day and, you know, suddenly you have, your whole workforce is like, not as productive as they were when something like this happens. But you know, you still need or your your system to be updated, you still need to pay your vendors on time. And otherwise, you know, you'll incur fees, and it'll so just like having an AI system in there that doesn't sort of care about those things. It has the same throughput and outputs 24/7 all year around, makes you very resilient for for sort of things like that are like workforce changes. Grant So that's the right word resilient, you want that organizational resilience, and as the point I wanted to drive out, which is, even though there's these disruptions that take place, most of which are outside of our control, getting our companies into a position to handle and respond properly or well, to that, or to pivot is what organizational resilience is about. And my experience has been AI is one of those tools to help us do that. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Okay, I want to ask you a very forward looking question. Right? You're ready? Yeah, sure. All right. So I'm not going to ask what are you going to do Norway? Or what I'm asking is tell me about blockchain? What does that mean to you in your world and things that you're doing? Alex Yeah, I mean, that's, we've been thinking about that. And, to be, to be honest, we haven't really seen yet the connection between specifically what we do and how to leverage a blockchain effectively, I like the technology of a blockchain is really awesome. And it can unlock a lot of things. But it doesn't mean that you need to use it for everything. One thing that I think could be an interesting exploration is when you start looking at accounting, ERP data, and whether the accounting systems could run and have their data in a blockchain that is verifiable, to prevent all sorts of, you know, fiddling with the data. That could be an interesting application for for blockchain in in our area. And there's clearly things around, you know, like money movement and value movements that blockchain can solve pretty pretty well. So just in the layer where we are, we haven't really found a great application that applies to us with the blockchain. Yes, but I think that technology is super fascinating. And I think that there are many areas where it is a superior technology to sort of like the trust based system that we have now. And it's an epic thing, when you can run that successfully in a resilient way. Grant When you think and that that makes a lot of sense. It's, it's got some, as you pointed out some interesting potential benefits to the industry. But I suppose at some point, it doesn't really matter where the transaction sits for you, right, in terms of the problem that you're solving, right? In other words, whether it's sitting on a blockchain or it's somewhere else and an Oracle ERP or whatever, right to it, at some point, that probably doesn't matter. Right? Alex Yeah, for us, the Store of the the sort of the store of the data ultimately is for us in the ERP system. And we are not an ERP system, we just layer on top of the ERP systems. So that is the ultimate sort of storage of the data. And that's where if, if, if at all the like blockchain technology could be leveraged to, to kind of store data in in a safe and transparent way. But there's also some new or some transparency issues with accounting data as well, that's going to be kept in mind. Grant Yeah, I would imagine that one of the greatest use cases to for what it is you provide is in the area of fraud to fraud detection, right the ability to regardless of where the data sitting, and regardless if it's on a blockchain or in an ERP system, you Your ai i would imagine would help to discover or uncover some of those potential opportunities. Is that accurate? Alex Yeah. And you have this this platform benefit as well is what if one customer sort of reports. So what happens a lot is just invoice fraud, right? You have, you have invoices that are not from the vendor that they appear to be from. And you have different variations of trying to change payment details, and you know, all of that. So when you see when you see data across 1000s of customers, you, you have a way of detecting those things, and at least flagging them for like, Hey, someone should have an extra look at this, because something may be up, if we're all good with it, that's fine. But you know, have an extra Look at this. And for people, you know, when we, as people, when we're doing something for six hours straight, you know, the last few hours, we're just like, you know, we're just clicking enter and trying to get, you know, the day over with, and, and things can easily pass by that shouldn't pass by. So this is this is problematic in two ways. Number one, your accounting data could end up being wrong, like you just have things that are misclassified. And then you can have things that are, you know, paid, or you're paid twice, or you pay the wrong thing, or you pay an extra zero, you have all of these things that are just humans are it's easy for humans to do those mistakes. And you just want to sort of get rid though those with a technology that can help you remove all of those errors. And we know how, you know, a billion dollar cost base? Just you know, half a percent is, you know, quite a lot. Grant A big number. Yeah, it is. Yeah, you'd hate to get false positives on a fraud situation, right, where you might be accusing someone that, that they've conducted fraud, when in fact it was was just a mistake. This is fascinating technology. So, Alex, where do people go to? I mean, where can you point them to, to learn more about you and your organization? Alex Yeah, I mean, the website is, is the safest place to go right now. So just go to Vic.ai. And we have, we have a good bit of marketing collateral and informative collateral blog posts, we try to educate the customers and the finance team. So finance teams are interestingly, you know, they're, they're not buying new things that often because you know, your ERP system, you have it for a very long time, which which you definitely should. So you know, you're not like a high. There's no high velocity necessarily on procuring things for the finance team. And, and we try to do a lot of educational material as well, because AI is new, but it has true effects or the finance team, and they'll find them blog, blog posts and collateral and can happily reach out to us and we'll help guide anyone through the process. Grant Oh, okay. That's, that's awesome. Alex, you've been so generous with your time here today, especially as you're getting ready to jet off into the sunrise just real quick. Any last comments that you want to share? Alex Um, I think this has been this has been a cool chats. It's been it's been really good. I love talking about, of course, AI and our company, but also the technologies in general. So I think this has been been super cool. And I think that it, you know, it's just wanted to say that we've we've spent a long time building the platform, so glad it's not complex for the customers right now, all of the AI performance, which is actually mind blowing, but you have no level of complexity. So, you know, if you if you want to get started with with AI for a function, this is a very specific function within invoice processing, where you can deploy AI, get the effects out of it with no complexities, and we'll deal with all of that for you. Grant That's actually the beauty of this, you know, to be able to get that down to a few points. Now splint clicks on a SaaS solution. They have all that taken care of, I've written my share of AI code, and oh, my goodness, the fact that you've handled that so seamlessly for the business people is huge. Nice job. Really great job on that. Yeah. Thanks. Great. Alex Thank you. Grant Thanks for taking the time today. Again, Alex. My gosh, this is awesome, everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of ClickAI Radio. And until next time, go check out Vic.ai. Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit clickairadio.com Now.  

INTRODUCTION: Alex Sanfilippo is the host of the top-rated podcast called Podcasting Made Simple. He is also the founder of PodPros.com, a software company focused specifically on the podcasting industry. Alex and his team have created popular services like PodMatch, a service that matches podcast guests and hosts together for interviews, and PodcastSOP, a project management tool that helps podcasters keep up with their episode releases.  INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to): ·      The Significance Of Making It To Episode #50 In Podcasting·      The Awesomeness of PODMATCH!!!·      Leaving Corporate America To Become An Entrepreneur ·      Pitfalls To Avoid In The Podcasting Industry ·      The Investor Has The Upper Hand Always·      Get A MACBOOK – Just Do It·      Apps That Make Podcasting Simple·      Start Small And Build From There·      Why Do You Do What You Do?·      The Value Of The Still Small Voice CONNECT WITH ALEX: Website: https://www.PodPros.comLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsanfilippo/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlexJSanfilippoYouTube: https://bit.ly/3smLjefPinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/podpros/_created/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ajsanfilippo/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Podpros.com  CONNECT WITH DE'VANNON: Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.comYouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCMFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/SexDrugsAndJesus/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexdrugsandjesuspodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabooTopixLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannonEmail: DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com  DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS: ·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)o  https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370o  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs ·      Upwork: https://www.upwork.com·      FreeUp: https://freeup.net·      Disabled American Veterans (DAV): https://www.dav.org·      American Legion: https://www.legion.org INTERESTED IN PODCASTING OR BEING A GUEST?: ·      PodMatch is awesome! This application streamlines the process of finding guests for your show and also helps you find shows to be a guest on. The PodMatch Community is a part of this and that is where you can ask questions and get help from an entire network of people so that you save both money and time on your podcasting journey.https://podmatch.com/signup/devannon  TRANSCRIPT: [00:00:00]You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your life.There is nothing off the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.De'Vannon: Hello? Hello. Hello everyone. I am a self fucking excited to be releasing my 50th episode today. Thank you all so much for being with me on this journey. Many blessings be upon you today. I have with me, Alex, Sanfilippo the creator of pod match pod pros.com podcast SOP. He's the greatest, so many things, and he is largely responsible for me still being in podcasting today.This man is gorgeous. He has a gourd does mine and I am pleased to [00:01:00] introduce him to you all. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about the significance of making it to episode 50 and podcasting the awesomeness of pod match some pitfalls to avoid in the podcasting industry, as well as why it's important to start small and not try to do everything all at once.And then build from there. Please listen close to this episode, Alex has a huge heart for humanity, and he's always coming up with ways to help others succeed in life. And I hope you succeed too. Yeah, well, I've got Alex Sanfilippo here with me today. I can't express how phenomenal the day is and how special it is because this is going to be my 50th episode. And we're going to talk about during this show, how big of a deal that is an Alex Sanfilippo is a huge reason why I've made it to episode 50 while I stayed in podcasting to begin with.And [00:02:00] so I really, really wanted to have him for episode 50, because these milestones, like the 50th episode, that 100, that was so in all of those things like that are very, very special. And you can't just have anybody on the show. Like it has to be somebody that means that something special insignificant.And so that's why I went with him, Alex, how are Alex: you? I'm great. I am just so thankful that you're having me for episode 50. Like I, I understand as a podcast for myself, like how big of a deal that is like, it's you, you didn't just wake up one day. You're like, oh, I need someone for my 50th episode. Like, you've been thinking about it probably since like episode 30 or 40, like who's going to be that 50 of episodes.I am just honored that you chose me to be here. Thank you so much for. De'Vannon: Oh, fuck. Yes. And so Alex created, okay. So his current website is pod pros.com. All of this information will go in the show notes. He's on all the social media and everything like that. Podcasting made simple as his podcast. I met Alex sometime last year when he sent [00:03:00] me an email to my sex drugs and Jesus account, introducing himself as the creator of an app called pod match.Pod matches like Tinder, but for podcast, guests and hosts. Now, usually I get bullshit in my inbox and I looked at his email and I was like, oh Lord, here we go. Another one of these motherfuckers trying to waste my time and shit. And I didn't open it at first because I had more pressing matters and shit.Then when I had time, I didn't delete it because I don't like to delete things until I at least purview purview them. And I looked at it and I was like, Hmm. This might be a little something here I might be able to work with. And then, so I messaged him back and then he had a very handsome photo in his email too.He's a very good lucky man, as you all can see. And and I was like, okay, he ain't bad looking. And he seems like he has a brain of there between those good looking ears. So then I responded back to him. Yes, there's more to, I need a man that I just looked good y'all he needs to have some common damn sense and some [00:04:00] sort of intelligence and some practical information I can work with, not just good looks.And so so he responded back to me personally, not his team with people that everything like that. I can't stand dealing with middlemen. And that comes back from my drug dealing days. But you know, he actually had useful information. His app is free, you know, you don't, you know, I didn't have to pay for it.And I was just starting and everything like that. And so I needed that option. And you know, and the rest is history. I ended up signing up for pod. And I'm still on pod match today and I'm still in business. So we're going to talk about pod match. Alex has a couple of different companies that he's dealing with it all have to do with podcasting.And we're gonna talk about podcasts, SOP, his podcast, lottery Southern come, a pod.style and the pod pros community in this show. That's the that's what's going to be coming up. [00:05:00] So tell us, Alex, what, what, what, what got you into this whole podcasting business? Alex: Well, first off I have to say thank you. I appreciate the fact that the one you think I'm good looking and two that you responded to me.Back back when I emailed you, I had just I'll share this real quick. I'll get into it, but I come from a background of, of corporates. I did 15 years in corporate. And if there's one thing that it taught me, it's how to write terrible emails. And thank you for the grace you had with me, because I look back at those emails now I'm like, what, why did I type that up?Like, it looked like a computer typed it up and like, just pick the words for it. It was so bad, but I was conditioned after 15 years of writing emails in corporate that I just didn't have to write a good email, but you had grace with me. You're one of the first people that give me a shot. And I'll say this Devon and writes the best testimonials for people.Like maybe it's just people you believe in. Like, but art, like if I'm having a down day, like when people were just being rude and mean to me, I'll go back and like, I actually have like pictures with your [00:06:00] testimonial on it and I'll go back and read that and be like, you know what, like we are doing something good here.Like forget this person who just wants to cuss me out for no reason. Right. Like they just are being mean. And I'll just remember people like Devon and that have helped me. So anyway, thank you for that. So to, to jump in, like I know I already mentioned the corporate thing, so I, I come from a background in corporate America.I was in the aerospace industry and I, I just hit a day where I was like, I think I'm ready to move on. Like, I want to do something. But I didn't know how to do anything else. So I was like, I don't want a nine to five job anymore, but I don't know how to do anything else. So I started a podcast to talk to people that had successfully left a nine to five job to become a full-time entrepreneur to kind of have like that financial time freedom.And because I wanted to learn and I couldn't afford the coaching necessarily. So I was like, it's like free coaching when you have a podcast, as you know, right. Like you get some of the best people, smart people in the world. You've had that tons of times on your show, haven't you, De'Vannon: you really do though.You learn, you learn so much of the huddles. Alex: Yeah. You really, I mean, you're like the number one student and all the listeners are the bonus. So [00:07:00] but anyway, so I started a show and just really started learning a lot about entrepreneurship. And while I was doing that, I knew I wanted to start a company of some sort, and I just fell in love with the podcasting space.Like in general, it's a real. Optimistic space full of like abundance mindset people, which is my tribe, right? Like we can all be kind and all have like a piece of the pie if you will. Right. And I just really respected that about the industry. So I decided I was like, you know what, I'm going to jump into this industry.And my show at that time did really well. So I started speaking on podcasting stages and doing some educational stuff, and I just started asking other podcasters what they're struggling with. And I defended, I can tenuously heard I'm struggling to find the right guests for my show, like the ideal guests for my show.And I just realized, you know what, there's probably a need to connect guests and hosts together. And to keep the story short, I just decided to build something that was really similar to a dating app, but for podcast guests and hosts. Now, granted, I'll say this I've been married longer than dating apps have been around.So I had no firsthand experience with it, but the one time I decided that's what I wanted to do. I went to a friend's house to hang out. [00:08:00] And I knew he was like being in the dating apps. Like he was recently single and just had all of them. So I'm like, Hey, can I just watch you for the next 30 minutes while we eat, play on your dating apps?And so he started like doing all these things and then you start getting concerned. Cause I started asking question, he goes, what's wrong, dude. Like, are you okay? Like you and Alicia good. I'm like, yeah, we're great. I'm like, I think I want to build one of these, but for something else. Anyway, long story short, we were able to develop just that.And it's worked really well to serve the industry. De'Vannon: Alicia is his beautiful wife and she helps them out there. She's a season like, you know, a really big part of you know, of, of all of that Alex does. Alex: Oh yeah. She's like the brain behind the operation in many ways. So De'Vannon: she, she definitely is. Now concerning.Those people who you say was cussing you out and everything. If you ever have that problem again, you let me know. I've got people who take care of them. Alex: Yes. I like it.De'Vannon: And then they won't ever bother you again. Trust me. [00:09:00]Alex: Yep. You know, you, you mentioned that if you don't mind the guy riff on that for a minute.So, so here's the thing. Like I I've trained me and my team. We're a small team, but I've trained people to remember one thing. Like, I mean, this is the sex drug and Jesus podcast. I'm gonna mention Jesus real quick. And like, for me as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, I've always known that my job is to love people that aren't always lovable.And so I've just trained the team to think this way that Hey, hurting people, hurt people. So if somebody is hurting us is because they're hurting themselves and we might be the only love they get. So we're never going to retaliate in a menial. I might take you up on your offer, but you know, we were always going to respond in a loving way.Like we're not gonna go over the top of someone's just overall rude, like said something terrible. We're just gonna ignore it and let it go. But in general, if someone's like just being harsh rubric and responding in a really loving way, not necessarily to win them over, to make them a customer the other day, that might be the only nice person to interact with.So for us, we always remember that hurting people hurt people. And our job as a company is to love people. Like first and foremost, we are a [00:10:00] human to human business. So we're not like B2B or B to C. We call ourselves human to human. So H to H and our job is just to be the light for some people in the world, whether they become customers of ours are members of ours or not.Right. And that day that's, what's important for us to do that. Mentality is not always easy to keep. That's why we actually have on our slack channel, a little channel called happy news, and people will just go back through and post nice things people have said about us and your name comes up a lot. So I'm always just thankful to see your name come from.Like, that's somebody who actually like, if I need to jump on a call and I need them to take care of. If I needed somebody to take care of this, this mean guy, right? Like demanding is my, my, my contact. So I'm good to go, but I appreciate you. Thank you. De'Vannon: Yeah, I'll say the, yeah. Or as, as the everything that's stated in the Hebrew Bible each and every time we do to D though, to do good, that there's evil presence.And so these are the heart of what you're doing is to help, to elevate people. So if we're going to get spiritual about it and look at it, even metaphysically, you know, you're driving positive energy, negative negativity, doesn't want to see you prevail. [00:11:00] And so people who have been hurt when you say hurting people, hurt people, they are vulnerable more vulnerable to negativity than people who abide in a, at a more constant state of positivity.And so therefore negativity wants to attack you. It can do so through people who are catering to their pain rather than to their positive. And so you're doing the right thing by overcoming that with more positivity as the Hebrew Bible also says, we overcome that evil with good. And so so speaking of foolishness though, this sort of show here that, that, that I'm doing, it's kind of like a step away from the main, my main, you know, my main vein in a way, but I don't care because I wanted to do it because of the signal.Of the, you know, of who you are and why the show was here. So I want to talk about the issues that I had when I started podcasting and [00:12:00] everything like that. And that's going to get down into more of the the dark side, the taboo side of things, which is the main vein of the show. So this isn't really like a businessy podcast.We're still gonna talk some shit y'all Alex: please. I hope so. By the way, this is the first time in like probably almost a year that I've come on a podcast. It's not specifically about podcasting. So I am down for anything which I know your show is all about. So I am here to get into whatever we want to, but honored to go whatever direction you want.But thanks again for having me. De'Vannon: Absolutely. Thank you for, for coming. I would like when I met you, I was like, I gotta help you. He wants to come on my show. I know this is really, really wild and not conservative.So I was writing my book, sex drugs, and Jesus, my memoir, and then someone told me, Hey, it's a good idea to start a podcast. You know, to have basically a cross promotion thing and already built an audience and everything. And I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. The same person also went about the business of introducing me to their podcasting team that was helping them.[00:13:00] And so, so I hired them and everything for a ridiculous amount of money. When I, when I met you, I think I was paying about like 1500 a month. Okay. So they were charging me like say $150 or $200 per person just to have someone come on my show. Now these are just recycled people that this other guy who already knew who had already been on his show.So all they were doing were sending an email and saying, Hey, will you come on this new podcast that we are starting? And we have something to do with, so that's, what's called hustling. This is the danger of dealing with middlemen and stuff like that, because they're going to charge you a lot of money and stuff like that.And so now I'm paying $150 a week for show notes. You know, and, and things like that. And so basically 450 to $600 per episode, just to get it created. And this is a large reason why people don't either get into podcasting or stay in it because it looks more expensive than it has to be. I fell into the same trap myself.[00:14:00] So I had pause the creation of it because I was like, this is incredibly expensive. I don't really like the energy of dealing with these people. I feel like I'm being used and hustled and taken advantage of, there's got to be a simpler way. I didn't know what way when I searched the Google and everything like that, I would find these companies doing similar things as them, Hey, come pay us this exorbitant amount of money.And we're going to get you on these big shows and everything like that. No guarantees the one who's going to benefit you or not. But you know, it was that same thing. And then you messaged me and I was like, okay, I can do it for free or this like $39 a month. If you want the upgraded version of hot and match, which I went with because that's a hell of $39 a month is a lot cheaper than 1500.It's Alex: good math De'Vannon: right there. So right. And so. I want you to speak to me, Alex, about some of the bullshit that people have come to you, crying, groveling and crying. Just like I did licking their [00:15:00]wounds saying, please help me. I don't want to quit podcasting. What helped me? What, what, what sort of shit have you seen people been going through Alex: all kinds of things.I mean, that's a perfect example of something that's very common and what happens. I just called the people that are those hustlers lever. We want to call them. They're like the gurus of the industry and maybe guru shouldn't be a bad word, but my head, if someone tells me they're podcasting guru, I'm going to be like, that's a red flag.Like, what does that mean? You know, like, why are you a guru? And like, what are you teaching other people to do? It's, it's just, it's so common. And it all starts from taking advantage of somebody who has a passion and interest, something they're trying to do. Like your show is extremely purposeful. Okay.Sex drugs. And Jesus is like a purpose-driven show. Like you have a plan for it, you know where it's going. Maybe it started as a hobby and maybe it still is a hobby, whatever you want to call it. But the, of the day it is, it's something that actually adds value to people's lives. And you have a specific focus on it.And those are the people that get taken advantage of because somebody knows, you know what? This person's passionate. They want to do [00:16:00] this. They're willing to invest. I'm going to charge them way too much. And I don't like to ever talk bad about anybody, but it, it doesn't have to be that way in podcasting.It's just people taking advantage of somebody who wants to, who wants to explore that passion. And that it's, it's something that's very common. If you use Google to this day, you're still most likely going to find those types of people, but there are alternatives. Thankfully, there, there are other ways around it.You don't have to spend an arm and a leg to do it at the end of the day. Maybe if you're in a place financially where makes sense and you just don't want to touch anything, right? You want to wash your hands up at salmon record. I'm not gonna touch anything else ever. You could go for it. That would be fun if it keeps the main thing, the main thing while for, but then the day, most of us are not in.I'm not in that boat. Most people aren't right. They just doesn't make sense. So, I mean, I've seen all kinds of things like this happen and people fall into the trap of this is the only route. So I think the first thing I really want to get in people's heads that are listening is that if you have a passion or something you want to do with the podcast, you do not have to go that route of spending a ton of money.There are alternatives, and you can work your way up to things. If you're saying eventually I want to outsource this or do [00:17:00] that, but you can start everything on your own with just, I don't know the exact dollar amount, but probably less than $50 a month. You could have, you could be doing really well at that dollar amount De'Vannon: right now.And I stayed with podcasting because along I started. Because of the reasons that they told me like, Hey, this would be a good compliment of being an author, but I stayed with it because in the process of doing it, I realized that this is basically like a every show is like a message preached. Every show is a testimony, if you will, but this is better than just standing up and testifying on a Sunday morning and charity hallelujah, or preaching a message because it's recorded and it'll outlive me.So even if somebody stops the podcast, though, that those shows are main, you know, out there and they can always be accessed until the end of time. And so have, have, after having gone through everything, I went through being homeless and, you know, getting HIV and everything like that. And living on the streets and being a drug dealer.And I started kind of tip telling in and out of churches. Again, it never really [00:18:00] felt right or came to me to like stand up and speak about the deliverance that God had given me. The words never came. I considered maybe was there something wrong with me or something like that, but it just. God is preferred platform for me, I think podcasting was because I get to tell it again and again and again, from different angles all the time.And then people can access it at their leisure, which is better than just speaking to one congregation. And so I want to remind people though, that when you have the money to spend on things and stuff like that, and these people are trying to corral you that you, the investor, you have the upper hand always.And it's very, very interesting how, when those of us who have some expendable income to spend on something are spending it, but the, the team, the assistance, or whatever, try to, there's almost like they have a way of seizing this control over us, even though we're the ones with the money. So have you, have you ever seen that sort of mindfuck before?Alex: Yeah. You know, before [00:19:00] I answer that I got to go back to something cause your mom, this show being like, it's an extension of you. This is how you can leave a legacy. I'm about halfway through episode 39 with branch and he talked about guilt combination. Like being so hard on yourself, like, and how to stop doing that.It's easily. One of the most profound, powerful podcast episodes I've ever heard, and I'm not even finished with it yet. I encourage everybody. Who's hearing this. It has not listened episode number 30, nine of sex, drugs, and sex drugs, and Jesus go back and listen to that episode. It is again profound. So what you're doing here is going to leave a legacy.Like I believe people will be listening to that episode alone for forever, right? Like that's going to be something can always go back and really help people a lot. And going back into what you're talking about now, like, yeah, even if you have, if you have the money, like you're saying, it's good wisdom, you do have control.When I got started, I didn't necessarily have a lot of money, but I thought that I had to use, I start off with somebody to edit. Everything I read was the editing is almost impossible, which isn't the case, but everyone thing was like, Hey, you're not gonna be able to edit yourself to me too much. And I [00:20:00] went with the most recommended one I could find they were charging me, like shot, just shy of $200 per episode.I didn't have that money back then. And I felt like I was trapped because they were like, Hey, you need to buy this in sets of 10, because you're going to save X amount instead of just buying one a time. And then the next time they're like, Hey, you should buy 30 because your show is doing well, you need to keep it going.And I felt like I was, I was like, okay, this is a money pit, but I know it's helping people, but I'm not making any money yet. Like, what do I do? Do I just outpace it until eventually I can pay for it? Like, what do I have to do here? And that was the first time I started talking to other podcasters. This was early in my journey.This is like around the time of the launch of my show. And when I started talking to their podcasters, I felt empowered because they're people like, oh, well, no, you could do it yourself here. I'll, I'll teach you. Like, let's do like a quick zoom and I'll show you like how I edit really. And it wasn't until I got around the community of people that I started feeling like I could get freedom from the people trying to charge me a lot of money to do podcasting.And again, if you do have the money and you just say, I don't want to touch it fine, you can. But then the day, I think [00:21:00] there's something to be said for someone who learns how it works. Anyway, for me, like I don't do all of podcasting anymore. Like I'm not the only guy in my team. There's multiple people now that I've actually hired that I'm getting a good deal on, but I know how every piece of the puzzle works.So when one of them says, I'm struggling to keep up. I'm not like, wow, you lose our cable. If you're not keeping up, like, what's wrong with you? I'm not saying that because I can go back and be like, you know what? I remember how much work that was. So I can say, how can I support that? Do you want me to come in and help edit a little bit more?Do we need another team member? Like what do we need to do to improve that? So I think there's something to be said for us, sitting back, taking a little bit extra time and learning all the elements of podcasting, just like anything else in life. When you know it all, you don't necessarily need to do it, but you have at least empathy towards someone else who might be doing something that you previously didn't under.De'Vannon: You better preach it on a Tuesday afternoon. And so like that for a second, you're going to use it. I use my Mac book, which I tried this doing this on like on a windows computer. Don't you need to get a Mac book once you go Mac it's true. I was reluctant, oh my God. This thing is like an electrical [00:22:00] orgasm.Every is perfect about this fucking thing. Fuck PC. You need an Mac baby, honey. And they Alex: better be paying you. That's all going to say they better be paying.De'Vannon: They will, when they damn it, they will. Alex: I believe it. De'Vannon: And so. That's it just that I use an app called transistor to distribute it. So if you're wondering, how do you get your show on all of these 50 million? Really literally about 20 different podcasting platforms is just put on one place and it's distributed automatically is really just that simple.And then Alex told me about the script, which is how I learned how to edit it myself, edit each show myself rather than paying. I think it was $200 per show for editing. I think the script might be like $10 a month. I do the annual thing and I think transistor might be like 10 or 20 a month. So like you said, it's true.You need less than $50 to [00:23:00] have all the, all the, all the things to do a show. You get yourself a good mic. That camera. Or you could start with just the Mac book, Mike and camera is, you know, not necessarily the best, but it's better than than nothing. And I don't want people to get obsessed with feeling like you have to have the top of the line, everything and all of these sound mixing boards.I know, I know, I know people who Who feel the need to do that? Like, like when they start, they go, okay, let me go on Amazon or somewhere and get this whole podcast production, kit and everything like that. And I know so many people who do that. What do you have to say about like starting equipment?Alex: You know, start with what you have.You're talking about a Mac. If you have like a brand new Mac book, the built-in camera and Mike is actually pretty good. Like, no one's ever gonna be like, oh, what's that terrible sound? Now don't like, use your, your cell phone. You know, like don't even, even an iPhone, isn't gonna be near as good as the actual Mac book, like start with what you have.And here's like, my I'll dive in a little bit more, but here's what I'll say [00:24:00] overall about this. People will forgive you for the quality of like the sound and the production. They won't give, forgive you for the lack of quality of content. So again, the sound and all the production doesn't have to be the best, but the content itself.Isn't good. And then one can forgive you. Now, what I mean by that is you could have the most expensive mic on the planet. You could spend 50 grand on your setup. If what you're saying, isn't good. No one cares about the other side of it, right? So at the end of the day, you need to try like putting a little bit effort, of course, like do your best to, to soundproof a little bit or whatever you do, but don't go over the top with it, focus on having really good content and over time things can improve.I've got a shirt M V seven. I'm not great with the tech stuff. MV seven is what it's called. I think I paid $220 for this mic. And this is like my forever mic. I'll use this one for as long as I podcasts before this, I had a mic that was about $80. Wasn't great. But here's the thing that got me through my first, like 80 or 90 episodes.No problem. And, and it was great. It worked, worked really good. So at the end of the day, really focus again on the quality of the [00:25:00] content. And don't go over the top on the production. I think that a lot of us defendant, we get nervous about the idea of starting a show. So we just fully engrave ourselves in all the things, right?Like, oh, I need to like learn the best sound I need to buy this mic. I need to test out of. What I challenge you to do is just press the record button and get started. I'll tell you who really, really spoke this to me in a big way with Jack, actually, Seth Goden. He and I had a conversation at one point, and he's like a marketing, like genius.The guy's brilliant. And he told me, he's like, Hey Alex, all right, let's imagine that you're a lifeguard. You're brand new. It's your first day on the job. You're out there by the water. And you see somebody on the ocean. Who's drowning now because you're new and not experienced. You see that person drowning is your reaction to go find a really experienced lifeguard and say, hold on.I know someone would be really good at saving this person. Let me go run back to the lifeguard station and find them, or you just going to jump in the water, not think about it as sloppy as it is, do your best to save that person. Every single time. Everybody who is in that scenario is going to jump in the water and do their best to save that person no matter how pretty or ugly it ends up looking.That's just our [00:26:00] instinct. And I think that with content creation, we have to remember that what we're doing is serving the world, but it doesn't serve the world. If you don't hit the record button again, you might not have all the best gear. You might not have everything that you feel that you need to be super successful with it.When you don't hit publish when you don't hit record, it's not serving anybody. So start off by serving people and then focus on continuous improvement over time. And eventually you might sound really good and get really great at it. But today, do your best to serve people where you're at. That's my little rant right there, rant De'Vannon: on.And so it just like with all things, we get better over time, you don't start anything as an expert or as a fully proficient that would Rob us of the of the fulfillment that comes when we grow. If we just, we're just perfect at everything from day one, you know, it doesn't work like that. And yeah, I did that on the PC, but like Alex was saying, we had to start somewhere.Look, you can do it if you have a PC, but just what mine's, the bitch was slow. And it took like 50 minutes to do shit on my Mac book. It takes like two [00:27:00] minutes. So it just really pressured me to create it more stress. But if you have a PC, then baby, you start with the PC, just like I did. And when you can afford to.Upgrade to the Mac, or you can get you an apple card and then you can get just finance the ship interest free on your apple card. And in terms of like the sound quality and yeah, I'm almost like my third mic too. You know, I think we all do that, you know, got that fucking mic, fallen out the closet, you know, from when we upgrade and shit.So the script that, that, that app that you recommended to me, they have two features on there that will really take away. Most of your worries. They're really all of your worries when it comes to how you're going to sound. There is a button that you can click to enhance your recordings. And so it'll take your voice and pull it forward.Like the voice of yours and your guests, and really clean it up. It eliminates background noise. Is it like the damn dogs that get out when you just knew you had them put up and shit like that? And the, in my [00:28:00] case, the birds and the pages and shit that fly by the window. Cause I live next to a nature Oasis, basically in my backyard.And then there's another button on there. You can click, that'll get rid of filler words. And by filler words, I mean like oohs and OMS and stuff like that, which annoys, some people doesn't really bother me. But just with like with one flip of the switch, you can just get rid of them all. So this shit is not complicated to do.We record these meetings and zoom. Some people use other apps. I like zoom. They're simple. They've been around a long time. They're quick, concise until. And then once you press the record button, once it's, once it's over, it will convert it to an MP3 MP4 or whatever the damn audio file is. And then that's what you put into the script.And in the script, we'll transcribe, it it'll create a transcript for you, which you can in turn use for your show notes for your search engine optimization and all of it later on. So it's a bit of a learning curve. It's not as hard as you might think. But it's worth, it was worth [00:29:00] me learning to save four or $500 a month to do so don't let people hustle.You try to act like this shit is complicated because they're using the same damn programs that we're telling you right now and charging you an arm and a Dick for it. And then try to act like they're doing something special. No, but they do in the same damn thing. Alex: You know, w one more piece of advice I like to give to people is if you're listening to this show, like you're, you're hearing, you've been.The sex drugs and Jesus for a long time. Right. And Devon, and speaking like your language, like I want to start a podcast, email demand and say, I've got a hundred dollars with your name on it. If you'll just give me 30 minutes of your time. Cause that would be so valuable. I think that if someone spent 30 minutes with you now, knowing what you know about podcasting, you could probably save them thousands of dollars just by the little bit of knowledge that you're sharing here, but going a little bit more in depth, showing somebody how to record for 30 minutes.I bet spend that a hundred dollars would again, save somebody hundreds of hours and probably thousands of dollars. I mean, you'd probably agree, right? If day [00:30:00] one, you're getting ready to start. If someone could have been like, Hey, hold on, let me show you this. That would have saved you a lot. I'm imagining, right.De'Vannon: Oh sure. I mean, I have a personal guide to go. Here's transistor. Here's the script and everything like that. I mean, knowledge is power. Yeah. And as they say it isn't said as the Hebrew Bible, you know, my people perish for a lack of knowledge, you know, we, we literally discharge ourselves for not doing research.So it's a good thing to be passionate, but then the Hebrew Bible also tells us that knowledge zeal without knowledge is destructive to, or it's not good. I don't know if it's destructive, but it's not good to have zeal without knowledge. It's basically, I want to get up and go do shit, but I don't want to take time to study about what the fuck I want to go do.Sometimes Alex: that's the problem with the world in it. De'Vannon: And so, oh, I hear a Republican echo what you just said. And Alex: I, oh, no, I like it. I like to sit in the middle instead of politics. So I hope I didn't sound too much like that. [00:31:00]De'Vannon: Oh, this is how this is just me because of the things going on inside of me and how I feel about them.So whenever somebody says something about like people who are extreme for seemingly no logical reason at all, they're the first things that come to my mind because Alice is not political. I became political a couple of years ago, so I always say, fuck Republicans. And I always say, I wish Democrats would grow a pair of balls and do more with the power that they have.So it sounds like Alex: you're right in the middle with me then. Sounds exactly like where I sit. De'Vannon: Oh, well that's the middle then there was this Malcolm in the middle of this shit. That's an old show. Y'all.You mentioned earlier about people like being passionate about starting their podcast, you made the analogy of the lifeguard and everything. And so, so y'all when you're thinking about starting a podcast, let's not get caught up in what seems like the glitz and the glam of it all. Hey, I've got to show, [00:32:00] you know, it looks like people are making a whole lot of money.You're going to be the next fucking, I guess if you would want to be someone like Joe Rogan or, or, you know, whoever hell is on serious or whatever the case may be, you know, making good bajillions of dollars and everything like that. Okay. So the way you got to go about this is like you, you got to pray about it, meditate, whoever, whatever deity you worship, or if you don't do any of that, get in your head, why you want to do it for reasons other than fame.And then if one day you have. To reach the level of, you know, how a shore, you know, or someone like huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, all the better. But if that doesn't happen, then you're totally happy and satisfied anyway. So why, and this is a big thing with you, Alex, you always challenged, you know, people, you know, why, what's the, why?What's the why? Why are you here? Why are you doing this? I always say, I need you to not even know why I feel the way I feel, why I believe what I believe, why am I doing what I'm doing? So if you're going to start a [00:33:00] podcast and there's all kinds of podcasts from people talking about gossip, the clothes, the shoes, the titties, the sex to music, to business, so much business.There's a good variety, but why do you want to do it? And what, what unique thing do you have to say? Are you just trying to, and like, and there's nothing wrong with looking into it, some stuff we start and we don't finish it. And there's no shame in that because we're all on a journey. So anything more you would care to say about.About purpose. Alex: Yeah. I think that this is, like you said, this is where I always tell people to start, because what I find is people burn out too quick because they didn't sit back and think about their why. And like you're saying, people go to the, the, the wanderings of the world, like, that's one of the big networks.The MPRs is the cereal that the Joe Rogan's right? Like these, these big names and podcasts and say, I want to do that, but you and I know this, like no one ever got famous because they wanted to be famous. Right? Like there has to be something that you do. And it wasn't usually [00:34:00] most of the time I'd say it wasn't their initial tent.They started something because they cared. They had a why behind why they were doing it the first place. And I find that people start instead was saying, I'm gonna get rich. I'm gonna get famous. I'm gonna quit my job. When that doesn't happen, they quit really. Like, they just stopped way too soon. But if, instead you say, you know what I really care about, there's always dogs walking by my window.I don't know why, but I have like a busy street and there's like people with their dogs, like all the time, I care about dog walking. So we use that as an example. Right. And how to get help your dog be more appropriate when you're walking them. So they don't go off to every squirrel and bark at every other dog.Right. Like if you're passionate about that and you have like a real, why behind that matter to you about how, like you used to be embarrassed about taking your dog out for a walk. Cause it was so misbehaved, right? Like if you had that, why behind it? And that's why you decided to do this, you might do really well in that niche, but you've got to sit down and decide, okay, why am I going to do this?I want to help educate other people, but they don't have to be embarrassed about their dog. Right. And I, I don't have a dog. So this is probably a terrible example. But you get the idea. I'm saying you pick that little focus and say, this is who I'm going to speak to. [00:35:00] I'm doing it because I care because I want to help someone else not struggle.The way that I did when you start with that, it makes it a lot easier for you to keep on going when things get. Cause defendant, you talking about like doing the editing and stuff like that. And yeah, we found some, like, you have found a really simple way to do this and your show sounds really good. So anyone could duplicate that, right?Like you could teach someone to do that. And like I said, probably 30 minutes, someone would be set up to win in podcasting, but in the day you still have to sit and do the work at some point when those times get tough and you have that strong, why you can say, you know what, I'm doing this for my neighbor.They really need to hear this episode. I've got to get this out. But if you're saying I'm not getting any richer, I'm not getting more famous. Why am I even wasting my time? You're going to stop too soon. And now the flip side is something that you mentioned as well, which is some people they, they just are trying it out there.Their friend does it. And they're like, oh, I'm gonna try doing. There is no harm in that. If you do three episodes inside, it's your least favorite thing on the planet. At least you can say you tried it so you don't need to go through all this, unless you feel that there's a real reason for it. If you're just exploring a passion or a potential passion or hobby, go for it.There's no reason to stay in it. If it's just not right for you, don't feel like you have to. There's [00:36:00] plenty of other mediums. But if you are getting into this for a specific reason and you know that there is some power behind it, start with that. Why really determine it. Sit down. I even talk about writing it out, write it out.Think about who is me listening, and then start going for it from there. De'Vannon: Child. See, that's why I had to have you on my show. You have a clear mind, you have, you're just teaming and overflowing with posse own. Then all the things that makes people want to get up and do shit. You're like a natural born leader.Like, like, like Barack Obama, you know, the main reason why white people, not all white people, but like a lot of them, a lot of Republicans really hate him is because he has that essence, that flare, that thing, you can't go to school for. Nothing wrong with going to leadership schools and all of that. You know, people got their different ways of some people are just born with that thing that makes people want to get behind them and their delivery when [00:37:00] they're talking.And speaking is as though they've done it ever since eternity was spawn into motion that you have that same spirit about Alex: you. Thank you. That totally just made my day. I could go ahead and we can hang up now and I'm good to go, actually, you know, I always say this, I, when, when Obama was leaving office after a second term, I always so president Obama was like on his way out.I always say no matter who's president for the rest of my life, they're never going to be that polished. Like, there's just no way, like, we're all gonna have to get used to a lower standard of like just the ability to speak. Cause everyone else talks. And I'm like, what are they trying to say? Like spit it out, man.You know? Like, but so yeah, I mean, president Obama set a standard from that regard. I, I appreciate you even putting me in that category. Like I said, just made my day. Thank you for that. De'Vannon: You know, only speaks the truth. Alex: I know it, you know, actually that's one thing that I just, I have to say this, I actually reminded myself, I put it down on a piece of paper cause earlier.So for me being a Christian, like I don't mean over spiritualize things, but I was going to, I prayed about this interview today, knowing it was coming up, prayed for you as well. And I felt like God reminded me of like [00:38:00] your, your genius, if you will, you've got a sense of boldness and realness that is just so rare in the world.And I believe that that's why you're going to succeed so much in the world. Like you're already succeeding, but I just believe that it's just gonna continue to multiply and God's going to bless the fact that you're again bold and you're real. Those just aren't things anymore. Like in today's world, unfortunately not like it used to be at least.And you have that rare gift and I just really respect that from you. And, and so I just wanted to say thank you for that. I had to say some time during this interview. De'Vannon: Thank you. I appreciate your kind words. I want you to remind me though, cause I seem to remember my research. If you like in the beginnings of pod match, Like maybe you were doing yard work or something like that.And you had like an epiphany or like something, some sort of knowledge came to you in a, in a it's like you went back inside and you started writing. Alex: Oh yeah, I definitely wasn't doing yard work. I live in a condo because I hate yard work so much. So you De'Vannon: were doing something else that you stopped Alex: it?[00:39:00] Yeah, I was actually working out, so it was right at the beginning of COVID and I was doing like a kettlebell workout. Cause I only had a few things at home at that point. Like I had to buy equipment, but I had like a kettlebell. So I was like swinging a kettlebell, like thinking about this idea and literally, I can't even explain it the van and like, it just like, it hit me at one.I've got not the weight, but I mean like the the idea hit me. I put down the weight, I ran inside to some whiteboards and I have three whiteboards behind, like where I'm at right now behind like this screen here. And I just mapped the whole thing out. Like it just hit me in an, in a moment. Can't really.It just came out of nowhere. Like again, when I'm working out, I'm not usually thinking of business, but it just, it really hit me in that moment. And you talking about pod match? Oh, so sorry. Yeah. Pod match specifically. Cause I came back from a conference I spoke at right before the world shut down like a week before the world shut down, which a 2000 person conference.It was the first week of March, 2020. And that's where people continuously were telling me I'm having trouble finding guests for my show. And it was interesting that same conference there's people there that were like, Hey, I just released this book. Do you know any podcasts about this? I [00:40:00] could talk to you.And I was actually saying, oh, I just talked to that person, come over here. Let me introduce you real quick. So it's making those connections there and I'm not always the smartest guy in the world. I came home, not knowing what to do with that idea. And then when I was working, I was when that, when that came forth.So yeah, the idea for pod match came from during that workout is when it just really was like, this is what I've got to do. And it came to like a moment, you De'Vannon: know, that that was a moment of divinity. And this is the sort of thing that comes to people who call upon the Lord who call up on Who call upon the, you know, power is greater than a power greater than themselves, because there's been several times in my life in the Hebrew Bible and always referred to the Bible as the Hebrew Bible, because I always like to pay tribute and homage to the middle east from where the Bible really Alex: comes from.And I, but my mom is Hebrew. So I appreciate that. Do you speakDe'Vannon: the language? Alex: No, I take fully after my dad. Who's Italian. Sorry. [00:41:00]De'Vannon: He ruined Italian. Ain't a bad mix. Alex: Oh, no, not at all. I'm De'Vannon: happy. Pretty good. You know, the Hebrew Bible speaks to us about a still small voice. There was a prophet in, something was going on and it was like, you know, there was a fire and a wind, but God wasn't in the fire and the wind, but then they know here it comes a still a still small voice when I Gosh, I have so many examples.Let me see. What's a good one. And epiphany like that came when I was trying to get the name for my massage business, I was at a wine party and I didn't know what to name it. A friend looked up like in a moment, it's like, it just hit her from nowhere. And she was like, you need to find something has to do with your third eye.And then that's how I found the Swahili word for vision, which means my own. Oh. And my massage business was my own a massage and wellness. When I was coming off of being homeless and I was a janitor, I had walked off of the [00:42:00] gym to job as they pissed me off. And I was trying to figure out what to do. I was setting steals.And when it came to me to look up food delivery jobs, and I had like three felonies, I still have those felonies on my record and I couldn't get a job anywhere. And I thought about that and I ended up being able to get hired that way. It's it's, didn't like these quiet moments in a workout is a quiet time and meditation as a form of active meditation to me.Yes. You know, I feel like the Lord can speak to us because our minds are not as busy as they usually are. And so the Lord can slip an idea into our conscious, you know, and then we can immediately go and do something about it. So I was very intrigued when I read that, wherever it is that I've, that I saw that ad.And I was like, Hmm, it looks like the spirit spoke to Alex in this moment. And then re energized his soul to neatly go and do it because when God puts something in you, he also gives you the [00:43:00]energy to go about the business of getting it done. And then when other people are looking at you thinking, well, how is he doing that?And how is he keeping it all together? It looks exhausting because it's not their calling, you know what, you're yours. And so this work that you're doing is not just a natural work, but it's a spiritual. And you see not all forms of ministry have to do with preaching from a pulpit or be, or have to do with a church.When I was going to go be a recruiter in the air force, my spiritual leader, evangelists, Nelson who was a prophetess and her own, you know, in a, in a highly clever woman, you know, a true prophet is I don't, it's very hard to find people like that anymore, you know, and she was like, you know, that's ministry that you're going to go do.And I was like, recruiting, you know, what does that have to do with ministry and everything like that. But anything that you're doing to enhance somebody's livelihood is true religion. That is mission work that is outreach, and it can come in any kind of form. I don't give a shit if it's a Tik TOK channel, you know, so you don't have to go to church to do the lowers the work.[00:44:00]And so I just want it to really drive home the divinity that surrounds the brands that you've created and how divine the nature is of what you're doing at its core. Alex: Yeah, thank you for that. You know, you talking about this, like that still small voice. That's always been so true for me. And whenever someone in my life who I know who happens to also be a believer in Jesus when like, oh, I keep on asking God about this.He's just not answering. I always say, have you taken any time to listen? And the answer is always, no, not really. I'm like, well, if it's a still small voice and you're just, God help God, God, God, God, God. Like, you're not really given any time to hear anything. And in my life, that was not, that was not a normal moment for me to have like, yes, like you're saying like for me, I wasn't like listening to loud music.I usually don't listen to music while I work out. So it was quiet. So it is like somewhat therapeutic, but I didn't expect God to speak to me in that moment. I think he just needed my attention and you're right. And since then, I've learned to make intentional time just to sit down and be [00:45:00] quiet. Some people call it meditation.It's just like, you're, you're not letting your mind actively just run, just sitting down and like being present in that moment, being still. And any other idea of had is coming those moments. And people who maybe aren't spiritual at all right. Aren't into that stuff. This might sound totally crazy, but I can not really take full credit for any of my ideas now execution.I can, because at the end of the day, an idea, no matter where it comes from, it doesn't really matter if you'll don't do anything with it. So I've always been able to, to perform and execute at a high level, but I really give God the credit for the ideas that I've had. And that, that is my ministry. Like church, the churches here, where, where I live, they all shut down.When COVID happened, there was a year and a half where that wasn't even an option anymore. And so this just became my ministry. I was used to serving at church, like I was used to greeting at the door and picking up the trash. Like, those are the things I love to help do or parked cars, whatever it is. But then it just became, you know what, this is my ministry.This is what I have. And I felt like God spoke it to me. And I just have done my best to steward it really well. And I'm glad that you brought it [00:46:00] up that way. I've never gotten to share it quite like that before. De'Vannon: Hallelujah, tabernacle and praise it's it's. It's a good thing to always take the time to invite God into whatever it is that you're doing and to get quiet and listen.And just because you don't feel like you hear anything. And when we were talking about God speaking, y'all, we're not necessarily talking about an audible voice, although it's not like he can't do that as like you just kind of know, and you also understand that it's it comes with a zest of energy and inspiration.That is a part from how you usually are. And so when we say God is speaking or something like that, that's really generally what we mean. And so, so you create a pod match to bridge people, hosts and guests. How many people are on pod match now Alex: there at time of recording this there's about 27,000 people using it, De'Vannon: 27,000 [00:47:00] people.So. And then we said that the average to speak to us about the averages of about how many episodes, someone records before they quit the average in the Alex: industry. Yeah. So people who quit, unfortunately, it's called pod fade. It's like been used forever. You've heard pod fade. It's seven episodes is like the magic number that people would just like, I'm done forget this.Like that's where that people just tend to stop. But I decided to look past that. So let's imagine you get past the seven episodes, where do people stop the amount of people that make it to one year after passing the seven year mark? So I think it's something like 90% or 95% of people stop at seven episodes.So the 5% that keep on going 90% of them stop that before the end of one year. So, you know, granted one episode per week, let's just say 50. Like only a very small fraction are making it to that. Like, I don't know the exact number, cause I haven't been able to drill down to the data that much. Cause it's hard to really get access to, but it's, it's almost, nobody makes it to 50 episodes.Like that [00:48:00] is an extremely rare thing. And it's a huge achievement because it basically means if, Hey, if you're doing one episode a year or a day or a week after one year, you've got about 50, 52 episodes. Right. And so yeah, that's where people are really stopping it. It goes back to them and we said they don't have a strong wide and maybe they just want to test it and that's fine.Or they spent all their money trying to get those first few episodes produce and other out of, out of money. Cause they thought they had to go spend it all. Those are some of the most, those are the main reasons that was really hard. That's why people stop it at that really low number. De'Vannon: So. I want to dig deeper into pod match.So pod match, it's very, it's a very organized website. Another issue that I had when I had my team of assistant or whatever, my production team, fuckingfucking everything up and call it, creating stress on my life where they didn't need to be. So they booked this person. Now they got a. If I want to ask this person something, I have to let the assistant know, then they've got [00:49:00] an email them. Then I've got to wait for them to email me back. I got to request pictures to use for promotions that they had to request their bio.Then I got to talk about whether or not they're going to send me their book. You know, anything they might want to talk about it. It could take like weeks pod match with what Alex has done is combined everything into an electronic media kit on your profile page. So we're like on a dating app. If you're going to say that you're a five foot, two green eyes, brunette hair, 10 inch Dick, triple Z, boobs, whatever the fuck you want to say, you know, you like long walks and kayaking.Doing the bioluminescence and shit and all of that, you know, we're going to have on there, your biography about you, you're already approved photos. Your call to action, your links, your social media, everything is all on one side. And page 10, if you're a guest and 10 questions, you're ready to answer. So that way, when you evaluating somebody, these 50 questions that you [00:50:00] were going to ask them is already there before you, this is saving you time, energy, and effort.It's the problem is one of the greatest things that I appreciate about it. Cause I'm like this entire media kit is right here. It's already done. And there are other websites out there that are trying to do with pod matches doing, but they're failing miserably. Because I've been on some of those y'all were acquired.Who were those people, pod being, and that you acquired, then you gobbled them up and hopefully get the gobble more. Because as I meet people, say like, sometimes when I'm on, I have a standing profile on matchmaker.fm. I don't actively use it. I just leave it there. And if somebody messages to me then grapes, and then I tell them about pod match and they never heard of it.Then they go sign up on pod. Alex: I love you. De'Vannon: I'm all like, you need to do better than matchmaker because matchmaking there's other websites out there now. And I haven't seen any of the others, but I'm like, I haven't found one [00:51:00] that is easy to use as pot match. They have everything there. Then, then Alex has like systems there to encourage.You to do things. There's like a rating system systems. We've been making it like the top 10. And then there's your affiliate program where bitches can get paid too. So tell us about these intricacies. Alex: Yeah, I mean, go back to the media kit. That was like really early on that we decided to do that because of the same problem.That's one of your listeners. So everyone listening to sex, drugs and Jesus, right now, you don't care how long it took Devon. And to get me booked or how long it took them, like how long it took to find a picture of like all these things, right? You don't, that doesn't matter. Like the back and forth of that, what matters is the content getting out there?And so in my mind, I was like, Hey, we need to get all this on pod match so people can just make it really simple. So it's like, okay, yeah. I want this guy as a guest, or I want this lady as a guest. Like I want this person to be on my. Cool. Here's their images. Here's their bio. Here's some questions ready to answer.In [00:52:00] case we get stuck. All these things, like the idea was just to have a one-stop shop to make the whole process seamless. You can book straight through the platform. So if you want to basically schedule the interview, you can use our built-in messaging platform. You don't ever have to exchange an email unless you want to.And I, some people would like to, and that's great. That's fine. I actually prefer people to actually make a, build a relationship as well. But if you don't want to, you don't have to do any of that. And yet, so we built this thing in just basically say, this is a one-stop shop for finding your guests or being a guest.That's the idea and everything you need is right here in the platform. And then for me personally, going back to just like the purpose side of things, I love this industry and I want to help creators be able to make some extra money. Cause I get it. Like even if you're spending 50 bucks on. That's that's a lot of money to some people that's like eating for a day for some people like they, they might not have that.So if they're saying I'm going to start this, I want to way they can make that back. So we really did the affiliate program. We have some we're calling pod value initiative, which basically means if you're completing interviews, using our platform, we're going to give you a piece of it. [00:53:00] Like we actually split our revenue in half.So 50% of our revenue we're giving back to creators that are using the platform. And it just kind of, there's a whole mathematical equation. I'm not going to get into, but basically the point is we just want to say, Hey, you know what creator? So the podcast host side of things here is a little cut of what we're making.Just our way of saying thanks and stay in the industry, keep it up. Because end of the day, that 10% of people that make it past their first year, I would love to help make that 11% of people making it. Like that would be a dream for me to just help increase it by 1%. Now that might be a really ambitious goal or not ambitious enough, but right now that's my.And I know if we could put a little bit money in people's pockets, make the whole process more seamless than maybe, maybe just, maybe we'd be able to do that. And that's really, my big focus is to help those creators because ultimately when they share an episode, that's what serves the world. This episode going out is what helps people, not all the administration that went behind it De'Vannon: and keeping in this same spirit, the pie, the pie upon pros community is a big deal.And so, and this is one thing [00:54:00] that, that I, that I really appreciate and got so much out of, especially at the beginning. So as a podcast, And especially during these times that we're like still kind of reeling with this pandemic, the feeling of isolation can be quite poignant and you can feel alone, espe

How many times have you considered going into short term rentals as a property manager? Short-term and vacation rentals are enticing, but they can also be an intimidating niche for newcomers.  Today's guest is Alex Jarbo, short-term rental developer and manager and CEO of Sargon Investments.He is the host of the Youtube Channel called Alex Builds where he teaches the ins and outs of short-term development and management. You'll Learn… [01:08] Starting out in the Short-Term Rental World [08:04] Useful Tools for Managing Short-Term Rentals [12:13] Virtual Guidebooks: Providing a Unique Experience to Guests [15:42] Dealing with Common Issues in Short-Term Rentals [18:32] Some Extra Tips from Pro Short-Term Rental Manager Alex [23:06] The Shifts in the Industry Since COVID [25:34] Where to go to Learn More! Tweetables “And anytime I talk to someone they're like, "I don't know where to start investing." I was like, just start in your backyard.” “It's easier to rent out these unique properties compared to, say, something like a normal condo or something.” “I like the property to be an experience in itself on top of the city that the people are visiting for the attraction.” “I talk to a couple of people a week then it's like, is it too late to invest in short term rentals? Like, no. It's not. Invest and manage both.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Alex: I talk to a couple of people a week then it's like, is it too late to invest in short term rentals? Like, no, it's not. Invest and manage both. [00:00:06] Jason: Alright, welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow! If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income.  [00:00:44] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and the business owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:08] And today's guest is Alex, Alex Jarbo. Am I saying your last name right?  [00:01:13] Alex: Yup. [00:01:14] Jason: I did? Okay. I didn't know if it was like a soft, "h" sounding 'j' or something. So Alex, welcome to the show. You have a company called Sargon investments. You do a lot of cool Airbnb stuff. So I'm really excited to have you on as a guest. I think the Airbnb market is of interest to a lot of my clients and a lot of property managers. It's heating up. There's more interest growing. So, maybe to get started: tell us a little bit about your background and how you kind of got into dealing with rental properties. [00:01:48] Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So I was originally, I served about four and a half years in the Marine Corps. And then I had gotten to a point where I just wanted to branch out and sort of do my own thing outside of the military. So, got out, and then the day I got out of the military, I actually moved down to where I live here in Asheville. Prior to that, I spent a couple months trying to figure out like where I wanted to move. I'm originally from Detroit, Michigan. And I wanted to get into short-term rentals. That was sort of the niche that I had chosen inside real estate. So when I moved here, got my real estate license, helped some people purchase and sell properties, but I saw a lot of people purchasing short term rentals that would just come to me. [00:02:26] So I decided to purchase my first one or at least start to purchase my first one. And I originally wanted to use my VA loan and purchase like a duplex or a triplex, live in one, and rent the other couple out on Airbnb. But what I realized really quickly was that like it was just very difficult, even back then in 2017 to find good, cash flowing short-term rentals that weren't completely out of my budget at the time. So after maybe like three months of looking and getting outbid a lot, I decided to build my first short-term rental. And on top of a building I decided to take over the, uh, management. So that's where I decided to both start a development company and start a management company. And that one property turned into two, two turned into four that we're developing, and now we're developing 10 and then working on like a boutique resort. [00:03:13] But yeah, that's the sort of the short of where I'm at now is just focusing on putting together these like boutique resort developments. And then we self manage in house. [00:03:24] Jason: Awesome. So a lot of property managers listening might think "I would like to be an investor and maybe get some of my own." I know some of my clients dabble a little bit just in their own investments. Even if they manage long-term rentals, they want to get more into AirBNB. So why don't we approach that topic first? Like getting into it, you do some things that are a little bit different than the typical Airbnb investor. And one of which being cabins. So I'm really curious about this idea of: why cabins? [00:03:59] Alex: So this is prior to COVID. My whole idea was like-- right now we invest in mountain communities, but every market has their own little area. And anytime I talk to someone they're like, "I don't know where to start investing." I was like, just start in your backyard. If you live in a Metro area, like a lot of areas, you're going to be renting out, like say condos, or you're going to be renting out apartments or something just cause you're in a busy metro city. I like to ask them like "where in your city or the market that you live in-- where do people like to take weekend vacations, maybe an hour to two away from you driving wise? [00:04:29] And that's sort of the market that I recommend people sort of go into. People are fine with driving say like 15- 20 minutes away from like a Metro city up to an hour in some cases. So like a good example of that is like people in New York, like New York city are going to travel maybe two hours. They're used to traveling two hours north to vacation, same thing with, say like in California on the west coast. People in San Diego are pretty used to going up to Big Bear Lake and taking that drive. Land prices are going to be cheaper.  [00:04:59] You can also host some like, not parties, but like bigger-- you can host more people in some of these larger cabins and you have more control on the design and that's sort of the thing we really focus on is focusing on developing unique cabins, whether it be a frames, really nice log cabins... we're, we're dabbling in like tree houses. It's just difficult to find like financing on those right now. The reason we gravitated towards cabins over something like purchasing a condo in a Metro city is we have more control over the design, which just plays into the marketing. It's easier to rent out these unique properties compared to say like something like a normal condo or something where it's a little bit more difficult to differentiate yourself to like the condo next door or something. [00:05:41] Jason: So it sounds like some of the key things you look at is proximity: like pick an area that's nearby. It needs to be something kind of where people take vacations and then novelty seems to be an aspect to this. Like cabins are a novel thing in the mountain area and making it somehow unique or different or stand out.  [00:05:59] Alex: Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, what I always like to say is: say, if you're not developing the property and you're coming into it, you want something unique about the property. I like the property to be an experience in itself on top of the city that the people are visiting for the attraction. So like, if you're looking at a market that has its attractions, but at the same time, it's like you sort of get rid of the seasonality part of it a little bit when the property itself is an experience in itself,  [00:06:24] Jason: Mmm, yeah, good point. The property kind of needs to be its own event or its own thing. Yeah. Cool. So let's shift gears and talk about property managers that might want to get into this game of targeting people. Like you have a portfolio or a small portfolio of investments that they can maybe get on as clients and what that might look like. And then maybe one of the things I think you're really good at is the technology. And so we could chat maybe a little bit about that.  [00:06:55] Alex: Yeah, for managers who are looking, before this, we were talking about like a lot of long-term managers are sort of starting to dabble in the short-term rental game. It sounds intimidating, but it's not as intimidating as it sounds. There's a lot of technology out there right now, plugins and then also CRMs that make the process pretty seamless. Depending on how many properties you have in the portfolio, you really don't need boots on the ground. It might in terms of like having a property manager in an area. Again, I would focus on one market at a time.  [00:07:25] But you can get away with a part-time maintenance person. The most important part is probably going to be your cleaning crew, and that's going to be up to you. There's pros and cons to either hiring your own, like managing the cleaning in-house or teaming up with a local cleaning crew in the area that can handle the cleaning stuff. Which again, the cleaning is definitely like-- I look at my cleaning crew as almost the manager of the properties themselves, because they're there at least twice a week or at least once a week, depending on what the booking looks like. So they see what needs to be replaced, what's damaged. If anything is damaged, they send me a picture directly, which I send directly to either Airbnb, VRBO, or wherever the property's listed.  [00:08:04] So the technology piece is going to be huge. And it, again, it's all dependent on how big you are. If you have 10 cabins, you can probably get away with, there are messaging plugins where it's like, I would say 80% of your messaging is automated. And then you can hire virtual assistants to sort of take over the other 20% of the messaging where it's like specific questions that are asked or say, if they're calling or something. [00:08:26] Jason: So the cleaning crew is almost your inspection crew. Like they're doing somewhat of an inspection as well, not just coming in and cleaning. So they're identifying issues, submitting things to your maintenance team or your system for maintenance. And then you need people that are managing that. And then you've got VAs that can help facilitate some of these things happening right? [00:08:48] Alex: Right. [00:08:49] Jason: What are some of the actual technological tools that you utilize that help you to systemize the business and make things simple for yourself?  [00:08:58] Alex: The first one is-- and I'll talk about maybe four or five tools here. The first one is going to be a tool and a company called StayFi. And I've talked about this tool so much now that I've recommended it to anyone looking to get into short-term rentals. StayFi is essentially a little disk that plugs in the back of the router. And what that does, is it email captures any guests that's using your internet. That 1. Protects you from if the guest is doing anything illegal on your internet, which might happen. But 2. It captures everyone's email in the cabin.  [00:09:29] So, you're essentially taking digital marketing principles and applying it to brick and mortar business, which is the short-term rental stuff. Which is a little difficult to do, but if you can master that part, you can essentially capture your customers. So StayFi. Imagine like you're walking into a Starbucks, you walk into an airport and you have to enter in your email address to be able to get access to the wifi. It's the same idea here, but it's geared towards short-term rentals.  [00:09:52] So from there we use MailChimp to push out marketing emails, but we push out maybe seasonal emails, like three or four emails a year just saying, "Hey," like "this season's coming up" or "Valentine's day is coming up. Would you like to book with us?" [00:10:04] Originally, when you're starting off, you can just put your Airbnb link directly in there. But as a manager who wants to build a bigger short-term rental business, you can use this to sort of take people off of Airbnb, VRBO where they book initially with the short-term rental sites, but then you can build a platform on the backend to sort of capture direct bookings where you're not paying both. The guest is not paying the processing fees. And then same thing with the host. You're saving money on that end where you're sort of-- you have more control over the guests, which is what we realized is very important.  [00:10:38] Jason: Yeah. So you're shifting from just traffic that's fed to you by Airbnb and you're taking that traffic so that it doesn't always have to come back through that and creating your own traffic. It's traffic you own now.  [00:10:50] And for those emails that you capture, do you have any, like, even anecdotal data or information on how many rebook at the same property? Is that common? [00:11:00] Alex: It is pretty common. I don't have exact numbers on that. But we do see a boost in booking say like a couple days after we've pushed the email out. Right now we're still working on building out the backend platform.  [00:11:13] We're just pushing them directly back through Airbnb right now. But like, companies like Airbnb and VRBO have metrics that show like, "Hey, this person has rebooked with you this many times." And then people who are looking to get into more of an advanced system, we use Streamline, or we're going to be using Streamline. vacation, rental software is top of the line where you can syndicate all the top short-term rental sites, and then it sort of syndicates all the messaging too that comes from the different sites. So you have one platform which I really recommend doing. Like, if someone is coming up to a manager and saying, "Hey, I want to take over your property. What can you do for me?" The first thing I recommend is always: are they just on one platform? If they're just on Airbnb, if they're just on VRBO, there's already room for growth there by just putting it on a couple other platforms or putting more eyes on your property. [00:12:00] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. So Streamline for syndication is one of the things. You mentioned MailChimp for getting emails out periodically do your list or some sort of newsletter. What other tools are you using to kind of simplify the business?  [00:12:13] Alex: Right now, a digital guidebook is very effective. We like to essentially plan-- I sort of stole this idea. My wife and I had a vacation in Taloon beach on a resort. And when we arrived, the resort had practically planned our trip for us, where it's like, "Hey, if you want to do a cave diving trip, this is this. If you want it, this is what your day would look like. If you wanted to go visit the pyramids, this is what your day is going to look like. If you just want a chill day and just want to go visit restaurants, this is what your day could look like."  [00:12:43] So we did the same thing there where we plan maybe three to four days. Like here we have like over a hundred breweries in the city, so we do like a brewery day. We do a hiking day. We do a waterfall chasing day, and it's like all that's in the digital guidebook where you could put links to different things in the digital guidebook. And it's just sent out. The link is sent out with the check-in instructions. Same thing with you can get with local restaurants or local providers and be like, "Hey, can you give me like a 10% discount, and then I'll put it in my digital guide book where the guests can use almost like a QR code where you can just generate a QR code. Yeah.  [00:13:15] Jason: So for the digital guidebook, is this just like a Google document or is this like..? [00:13:21] Alex: We use a company called Hostfully. And Hostfully is specifically a short-term rental, digital guidebook. [00:13:28] Jason: Host fully?  [00:13:30] Alex: Yeah, Hostfully. Host and then F U L L Y. Yeah.  [00:13:33] Jason: Okay. Great. [00:13:34] Alex: Pretty cheap too, man. It's like, I think it's like 15, $20 a month per property.  [00:13:38] Jason: Got it. And so what advantages does Hostfully give you over just throwing it in a Google document, for example?  [00:13:45] Alex: The templates are super easy to use. You can also track like how many people are actually looking at it. I mean, I would say the templates, and then also, Hostfully does have a backend system just like Streamline. So. Streamline I believe it's a minimum of 15 properties if you're just starting off. Hostfully I believe is like $25 a month per property. Where it's the same type of syndication CRM, where it pushes out to the other short-term rental sites. So you can sync those two together.  [00:14:11] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I had a software company on one of my previous episodes. They were showcasing TripAngle. Tripangle.com. And he was talking about how they like reduce all the fees, connected Airbnb and all this stuff. So. Pretty cool. It might be worth listeners checking out that and checking out tripangle.com. I think he had mentioned something about Streamline the last time I talked to this gentleman too. So, some connections. [00:14:37] Alex: Streamline's a company standard. It's been around before Airbnb. Before VRBO blew up too. People forget like short-term rentals is not a new idea. It's just the access Airbnb has made it so much easier and VRBO too. Short-term rentals have been around for a very long time where people have to pick up a phone and book So like, I mean, people aren't missing the boat on that. I talk to a couple of people a week then it's like, is it too late to invest in short term rentals? [00:15:04] Like, no, it's not. Invest and manage both. It's continuing to grow, especially with COVID like people sort of stepped away from hotels a little bit, and they're more comfortable driving out a little further out where it's like, would you rather pay an extra $1500 to stay an actual house compared to a hotel? And same thing with like some of the larger properties that we manage. It's like we have families instead of booking, maybe two or three hotel rooms, they're just going to book one house and it almost comes out to be the same price.  [00:15:31] Jason: Nice. Yeah. For large groups it's hard to beat, you know, if you're doing a family reunion or something like that. It's pretty difficult. You're talking a whole bunch of hotel rooms or you get a 10 bedroom house. So, [00:15:42] Alex: One thing going back to the tools that just came to mind. This has helped us a lot when it comes to-- cause we are in a very strict short-term rental market in terms of like laws and zoning and everything. And one of the things that's helped us a lot. And this can help a lot of the managers who are looking to get into the space is using a company called NoiseAware and stacking that with a company called Party Squasher. And we mainly use NoiseAware compared to Party Squasher. You can combine the two but NoiseAware sort of, it hears-- it doesn't listen to everything. It doesn't listen into conversations, but it monitors the decibel level inside of the property.  [00:16:17] So if the guests are being way too loud or screaming since you get their phone number at booking, even if it's through Airbnb or VRBO, they get an immediate text message "Hey, you're being too loud. Could you please like quiet down?" Or something like that. Maybe a little bit more tactful than that. But that's been a very powerful tool for us and especially approaching the county. It's like the biggest thing neighbors think about is like, oh my God, when they think Airbnb they think like, oh my God, there's gonna be just parties next door all the time. So.  [00:16:44] Jason: Right. Destroy the neighborhood.  [00:16:46] Alex: Right.  [00:16:47] Jason: So, yeah, that's pretty interesting. So they get a text message. Do they reply to this and do you see their messages? Or like, what the hell? You know,  [00:16:55] Alex: But what we do, there's like a whole list of things. So Stayfi, what I mentioned earlier also allows you to see how many devices are connected to the wifi. So. [00:17:06] Jason: Right, so if there's like a thousand, you know there's some rager going on. [00:17:09] Alex: Granted, you might have your laptop. Like one guest will have a phone, a laptop, So two, three devices, maybe an iPad too, a tablet. But if like the property sleeps six people and there's 30 people attached to the wifi. [00:17:21] We also have like an outdoor facing camera just at the driveway too. So say if we do get a say, cause we can set it up to where we get the noise notification as well. So from there, we just look at our cameras and say, oh, okay. There's 50 cars in the parking lot, and this place sleeps six people. And then from there, we can either text "Hey, like you're not supposed to have..." or we can reach out to Airbnb directly. We've never really dealt with that issue, but the systems are in place just to make sure. [00:17:48] Jason: And it's largely probably the screening process at the outset that you have in place to prevent that. Right. So you mentioned NoiseAware you couple it sometimes with Party Squasher, is that what you said?  [00:17:59] Alex: I personally haven't used it, but some other guests have recommended it to me. I haven't-- I have almost no experience in that, but I've seen it a lot mentioned on different short term rental podcasts and some of the books that I've read too. [00:18:10] Jason: Okay. Cool.  [00:18:11] Alex: I Don't know what it does on the backend but...  [00:18:13] Jason: Yeah, I don't either. Okay, cool. But it probably prevents parties, which is probably a big concern, like, parties happening, the NoiseAware and the Party Squasher. All right. Cool. Any other tools or systems that you utilize in managing your rentals to make sure things go smoothly. [00:18:32] Alex: Going back to the cleaning crew just a good line of communication is very important. Making sure that you are choosing a cleaning crew or cleaning company that can grow with you. A lot of the time, you don't want to be teaching your cleaning crew how to clean short-term rentals because what I realized initially, and just with the labor shortage that's happening right now is a lot of people, like my cleaning crew stopped taking on new clients, not new properties, just new clients. [00:18:58] It's difficult to try to switch the mindset of approaching a cleaner that takes care of properties. Say for just cleaning people's properties like our property manager or our cleaning crew specifically deals in short-term rentals, a company that is used to turning a property two, three times a week if need be.  [00:19:17] Another thing I'd recommend is-- it might affect your bottom line a little bit, but it might outweigh the amount of time that you put on a specific property. Because of COVID, we stopped taking on one day bookings, which we were taking a lot of, one day bookings prior to COVID and that sort of just came out of my cleaning crew couldn't handle the work from the one day bookings, but what I realized is looking back, we've been doing that for four or five months since we stopped taking one day bookings, a lot of our problems, a lot of our questions, a lot of our bandwidth was taken up by one day guests. And I sorta understand it's like a lot of the times they were just coming in at like, say 8, 9, 10 PM. And they have to check in at 10:00 AM the next day. They don't really get to enjoy the property too much. You get those late night texts a lot too, from the one day guests compared to a guest staying 3, 4, 5, sometimes a week with you. [00:20:10] Sometimes those are the quietest guests where you don't hear anything from them. Maybe a couple of questions here and there. But what I saw was a lot of my issues, a lot of my people requesting refunds or whatever was coming from one day guests. So for people who are already in the short-term rental space, I'd play around to see. And what I also realized too, was like, sometimes that one day guest will book in the center of the week on the Wednesday, which blocks someone from booking that entire week. So if someone's in the short term rental space play around with seeing, maybe just do it with one property and see how the property is affected.  [00:20:42] You might get a better tenant in there which is what we saw a better tenant by booking two, three days minimum compared to a one day. And what I also saw with if you're booking on Airbnb or VRBO, is the algorithm sort of adjusts based off that request of only accepting two or three-day bookings. They'll try to play with your schedule to show it to people who are only trying to book three days and sort of, like for most of our properties are fully booked up with no one day gaps in the schedule right now, after we've switched over from not taking one day bookings. [00:21:16] Jason: Yeah, that's interesting. I would imagine that would be really effective. Plus if you're able to get two and three day bookings to fill it up for the most part, you probably rather than a bunch of one days, you're probably between a one day and a three day. For example, you probably have similar operational costs. [00:21:34] Alex: That's been huge. And that's sort of just came that we discovered that by accident. Also, one of my mentors had told me, like we were operating for the first year, we were operating at like a hundred percent occupancy and he's like, "your prices aren't high enough. You shouldn't be at a hundred percent occupancy." And that rings true for any type of real estate asset. It's like, if you're at a hundred percent occupancy or hundred percent booked... [00:21:53] Jason: yeah. You haven't hit the limit yet on what you could get. [00:21:55] Alex: Right.  [00:21:56] Jason: If you're at a hundred percent,  [00:21:57] Alex: If it's multi family, self storage, whatever. It's like, if you're at a hundred percent, you got to raise your prices. [00:22:01] Jason: Yeah what's the occupancy rate you go for now instead of aiming for a hundred percent.  [00:22:07] Alex: So we raised our rates by 30%, if we can stick to the 85%, which is, I mean, if you look at like companies that look at like what to price your property as like rdna.co is probably another good a good tool for the audience that sort of helps you price out what the short-term rental will rent for rdna.co they look at if a property is anything over 75% that's looked at, like you're in a higher percentile compared to anything below that. [00:22:35] This is getting on the development side when we develop our properties, we underwrite them as long-term rentals. Just in case, if the zoning ever changed in the city, that it's an extra fail safe, it's an exit. That's worst case scenarios. If we have to book it out, has a long-term rental. It can cover the debt service and the expenses. If we need it.  [00:22:54] Jason: Smart. Yeah. I know when COVID hit, the short-term rental game got pretty damaged in the short term, right? And there was a lot of people like trying to shift and shuffle and get their properties into the long-term space.  [00:23:06] Alex: What I saw too is I had talked to someone. I realized that this was different. We use the term vacation rental and short-term rental pretty interchangeably, but sometimes people look at that as differently. If you're looking at the definitions of what I'm about to explain right now, vacation rentals is what I'm in right now. Sometimes short-term rentals can be looked at like 30 day plus stays, but not over six months. During COVID a lot of people were renting out to traveling nurses and they're still doing that is they're renting out to traveling nurses. Say you're not in a market where you have all these properties. You might be close to a very large hospital. [00:23:40] If you're close to a large hospital, you can go. There are short-term rental sites that are specifically geared towards nurses. And that's a lot of hosts sort of pivoted towards that during, when they weren't allowed to do short-term rentals. But the 30 day plus stay is a gray area. Almost all cities and counties cannot regulate short-term rentals for 30 days plus which is interesting. A lot of people are making good money just on that route.  [00:24:06] Jason: Yeah. I've talked to some property managers. One property manager mentioned that they do a lot of that extended stay it's in the short term sort of space, but they get a lot of people from overseas that are coming over that need a place to stay in the interim or they're coming for some sort of work thing, you know, they might be maybe from India coming to work for a tech firm or some of these things, and they need an extended place to stay for a few months while they're doing some sort of training, you know, things like that. And so, yeah, that can be a very profitable business. They're getting a lot more money than the standard rate on a property.  [00:24:43] Alex: And you had mentioned COVID. It'll be interesting to-- I've seen different projections on like once international travel really starts to pick up again. Prices or occupancy might drop, but it's going to be interesting to see, every market's going to be different, how that plays out because a lot of people did start using. They picked up Airbnb and VRBO during COVID where it's like, instead of staying in a hotel, they decided to book through Airbnb and VRBO for the first time. So it'd be interesting to see if those people, if the occupancy and the rates sort of stay the same once, international travel picks back up. [00:25:16] Jason: Yeah, that will be interesting. Well, cool. This has been really insightful and I'm sure those that are kind of dabbling or just getting into the short-term rental game will have picked up some cool ideas and some cool tips. Anything else that you think they might be interested in or that we could point out to property managers? [00:25:34] Alex: Yeah. I talk a lot about this stuff on my YouTube channel too. Alex Builds it's a little logo of a blue tree house. If they want to sort of dive deeper into the management side of it and the tool side they can check that out. And then also my website, Sargoninvestments.com they can, if they can't find that YouTube channel, they could find it through there too. [00:25:51] Jason: Awesome. Cool, Alex, I appreciate you coming on the show and thanks for sharing so many of your knowledge and insights, and I wish you continued success in your short-term game.  [00:26:03] Alex: Perfect. Thanks, Jason. [00:26:04] Jason: You bet. All right. Cool. Check him out on YouTube. He's got a cool little YouTube channel you know, going over investments short-term rentals. He talks about some cool ideas. Lending loans like how to play the game of short-term rentals. So check him out on YouTube. And for those that are interested in growing their property management business, be sure to check us out at doorgrow.com we're here to support you and your growth. We're especially really good at helping you not just add a bunch of doors without spending a bunch of money on marketing. [00:26:34] And we are helping. We have short-term rental clients, you know, in our program. Long-term rental clients are our most common target audience that we're helping build out their portfolio. But we also are helping on the operational side to be able to streamline the business and to become the entrepreneur that can run and have a team that makes your life easier so that you have more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, which means you're making a difference and doing things you really feel good about, and more support. And so if you feel like you're kind of scarce on those things, I call those the four reasons and you're really frustrated and you're banging your head against the wall with your team, then reach out. We can support you and help you in that. [00:27:17] You might be a really good candidate for our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind which is really awesome. So anyway, check this out. And for those that are listening to this on iTunes or on YouTube, be sure to also join our free Facebook community, which you can get to by going to doorgrowclub.com and until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:27:42] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay per lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:28:09] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. [00:28:30] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

About AlexAlex holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from UC San Diego, and has spent over a decade building high-performance, robust data management and processing systems. As an early member of a couple fast-growing startups, he's had the opportunity to wear a lot of different hats, serving at various times as an individual contributor, tech lead, manager, and executive. Prior to joining the Duckbill Group, Alex spent a few years as a freelance data engineering consultant, helping his clients build, manage and maintain their data infrastructure. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexras/ Personal page: https://alexras.info Old Consulting website with blog: https://bitsondisk.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: The company 0x4447 builds products to increase standardization and security in AWS organizations. They do this with automated pipelines that use well-structured projects to create secure, easy-to-maintain and fail-tolerant solutions, one of which is their VPN product built on top of the popular OpenVPN project which has no license restrictions; you are only limited by the network card in the instance. To learn more visit: snark.cloud/deployandgoCorey: Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at MinIO the high-performance Kubernetes native object store that's built for the multi-cloud, creating a consistent data storage layer for your public cloud instances, your private cloud instances, and even your edge instances, depending upon what the heck you're defining those as, which depends probably on where you work. It's getting that unified is one of the greatest challenges facing developers and architects today. It requires S3 compatibility, enterprise-grade security and resiliency, the speed to run any workload, and the footprint to run anywhere, and that's exactly what MinIO offers. With superb read speeds in excess of 360 gigs and 100 megabyte binary that doesn't eat all the data you've gotten on the system, it's exactly what you've been looking for. Check it out today at min.io/download, and see for yourself. That's min.io/download, and be sure to tell them that I sent you. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm the chief cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, which people are generally aware of. Today, I'm joined by our most recent principal cloud economist, Alex Rasmussen. Alex, thank you for joining me today, it is a pleasure to talk to you, as if we aren't talking to each other constantly, now that you work here.Alex: Thanks, Corey. It's great being here.Corey: So, I followed a more, I'd say traditional path for a cloud economist, but given that I basically had to invent the job myself, the more common path because imagine that you start building a role from scratch and the people you wind up looking for initially look a lot like you. And that is grumpy sysadmin, historically, turned into something, kind of begrudgingly, that looks like an SRE, which I still maintain are the same thing, but it is imperative people not email me about that. Yes, I know, you work at Google. But instead, what I found during my tenure as a sysadmin, is that I was working with certain things an awful lot, like web servers, and other things almost never, like databases and data warehouses. Because if you screw up a web server, we all have a good laugh, the site's down for a couple of minutes, life goes on, you have a shame trophy on your desk if that's your corporate culture, things continue.Mess up the data severely enough, and you don't have a company anymore. So, I was always told to keep my aura away from the expensive spendy things that power a company. You are sort of the first of a cloud economist subtype that doesn't resemble that. Before you worked here, you were effectively an independent consultant working on data engineering. Before that, you had a couple of jobs, but you had gotten a PhD in computer science, which means, first, you are probably one of the people in this world most qualified to pass some crappy job interview of solving a sorting algorithm on a whiteboard, but how did you get here from where you were?Alex: Great question. So, I like to joke that I kind of went to school until somebody told me that I had to stop. And I took that and went and started—or didn't start, but I was an early engineer at a startup and then was an executive at another early-stage one, and did a little bit of everything. And went freelance, did that for a couple of years, and worked with all kinds of different companies—vast majority of those being startups—helping them with data infrastructure problems. I've done a little bit of everything throughout my career.I've been, you know, IC, manager, manager, manager, IT guy, everything in between. I think on the data side of things, it just sort of happened, to be honest with you, it kind of started with the stuff that I did for my dissertation and parlayed that into a job back when the big data wave was starting to kind of truly crest. And I've been working on data infrastructure, basically my entire career. So, it wasn't necessarily something that was intentional. I've just been kind of taking the opportunity that makes the most sense for me it kind of every juncture. And my career path has been a little bit strange, both by academic and industrial standards. But I like where I'm at and I gained something really valuable from each of those experiences. So.Corey: It's been an interesting area of I won't say weakness here, but it's definitely been a bit of a challenge when we look at an AWS environment and even talking about a typical AWS customer without thinking of any of them in particular, I can already tell you a few things are likely to be true. For example, the number one most expensive line item in their bill is going to be EC2, and compute is the thing that powers it. Now, maybe that is they're running a bunch of instances the old-fashioned way. Maybe they're running Kubernetes but that's how it shows up. There's a lot of things that could be, and we look at what rounds that out.Now, the next item down should almost certainly not be data transfer and if so we should have a conversation, but data in one form or another is very often going to be number two. And that can mean a bunch of different things, historically. It could mean, “Oh, you have a whole bunch of stuff in S3. Let's talk about access patterns. Let's talk about lifecycle policies. Let's talk about making sure the really important stuff is backed up somewhere. Maybe you want to spend more on that particular aspect of it.”If it's on EBS volumes, that's interesting and definitely worth looking into and trying to understand the context of what's going on. Periodically we'll see a whole bunch of additional charges that speak to some of that EC2 charge in the form of EMR, AWS's Elastic MapReduce, which charges a per-hour instance charge, but also charges you for the instances that are running under the hood and under the EC2 line item. So, there's a lot of data lifecycle stuff, there's a lot of data ecosystem stories, that historically we've consulted out with experts in that particular space. And that's great, but we were starting to have to drag those people in on more and more engagements as we saw them. And we realized that was really something we had to build out as a core competency for ourselves.And we started out not intending to hire for someone with that specialty, but the more we talked to you, the more it became clear that this was a very real and very growing need that we and our customers have. How closely it is what you're doing now as far as AWS bill analysis and data pattern deep-dive align with what you were doing as a freelance consultant in the space?Alex: A lot more than you might expect. You know, I think that increasingly, what you're seeing now is that a company's core differentiator is its data, right, how much of it they have, what they do with it. And so, you know, to your point, I think when you look at any company's cloud spend, it's going to be pretty heavy on the data side in terms of, like, where have you put it? What are you doing to process it? Where is it going once it's been processed? And then how is that—Corey: And data transfer is a very important first word in that two-word sequence.Alex: Oh, sure is. And so I think that, like, in a lot of ways, the way that a customer's cloud architecture looks and the way that their bill looks kind of as a consequence of that is kind of a reification in a way of the way that the data flows from one place to another and what's done with it at each step along the way. I think what complicates this is that companies that have been around for a little while have lived through this kind of very amorphous, kind of, polyglot way that we're approaching data. You know, back when I was first getting started in the big data days, it was MapReduce, MapReduce, MapReduce, right? And we quickly [crosstalk 00:07:29]—Corey: Oh, yes. The MapReduce white paper out of Google, a beautiful April Fool's Day prank that the folks at Yahoo fell for hook, line, and sinker. They wrote Hadoop, and now we're all stuck with that pattern. Great gag, they really should have clarified they were kidding. Here we are.Alex: Exactly. So—Corey: I mostly kid.Alex: No, for sure. But I think especially when it comes to data, we tend to over-index on what the large companies do and then quickly realize that we've made a mistake and correct backwards, right? So, there was this big push toward MapReduce for everything until people realize that it was just a pain in the neck to operate and to build. And so then we moved into Spark, so kind of up-leveled a little bit. And then there was this kind of explosion of NoSQL and NewSQL databases that hit the market.And MongoDB inexplicably won that war and now we're kind of in this world where everything is cloud data warehouse, right? And now we're trying to wrestle with, like, is it actually a good idea to put everything in one warehouse and have SQL be the lingua franca on top of it? But it's all changing so rapidly. And when you come into a customer that's been around for 10 or 15 years, and has, you know, been in the cloud for a substantial—Corey: Yeah, one of those ancient customers. That is—Alex: I know, right?Corey: —basically old enough to almost get a driver's license? Oh, yeah.Alex: Right. It's one of those things where it's like, “Ah, yes, in startup years, you're, like, a hundred years old,” right? But still, you know, I think you see this, kind of—I wouldn't call it a graveyard of failed experiments, right, but it's a collection of, like, “Well, we tried this, and it kind of worked and we're keeping it around because the cost of moving this stuff around—the kind of data gravity, so to speak—is high enough that we're not going to bother transitioning it over.” But then you get into this situation where you have to bend over backwards to integrate anything with anything else. And we're still kind of in the early days of fixing that.Corey: And the AWS bill pattern that we see all the time across the board of those experiments were not successful and do not need to exist, but there's no context into that. The person that set them up left five years ago, the jobs are still running on time. What's happening with them? Well, we could stop them and see who screams, but very often, that's not the right answer either.Alex: And I think there's also something to note there, too, which is like, getting rid of data is very scary, right? I mean, if you resize a Kubernetes cluster from 15 nodes to 10, nobody's going to look at you sideways. But if you go, “Hey, we're just going to drop these tables.” The immediate reaction that you get, particularly from your data science team more often than not is, “Oh, God, what if we need that?” And so the conversation never really happens, and that causes this kind of snowball of data debt that persists in some cases for many, many years.Corey: Yeah, in some cases, what I found has been successful on those big unknown questions is don't delete the data, but restrict access to it for a few weeks and see what happens. Look into it a bit and make sure that it's not like, “Oh, cool. We just did for a month, and now we don't need that data. Let's get rid of it.” And then another month goes by it's like, “So, time to report quarterly earnings. Where's the data?”Oh, dear, that's not going to go well, for anyone. And understanding what's happening, the idea of cloning a petabyte of data so you can run an experiment on it. And okay, turns out the experiment wasn't needed. Do we still need to keep all of that?Alex: Yeah.Corey: The underlying platform advancements have been helpful toward this as well, a petabyte of data now in Glacier Deep Archive cost the princely sum of a thousand bucks a month, which is pretty close to the idea of why would I ever delete data ever again? I can get it back within a day if I need it, so let's just put it there instead.Alex: Right. You know, funny story. When I was in graduate school, we were dealing with, you know, 100 terabyte datasets on the regular that we had to generate every time because we only had 200 terabytes of raw storage. [laugh]. And this was before cloud was yet mature enough that we could get the kind of performance numbers that we wanted off of it.And we would end up having to delete the input data to make room for the output data. [laugh]. And thankfully, we don't need to do that anymore. But there are a lot of, kind of, anti-patterns that arise from that too, right? If data is easy to keep around forever, it stays around forever.And if it's easy to, let's say, run a SQL command against your Snowflake instance that scans 20 terabytes of data, you're just going to do it, and the exposure of that to you is so minimal that you can end up causing a whole bunch of problems for yourself by the fact that you don't have to deal with stuff at that low-level of abstraction anymore.Corey: It's always fun watching how this stuff manifests—because I'm dipping a toe into it from time to time—the easy, naive answer that we could give every customer but we don't is, “Huh. So, you have a whole bunch of EMR stuff? Well, you know, if you migrate that into something else, you'll save a whole bunch of money on that.” With no regard for the 500 jobs that run against that EMR cluster on a consistent basis that form is a key part of business process. “Yeah, if you could just do the entire flow of how data is operated with throughout your entire business that would be swell because you can save tens of thousands of dollars a month on that.” Yeah, how about we don't suggest things that are just absolute buffoonery.Alex: Well, and it's like, you know, you hit on a good point. Like, one of my least favorite words in the English language is the word ‘just.' And you know, I spent a few years as a freelance data consultant, and you know, a lot of what I would hear sometimes from customers is, “Well, why don't we ‘just' deprecate X?”Corey: “Why don't we just—” “I'm going to stop you there because there is no ‘just.'”Alex: Exactly.Corey: There's always context that we cannot have as outsiders.Alex: Precisely. Precisely. And digging into that really is—it's the fun part of the job, but it's also the hard part of the job.Corey: Before we created The Duckbill Group, which was really when I took Mike Julian on as business partner and CEO and formed the entity, I had something in common with you; I was freelancing for a couple of years beforehand. Now, I know why I wound up deciding, all right, we're going to turn this into a company, but what was it that I guess made you decide to, you know, freelancing is all well and good, but it's time to get something that looks a lot more like a quote-unquote, “Traditional job.”Alex: So, I think, on one level, I went freelance because I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do next. And I knew what I was good at. I knew what I had a lot of experience at, and I thought, “Well, I can just go out and kind of find a bunch of people that are willing to hire me to do what I'm good at doing, and then maybe eventually I'll find one of them that I like enough that I'll go and work for them. Or maybe I'll come up with some kind of a business model that I can repeat enough times that I don't have to worry that I wake up tomorrow and all of my clients are gone and then I have to go live in a van down by the river.”And I think when I heard about the opening at The Duckbill Group, I had been thinking for a little while about well, this has been going fine for a long time, but effectively what I've been doing is I've been you know, a staff-level data engineer for hire. And do I want to do something more than that, you know? Do I want to do something more comp—perhaps more sophisticated or more complex than that? And I rapidly came to the conclusion that in order to do that, I would have to have sales and marketing, and I would have to, you know, spend a lot of my time bringing in business. And that's just not something that I have really any experience in or I'm any good at.And, you know, I also recognize that, you know, I'm a relatively small fish in a relatively large pond, and if I wanted to get the kind of like, large scale people, the like the big, you know, Fortune 1000 company kind of customers, they may not pay attention to somebody like me. And so I think that ultimately, what I saw with The Duckbill Group was, number one, a group of people that were strongly aligned to the way that I wanted to keep doing this sort of work, right? Cultural alignment was really strong, good people, but also, you know, you folks have a thing that you figured out, and that puts you 10 to 15 steps ahead of where I was. And I was kind of staring down the barrel that, I'm like, am I going to have to take six months not doing client work so that I can figure out how to make this business sustain? And, you know, I think that ultimately, like, I just looked at it, and I said, this just makes sense to me, like, as a next step. And so here we all are.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of “Hello, World” demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking, databases, observability, management, and security. And—let me be clear here—it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself, all while gaining the networking, load balancing, and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build. With Always Free, you can do things like run small-scale applications or do proof-of-concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free? This is actually free, no asterisk. Start now. Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: It's always fun seeing how people perceive what we've done from the outside. Like, “Oh, yeah, you just stumbled right onto the thing that works, and you've just been going, like, gangbusters ever since.” Then you come aboard, it's like, “Here, look at this pile of things that didn't pan out over here.” And it's, you get to see how the sausage is made in a way that we talk about from time to time externally, but surprisingly, most of our marketing efforts aren't really focused on, “And here's this other time we screwed up as well.” And we're honest about it, but it's not sort of the thing that we promote as the core message of what we do and who we are.A question I like to ask people during job interviews, and I definitely asked you this, and I'll ask you now, which is going to probably throw some folks for a loop because who talks to their current employees like this? But what's next for you? When it comes time for you to leave the Duckbill Group, what do you want to do after this job?Alex: That's a great question. So, I mean, as we've mentioned before, you know, my career trajectory has been very weird and circuitous. And, you know, I would be lying to you if I said that I had absolute certainty about what the rest of that looks like. I've learned a few things about myself in the course of my career, such as it is. In my kind of warm, gooey center, I build stuff. Like, that is what gives me joy, it is what makes me excited to wake up in the morning.I love looking at big, complicated things, breaking them down into pieces, and figuring out how to make the pieces work in a way that makes sense. And, you know, I've spent a long time in the data ecosystem. I don't know, necessarily, if that's something that I'm going to do forever. I'm not necessarily pigeonholing myself into that part of the space just yet, but as long as I get to kind of wake up in the morning, and say, “I'm going to go and build things and it's not going to actively make the world any worse,” I'm happy with that. And so that's really—you know, might go back to freelancing, might go and join another group, another company, big small, who knows. I'm kind of leaving that up to the winds of destiny, so to speak.Corey: One thing that I have found incredi—sorry. Let me just address that first. Like that—Alex: Sure.Corey: —is the right way to think about it. My belief has always been that you don't necessarily have, like, the ten-year plan, or the five-year plan or whatever it is because that's where you're going to go so much as it gives you direction and forces you to keep moving so you don't wind up sitting in the same place for five years with one year of experience repeated five times. It helps you remember the bigger picture. Because I've always despised this fiction that we see in job interviews where average tenure in our industry is 18 to 36 months, give or take, but somehow during the interviews, we all talk like this is now your forever job, and after 25 years, you'll retire. And yeah, let's be a little more realistic than that.My question is always what is next and how can we align in a way that helps you get to what's coming? That's the purpose behind the question, and that's—the only way to make that not just a drippingly insincere question is to mean it and to continue to focus on it from time to time of, great. What are you learning what's next? Now, at the time of this recording, you've been here, I believe three weeks if I'm not mistaken?Alex: I've—this is week two for me at time of recording.Corey: Excellent. Yes, my grasp of time is sort of hazy at the best of times. I have a—I do a lot of things.Alex: For sure.Corey: But yeah, it has been an eye-opening experience for me, not because, “Oh, wow, we have an employee.” Yeah, we've done that a few times before. But rather because of your background, you are asking different questions than we typically get during onboarding. I had a blog post go out recently—or will be by the time this airs—about a question that you asked about, “Wow, onboarding into our internal account structure for AWS is way more polished than I've ever seen it before. Is that something you built in-house? What is that?”And great. Oh, terrific, I'd forgotten that this is kind of a novel thing. No. What we're using is AWS's SSO offering, which is such a well-built, polished product that I can only assume that it's under NDA because Amazonians don't talk about it ever. But it's great.It has a couple of annoyances, but beyond that, it's something that I'm a big fan of, but I'd forgotten how transformative that is, compared to the usual approach of all right, here's your username, here's a password you're going to have to change, here are your IAM credentials to store on disk forever. It's the ability to look at what we're doing through the eyes of someone who is clearly deep into the technical weeds, but not as exposed to all of the minutiae of the 300-some-odd AWS services is really a refreshing thing for all of us, just because it helps us realize what it's like to see some of this stuff for the first time, as well as gives me content ideas because if it's new to you, I promise you are not the only person who's seeing it that way. And if you don't really understand something well enough to explain it, I would argue you don't really understand the thing, so it forces me to get more awareness around exactly how different facets work. It's been an absolutely fantastic experience so far, from my perspective.Alex: Thank you. Right back at you. I mean, spending so many years working with startups, my kind of level of expected sophistication is, “I'm going to write your password on the back of a napkin. I have fifteen other things to do. Go figure it out.” And so you know, it's always nice to see—particularly players like AWS that are such 800-pound gorillas—going in and trying to uplevel that experience in a way that feels like—because I mean, like, look, AWS could keep us with the, “Here's a CSV with your username and password. Good luck, have fun.” And you know, they would still make—Corey: And they're going to have to because so much automation is built around that—Alex: Oh yeah—Corey: In so many places.Alex: —so much.Corey: It's always net-additive, they never turn anything off, which is increasingly an operational burden.Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah, it's nice to see them up-level this in a way that feels like they're paying attention to their customers' pain. And that's always nice to see.Corey: So, we met a few years ago—in the before times—at a mixer that we wound up throwing—slash meetup. It was in Southern California for some AWS event or another. You've been aware of who we are and what we do for a while now, so I'm very curious to know—and the joy of having these conversations is that I don't actually know what the answer is going to be, so this may never see the light of day if it goes to weird—Alex: [laugh].Corey: —in the wrong direction, but—no I'm kidding. What has been, I guess, the biggest points of dissonance or surprises based upon your perception of who we are and what we do externally, versus joining and seeing how the sausage is made?Alex: You know, I think the first thing is—um, well, how to put this. I think that a lot of what I was expecting, given how much work you all do and how big—well, ‘you all;' we do—and how big the list of clients is and how it gets bigger every day, I was expecting this to be, like, this very hyper put together, like, every little detail has been figured out kind of engagement where I would have to figure out how you all do this. And coming in and realizing that a lot of it is just having a lot of in-depth knowledge born from experience of a bunch of stuff inside of this ecosystem, and then the rest of it is kind of free jazz, is kind of encouraging. Because as someone that was you know, as a freelancer, right, who do you see, right? You see people who have big public presences or people who are giant firms, right?On the GCP side, SADA Systems is a great example. They're another local company for me here in Los Angeles, and—Corey: Oh, yes. [unintelligible 00:24:48] Miles has been a recurring guest on the show.Alex: Yeah. And he's great. And, like, they have this enormous company that's got, like, all these different specializations and they're basically kind of like the middleman for GCP on a lot of things. And, like, you see that, and then you kind of see the individual people that are like, “Yeah, you know, I'm not really going to tell you that I only have two clients and that if both of them go away, I'm screwed, but, like, I only have two clients, and if both of them go away, I'm screwed.” And so, you know, I think honestly seeing that, like, what you've built so far and what I hope to help you continue to build is, you know, you've got just enough structure around the thing so that it makes sense, and the rest of it, you're kind of admitting that no plan ever survives contact with the client, right, and that everybody's going to be different than that everybody's problems are going to be different.And that you can't just go in and say, “Here's a dashboard, here's a calculator, have fun, give me my money,” right? Because that feels like—in optimization spaces of any kind, be that cloud, or data or whatever, there's this, kind of, push toward, how do I automate myself out of a job, and the realization that you can't for something like this, and that ultimately, like, you're just going to have to go with what you know, is something that I kind of had a suspicion was the case, but this really made it clear to me that, like, oh, this is actually a reasonable way of going about this.Corey: We thought otherwise at one point. We thought that this was something could be easily addressed their software. We launched our DuckTools SaaS platform in beta and two months later, did the—our incredible journey has come to an end, and took it off of a public offering. Because it doesn't lend itself to solving these problems in software in any reasonable way. I am ever more convinced over time that the idea of being able to solve cloud cost optimization with software at VC-scale is a red herring.And yeah, it just isn't going to work because it's one size fits some. Our customers are, by definition, exceptional in many respects, and understanding the context behind why things are the way that they are mean that we can only go so far with process because then it becomes a let's have a conversation and let's be human. Otherwise, we try to overly codify the process, and congratulations, we just now look like really crappy software, but expensive because it's all people doing it. It doesn't work that way. We have tools internally that help smooth over a lot of those edges, but by and large, people who are capable of performing at especially at the principal level for a cloud economics role, inherently are going to find themselves stifled by too much process because they need to have the freedom to dig into the areas that are relevant to the customer.It's why we can't recraft all of our statements of work in ways that tend to shy away from explicitly defined deliverables. Because we deliver an outcome, but it's going to depend entirely, in most cases, up on what we discover along the way. Maybe a full-on report isn't the best way of presenting the data in the way that we see it. Maybe it's a small proof of concept script or something like that. Maybe it's, I don't know, an interpretive dance in front of the company's board.Alex: [laugh]. Right.Corey: I'm open to exploring opportunities. But it comes down to what is right for the customer. There's a reason we only ever charge a fixed fee for these things, and it's because at that point, great, we're giving you the advice that we'd implement ourselves. We have no partnerships with any vendor in the space just to avoid bias or the perception of same. It's important that we are the authoritative source around these things.Honestly, the thing that surprised me the most about all this is how true to that vision we've stayed as we've as we flushed out what works, what doesn't. And we can distantly fail to go out of business every month. I am ecstatic about that. I expected this to wind up cratering into a mountain four months after I went freelance. Not yet.Alex: Well, I mean, I think there's another aspect of this too, right? Because I've spent a lot of my career working inside of venture capital-backed companies. And there's a lot of positive things to be said about having ready access to that kind of cash, but it does something to your business the second you take it. And I've been in a couple of situations where, like, once you actually have that big bucket of money, the incentive is grow, right? Hire more people get more customers, go, go, go, go, go.And sometimes what you'll find is that you'll spend the time and the money on an initiative and it's clearly not working. And you just kind of have to keep doubling down because now you've got customers that are using this thing and now you have to maintain it, and before you know it, you've got this albatross hanging around your neck. And like one of the things that I really respect about the way that Duckbill Group is is handling this by not taking outside cash is, like, it frees you up to make these kinds of bets, and then two months later say, “Well, that didn't work,” and try something else. And you know, that's very difficult to do once you have to go and convince someone with, you know, money flowing out of their ears, that that's the right thing to do.Corey: We have to be intentional about what we're doing. One of the benefits of bringing you aboard is that one, it does improve our capacity for handling more engagements at the same time, but it also improves the quality of the engagements that we are delivering. Instead of basically doing a round-robin assignment policy we can—Alex: Right.Corey: —we consult with each other; we talk about specific areas in which we have specific expertise. You get dragged into a lot of data portions of existing engagements, and the rest of us get pulled into other areas in which you might not be as strong. For example, “What are all of these ridiculous services? I can't make heads or tails have the ridiculous naming side of it.” Surprise, that's not a you problem.It comes down to being able to work collaboratively and let each other shine in a way that doesn't mean we load people up with work. We're very strict about having a 40-hour or less work week, just because we're not rushing for an exit. We want to enjoy our time working, we want to enjoy what we're doing, and then we want to go home and don't think about work until it's time to come back and think about these things. Like, it's a lifestyle company, but that lifestyle doesn't need to be run, run, run, run, run all the time, and it doesn't need to be something that people barely tolerate.Alex: Yeah. And I think that, you know, especially coming from being an army of one in a lot of engagements, it is really refreshing to be able to—see because, you know, I'm fortunate enough, I have friends in the industry that I can go and say like, “I have no idea how to make heads or tails of X.” And you know, I can get help that way, but ultimately, like, the only other outlet that I have here is the customer and they're not bringing me in if they have those answers readily to hand. And so being able to bounce stuff off of other people inside of an organization like this has been really refreshing.Corey: One of the things I've appreciated about your tenure here so far is the questions that you ask are pitched at the perfect level, by which I mean, it is never something you could answer with a three-second visit to Google, but it's also not something that you've spent three days spinning your wheels on trying to understand. You do a bit of digging; it's a little unclear, especially since there are multiple paths to go down, and then you flag it for clarification. And there's really so much to be said for that. Really, when we're looking for markers of seniority in the interview process, it's admitting you don't know something, but then also talking about how you would go about getting the answer. And it's—because no one has all this stuff in their head. I spend a disturbing amount of time looking at search engines and trying to reformulate queries and to get answers that make sense.I don't have the entirety of AWS shoved into my head. Yet. I'm sure there's something at re:Invent that's going to be scary and horrifying that will claim to do it and basically have a poor user interface, but all right. When that comes, we'll reevaluate then because this industry is always changing.Alex: For sure. For sure. And I think it's, it's worth pointing out that, like, one of the things that having done this for a long time gives you is this kind of scaffolding in your head that you can hang things over. We're like, you don't need to have every single AWS service memorized, but if you've got that scaffold in your head going, “Oh, like, this thing sounds like it hangs over this part of the mental scaffold, and I've seen other things that do that, so I wonder if it does this and this and this,” right? And that's a lot of it, honestly.Because especially, like, when I was solely in the data space, there's a new data wareho—or a new, like, data catalog system coming out every other week. You know, there are a thousand different things that claim to do MLOps, right? And whenever, like, someone comes to me and says, “Do you have experience with such and such?” And the answer was usually, “Well if you hum a few bars, I can fake it.” And, you know, that tends to help a great deal.Corey: Yeah. “No, but I'll find out and get back to you,” the right answer. Making it up and being wrong is the best way to get rejected from an environment. That's not just consulting; that's employment, too. If 95% of the time, you give the right answer, but that one time and 20 you're going to just make it up, well, I have to validate the other 19 because I never know when someone's faking it or not. There's that level of earned trust that's important.Alex: Well, yeah. And you're being brought in to be the expert in the room. That doesn't necessarily mean that you are the all-seeing, all-knowing oracle of knowledge but, like, if you say a thing, people are just going to believe you. And so, you know, it's beholden on you—Corey: If not, we have a different problem.Alex: Well, yeah, exactly. Hopefully, right? But yeah, I mean, it's beholden on you to be honest with your customer at a certain point, I think.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to got with me about this. And I would love to have you back on in a couple of months once you're fully up to speed and spinning at the proper RPMs and see what's happened then. I—Alex: Thank you. I'd—Corey: —really appreciate—Alex: —love to.Corey: —your time where's the best place for people to learn more about you if they haven't heard your name before?Alex: Well, let's see. I am @alexras on Twitter, A-L-E-X-R-A-S. My personal website is alexras.info.I've done some writing on data stuff, including a pretty big collection of blog posts on the data side of the AWS ecosystem that are still on my consulting page, bitsondisk.com. Other than that—I mean, yeah, Twitter is probably the best place to find me, so if you want to talk more about any weird, nerd data stuff, then please feel free to reach out there.Corey: And links to that will, of course, be in the [show notes 00:35:57]. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.Alex: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.Corey: Alex Rasmussen, principal cloud economist here at The Duckbill Group. I am Corey Quinn, cloud economist to the stars, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, insulting comment that you then submit to three other podcast platforms just to make sure you have a backup copy of that particular piece of data.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

In this episode, we cover: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:56 - How Alex and Kolton know each other and the beginnings of their companies  00:10:10 - The change of mindset from Amazon to the smaller scale 00:17:34 - Alex and Kolton's advice for companies that “can't be a Netflix or Amazon” 00:22:57 - PagerDuty, Gremlin and Crossovers/Outro TranscriptKolton: I was speaking about what I built at Netflix at a conference and I ran into some VCs in the lobby, and we got into a bit of a debate. They were like, “Hey, have you thought about building a company around this?” And I was like, “I have, but I don't want your money. I'm going to bootstrap it. We're going to figure it out on our own.” And the debate went back and forth a little bit and ultimately it ended with, “Oh, you have five kids and you live in California? Maybe you should take some money.”Julie: Welcome to the Break Things on Purpose podcast, a show about chaos, culture, building and breaking things with intention. I'm Julie Gunderson and in this episode, we have Alex Solomon, co-founder of PagerDuty, and Kolton Andrus, co-founder of Gremlin, chatting about everything from founding companies to how to change culture in organizations.Julie: Hey everybody. Today we're going to talk about building awesome things with two amazing company co-founders. I'm really excited to be here with Mandy Walls on this crossover episode for Break Things on Purpose and Page it to the Limit. I am Julie Gunderson, Senior Reliability Advocate here over at Gremlin. Mandy?Mandy: Yeah, I'm Mandy Walls, DevOps Advocate at PagerDuty.Julie: Excellent. And today we're going to be talking about everything from reliability, incident management, to building a better internet. Really excited to talk about that. We're joined by Kolton Andrus, co-founder of Gremlin, and Alex Solomon, co-founder of PagerDuty. So, to get us started, Kolton and Alex, you two have known each other for a little while. Can you kick us off with maybe how you know each other?Alex: Sure. And thanks for having us on the podcast. So, I think if I remember correctly, I've known you, Kolton, since your days in Netflix while PagerDuty was a young startup, maybe less than 20 people. Is that right?Kolton: Just to touch before I joined Netflix. It was actually that Velocity Conference, we hung out of that suite at, I think that was 2013.Alex: Yeah, sounds right. That sounds right. And yeah, it's been how many years? Eight, nine years since? Yeah.Kolton: Yeah. Alex is being humble. He's let me bother him for advice a few times along the journey. And we talked about what it was like to start companies. You know, he was in the startup world; I was still in the corporate world when we met back at that suite.I was debating starting Gremlin at that time, and actually, I went to Netflix and did a couple more years because I didn't feel I was quite ready. But again, it's been great that Alex has been willing to give some of his time and help a fellow startup founder with some advice and help along the journey. And so I've been fortunate to be able to call on him a few times over the years.Alex: Yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure. I'm always happy to help.Julie: That's great that you have your circle of friends that can help you. And also, you know, Kolton, it sounds like you did your tour of duty at Netflix; Alex, you did a tour duty at Amazon; you, too, Kolton. What are some of the things that you learned?Alex: Yeah, good question. For me, when I joined Amazon, it was a stint of almost three years from '05 to '08, and I would say I learned a ton. Amazon, it was my first job out of school, and Amazon was truly one of the pioneers of DevOps. They had moved to an environment where their architecture was oriented around services, service-oriented architecture, and they were one of the pioneers of doing that, and moving from a monolith, breaking up a monolith into services. And with that, they also changed the way teams organized, generally oriented around full service-ownership, which is, as an engineer, you own one or more services—your team, rather—owns one or more services, and you're not just writing code, but you're also testing yourself. There's no, like, QA team to throw it to. You are doing deploys to production, and when something breaks, you're also in charge of maintaining the services in production.And yeah, if something breaks back then we used pagers and the pager would go off, you'd get paged, then you'd have to get on it quickly and fix the problem. If you didn't, it would escalate to your boss. So, I learned that was kind of the new way of working. I guess, in my inexperience, I took it for granted a little bit, in retrospect. It made me a better engineer because it evolved me into a better systems thinker. I wasn't just thinking about code and how to build a feature, but I was also thinking about, like, how does that system need to work and perform and scale in production, and how does it deal with failures in production?And it also—my time at Amazon served as inspiration for PagerDuty because in starting a startup, the way we thought about the idea of PagerDuty was by thinking back from our time at Amazon—myself and my other two co-founders, Andrew and Baskar—and we thought about what are useful tools or internal tools that existed at Amazon that we wished existed in the broader world? And we thought about, you know, an internal tool that Amazon developed, which was called the ‘Pager Duty Tool' because it organized the on-call scheduling and paging and it was attached to the incident—to the ticketing system. So, if there's was a SEV 1 or SEV 2 ticket, it would actually page either one team—or lots of teams if it was a major incident that impacted revenue and customers and all that good stuff. So yeah, that's where we got the inspiration for PagerDuty by carrying the pager and seeing that tool exist within Amazon and realizing, hey, Amazon built this, Google has their own version, Facebook has their own version. It seems like there's a need here. That's kind of where that initial germ of an idea came from.Kolton: So, much overlap. So, much similarity. I came, you know, a couple of years behind you. I was at Amazon 2009 to 2013. And I'd had the opportunity to work for a couple of startups out of college and while I was finishing my education, I'd tasted startup world a little bit.My funny story I tell there is I turned down my first offer from Amazon to go work for a small startup that I thought was going to be a better deal. Turns out, I was bad at math, and a couple of years later, I went back to Amazon and said, “Hey, would you still like me?” And I ended up on the availability team, and so very much in the heart of what Alex is describing. It was a ‘you build it, you own it, you operate it' environment. Teams were on call, they got paged, and the rationale was, if you felt the pain of that, then you were going to be motivated to go fix it and ensure that you weren't feeling that pain.And so really, again, and I agree, somewhat taken for granted that we really learned best-in-class DevOps and system thinking and distributed system principles, by just virtue of being immersed into it and having to solve the problems that we had to solve at Amazon. We also share a similar story in that there was a tool for paging within Amazon that served as a bit of an inspiration for PagerDuty. Similarly, we built a tool—may or may not have been named Gremlin—within Amazon that helped us to go do this exact type of testing. And it was one part tooling and it was one part evangelism. It was a controversial idea, even at Amazon.Some teams latched on to it quickly, some teams needed some convincing, but we had that opportunity to go work with those teams and really go develop this concept. It was cool because while Netflix—a lot of folks are familiar with Netflix and Chaos Monkey, this was a couple of years before Chaos Monkey came out. And we went and built something similar to what we built a Gremlin: An API, a front end, a variety of failure modes, to really go help solve a wider breadth of problems. I got to then move into performance, and so I worked on making the website fast, making sure that we were optimizing things. Moved into management.That was a very useful life experience wasn't the most enjoyable year of my life, but learned a lot, got a lot done. And then that was the next summer, as I was thinking about what was next, I bumped into Alex. I was really starting to think about founding a company, and there was a big question: Was what we built an Amazon going to be applicable to everyone? Was it going to be useful for everyone? Were they ready for it?And at the time, I really wasn't sure. And so I decided to go to Netflix. And that was right after Chaos Monkey had come out, and I thought, “Well, let's go see—let's go learn a bit more before we're ready to take this to market.” And because of that time at Amazon—or at Netflix, I got to see, they had a great start. They had a great culture, people were bought into it, but there was still some room for development on the tooling and on the approach.And I found myself again, half in the developer mindset, half in the advocacy mindset where needed to go and prove the tooling to make it safer and more scalable and needed to go out and convince folks or help them do it well. But seeing it work at Amazon, that was great. That was a great learning experience. Seeing at work at Amazon and Netflix, to me said, “Okay, this is something that everyone's going to need at some point, and so let's go out and take a stab at it.”Alex: That's interesting. I didn't realize that it came from Amazon. I always thought Chaos Engineering as a concept came from Netflix because that's where everyone's—I mean, maybe I'm not the only one, but that's—that was my impression, so that's interesting.Kolton: Well, as you know, Amazon, at times, likes to keep things close to the vest, and if you're not a principal engineer, you're not really authorized to go talk about what you've done. And that actually led to where my opportunity to start a company came from. I was speaking about what I built at Netflix at a conference and I ran into some VCs in the lobby, and we got into a bit of a debate. They were like, “Hey, have you thought about building a company around this?” And I was like, “I have, but I don't want your money. I'm going to bootstrap it. We're going to figure it out on our own.” And the debate went back and forth a little bit and ultimately it ended with, “Oh, you have five kids and you live in California? Maybe you should take some money.”Mandi: So, what ends up being different? Amazon—I've never worked for Amazon, so full disclosure, I went from AOL to Chef, and now I'm at PagerDuty. So, but I know what that environment was like, and I remember the early days, PagerDuty you got started around the same time, like, Fastly and Chef and, like, that sort of generation of startups. And all this stuff that sort of emerged from Amazon, like, what kind of mindset do you—is there a change of mindset when you're talking to developers and engineers that don't work for Amazon, looking into Amazon from the outside, you kind of feel like there's a lot more buy-in for those kinds of tools, and that kind of participation, and that kind of—like we said before, the full service-ownership and all of those attitudes and all that cultural pieces that come along with it, so when you're taking these sort of practices commercial outside of Amazon, what changes? Like, is there a different messaging? Is there a different sort of relationship you have with the developers that work somewhere else?Alex: I have some thoughts, and it may not be cohesive, but I'm going to go ahead anyway. Well, one thing that was very interesting from Amazon is that by being a pioneer and being at a scale that's very significant compared to other companies, they had to invent a lot of the tooling themselves because back in mid-2000s, and beyond, there was no Datadog. There was no AWS; they invented AWS. There wasn't any of these tools, Kubernetes, and so on, that we take for granted around containers, and even virtual servers were a new thing. And Amazon was actually I think, one of the pioneers of adopting that through open-source rather than through, like, a commercial vendor like VMware, which drove the adoption of virtual everything.So, that's one observation is they built their own monitoring, they built their own paging systems. They did not build their own ticketing system, but they might as well have because they took Remedy and customized it so much that it's almost like building your own. And deployment tools, a lot of this tooling, and I'm sure Kolton, having worked on these teams, would know more about the tooling than I did as just an engineer who was using the tooling. But they had to build and invent their own tools. And I think through that process, they ended up culturally adopting a ‘not invented here' mindset as well, where they're, generally speaking, not super friendly towards using a vendor versus doing it themselves.And I think that may make sense and made a lot of sense because they were at such a scale where there was no vendor that was going to meet their needs. But maybe that doesn't make as much sense anymore, so that's maybe a good question for debate. I don't know, Kolton, if you have any thoughts as well.Kolton: Yeah, a lot of agreement. I think what was needed, we needed to build those things at Amazon because they embraced that distributed systems, the service-oriented architectures early on, that is a new class of problem. I think in a world where you're not dealing with the complexity of distributed systems, Chaos Engineering just looks like testing. And that's fine. If you're in a monolith and it's more straightforward, great.But when you have hundreds of things with all the interconnections and the combinatorial explosion you have with that, the old approach no longer works and you have to find something new. It's funny you mentioned the tooling. I miss Amazon's monitoring tooling, it was really good. I miss the first iteration of their pipelines, their CI/CD tooling. It was a great iteration.And I think that's really—you get to see that need, and that evolution, that iteration, and a bit of a head start. You asked a bit about what is it like taking that to market? I think one of the things that surprised me a little bit, or I had to learn, is different companies are at different points in their journey, and when you've worked at Amazon and Netflix, and you think everybody is further along than they are, at times, it can be a little frustrating, or you have to step back and think about how do you catch somebody up? How do you educate them? How do you get them to the point where they can take advantage of it?And so that's, you know, that's really been the learning for me is we know aspirationally where we want to go—and again, it's not the Amazon's perfect; it's not the Netflix is perfect. People that I talk to tend to deify Netflix engineering, and I think they've earned a lot of respect, but the sausage is made the same, fundamentally, at every company. And it can be messy at times, and it's not always—things don't always go well, but that opportunity to look at what has gone well, what it should look like, what it could look like really helps you understand what you're striving for with your customers or with the market as a whole.Alex: I totally agree with that because those are big learning for me as well. Like, when you come out of an Amazon, you think that maybe a lot of companies are like Amazon, in that they're… more like I mentioned: Amazon was a pioneer of service-oriented architecture; a pioneer of DevOps; and you build it, you own it; pioneer of adopting virtual servers and virtual hosting. And you, maybe, generalize and think, you know, other companies are there as well, and that's not true. There's a wide variety of maturities and these trends, these big trends like Cloud, like AWS, like virtualization, like containerization, they take ten years to fully mature from the starting point. With the usual adopter curve of very early adopters all the way to, kind of, the big part of the curve.And by virtue of starting PagerDuty in 2009, we were on the early side of the DevOps wave. And I would say, very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, riding that wave and riding that trend. And we worked with a lot of customers who wanted to modernize, but the biggest challenge there is, perhaps it's the people and process problem. If you're already an established company, and you've been around for a while you do things a certain way, and change is hard. And you have to get folks to change and adapt and change their jobs, and change from being a, “sysadmin,” quote-unquote, to an SRE, and learn how to code and use that in your job.So, that change takes a long time, and companies have taken a long time to do it. And the newer companies and startups will get there from day one because they just adopt the newest thing, the latest and greatest, but the big companies take a while.Kolton: Yeah, it's both that thing—people can catch up quicker. It's not that the gap is as large, and when you get to start fresh, you get to pick up a lot of those principles and be further along, but I want to echo the people, the culture, getting folks to change how they're doing things, that's something, especially in our world, where we're asking folks to think about distributed system testing and cross-team collaboration in a different way, and part of that is a mental journey, just helping folks get over the idea—we have to deal with some misconceptions, folks think chaos has to be random, they think it has to be done in production. That's not the case. There's ways to do it in dev and staging, there's ways to do it that aren't random that are much safer and more deterministic.But helping folks get over those misconceptions, helping folks understand how to do it and how to do it well, and then how to measure the outcomes. That's another thing I think we have that's a bit tougher in our SRE ops world is oftentimes when we do a great job, it's the absence of something as opposed to an outcome that we can clearly see. And you have to do more work when you're proving the absence of something than the converse.Julie: You know, I think it's interesting, having worked with both of you when I was at PagerDuty and now at Gremlin, there's a theme. And so we've talked a lot about Amazon and Netflix; one of the things, distinctly, with customers at both companies, is I've heard, “But we're not Amazon and we're not Netflix.” And that can be a barrier for some companies, especially when we talk about this change, and especially when we talk about very rigid organizations, such as, maybe, FinServ, government, those types of organizations, where they're more resistant to that, and they say, “Don't say Amazon. Don't say Netflix. We're not those companies. We can't operate like them.”I mean, Mandy and I, we were on a call with a customer at one point that said we couldn't use the term DevOps, we had to call it something different because DevOps just meant too forward-thinking, even though we were talking about the same concepts. So, I guess what I would like to hear from both of you, is what advice would you give to those organizations that say, “Oh, no. We can't be Netflix and we can't be Amazon?” Because I think that's just a fear of change conversation. But I'm curious what your thoughts are.Alex: Yeah. And I can see why folks are allergic to that because you look at these companies, and they're, in a lot of ways, so far ahead that you don't, you know—and if you're a lower level of maturity, for lack of a better word, you can't see a path in your head of how do you get from where you are today to becoming more like a Netflix or an Amazon because it's so different. And it requires a lot of thinking differently. So, I think what I would encourage, and I think this is what you all do really well in terms of advocacy, but what I'd encourage is, like, education and thinking about, like, what's a small step that you can take today to improve things and to improve your maturity? What's an on-ramp?And there's, you know, lots of ideas there. Like, for example, if we're talking about modern incident management, if we're talking Chaos Engineering, if we're talking about public cloud adoption and any of these trends, DevOps, SRE, et cetera, maybe think about how do you—do you have a new greenfield project, a brand new system that you're spinning up, how do you do that in a modern way while leaving your existing systems alone to start? Then you learn how to do it and how to operate it and how to build a new service, a new microservice using these new technologies, you build that muscle. You maybe hire some folks who have done it before; that's always a good way to do it. But start with something greenfield, start small, you don't have to boil the ocean, you don't have to do everything at once. And that's really important.And then create a plan of taking other systems and migrating them. And maybe some systems don't make sense to migrate at all because they're just legacy. You don't want to put any more investment in them. You just want to run them, they work, leave them alone. And yeah, think about a plan like that. And there's lots of—now, there's lots of advice and lots of organizations that are ready and willing to help folks think through these plans and think through this modernization journey.Kolton: Yeah, I agree with that. It's daunting to folks that there's a lot, it's a big problem to solve. And so, you know, it'd be great if it's you do X, you get Y, you're done, but that's not really the world we live in. And so I agree with that wisdom: Start small. Find the place that you can make an impact, show what it looks like for it to be successful.One thing I've found is when you want to drive bottoms-up consensus, people really want to see the proof, they want to see the outcome. And so that opportunity to sit down with a team that is already on the cutting edge, that is feeling the pain, and helping them find success, whether that's SRE, DevOps, whether it's Chaos Engineering, helping them, see it, see the outcome, see the value, and then let them tell their organization. We all hear from other folks what we should be doing, and there's a lot of that information, there's a lot of that context, and some of its noise, and so how we cut through that into what's useful, becomes part of it. This one to me is funny because we hear a lot, “Hey, we have enough chaos already. We don't need any more chaos.”And I get it. It's funny, but it's my least favorite joke because, number one, if you have a lot of chaos, then actually you need this today. It's about removing the chaos, not about adding chaos. The other part of it is it speaks to we need to get better before we're ready to embrace this. And as somebody that works out regularly, a gym analogy comes to mind.It's kind of like your New Year's, it's your New Year's resolution and you say, “Hey, I'm going to lose ten pounds before I start going to the gym.” Well, it's a little bit backwards. If you want to get the outcome, you have to put in a bit of the work. And actually, the best way to learn how to do it is by doing it, by going out getting a little bit of—you know, you can get help, you can get guidance. That's why we have companies, we're here to help people and teach them what we've learned, but going out doing a bit of it will help you learn how you can do it better, and better understand your own systems.Alex: Yeah, I like the workout analogy a lot. I think it's hard to get started, it's painful at first. That's why I like the analogy [laugh]—Kolton: [laugh].Alex: —a lot. But it's a muscle that you need to keep practicing, and it's easy to lose, you stopped doing it, it's gone. And it's hard to get back again. So yeah, I like that analogy a lot.Julie: Well, I like that, too, because that's something that we talked a lot about for being on call, and understanding how to handle incidents, and building that muscle memory, right, practice. And so there's a lot of crossover—just like this episode, folks—between both Gremlin and PagerDuty as to how they help organizations be better. And again, going back to building a better internet. I mean, Alex your shirt—which our viewers—or our listeners—can't see, says, “The world is always on. Let's keep it this way,” and Kolton, you talk about reliability being no accident.And so when we talk about the foundations of both of these organizations, it's about helping engineers be better and make better products. And I'm really excited to learn a little bit more about where you think the future of that can go.For the second part of this episode, check out the PagerDuty podcast at Page it to the Limit. For links to the Page it to the Limit podcast and to all the information mentioned, visit our website atgremlin.com/podcast. If you liked this episode, subscribe to Break Things on Purpose on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.Jason: Our theme song is called, “Battle of Pogs” by Komiku, and it's available onloyaltyfreakmusic.com.[SPLIT]Mandy: All right, welcome. This week on Page it to the Limit, we have a crossover episode. If you haven't heard part one of this episode featuring Kolton Andrus and Alex Solomon, you'll need to find it. It's on the Break Things on Purposepodcast from our friends at Gremlin. So, you'll find that atgremlin.com/podcast. You can listen to that episode and then come back and listen to our episode this week as we join the conversation in progress.Julie: There's a lot of crossover—just like this episode, folks—between both Gremlin and PagerDuty as to how they help organizations be better. And again, going back to building a better internet. I mean, Alex your shirt—which our viewers—or our listeners—can't see, says, “The world is always on. Let's keep it this way,” and Kolton, you talk about reliability being no accident. And so when we talk about the foundations of both of these organizations, it's about helping engineers be better and make better products. And I'm really excited to learn a little bit more about where you think the future of that can go.Kolton: You hit it though. Like, the key to me is I'm an engineer by trade. I felt this pain, I saw value in the solution. I love to joke, I'm a lazy engineer. I don't like getting woken up in the middle of the night, I'd like my system to just work well, but if I can go save some other people that pain, if I can go help them to more quickly understand, or ramp, or have a better on-call life have a better work-life balance, that's something we can do that helps the broader market.And we do that, as you mentioned, in service of a more reliable internet. The world we live in is online, undoubtedly, after the last couple of years, and it's only going to be more so. And people's expectations, if you're an older person like me, you know, maybe you remember downloading AOL for a couple of hours, or when a web page took a minute to load; people's expectations are much different now. And that's why the reliability, the performance, making sure things work when we need them to is critical.Alex: Absolutely. And I think there's also a trend that I see and that we're part of around automation. And automation is a very broad thing, there's lots of ways that you want to automate manual things, including CI/CD and automated testing and things like that, but I also think about automation in the incident context, like when you have an alert that fires off or you have an incident you have something like that, can you automate the solution or actually even prevent that alert from going off in the first place by creating a set of little robots that are kind of floating around your system and keeping things running and running well and running reliably? So, I think that's an exciting trend for us.Mandy: Oh, definitely on board with automating all the things for sure. So, of the things that you've learned, what's one thing that you wish you had maybe learned earlier? Or if there was like a gem or a nugget for folks that might be thinking about starting their own company around developer tools or this kind of software, is there anything that you can share with them?Alex: Kolton, you want to go first?Kolton: Sure, I'll go first. I was thinking a little bit about this. If I went back—we've only been at about six years, so Alex has the ten-year version. I can give you the five, six-year version. You know, I think coming into it as a technical founder, you have a lot of thoughts about how the world works that you learn are incorrect or incomplete.It's easy as an engineer to think that sales is this dirty organization that's only focused on money, and that's just not true or fair. They do a lot of hard work. Getting people to do the right thing is tough. Helping with support, with customer success.Even marketing. Marketing is, you know, to many engineers, not what they would spend their time doing, and yet marketing has really changed in the last 20 years. And so much of marketing now is about sharing information and teaching what we've learned as opposed to this old approach of you know, whatever you watched on TV as a kid. So, I think understanding the broader business is important. Understanding the value you're providing to customers, understanding the relationships you build with those customers and the community as a whole, those are pieces that might be easy to gloss over as an engineer.Alex: Yeah, and to echo that, I like your point on sales because initially when I first started PagerDuty, I didn't believe in sales. I thought we wouldn't need to hire any salespeople. Like, we sell to other engineers, and if they're anything like me, they don't want to talk to a salesperson. They want to go on the website, look around learn, maybe try it out—we had a free trial; we still have a free trial—and put in a credit card and off to the races. And that's what we did it first, but then it turns out that when doing so, and in customers in that way, there are folks who want to talk to you to make sure that, first of all your real business, you're going to be around for a while and it's not—you know, you're not going to not be around tomorrow.And that builds trust being able to talk to someone, to understand, if you have questions, you have someone to ask, and creating that human connection. And I found myself doing that function, like, myself and then realized, there's not enough time in the day to do this, so I need to hire some folks. And I changed my mind about sales and hired our first two salespeople about two-and-a-half years into PagerDuty. And probably got a little bit lucky because they're technical engineering background type folks who then went into sales, so they ended up being rockstars. And we instantly saw an increase in revenue with that.And then maybe another more tactical piece of advice is that you can't focus on culture too early when starting a company. And so one lesson that we learned the hard way is we hired an engineer that was brilliant, and really smart, but not the best culture fit in terms of, like, working well with others and creating that harmonious team dynamic with their peers. That ended up being an issue. And basically, the takeaway there is don't hire brilliant but asshole folks because it's just going to cause a lot of pain, and they're not going to work out even though they're really smart, and that's kind of the reason why you keep them around because you think, well, it's so hard to hire folks. You can't let this person go because what are we going to do? But you do have to do it because it's going to blow up anyways, and it's going to be worse in the long run.Kolton: Yeah, hiring and recruiting have their own set of challenges associated with them. And similar to hiring the brilliant jerk, some of the folks that you hire early on aren't going to be the folks that you have at the end. And that one's always tough. These are your friends, these are people you work closely with, and as the company grows, and as things change, people's roles change, and sometimes people choose to leave and that breaks your heart because you've invested a lot of time and effort into that relationship. Sometimes you have to break their heart and tell them it's not the right fit, or things change.And that's one that if you're a founder or you're part of that early team, you're going to feel a little bit more than everyone else. I don't think anything you read on the internet can prepare you for some of those difficult conversations you have to have. And it's great if everything goes well, and everyone grows at the same rate, everyone can be promoted, and you can have the same team at the end, but that's not really how things play out in reality.Julie: It's interesting that we're talking about culture, as we heard about last week, on the Break Things on Purposeepisode, where we also talked about culture and how organizations struggle with the culture shift with adopting new technologies, new ways of working, new tools. And so what I'm hearing from you is focusing on that when hiring and founding your company is important. We also heard about how that's important with changing the way that we work. So, if you could give an advice to maybe a very established—if you are going to give a piece of advice to Amazon—maybe not Amazon, but an established company—on how to overcome some of those objections to culture change, those fears of adopting new technology. I know people are still afraid of holding a pager and being on call, and I know other people are afraid of chaos as we talk about it and those fears that you've mentioned before, Kolton. What would your piece of advice be?Alex: Yeah, good—great question. This will probably echo what I've said earlier, which is when looking to transform, transform culture especially, and people and process, the way I think about is try to not boil the ocean and start small, and get some early wins. And learn what good looks like. I think that's really important. It's this concept of show, don't tell.Like, if you want to, you know, you want to change something, you start at the grassroots level, you start small, you start maybe with one or two teams, you try it out, maybe something like I mentioned before, in a greenfield context where you're doing something brand new and you're not shackled by legacy systems or anything like that, then you can build something new or that new system using the new technologies that are that we're talking about here, whether it's public cloud, whether it's containerization and Kubernetes, or whatnot, or serverless, potentially. And as you build it and you learn how to build it and how to operate it, you share those learnings and you start evangelizing within the company.And that goes to what I was saying with the show don't tell where you're like showing, “Here's what we did and here's what we learned. And not everything went swimmingly and here are things that didn't go so well, and maybe what's our next step beyond this? Do other folks want to opt-in to this kind of new thing that we're doing?” And I'm sure that's a good way to get others excited. And if you're thinking about longer-term, like, how do you transform the entire company, well, that's this is a good way to start; start small you learn how to do it, you learn about what good looks like, you get others excited about it, others opt-in, and then at some point through that journey, you start mandating it top-down as well because grassroots is only going to take you so far. And then that's where you start putting together project plans around, like, how do we get other teams to do it, on a timeline? And when are they going to do it? And how are they going to do it? And then bring everyone along for the journey as well.Kolton: You're making this easy for me. I'll just keep agreeing with you. You hit all the points. Yeah, I mean, on one hand, the engineer in me says, you know, a lot of times when we're talking about this transformation, it's not easy, but it's worth it. There's a need that we're trying to solve, there's a problem we're trying to solve.And then the end, what that becomes as a competitive advantage. The thought that came to mind as Alex was speaking is you need that bottoms-up buy-in; you also need that top-down support. And as engineers, we don't often think about the business impact of what we do. There's an important element and a message I like to reiterate for all the engineers that, think about how the business would value the work you do. Think about how you would quantify the value of the work you do to the business because that's going to help that upper level that doesn't, in the day-to-day feeling the pain, understand that what we're doing is important, and it's important for the organization.I think about this a little bit like remote-by-default work. So, when we founded Gremlin, we decided you know, we didn't want offices. And six years ago that was a little bit exceptional. Folks were still fundamentally working in an office environment. I'm not here to tell you that remote-by-default is easy, works for everyone, or is the answer.Actually, what we found is you need a little bit of both. You need to be able to have good tooling so folks can be efficient and effective in their work, but it's still important to get folks together in person. And magic happens when you get a group of folks in a room and let them brainstorm and collaborate chat on the way to launch or on the way to dinner. But I think that's a good example where we've learned over the last couple of years that the old way of doing it was not as effective as it could be. That maybe we don't need to swing the pendulum entirely the other way, but there's merits at looking at what the right balance is.And I think that applies to, you know, incident management, to SRE, to Chaos Engineering. You know, maybe we don't have to go entirely on the other end of the spectrum for everyone, but are there little—you know, is there an 80/20 solution that gets us a lot of value, that saves a lot of time, that makes us more efficient and effective, without having to rewrite everything from scratch?Alex: Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think part of it, just to add to that, is make it easy for people to adopt it, too. Like, if you can automate it for folks, “Hey, here's a Terraform thing where you could just hit a button and it does it for you, here's some training around how to leverage it, and here's the easy button for you to adopt.” I think that goes with the technology of adopting, but also the training, also the, you know, how-tos and learnings. That way, it's not going to be, like, a big painful thing, you can plan for it. And yeah, it's off to the races from there.Kolton: I think that's prudent product advice, as well. Make it easy for people to do the right thing. And I'm sure it's tricky in your space; it's really tricky in our space. We're going out and we're causing failure, and there's inadvertent side effects, and you need to understand what's happening. It's a little scary, but that's where we add a lot of value.We invest a lot of time and effort in how do we make it easy to understand, easy to understand what to expect, and easy to go do and see what happens and see that value? And it sounds easy. You know, “Hey, just make it easy. Just make it simple,” but actually, as we know, it takes so much more effort and work to get it to be that level of simplicity.Alex: Yeah, making something easy is very, very hard—Kolton: [laugh].Julie: —ironically.Kolton: Yeah. Ironically.Mandy: Yeah, so what are you excited for the future? What's on your horizon that maybe you can share with us that isn't too, like, top-secret or anything? Or even stuff, maybe, not related to your companies? Like, what are you seeing in the industry that really has you motivated and excited?Alex: Great question. I think a couple of things come to mind. I already mentioned automation, and we are in the automation space in a couple of different ways, in that we acquired a company called Rundeck over a year ago now, which does runbook automation and just automation in general around something like running a script across a variety of resources. And in the incident context, if an alert fires or an incident fires, it's that self-healing aspect where you can actually resolve the issue without bothering a human.There's two modes to this automation: There's the kind of full self-healing mode where, you know, something happens and the script just fixes it. And then the second mode is a human is involved, they get paged, and they have a toolbox of things that they can do, that they can easily do. We call that the Iron Man mode, where you're getting, like, these buttons you can push to actually resolve the problem, but in that case, it's a type of problem that does require a person to look at it and realize, oh, we should take this action to fix it. So, I'm very excited about the automation and continuing down that path.And then the other thing that really excites me as well is being able to apply AI and ML to the alerting and incident response and incident management space. Especially our pattern detection, looking for patterns and alerts and incidents, and seeing have we seen this kind of problem before? If so, what happened last time? Who worked on the last time? How did they resolve it last time?Because, you know, you don't want to solve the same problems over and over. And that actually ties into automation really nicely as well. That pattern detection, it's around reducing noise, like, these alerts are not real alerts, they're false alerts, so let's reduce them automatically, let's suppress them, let's filter them out automatically because the signal to noise is really important. And it's that pattern detection, so if something major is happening, you can see here's the blast radius, here's the services or systems it's impacting. Oh, we've seen something similar before—or we haven't seen something similar before, it's something totally brand new—and try to get the right folks involved quickly so that they can understand that blast radius and know how to approach the problem, and resolve it quickly.Kolton: So, it's not NFT's is your PagerDuty profile picture?Alex: [laugh].Kolton: Because that's, kind of, what I—no, I'm kidding. I couldn't help but just like what do I not see—like, I've, I've tried to think of the best NFT joke I could. That was what I came up with. I agree on the AI/ML stuff. That opportunity to have more data and to be able to do better analysis of it, I've written some of that, you know, anomaly detection stuff—and it was a while back; I'm sure it could be done better—that'll get us to a point.You know, of course, I'm here to push on the proactive. There's things we can do beyond just reacting faster that will be helpful. But I think part of that comes from people being comfortable sharing more about their failures. It's a stigmata to fail today, and regardless of whether we're talking about a world where we're inciting things like blameless postmortems, people still don't want to talk about their failures, and it's hard to get that good outage information, it's hard to get the kind of detail that would let us do better analytics, better automation.And again, back to the conversation, you know, maybe we know what Amazon and Netflix looks like, but for us to create something that will help solve a broader problem, we have to know what those companies are feeling in pain; we need to know what their troubles are hitting at. So, I think that's one thing I've been excited about is over the past two years, you've seen the focus on reliable, stable systems be much more important. Five years ago, it was, “Get out of my way, I got features to write, we got money to make, we're not interested in that. If it breaks, we'll fix it.” And you know, as we're looking at the future, we're looking at our bridges, we're looking at our infrastructure, our transportation, the software we're writing is going to be critical to the world, and it operating correctly and reliably is going to be critical. And I think what we'll see is the market and customers are going to catch up to that; that tolerance for failure is going to go down and that willingness to invest in preventing failure is going to go up.Alex: Yeah, I totally agree with that. One thing I would add is, I think it's human nature that people don't want to talk about failures. And this is maybe not going to go away, but there is maybe a middle ground there. I mean, talking about postmortems, especially, like, when a big company has a big outage and it makes the news, it makes Hacker News, et cetera, et cetera, I don't see that changing, in that companies are going to become radically more transparent, but where I do think there is a middle ground is for your large customers, for your important customers, creating relationships with them and having more transparency in those cases. Maybe you don't post it on a public status page a full, detailed nitty-gritty postmortem, but what you do do is you talk to your major customers, your important customers, and you give them that deeper view into your systems.And what's good about that is that it creates trust, it helps establish and maintain trust when you're more transparent about problems, especially when you're taking steps to fix them. And that piece is really important. I mean trust is, like, at the core of what we do. I have a saying about this—[unintelligible 00:19:31]—but, “Trust is won in droplets and lost in buckets.” So, if you have these outages all the time, or you have major service degradation, it's easy to lose that trust. So, you want to prevent those, you want to catch them early, you want to create that transparency with your major customers, and you want to let them in the loop on what's happening and how you're preventing these types of issues going forward.Kolton: Yeah, great thoughts. Totally agree.Julie: So, for this episode of deep thoughts with Kolton and Alex, [laugh] I want to thank both of you for being here with Mandy and I today. We're really excited to hear more and to see each of our respective companies grow and change the way people work and make life easier, not just for engineers, but for our customers and everybody that depends on us.Mandy: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's good for folks out there to know, you're not alone. We're all learning this stuff together. And some folks are a little further down the path, and we're here to help you learn.Kolton: Totally. Totally, it's an opportunity for us to share. Those that are further along can share what they've learned; those that are new or have some great ideas and suggestions and enthusiasm, and by working together, we all benefit. This is the two plus two equals five, where, by getting together and sharing what we've learned and figuring out the best way, no one of us is going to be able to do it, but as a group, we can do it better.Alex: Yeah. Totally agree. That's a great closing thought.Mandy: Well, thanks, folks. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Page it to the Limit. We're wishing you an uneventful day.

Max: Hello, and welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster, and today on the show, delighted to introduce to you, who don't know, Mr. Alex Murphy, CEO and Founder of JobSync. JobSync is a technology partner that can help to speed up the application process and improve the candidate experience, notably with marketplaces and job boards, and its very cool technology, which is trying to connect two worlds, marketplaces and ATSes. I'll let Alex explain it a lot better than me. But we'll talk about job board and about Facebook and how the sourcing world is changing. Alex, welcome to the show. Alex: Max, thanks for having me. Much appreciated. Max: So, did I represent what JobSync does decently or you want to take another stab at it? Alex: No, I think you did. I mean, we are, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is we're trying to help companies, specifically employers, create more efficient recruiting processes, right. So, it sounds fairly generic, most of us are trying to do that. The way we go about trying to do that is we are connecting the various systems that they use in the recruitment and talent acquisition process. So, as you said, between job boards and applicant tracking systems, this means enabling the candidates to apply while they're on the job site. So, whether that's on Indeed, and Indeed Apply, ZipRecruiter, Zip Apply, or anywhere where they may be, to use the applications natively on those job board platforms or job board marketplaces, and to not have to leave, but for the employer to still get all the questions that they need to have answered in that application, and then delivered directly into the applicant tracking system, just within a few seconds. And then the recruiter can start the recruitment process immediately, as opposed to waiting for some period of time or recognizing and seeing a huge fall off. So, the end of the day, we're helping companies get more out of the recruitment advertising spend than they were previously. Max: And to put a visual on it, I mean, I'm thinking back to the days when I was a jobseeker, I was unemployed, a long time ago, and I would go to job boards like Monster, and I would have applied to 10, 20 jobs a day because, you know, I needed a job. And in that context, I would, of course, be more likely to complete an application if I didn't have to bounce around from website to website. And so, I think job boards have now recognized that and this is what you're describing with the Indeed Apply, Zip Apply, and others. That's the candidate experience improvement in a nutshell, right? Alex: Yeah, I think it's interesting. There's a lot of talk about candidate experience, there's actually an award, right, the Candidate Experience Awards, the candies. And what that's really gets that side of the world kind of gets hyper focused on is what is the experience like after I apply? And unfortunately, for a long period of time, there hasn't been enough focus on the applicant experience. Right? What is the experience before I apply? Or will I even apply? An interesting kind of side note, a recruiting benefit that we have is we talk about in our job ads for when we're recruiting new people that come work with us, we talk about fixing this application experience. And we're speaking to the people that are literally going through this really bad application experience, at which point, they get really excited about being part of the solution to this problem, because pretty much every job seeker has had this experience where they are on a job site, they leave the job site to go to apply to a job. They're viewing the job for a second time because they already viewed it on the job site. They view it on the company's career site. They're then redirected to the applicant tracking system, they probably been presented with two different places where they had to sign up for some newsletter, join a talent community, they finally get to the applicant tracking system. They click Apply for the third time. And now they're presented with a login form. And they're kind of like, what is this? A login form? I haven't created an account. And that's an immediate path for that candidate to leave and go to TikTok and start watching videos, right? Like nobody wants to go through that experience at all. And so, when we communicate to prospective candidates ourselves about fixing that, it resonates pretty highly because everybody is having that same really terrible experience as an applicant. Max: Talent acquisition is always running behind on a smooth experience, but yeah. Of course, in 2022, where everything goes so fast, and you can get everything done and delivered to your home in just a couple of clicks, you would want that application to be just the same, if not better. And well, before we talk about the market, Alex, how did you end up creating JobSync to begin with? It's an insider's trick to activate JobSync in a booming marketplace, kind of working at the frontier of different tech giants. So, you need to be an insider to do what you're doing. So, I gotta ask you how you ended up in that area. Alex: So, I have a co-founder, John Bell, he was the founder and CEO of a company called Boxwood Technology that he sold in 2014. Boxwood, was a job board software platform primarily for associations, they had over a thousand associations and he had started that back in the 90s. And I actually credit John, I think, with the real observation about what happened between I'll say 2002 and 2012, which was the experience for applying to jobs changed fundamentally. In 2002, virtually all applications online took place on job boards, and the application was delivered by email to a recruiter, and in the early 2000s, and then kind of really taking hold by about 2006 and 2007 in the US market, in particular, with respect to the EEOC questions, companies started to require the application process to take place on their ATS. And what John observed was this massive decline in conversion rates, and what used to be 40% conversion rates or better, meaning, if 100 people viewed my job posting 40 People would apply, had tanked to sub 10%. And in a lot of cases, with really arduous applicant tracking systems, that conversion rate might be 1%. So, one out of 100 people would apply. And so, he observed that. In parallel, I had been job.com as a co-founder there in the early 2000s, was at Beyond for eight years, as part of the traffic and business development teams, was observing the same thing happening as from the operator side, that the product that we're selling is deteriorating, right, like we are not able to generate the applicants that we once were. So, fast forward, and I left Beyond John started a company, and we brought a bunch of different ideas together in 2019 around creating this integration platform that was focused on connecting the job boards and applicant tracking systems to make it so that we could emulate the application on the job board that was taking place on the ATS, so as to improve conversion rates, and on Indeed, their data shows that you get a 4X increase, meaning 400% improvement in applications. That's like a 400% improvement in your recruitment when you return on ad spend. That has massive implications in terms of not just your ROI, which is great, but really, at the end of the day, the thing that you're really getting more of is you're getting access to candidates that would otherwise drop out, which typically are going to be the most sought-after candidates. And so not only…Max: Candidates like me, 20 years ago, they need a job. So, they're going to apply to a number of positions, right? I mean, those are not bad candidates, they're hungry candidates. Alex: They are in what I would say though, is that, you know, there's a lot of things that are odd in the world, right, and you could say that they're bad, right. So, like, people that have been out of work and kind of, you know, you can call it like a gap shaming or what have you. What I will say is this, though, is that if you are looking for somebody in a position that requires some level of experience and expertise, then those candidates, those people are the ones that are generally the most difficult to get at, most difficult to find, and the most difficult to actually get to follow through, right? Like, they're not as motivated to go apply right now. Right? Like, the thing that pushes them over the edge is they had a bad interaction with their boss. I like to say, like, the moment when somebody is most likely to apply is when they walk out the door of their boss, and the boss just gave them a lot of grief, right? [overlap]Max: …around, indeed, and they'd be like, screw this place. And they'll go look for a couple of options. But they don't feel like spending 20 minutes going through application forms, creating a username, profile, password, all that. Alex: That's exactly right. I call it the subway application, you need to be able to complete the application in the time that it takes for the train to come into the station, Wi-Fi turns on, I get a job, I see it, click Apply, and before the train leaves the station, I need to be able to finish it. Right? So, that means that…Max: I thought we're talking about Subway sandwiches, but that takes about the same amount of time, I guess.Alex: Yeah, no doubt. I imagine they probably does, so.Max: Okay. I love that native applied concept, and I've been promoting it to my customers for years on social media saying, if, in your case, we're talking about a disgruntled employee who is spending a little bit of time on Indeed, exploring what could be. That's not a very captive audience. But even less captive audience would be somebody who's just browsing TikTok or browsing Facebook, they see an ad, they click on it. I mean, those guys, they certainly don't have, you know, they don't have the mindset, they're not in the right frame of mind to start applying for a job for 25 minutes, because they were just kind of like having fun, killing time. So, it makes sense to keep the experience as native as possible for those even more. And so, as a historian of the space, Alex, you're saying that the space kind of moved in the late 90s, right, and 2008 or so when everybody moved everything to the ATS and completion rates dropped considerably, are you saying that we're shifting back now, that the share of applications that are completed without the ATS is increasing? Alex: It is. So, you know, I think that what's happening is you're seeing, like, course corrections, so to speak, right? And there's a little bit of maybe call it something like the Goldilocks zone, right? So, we write about this where, you know, there's this concept of a quick apply, which might be like the name, email and CV of a person. And when a recruiter calls that person, if they can even call them, because often it doesn't have a phone number. So, they email them and they say, Hey, would you like to set up an interview? They get nothing, right? Or maybe they get an interview scheduled, but the person doesn't show up, right? So why is ghosting up? Why? I don't understand why did ghosting go up? Well, the person doesn't even know what they apply to. Because they had to just check a box, they may have checked 20 boxes and hit submit. Right? So, is there enough interest? I like to think back. Like, let's not just go back to 2002, let's go back to 1986. The level of effort to apply to a job: you open the newspaper, you had to find the fax number, you had to send that, you had to write out your cover letter, and you had to make that resume perfect and you had to print it and then you had to get to a fax machine, as most people didn't have fax machines. You had to sneak into the office and get it through the fax machine before somebody else saw you putting a fax through to somebody else, right? Like the level of effort was really, really high. And that meant that when you got a phone call, you reply. And today you can send out 4000 applications with a click of a button, remarkably different. On the other end of the spectrum in 2008, the recruiter said, Okay, now we have the power. And what that meant to them was I'm just going to ask you every question that I would ever need to ask and force you to spend 35 minutes going through this application. And people have just gotten fed up with it, right? They're not willing to go through it. The answer is that there's something proper in between. Five questions, seven questions, on a drop-down, simple screening questions actually can decipher, is this something that you should be interested in? We want to talk to people to come work for us that are interested in being part of a startup, being part of building a company, which means that there isn't a lot of structure yet defined, because we are defining it as we go along, right, that proverbial build the airplane in flight. So, if somebody wants lots of structure, and we can discern that in a screening question, then we can we can help save everybody time and pain and anguish, right? And every company in every job has a set of screening questions that should be asked to ascertain is this a good position for you or not? And that type of experience, I think, will go a long, long way to helping everybody get at what it is ultimately that they want, which is to have, you know, really worthwhile conversations for both candidate and recruiter. Max: It's crazy sometimes that it feels like the different partners in the space are fighting for eyeballs and for the time of the candidates, you know, and like job boards, or protecting their candidates from spending time in other platforms, and vice versa, when it's to no one's advantage to hold the candidate up. We just kind of want to get through those applications as fast as possible and give people quick answers. And I think what you're doing is going to help a lot of time save, a lot of savings for the candidates when they needed most, which is when they're looking for a job. We spoke a little bit before recording about the recent announcement of Facebook jobs and your read on this situation. For our listeners who don't know, Facebook Jobs has invested for the last few years in a marketplace where millions of people have logged in and applied for jobs all over the world. And I know they generated a lot of traffic for us in different parts of the world, from Brazil to the Philippines and to the US. But that marketplaces are getting shut down, unfortunately, for all that free traffic that it was generating. But perhaps there's a silver lining with that announcement. Alex, you were saying that this initiatives maybe solidified Facebook as a great place to source? Alex: Yeah, well, I mean, I think so. First and foremost, I'll just say for the record, I think it's unfortunate that they've made the decision that they made. They introduced the Facebook jobs marketplace as a response to what their users were doing, which was they were searching for jobs in the search bar within Facebook. And they were having a really bad experience. And so, the idea that the jobs marketplace would go away means, you know, without seeing what it's going to look like on the other side, I would imagine that it's going to go back to being a bad experience. So, that's too bad. The silver lining sort to speak, as you put it, in my opinion, is there now are hundreds of thousands of companies out there that recognize that Facebook has people that go look for work, and that should be a no brainer to most people, right? Like recruitment advertising should go wherever the people are, right? We are trying to reach people where people are. And people are on Facebook, they're on Tik Tok, they're on Snapchat, they're on Reddit, they're on YouTube, just like they're on job boards as well. But they're on these social platforms at a much greater investment of time, if you will, than they are on the others. The question is, can you do something to pull them in to engage with your recruitment ad, right, and this is where you were talking earlier about having that kind of more native experience. The person has to leave Facebook, right, and a tremendous amount of the activity on Facebook is happening on the mobile app, right? If they're supposed to leave Facebook in order to engage with your brand and to become, I'll say, a lead or an applicant, then the likelihood that they do so is really, really low. And so perhaps there are companies that recognize, okay, I should take my brand and go to where the candidate is, and then engage with them where they are, rather than trying to force them to come back to me. And if they do that, then there's a lot winning strategies. And you guys are one of the leaders, if not the leader, in recruitment at reaching people through Facebook ads, and really activating that audience and getting them to turn into applicants and employees, right, because at the end of the day, 9 out of 10, people are active on Facebook in some way, shape or form, Simply as a matter of reaching them with the right message at the right time in the right place, which is often that timing thing for…Max: I love about the Facebook job was the fact that the timing was there, right, because somebody will not go into the marketplace, if they're not looking for a job. And advertisers on Facebook don't have the option of targeting specifically job seekers, like, there's no tag for that. And I was, you know, I think advertisers would really benefit from getting that data points. But it's a sensitive data that I suppose Facebook couldn't extract or couldn't share with its advertisers. But it's still, you know, the most rich advertising platform of all in terms of targeting. I mean, you can target any job title in any location, and all kinds of other psychographics that can correlate well with your talent pool. But, when people hire there, they say, Well, I'm only hiring one or 2% of, you know, the clicks, the leads that I generate. So, it's really a bad quality, I can't, I can't manage, but I think that's the wrong way to look at it, right? If it's 1%, but the cost is, you know, is 1% of what a cost for a lead is in Indeed, then that's fine, as long as you've automated the front of the funnel. I think the cost per lead needs to be broken down into what a lead means. And I suppose what you do is you're going to take those job board leads, and then they maybe have two or three different stages of how qualified they are. Right? Alex: Yeah, so I think, you know, just for one other thing that's really important in there is, you're reaching people that you otherwise wouldn't reach. Right? I mean, if you're, you know, think about like somebody like a nurse, right? How many nurses are there on Indeed, right now, eight, like, worldwide, like, it's not, there aren't a lot, nurses don't really need to work very hard to go get a new job. Most of them are leaving their jobs. And you know, that's like its own tragedy all on its own at the moment. But I can tell you that a lot of them are on Facebook, looking at what people say, thinking a lot of different things about what that conversation looks like. And if you have an ad talking about, you know, we pay you full time, but you work 30 hours, I'm making something up. Right? We have mental health facilities, we limit you to six-hour shifts, we have, you know, half an hour breaks every two hours or whatever, like, I'm just totally making stuff up. Max: We have a cocktail room in the back. Alex: Exactly, right, exactly. We do shots at the start of the shift. You know, whatever your benefits are. Those things are speaking to that person where they are when they're just trying to kind of unwind. And that's a way to pull them in, invite them in, to engage in a dialogue. And if you try to get them to go answer 42 questions on your, your 25-minute application, that's going to fail, right. But if you say, you know, we'd love to just chat for 10 minutes, when you've got time, if you're interested in looking for a new opportunity, that's the kind of thing that pulls that, you know, pulls up on that thread, if you will, and gets them to come engage. And all of a sudden, they start to engage, now you're in a dialogue, that's a discussion, that's how you convert. And that's the kind of thing I think that the presence of Facebook jobs for the last five years, for better or worse, and it leaving, at least hopefully, some people saw that Facebook brings value. I always love this story, our first customer, their first hire was a data scientist off of Facebook. Right? It's like, you'll say who's on Facebook. I'm like everybody, every person type, every personality type, every job type everywhere in the world, there is representation on Facebook. It doesn't mean every person's on Facebook, but every type of person, every type of role can be filled with the right ad presented the right person right time on there. And that's true across all social platforms. Max: Tw billion monthly active users, two billion plus. So, if you can't find your candidate there, then might as well forget about it. Alex: Right? Well, in all likelihood, the candidate probably doesn't exist, right? Like you have to go train and hire right? And so always love those stories, right, where it's like looking for somebody that has more experience than the technology has been around, right? We had a joke about iOS developer job in 2012, that the minimum requirements were 10 years' experience of iOS development. iOS have been around for five and a half years. So, it's like, that's probably not a realistic expectation. Max: Open your talent pools to people with less experience and more desire. And you'll see small miracles happen. Alex: That's right.Max: I'd like to ask Alex to drive some of the listeners to check out JobSync. What are the quantifiable problems that you are solving for them? I believe it's the conversion rate from job board to application? That'd be one of the, if you have a low conversion rates, and single digit, like you were saying, that that would be one area where they should reach out to you. Are there other, yeah, does that describe it well and how do they get ahold of you? Alex: Yeah, so first off, if you go to jobsync.io, you know, come and see us, I'm active on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn handle is amurphy59. I think, you know, at the end of the day, the thing that we're solving for is when your recruiting team is doing a lot of manual effort, or conducting a lot of manual effort in order to run your recruitment programs. And that's not just limited by the way to job boards and ATSes, right, it could be with any of the other systems up and down inside the stack. So, we connect to your text messaging platform or your career events platform or your assessment platform, and automate the messaging in between, so that your recruit recruitment teams are not having to manually do that work. I'd say that the number one metric that we kind of think about the most is really around reducing time to hire. So, you know, the consistent metric across all of our customers, when they start with us, they're really struggling to get applicants into their job postings at enough scale to take that job posting to an extended offer and into an actual start. And by putting our program in place, you get a lot more efficiency across the spectrum, you get more efficiency out of your ads, and your recruitment team, you get exposure to better candidates. And those three things combined means that you're going to reach you know, a slate of candidates or your kind of final five that you might want to take to final interview and offer much more quickly than you would otherwise. Max: I think that that will connect with a lot of people. Non-job-related question, but one that I asked everyone on the show is a personal hiring mistake that you have made, so that our listeners can draw from that experience and avoid making the same mistake. Can you think back to somebody you hired and it didn't work out and you messed up somehow and you're able to kind of, you know, mea culpa on your mistakes, so that we don't commit the same one again? Your eyes are glazing over, you're seeing ghosts. Alex: I am actually, it's like a roomful of them, right. I mean, we all make a gazillion mistakes over time. I would have to say that my number one mistake that I've made in the past, and I can say that we actually had the opposite experience recently, was set up a process to screen people out because there are minimum thresholds, right, saying this is our standard and that needs to be our standard and I want to believe in what the person on the other side of the conversation is saying to me and they didn't pass a check in the assessment process, and I let the person pass, and then that came back to bite me pretty hard. So, I would say, adhering to a process that you predefined is really the way I counter that. And I would say the mistake was not sticking to the process that I had predefined.Max: You were bending the rules that you were setting yourself, for yourself?Alex: That's exactly right. Yeah. So, we just recently went through this where we set what the standard was, and the person came through and had all sorts of good reasons why things didn't work out, and why he was underneath of the bar. And we said, look, this is just the way it's going to be, it's a really high profile, really important position, and we stuck to our guns. And so, I feel really good about it having made that mistake in the past. Max: I sense that there's something about job hopping that may upset you was that related? You're looking for people, job hoppers. Alex: I'm perfectly fine with job hopping. I mean, I think that, you know, a lot of the things that are memes today around, you know, call it Twitter conversations. You know, if a person left three jobs in the last nine months, you know, I want to understand what is it that's making you make a bad decision about whether or not you should go work someplace, we should spend an extra couple of weeks making sure that you get to know everything about us, right, set your expectations on what life's like here before you come. Because the last thing in the world that I want you to do is to come and leave. But, you know, I think it's really important that we all look at that the people that join our teams, they're here, like, a) to make a paycheck, b) they want to make an impact and make a difference. But the impact-difference piece is about growing themselves in their career to set themselves up for their next gig. I'm not ignorant to that, that's been my background, my life, right, that should be everybody's life. I want them to get the best of what they're gonna do next, and if they've been hopping jobs, something happened there, I wanna understand it. But it certainly isn't a glaring red flag, in fact, it means that they're gonna stand up for themselves and that they're gonna leave. I'd rather have that person than somebody who's gonna stick around and kind of create chaos in the background for 8 years. Max: It's more of a red flag if somebody stayed in the same job for 10 years without changing them.Alex: Yeah, if somebody's been in the same exact role for 8 years, are you really ambitious? For our company, you probably' wouldn't be a good fit because our world is gonna change 16 times in the next four years. So, it's about finding that right fit. At the end of the day, that's tough, and we all make mistakes in the process. I like to look at it as just one big gigantic conversation, certainly in our stage.Max: Great. Well, amurphy59 is the LinkedIn handle, if you wanna continue that gigantic conversation with Alex. It's been a pleasure chatting with you about the industry. Thanks, Alex. Alex: Thanks, Max, appreciate it. Max: That was Alex Murphy ofJobsync and some interesting perspective on how the pendulum is swinging from marketplace and job boards to the ATS's is where should the candidates spend the most time and how do we adapt to the changing candidate behavior? And the changing ecosystem that they live in.Hope you got something from this interview I certainly did. And that you'll be back for more. Remember to subscribe. 

What if you could perform beyond the limitations of your own voice? Anne is joined by special guest Alex Serdiuk for a bonus Voice and Ai episode. They discuss Respeecher's speech-to-speech technology, the limitations of your natural voice, and how a synthesized voice is similar to a printing press. The future isn't just on its way - the future is here - and creative possibilities are endless when human voices and technology work together... Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast for another episode of the AI and Voice series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm excited to bring you special guest Alex Serdiuk. Alex is the founder and CEO of Respeecher, an AI speech-to-speech based company that creates voice cloning for content creators. Respeecher's technology was the first synthetic speech adopted by big Hollywood productions starting around 2019. And their primary focus is in improving the voice cloning technology in many directions, including the tech democratization to let sound professionals and creators have access to it. And as a voice talent, we love that. So Alex, thank you so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure having you. Alex: Hey Anne, everyone. It's so great to be here. Thank you for having me. Anne: Yes. So I have so many questions. You're a relatively young company founded in 2018, correct? Alex: Yes. That's correct, yes. Anne: Yeah. So, but you seem to have come a really long way in a very short amount of time. So if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about your company and how you got started. Alex: Yeah, actually for us, it felt like a very long amount of time, like eternity. But yeah, we started a bit earlier than 2018 with the idea we were playing around for several years. So we actually participated in one hackathon in Kiev, in Ukraine, and everyone were picking this ideas of applying deep learning AI, quite sophisticated machine learning techniques to do something with visuals, to do something with pictures. And we thought that would be cool to try doing something with speech, and that's harder task because we are much picky about the stuff we hear, unlike the stuff we see. And we ended up winning that hackathon with a very simple prototype of voice conversion technology that allowed one voice sound like another voice. Then we started to play around with the technology, started to speak to some folks we thought who could be our first clients, if you start this company. And they told us that it's all about quality. So if you talk about high quality voice cloning, it should be really high. So it should be indistinguishable for listener, whether it's synthesized or not. And given that we are quite picky about the sounds that we spot all the tiny little artifacts in sound the task has been challenging. So we launched the company in 2018 and took us about a year to get to the level where it could actually be of interest to some big sound engineers in Hollywood. And since then we've been improving the technology in several directions, usability, quality of the sound, speed, all that stuff. We try to make better on constant basis. Anne: Got it, got it. So, all right. What might seem like a simple question, because I think a lot of us in the voice industry, we've heard about text-to-speech. And as a matter of fact, we've been doing it for a very long time, you know, TTS projects. But now speech-to-speech is different. And so tell us exactly what is the difference between text-to-speech and speech-to-speech. Alex: Yeah. The differences in input, right? So when you use text-to-speech, you type words, and there is some AI that tries to make those words sound like they were spoken by human. The thing is there are two, in my opinion, holistic problems with text-to-speech. And that's one of the reasons why we do speech-to-speech. The first holistic problem would it text-to-speech be so limited to language models, to vocabularies. So if you want to try something different from what is in the vocabulary, it would fail. So if you try to pronounce some unusual name or street address, text-to-speech doesn't know where to take it from. That's one problem. The second one would be emotional control. And this one is huge. So text-to-speech can offer you few emotions, right? It can sound excited or sad, but that's it. And we humans are best in terms of producing emotions as we use our vocal apparatus. And we are the best in terms of being guided, how to produce emotions. So if you try to imagine very sophisticated text-to-speech that would allow you to have all these triggers our vocal apparatus has from the day we were born, that would be a very comprehensive tool. That would be extremely hard to use. It would be just simpler to say it in the exact way you want to say it. And that's where it's speech-to-speech comes in. So the idea of speech-to-speech is to enable a human speaking. The voice of another human is speaking in another timbre and all the emotions, all the inflections, all this stuff is being taken from source speaker. That means that you act, but you remove this boundary of being attached to the vocal apparatus, you were born with, the voice you have at the particular moment of your life. You can sound very different and that would be natural because emotions, inflections, acting would be yours. The timbre would be different. Anne: So then you require an actor to be a model for whatever voice that gets applied to? Is that correct? Alex: That's correct. We heavily rely on the actors. Anne: So then I would think that it's a different process because what I'm familiar with in terms of synthetic voices is that we record a whole bunch of prompts and then there becomes this voice that's created from that. And your technology basically has a source voice, is that correct, that is the actor? And then you can apply any different voice to that voice model? And so for every script, you would have an actor speaking those words, and then you would be able to apply any voice to that? Alex: Yeah, that's right. So basically our model compares voices. So it compares your voice to another voice you want to sound like, and it understands the difference between your timbre and the timbre you want to sound alike. And then after model learned those differences, you can actually feed their recordings in your voice. And those recordings would be converted into the voice of your desire. Anne: So then let's talk about the target voice, first of all. Is that something that let's say when you have different target voices, if I want it to be a target voice, I would say, how do I create that target voice? Is that similar to how most people create their synthetic voices? Meaning I record a series of prompts, and it becomes part of the data model, and then a voice is created, and then that is how you create your target voices? Alex: Yeah, that's correct. It's similar to text-to-speech. So basically you would need to record your voice in very good condition for some time, though speech-to-speech requirements are all over usually than text-to-speech. You don't need to go in studio and spend like hours. Say on a particular script, we can take existing recordings of your voice. And that would be enough. We just need observations of your voice saying different things in different emotions so model would learn it and then it's good to go. Anne: Interesting. So then it's basically your model, which is the actor, would be any good either audio example that you have of acting, but it doesn't have to be the exact script? Alex: Correct. Anne: Is that correct? Okay. Alex: Yeah. That they can read a lullaby for their baby or whatever. And in many of our projects, in many of our film projects, we had to deal with old recordings because we used to do a lot of de-aging or resurrecting projects. And that's cool about speech-to-speech that we can take existing recordings in quite a small amount. So currently we require like 40 minutes, but in plenty of projects, we had to deal with much less data. Anne: Wow. So then, so this is an additional layer that you do. So not only do you create the target voices in a traditional like text-to-speech kind of way where you're creating the synthetic voice, but you're also creating that speech-to-speech model, which is the acting. And that, again, like you're saying, doesn't necessarily have to be the same script that you want to be repeated. Let's say there's a new movie out, and you want to have a particular target voice on it. Would the actor model have to go in and say all the lines first so that the speech-to-speech target could kind of, I guess, mimic it or reiterate it? Alex: Yeah. So the -- the way how our system works, we would on the first stage, on the training stage, we would need just examples of a target voice, someone we impersonate, and source voice, a voice actor who would be doing impersonation. And we don't care much about what is the content, what are the spoken words? So it could consist of the content that needs to be converted further for the movie, but it could be something different. But then once the model is trained, you can say exact lines in the exact performance that are needed for the movie. And that would be converted into a target voice within minutes. Anne: Got it. That's pretty impressive. What are the applications that you see for your speech-to-speech software? Alex: Yeah, we've been focused on very high quality content because what's special about our technology, it can produce very high quality results, not just because of sound quality itself, quality of the sound files, but also because of the control you would have over emotional content. So you can make it sound exactly as you want it to sound. We've been applying our technology for films, animation, TV series, where we helped content creators get voices they cannot get in any other way. Like we did some work for Mandalorian season two, where we helped with making the voice, synthesizing the voice of young Mark Hamill, young Luke Skywalker -- Anne: Yeah. Alex: -- who appeared in the very last scene. And you cannot get this voice anymore. You have recordings of 40 years old, but the voice of Mark Hamill is drastically different -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- from what he had 40 years ago. Anne: 40 years ago. Alex: That would be one application. We did some resurrection projects. One of them audience might have heard of would be Super Bowl opening where Vince Lombardi came and said some encouraging things about all the challenges our society needs to go through in this quite, quite hard time. Anne: I remember that. Alex: Yeah, that was a powerful piece we did together with NFL Digital Domain, 72 and Sunny. And the idea was to resurrect the voice of this person. We also did one cool project in resurrection where we made quite famous announcer -- not just announcer, but basketball commentator in Puerto Rico, who died 20 years ago, to voiceover the whole game in August, when -- Anne: Wow. Alex: -- Puerto Rico made it to Olympics. Anne: Wow. Alex: And that was huge for us because we were focused on short form content for quite a while. Our technology has been heavy and we required a lot of take. And that might have been one of the first projects when we had like our own health (?) of voiceover in one take that had to be converted overnight for putting on TV the next day. And it worked out. So it sounded good. And recordings for target voice for Manolo were extremely bad. So it was quite, quite complicated, but it turned out to be working, and Telemundo put it on stream. Anne: Wow. So then that's very impressive. Now it's also very scary, not just for me as a voice actor, but I'm thinking for the consumer, right, who's listening to the voice. So what sort of steps are taken to, I guess, notify the listener that maybe, especially if you're resurrecting voices. I would imagine that there's gotta be some sort of a protocol where you're allowing people or letting people know that this voice is resurrected or like, what are your thoughts on that? Alex: Yeah. I mean, we basically build some guiding principles, guiding ethics principles from the very beginning when we started. And the first thing we always ask our prospective clients, when they want to do a project, whether they have permission or going to obtain one from owner of the voice they're going to clone. And in case if that person would be deceased, we would require permission from their relatives or estate or if that's a president, from president library, from company or individual that owns the right. And that would be the very first step. Then we actually need to be sure that the project is not controversial in general, because it might be not wrong to do something with permission. But if it's very attached to politics or were a controversial content, even with permission, we can just say no, because there is a lot of fear to this technology -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- in general and -- Anne: And deep fakes, I'm thinking. Right? Alex: And deep fakes. Yeah. And the thing is, I mean, the technology itself is neither good or bad. It's just an instrument like a Photoshop, like hammer, like printing press. The thing is that we used to be scared of something new. And our goal is to showcase exciting, cool projects, creative opportunities, opportunities for voice actors using this technology without some bad projects to be in the news, because bad news travels so far, right? Everyone's heard about this end Tony Bourdain project that is -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- very controversial. Right? Anne: Yes. Alex: But I guess much less people heard about the amazing work we did for Mandalorian -- Anne: Yeah. Alex: -- even though Mandalorian is the biggest TV series of 2020. Anne: That's very true. That's very true. So then maybe you can answer this question. As a voice actor, what are the opportunities for me, as a voice actor -- number one, I like that you have an ethics statement on your website, and that you say that you are not allowing any deceptive uses of the technology. But number one, how can voice actors use this to let's say enhance our opportunities? And also how are you protecting the voice actor from any type of misuse or deepfakes or ethics? Alex: Yeah, I mean, in terms of protection, we do have quite strict protocols that are required from us when we've work with biggest Hollywood studios, right? So have data security and stuff in place. In terms of opportunities, look, let's think about this technology from the point of view that the technology itself removes limitation you have. You -- you've been attached to your voice, and you're attached to your voice you have in particular moment of your life. So you can act, you can, you can work only with the particular vocal timbre you have been born with, right? The technology allows you to sound very different. So you can sound like 70 years old woman, or like 12 years old kid. And it would sound like 12 years old kid or 70 years old woman in terms of naturalness. The thing is you would, you would act those voices. And that means that, in my opinion, in future, the distribution of load between voice actors could be significantly improved in future. Because when voice actor is being hired, they're hired for two things, their ability to act and their vocal timbre, the unique timbre they have. And now we can remove the timbre part from equation, and voice actors would be hired because their ability to perform. And that's amazing because some voice actors who meet very high demand for their particular vocal timbre can give this timbre, can license this timbre to other voice actors who can use it with their approval. But also the voice actors who cannot get jobs just because their vocal timbre does not match this particular character can actually get these jobs because they can sound like, like a different person. Anne: So then they would buy a license for that target person? Is that correct? How does that work? Alex: Yeah, that's correct. I mean, our company has been focused on like one-off projects for quite a while because the technology has been heavy, but this year we launched what we call a voice marketplace, and that would be a self-serve product. There -- it's been a roller coaster for us to make this heavy technology we used to operate manually the work in self-serve mode. But voice marketplace is out and it works. And it's really cool piece of technology where we try to democratize access to such a fine tool, to smaller creators and to voice actors. And the idea of the voice marketplace that as user of the voice marketplace, you can speak in 40, more than 40 different vocal timbres we created there for you. And we actually hired people. We paid them money. We got their release and consent to use their voice in the voice marketplace. And those voices we have in the voice marketplace so far belong to average people because the most important part is this -- Anne: The timbre. Alex: -- timbre. Yeah. But acting could be done by user -- Anne: Interesting. Alex: -- and that means that you can sound exactly like any of those voices we have in the system and just utilize opportunities in terms of acting and performance, instead of being limited to the vocal timbre you own. So that's one way how -- Anne: Got it. Alex: -- voice actors can benefit from this technology right now. Anne: So then I can have an account in your marketplace, and then I can purchase additional timbres. Is that correct? Alex: Yeah, that's correct. And you can get access to all the voices we have on the voice marketplace, try it out, but that's like a starting point. Anne: Interesting. Alex: We started with some like average voices, but in future, we want to add other voices, professional voices, because I mean, when system has not seen some particular emotions like singing, or crying, or whispering, it performs suboptimal, right? And people who are not professionally trained to be voice actors cannot produce many emotions. And that means for getting very high quality and professional voices in the output, you would want to see in target voices some professional voices. Anne: Yes. Alex: We want to invite voice actors in future as well as we want to get licensing deals with some famous voices and even voices from the past. Anne: Sure. Alex: But the thing is this kind of improvement to the voice marketplace as a product requires us to build two more layers. The first one would be approval layer. So as target voice, when you supply your voice to the system, you should feel secure that your voice is not used for something that you feel is inappropriate. Anne: Sure. Alex: So you need to be able to approve the content that is being created -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- with your voice or approve the user, the company, or the individual who want to use your voice. That's first thing. The second layer would be building compensation model -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- because there should be economics there's built on usage. Anne: Sure. Alex: It shouldn't be just one time licensing deal. Anne: Right. Alex: And those layers, they require some time to be built as well as some attention. And they should work very properly because it should be trusted. Anne: Yes. And I do believe that for a voice talent, if they were a target voice or the source voice, I think they would want to number one, it should be a permission-based model. Or they would want that. Also they would want fair compensation. And I, I agree with you saying that that compensation would be on a per job basis because there is, you know, the way that we determine usage now, if we're doing a McDonald's commercial, right, we have a certain time that we can use that. And we aren't able to use our voice for a competitor. So I think on a per job usage basis is wise, and that is going to be, from what I understand -- I mean, especially for you, because you're doing the AI development, right, and the products. And so now also to have a marketplace, that's a whole other ball game. So kudos to you for wanting to build that marketplace and to do it in a fair and ethical way. So when any of us go onto your website or marketplace, and we are, let's say recording on it or inputting our voice or sending you files, what is your policy in terms of who owns that voice? Alex: Yeah. Voice is owned by the person who, whose voice it is. Right? And there is quite clear legislation around that. So that's your IP and you own it. And without your permission, your voice cannot be used for something you have not authorized. So your recordings as a source speaker belong only to you. Recordings of converted speech, you get them. So you own the recordings of converted speech, if you're, if you use our voice marketplace on paid basis and that's quite clear and fair. Anne: Great. Okay. So how, going back to the ethics where you say that we don't allow any misuse of our technology, how do you actually prevent anybody from misusing your technology? Alex: Yeah. I mean, on example of the voice marketplace, you can not introduce any target voice, right? You cannot just put their voice of Donald Trump and try to say something in his voice because system does not allow it. Anne: Okay. Alex: And we do not have any public API or even non public API that would allow users or our partners to create target voices themselves. In those cases, when you need a particular voice to be cloned, always need to go through us. And we would require permission. And we actually require written permission, or in cases when we've worked with big and legit studios, we can put it on their shoulders. So they would need to get the permission themselves. The second part of protecting our technology from misuse is actually bringing awareness about existence of this technology. And we did plenty of projects that were focused more -- mostly on bringing awareness like Nixon project we did in 2019 with MIT. And the whole idea of the project was to make Richard Nixon say the speech that was written in case if moon landing (?) goes wrong, actually showcase what modern technologies can do to change our understanding of history. And this educational part is extremely important because we all understand that this type of very fine technology could -- would fall in wrong hands in the future -- Anne: Absolutely. Alex: -- and that's in quite foreseeable future. And the thing is we can protect ourselves only being aware that voice can be manipulated. Anne: Yes. Alex: Like if we're aware that something that is typed in the newspaper could not be true. Though. Our grandparents or grand-grandparents used to believe in everything that was typed. So that's, that's about how we treat the information we receive. And that's about awareness. Another thing we work on is to create a watermark, and the idea of watermark -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- the watermark to be able to tell Respeecher generated content from any other content. That's been quite complex and hard task because with our technology, you can generate a very small file and to put there a legit watermark, you will need to have this balance of watermark being not hearable -- Anne: Right. Alex: -- but being not easily removable. Anne: Right. Alex: And keeping this balance in very short chunks is quite hard task, but I hope in next year, we would release the watermark. Another thing we are doing, we are actually working in several communities that are designed with the idea of building detection of synthetic speech algorithms that would detect synthetic speech or synthetic images. And we are providing our samples, we are providing our recordings that sound very indistinguishable in order to improve those algorithms. And the idea is those algorithms should be created and adopted as soon as possible, and big platforms -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- that distribute content like YouTube or Facebook should have this stuff embedded there. So it would just notify people that this recording or this video might have been manipulated. And that's quite important thing to do. Anne: I agree, especially after hearing samples on your webpage, how really good your technology is, because it is encapsulating like the emotion. And I can only imagine for us, it makes us like doubly scared. You know, text-to-speech, synthetic voices is already scary, but this is an extra kind of step where it sounds so real that -- and especially how can you tell? Let's say that, you know, somehow my voice gets out there, or somehow the model of what I said gets out there, and how do I know that I approved that and allowed that to happen or allowed that usage? So I think it's great that yes, you should get those models out there and that watermarking out there as soon as possible on all platforms. Because I also think for us to be able to give the permission and to know where our voice is being used and for the people listening, they need to know that what they're listening to may not be human or may be altered. So good stuff. Alex: Yeah. That's correct. Anne: Yeah. Alex: However, I want to contradict you a bit about letting viewers of the film be obligatorily notified about synthetic speech being part of that. I mean, viewers are not notified about effects, about postproduction that has been made to speech. And you can think about some cases -- Anne: True. Alex: -- when our stuff is more like a postproduction technique, like we de-age some voice. So an actor acts themselves, but they sound younger, right? It's nothing bad with this use case and you don't obligatory need to have like a huge notification -- Anne: Right. Alex: -- on the center of the screen that -- Anne: Right. Alex: -- this audio has been manipulated. Because if you think about dinosaurs in Jurassic park, you don't have -- Anne: Yeah. Alex: -- and you don't expect to have those -- Anne: Sure. Alex: -- notifications that this creature does not exist, or Terminator, or like that's a creative part of things. And in cases, if it used in postproduction or as a creative tool, it shouldn't be there in my opinion. But in cases when it's, it might consist of controversial content, it my consist of alternative history content, when someone like Anthony Bourdain never actually say these lines, even if he wrote it himself, the notification should be in place. Because in such cases, we always encourage our clients and documentary creators to be very straightforward and tell their listeners that voice has been modified. Synthesized. Anne: Excellent point, excellent point. Thank you for that. Wow. So this has just been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for educating us and talking about your product. Respeecher. How can BOSSes get in touch with you if they're interested to find out more, or maybe try it out, or maybe be a voice, how can they get in touch with you? Alex: Yeah, so you just basically go to our website, respeecher.com, and you can hear a lot of examples, read our blog, read our ethics statements, look some projects we finished, and we can actually talk about, because there are plenty of projects that have delayed PR rights for us. And you can easily try voice marketplace. You can try the same core technology that we are using for Hollywood for your needs. And we would really appreciate the feedback because voice marketplace is something quite new for us -- Anne: Yes. Alex: -- but we want this to be a very good creative tool and tool that would let voice actors do what they do best, act, without being limited to their timbre, and creators be focused on creative opportunities without being limited to necessity of finding a particular vocal timbre. And sometime it's very hard to find. Anne: Wow. Well, thank you so very much for joining me today. I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor ipDTL that allowed me to connect with Alex today. You can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week, and I'll see you next week. Thanks so much, Alex. Alex: Thank you, Anne. Anne: Bye-Bye. Alex: Bye. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. 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Alexander Pugh is a software engineer at Albertsons. He has worked in Robotic Process Automation and the cognitive services industry for over five years.This episode originally aired on Software Engineering Radio.Related LinksAlexander Pugh's personal siteEnterprise RPA Solutions Automation Anywhere UiPath blueprism Enterprise "Low Code/No Code" API Solutions appian mulesoft Power Automate RPA and the OS Office primary interop assemblies Office Add-ins documentation Task Scheduler for developers The Component Object Model The Document Object Model TranscriptYou can help edit this transcript on GitHub.[00:00:00] Jeremy: Today, I'm talking to Alexander Pugh. He's a solutions architect with over five years of experience working on robotic process automation and cognitive services. Today, we're going to focus on robotic process automation. Alexander welcome to software engineering radio. [00:00:17] Alex: Thank you, Jeremy. It's really good to be here. [00:00:18] Jeremy: So what does robotic process automation actually mean? [00:00:23] Alex: Right. It's a, it's a very broad nebulous term. when we talk about robotic process automation, as a concept, we're talking about automating things that humans do in the way that they do them. So that's the robotic, an automation that is, um, done in the way a human does a thing.Um, and then process is that thing, um, that we're automating. And then automation is just saying, we're turning this into an automation where we're orchestrating this and automating this. and the best way to think about that in any other way is to think of a factory or a car assembly line. So initially when we went in and we, automated a car or factory, automation line, what they did is essentially they replicated the process as a human did it. So one day you had a human that would pick up a door and then put it on the car and bolt it on with their arms. And so the initial automations that we had on those factory lines were a robot arm that would pick up that door from the same place and put it on the car and bolt it on there.Um, so the same can be said for robotic process automation. We're essentially looking at these, processes that humans do, and we're replicating them, with an automation that does it in the same way. Um, and where we're doing that is the operating system. So robotic process automation is essentially going in and automating the operating system to perform tasks the same way a human would do them in an operating system.So that's, that's RPA in a nutshell, Jeremy: So when you say you're replicating something that a human would do, does it mean it has to go through some kind of GUI or some kind of user interface?[00:02:23] Alex: That's exactly right, actually. when we're talking about RPA and we look at a process that we want to automate with RPA, we say, okay. let's watch the human do it. Let's record that. Let's document the human process. And then let's use the RPA tool to replicate that exactly in that way.So go double click on Chrome, launch that click in the URL line and send key in www.cnn.com or what have you, or servicenow hit enter, wait for it to load and then click, you know, where you want to, you know, fill out your ticket for service. Now send key in. So that's exactly how an RPA solution at the most basic can be achieved.Now and any software engineer knows if you sit there and look over someone's shoulder and watch them use an operating system. Uh, you'll say, well, there's a lot of ways we can do this more efficiently without going over here, clicking that, you know, we can, use a lot of services that the operating system provides in a programmatic way to achieve the same ends and RPA solutions can also do that.The real key is making sure that it is still achieving something that the human does and that if the RPA solution goes away, a human can still achieve it. So if you're, trying to replace or replicate a process with RPA, you don't want to change that process so much so that a human can no longer achieve it as well.that's something where if you get a very technical, and very fluent software engineer, they lose sight of that because they say, oh, you know what? There's no reason why we need to go open a browser and go to you know, the service now portal and type this in when I can just directly send information to their backend.which a human could not replicate. Right? So that's kind of where the line gets fuzzy. How efficiently can we make this RPA solution? [00:04:32] Jeremy: I, I think a question that a lot of people are probably having is a lot of applications have APIs now. but what you're saying is that for it to, to be, I suppose, true RPA, it needs to be something that a user can do on their own and not something that the user can do by opening up dev tools or making a post to an end point.[00:04:57] Alex: Yeah. And so this, this is probably really important right now to talk about why RPA, right? Why would you do this when you could put on a server, a a really good, API ingestion point or trigger or a web hook that can do this stuff. So why would we, why would we ever pursue our RPA?There there's a lot of good reasons for it. RPA is very, very enticing to the business. RPA solutions and tools are marketed as a low code, no code solution for the business to utilize, to solve their processes that may not be solved by an enterprise solution and the in-between processes in a way.You have, uh, a big enterprise, finance solution that everyone uses for the finance needs of your business, but there are some things that it doesn't provide for that you have a person that's doing a lot of, and the business says, Okay. well, this thing, this human is doing this is really beneath their capability. We need to get a software solution for it, but our enterprise solution just can't account for it. So let's get a RPA capability in here. We can build it ourselves, and then there we go. So there, there are many reasons to do that. financial, IT might not have, um, the capability or the funding to actually build and solve the solution. Or it it's at a scale that is too small to open up, uh, an IT project to solve for. Um, so, you know, a team of five is just doing this and they're doing it for, you know, 20 hours a week, which is uh large, but in a big enterprise, that's not really. Maybe um, worth building an enterprise solution for it. or, and this is a big one. There are regulatory constraints and security constraints around being able to access this or communicate some data or information in a way that is non-human or programmatic. So that's really where, um, RPA is correctly and best applied and you'll see it most often.So what we're talking about there is in finance, in healthcare or in big companies where they're dealing with a lot of user data or customer data in a way. So when we talk about finance and healthcare, there are a lot of regulatory constraints and security reasons why you would not enable a programmatic solution to operate on your systems. You know, it's just too hard. We we're not going to expose our databases or our data to any other thing. It would, it would take a huge enterprise project to build out that capability, secure that capability and ensure it's going correctly. We just don't have the money the time or the strength honestly, to afford for it.So they say, well, we already have. a user pattern. We already allow users to, to talk to this information and communicate this information. Let's get an RPA tool, which for all intents and purposes will be acting as a user. And then it can just automate that process without us exposing to queries or any other thing, an enterprise solution or programmatic, um, solution.So that's really why RPA, where and why you, you would apply it is there's, there's just no capability at enterprise for one reason or another to solve for it. [00:08:47] Jeremy: as software engineers, when we see this kind of problem, our first thought is, okay, let's, let's build this custom application or workflow. That's going to talk to all these API APIs. And, and what it sounds like is. In a lot of cases there just isn't the time there just isn't the money, to put in the effort to do that.And, it also sounds like this is a way of being able to automate that. and maybe introducing less risk because you're going through the same, security, the same workflow that people are doing currently. So, you know, you're not going to get into things that they're not supposed to be able to get into because all of that's already put in place.[00:09:36] Alex: Correct. And it's an already accepted pattern and it's kind of odd to apply that kind of very IT software engineer term to a human user, but a human user is a pattern in software engineering. We have patterns that do this and that, and, you know, databases and not, and then the user journey or the user permissions and security and all that is a pattern.And that is accepted by default when you're building these enterprise applications okay.What's the user pattern. And so since that's already established and well-known, and all the hopefully, you know, walls are built around that to enable it to correctly do what it needs to do. It's saying, Okay. we've already established that. Let's just use that instead of. You know, building a programmatic solution where we have to go and find, do we already have an appropriate pattern to apply to it? Can we build it in safe way? And then can we support it? You know, all of a sudden we, you know, we have the support teams that, you know, watch our Splunk dashboards and make sure nothing's going down with our big enterprise application.And then you're going to build a, another capability. Okay. WHere's that support going to come from? And now we got to talk about change access boards, user acceptance testing and, uh, you know, UAT dev production environments and all that. So it becomes, untenable, depending on your, your organization to, to do that for things that might fall into a place that is, it doesn't justify the scale that needs to be thrown upon it.But when we talk about something like APIs and API exist, um, for a lot of things, they don't exist for everything. And, a lot of times that's for legacy databases, that's for mainframe capability. And this is really where RPA shines and is correctly applied. And especially in big businesses are highly regulated businesses where they can't upgrade to the newest thing, or they can't throw something to the cloud.They have a, you know, their mainframe systems or they have their database systems that have to exist for one reason or the other until there is the motivation and the money and the time to correctly migrate and, and solve for them. So until that day, and again, there's no, API to, to do anything on a, on a mainframe, in this bank or whatnot, it's like, well, Okay. let's just throw RPA on it.Let's, you know, let's have a RPA do this thing, uh, in the way that a human does it, but it can do it 24 7. and an example, or use cases, you work at a bank and, uh, there's no way that InfoSec is going to let you query against this database with, your users that have this account or your customers that have this no way in any organization at a bank.Is InfoSec going to say, oh yeah. sure. Let me give you an Odata query, you know, driver on, you know, and you can just set up your own SQL queries and do whatever they're gonna say no way. In fact, how did you find out about this database in the first place and who are you.How do we solve it? We, we go and say, Okay. how does the user get in here well they open up a mainframe emulator on their desktop, which shows them the mainframe. And then they go in, they click here and they put this number in there, and then they look up this customer and then they switch this value to that value and they say, save.And it's like, okay. cool. That's that RPA can do. And we can do that quite easily. And we don't need to talk about APIs and we don't need to talk about special access or doing queries that makes, you know, Infosec very scared. you know, a great use case for that is, you know, a bank say they, they acquire, uh, a regional bank and they say, cool, you're now part of our bank, but in your systems that are now going to be a part of our systems, you have users that have this value, whereas in our bank, that value is this value here. So now we have to go and change for 30,000 customers this one field to make it line up with our systems. Traditionally you would get a, you know, extract, transform load tool an ETL tool to kind of do that. But for 30,000 customers that might be below the threshold, and this is banking. So it's very regulated and you have to be very, very. Intentional about how you manipulate and move data around.So what do we have to do? okay. We have to hire 10 contractors for six months, and literally what they're going to do eight hours a day is go into the mainframe through the simulator and customer by customer. They're going to go change this value and hit save. And they're looking at an Excel spreadsheet that tells them what customer to go into.And that's going to cost X amount of money and X, you know, for six months, or what we could do is just build a RPA solution, a bot, essentially that goes, and for each line of that Excel spreadsheet, it repeats this one process, open up mainframe emulator, navigate into the customer profile and then changes value, and then shut down and repeat.And It can do that in one week and, and can be built in two, that's the, the dream use case for RPA and that's really kind of, uh, where it would shine.[00:15:20] Jeremy: It sounds like the. best use case for it is an old system, a mainframe system, in COBOL maybe, uh, doesn't have an API. And so, uh, it makes sense to rather than go, okay, how can we get directly into the database?[00:15:38] Alex: How can we build on top of it? Yeah,[00:15:40] Jeremy: we build on top of it? Let's just go through the, user interface that exists, but just automate that process. And, the, you know, the example you gave, it sounds very, very well-defined you're gonna log in and you're going to put in maybe this ID, here's the fields you want to get back.and you're going to save those and you didn't have to make any real decisions, I suppose, in, in terms of, do I need to click this thing or this thing it's always going to be the same path to, to get there.[00:16:12] Alex: exactly. And that's really, you need to be disciplined about your use cases and what those look like. And you can broadly say a use case that I am going to accept has these features, and one of the best ways to do that is say it has to be a binary decision process, which means there is no, dynamic or interpreted decision that needs to, or information that needs to be made.Exactly like that use case it's very binary either is, or it isn't you go in you journey into there. and you change that one thing and that's it there's no oh, well this information says this, which means, and then I have to go do this. Once you start getting in those if else, uh, processes you're, you're going down a rabbit hole and it could get very shaky and that introduces extreme instability in what you're trying to do.And also really expands your development time cause you have to capture these processes and you have to say, okay. tell me exactly what we need to build this bot to do. And for, binary decision processes, that's easy go in here, do this, but nine times out of 10, as you're trying to address this and solution for it, you'll find those uncertainties.You'll find these things where the business says, oh, well, yeah. that happens, you know, one times out of 10 and this is what we need to do. And it's like, well, that's going to break the bot. It, you know, nine times out of 10, this, this spot is going to fall over. this is now where we start getting into, the machine learning and AI, realm.And why RPA, is classified. Uh, sometimes as a subset of the AI or machine learning field, or is a, a pattern within that field is because now that you have this bot or this software that enables you to do a human process, let's enable that bot to now do decision-making processes where it can interpret something and then do something else.Because while we can just do a big tree to kind of address every capability, you're never going to be able to do that. And also it's, it's just a really heavy, bad way to build things. So instead let's throw in some machine learning capability where it just can understand what to do and that's, you know, that's the next level of RPA application is Okay. we've got it. We've, we've gone throughout our organization. We found every kind of binary thing, that can be replaced with an RPA bot. Okay.Now what are the ones that we said we couldn't do? Because it had some of that decision-making that, required too much of a dynamic, uh, intelligence behind it. And let's see if we can address those now that we have this. And so that's, that's the 2.0, in RPA is addressing those non-binary, paths. I would argue that especially in organizations that are big enough to justify bringing in an RPA solution to solve for their processes. They have enough binary processes, binary decision processes to keep them busy.Some people, kind of get caught up in trying to right out the gate, say, we need to throw some machine learning. We need to make these bots really capable instead of just saying, well, we we've got plenty of work, just changing the binary processes or addressing those. Let's just be disciplined and take that, approach.Uh, I will say towards RPA and bots, the best solution or the only solution. When you talk about building a bot is the one that you eventually turn off. So you can say, I built a bot that will go into our mainframe system and update this value. And, uh, that's successful.I would argue that's not successful. When that bot is successful is when you can turn it off because there's an enterprise solution that addresses it. and, and you don't have to have this RPA bot that lives over here and does it instead, you're enterprise, capability now affords for it. And so that's really, I think a successful bot or a successful RPA solution is you've been able to take away the pain point or that human process until it can be correctly addressed by your systems that everyone uses. [00:21:01] Jeremy: from, the business perspective, you know, what are some of the limitations or long-term problems with, with leaving an RPA solution in place?[00:21:12] Alex: that's a, that's a good question. Uh, from the business there, isn't, it's solved for. leaving it in place is other than just servicing it and supporting it. There's no real issue there, especially if it's an internal system, like a mainframe, you guys own that. If it changes, you'll know it, if it changes it's probably being fixed or addressed.So there's no, problem. However, That's not the only application for RPA. let's talk about another use case here, your organization, uses, a bank and you don't have an internal way to communicate it. Your user literally has to go to the bank's website, log in and see information that the bank is saying, Hey, this is your stuff, right?The bank doesn't have an API for their, that service. because that would be scary for the bank. They say, we don't want to expose this to another service. So the human has to go in there, log in, look at maybe a PDF and download it and say, oh, Okay.So that is happens in a browser. So it's a newer technology.This isn't our mainframe built in 1980. You know, browser based it's in the internet and all that, but that's still a valid RPA application, right? It's a human process. There's no API, there's no easy programmatic way to, to solution for it. It would require the bank and your it team to get together and, you know, hate each other. Think about why this, this is so hard. So let's just throw a bot on it. That's going to go and log in, download this thing from the bank's website and then send it over to someone else. And it's going to do that all day. Every day. That's a valid application. And then tomorrow the bank changes its logo. And now my bot is it's confused.Stuff has shifted on the page. It doesn't know where to click anymore. So you have to go in and update that bot because sure enough, that bank's not going to send out an email to you and saying, Hey, by the way, we're upgrading our website in two weeks. Not going to happen, you'll know after it's happened.So that's where you're going to have to upgrade the bot. and that's the indefinite use of RPA is going to have to keep until someone else decides to upgrade their systems and provide for a programmatic solution that is completely outside the, uh, capability of the organization to change. And so that's where the business would say, we need this indefinitely.It's not up to us. And so that is an indefinite solution that would be valid. Right? You can keep that going for 10 years as long, I would say you probably need to get a bank that maybe meets your business needs a little easier, but it's valid. And that would be a good way for the business to say yes, this needs to keep running forever until it doesn't.[00:24:01] Jeremy: you, you brought up the case of where the webpage changes and the bot doesn't work anymore. specifically, you're, you're giving the example of finance and I feel like it would be basically catastrophic if the bot is moving money to somewhere, it shouldn't be moving because the UI has moved around or the buttons not where it expects it to be.And I'm kind of curious what your experience has been with that sort of thing.[00:24:27] Alex: you need to set organizational thresholds and say, this is this something this impacting or something that could go this wrong. It is not acceptable for us to solve with RPA, even though we could do it, it's just not worth it. Some organizations say that's anything that touches customer data healthcare and banking specialists say, yeah, we have a human process where the human will go and issue refunds to a customer, uh, and that could easily be done via RPA solution, but it's fraught with, what, if it does something wrong, it's literally going to impact.Uh, someone somewhere they're their moneys or their, their security or something like that. So that, that definitely should be part of your evaluation. And, um, as an organization, you should set that up early and stick to it and say, Nope, this is outside our purview. Even we can do it. It has these things.So I guess the answer to that is you should never get to that process, but now we're going to talk about, I guess, the actual nuts and bolts of how RPA solutions work and how they can be made to not action upon stuff when it changes or if it does so RPA software, by and large operates by exposing the operating system or the browsers underlying models and interpreting them.Right. So when we talk about something like a, mainframe emulator, you have your RPA software on Microsoft windows. It's going to use the COM the component operating model, to see what is on the screen, what is on that emulator, and it's gonna expose those objects. to the software and say, you can pick these things and click on that and do that.when we're talking about browser, what the RPA software is looking at is not only the COM the, the component object model there, which is the browser, itself. But then it's also looking at the DOM the document object model that is the webpage that is being served through the browser. And it's exposing that and saying, these are the things that you can touch or, operate on.And so when you're building your bots, what you want to make sure is that the uniqueness of the thing that you're trying to access is something that is truly unique. And if it changes that one thing that the bot is looking for will not change. So we let's, let's go back to the, the banking website, right?We go in and we launch the browser and the bot is sitting there waiting for the operating system to say, this process is running, which is what you wanted to launch. And it is in this state, you know, the bot says, okay. I'm expecting this kind of COM to exist. I see it does exist. It's this process, and it has this kind of name and cool Chrome is running. Okay. Let's go to this website. And after I've typed this in, I'm going to wait and look at the DOM and wait for it to return this expected a webpage name, but they could change their webpage name, the title of it, right. They can say, one day can say, hello, welcome to this bank. And the next day it says bank website, all of a sudden your bot breaks it no longer is finding what it was told to expect.So you want to find something unique that will never change with that conceivably. And so you find that one thing on the DOM on the banking website, it's, you know, this element or this tag said, okay, there's no way they're changing that. And so it says cool the page is loaded. Now click on this field, which is log in.Okay. You want to find something unique on that field that won't change when they upgrade, you know, from bootstrap to this kind of, you know, UI framework. that's all well, and good. That's what we call the happy path. It's doing this perfectly. Now you need to define what it should do when it doesn't find these things, which is not keep going or find similar it's it needs to fail fast and gracefully and pass on that failure to someone and not keep going. And that's kind of how we prevent that scary use case where it's like. okay. it's gone in, it's logged into the bank website now it's transactioning, bad things to bad places that we didn't program it for it, Well you unfortunately did not specify in a detailed enough way what it needs to look for.And if it doesn't find that it needs to break, instead of saying that this is close enough. And so, in all things, software engineering, it's that specificity, it's that detail, that you need to hook onto. And that's also where, when we talk about this being a low-code no-code solutions that sometimes RPA is marketed to the business.It's just so often not the case, because yes. It might provide a very user, business, friendly interface for you to build bots. But the knowledge you need to be able to ensure stability and accuracy, um, to build the bots is, is a familiarity that's probably not going to be had in the business. It's going to be had by a developer who knows what the DOM and COM are and how the operating system exposes services and processes and how.JavaScript, especially when we're talking about single page apps and react where you do have this very reactive DOM, that's going to change. You need to be fluent with that and know, not only how HTML tags work and how CSS will change stuff on you in classes, but also how clicking on something on a single page app is as simple as a username input field will dynamically change that whole DOM and you need to account for it. so, it is it's, traditionally not as easy as saying, oh, the business person can just click, click, click, click, and then we have a bot. You'll have a bot, but it's probably going to be break breaking quite often. It's going to be inaccurate in its execution.this is a business friendly user-friendly non-technical tool. And I launch it and it says, what do you want to do? And it says, let me record what you're going to do. And you say, cool.And then you go about you open up Chrome and you type in the browser, and then you click here, click there, hit send, and then you stop recording. The tool says, cool, this is what you've done. Well, I have yet to see a, a solution that is that isn't able to not need further direction or, or defining on that process, You still should need to go in there and say, okay, yeah.you recorded this correctly, but you know, you're not interpreting correctly or as accurate as you need to that field that I clicked on.And if you know, anybody hits, you know, F12 on their keyboard while they have Chrome open and they see how the DOM is built, especially if this is using kind of any kind of template, Webpage software. It's going to have a lot of cruft in that HTML. So while yes, the recording did correctly see that you clicked on the input box.What it's actually seen is that you actually clicked on the div. That is four levels scoped above it, whereas the parent, and there are other things within that as well. And so the software could be correctly clicking on that later, but other things could be in there and you're going to get some instability.So the human or the business, um, bot builder, the roboticist, I guess, would need to say, okay, listen, we need to pare this down, but it's, it's even beyond that. There are concepts that you can't get around when building bots that are unique to software engineering as a concept. And even though they're very basic, it's still sometimes hard for the business user to, they felt to learn that.And I I'm talking concepts as simple as for loops or loops in general where the business of course has, has knowledge of what we would call a loop, but they wouldn't call it a loop and it's not as accurately defined. So they have to learn that. And it's not as easy as just saying, oh Yeah.do a loop. And the business will say, well, what's a loop.Like I know, you know, conceptually what a loop could be like a loop in my, when I'm tying my shoe. But when you're talking about loop, that's a very specific thing in software and what you can do. And when you shouldn't do it, and that's something that these, no matter how good your low code, no code solution might be, it's going to have to afford for that concept.And so a business user is still going to have to have some lower level capability to apply those concepts. And, and I I've yet to see anybody be able to get around that in their RPA solutions.[00:33:42] Jeremy: So in your experience, even though these vendors may sell it as being a tool that anybody can just sit down and use but then you would want a developer to, to sit with them or, or see the result and, and try and figure out, okay, what do you, what do you really want this, this code to do?Um, not just sort of these broad strokes that you were hoping the tool was gonna take care of for you? Yeah.[00:34:06] Alex: that that's exactly right. And that's how every organization will come to that realization pretty quickly. the head of the game ones have said, okay, we need to have a really good, um, COE structure to this robotic operating model where we can have, a software engineering, developer capability that sits with the business, capability.And they can, marry with each other, other businesses who may take, um, these vendors at their word and say, it's a low code meant for business. It just needs to make sure it's on and accessible. And then our business people are just gonna, uh, go in there and do this. They find out pretty quickly that they need some technical, um, guidance to go in because they're building unstable or inaccurate bots.and whether they come to that sooner or later, they, they always come to that. Um, and they realize that, okay, there there's a technical capability And, this is not just RPA. This is the story of all low-code no-code solutions that have ever existed. It always comes around that, while this is a great interface for doing that, and it's very easy and it makes concepts easy.Every single time, there is a technical capability that needs to be afforded. [00:35:26] Jeremy: For the. The web browser, you mentioned the DOM, which is how we typically interact with applications there. But for native applications, you, you briefly mentioned, COM. And I was wondering when someone is writing, um, you know, a bot, uh, what are the sorts of things they see, or what are the primitives they're working with?Like, is there a name attached to each button, each text, field, [00:35:54] Alex: wouldn't that be a great world to live in, so there's not. And, and, as we build things in the DOM. People get a lot better. We've seen people are getting much better about using uniqueness when they build those things so that they can latch onto when things were built or built for the COM or, you know, a .NET for OS that might, that was not no one no one was like oh yeah, we're going to automate this.Or, you know, we need to make this so that this button here is going to be unique from that button over there on the COM they didn't care, you know, different name. Um, so yeah, that is, that is sometimes a big issue when you're using, uh, an RPA solution, you say, okay. cool. Look at this, your calculator app. And Okay. it's showing me the component object model that this was built. It that's describing what is looking at, but none of these nodes have, have a name. They're all, you know, node one node, 1.1 node two, or, or whatnot, or button is just button and there's no uniqueness around it. And that is, you see a lot of that in legacy older software, um, E legacy is things built in 2005, 2010.Um, you do see that, and that's the difficulty at that point. You can still solve for this, but what you're doing is you're using send keys. So instead of saying, Okay.RPA software, open up this, uh, application and then look for. You know, thing, this object in the COM and click on it, it's going to, you know, it can't, there is no uniqueness.So what you say is just open up the software and then just hit tab three times, and that should get you to this one place that was not unique, but we know if you hit tab three times, it's going to get there now. That's all well and good, but there's so many things that could interfere with that and break it.And the there's no context for the bot to grab onto, to verify, Okay. I am there. So any one thing, you could have a pop-up which essentially hijacks your send key, right? And so the bot yes, absolutely hit tab three times and it should be in that one place. It thinks it is, and it hits in enter, but in between the first and second tab, a pop-up happened and now it's latched onto this other process, hits enter. And all of a sudden outlook's opening bot doesn't know that, but it's still going on and it's going to enter in some financial information into oops, an email that it launched because it thought hitting enter again would do so. Yeah.That's, that's where you get that instability. Um, there are other ways around it or other solutions.and this is where we get into the you're using, um, lower level software engineering solutioning instead of doing it exactly how the user does it. When we're talking about the operating system and windows, there are a ton of interop services and assemblies that a, uh, RPA solution can access.So instead of cracking open Excel, double-clicking on Excel workbook waiting for it to load, and then reading the information and putting information in, you can use the, you know, the office 365 or whatnot that, um, interop service assembly and say, Hey, launch this workbook without the UI, showing it, attach to that process that, you know, it is.And then just send to it, using that assembly send information into it. And the human user can't do that. It can't manipulate stuff like that, but the bot can, and it it's the same end as the human users trying. And it's much more efficient and stable because the UI couldn't afford for that kind of stability.So that would be a valid solution. But at that point, you're really migrating into a software engineering, it developer solution of something that you were trying not to do that for. So when is that? Why, you know, why not just go and solve for it with an enterprise or programmatic solution in the first place?So that's the balance. [00:40:18] Jeremy: earlier you're talking about the RPA needs to be something that, uh, that the person is able to do. And it sounds like in this case, I guess there still is a way for the person to do it. They can open up the, the Excel sheet and right it's just that the way the, the RPA tool is doing it is different. Yeah.[00:40:38] Alex: Right. And more efficient and more stable. Certainly. Uh, especially when we're talking about Excel, you have an Excel with, you know, 200,000 lines, just opening that that's, that's your day, that's going to Excel it, just going to take its time opening and visualizing that information for you. Whereas you, you know, an RPA solution doesn't even need to crack that open.Uh, it can just send data right directly to that workbook and it that's a valid solution. And again, some of these processes, it might be just two people at your organization that are essentially doing it. So it's, you know, you don't really, it's not at a threshold where you need an enterprise solution for it, but they're spending 30 minutes of their day just waiting for that Excel workbook to open and then manipulating the data and saving it.And then, oh, their computer crashed. So you can do an RPA solution. It's going to be, um, to essentially build for a more efficient way of doing it. And that would be using the programmatic solution, but you're right. It is doing it in a way that a human could not achieve it. Um, and that again is. The where the discipline and the organizational, aspect of this comes in where it's saying, is that acceptable?Is it okay to have it do things in this way, that are not human, but achieving the same ends. And if you're not disciplined that creeps, and all of a sudden you have a RPA solution that is doing things in a way that where the whole reason to bring that RPA solution is to not have something that did something like that. And that's usually where the stuff falls apart. IT all of a sudden perks their head up and says, wait, I have a lot of connections coming in from this one computer doing stuff very quickly with a, you know, a SQL query. It's like, what is going on? And so all of a sudden, someone built a bot to essentially do a programmatic connection.And it is like, you should not be who gave you this permissions who did this shut down everything that is RPA here until we figure out what you guys went and did. So that's, that's the dance. [00:42:55] Jeremy: it's almost like there's this hidden API or there's this API that you're not intended to use. but in the process of trying to automate this thing, you, you use it and then if your, IT is not aware of it, then things just kind of spiral out of control.[00:43:10] Alex: Exactly. Right. So let's, you know, a use case of that would be, um, we need to get California tax information on alcohol sales. We need to see what each county taxes for alcohol to apply to something. And so today the human users, they go into the California, you know, tobacco, wildlife, whatever website, and they go look up stuff and okay, let's, that's, that's very arduous.Let's throw a bot on that. Let's have a bot do that. Well, the bot developers, smart person knows their way around Google and they find out, well, California has an API for that. instead of the bot cracking open Chrome, it's just going to send this rest API call and it's going to get information back and that's awesome and accurate and way better than anything. but now all of a sudden IT sees connections going in and out. all of a sudden it's doing very quickly and it's getting information coming into your systems in a way that you did not know was going to be, uh, happening. And so while it was all well and good, it's, it's a good way for, the people whose job it is to protect yourself or know about these things, to get very, um, angry, rightly so that this is happening.that's an organizational challenge, uh, and it's an oversight challenge and it's a, it's a developer challenge because, what you're getting into is the problems with having too technical people build these RPA bots, right? So on one hand we have business people who are told, Hey, just crack this thing open and build it.And it's like, well, they don't have enough technical fluency to actually build a stable bot because they're just taking it at face value. Um, on the other hand, you have software engineers or developers that are very technical that say, oh, this process. Yeah. Okay. I can build a bot for that. But what if I used, you know, these interop services, assemblies that Microsoft gives me and I can access it like that.And then I can send an API call over here. And while I'm at it, I'm going to, you know, I'm just going to spin up a server just on this one computer that can do this. When the bot talks to it. And so you have the opposite problem. Now you have something that is just not at all RPA, it's just using the tool to, uh, you know, manipulate stuff, programmatically.[00:45:35] Jeremy: so, as a part of all this, is using the same credentials as a real user, right. You're you're logging in with a username and password. if the form requires something like two factor authentication or, you know, or something like that, like, how does that work since it's not an actual person?[00:45:55] Alex: Right. So in a perfect world, you're correct. Um, a bot is a user. I know a lot of times you'll hear, say, people will be like, oh, hi, I have 20 RPA bots. What they're usually saying is I have 20 automations that are being run for separate processes, with one user's credentials, uh, on a VDI. So you're right.They, they are using a user's credentials with the same permissions that any user that does that process has, that's why it's easy. but now we have these concepts, like two factor authentication, which every organization is using that should require something that exists outside of that bot users environment. And so how do you afford for that in a perfect world? It would be a service account, not a user account and service accounts are governed a little differently. A lot of times service accounts, um, have much more stringent rules, but also allow for things like password resets, not a thing, um, or two factor authentication is not a thing for those.So that would be the perfect solution, but now you're dragging in IT. Um, so, you know, if you're not structurally set up for that, that's going to be a long slog. Uh, so what would want to do some people actually literally have a, we'll have a business person that has their two factor auth for that bot user on their phone.And then just, you know, they'll just go in and say, yeah.that's me. that's untenable. So, um, sometimes what a lot of these, like Microsoft, for instance, allow you to do is to install a two factor authentication, application, um, on your desktop so that when you go to log in a website and says, Hey, type in your password.Cool. Okay. Give me that code. That's on your two factor auth app. The bot can actually launch that. Copy the code and paste it in there and be on its way. But you're right now, you're having to afford for things that aren't really part of the process you're trying to automate. They are the incidentals that also happen.And so you have to build your bot to afford for those things and interpret, oh, I need to do two factor authentication. And a lot of times, especially if you have an entirely business focused PA um, robotic operating model, they will forget about those things or find ways around them that the bot isn't addressing, like having that authenticator app on their phone.that's, um, stuff that definitely needs to be addressed. And sometimes is only, found at runtime like, oh, it's asking for login. And when I developed it, I didn't need to do that because I had, you know, the cookie that said you're good for 30 days, but now, oh, no. [00:48:47] Jeremy: yeah. You could have two factor. Um, you could have, it asking you to check your email for a code. There could be a fraud warning. There's like all sorts of, you know, failure cases that can happen. [00:48:58] Alex: exactly. And those things are when we talk about, uh, third-party vendors, um, third-party provider vendors, like going back to the banking website, if you don't tell them that you're going to be using a bot to get their information or to interface with that website, you're setting yourself up for a bad time because they're going to see that kind of at runtime behavior that is not possible at scale by user.And so you run into that issue at runtime, but then you're correct. There are other things that you might run into at runtime that are not again, part of the process, the business didn't think that that was part of the process. It's just something they do that actually the bot has to afford for. that's part of the journey, uh, in building these. [00:49:57] Jeremy: when you're, when you're building these, these bots, what are the types of tools that, that you've used in the past? Are these commercial, packages, are these open source? Like what, what does that ecosystem look like?[00:50:11] Alex: Yeah, in this space, we have three big ones, which is, uh, automation anywhere UI path and, blue prism. Those are the RPA juggernauts providing this software to the companies that need it. And then you have smaller ones that are, trying to get in there, or provide stuff in a little different way. and you even have now, big juggernauts that are trying to provide for it, like Microsoft with something like power automate desktop.So all of these, say three years ago, all of these softwares existed or all of these RPA solution softwares existed or operated in the same kind of way, where you would install it on your desktop. And it would provide you a studio to either record or define, uh, originally the process that was going to be automated on that desktop when you pushed play and they all kind of expose or operate in the same way they would interpret the COM or the DOM that the operating system provided. Things like task scheduler have traditionally, uh, exposed, uh, and they all kind of did that in the same way. Their value proposition in their software was the orchestration capability and the management of that.So I build a bot to do this, Jim over there built a bot to do that. Okay. This RPA software, not only enabled you to define those processes, But what their real value was is they enable a place where I can say this needs to run at this time on this computer.And it needs to, you know, I need to be able to monitor it and it needs to return information and all that kind of orchestration capability. Now all of these RPA solutions actually exist in that, like everything else in the browser. So instead of installing, you know, the application and launching it and, and whatnot, and the orchestration capability being installed on another computer that looked at these computers and ran stuff on them.Now it's, it's all in the cloud as it were, and they are in the browser. So I go to. Wherever my RPA solution is in my browser. And then it says, okay, cool. You, you still need to install something on the desktop where you want the spot to run and it deploys it there. But I define and build my process in the provided browser studio.And then we're going to give you a capability to orchestrate, monitor, and, uh, receive information on those things that you have, those bots that you have running, and then what they're now providing as well is the ability to tie in other services to your bot so that it has expanded capability. So I'm using automation anywhere and I built my bot and it's going, and it's doing this or that.And automation anywhere says, Hey, that's cool. Wouldn't you like your bot to be able to do OCR? Well, we don't have our own OCR engine, but you probably as an enterprise do. Just use, you know, use your Kofax OCR engine or Hey, if you're really a high speed, why don't you use your Azure cognitive services capability?We'll tie it right into our software. And so when you're building your bot, instead of just cracking open a PDF and send key control C and key control V to do stuff instead, we'll use your OCR engine that you've already paid for to, to understand stuff. And so that's, how they expand, what they're offering, um, into addressing more and more capabilities.[00:53:57] Alex: But now we're, we're migrating into a territory where it's like, well, things have APIs why even build a bot for them. You know, you can just build a program that uses the API and the user can drive this. And so that's where people kind of get stuck. It's they they're using RPA on a, something that just as easily provides for a programmatic solution as opposed to an RPA solution.but because they're in their RPA mode and they say, we can use a bot for everything, they don't even stop and investigate and say, Hey, wouldn't this be just as easy to generate a react app and let a user use this because it has an API and IT can just as easily monitor and support that because it's in an Azure resource bucket.that's where an organization needs to be. Clear-eyed and say, Okay. at this point RPA is not the actual solution. We can do this just as easy over here and let's pursue that. [00:54:57] Jeremy: the experience of making these RPAs. It sounds like you have this browser-based IDE, there's probably some kind of drag and drop set up, and then you, you, you mentioned JavaScript. So I suppose, does that mean you can kind of dive a little bit deeper and if you want to set up specific rules or loops, you're actually writing that in JavaScript.[00:55:18] Alex: Yeah. So not, not necessarily. So, again, the business does not know what an IDE is. It's a studio. Um,so that's, but you're correct. It's, it's an IDE. Um, each, whether we're talking about blue prism or UiPath or automation anywhere, they all have a different flavor of what that looks like and what they enable.Um, traditionally blue prism gave you, uh, a studio that was more shape based where you are using UML shapes to define or describe your process. And then there you are, whereas automation anywhere traditionally used, uh, essentially lines or descriptors. So I say, Hey, I want to open this file. And your studio would just show a line that said open file.You know, um, although they do now, all of them have a shape based way to define your process. Go here, here. You know, here's a circle which represents this. Uh, let's do that. Um, or a way for you to kind of more, um, creatively define it in a, like a text-based way. When we talk about Java script, um, or anything like that, they provide predefined actions, all of them saying, I want to open a file or execute this that you can do, but all of them as well, at least last time I checked also allow you for a way to say, I want to programmatically run something I want to define.And since they're all in the browser, it is, uh, you know, Javascript that you're going to be saying, Hey, run this, this JavaScript, run this function. Um, previously, uh, things like automation anywhere would, uh, let you write stuff in, in .NET essentially to do that capability. But again, now everything's in the browser.So yeah, they do, They do provide for a capability to introduce more low level capability to your automation. That can get dangerous. Uh, it can be powerful and it can be stabilizing, but it can be a very slippery slope where you have an RPA solution bot that does the thing. But really all it does is it starts up and then executes code that you built.[00:57:39] Alex: Like what, what was the, the point in the first place? [00:57:43] Jeremy: Yeah. And I suppose at that point, then anybody who knows how to use the RPA tool, but isn't familiar with that code you wrote, they're just, they can't maintain it [00:57:54] Alex: you have business continuity and this goes back to our, it has to be replicable or close as close to the human process, as you can make. Because that's going to be the easiest to inherit and support. That's one of the great things about it. Whereas if you're a low level programmer, a dev who says, I can easily do this with a couple of lines of, you know, dot net or, you know, TypeScript or whatever.And so the bot just starts up in executes. Well, unless someone that is just as proficient comes along later and says, this is why it's breaking you now have an unsupportable business, solution. that's bad Juju. [00:58:38] Jeremy: you have the software engineers who they want to write code. then you have the people who are either in business or in IT that go, I don't want to look at your code.I don't want to have to maintain it. Yeah. So it's like you almost, if you're a software engineer coming in, you almost have to fight that urge to, to write anything yourself and figure out, okay, what can I do with the tool set and only go to code if I can't do it any other way.[00:59:07] Alex: That's correct. And that's the, it takes discipline. more often than not, not as fun as writing the code where you're like, I can do this. And this is really where the wheels come off is. You went to the business that is that I have this process, very simple. I need to do this and you say, cool, I can do that.And then you're sitting there writing code and you're like, but you know what? I know what they really want to do. And I can write that now. And so you've changed the process and while it is, and nine times out of 10, the business will be like, oh, that's actually what we wanted. The human process was just as close as we could get nothing else, but you're right.That's, that's exactly what we needed. Thank you nine times out of 10. They'll love you for that. But now you own their process. Now you're the one that defined it. You have to do the business continuity. You have to document it. And when it falls over, you have to pick it back up and you have to retrain.And unless you have an organizational capacity to say, okay, I've gone in and changed your process. I didn't automate it. I changed it. Now I have to go in and tell you how I changed it and how you can do it. And so that, unless you have built your robotic operating model and your, your team to afford for that, your developer could be writing checks bigger than they can cash.Even though this is a better capability. [01:00:30] Jeremy: you, you sort of touched on this before, and I think this is probably the, the last topic we'll cover, but you've been saying how the end goal should be to not have to use the RPAs anymore And I wonder if you have any advice for how to approach that process and, and what are some of the mistakes you've seen people make[01:00:54] Alex: Mm Hmm. I mean the biggest mistake I've seen organizations make, I think is throwing the RPA solution out there, building bots, and they're great bots, and they are creating that value. They're enabling you to save money and also, enabling your employees to go on and do better, more gratifying work. but then they say, that's, it that's as far as we're going to think, instead of taking those savings and saying, this is for replacing this pain point that we had to get a bot in the first place to do so.That's a huge common mistake. Absolutely understandable if I'm a CEO or even, you know, the person in charge of, you know, um, enterprise transformation. Um, it's very easy for me to say, ha victory, here's our money, here's our savings. I justified what we've done. Go have fun. Um, and instead of saying, we need to squirrel this money away and give it to the people that are going to change the system. So that, that's definitely one of the biggest things.The problem with that is that's not realized until years later when they're like, oh, we're still supporting these bots. So it is upfront having a turnoff strategy. When can we turn this bot off? What is that going to look like? Does it have a roadmap that will eventually do that?And that I think is the best way. And that will define what kind of processes you do indeed build bots for is you go to it and say, listen, we've got a lot of these user processes, human processes that are doing this stuff. Is there anything on your roadmap that is going to replace that and they say, oh yeah you know, in three years we're actually going to be standing up our new thing.We're going to be converting. And part of our, uh, analysis of the solution that we will eventually stand up will be, does it do these things? And so yes, in three years, you're good. And you say, cool, those are the processes I'm going to automate and we can shut those off. That's your point of entry for these things not doing that leads to bots running and doing things even after there is a enterprise solution for that. And more often than not, I would say greater than five times out of 10, when we are evaluating a process to build a bot for easily five times out of 10, we say, whoa, no, actually there's, you don't even need to do this.Our enterprise application can do this. you just need retraining, because your process is just old and no one knew you were doing this. And so they didn't come in and tell you, Hey, you need to use this.So that's really a lot of times what, what the issue is. And then after that, we go in and say, Okay.no, there's, there's no solution for this. This is definitely a bot needs to do this. Let's make sure number one, that there isn't a solution on the horizon six months to a year, because otherwise we're just going to waste time, but let's make sure there is, or at least IT, or the people in charge are aware that this is something that needs to be replaced bot or no bot.And so let's have an exit strategy. Let's have a turn-off strategy. When you have applications that are relatively modern, like you have a JIRA, a ServiceNow, you know, they must have some sort of API and it may just be that nobody has come in and told them, you just need to plug these applications together.[01:04:27] Alex: And so kind of what you're hitting on and surfacing is the future of RPA. Whereas everything we're talking about is using a bot to essentially bridge a gap, moving data from here to there that can't be done, programmatically. Accessing something from here to there that can't be done programmatically.So we use a bot to do it. That's only going to exist for so long. Legacy can only be legacy for so long, although you can conceivably because we had that big COBOL thing, um, maybe longer than we we'd all like, but eventually these things will be. upgraded. and so either the RPA market will get smaller because there's less legacy out there.And so RPA as a tool and a solution will become much more targeted towards specific systems or we expand what RPA is and what it can afford for. And so that I think is more likely the case. And that's the future where bots or automations aren't necessary interpreting the COM and the DOM and saying, okay, click here do that.But rather you're able to quickly build bots that utilize APIs that are built in and friendly. And so what we're talking about there is things like Appian or MuleSoft, which are these kind of API integrators are eventually going to be classified as RPA. They're going to be within this realm.And I think, where, where you're seeing that at least surfaced or moving towards is really what Microsoft's offering in that, where they, uh, they have something called power automate, which essentially is it just a very user-friendly way to access API. that they built or other people have built.So I want to go and I need to get information to service now, service now has an API. Yeah. Your, IT can go in and build you a nice little app that does a little restful call to it, or a rest API call to it gets information back, or you can go in and, you know, use Microsoft power automate and say, okay, I want to access service now.And it says, cool. These are the things you can do. And I say, okay, I just want to put information in this ticket and we're not talking about get or patch or put, uh, or anything like that. We're just saying, ah, that's what it's going to do. And that's kind of what Microsoft is, is offering. I think that is the new state of RPA is being able to interface in a user-friendly way with APIs. Cause everything's in the browser to the point. where, you know, Microsoft's enabling add ins for Excel to be written in JavaScript, which is just the new frontier. Um, so that's, that's kind of going to be the future state of this. I believe. [01:07:28] Jeremy: so, so moving from RPAs being this thing, that's gonna click through website, click through, um, a desktop application instead it's maybe more of this high, higher level tool where the user will still get this, I forget the term you used, but this tool to build a workflow, right. A studio. Okay. Um, and instead of saying, oh, I want this to click this button or fill in this form.It'll be, um, I want to get this information from service now. And I want to send a message using that information to slack or to Twilio, or, um, you're basically, talking directly to these different services and just telling it what you want and where it should go.[01:08:14] Alex: That's correct. So, as you said, everything's going to have an API, right? Seemingly everything has an API. And so instead of us, our RPA bots or solutions being UI focused, they're going to be API focused, um, where it doesn't have to use the user interface. It's going to use the other service. And again, the cool thing about APIs in that way is that it's not, directly connecting to your data source.It's the same as your UI for a user. It sits on top of it. It gets the request and it correctly interprets that. And does it the same thing with your UI where I say I click here and you know, wherever it says. okay. yeah. You're allowed to do that. Go ahead. So that's kind of that the benefit to that.Um, but to your point, the, the user experience for whether you're using a UI or API to build up RPA bot, it's going to be the same experience for the user. And then at this point, what we're talking about, well, where's the value offering or what is the value proposition of RPA and that's orchestration and monitoring and data essentially.we'll take care of hosting these for you. we'll take care of where they're going to run, uh, giving you a dashboard, things like that.[01:09:37] Alex: That's a hundred percent correct. It's it's providing a view into that thing and letting the business say, I want to no code this. And I want to be able to just go in and understand and say, oh, I do want to do that. I'm going to put these things together and it's going to automate this business process that I hate, but is vital, and I'm going to save it, the RPA software enables you to say, oh, I saw they did that. And I see it's running and everything's okay in the world and I want to turn it on or off. And so it's that seamless kind of capability that that's what that will provide. And I think that's really where it isn't, but really where it's going. Uh, it'll be interesting to see when the RPA providers switch to that kind of language because currently and traditionally they've gone to business and said, we can build you bots or no, no, your, your users can build bots and that's the value proposition they can go in.And instead of writing an Excel where you had one very, very advanced user. Building macros into Excel with VBA and they're unknown to the, the IT or anybody else instead, you know, build a bot for it. And so that's their business proposition today. Instead, it's going to shift, and I'd be interested to see when it shifts where they say, listen, we can provide you a view into those solutions and you can orchestrate them in, oh, here's the studio that enables people to build them.But really what you want to do is give that to your IT and just say, Hey, we're going to go over here and address business needs and build them. But don't worry. You'll be able to monitor them and at least say, yeah okay. this is, this is going.[01:11:16] Jeremy: Yeah. And that's a, a shift. It sounds like where RPA is currently, you were talking about how, when you're configuring them to click on websites and GUIs, you really do still need someone with the software expertise to know what's going on. but maybe when you move over to communicating with API, Um, maybe that won't be as important maybe, somebody who just knows the business process really can just use that studio and get what they need.[01:11:48] Alex: that's correct. Right. Cause the API only enables you to do what it defined right. So service now, which does have a robust API, it says you can do these things the same as a user can only click a button that's there that you've built and said they can click. And so that is you can't go off the reservation as easy with that stuff, really what's going to become prime or important is as no longer do I actually have an Oracle server physically in my location with a database.Instead I'm using Oracle's cloud capability, which exists on their own thing. That's where I'm getting data from. What becomes important about being able to monitor these is not necessarily like, oh, is it falling over? Is it breaking? It's saying, what information are you sending or getting from these things that are not within our walled garden.And that's really where, it or the P InfoSec is, is going to be maybe the main orchestrator owner of RPA, because they're, they're going to be the ones to say you can't, you can't get that. You're not allowed to get that information. It's not necessarily that you can't do it. Um, and you can't do it in a dangerous way, but it's rather, I don't want you

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

Todd: Alex, when you were little, what did you like to do?Alex: When I was small and I was in junior high school we used to like playing soccer with my friends. Actually in Kenya, what's different from other countries, we used to make our own soccer ball to play. So, it's very easy.Todd: Wow. How do you make the soccer ball?Alex: We used to collect like plastic papers and bind them with string, around them to make something round. So it was like, you didn't have to spend any money.Todd: Wow, that's ingenious. That's great. So were you a good soccer player?Alex: Not really. I used to like playing soccer but I was not very good, actually to tell the truthTodd: Yeah, me too. I wasn't a very good athlete. I mean I like sports but I was never any good. Um, so do you play soccer in Japan?Alex: Sometimes, until last year when I was in school I still played soccer. Right now, actually I'm not playing anymore because I'm like busy.Todd: Yeah.Alex: Yeah. You can't play soccer without a big group of people and everyone is busy right now so I'm not playing anymore.Todd: Yeah, that's a bummer. Like I always want to play sports but it's hard asyou get older. When's the last time you played soccer?Alex: About one year ago. I think November of 199?,...2003, November.Todd: OK. Actually in Kenya do you call it soccer or football?Alex: In Kenya you call it football.Todd: Football. I'm sorry.Alex: Actually, I've been in Japan for some time so I'm used to calling it soccer. In Kenya you call it football.

Todd: Alex, when you were little, what did you like to do?Alex: When I was small and I was in junior high school we used to like playing soccer with my friends. Actually in Kenya, what's different from other countries, we used to make our own soccer ball to play. So, it's very easy.Todd: Wow. How do you make the soccer ball?Alex: We used to collect like plastic papers and bind them with string, around them to make something round. So it was like, you didn't have to spend any money.Todd: Wow, that's ingenious. That's great. So were you a good soccer player?Alex: Not really. I used to like playing soccer but I was not very good, actually to tell the truthTodd: Yeah, me too. I wasn't a very good athlete. I mean I like sports but I was never any good. Um, so do you play soccer in Japan?Alex: Sometimes, until last year when I was in school I still played soccer. Right now, actually I'm not playing anymore because I'm like busy.Todd: Yeah.Alex: Yeah. You can't play soccer without a big group of people and everyone is busy right now so I'm not playing anymore.Todd: Yeah, that's a bummer. Like I always want to play sports but it's hard asyou get older. When's the last time you played soccer?Alex: About one year ago. I think November of 199?,...2003, November.Todd: OK. Actually in Kenya do you call it soccer or football?Alex: In Kenya you call it football.Todd: Football. I'm sorry.Alex: Actually, I've been in Japan for some time so I'm used to calling it soccer. In Kenya you call it football.

Todd: Alex, when you were little, what did you like to do?Alex: When I was small and I was in junior high school we used to like playing soccer with my friends. Actually in Kenya, what's different from other countries, we used to make our own soccer ball to play. So, it's very easy.Todd: Wow. How do you make the soccer ball?Alex: We used to collect like plastic papers and bind them with string, around them to make something round. So it was like, you didn't have to spend any money.Todd: Wow, that's ingenious. That's great. So were you a good soccer player?Alex: Not really. I used to like playing soccer but I was not very good, actually to tell the truthTodd: Yeah, me too. I wasn't a very good athlete. I mean I like sports but I was never any good. Um, so do you play soccer in Japan?Alex: Sometimes, until last year when I was in school I still played soccer. Right now, actually I'm not playing anymore because I'm like busy.Todd: Yeah.Alex: Yeah. You can't play soccer without a big group of people and everyone is busy right now so I'm not playing anymore.Todd: Yeah, that's a bummer. Like I always want to play sports but it's hard asyou get older. When's the last time you played soccer?Alex: About one year ago. I think November of 199?,...2003, November.Todd: OK. Actually in Kenya do you call it soccer or football?Alex: In Kenya you call it football.Todd: Football. I'm sorry.Alex: Actually, I've been in Japan for some time so I'm used to calling it soccer. In Kenya you call it football.

Interacting with customers requires a level of finesse and talent that is beautiful when done well, and a tough sight when done poorly. There is give and take, and you have to flow through various movements and ups and downs to reach a satisfying end result. It’s like a dance. A tango if you will. At least, that’s how the folks over at LivePerson see it. Alex Spinelli is the CTO and EVP of product, technology, and operations at LivePerson, and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he broke down what that dance should look like, and how A.I. is taking the lead.  As Alex explains, LivePerson is a set of tools, technologies and platforms that enable businesses to have conversations with customers through messaging channels, and to detect where customers may be getting stuck or frustrated. Then, with a small immediate intervention, LivePerson’s A.I. routes that customer to a human who can make the buying process easier. It is a way to get to a better end result more often, and it works. Businesses using LivePerson have seen double-digit-percentage-point improvement in conversions and higher NPS scores than ever. But the power of A.I. doesn’t end there, and Alex dives deep into where we are headed with A.I. as a tool in retail, including the blended in-person and virtual experiences that seem to be overlapping more than ever before. And Alex gets into the nitty-gritty of the ethics behind A.I. and how everyone will have to be more involved going forward when it comes to defining their limits, wants, and needs. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Joining Forces: The future of A.I. in the ecommerce space is in the way brands can join together an A.I. experience with a human-based one. The way brands should be looking at A.I. is as a conversation-starter and a tool that can solve transactional problems, but when a deeper conversation is needed, it should be able to usher customers through a seamless transition to a real person who can build a relationship, form trust, solve problems, and ensure that the customer experience is a good one the has a positive end result.Let’s Get Ethical!: With any new technology, there are ethical questions that have to be addressed. This is especially true when dealing with A.I. Not only do you have to take into account the repercussions that A.I. will have on the labor force, but you also have to consider how A.I. is being trained, what kind of biases are being programmed into the model, and how and when to start and stop collecting data to build bigger and better A.I. models.  Blend It Up: As we move further into the fourth industrial revolution, we are beginning to see more blending of virtual, digital, and physical experiences. Conversational technology will begin to follow us into physical stores and A.I., along with more targeting-types of technology, will be used in and out of stores.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host Stephanie Postles, CEO at Mission.org. Today we have Alex Spinelli joining the show. He's the CTO at LivePerson. Alex, welcome.Alex:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. So I was looking through your background. And I was hoping we could kind of start with your days at Alexa, because I feel like there's probably a lot of good juicy stories there and I want to hear a bit about what was your role there? What did you do there? And then we can jump into the big topic around AI and your current product?Alex:Sure, sure. I led what we call the Alexa OS. And what that was, or is today, is really the core software platform that powers the Alexa experience, the brain. It included things like personalization, speaker recognition, so Alexa knows who's talking to her. And then all of the APIs and technologies, dialogue management, they really power the whole experience and allowed both internal developers at Amazon and skill builders, so skills are like apps for Alexa, to go and build those experiences. So it was really the cloud operating system for Alexa.Stephanie:So what drew you to that field and industry?Alex:Yeah, so I've always been pretty connected to AI, natural language, even going back to, I have a lot of roots in news, something I was pretty passionate about, in news technology. So at Thomson Reuters, for example, where I lead technology for news, both for real time news, algorithmic trading, and then also all the Reuters news properties and journalists, the tools that journalists use, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how do people consume information, how they read information, and how can digital and computers really help us find the most important things, gain insight from information, gain insight from data.Alex:So then I kind of took a little bit of a hiatus from news, and when I joined Amazon, I was leading search. So the whole experience for browsing and discovering the right product for you, and trying to optimize that, make it easier. And one of the things that was really interesting is, I started to see the limitations of these very flat experiences, search pages, web pages and apps. And people started to try to have a conversation with Amazon search. So they'd ask questions in search, is this product compatible with this one? What's the best gift for my daughter who's graduating high school? And all these interesting questions, and the experience often fell down. So we actually started looking at what we called query understanding and natural search and all these interesting things where we wanted to help people get answers to their questions and have a dialogue with the search experience.Alex:And I thought it was pretty hard. In the sort of traditional, I put in a query, I get a set of results, that interface just didn't work really well. Alexa at the time was just kind of quirky little device that was just launching at Amazon very early days, I actually had one, I was part of the early beta testing. And I said, "God, I want to be part of that. That actually is starting to recreate the way we're going to interact with our digital lives and we're going to use natural language. And I guess the rest is history. I think when I joined there was 20 or 30 people in the team. And again, it was this quirky little device that people were like, "What the hell is this thing? Is this going to be big?" And yeah, in six months, we sold millions of devices, and I was growing a team, and we were adding all kinds of new features and capabilities. And it was pretty much a rocket ship, which was pretty fun.Stephanie:That's awesome. I have Alexas throughout the house. I've always wondered though, how to get past that hurdle of, like when you're talking with someone, you are very free flowing and you'll ask any kind of questions. And I feel like oftentimes, with Alexa or any speaker that you would talk into, you're like, "Ah, ah, what can I ask? I don't know what to say. I don't know how to phrase it." And it feels like there's still a bit of a hurdle with a lot of conversational speakers to get past the getting you help kind of with anything, and being able to query things in a million different ways, so that you're not like me, where you're just like, "And I'm stumped and now I'm just going to open up the app on my phone and resort to the old way of doing things."Alex:Yes. So it's interesting, because that same challenge is what actually led me to LivePerson. So when I met my current boss, he was explaining what LivePerson was doing, which was really a messaging platform for customer service and sales. And he said, "Listen, we're really interested in taking things to the next level with AI." And my first response was, "I'm good. I'm at the hottest product on the planet." And Rob and I had known each other for years from New York and we had conversations earlier. I said, "I'm good."Alex:He said, "Well listen, there's an opportunity to take what you're doing at Amazon, creating these natural experiences, but actually democratize it and do it for companies all around the world, large and small, and really help consumers interact in a new way." And it kind of stuck with me. And I started, we had more and more conversations, and I ended up joining. And I think the key differentiation that you're seeing is, I think the smart speakers in that whole space, they aren very transactional, right?Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Alex:They've kind of started to center around entertainment, home entertainment, smart home. And they are still fundamentally very, very, I ask for something, I get the result, I ask for something, I get the result. And what we're trying to do here, because we're working for all different businesses and companies, is allow you to have a full-fledged conversation to build a relationship with the things that are important to you in your life, your bank, your healthcare company, your insurance company — Industries that tech and AI have tended to ignore, like, "Those are big, boring, you can't change them." And I think the problem is we've kind of leaned into these proxies of relationship building, apps, well, you can't build a... You and I are having a conversation. I didn't send you the A.L.E.X. app and say, "Here, you can get any answer to any question, you can click and browse and tap and search, and you'll get..."Alex:You didn't send me your app. We're having a dialogue and a conversation. What's crazy is businesses have put the app, they've actually done that crazy thing. They've said, "Oh, no, don't talk to us. Don't have a conversation with us here, use our app, use our website." And what we want to do is actually do exactly what you described, have that fluid conversation, build a real relationship. And the key for us, and this is where I think the smart speakers fall down, is humans have to be involved as well. So you can't get stuck. The AI is not going to be able to solve every dialogue.Alex:So the way we look at the world is the AI as a kind of concierge in many ways, and begins and initiates the dialogue and conversation for simple things like play music, do this, do that, AI can do it. But then when you really need to have a more meaningful conversation, we want to connect you with the right person. And Alexa can't do that, because just the scale wouldn't work. It's just for Amazon, where I think when you start thinking about democratizing AI, we can actually start to do that and make it a useful tool, not just for the consumer, but also for the employees of the business.Stephanie:Yep. I mean, now it seems like it's the perfect time too, because I think through the past five years or so, and it seems like we've kind of gone through a period where everything had to be optimized, you don't want to have support centers, you've got bots everywhere, you can do drop shipping now, you don't need brands, you don't need... Just white label products, we went through this phase, and now we're kind of coming out on the other side where people are like, "I don't really want to talk just to a bot, I want to talk to a person. If I instantly want to call, I want to be able to have someone there. And it seems like now consumers' expectations have changed where it's like we're a little bit there, we were getting used to just, "Okay, I'll just talk to the chat and see if it fixes it." And now it seems like expectations are so much higher than they even were just a couple years ago.Alex:I think part of that is this digital was growing due to convenience, right?Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Alex:We were buying large bulk things. We were buying simple things. We were buying more toothpaste, more batteries, more this, more that. And as we started to need to use digital, and now in the pandemic, obviously, need to, have to, no other way, for all the things in our life. Yeah, we want to actually connect those things to values, our values, right? So the brands matter. The business matters, what does that brand stand for? What are the values that they stand behind? So I do think you're right, I think the need for developing a real relationship is important.Alex:And if you look at, actually it's interesting, banks, telcos, all these kind of big, stodgy, old businesses, or at least we used to think of them that way, or kind of were perceived that way, they kind of lost their differentiation, right? A banking app is a banking app is a banking app, they all look the same, feel the same, act the same. But not all banks are the same, they have different values, they have different missions.Alex:And without being able to talk and have a conversation, you don't get to connect your values to where you're putting your money. So I think that's the shift. I think people now care. They're spending all their dollars in the digital world, by and large. Even the restaurants, who's delivering? Is it Postmates? Is it Uber? Is it Grubhub? It matters. We want to support the right business who has the values that we share. So yeah, I think it's really important. A connection is super important.Stephanie:Yep. I also think a lot about retail. A lot of people probably do miss those experiences of going in stores and having someone there to ask questions to, and now that just needs to be mimicked more in the digital space where people are like, "Well, I can't," or maybe they can start to now, but for a while there, you couldn't go in and have your normal conversations and ask where things were. I mean, I go all the time, and I'll be like, "What kind of wine do you like? Just tell me what you like. I'll buy whatever you tell me because I don't know." And I miss that. And I was looking for that. But oftentimes it was lacking in the digital world. So-Alex:Yeah, so I think developing the tools to allow the... Brands are made of people, and enabling people to actually come through the digital world and connect is exactly what you're saying. Yeah, we thrive that human experience. I mean, we desire that human experience.Stephanie:Yeah. So tell me a little bit deeper about what is LivePerson? Because I'm hearing it is like it's essentially conversational AI for any industry, it's not just focused on commerce, it can be banking, it can be anywhere, is that the right way to think about it? Or maybe I'll let you describe it better.Alex:Yeah, so at our core, at our roots, it's a set of tools, technologies, platforms, that enable you as a business to actually have conversations with your customers through messaging channels. So this is the way we've all started to interact with one another. My daughter and I don't talk on the phone as much, it's all messaging, but I can talk to her all day long, right? Because it's asynchronous, it's on my time, it's on her time, she can be in class, I can be in this meeting, we can start a conversation and continue it. So the core offering is letting businesses do that. So giving those interactions back to the consumer on their schedule. And then we start to layer on a lot of intelligence.Alex:So a lot of those conversations can be led by an AI to gather information, to do the simple things, to actually help you with, what's your name, what's your account number, what's your size, reset my password, pay my bill, lots of things that really become kind of very rote. And then you start to really get more and more advanced in enabling you to shop, enabling you to buy, enabling you to transact. And the whole platform lets you never get stuck. So you can have a conversation, it can be part of an automation, you can be looking at a product, you can be asking questions to a bot about the size, color, compatibility, etc. And then when you get stuck, we can actually detect that and route you immediately to a person, a real human being that can help you. And we call that the tango. So it's this-Stephanie:I like that.Alex:... beautiful dance that allows us to go back and forth. And that's really, I think, where we excel. And then just from a technical perspective, we wrap all of that with a set of analytics and tools that even if you're a small business, you can use to look at the health of those conversations, how's it going? Is it making you money? Is it costing you more? How's your customer satisfaction? And those kinds of things. So it's a pretty full suite of tools to build a new kind of customer experience.Stephanie:That's awesome. So what kind of results do you see? Especially around commerce, when it comes to, like you said, you're doing the tango, you're sending them over to a customer service person. What would you see, otherwise? I'm sure losing that customer and not converting to a sale, are there any metrics that you guys have that you can share?Alex:Yeah, so it definitely is industry dependent and customer dependent. And we tend not to share direct customer numbers. But this is why I joined, the results are crazy. And so when Rob and I were talking about me joining LivePerson, he said that, "We're kind of onto something where we see costs go down, customer satisfaction go up, NPS go up, conversion rates go up, and agent turnover, or sales agent turnover go down." And I said, "There's no way all those metrics can be moving in the positive direction." Usually, there's trade offs. But right now, that's what we're seeing.Alex:So we do see conversion rates for conversations to be often double digit percentages better than experiences that didn't have. So if you were interacting in an app or a website, and we detect that you might be stuck, you might be jumping back and forth between pages, we'll actually offer like, "Hey, it looks like you might be having... Do you have a question? Do you have a problem?" And then we'll have that dialogue and that conversation.Alex:And that might be a tangoed conversation mixed and matched between an AI and a human. And we see conversion rates of those dialogues, again, double digit percent. There's a large big box retailer whose conversion rates typically exceed over 15% when a conversation is initiated. And a typical conversion rate on web shopping is single digits, mid to 5%, 6%. So significant increases when you actually connect and have a dialogue are pretty common for us.Stephanie:Wow, that's cool. So if I'm a brand-Alex:Yeah, it's pretty powerful.Stephanie:Yeah, I mean, it sounds amazing. It sounds like, why wouldn't someone use something like this? If I'm a brand, and I'm thinking about setting this up, would you be tapping into my customer support people who are trained my way and then you're like, you train the AI, you got the questions in there, the answers, you kind of map all that out, you've got your database, and then you're constantly learning, I'm assuming, from what people are saying and what's actually helpful. And then, when you go into the tango mode, it goes over to your customer service people, or how does that work?Alex:So our tooling, mostly, is used directly by the brand. So you're a brand, our technology sits inside, I mean it's SaaS base technology, but it sits inside your contact center. Actually, the way we typically will train AI, it's actually pretty cool, you have human conversations first, and you don't need many. So you actually start to have human to human conversations. And then just in a few weeks, we can actually collect enough data to go and build the best intents. So intent is, as you're having a natural language discussion and an AI is detecting what you need. So an intent is the thing that you want, I want to pay a bill, I want to buy that product. Is this product compatible? Does this come with batteries? Whatever have you. Those are all intents.Alex:So those intents are basically derived from your real customer conversations. So the accuracy ends up being very high. And we've actually built the whole series of proprietary data models that are very industry specific. So in retail, in airlines, in banking, in insurance, we can actually have some really high accurate recognition. And again, those intents can be recognized for human conversations, so that we can tell the agent exactly what's going on and what this person needs. And then they're also used to go and build those AI driven experiences.Alex:And the goal is, can we take all the mundane repeatable stuff away from the agents? So the agents are really closing the sale, they're really helping tough problems. And this is why you see agent satisfaction go up, because they're not doing the rote, same, same, same, same conversations, all that's done by the AI. And then the agents actually having a kind of much more high bandwidth interaction.Stephanie:Like doing the creative work, where they can think and solve- [crosstalk]Alex:Exactly.Stephanie:... problems. And I mean, I think it comes back to, for a while there, everyone's like, "AI is going to take our jobs." It's like, "No, it's augmenting your jobs. And it's doing the things that you probably don't want to do anyways. But now you just get to work on higher level things," I would think.Alex:We do see that. And it's interesting, we see the wait times... So rather than waiting for 30 minutes, you actually wait for very little time. And then that agent can actually spend the time and energy to have a, just like you said, a much more creative high bandwidth conversation. So we don't see this, "Yeah, take..." It's changing jobs, it's augmenting jobs, it does require some new training, for sure. But at least right now, it's not this job killer, it actually opens up the world for new jobs. We actually are converting agents to data annotators.Alex:So agents in real time can actually go and label conversations and data to improve the AI. So it's actually advancing their roles in some ways. Again, I'm not going to be naïve, there will come a time where automation and those kinds of things do impact jobs at scale. I think we as responsible business people need to think about what's the next thing, right? And what's the next set of opportunities. So I'm hopeful in general, we are pretty hopeful and positive on where we can get to, but I think we have to kind of wade in very open eyed and make sure we do the right thing as we go forward.Stephanie:Yeah, so when thinking about doing the right thing, I think it'd be good to get a little lay of the land of the AI field in general, because I feel like it's had a pretty bumpy couple of years, just I mean, so many headlines were made around unintended consequences of using AI models, labeling things incorrectly. There's just been a lot out there. So what does it look like now? And especially in the world of commerce, how do we think about, where is AI even being utilized properly, or misused? And where could it be in a couple years? Or where should it be?Alex:The biggest challenge with AI is bias. And I'll explain what that means. So some of the bias is deliberate, some is not deliberate, or intentional and unintentional. So AI is only as good as the data. So what AI is, at the end of the day, it's a tool that allows you to look at lots and lots of data, examples. And then you build a model, mathematical model, statistical model, that makes certain assumptions based on the examples. And so if you were trying to make an AI service that would recognize oranges, this is when I used to meet people in person at South by Southwest to give a talk, I put this big, gnarly looking orange on the screen. It was not orange, it was mostly white and moldy and green. And I'd asked the audience, "Who knows what this is?" And 95% of people would raise their hand, I'd say, "What is it?"Alex:And everyone knew it was an orange. No one saw an orange [inaudible] anything like that. Unless you went on vacation and left an orange on your counter for like three weeks, then you maybe have seen an orange like that. But everyone instantly recognized it, right? So really what's happening is very similar to AI, you've seen thousands of oranges in your life. So there's a bunch of features of an orange, little dimples, the skin, the [inaudible] possible colors, it's round. And your brain immediately matched that image to this archetype of an orange, even though you've never seen an orange that looks like that. That's really what AI is doing. So if you have a bad data set, if you showed a young kid, many, many different images of things that weren't oranges, but you told them it was an orange, right?Alex:When that image would pop, they might not recognize it, they might not be able to tell what it was, or they might misrecognize something else and call it an orange. So the data under AI can inherently have bias by where we collect it from. So if we're trying to collect data to recognize a certain type of person, or a certain type of behavior, or a certain type of language, if we don't have a representative data set from the right populations, the AI is going to be biased, it's going to be biased based on that data set. Or if humans label that data, and those humans come from a certain one kind of homogenous background, they might label the data with their own biases. Again, that could be unintentional, but everyone brings their own unconscious biases with them.Alex:Or lastly, engineers, when they build AI models have their own biases, too. They think certain things are important and other things are unimportant. Simple kind of innocuous examples, if you're building a trading system, and you thought the weather really had an importance on stock prices, so that engineer would build weather as being a heavily weighted variable, that's a bias. So the key actually is recognizing all the ways that biases can creep in and creating some standards, and then really having the tools and process in your company to actually recognize those, and ask the question, and make sure that you're doing all the things that you need to do to eliminate that. That bias is what we've seen in some of these horror stories around AI.Alex:And it was kind of rushing headlong into it and not really thinking deeply about it. So there's actually some great organizations that... We actually took the EqualAI pledge as a company. So there's a nonprofit called EqualAI, that is working with industries to try to eliminate bias in AI. Or I should probably rephrase, not eliminate, but really try to mitigate. I don't know if we'll ever be able to fully mitigate-Stephanie:Or eliminate.Alex:Eliminate, sorry, yep. It's just super important, and it's actually the right thing. It's good for your business. It's good for your employees, it's just something we have to do, ethical use of any new powerful tool, no matter what it is, you have to actually consider those things. So I think that's the key challenge right now. And I think we're still in the early, early days of really grappling with it.Stephanie:Yeah, I mean, it seems like too, right now, a lot of models will have to be thrown away because they were all trained on a set of consumers that are still there, but now there's all these new consumers who's come on the market that were never shopping online before, never doing their grocery shopping online. And we had a really good guest from Stitch Fix, she was the VP of data science there. And she was like, the way that the older generation, who's now trying out Stitch Fix, wants to talk with us is very different than how we were talking with millennials. And so you have to start rethinking about, do I keep my model and adjust it? Do I just throw it out and start over? And it seems like a tricky point now, because you just had this big inflow of new consumers that you never really were talking with before last year.Alex:Yeah, I have a 14-year old. And it's been an interesting journey as most of his communication has really moved online, and the words and terminology and no cap and sus and all these funny terms. They need to be built in to model. So your VP at Stitch Fix is 100% correct. And we need to go and deal with that. And I don't know if it's about throwing away, I think it's more about augmenting and building on top of. The good news is the influx is a big number of people coming, and those large numbers can actually improve the models pretty quickly, if the number that you're starting with was smaller. But it's something we actually, because we live and breathe natural language, we actually have to stay on top of really, really regularly. And yeah, this is going to be the perennial challenge. This is where actually that, remember I talked about I'm transforming agent roles?Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Alex:So one of the things that we've looked at and we've just actually released this, it's pretty cool, is the agents, as they're having conversations, can label the intents and they can actually improve intents, and they can actually retag intents and all this kind of stuff. And so we believe, and this is where I think we are changing roles, not eliminating, the agents know your products, they know your language, they know the markets you're operating in, they talk to your customers every day, and they're the ones that are going to be best positioned to kind of add and augment those models, so it's actually really important to have them as part of that process.Stephanie:Oh, that's really interesting, that they can do that now. And I could see it being really helpful too, because I have heard that oftentimes, models can also, like you said, train themselves and turn into a black box where it's like they keep ingesting the wrong data, wrong data, and then you build up maybe algorithms that, I remember at certain companies I used to work at, you kind of didn't know what was in there, at a certain point, you're like, "I don't know how it's working. I don't know why it's working this way." How much data do you need? Is there ever a point where you're like, "That's enough, let's stop. Only collect it this many times." Because right now, it feels like we're in a world of like, just get as much as you can and ingest as much as you can. Which seems like it could maybe have unintended consequences.Alex:Agreed. But explainability is still a big problem with AI. So there's a startup for folks out there listening, create some technology that offers introspection and explainability to large machine learn models. It's not a solved problem. And I don't have a good answer, actually, when do you have enough, when don't you have enough? I think you need to constantly benchmark, constantly look at your accuracy, and have all the protections in place that you are looking for that bias, you are looking for those negative consequences. And that's hard work. That's not like putting some technology gaps in place and a threshold, that's really having a dialogue internally, asking the questions, turning over rocks, what could be the negative consequences here? It's kind of active management right now, and it really needs to be baked into your kind of culture, that it's something that you focus on.Stephanie:Yeah, definitely agree there. So what kind of opportunities do you see? Where do you think conversational commerce should be in the next one to three years? Or what do you think is going to start happening?Alex:So I think the big opportunity right now is actually the topic of our chat is more commerce, like real shopping, real purchasing, real buying, I think conversational commerce, primarily over the last number of years, has been sort of sat in that care, support, follow up space. And now because digital is a necessity, not a convenience, we're starting to see, like I said before, all the little breakage and the flat experiences. So I think the big opportunities are around how can we really help people discover?Alex:So discovery is really hard. With Alexa, for example, you don't know what Alexa can do and can't do, and those kinds of [inaudible]. Discovery is that still a big challenge. Huge opportunity there. It's how do you stitch conversations together with discovery? And to me, that's all about actually modeling the behaviors that we would have in real life. So we're going to go back to stores, we're going to go back to malls, they're going to be changed up, they're going to be very different. I think we're going to see conversations in the digital world follow us in and try to fill in the gaps and start to really help us in a much more kind of blended way. So there's something called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, if you really want to geek out. It's this-Stephanie:Oh, yeah, we've talked about this before-Alex:Oh, cool. Yeah.Stephanie:... on a lot of our other podcasts.Alex:It's this blending of the virtual and physical. Yeah. So I think the big opportunities are in real commerce, and how do we start to blend the physical and the virtual? So we see, for example, especially during COVID, blending conversations with curbside pickup, I'm ready, I'm here, are you here? I want to add this, can you get me... So really trying to fill in all those gaps in those interactions and exchanges. So I think that's where a lot of the kind of next stage plays, is we're going to see conversations start to power a lot more of our transactions and commercial activities, and starting to blend together that physical and virtual, that's where we're spending a lot of our time.Stephanie:That's cool. I mean, so what kind of tech advancements are needed, because I'm even thinking about that Fourth Industrial Revolution and blending that, and okay, if you're walking to a store, I mean, I know there was a while there where store owners were hesitant to even install the beacons so that you would know who's coming in your store. And there was a lot of hangups when it came to retail that didn't allow the digital world to interact with them, because you had to have hardware infrastructure changes, there was a lot needed there. So what kind of things are needed for that advancement to take place?Alex:Yeah, well, a bunch of things. I mean, these things have basically become supercomputers, right? These are more powerful than even the biggest machines 10, 15 years ago. So they're going to take on more and more of the processing. I think image recognition, big space. And then I think a lot of that starts to wrap together the privacy concerns, so giving control back to the consumer about what data I share and when based on my needs and what I want to do. So that's where I think you're going to see a lot of technology advancement is, yes, beacons. Yes, image recognition. Yes, the kind of blending of conversations and in person and then live and all these kinds of things and trying to, like I said, stitch that experience together.Alex:But if I were, again, entrepreneurs out there and technology companies, I would look at those for sure, but I think we also have this kind of renewed interest in privacy and what targeting is. And we can do a whole soapbox, if you want, on the evils of free social media and the hyper targeting, I think there needs to be legislation to almost eliminate some of that, because what we've allowed companies to do is extreme content and extreme information can find audiences now, because the audience is basically free, they just [inaudible]. So I think trying to really understand who I share my data with, why I share my data with, and I'm sharing it only for the purpose that I want, is another whole area of technology that we need to focus on. These are the things at least we're working on, that we feel pretty passionate about.Alex:And then in terms of very specific technologies, I think the combination of conversations with location and image recognition, are going to start to be really interesting, right? Because I'm going to be looking at something, I want to verify something, I want to validate something with a conversation and a dialogue. And a lot of it's going to be dependent about where I am. So we're trying to figure out how those intersect in the right way.Stephanie:Yeah. How do you approach it in a way that garners trust from the consumer? Because I feel like there's been a lot of times, even me personally, if I know I'm talking to a computer, I'm like, "Nope, I'm good." Because I've had so many bad experiences, or I've mentioned it a couple times, you call in to like Verizon, it's like... Pretending to type, like... And you're like, "This is so fake, and I don't like this." And then they can't even help me either. So how do you go about it in a way that informs the person that you're not really talking to a person right now, but still keeps them incentivized to want to try and work that method, if they've kind of been burned in the past?Alex:I think there's two topics there. One, both of them, we have pretty strong opinions about. First, an AI should always identify itself as AI and not try to pretend it's a human. I actually think we'll see legislation on that. Because I think it's bad. And I think a couple of things, even their practical issues with it too, you speak differently than you do to human than you do to an AI or a bot. And it's better if you know for everybody, it's actually better even for the AI builder to know that you know because the model is going to be different, interestingly. So there's actually a real practical reason. But I think there's a lot of ethical reasons, is I should know who I'm speaking to, and what I'm speaking to. That's one.Alex:Two, I think that the gatekeepers, the Facebooks of the world, that want to kind of screen everyone and operate as these Uber, Uber marketplaces that they control the traffic flow, I think we as consumers are going to start to have very negative... I mean, we've started in terms of perception. But I think there's going to be a continued backlash on that. And I think you want to know that if you're into dealing with Verizon, you want to deal with Verizon, you want to deal with this company, you want to deal directly with that company. So, again, we feel really strongly about that, we don't sell data, we work on behalf of the brand, there's no targeting, there's no selling data, there's no advertising.Alex:So I think we're going to see a return to kind of truer commercial relationships. Now, we've benefited, we've gotten all this free stuff by selling our behaviors, we don't sell our data, by the way, we sell our behaviors, right? We sell behavioral changes to Facebooks and Googles of the world. And I think we're going to stop doing that. And I think we have to stop, we have to pay for the things that would give us value, and then we know what we're paying for and we understand how our data is going to be used. And I think that's really, really important. And I think we're going to see a shift over the next year or two, for sure. For sure, in terms of what people want.Stephanie:Yeah, so a lot of brands are probably hearing this and are nervous because of all the changes that are happening with Facebook and privacy rules. And many of them have been very reliant on search ads and Facebook. So what do you see customer acquisition looking like if you kind of can't rely or maybe shouldn't rely on those channels, and now people are maybe opting out of sharing all their data, even though it's still pretty hard to opt out. It's like, you either accept it or [crosstalk] look at a website. Like, "Okay, I guess I'll just accept." But how do you see it working for brands where it's like, "Well, most of my traffic was coming from Facebook. And now that's not really the world we're going to be living in." Is that kind of targeting and traffic and customer acquisition?Alex:Yeah, I mean, there's still going to be these aggregate places, I think they're not going to be eliminated. So our view is moving from a stream and target the stuff at me to enabling people to express their desires, their intents. And then businesses honestly, basically, applying for, "Hey, here's something that based on what you've asked for, we may have." And so I think the user acquisition, I don't have the answer to, if I did, I'd probably start that company, or we would be doing it here at LivePerson, but I think that there will be kind of a flipping the model on its head a bit, right?Alex:So rather than this idea of, I can have some type of content, because I think the ills that we've seen have come from this model, I can have some kind of content, I want to get 50,000 people for a very, very, very low cost, I can go and target those 50,000 people, who don't know about me and who I think have a proclivity to me, and I can go get them. So that was good for small business in some ways, right?Stephanie:Yeah.Alex:You can actually build businesses online. It's bad for lots of other reasons. It's also as a consumer, that you're being introduced to something that... Like the whole serendipity introduction is neat when you're on Etsy, because you know what it is [inaudible], it's not neat when it could be anything. So I think we're going to start to ask consumers to express their needs, and like, what do you want? What are you looking for? Can you define kind of your ecosystem of things that you like and appreciate? And then we're going to ask your permission to actually bring others too. And you're going to set standards, like, "I really only want to hear from companies that have certain social stances, or I only want to hear from companies that have certain environmental stances."Alex:So I think it's really all about empowering the consumer to kind of define, it's a little more work, and I think that's the thing that's going to be interesting to see. Because I think we as consumers have gotten very lazy, it's just like, "I want to scroll and you're going to send me stuff." I think we're going to have to be asking consumers for a little bit more work to define those things and tell us more, so that we can give them things that are much more open, honest and transparent.n again, I don't know what the format it's going to look like, right now-Stephanie:I'm thinking of a whole new browser right now. Just need a whole new browser that operates in that way, because right now it's like, where do you get all those ads and everything? It's from your own Chrome, you're on Safari. But it seems like you need a whole new world for it to operate in that way.Alex:So we're actually experimenting with, call it a messenger, but I wouldn't kind of categorize it that way, that it is intent driven. So you define, I'm looking for X, Y and Z, almost think of the kind of anti Alexa in some ways where it's not just this transactional thing, I want to play this music and turn this thing on, it's much more, I'm looking for this, I need this. And you understand the ecosystem of services and providers that actually can come together, all permission based, all about transparency. Early days, kind of experimenting and thinking it through, and talking to a lot of partners and companies also, because I don't think we're alone. I think many, many folks think there needs to be a change here, and we need to figure it out together.Stephanie:Yep. So we've had a debate on the show a couple of times about this whole trend of shopping on the edge, which to me seems like kind of where you guys are headed up, like being able to have conversations kind of wherever you are. How are you thinking about where people are shopping now? Do you see it moving to being on Instagram, being within Facebook Messenger, being on Tik Tok and being able to have those conversations there from the brand and selling on those platforms, and less about driving directly to one single website, or just on Amazon?Alex:So I do think this idea of the destination starts to fade. I do think that brands will be able to speak to you wherever you are, right? Again, I think it needs to be permission based. I think it needs to be based on your intent. But I do think brand... It's funny. I mean, the idea that you don't have a website sounds insane, right? If you're a company, but what was a website 20 years ago? Nobody had a website really. The brand found you where you were, you saw the store, you looked in different magazines, you saw them on different television channels advertise. It was a much more organic process.Alex:And these gatekeepers have become very, very dominant. And again, I think if that changes where we're not willing to give away our behaviors anymore, or sell our behaviors anymore, then I do think you'll start to see brands engage in ways across all the places you live and breathe. Again, should be permission based, for sure. So I do think this shopping on the edge is kind of funny because isn't that where we all did years ago?Stephanie:Yeah, but now we're back. In the digital world though.Alex:Exactly. But that's where we're going to... The Fourth Industrial Revolution kind of back again is like, I think all these things start to blend together and we don't want, we don't want these kind of singular locations and gatekeepers, I think we're going to start to see different properties have different purposes based on what we're in the mood for, what we need. It's interesting, I think the biggest thing that I would leave you with, and leave listeners to, is digital was convenient. It is now a necessity. There's not more meaningful things that can shape change in terms of the format of an experience and the business models. And I don't think we're going to go back, I don't think we're going to go back to what was before, there's going to be something new, and that [inaudible] is what's really going to drive a lot of it. So I think you're going to have to as a brand be where people are.Stephanie:Yeah, which sounds chaotic for me.Alex:And this idea that people are... It sounds chaotic, but I actually think it democratizes things, I actually think it means that we can eliminate some of these gatekeepers who make billions and billions of dollars on our behaviors, which I think would be a good thing in the world.Stephanie:Yeah, I agree. All right. Well, let's shift over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have 30 seconds or less to answer. Are you ready, Alex?Alex:Sure.Stephanie:All right. First one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Alex:So I'm sorry to repeat, but the fact that digital is now a necessity, I think is going to have one of the biggest impacts, for sure.Stephanie:That's all right. You're allowed to repeat on this show. You can do whatever you want. Let's see, what is something that you believe that many people don't agree with you on?Alex:I'm hopeful. I do a lot of these podcasts, I get a lot of scary questions. I don't go there, you're not going to get me there. I think-Stephanie:[crosstalk]Alex:No. No, you didn't. You didn't. This has been fun and positive, which is great. I really enjoyed it. I'm hopeful about the future, I actually think AI is going to be a powerful tool of change, positive change. I don't think it's going to kill everyone's jobs. I actually think we're going to find new ways to make it augment and enhance us in ways we don't even expect. So I guess in the AI space, in Big Tech space, I spend a lot of time talking, I hear a lot of fear and the sky is falling. And I guess I don't think that way. I think I'm pretty uplifted and positive about what the future is to come.Stephanie:I love that. I'm on the same page. Normally-Alex:Good, yeah, I can get that.Stephanie:... [crosstalk] all that stuff. Yeah, you can get us on a space. What's one thing you don't understand today that you wish you did?Alex:I don't understand, and I think about it all the time and debate it all the time, and I'm not going to go all political on you, I don't understand the device of this right now, that we can't find ways to communicate and talk and debate real issues to find solutions. We like to divide. And I'm kind of confused by it, to be honest.Stephanie:Do you ever just look back at your news and media days and be like, "That's the stem of it, a lot of it." Like the targeting and the way articles are written. Oh, man.Alex:Yeah, I don't know. I think it's easy to go blame the media. I'm not saying you're doing that. I don't know. I don't know. Are we at peak Western civilization and there's always a crest in your fall? Maybe, that could be it. And I'm part of that problem, probably. I don't know. But I'm confused by it. It's something- [crosstalk]Stephanie:I'd like to see that change. That would be nice to see, [inaudible] everyone just come together in love, like the yellow debate, in a friendly manner. That would be nice.Alex:Yeah. And I think we'll get through it. So I am still positive about the future, I think. But I'm confused by the current state of it.Stephanie:Yeah. Yeah. Same. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about? And who would your first guest be?Alex:If I were to have a podcast, it would probably be a little bit far from tech. It would be about how we bring magic back into our lives.Stephanie:Oh, I like that.Alex:Yes.Stephanie:You need the Alex Spinelli show.Alex:A little journey I'm on. Yeah, the little journey I'm on. I started going to Burning Man a number of years ago, and there's just an infectiousness of [inaudible] in wonder and magic and art, and dancing in the desert, into your life. And I think more people need to dance in the desert at sunrise.Stephanie:I love that. That's great. All right. And then the last thing, what's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you?Alex:The nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. I have a pretty amazing group of friends and family, so I got a lot of nice things done for me.Stephanie:You're a lucky dude.Alex:I am lucky. I really do appreciate it. I think my wife marrying me is probably the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. It changed my life and it's been wonderful.Stephanie:Go her.Alex:She's amazing.Stephanie:We've had a couple of guys say that on the show, which is so sweet. I'm always like, "I hope your wife listens to this then."Alex:I'm lucky. She's amazing.Stephanie:That's awesome. Well, Alex, it's been such a pleasure having you on. Yeah, I love the conversation. Where can people find out more about you and LivePerson?Alex:Yeah, I think you start on liveperson.com. And there's plenty on me on LinkedIn and our various social media. So I look forward to it.Stephanie:That sounds great. Thanks so much.Alex:Yeah. You got it. Thank you.

Doug and Alex have an excellent discussion about podcasting and using podcasts to build a brand. At first glance, it can seem like the podcast medium is too crowded. However, Alex breaks it down by filtering out the inactive podcasts and the ones with less than 10 episodes published. The net result is a much smaller community than you might imagine of active podcasts. This means that now is an exceptional time to launch your podcast and build a personal brand. Learn more at https://creatingabrand.com (https://creatingabrand.com) Doug's business specializes in partnering with companies and non-profits to create value and capture cost savings without layoffs to fund growth and strengthen financial results.  You can find out more athttp://www.terminalvalue.biz ( www.TerminalValue.biz) You can find the audio podcast feed athttp://www.terminalvaluepodcast.com ( www.TerminalValuePodcast.com) You can find the video podcast feed athttp://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5a4QbT-dXhpgb-8HJHdGg ( www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5a4QbT-dXhpgb-8HJHdGg) Schedule time with Doug to talk about your business athttp://www.meetdoug.biz ( www.MeetDoug.Biz) [Music] [Introduction] Welcome to the terminal value Podcast where each episode provides in depth insight about the long term value of companies and ideas in our current world. Your host for this podcast is Doug Utberg, the founder and principal consultant for Business of Life, LLC. Doug: Welcome to terminal value podcast. I have Alex. Okay Alex I might butcher your name so forgive me here is a snap snap leaf snap Leo. Alex: Not even close. But hey I love this because nobody ever gets close, so I love just listening somebody like hey can tell me how to say it I'm like I want to hear you try first. It's Sanfilippo and very few people get it. Doug: Okay yeah. Alright I utterly and completely butchered it well. Mine's not burgets, it's you know not quite as easy to butcher but I've certainly had many of my own experiences. But anyway. Alex: I'm sure. Doug: I'm here to talk with Alex just about the podcast medium and podcasting for brand building. And this is of course a chance for Alex to promote his brand as well because he is the founder of pod match which of course is a podcasting basically a matchmaking service to find podcast authors and podcast guests. So I think the you know of course I'm going to give Alex a chance to promote his brand because that's a part of what we all do when we run podcasts. But really just want to have open conversation just about the meaning of the podcast medium and really what it's doing to media. And I thought Alex in our pre you know our pre-interview chat one of the things he said that I thought was really really profound is that a lot of people are really just looking for kind of feeling like there's somebody to be around because you know we're all kind of stuck by ourselves so with this with the rolling lockdown. So I live in Oregon which is in which has kind of never really gotten out of the idea that nobody's allowed to go anywhere. And of course right anybody who's on the west coast  it probably feels the same what number of other states have loosened up a bit but, yeah. Is this something I can only assume. This is something you've been noticing that a lot of people are just really feeling like they need to have some kind of voice in their life.  Alex: Yeah. Interestingly enough. First off I'm so glad to be here Doug. Thanks, thanks for having me. Doug: No problem.  Alex: And I did notice initially when all lockdown happened. I know this is not like a covid podcast or anything like that but I noticed there's about a 20 percent drop in podcast listenership and it wasn't just mine. I actually checked with some of the hosting providers. I have some relationships with the people that own them and they said in general was a big dip and they didn't think it was going to come back very quick and it...

Avid listeners will have noticed a few weeks without a podcast - that's because Alan's been hard at work behind-the-scenes building capital for several MetaVRse projects, including the MetaVRse Engine. This gave Alan a chance to reflect on the investment landscape of 2020, and is joined by VP of Marketing Alex Colgan to discuss the new normal that COVID has ushered into the VC world. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special episode. We're going to be talking about the investment landscape of virtual and augmented reality as it pertains to investment in startups, companies going public. What is the investment landscape look like between now and the next few years? How are things going to be funded and what can we expect from the markets in terms of returns? And what can investors really count on to drive those returns as high as possible? Today, I'm joined by the MetaVRse VP of Marketing, our wonderful Alex Colgan. He's going to be joining me today and he's going to be interviewing *me* today. Alex: Hey. Alan: Hey, what's up, Alex? Fun fact about Alex: he also lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Or near Halifax. He's in the eastern part of Canada. So, Alex, thanks for joining me on the show today. Alex: Canadian born and bred. Glad to be taking over the reins today. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, let's flip it around. Alan: It's really interesting, Alex, before we get started I have to really just punctuate a couple of things. Over the last few years, there has been an enormous amount of capital invested into virtual and augmented reality startups, in the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. And it almost feels like we are going through this kind of winter, where investments have dried up in the area. So I'm really excited to talk about that, because I believe that as much as we're going into physical winter in Canada, I believe that we're going into a beautiful spring with regards to the investment landscape of this technology. So I'm really excited to dig into it today. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Bad economies are often some of the best times to invest, and there are also some of the best times to build a startup. COVID has had everybody scrambling over the past six months, and trying to identify the best path forward for the future. As a result of that, we've seen a lot of different sectors have been getting shaken up as a result. What are some of the biggest disruptions that we've seen over the past six months in some of these areas? Alan: Well, I think the major one is that with regards to investment, everybody just closed their wallets. COVID came and people went, "OK, there's so much uncertainty, just stop everything." And so pretty much all investment across all sectors dried up in March, and basically hasn't really come back until you were starting to see funding rounds happen now in September. And I believe this will continue October-November. Now we find ourselves in a time where there's actually a lot of fresh capital sitting on the sidelines that needs to be deployed. And if it's not deployed, it's losing money. So you have a ton of new startups on the market as well. We have a platform called xrcollaboration.com, and there's been over 70 startups that have created XR collaboration tools that allow you to go in VR, go into AR glasses, and communicate with people around the world. And not only if you have the VR and AR glasses, but there's new opportunities around using 2D screens like computers to navigate these 3D worlds, almost like Second Life, but kind of Second Life 2.0, if you would. And this is giving a huge opportunity for investors. There's a company called VirBELA and they have done really well. Their ma

Avid listeners will have noticed a few weeks without a podcast - that’s because Alan’s been hard at work behind-the-scenes building capital for several MetaVRse projects, including the MetaVRse Engine. This gave Alan a chance to reflect on the investment landscape of 2020, and is joined by VP of Marketing Alex Colgan to discuss the new normal that COVID has ushered into the VC world. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special episode. We're going to be talking about the investment landscape of virtual and augmented reality as it pertains to investment in startups, companies going public. What is the investment landscape look like between now and the next few years? How are things going to be funded and what can we expect from the markets in terms of returns? And what can investors really count on to drive those returns as high as possible? Today, I'm joined by the MetaVRse VP of Marketing, our wonderful Alex Colgan. He's going to be joining me today and he's going to be interviewing *me* today. Alex: Hey. Alan: Hey, what's up, Alex? Fun fact about Alex: he also lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Or near Halifax. He's in the eastern part of Canada. So, Alex, thanks for joining me on the show today. Alex: Canadian born and bred. Glad to be taking over the reins today. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, let's flip it around. Alan: It's really interesting, Alex, before we get started I have to really just punctuate a couple of things. Over the last few years, there has been an enormous amount of capital invested into virtual and augmented reality startups, in the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. And it almost feels like we are going through this kind of winter, where investments have dried up in the area. So I'm really excited to talk about that, because I believe that as much as we're going into physical winter in Canada, I believe that we're going into a beautiful spring with regards to the investment landscape of this technology. So I'm really excited to dig into it today. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Bad economies are often some of the best times to invest, and there are also some of the best times to build a startup. COVID has had everybody scrambling over the past six months, and trying to identify the best path forward for the future. As a result of that, we've seen a lot of different sectors have been getting shaken up as a result. What are some of the biggest disruptions that we've seen over the past six months in some of these areas? Alan: Well, I think the major one is that with regards to investment, everybody just closed their wallets. COVID came and people went, "OK, there's so much uncertainty, just stop everything." And so pretty much all investment across all sectors dried up in March, and basically hasn't really come back until you were starting to see funding rounds happen now in September. And I believe this will continue October-November. Now we find ourselves in a time where there's actually a lot of fresh capital sitting on the sidelines that needs to be deployed. And if it's not deployed, it's losing money. So you have a ton of new startups on the market as well. We have a platform called xrcollaboration.com, and there's been over 70 startups that have created XR collaboration tools that allow you to go in VR, go into AR glasses, and communicate with people around the world. And not only if you have the VR and AR glasses, but there's new opportunities around using 2D screens like computers to navigate these 3D worlds, almost like Second Life, but kind of Second Life 2.0, if you would. And this is giving a huge opportunity for investors. There's a company called VirBELA and they have done really well. Their ma

GEORGE:   All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the did George show, where I make up intros off the top of my head, because people are amazing and I'm stoked to have them. And today's guest is somebody that I've wanted to interview for probably five years, except I didn't have a podcast nor reason to talk to him.And then we became best friends overnight. And so I'm excited beyond belief to have somebody that I look up to. I've considered a mentor through his teachings and what he's done. He stands for absolutely everything that is ethical entrepreneurship, caring about human beings, making a difference, building legacy businesses, and tolerance absolute zero bullshit will doing any of it. Well, Also leading by example, you know, that magic thing that we don't see a lot of on the internet where it's do, as I say, not as I do, because I don't want you to see what I do. Well, Alex Charfen is here today, CEO Charfen. He has built massively successful companies, navigated some of the biggest downturns of our world and my lifetime, and always come out on top with a smile on his face, grounded in the values that are important to him, his family, and leads by example.And so without further ado, Alex, welcome to the show. ALEX:   Thanks George. That was one of the best intros I've ever gotten. And that was awesome. GEORGE:   I feel like M and M and eight mile on Sunday mornings at 8:00 AM before I have my coffeeALEX:  I want that on my phone so I can play it each morning. Before I start workingGEORGE:   We'll send you the audio clip and then we can do it like the rock used to do as alarm codes, right? Like get up. And he yells at you. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm super, super excited to have you, man. I'm honored. This has been a long time coming and before we get into the deep, deep, deep stuff for the show, whatever, you know, navigating turns, we're going to end up in today. The first question that I always ask everybody to set context, the humanizes, and you have a lot of these, so feel free to take creative freedom with this one.What is the biggest mistake that you've ever made in business? And what was the lesson that you took away from  it?ALEX: That's like trying to like walk into an Amazon warehouse and say, which is the best box. Cause there's so many options. You know, George when I consider mistakes in business, so many of them, I don't look at them as mistakes anymore because. I've learned from them to find where I am now.I feel like almost every mistake, every huge challenge that I created has, has actually taught me something and moved me forward. And I think the one place where I would say that. That there were actual mistakes that I regret. And, and, and here's why I regret them. I don't regret the learning from them, but the mistakes that I made were with people when I was younger, especially there was a tremendous amount of collateral damage and the businesses that I ran. I was one of those people, not any more or not at all anymore, but I was one of those people that if I was going to separate with somebody, I actually had to break them, break the relations.I had to make it okay with me.  I had to make it so that it was so horrible that like we can never talk again. And when I look back at some of the separations that I had where people were either terminated or left, the companies that I ran, I feel like those are some of the biggest, the mistakes I made.And, and, you know, if I could go back and do it over again? I would, I would, you know, I would tell my younger self that you don't have to completely destroy a relationship to put it on pause. And you don't know, I have to completely demonize somebody to have them leave your company. Like those are all natural things that happened in the world.And  today with contrast,when somebody leaves our organization now, or when somebody decides to go to another opportunity, doesn't happen often anymore. But when it does. It's totally different. You know, I've actually, I've, I've led several several employess because of COVID and some other reasons we've actually let a few people go.And it's interesting cause I've remained connected with them. We connect every once in a while, you know, we talk. And so having that experience of being able to work with somebody and then continue the relationship, even though it's no longer a working relationship, it has been extraordinary. And when I was young, I did not even allow space for that. And I think that was, this longterm mistake, honestly, that comes from a childhood of trauma and a childhood of bullying and a childhood of really challenging relationships where I didn't understand how to navigate them. And I brought that forward into my business career. That's the biggest reason.GEORGE: And there's so much gold in there. This is why we get along. So for some context guys, when Alex and I reconnected, we got on zoom for a half an hour and then were like, we need an hour that we need three hours. Now let's just keep talking all day every day because I was like, I was like, sorry, Katie, you can have them back now. I'm like, I'm getting my very much dopamine hit and I'm not gonna deny this, that I wanted this. Like, this was very much my drug today. And I'm okay with this one, right? This is one of those, like, I can go seek it as I need, you know, Alex, one of the things that I think is so imperative and we talked about this, but you and I have so many similarities in this.Is that in the beginning, right? Is this collateral damage? Right? I got feedback that there were trails of dead bodies behind every success. And there were two sides of it for me that were tough. Number one is I never celebrated, right. There was no space because it was never good enough. Right. And so that took from everybody and made it.And then really, I think, as an entrepreneur and a self-aware entrepreneur, and you talk about this as like evolutionary hunters and the way that you do this, I think it was your EPT, your entrepreneurial personality types. You know, one of the things that I think is so amazing as entrepreneurs is that  we're driven for change.We want things to be better, but I think what the razors edges or the tight rope that we like to ride a unicycle down from is to come from when we go down the middle. And there's that part of us as entrepreneurs we're down there, the middle, all the one side was insecurity ego. It doesn't matter.It's never enough I'll sacrifice anything and then we've spent our life at this point, working towards self-awareness. You love, compassion, empathy, relationship, even you just said.I didn't think this was possible a couple of years ago. Like, wait, somebody can leave my organization and be better than when they got there.And we still have a relationship, like can still text. We can talk, right? Like this isn't, you know, purgatory exile, like we're going back in Mayan culture. So, what are some of the things? Cause you have like five core values at your company. You guys stand for humans. Like you stand for change, you stand for being, but I know that this is prevalent everywhere.And I had one of my mentors at a very young age Allen out.  Alex told me that and I learned this as a Marine, too. Like my job wasn't to keep people underneath me. My job was to get myself fired and get them better than me. And there's a point where. You know, they have to leave the coop and they have to grow.But I think the biggest distinction is it was talked about in there world, but really it's our, our growth as a human, like on our side, like the self-awareness side. So what are some of the things that you do that you focus on? Like you help companies with operations, with culture, with flow, with team and people like, how do you go about that?And what are some of the things that you keep to keep your keel in the water as you navigate that? ALEX: Oh, man. There's that question, George.GEORGE: So that's the point. Now I can drink my coffee over here and go to town. Yeah. Where did you go? ALEX: George, I think in order to answer that question, I kind of have to take a step back and, and talk about where, where, like, I've come from.If you want to know how things are kept in motion now, I think we have to first draw, contrast as to how things were before. Yes, sir. When I look at when I was younger and well into my twenties I experienced a tremendous amount of trauma and I had the same, like this is, this came up in our, we just had a three day event with 200 companies around the world and it came up this week.I started, I taught, I talk openly about trauma and how it drives us in the present. And I often tell our clients until you are ready to work through your trauma, you are destined to create, or, and you will only continue to create trauma. Cause it's a pattern for people, hurt people. And that's really how it works.You know, when I look at somebody who's causing havoc in the world, what I see as somebody who's severely traumatizedand acting through those things. And so for me, when I was 26 years old, I went through a really severe breakup. I'm 47 now and at the time to do okay. I actually was, um, I was uncomfortable enough that the only time I felt comfortable in it was when I was drinking.The only time I really fell asleep and stayed asleep was when I was. Kind of loaded and I wasn't used to having those feelings like I had when I was younger. I had definitely I,  was no lack of time in bars or drinking and entertaining and doing those things. But I hit this period where it almost became a necessity and not almost it became a necessity and it was severely challenging to go through that.And. My mom was a therapist in California and I was talking to her about it. I had tried cognitive behavioral therapy. I don't know if you've tried this too. You go in like, I don't, I don't want to demonize all cognitive behavioral therapy, but for me, CBT was so hard because you go in, you spill your guts and the person across the room.I see. How does that make you feel? And then you spill your guts more and then they say, I see, how does that make you feel? And then you spend more. And by the third time they say, I see you, how does that make you feel? I actually responded one time to a therapist. It makes me feel like I want to get up, knock you out because you're not helping me.I feel like you're just, this is frustrating. , I feel agitated and yeah. Triggered and all that stuff. And so I stopped doing that. And I remember calling my mom and she said, there'd be called EMDR. And, it's eye movement, desensitization and reprogramming. It'sa very weird sounding therapy, but it's actually amazing.I, you know, George, it's interesting that you were in the military and we, we talked so much about trauma because even back then, when I was 26, I had some friends that had been in the teams. And, they were VR for Navy seals. Yep. It was actually this huge experiment in the military to see if EMDR would help with the offloading of  trauma and return to service.And they were getting incredible results with it. So for me that growth process has been understanding my trauma. Understanding where so much of my reactivity and almost automatic behaviors came from. And, and so much of a processing, what had happened to me has now allowed me to become more present and aware and you know, it's interesting, George.I used to think that I was so present and so aware when I was in my twenties and now I look back and it's like the funniest thing in the world because I was so detached and , not even feeling my feelings and understanding what was going on. I didn't even know how to interpret what was happening.And then I thought I did so much better in my thirties and I'm like, you know, nailed it. And then I look back and I'm like, no, I just had a better understanding, but I was still working through so much of it. And finally, I feel like in about the past 10 years in years, I've gone into another year of really being able to release things and process things and, and work through things.And that's been a combination of a ton of breath  work. Breath work, I think has been one of the most effective things that I've done a tremendous amount of EMDR therapy and, and going back to then as needed, not like just when it's acute, but when I feel stuck or when I feel like I have writing blocks or anything like that.And then, really a lot of self exploration and a lot of and if you wanted to put a layer on all of that, It's process, structure and routine. And it's you say that this is what a day is like the process structure and routine that allows you to grow a business, grow your life, have what you want in your life.But for most of my life, I fought process, structure and routine more than anything else. Oh yeah. I had that, that, that impression that like, as an entrepreneur, What makes you successful is being whatever you want, anytime that you want. And so I held onto that myth, that illusion, that totally illusory place, it does not exist where you can be a successful entrepreneur and just wake up and do whatever the heck you want every day.It doesn't really work. I mean, you might be able to be a yeah, no, , there's not a situation where it works. And so. Um, I think the biggest shift for me has been committing to process, structure and routine, like up to and including even on a Sunday this morning, I got up, did my morning planning, went through my morning routine.Like I do every other day, sat down in a line with my family. It's like now it's an edict. It's not an option anymore. Cause I know that's where my strength. And really that's where my be present and productive and persuasive and influential. That's what it comes from.GEORGE: Totally. There's so much in that And I want to, I want to nail some, so people have heard me talk about EMDR before. Um, but I glance over it.  Cause very rarely am I across from somebody who I'm like, Oh, you too. Right. Like, Oh, I, I remember, like I remember we did CBT and my wife actually walked us out. She was with me cause I was trying to process childhood trauma stacked on military trauma, stacked on battle entrepreneurial trauma.And she's like, this is not going to help you this like ALEX: 70 creative relationshipGEORGE: Oh yeah. Oh you, Oh, you, you re like, I mean, it's like a trauma definition, right? Like you open the book and the generic and it was a picture of every instance of my life. How they all exacerbated each other in different scenes.Yeah, right. Like, yeah. It was like, it was like almost like a storyboard for a movie at this point. AndI remember one EMDR appointment and I came out my wife's like, you're a different person, like one appointment, one appointment. And I think you nailed something too. And I think what's so important, Alex.And this is like the undertone of what you're talking about. And if anybody hasn't caught this yet, this success as an entrepreneur on the outside, comes from the commitment to the work on the inside. A hundred percent and it is a daily and I mean, daily committed practice to come in. And like EMDR for me was two years of, I think once or twice a week.And then it was like a once a year if needed. And now I just texted him and like just texting him, like gets me back into like where I need to go but I think, I think it's so important, like to reach the levels. When we talk about this, the two things that being number one is this commitment to self.Right. And like, it's what you teach now. It's the discipline, the intentionality, the process, the structure, everything that you're doing, but also the awareness of what it really means to be an entrepreneur and what we're doing.  And you hit this and we live in a world right now where it's like, Oh, laptop, lifestyle, and boom, boom, boom.And yeah, you do whatever you want. I'm like, that's not what it's like. That Instagram life is not real. And entrepreneurship is amazing. It is the most freeing, powerful job, you know, whatever business opportunity on the planet. But within that, we also have to create our own containers and structure to make it that efficient.If not, it's just a new form of addiction to hide from the traumas and the pain that we've never worked on. no question. And I think, I think, and for you, like you say, yo, you're in your forties, I'm like, I became aware yesterday of things I was doing that I wasn't aware of. , I think it's this process and awareness, but I think it was like last year, maybe after the birth of my son, where I was like looking at it and I was like, Oh, you mean that?Like my name can't carry everything. And I say something and magically a million dollars appears like, why? Like, I don't understand, like, why didn't my launch crush? Like why don't my Facebook ads work? And nobody else's does, like, why don't they just work? Cause I deserve them to work. Right? Like there was this.There was this thing that like I had to be aware of and process through and eat some humble pie. And so there's so many golden nuggets that you said. Um, and, and the first question I asked you was like, how do you know, operate forward and this point, and you nailed it. But I think one more thing I want to unpack before we even get there is in the very beginning, when I asked you what was the biggest mistake or lesson, you said something so subtle, but so empowering statement to where you are. And you said the challenges I created. Not the challenges that happen to me, not the challenges that somehow magically fell on my plate, like the challenges I created and there's this level of ownership that we do in breath, in work, in life, in modalities that puts us in this situation of awareness and the ability to shift something.But I see a whole lot of time and we both coach entrepreneurs a whole lot of like, I don't know why this happened and this happened and they did this to me and they did this to me and it's like an advocation of responsibility and it was so subtle when you said it, but it's so powerful to hear you talk about it.Can you unpack that a little bit of like the difference between, you know, my business partner failed and walked away versus like I created this challenge.ALEX:   Yeah, no question George. So. Years ago. I read this book. I think I can't remember who it was by, but I think it might've been Mark Victor Hansen. I think it was called the millionaire messenger.And it was a book that you read in two directions. So very interesting book where it had kind of a nonfiction and a fiction book together. I don't remember a ton about that book. I remember on one page, they had this graphic and it was the word responsibility with a line and underneath it blame and then underneath it said live above the line.And I remember that I actually have that on my well now with a couple of other equations that we've created as a company. But that responsibility over blame. I remember when I read it, I saw it and it was so 19. I'm like, no, you can blame. You can still like, yeah, you don't have to take responsibility for everything.And that was a journey that was probably a few years of like really working through that and understanding it. And then I remember one day it just clicked, you know, as honorable the faster we realized that we are for everything and we can take responsibility for everything. The faster we start to actually control our lives, create our destiny and be able to go in the direction that we want.I used to be the same as most people when I was younger and I had my business. You know, 911 happened for about eight weeks before. One of our biggest events when I owned a huge events company in Latin America. And I remember it happening and having the feelings of like, how could this happen to us?How insanely selfish and egotistical was the statement. 911 happened to us. Like, as I say it right now, I actually get kind of sick feeling in my stomach that I ever thought that way. But I remember actually saying it out loud and not even feeling like not feeling the. Body reactions and negative feelings, you should feel of making a statement that egotistical, which in retrospect shows me just how separated I was from my true self, just how detached I was.And as entrepreneurs what we work with our members on is responsibility over blame. Like how do you live in a world where you take responsibility for everything that's going on? And I have people, especially in today's timeframe, say things like, Oh, well, you can't be responsible for COVID.Sure you can be responsible for your reactions. You can be responsible for how you show up. You can be responsible for what you're going to allow and not allow into your mind. You can be responsible for how you lived through this situation. And, you know, I always tell people the bigger, the crisis, the bigger, the opportunity there's going to be more self billionaires made in this timeframe that at any other timeframe in the human history, And anyone who wants to argue that?Just go look, it's all ready. Oh, ready? We're all. We're only six or seven months in and look at the hundreds of billions of dollars of company value that has been added to the companies that we're well positioned and ready to go forward. And I think for us that's one of the things that are not for us, for me.That's one of the things that's really shifted for me is that now, regardless of what it is, I take responsibility and I put this on Facebook the other day. One of the observations that finally got through I've learned so much of what I understand in business and so much of what I know about relationships and how to create momentum as an entrepreneur has been observational.And one of the observations that has become crystal clear over time is that the more successful and entrepreneur. The more quickly, they turn every obstacle into an opportunity. The more quickly they turn every crisis into an opportunity. I've been around people that regardless of what's going on, they're just constantly shifting to housing and opportunity.How is this an opportunity? Most negative thing in their entire life. How can I create something better out of this? How do I grow from this? How do I move from this and that? You know, not that I'm a hundred percent there. I don't think, I don't know that I ever will be, but I'm so much closer to seeing everything as an opportunity.Than I ever was before. And so when Covid hit, I actually had somebody text me after one of my lives. And they're like, Hey man, it sounds like you're hearing the crisis sign. I'm like, Oh dude, that is not the impression I want to give. I'm not sharing it on. But I am fully conscious that this is the biggest opportunity a lot of us have had, and we should admit that to ourselves and get ready for it and go out and change the world because the world needs us now more than it ever  has.GEORGE:   totally.I think too, and you nailed this and, Oh man, there's so much here and you, and I think we might've been separated at birth at this point, which is so. Yeah, no, no, it was, it was like, and for those of you wondering like only like 32 people or so have my phone number and Alex doesn't give his out connected years ago.Never really talked to him. We both realized we both had our numbers in our phones,  totally.I think too, and you nailed this and, Oh man, there's so much here and you, and I think we might've been separated at birth at this point, which is so. Yeah, no, no, it was, it was like, and for those of you wondering like only like 32 people or so have my phone number and Alex doesn't give his out connected years ago.and we were like, okay, there's a reason. And the timing and everything. And what you said, Alex, Uh, it's about the pursuit of turning things into opportunities, not the perfection of what it looks like.And I think as an entrepreneur for me, you know, cause my ego needs some love at this point in this moment. So I'm going to make a statement, you know, because I'm learning so much in this time. But when I think about it, for me, one of the things that I really fell in love with after processing the belief around it was that there is no finish line, but it's what I choose to do every day about it.And. You know, there were parts of COVID like I lost over a million dollars under contract. I lost two companies and 70 grand a month in MRR in basically like 60 days. And I'm like still on paper. I'm in financially. One of the hardest places I've ever been in. And I'm the happiest and clearest I've ever been.And it wasn't an overnight, it was a, I feel like, crap, what am I going to do today? I feel like crap, what am I going to focus on today? And instead of it taking six months or three years, eight years of depression, it took like a week and it was, I feel this way. I acknowledge how I feel. That's not going to change.What am I going to do about it then that created the opportunity for opportunity. Like it created the ability to see the opportunity. Yes. It's like when we sit in these rooms as entrepreneurs, consider it a virtual room of made of Rome, a metaphorical room, whatever you want to call it. I say this all the time, you know, from breath work and the therapy trauma that I've done in the work that I've done in personal defense.And it's like the worst thing you can stay as stock. We are evolutionary creatures. We are supposed to evolve. We are supposed to move forward. And you know, I heard this the other day and it's like, you want to know what anxiety is? It's unused energy move. Yeah. And I was like, Whoa, like I've been doing it for years, but it was this simple thing.But then when I think about the compartment of entrepreneurship, what is anxiety, I'm like it's stagnation in our biggest enemy, which is our brain. It knows our fears. It knows our insecurities. It knows our habits. It knows our addictions. And yet we think we can out convince it that somehow we're going to feel better about it.Where, what you talk about this is how I feel. I'm aware. This is how I feel. Breath gets you there. Cold therapy gets you there. Movement gets you there. Okay. If this is how I feel, I have two choices. I can either succumb to this feeling and surrender and die, or I can acknowledge it, which that this feeling is here.And I can take a step in a different direction. And it's something that like I've been obsessing about, like on a different level of obsession. And it's probably had one of the most profound effects on everything in my life. And, you know, financially to gain will come and it has already, but even outside of that, like the happiness, the joy, and go back to deployments.Like I remember like I'll never forget. I hit some, all I'm about to cry. I hit Somalia. When I was 19 years old, I just turned 20 and I spent 13 months in my life and probably one of the worst places on this planet. And I'll never forget, like, seeing people wrapped in carpets on the side of the road, cause they couldn't afford to throw them out of them, burning dead by.And I was like, I was like, I'm not a tough guy. I want to go home. I didn't have a home to go to, like I left trauma to get there. And like I remember for 13 months I was like, get me out of here. Like I can't be here. I don't know habit. I didn't have that choice. So luckily I found a few people that mentored me and I found waits and I found, you know, certain therapies and things that I could do, but I'm just, I just remembered, like if I say came to any of that, I would have died.Like I would have just died. I would have just stopped moving the whole world crashed and crushed on me and it wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. And it took me a long time to be able to talk about it, some of these things and to process them in for me, what I struggle with sometimes is that like, what I saw is like 1% of what some of my friends saw.Like 1% and I can't even imagine, you know, what that was there, but I think the biggest thing that I always took away from everything, and I thank the Marine Corps for this is like, I wasn't given the chance to stop. I wasn't. It was like, Hey, and like we say this, like, Oh, they don't want you to feel, no, they do.They don't really totally do, but they don't want you to stop. And it's this thing of like this pursuit for full word and growth and movement as we go. And so, you know, with what you're saying, The one thing that I wanted to hit and this is a really big one and this is so subtle, but when I did personal film, I was getting coached and they were teaching the distinction versus responsibility.Victim versus responsible victim versus responsible, right. They really push the boundary on the belief of this, right? Like a hundred percent responsible, a hundred percent of the time. And it was this interesting thing because we would get in trouble for saying, I take responsibility. And I was like, I don't get it.I'm taking they're like, you can't take it. You never didn't eat. There was no point in which you never had it. ALEX:   There's no point in what you gave it up. And so you can't take it backGEORGE: You just feel like it did. And this distinction, like, it probably took me 10 years to understand, because there's so many times in business, right.Or as a consultant or with a student, or even in my own business, I like, Oh, I'll take it. And then I have to be like, Oh wait, no way. That was mine. The whole time. Yeah. And it's like this embodiment of it that is powerful. Like when we think about it. And so I didn't, I've never, I've never talked about a lot of the stuff that I, I experienced, like from a mindset perspective, they don't think I've ever been in the point to like really, um, process us.But you know what I love about you, Alex, and what I, you, you have this childlike curiosity and excitement mast with this tight container of structure that basically guaranteed success. ALEX: Thank you, but I appreciate thatGEORGE: Like, um, yeah, like I'm surprised I'm not walking around in diapers is my son's out of them. Like at that level of management. Cause there's times I feel like that, but you know, with that, I think what's so important and so powerful from like what I noticed with you. It's like when you get self-aware right.So you were talking about basically being, self-aware identifying what's here, understanding that we're responsible understanding that, you know, results equals opportunity depending on how we choose to see it. What I also love about that is that as you do this work on yourself, that awareness gives you a tool to see possibility versus resistance, right?And again, gives you the ability to react or not to react, to respond on a diamond pivot. Because there's no insecurity ridden. And I think about the times as an entrepreneur or where I was stuck and it was stocked because I had a belief that I was supposed to look a certain way, or it was supposed to be a certain way.And here's the news, flash entrepreneurship is basically a guaranteed. It's not going to look like you think it is every day of every moment for the rest of your life. Right. It's a commitment to chaos and it, and it's navigating that. And so in your, in your journey, and, and you've been in this game a long time, I mean, you, I don't even remember this specific you got, but like single-handedly denting the real estate crash market recovery and, you know, building like half a billion dollar businesses and I'm over here doing it for everybody else, but myself.And I'm a self jab on that one, but Oh, well, George, I've done some of that  myself too.ALEX:  I've you know, and, and I just, I don't want to, I don't want to like leave you on the hook there as a coach, as a consultant. One of the things that I'm now dealing with at 47 is that I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs build businesses bigger than I have.And, and I, you know, I really like year before last, I sat down with Katie and I'm like, you know, Katie. I've done this too many times for other people this time, the business plan has to include us doing it for  ourself.and this is, this is like my realization really in just like the past 24 to 30 months.And when the reason we restarted this company from scratch was energetic, not legal or anything else. It was, we wanted to shut everything down and start over. Cause this is going to be different. Yeah. And so July of 2017, Katie and I hit the reset button, shut everything down, went down to no team members started from zero, and this is the business that we're going to create the success out of that. just like, we help other peopleGEORGE:  I'm  for those of you listening, if you can't tell, like I've been an Alex fan boy for a long time, but like out of, out of respect, like out of like genuine, pure. Respect because there's these things like we, Alex, and I joke a lot.We talk about the state of the industry that we're in. We're probably going to unpack that in a little while, but yeah. You know, like people don't even pretend to be like snakes in the grass anymore. They're like, no, no, no, no. I don't care if the grass is there not, I want you to see me. And like, there's these people that walk it and they talk it and they believe it and they do it.And it's congruency. And Alex is one of those people, which I hide, we admire and respect. And I think it's an important point. Alex is an entrepreneur. I don't know about you, but you know, for me, I needed to build it for other people. To get those lessons, to have the awareness and understand why I was doing it to then be able to come in and be like, Oh, I still get to do it.And I think healed that part of me that didn't think I was good enough that I could only do it for other people. And also give myself a back door out of those daily routines and commitments and structure that would prove my core trauma wrong as a child. That I'm not good enough because that's really what it is like for me.If for me, it was like, Oh, it's so easy. I'll go, I'll diagnose your problems. I'll give you the things. I'll help you do it. I'll pour all my energy into you. Then you'll like me, and then I'll be good enough. And then at the same time I'm living on that dopamine and validation will also deny my own sovereignty of that.I can do this and I know this. And then the belief system there, and the pain that I had to experience was you do deserve this. You can have a bigger impact this way, but you're good enough. And, and that had to happen in silence. Yeah. You're worth it. Right. Like for me, my core wound is I'm not good enough.ALEX:  I'm having like so many different, like first, I just want you to know this is a very validating conversation. And when you operate at the level that you and I operate as entrepreneurs, they're not maybe not the level, but when you operate at the level of awareness that we operate up.You often become, you often get invalidated because the other people around you don't even understand the conversation. Right. You know, I think what you just said, that is so true for so much of my career. Now, in retrospect, it's only, you see this in retrospect, I was not in the pursuit of success for myself, cause I didn't feel worthy.And I actually felt like the people around me were so much better than I was. That I put all my energy into helping those people all my time in it.  Other people get become far more successful than I was because in so many ways I still felt like I was, you know, the, the short, you know, Mex, lat, Latin American accent, chubby kid in school.Cool. That everybody made fun of it. And I really, you know, when I was at, I did not have a lot of friends. I had a really challenging childhood. I wasn't good at relationships and all of that carried forward to the business world to the point where. But, it made me an incredible consultant because I wanted to help everybody so bad so that I would get validation and be okay and be worthy and not be that kid that I was running away from.And dude, Oh man, now I'm going to get emotional. And, um,as time went on, what I realized was, and what I am realizing is that I could honor that kid. And that I could actually love that child,and be okay with who I used to be and understand why I was the way I was and understand everything that I went through. And the more that I was able to process it and be aware of it.And the more I was able to let go of the common entrepreneurial belief that  other people had it worse than I was. You kind of said it earlier. It's like a habit for us. As soon as we claim any type of trauma, we almost, I have to let out this relief valve. Oh well, but it wasn't as bad for me. You know, there was other people who had them and it wasn't that bad for me and it, but I I'm just going to claim a little bit of it.Yep. And the reality is every entrepreneur I've ever worked with has trauma that needs to be explored and validated and understood so that they can show up in the world the way that they want to, and the excessive reactivity that we carry around with us and the feelings we carry around with us, you know, George's, it's, it's one of the things that drives us into pursuit because.Here. Here's where I am today in my career. I understand that the goal is not the goal. The goal is the journey. Yes, it really is. It's the process it's going through it because here's what I know as an entrepreneur, as I have this analogy or theory that we are evolutionary hunters and I call it an analogy.But to me, I really do think this is evolutionary fact. We are that small percentage of the population that gets up every morning. Can't turn the motor off. It's always running we can't relax. We don't sit right. And we have this innate motivation to go into the future, create a new reality, come back to the present and then demand.It becomes real, no matter what we put up with. But the reality is, is no matter what goal or outcome or whatever it is that we put out there, as we are crossing the finish line, it loses all importance to us. As we're approaching the finish line, we start going, does this really matter? And it's because if you think about, if we're evolutionary hunters, The goal was never  the hunt just keeps the tribe alive.The goal is you go back on the hunt. Yeah. The goal is you stay hunting. The goal is keep doing it over and over again. And there's food for everybody for the whole time that we needed. And so, you know, I look at it, I, I feel like we are programmed to be in pursuit, but not really finished. And so the whole goal is entrepreneurs is how do you keep.How do you keep creating that future? That is compelling enough and bright enough and exciting enough and engaging enough that you do what it takes to put yourself through the crucible. GEORGE: Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. When you said, and by the way, thank you for the accountability on the, uh, I had it way worse or they had it.ALEX: it twice this week in my own event. I said, and then, and I even pointed out like, Hey, I just use the release valve. I want everyone to know that that's like an unhealthy behavior of invalidating yourselfGEORGE: And it's basically saying, I don't believe in myself enough, or I'm not in my space or power enough to own the fact that this was my truth.Yeah. And, and what I'm looking for. And quite frankly, as everybody wants to get into the monitor, George, what I'm looking for is for you too, without realizing and liked me a little bit  more because I experienced that while also add vacating it and doing it in a very subtle manipulative way and not in a bad manipulative way at heart bins in our subconscious all the time.Um, but this is why I love having friends like Alex, we get to talk about these things. Um, And the real, the real stuff. Well, I think what's so important about the real stuff. Alex is like, we talk about this, right? And we were talking about like, why we did what we did and why we consult them, why we still consult.And what I love is looking back. Cause I love my process through all of it. Like I had to do that. I had to learn that I had to be there. I had to not get that check. They had to not pay me that million dollars. Like I had to have all that happen. And now looking at it too the other side of it for me is I never understood the consequences of doing it for everybody else.The amount of sacrifices and collateral damage I caused because I wanted everybody else to like me versus everybody else respect me. And it was like, I'll go to a dinner. I didn't need to be at that dinner. I'll go to an event. I didn't need to be at that event. I'll go to that meeting. That was not a meeting.Like there were all these like ego fests that were. You know, validation collection, dopamine collection causing collateral damage and the ones I think that we swore as entrepreneurs, that we were doing it  "right". Like I'm doing it for my family. I'm like, well now pretty sure. My three year old son, isn't going to be like, daddy, don't go to them zoo with me, or don't see me for three days because you go to this meeting because you want these people to like you versus do the work that it's there.And I think, you know, if I could give a gift to any entrepreneur, uh, it's the gift of awareness of the. The impact and the consequences, both positive and negative. That happened when we do advocate that sovereignty as entrepreneurs. And we, and we get into that because it took me a long time. And I think it's still a practice, but it's a practice that I've, I love at this point.Like I kind of love saying no at this point. Sure. Can you do now? Why we don't need to, like, we have a dinner meeting. I'm like, no, we can have a zoom meeting. I'm not leaving. Right. ALEX: Well, you get to the point where it's saying no, actually becomes the dopamine hit because you have, I mean, and this takes a while, so I don't want anyone listening, not to think that it's going to happen by Monday, but what happens is.When you stop abdicating the responsibility, you have to create the life you want. And you start actually, cause man, George, when you were just talking about going to the meeting and doing this and doing that you just described like most of my thirties,  if there's, if there was an attention, getting the opportunity, I was in that attention, getting an opportunity with a whole line of justification for it.If there was a time and I got tons of opportunities, if I could get up on it. Really important stage with famous people. Like I was there no matter what. And a lot of the time it was for nothing else than the ego hit. Like really, it didn't even really build our business and build notoriety, but it was just building an ego hit. And I, when I look back at so much of that need for approval that need for validation that need for confirmation as an entrepreneur, when you finally realized that is so much of the, almost the automatic programming that's running, the decisions you're making, when you can start backing out of that and rising to a level of intention, everything changes.I had this really confronting Meaning with a coach of mine. I had this coach a while ago named Kirk Dando, super talented two guy and, um, Kirk and I became friends. That's why he was working with me. Most of the work that he did was with privately funded companies where he took a percentage and he was like a non named board member in dozens of companies.And we became friends. So he, he started working with me and we did a few, one days and he did a 360 for me and came in and interviewed my team. And he was doing the delivery of the 360. And we were in the middle of like, what about my team and what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. And he said, you know what, Alex.You don't have investors behind you. Let's just cut the BS, man. What's the most important thing in your world. And the reason he said you didn't have investors behind you is cause I had options. Most of his CEOs didn't have options. He said that he was like, you have options. Let's talk about this. I said, well, George, that's not George.I said, Kirk, that's easy. The most important thing in my world is Katie and my kids. And he goes, great. Let's take five minutes, get your calendar out and get your bank account out. And let's look at your spending time and spending money on Katie and your kids. And that way we can see if you're growing and you're the most important thing in your world.And I know he could see the blood drain out of my face. Cause at that point it was like getting called to the principal's office. I remember immediately thinking, Oh, there's no way my calendar or my bank account are going to show any type  of like allegiance or affiliation to my family. Because up to, and including in the time I was with Kirk, I had been pushing them aside to get all this stuff done.And here's, what's interesting that meaning changed things. I actually went back to my room and sat down with Katie and I'm like, Katie, Kirk asked me this question that kind of knocked me backwards and I shared it with her and we talked about it for a long time. And from that point forward, I started shifting and I started saying, I need to assign responsibility to the things that are important to me.I needed to put more time to things that are important to me. You know, and, and I, I started building process, structure and routine around what was important to me. It's structured have spend time with family structure to make sure I was connected with my daughters structure to make sure that Katie and I had the time that we needed, otherwise, everything else just competes and wins.And here's, what's interesting, George by demand. Yeah. Ending the space and time for myselfby making that the most important thing. Suddenly my decision making in business got infinitely better. And almost overnight, we started moving in the right direction rather than spinning our wheels and not having things happen.And this is the thing that always like for most people feels like an oxymoron. When you first started doing this, I was putting less time in, but getting more results because when you start throwing up the constraints that are important, you look at time differently and you spend it differently. When you start allocating time to where you should be, not what you know to where you actually, when I say should be when you started actually allocating time around.What you want your life to look like your business will shift in a way that it actually gets to be the business that you want. You start building an organization that you really want. You start doing the things that you want. And it's interesting today at 47, you know, we, we, like I said, we reset a few years ago.We're around a little, little over 2.1 or 2.2 million in recurring revenue, right? Yeah. Now we're building this company completely differently. I'm, I'm absolutely not responsible for delivering. I built myself out of a lot of the responsibilities. And today I have a  business that I love working with people that are like incredibly fun people to work with.And I'm more focused on people development than anything else right now. Cause that's where we're going to grow the nexttime in our business. But what's most important is I wake up every morning. I align with my kids. They hang out with me, they know what we do. We talk openly. There's a completely different dialogue in our house.And all of that, I think makes me not think all of that I know. Makes me the entrepreneur I actually want to be, and it actually allows me to start making decisions for the person I'm becoming instead of the person I'm running away from. Yeah. And I think for entrepreneurs, you know, I think that the same, I've heard the same, say, you know, make the decisions for the person you're becoming, not the person you are.And I'm like, that's not how it works for entrepreneurs. We either make decisions for the person we're becoming or the person we're running away from. We don't make decisions for the person. We never get to the place where you're making decisions in the moment because we don't live in the present. Nope.What that small percentage of the population that doesn't really even deal well with the no.GEORGE: That's why we have to practice breathALEX: That's what I, you know, what was I did it this morning. I did like, like three huge empty breath holds this morning and just like feeling the experience of whether my body was calling for oxygen or my mind.And where was it coming from and how does this make me react during the day? And, you know, I get up from breathwork sessions now I laid down on my floor and do a breathwork session. I actually feel like I'm in the present moment for a period of time. Yeah. It's interesting. You like get up and you're like, Whoa, the world is really intense if you're here, you know?GEORGE: Yeah. That's why I get up so early in the morning, like I used to get up at four 30 for my ego to show everybody I got up at four 30. Now I get up at three 30 now I get up at three 30, so nobody knows. And like, people think I'm nuts, but I was like, I wake up with my kids at six and when I was getting before 35, like my, I would get home, my son will be awake. My wife wanted to sleep in, but she'll be up. And I was like, am I doing this? And I was like, I'm doing this for the wrong reasons. Like if I get up at three 30, I get. Two and a half hours of alone time I'm home before my son wakes up, I'm done with my writing. I'm completely present for the day. I'm supporting my wife with what she wants based on her job and like her responsibilities.And I was like, yeah, that feels better. Like, and that's like, and like, by the way, I don't listen to music. I don't listen to podcasts. I work out in silence and I'd say five out of six times a week, I'm crying, I'm yelling, I'm looking at myself in the mirror. Like I'm a silver back gorilla and patting my chest and then crying two minutes later.Like I'm processing whatever's coming up in that moment you know, one of the things, yeah, ALEX:   Let's not run past that because that, what you just said is so crucial. So let me, let me tell you how I used to work out. Yeah. So what I would do is, and this is during my four 30 in the morning taking a picture, so I could prove to everybody that I did it.So when I was doing the four 30 in the morning, prove to everybody that you did it, it was get up at four 30 in the morning, drink coffee, then wait about 20 or 30 minutes, drink a pre-workout because the coffee wasn't enough. You need to back it up with a pre-workout. Then go into the gym, close the doors.And we had a gym in our home. We close the doors, put towels under the doors. And then put on like limp biscuit or something ridiculous where it's just screaming and raging and yelling, and then get myself into a state where I could lift weights and not feel it. So I would get myself into fight or flight and then fight for an hour and a half with my gym.And it was like going, you know, and, and I don't mean to use this term in a way that indicates that I don't understand what it is really like to go to war because I don't want to minimize anything. Guys. What guys like you and the people that you were around, did George. But I feel like I went to my own little private one in the gym every morning.Totally. And, and it was cause it was instead of feeling the feelings and moving through them, it was creating so much noise and so much pain that I could push the feelings away. Yep. And, you know, I, I remember at my biggest, I looked back, it was probably like seven or eight years ago. I was about 240 pounds and going on Fox news.And I remember like seeing myself in the suit, my shoulders didn't fit in the screen. I looked completely inflamed. My neck and my head were kind of one thing. And recently a person on my team found an old Wistia video on me on Fox. And she's like, man, I saw Alex on Fox news from a while ago. I'm so glad I worked for this Alex and not that guy. Just watching the videos. He could tell, like how, how accelerated and how angry and , how detached I was. And I think, yeah. So many entrepreneurs think that they're, they're doing this incredible thing, working out and getting themselves in shape. And then I watched the workouts on not online and I'm like, man, why that might not be going in the right direction.GEORGE: Workouts for me are a tool like breath and they didn't use to be, they used to be an escapism for me. Right. And trust me, I was doing three days. I taught a world record for standing box shop. I was a competitive CrossFit athlete. Like my numbers are stupid. Stupid right. I'm five, seven. I can dunk. There's like, it's not mind blowing.And I was also dead lifting like six, 15 squatting, like five 85. I weighed 170 pounds. Like it was gnarly. Nowhere does that help me be a better human to my family? Right. But my ego loved it. ALEX: Standing there practicing the jump box jumper.Oh yeah. At one point I went not being a runner to actually going out and winning races in Austin, winning five Ks, 10 Ks, like going out and getting first, second or third place. And if there was a Clydesdale division, I always wanted it. 7,000 person race. I was first placed in Clydesdale. I was 240 pounds and I was the first place in Clydesdale.Because I was willing to do whatever it took. I finished that race and threw up about seven or eight times. Cause I pushed my body so hard. I still got first place. That was all I cared about. But I look back now and I'm like, dude not only will you, not in your body, you weren't in Austin during that?GEORGE:  and then given more trauma and then came out without doing any of the work.And I remember my wife's like, you know, you should do personal development. Like I read books. That was my answer. Yeah. That didn't go well fast forward, eight years. And there we go. And now we're here we are now. Um, but yeah, I was, and then I had this like really big shift after my son was born where I realized like, wow, I can be in shape if I want, I can look, however I want, I can function however I want, but it's also a tool like it's an hour and a half a day or two hours a day that if I utilize it correctly, I can do it.I'll never forget. I was in the jungle with a shaman and, you know, lots of wise wisdom come from shamans to me.  You know, one of them was like talking about relationships happening for a reason season or lifetime. And then you know, then a personal development teacher looked at me one day scrolling, and I said, what are you pretending not to know?Which hit me like a ton of bricksand then somebody else is like, what are you trying to avoid feeling? And that was the one that got me and it was the feeling part. Right. And so then I like looked at my day and I was challenged by Shaman said, I want you to eliminate. Any music with lyrics for 30 days, just get rid of it, get rid of it.Okay, cool. And I would listen to like music, like upbeat music, like I wasn't into like bitches and hoes, like all that stuff. And you know, but I would listen to music, but I would listen to music that allowed me to be romantic about who I used to be, or pretend that something was going to shift for me by doing nothing.And it was programming my brain into like the stagnation. And I was like, okay, cool. And I remember it was one of the hardest things ever to not have the radio on, in the car because what did I have to be present? I had to be with whatever was coming up and then going to the gym. I was like, okay. Right.And I'm like, don't lift. And all of a sudden I lost a hundred pounds on lift because I didn't have anything to like put me into that sympathetic state. And it was crazy, crazy what happened. And then for a wild, like this adoption period, I started to fall in love with it. And then I realized that. When I was there, the days that I was present and grounded, I felt like in my body and like emotionally good, I was lifting like crazy.And then there were days that like, It hurt to do a warmup and then I would scream or I would cry or I would laugh or I be like, I don't want to be here today. And then I could never walk out the door, but I was literally in the moment experiencing my experience and my feelings and it kind of became therapy for me.I rank it out? Can I yank it out? And then, or where can I go plug into somebody else's world to avoid mine? Right. Right.And then it was like, I have more work to do. I have more work to do. I have more work to enlist and entrepreneurs, your list will never end. And that's why it's so important. Like when you talk about structure, Alex structure gives us the container because no matter what we do, we're going to fill it. So if you give yourself a 24 hour container, you're going to find ways to fill it.But if you give yourself a two hour container, you'll fill it, but you also have to fill it with the stuff that moves the needles, move the levers and eliminates the bullshit. And that's been one of those things for me that I think in what you do and there's this belief like this paradigm around entrepreneurship, right?Like I can do whatever I want. I can do whatever I want. And I was like, yes. And you have to realize that the moment you start being that is you lose the thing that built it and you end up right back where you started. ALEX: Yeah. Yeah. I love Maxwell's. You know, John, there's a lot of stuff that John Maxwell's put out that I just, that is so true.It's just truth. And he has this chart of  the more leadership responsibility you have, the less freedom you have. And it's this very confronting belief system that the more responsibility I take on as a leader the less freedom that you actually have. And what you're doing is you're exchanging that freedom for making a massive contribution.And I think that. People want to argue. I have entrepreneurs all the time. Like one argue that and debate it. Yeah. And I always like at the end of the day, if you'd want to debate it, you can. But the fact is right only going to slow you down over time. And man George, that was intense. What you just shared because I think it's probably seven or eight years ago.It's definitely living in this house. I know, because in my gym here, I have a huge sound system and I built it so that I could go down into the gym. So I didn't hear anything in the world. I didn't even hear the weights clanking together because that sound was so high. I probably haven't turned that on in six or seven years, because now I look at my workouts, totally different.My workouts used to be an escape. It used to be like, go in, check out, get all this stuff done, working out with your body and then come out. But really not a lot of recall or recollection of what happened. And I, and a lot of like feeling here, like I did something, but not really connecting to everything that happened in the gym.Yeah. Yeah. I love Maxwell's. You know, John, there's a lot of stuff that John Maxwell's put out that I just, that is so true.It's just truth. And he has this chart of  the more leadership responsibility you have, the less freedom you have. And it's this very confronting belief system that the more responsibility I take on as a leader the less freedom that you actually have. And what you're doing is you're exchanging that freedom for making a massive contribution.And I think that. People want to argue. I have entrepreneurs all the time. Like one argue that and debate it. Yeah. And I always like at the end of the day, if you'd want to debate it, you can. But the fact is right only going to slow you down over time. And man George, that was intense. What you just shared because I think it's probably seven or eight years ago.It's definitely living in this house. I know, because in my gym here, I have a huge sound system and I built it so that I could go down into the gym. So I didn't hear anything in the world. I didn't even hear the weights clanking together because that sound was so high. I probably haven't turned that on in six or seven years, because now I look at my workouts, totally different.My workouts used to be an escape. It used to be like, go in, check out, get all this stuff done, working out with your body and then come out. But really not a lot of recall or recollection of what happened. And I, and a lot of like feeling here, like I did something, but not really connecting to everything that happened in the gym.GEORGE: Like the guy over here covered in tattoos that had a blue Mohawk. When you met him, Right. Like that guyALEX:  Something like that. You know, it was like, I'm never going to be in a place of being traumatized again by a room I'm gonna walk in and have everyone back at, you know, take a step back and.Now, you know, when I go work out, one of the, I have for a workout is a dry erase pen. My whole gym is surrounded in mirrors and there are so often I will be in the middle of a set. And this is like the Cardinal sin of working out. You're like almost to the place where you're done and I'll just drop the weight it's and go write down everything that just came to me.Yeah. Because yeah. Now it's more important. The realization is more important than finishing this app. And the belief system, you know, the beliefs that I can work through and the processing that I do is so much more important than the weight that I'm lifting. And I remember there was a point in my life where if I had a workout where the next workout, I didn't do more. I couldn't deal. It was demoralized thousand percent out. I don't even feel it. I'm like, wow, that was a great workout. I lifted half the weights, but look at the whiteboardGEORGE:  Well, even, even the point of like stopping a set, like way to diminish seven reps of progress. RightALEX: It's like, man, I just threw it all away. Yeah. And you know, the, the, like the beliefs that we built when we're in the gym, the last set is where you earn over the last rep is where you earn it. So you're always chasing the last rep. Now I'm like, man, I don't want to lose this thought. GEORGE: Well, and then like really looking at what sets us apart as leaders.Right? Cause we're, we're when we say entrepreneurial, we're talking about leaders, we're talking about the small percentage of the world, right. That's willing to stand in a new belief system and I love the way that you described, like going into the future, but really. You know, when I wrote my personal mission statement for my life it's to stand with structure in the face of resistance to create possibility.Like, that's it. That's, that's what we do. And it's like, it's actually, the wind was when you made a commitment and you kept your word with integrity to get to the gym. You've already won. Everything at that point is bonus. Right? It's strengthening it's fortification it's reflection. It's you know, and like, yeah, if you have 30 pounds to lose and you do one wrap, like don't expect a result, but be aware of like, what's there, but it's really the intention that we put behind everything.And when you say it, right, you got up, yes. You create the structure and you commit to the routine and that's, it's the combination of those things. That is the wind. And you, I mean, I'm the same way, except for me right now, I realized. You know, in the last couple of years, I fell out of love with myself again, like at a deep, deep, deep level.And I was looking at it and I was working out crazy before lockdown. And I was like, okay, cool. And I was like, I'm posting videos every day. And I was like, looking back when it locked down and I didn't have a gym, we went up to the mountains and I was like, man, I really don't want to do anything. I don't want to do anything.I don't want to do anything. And I literally was like, why. And I was like, because I can't, because I don't like why I'm doing it. And I don't know why I want to. And I gained a lot of weight again, and I fell in love with my dad bod, but I gained a dad bought first.  And then I looked at it and then I was playing with my son and I'm up here and I'm like, You know, this isn't what I want.And I was like, why? And I was like, I somehow fell out of love with myself, or this was an opportunity where I hadn't fully loved myself yet. Like, I hadn't loved where I was versus the guy with the big muscles or the tattoos, or could do this. Wait. So it was really interest because I started working out again and it feels different.It feels different. And then all of a sudden I wanted to get up here and it felt different and my workouts are very different. It felt different and I'm not humble, bragging. Like I just enjoy the process, but what's really interesting, Alex is I went through this point and I always wear like cutoff shirts.I won't take my shirt off. I still was struggling with self-consciousness and everything else. And then this, then I'm going to cry. But like 35 days ago, I went to the gym one morning and I was like, I'm not working out with a shirt on. I get to look at myself. Every moment of every rep every day. And every time I look in the mirror, I just get to tell myself I love myself.And it's a really interesting, because I started this challenge with my, with my business partner to lose weight, right. Like I was like, okay, I'm two 10, my fighting weights, like one 75. I want to be back there. 55 days of eating ma

This Part 2 of my interview with Alex Norman, co-founder of TechTO. Today's episode dives into how he grew TechTO into the leading tech-events company in Canada. This episode has background music added in. Feedback so far on the background music is negative and I will discontinue it after this podcast if I don't get overwhelming feedback in the other direction.Subscribe to the podcast: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed.TRANSCRIPT:Edward Nevraumont: This is part two of my interview with Alex Norman. Today, we're going to dive into his experience as Managing Director of TechTO. First, Alex, can you describe what TechTO is?Alex Norman: TechTO is an organization that helps the Canadian tech ecosystems improve. And what I mean by that is we're a member-based organization that helps members meet other like-minded people, learn from each other, and advance their career in technology, either as a founder or as an employee.Edward: Traditionally that meant events, right? You guys started with a monthly event and then added more and more and more of these in-person events.Alex: That's correct. It started off with a monthly event and then March, 2020 I think the previous 12 months that we had a hundred events. Anything from a small dinners to 1,000 people showing up to the event.Edward: And obviously COVID has made that a lot more difficult. Basically you're running an event company with hundreds and hundreds of events, and then all of a sudden events dropped to zero within like a three-day time period. How did you guys manage?Alex: So I'd say there's two parts to this. One is going back to what I said yesterday about you should always be doubling down on what works and have experiments on the side. I think the year before we started experimenting with a digital membership, so not digital events, but a membership and community. And how do we make the community exist beyond events and online? So we had some learning about what we have to do from a community perspective online to make this still a vibrant community add value to our members. So we were prepared from that perspective and had some knowledge there. So we ramped that up quickly.The other thing is, I remember March 10th, I think we had an event and then both Jason and I were supposed to go on vacation because March break on March 11th. March 12th we decided that there's going to be no events for the next year. Let's figure out how to do online events and what that meant, what technology can enable us and how our events could represent something similar to what we do. What will work that we used to do, what won't work?And so I think the next five or six days we tested like 30 platforms. We started learning limitations of what could be done, what couldn't be done. And we did a test event, I think on March 18th or 17th, with just some of our members. And then March 24th we did our first event and then basically did an event, I feel like it's every weekday, since then. And it was constant iteration and improving how to improve experience and how we could deliver value.And I'd say from March until now, being August 2020, probably done 150 events, a bunch of different formats. And we're actually now thinking we have enough impetus strategically about how do we take it to the next level. Assuming there's no events for another year in person, what do we have to do to actually deliver value for members? And how do we have to change, for lack of a better word, our product. But we have now enough data, enough insight, enough interactions with people to build a fact-based hypothesis versus we went live and started iterating and we had enough of community and brand to experiment online.Edward: I read somewhere recently that in order to win in quality, the way to do it is to massively increase quantity. Does that match with what you guys are doing?Alex: Yeah. I've never heard that before, but I fundamentally believe in that. Again, maybe there's vision, product-driven founders and people out there that can see the end product. And maybe that was what Steve Jobs was, but the way I've always more than likely got the best product is doing hundreds of experiments. And sometimes experiments are hypothetical and sometimes they're building a product and putting it out there and seeing how the world reacts. So it's been a lot of quantity, we had a quality level we had to keep, but now we have an idea how to take the quality level, make it three times better.Edward: I want to dive into some of your more significant marketing channels. Let's start with meetup.com. How did you start using Meetup to grow TechTO at the beginning?Alex: So originally we used Meetup. We came to Meetup. We said, "Okay, this might be interesting way to get distribution," but it was more of tool for functionality. It's an easy way for people to register interests, show up. We could use their ticketing. They had some ticketing built in. We could use it to administer our initial events. And initially we didn't think of Meetup as a distribution channel, but we quickly found out after doing the first few events, seeing a lot of people were just discovering and joining our Meetup group, not necessarily events on Meetup. We said, "Okay, this is actually a strong distribution channel." Because a. Meetup gets lots of organic traffic. You find out that they get ranked pretty high in some SEO terms. And if you could basically, for lack of a better word, figure out how their recommendation engine recommends groups, you could probably drive a lot more traffic.So I don't know if it was three months in, nine months, but I spent a lot of time researching in and playing around to figure out how you set up a group and how you set up events. How you can basically take advantage of organic traffic from Meetup. So I'd say we optimized how we did everything on Meetup to basically optimize the flow of people to join our Meetup. And then we experiment a lot with how do we communicate with people to get to them to attend events. And I'd say at the peak, when doing offline events for some of our, and we have different committees, for some of our committees it could be 30 to 40% of our initial interaction. And coming to our event was from Meetup. It could be lower for some. It's just like search is optimized for Google or YouTube. You could do that for Meetup.Edward: And how did you do that? So how do you search engine optimize for Meetup if you're not going to give away any secrets?Alex: So I think it's changed over the years. So I think the first thing was what terms. You could say, I think 10 or 12 terms that you associate a group with. It could be how many events you have listed on there. So is it a regular event? Are you listing two or 10? The more regular frequency and the more events you have listed and the right hashtags, the right wording... And so we could find also how we did research. You could look at like New York Tech Meetup group. You could click on it. They have 50,000 members. I think they were the biggest Meetup group at one point. You could see what they were hashtagged for. Then you can then use those hashtags.You can search those hashtags. They tell you how many people are members. You get metrics, you can basically navigate around Meetup to find metrics and tags. You could figure out which groups or you could just reach our communities. We had different meetup groups, we'd start measuring the growth of them and try to figure out what was working or not. We tried to research articles and there wasn't much out there, but it was just exploring Meetup and basically trying to backwards engineer how they were recommending stuff.And we'd test results and we'd see. Because we tried different things with different communities and you could see the growth rates and we'd see our biggest group was growing twice as fast as our smallest group. So what are we doing different? So it was just a lot of analytics, a lot of backwards engineering, also experimenting. It's also doing great products. So I think what we also believed is if you have a lot of people attending and a lot of repeat attendance to events and people come looking for you, Meetup would recognize that as a quality event. So it was just basically observing what would make a difference and we could see by the rate of people joining our group.Edward: You even put a bid in to buy Meetup when WeWork was divesting it, is that right?Alex: Yes, we did. Our belief with Meetup is it's a great brand. It has tons of organic traffic, but it doesn't know who it wants to serve. And then there's a few different types of groups that leverage Meetup and that can either build different products for different groups or could just focus on one. So we believed there was a lot of value in Meetup but it hasn't ever really figured a way to unlock it for itself or for its organizations. And there was an opportunity to potentially buy that asset and just make it much more powerful.Edward: Your other big channel is organic social, which is primarily Facebook and LinkedIn. Now I've always thought that companies overvalue organic social, but you seem to have found something that drives more than a quarter of your business. What are you doing that's working so well on organic social?Alex: Let's be clear, I think it's changed over time and we've sort of zigged when everyone zagged. So I think Facebook was doing a way that you got the people attending events to interact with content for them. So a lot of pictures, a lot of videos, a lot of content that... We have a Facebook group, but that gets no distribution anymore. So we probably took 200, 300 pictures of an event. And even though there's 700, 800 people, we would try to tag all the people in those pictures. We would have postings after, which were interactive. And so when people interacted with it, their friends see it and hopefully a lot of them have like-minded friends that'd be interested in the same thing. And then that would translate into people signing up for us and coming to events.I think Facebook was good by leveraging our community, to get distribution and get like-minded. So you didn't need a huge amount of distribution because you had the right members and they would attract like-minded people. We started off with using Twitter a lot. I think Twitter is a great for awareness, but Twitter is like pissing in the wind. You put a tweet out... Every time we did an event, we'd be number one trending in Canada because we just had huge engagement. We have 800 people, huge engagement. We do our events on Monday night, it'd be us or NFL Monday Night or the Bachelor. So you're talking about good awareness, but the distribution of any one tweet's not huge. It disappears after a few seconds. And once you start trending you also get lots of spam that paws on to take advantage of that.So it gives you [inaudible 00:09:48] metrics, which give you credibility and gives you a bit of awareness because people that aren't at events seen an event's going on and they want to interact with that. But we're interacting a lot with Twitter but we de-emphasize it as a marketing channel because we saw it's great for the community. It's a great communication app, but doesn't really do anything. My hypothesis at one point was LinkedIn has become more of a social network. And I can't remember when this was about two or maybe three years ago we said, people aren't leveraging it like they would leverage other social networks, so let's experiment with LinkedIn and see if that can make a difference because you're not going to get necessarily the person that wants [CentreTech 00:10:21] but you might get tech leaders that are trying to recruit.You might get potential partners that look at LinkedIn and no one's really filling their feed. So we started doing a bunch of experimentation on how to get distribution, and LinkedIn's horrible from an analytics and distribution perspective, but we started de-emphasizing Twitter from a social stream to LinkedIn. And it actually paid off because we got to activate a different customer set that we were targeting. It builds a brand and gets people out. And they introduced LinkedIn events, I think 10, 12 months ago. So we were being quick to try new tools. So we got a lot of initial bump there because no one else was using it or experimenting with it. So you adapt for the channel, but you also take learnings from other channels. And I think our approach to LinkedIn was early and different than other people's. So it helped us grow our communities.Edward: Tell me more about what you were doing on LinkedIn. You weren't just posting, "Hey event having happening tonight" or, "Here's some pictures of the event."Alex: No, I'd call them two buckets of content. One is just interacting with the overall tech ecosystem. Just being a source of information, but I think more importantly we'd have Jim McKelvey speaking. He's not good example. He was co-founder of Square. So once we have Jim McKelvey speaking we do content around that beforehand. "Hey, here's Jim, you may not know him. He started a company with Jack Dorsey. It's called Square" and do stories. And then maybe we'd say, "What would you like to ask him?" So a bit of information about upcoming events, but not advertorial. It was more information about why this is relevant to you. And then maybe try to engage with the audience.And then post event we'd have postings that would be like, "You may have missed an event, but here's the three key takeaways from Allan at Wattpad." Or we do member stories. "Here's a member that joined TechTO and she found her first job." Or a perfect one was, "Here's a member, she attended TechTO three years ago. She loved the founder that was talking, she reached out to him. Now she's the CEO of that company." Highlighting stories and highlighting takeaways and what was going to community. So building awareness by providing two, three paragraph insights and then engaging with the community and-Edward: And you're doing that daily?Alex: No, we found daily's too often, but it'd be once every couple days. We experiment a lot. I think anything more than once a day in LinkedIn's too much just because it's the exact opposite of Twitter. Stuff stays up there long. We never really spent too much time figuring out how everything works, but we just knew that if you do more than once a day, I think LinkedIn seems to hide your postings. So one thing we did learn is if you have quick reactions on LinkedIn, it gets spread faster. So in the first 10 minutes 10 people give it a like, or whatever they call it, it would be more likely seen by your wider community. So you have Facebook equivalent, your company can have followers? We never even focused building that on LinkedIn because it's just enough other ways to get distribution on there.Edward: I want to loop back a little bit to your Facebook comment. You were trying to tag 700 people. How did you manage something like that?Alex: Dedicated team. The thing is everyone has name tags on them and usually your name tag's in the picture. So maybe you get a Tammy or a Jessica but even in the group of 800 there's five Jessicas? Either the team would know her or we had a group of volunteers and team members that we'd try to do it with. We weren't 100% successful. But if you have just five people in the picture and you get one person, usually the other people come tag themselves. So you need like a 60% success rate to make that strategy valid.Edward: That's incredible. So now that COVID's happened and you switched from in-person events to online events, has that changed the marketing channels that are working for you?Alex: Yes. And I don't think we were well aware of it at the beginning. So I've always been overly worried about the margin channels we work on because it's not our platforms. One of our biggest marketing channels we didn't discuss. We have an email list of members, which is 50,000-plus strong. So that's something we own. And other channels we rely on are all the channels we don't control. So the email channel still works, but I'd say we are over-relying on three channels before and two which don't work the same way. Who goes to Meetup today? You go to Meetup because you want to see an in-person event. They're doing digital events, but just my guess without knowing anything is their traffic's probably down 80 to 90%. Because people aren't inherently going out to go look for, "Hey, I want to go to a tech conference" or "I want to go meet a bunch of bicyclists."And so the activity on Meetup has significantly dropped. I think the other channel, which we're aware of never really quantified, but I think it's actually significantly hurt us is I think we had a unique word of mouth. And what I mean by that is, someone goes Monday morning and goes, "Hey, I'm going to TechTO tonight" to their colleagues. Maybe they go themselves the first time. Next day they go for coffee. He says, "Man, I had a great time at TechTO. You should come to it." And then three weeks later, when the next TechTO or let's say your FinTechTO in two weeks comes along, someone goes to buy a ticket. And they say, "Hey, I'm buying a ticket. I'm going to TechTO next week."And then they say, "Why don't you come out with us?" And they pull their friends. The word of mouth was actually dragging friends that enjoy social experience together in person. And I think we still have strong word of mouth, but it's not nearly as impactful because when there's a point you have to schedule to go see something in person together, you make plans around it. It becomes part of your social activity. And when you think it's good enough for your friends to enjoy, you'll suggest it and you'll go to it together. And then they become advocates and come together.What I noticed online is no one does, "Hey, I'm going at 7:00 online to this event tonight. Why don't you come join me?" And then there's a couple of things that happen. I think when you want to go to TechTO an event in person, you actually have to plan your day around it. At 7:00 you have to be at RBC WaterPark for a TechTO event on Monday or 6:00, you're going to plan that Monday not to work. Maybe you have an issue with the babysitter. Maybe you got work and you don't come, but you're usually buying your tickets ahead of time. What I've noticed online is, "Hey, we have an event at 7:00 on Tuesday." People are like, "Oh, let me see what's happening and I'll register at 6:55."So first of all, people don't plan. And I think second of all, this shared social experience online right now is not like a shared social experience in person. You're not going there. You're not laughing together. You're both in your own rooms or your houses. So I think we still get strong word of mouth, but [amplifier 00:16:48] where people drag their friends along, it doesn't happen. And I think that's a significant impact on us. So Meetup as a channel is not working and word of mouth is not working. So we've relied a lot more social. We rely a lot more email and we're still trying to experiment because I think lots of people have had the marketing channels changed, not just events, but retail and stuff like that. So I think it's a lot more crowded and there's a lot more volatility and noise in lots of channels right now. So it's not clear to me which ones will scale up in the near future.Edward: This has been awesome, Alex, thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show. Before you go, tell me what comic book we should all read next.Alex: I haven't read it but I've enjoyed the Netflix series Umbrella Academy so I want to actually pick up the comic books and read them. But I haven't read any good comics in a while. If you want a classic, it's the Sandman series. It's written by Neil Gaiman and it's about the mythology of the character Sandman: Master of Dreams. It's not what you expect from a comic book. Go read it.Edward: I think ending on the Master of Dreams is a fantastic way to end. Thanks, Alex. Really appreciate having you here today. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

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

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.  

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Maria: So Alex, now we talked about what I would like to do in the future, what about you? Career-wise, let's start with that.Alex: I actually have absolutely no idea what I want to do as a career. I know I want to do something interesting and I want to do something fun. I've certainly, I think that I as a person am most suited to a service style industry or a hospitality something like that where I would be, I've had sort of dalliancesor ideas about cafes, cafe chains, certainly, I'd always wanted to I think maybe rival Starbucks would be lovely. I looked at restaurants. Restaurants didn't really appeal to me because you've got weird hours and when everyone is having fun you're not. What else? For me it's, I just like to be able to have something that was constantly enjoyable. I think, you know, what you said, dynamic you know.Maria: Exactly.Alex: You can have something that will be enjoyable and you can change it up every day and so on and so forth but as to what I specifically would do, I can't put a name to it. I'm not the only one in my family. My father has a CV that's four, sorry ten pages long. It's ten pages long. He's changed jobs I think twenty-six times, twenty-seven now, and he's just so I don't know. For me, I'd like to travel but I'd certainly want to have a home base. I can't go too far away from home.Maria: When you say home, would it be your present home-like Australia or would you...?Alex: Yeah, I've got to say I'm an Aussie, true blue Aussie. I've got a love of the country. It's my home. I have spent time overseas. I've lived a year and a half in Canada, a year and a half in Australia, a year and a half in Asia sorry it's not a year and a half in Australia, a year and a half in America, so I've done a couple of other things and I've always come back and been why did I leave? What caused me to leave? So, yeah, I'm torn between doing things that are altruistic and selfish. Do I want to just work for me and get the money, the moolah, the cash, the green, or do I want to do something a bit more for everyone else and I don't know it's difficult to decide. How do I do both?Maria: So the future is open?Alex: It is open isn't it?

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Maria: So Alex, now we talked about what I would like to do in the future, what about you? Career-wise, let's start with that.Alex: I actually have absolutely no idea what I want to do as a career. I know I want to do something interesting and I want to do something fun. I've certainly, I think that I as a person am most suited to a service style industry or a hospitality something like that where I would be, I've had sort of dalliancesor ideas about cafes, cafe chains, certainly, I'd always wanted to I think maybe rival Starbucks would be lovely. I looked at restaurants. Restaurants didn't really appeal to me because you've got weird hours and when everyone is having fun you're not. What else? For me it's, I just like to be able to have something that was constantly enjoyable. I think, you know, what you said, dynamic you know.Maria: Exactly.Alex: You can have something that will be enjoyable and you can change it up every day and so on and so forth but as to what I specifically would do, I can't put a name to it. I'm not the only one in my family. My father has a CV that's four, sorry ten pages long. It's ten pages long. He's changed jobs I think twenty-six times, twenty-seven now, and he's just so I don't know. For me, I'd like to travel but I'd certainly want to have a home base. I can't go too far away from home.Maria: When you say home, would it be your present home-like Australia or would you...?Alex: Yeah, I've got to say I'm an Aussie, true blue Aussie. I've got a love of the country. It's my home. I have spent time overseas. I've lived a year and a half in Canada, a year and a half in Australia, a year and a half in Asia sorry it's not a year and a half in Australia, a year and a half in America, so I've done a couple of other things and I've always come back and been why did I leave? What caused me to leave? So, yeah, I'm torn between doing things that are altruistic and selfish. Do I want to just work for me and get the money, the moolah, the cash, the green, or do I want to do something a bit more for everyone else and I don't know it's difficult to decide. How do I do both?Maria: So the future is open?Alex: It is open isn't it?

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Maria: So Alex, now we talked about what I would like to do in the future, what about you? Career-wise, let's start with that.Alex: I actually have absolutely no idea what I want to do as a career. I know I want to do something interesting and I want to do something fun. I've certainly, I think that I as a person am most suited to a service style industry or a hospitality something like that where I would be, I've had sort of dalliancesor ideas about cafes, cafe chains, certainly, I'd always wanted to I think maybe rival Starbucks would be lovely. I looked at restaurants. Restaurants didn't really appeal to me because you've got weird hours and when everyone is having fun you're not. What else? For me it's, I just like to be able to have something that was constantly enjoyable. I think, you know, what you said, dynamic you know.Maria: Exactly.Alex: You can have something that will be enjoyable and you can change it up every day and so on and so forth but as to what I specifically would do, I can't put a name to it. I'm not the only one in my family. My father has a CV that's four, sorry ten pages long. It's ten pages long. He's changed jobs I think twenty-six times, twenty-seven now, and he's just so I don't know. For me, I'd like to travel but I'd certainly want to have a home base. I can't go too far away from home.Maria: When you say home, would it be your present home-like Australia or would you...?Alex: Yeah, I've got to say I'm an Aussie, true blue Aussie. I've got a love of the country. It's my home. I have spent time overseas. I've lived a year and a half in Canada, a year and a half in Australia, a year and a half in Asia sorry it's not a year and a half in Australia, a year and a half in America, so I've done a couple of other things and I've always come back and been why did I leave? What caused me to leave? So, yeah, I'm torn between doing things that are altruistic and selfish. Do I want to just work for me and get the money, the moolah, the cash, the green, or do I want to do something a bit more for everyone else and I don't know it's difficult to decide. How do I do both?Maria: So the future is open?Alex: It is open isn't it?

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Katia: I'm doubting, I'm doubting if the whole Facebook and Twitter if that's actually good. It seems like generations now are spending so much time in computers and virtually but not really doing outside activities so I wonder if there should be a change and perhaps not allow it so easily or be or have more restrictions on it.Alex: That would have to be something with children, right? Like if children or younger generations are spending more time on Facebook or on social media online than spending time with their real friends outside playing or doing stuff in the park or going to special classes or something. I don't know. I don't have brothers or children or anyone that I could talk about but I don't know. What do you think?Katia: I would be worried if I had children and they were into all these social media things that it's hard to keep up even for me and even for us. I feel that you know, some people that we don't know might be spying on us; we're just open.Alex: Yeah, that's another case. That's another thing like it's very easy for somebody to find out about you and what you do or who your friends are. That specifically, that's a difficult topic in a country like Mexico or some Latin American places where it could be that, criminality is higher and you know you don't want to disclose information to other people, even non specifically a country but in a place.Katia: That is true. I would really, I don't know, it seems like my doubts are increasing about social media and what it's actually doing to us and what it will do to our generations so I really wonder how much or how should we handle it? I really don't know. Also phone texting, it's been used so much that we don't talk on the phone anymore or we don't even talk person to person. We just text messages.Alex: That's right, that's right. I've noticed that, especially in younger generations. They are so into texting. They text so fast. I cannot do that. Like to me, it's way easier just to grab the phone and call someone, get the thing done, that's it. But texting takes so long but there are so many people into it especially younger kids.Katia: Yeah, so I wonder what it actually does to our communication skills. I am sure they have to change.Alex: Well it evolves differently.Katia: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Katia: I'm doubting, I'm doubting if the whole Facebook and Twitter if that's actually good. It seems like generations now are spending so much time in computers and virtually but not really doing outside activities so I wonder if there should be a change and perhaps not allow it so easily or be or have more restrictions on it.Alex: That would have to be something with children, right? Like if children or younger generations are spending more time on Facebook or on social media online than spending time with their real friends outside playing or doing stuff in the park or going to special classes or something. I don't know. I don't have brothers or children or anyone that I could talk about but I don't know. What do you think?Katia: I would be worried if I had children and they were into all these social media things that it's hard to keep up even for me and even for us. I feel that you know, some people that we don't know might be spying on us; we're just open.Alex: Yeah, that's another case. That's another thing like it's very easy for somebody to find out about you and what you do or who your friends are. That specifically, that's a difficult topic in a country like Mexico or some Latin American places where it could be that, criminality is higher and you know you don't want to disclose information to other people, even non specifically a country but in a place.Katia: That is true. I would really, I don't know, it seems like my doubts are increasing about social media and what it's actually doing to us and what it will do to our generations so I really wonder how much or how should we handle it? I really don't know. Also phone texting, it's been used so much that we don't talk on the phone anymore or we don't even talk person to person. We just text messages.Alex: That's right, that's right. I've noticed that, especially in younger generations. They are so into texting. They text so fast. I cannot do that. Like to me, it's way easier just to grab the phone and call someone, get the thing done, that's it. But texting takes so long but there are so many people into it especially younger kids.Katia: Yeah, so I wonder what it actually does to our communication skills. I am sure they have to change.Alex: Well it evolves differently.Katia: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Katia: I'm doubting, I'm doubting if the whole Facebook and Twitter if that's actually good. It seems like generations now are spending so much time in computers and virtually but not really doing outside activities so I wonder if there should be a change and perhaps not allow it so easily or be or have more restrictions on it.Alex: That would have to be something with children, right? Like if children or younger generations are spending more time on Facebook or on social media online than spending time with their real friends outside playing or doing stuff in the park or going to special classes or something. I don't know. I don't have brothers or children or anyone that I could talk about but I don't know. What do you think?Katia: I would be worried if I had children and they were into all these social media things that it's hard to keep up even for me and even for us. I feel that you know, some people that we don't know might be spying on us; we're just open.Alex: Yeah, that's another case. That's another thing like it's very easy for somebody to find out about you and what you do or who your friends are. That specifically, that's a difficult topic in a country like Mexico or some Latin American places where it could be that, criminality is higher and you know you don't want to disclose information to other people, even non specifically a country but in a place.Katia: That is true. I would really, I don't know, it seems like my doubts are increasing about social media and what it's actually doing to us and what it will do to our generations so I really wonder how much or how should we handle it? I really don't know. Also phone texting, it's been used so much that we don't talk on the phone anymore or we don't even talk person to person. We just text messages.Alex: That's right, that's right. I've noticed that, especially in younger generations. They are so into texting. They text so fast. I cannot do that. Like to me, it's way easier just to grab the phone and call someone, get the thing done, that's it. But texting takes so long but there are so many people into it especially younger kids.Katia: Yeah, so I wonder what it actually does to our communication skills. I am sure they have to change.Alex: Well it evolves differently.Katia: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Alex: Hi, Katia, how are you?Katia: I'm doing good and you, Alex?Alex: I'm doing good thank you. I have a question for you. Are you on Facebook?Katia: Yes, I am on Facebook but I really do not check very often.Alex: OK, how often do you check it usually?Katia: I actually try not to check it very often. It's been taking a lot of my time so right now I check it about, I try once a week during the weekends.Alex: OK. I used to be on Facebook a lot before. I was like checking it every day and, you know, posting on my friends' walls and trying to catch up with everybody on Facebook. But then I realized that I was losing a lot of time on it. I was, I don't know if investing is the word, but I was spending a lot of time on it and I kind of like decided to close my wall, because I thought that I was just spending too much time, and it was not really adding anything so, but I don't know if that's the right thing, because sometimes I feel that I need to communicate stuff to my friends and since my wall has been closed for so long, I don't want to kind of like just communicate something there and then just stopped communicating through my wall any more so I don't know how to do it.Katia: It has really become an issue hasn't it? You can get lost from what is actually happening around you and live in a virtual world so I'm actually a little bit worried about that, about what is happening and how we live our lives and how we present ourselves to others. I believe that it should be handled differently than it has up to now so maybe you're doing good by closing or, you know, thinking about it at least.Alex: Yeah.Katia: But how much, that you might have to consider.Alex: Yeah, that's right. It's very funny how all this communication has changed in the last few years. I remember just four years ago or even five years ago I wasn't on Facebook and all the communication I used to have with my friends was through email or by phone or by meeting you know. But now with Facebook, everybody spends so much time on Facebook. Sometimes if you don't publish something on Facebook, it seems that you didn't do anything so I don't know it's just weird.Katia: Well the question is are you actually more in communication now than you were four or five years ago?Alex: I am more in communication with people that I haven't been in touch with for the last ten years let's say. Like all my friends from elementary school that I wasn't really in touch and everybody's now on Facebook and now everybody is updated on what I'm doing or why I do this, what I'm going to do on next vacation, what about my plans for anything so that's a good thing I think. It really depends on how much importance you give to it.Katia: That is true.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Alex: Hi, Katia, how are you?Katia: I'm doing good and you, Alex?Alex: I'm doing good thank you. I have a question for you. Are you on Facebook?Katia: Yes, I am on Facebook but I really do not check very often.Alex: OK, how often do you check it usually?Katia: I actually try not to check it very often. It's been taking a lot of my time so right now I check it about, I try once a week during the weekends.Alex: OK. I used to be on Facebook a lot before. I was like checking it every day and, you know, posting on my friends' walls and trying to catch up with everybody on Facebook. But then I realized that I was losing a lot of time on it. I was, I don't know if investing is the word, but I was spending a lot of time on it and I kind of like decided to close my wall, because I thought that I was just spending too much time, and it was not really adding anything so, but I don't know if that's the right thing, because sometimes I feel that I need to communicate stuff to my friends and since my wall has been closed for so long, I don't want to kind of like just communicate something there and then just stopped communicating through my wall any more so I don't know how to do it.Katia: It has really become an issue hasn't it? You can get lost from what is actually happening around you and live in a virtual world so I'm actually a little bit worried about that, about what is happening and how we live our lives and how we present ourselves to others. I believe that it should be handled differently than it has up to now so maybe you're doing good by closing or, you know, thinking about it at least.Alex: Yeah.Katia: But how much, that you might have to consider.Alex: Yeah, that's right. It's very funny how all this communication has changed in the last few years. I remember just four years ago or even five years ago I wasn't on Facebook and all the communication I used to have with my friends was through email or by phone or by meeting you know. But now with Facebook, everybody spends so much time on Facebook. Sometimes if you don't publish something on Facebook, it seems that you didn't do anything so I don't know it's just weird.Katia: Well the question is are you actually more in communication now than you were four or five years ago?Alex: I am more in communication with people that I haven't been in touch with for the last ten years let's say. Like all my friends from elementary school that I wasn't really in touch and everybody's now on Facebook and now everybody is updated on what I'm doing or why I do this, what I'm going to do on next vacation, what about my plans for anything so that's a good thing I think. It really depends on how much importance you give to it.Katia: That is true.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Alex: Hi, Katia, how are you?Katia: I'm doing good and you, Alex?Alex: I'm doing good thank you. I have a question for you. Are you on Facebook?Katia: Yes, I am on Facebook but I really do not check very often.Alex: OK, how often do you check it usually?Katia: I actually try not to check it very often. It's been taking a lot of my time so right now I check it about, I try once a week during the weekends.Alex: OK. I used to be on Facebook a lot before. I was like checking it every day and, you know, posting on my friends' walls and trying to catch up with everybody on Facebook. But then I realized that I was losing a lot of time on it. I was, I don't know if investing is the word, but I was spending a lot of time on it and I kind of like decided to close my wall, because I thought that I was just spending too much time, and it was not really adding anything so, but I don't know if that's the right thing, because sometimes I feel that I need to communicate stuff to my friends and since my wall has been closed for so long, I don't want to kind of like just communicate something there and then just stopped communicating through my wall any more so I don't know how to do it.Katia: It has really become an issue hasn't it? You can get lost from what is actually happening around you and live in a virtual world so I'm actually a little bit worried about that, about what is happening and how we live our lives and how we present ourselves to others. I believe that it should be handled differently than it has up to now so maybe you're doing good by closing or, you know, thinking about it at least.Alex: Yeah.Katia: But how much, that you might have to consider.Alex: Yeah, that's right. It's very funny how all this communication has changed in the last few years. I remember just four years ago or even five years ago I wasn't on Facebook and all the communication I used to have with my friends was through email or by phone or by meeting you know. But now with Facebook, everybody spends so much time on Facebook. Sometimes if you don't publish something on Facebook, it seems that you didn't do anything so I don't know it's just weird.Katia: Well the question is are you actually more in communication now than you were four or five years ago?Alex: I am more in communication with people that I haven't been in touch with for the last ten years let's say. Like all my friends from elementary school that I wasn't really in touch and everybody's now on Facebook and now everybody is updated on what I'm doing or why I do this, what I'm going to do on next vacation, what about my plans for anything so that's a good thing I think. It really depends on how much importance you give to it.Katia: That is true.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Alex: So Maria, you've seen a lot of the stuff that's been happening recently in Europe and you know that things have not exactly gone very well. What do you think are the, what's the outlook for Denmark in the future? Do you think you guys will do well or...?Maria: I don't think we'll do that well because I'm from a generation where we, like my generation, we had it very well. We had a very good, we could choose whatever job we wanted, we could still choose whatever education we wanted if we're smart enough at least. We get paid from the Government to study. I get a lot of money every month. I still do even though I am on exchange just to study so compared to other countries where it is a privilege to study, we just, if we feel like it we'll study and we might wait a little but now they're saying that we're this luxury generation, that we're not used to working hard and I can recognize that because I'm not used to working for anything.So when we begin to struggle finding jobs because we have like a high rate of unemployment, especially for young people, people who graduate usually they wait. If you don't have a very specific education, doctors I think are OK, people like that, but if you have a humanistic education, you might have to wait more than a year to find a job. My sister's graduating now and she is like dying because she has a fear for that. When she graduates with her social European studies, she will have a very hard time finding anything. So I think the biggest problem is the personality of the Danish youth because we are not used to having to do anything and now we have to because the environment has changed in Europe.I don't know economically because we still have a lot of like huge enterprises and we have a lot of, the way we're placed we have pretty good connections with America and we're in Europe. We have like the whole of Europe around us and of course we, as a part of Scandinavia, we have good connections with like we have some more than just connections with Sweden and Norway, we are like, I don't know, closer than we would have been for example Germany which actually Denmark is situated on Germany so we have the link to Germany but we're still closer to Sweden. So we will probably manage but we will have to change economically and this might be a problem that we're getting a socialist government at the moment. I think it's great because I love it that we have it this way but we might get in economic trouble, difficulties, so I am probably going to have a harder time than my parents. It's got to work, it's going to help that I'm studying business though because I can always just work in another country, Australia for example, but yeah I don't know, the future is vague.Alex: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Alex: So Maria, you've seen a lot of the stuff that's been happening recently in Europe and you know that things have not exactly gone very well. What do you think are the, what's the outlook for Denmark in the future? Do you think you guys will do well or...?Maria: I don't think we'll do that well because I'm from a generation where we, like my generation, we had it very well. We had a very good, we could choose whatever job we wanted, we could still choose whatever education we wanted if we're smart enough at least. We get paid from the Government to study. I get a lot of money every month. I still do even though I am on exchange just to study so compared to other countries where it is a privilege to study, we just, if we feel like it we'll study and we might wait a little but now they're saying that we're this luxury generation, that we're not used to working hard and I can recognize that because I'm not used to working for anything.So when we begin to struggle finding jobs because we have like a high rate of unemployment, especially for young people, people who graduate usually they wait. If you don't have a very specific education, doctors I think are OK, people like that, but if you have a humanistic education, you might have to wait more than a year to find a job. My sister's graduating now and she is like dying because she has a fear for that. When she graduates with her social European studies, she will have a very hard time finding anything. So I think the biggest problem is the personality of the Danish youth because we are not used to having to do anything and now we have to because the environment has changed in Europe.I don't know economically because we still have a lot of like huge enterprises and we have a lot of, the way we're placed we have pretty good connections with America and we're in Europe. We have like the whole of Europe around us and of course we, as a part of Scandinavia, we have good connections with like we have some more than just connections with Sweden and Norway, we are like, I don't know, closer than we would have been for example Germany which actually Denmark is situated on Germany so we have the link to Germany but we're still closer to Sweden. So we will probably manage but we will have to change economically and this might be a problem that we're getting a socialist government at the moment. I think it's great because I love it that we have it this way but we might get in economic trouble, difficulties, so I am probably going to have a harder time than my parents. It's got to work, it's going to help that I'm studying business though because I can always just work in another country, Australia for example, but yeah I don't know, the future is vague.Alex: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Alex: So Maria, you've seen a lot of the stuff that's been happening recently in Europe and you know that things have not exactly gone very well. What do you think are the, what's the outlook for Denmark in the future? Do you think you guys will do well or...?Maria: I don't think we'll do that well because I'm from a generation where we, like my generation, we had it very well. We had a very good, we could choose whatever job we wanted, we could still choose whatever education we wanted if we're smart enough at least. We get paid from the Government to study. I get a lot of money every month. I still do even though I am on exchange just to study so compared to other countries where it is a privilege to study, we just, if we feel like it we'll study and we might wait a little but now they're saying that we're this luxury generation, that we're not used to working hard and I can recognize that because I'm not used to working for anything.So when we begin to struggle finding jobs because we have like a high rate of unemployment, especially for young people, people who graduate usually they wait. If you don't have a very specific education, doctors I think are OK, people like that, but if you have a humanistic education, you might have to wait more than a year to find a job. My sister's graduating now and she is like dying because she has a fear for that. When she graduates with her social European studies, she will have a very hard time finding anything. So I think the biggest problem is the personality of the Danish youth because we are not used to having to do anything and now we have to because the environment has changed in Europe.I don't know economically because we still have a lot of like huge enterprises and we have a lot of, the way we're placed we have pretty good connections with America and we're in Europe. We have like the whole of Europe around us and of course we, as a part of Scandinavia, we have good connections with like we have some more than just connections with Sweden and Norway, we are like, I don't know, closer than we would have been for example Germany which actually Denmark is situated on Germany so we have the link to Germany but we're still closer to Sweden. So we will probably manage but we will have to change economically and this might be a problem that we're getting a socialist government at the moment. I think it's great because I love it that we have it this way but we might get in economic trouble, difficulties, so I am probably going to have a harder time than my parents. It's got to work, it's going to help that I'm studying business though because I can always just work in another country, Australia for example, but yeah I don't know, the future is vague.Alex: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Alex: So how do you feel about long-distance relationships?Maria: Not that good. I had two relationships by now and both of them ended after me going somewhere. First time I was in Denmark but like I lived on a school in another city and while I was there for four months like I think two months after I went home to him and broke up and then came back to the school and just didn't really care. And then the second time I went traveling and I missed him so much and I came back and realized that there was nothing left. I'd lost everything while I was away so I don't, after one month, after two months, I think it just doesn't work for me if it's not really special.Alex: Yeah, I guess you're kind of like me. I have to see the person.Maria: Exactly.Alex: Almost, you know, daily.Maria: Exactly and you can have conversations online and on the phone but if there's no, I don't know, it doesn't have to be much, just like be close, see each other in the eye.Alex: It's a big difference, yeah. I did a month when I went home to Australia away...Maria: This summer?Alex: Yeah, this recent summer and like Skype is just not enough. Do you know what I mean? You can see the person, you can talk to them, you know you can kiss the camera if you want but it's not...Maria: If you want.Alex: You know it's not the same but that's not to say I don't think, some people can do it.Maria: I figure if it's a very like if the relationship is very, it's very passionate or you've been going on for a long time because both of my relationships were under one year I think. The first one was one year and the second one was half a year. So if we're used to staying together then I think you can work it out. I'm just too impatient.Alex: Yeah, I guess under a year you haven't really learned to depend on the other person all the time.Maria: Exactly.Alex: Or...Maria: Still going by the passion and if you can't see the person every day or like whenever you want, then the passion just slowly fades.Alex: Yeah, agreed.Maria: But this is your first relationship right?Alex: Yes it is and I did one month when I went home away from the person and it was just...Maria: And that was the first time you ever went away from the person?Alex: Yeah and it was just aah horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible.Maria: I remember the first time I like traveled while my boyfriend was still at home and it was a week and I was devastated so it's if it's passionate it's...Alex: Well I did Christmas away from them when I went to Christmas, I did India for Christmas last year.Maria: OK.Alex: And two weeks was bad enough and then a month and I was just pulling my hair out, do you know? So.Maria: Yeah, it's hard.Alex: It, yeah, it certainly is.Maria: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Alex: So how do you feel about long-distance relationships?Maria: Not that good. I had two relationships by now and both of them ended after me going somewhere. First time I was in Denmark but like I lived on a school in another city and while I was there for four months like I think two months after I went home to him and broke up and then came back to the school and just didn't really care. And then the second time I went traveling and I missed him so much and I came back and realized that there was nothing left. I'd lost everything while I was away so I don't, after one month, after two months, I think it just doesn't work for me if it's not really special.Alex: Yeah, I guess you're kind of like me. I have to see the person.Maria: Exactly.Alex: Almost, you know, daily.Maria: Exactly and you can have conversations online and on the phone but if there's no, I don't know, it doesn't have to be much, just like be close, see each other in the eye.Alex: It's a big difference, yeah. I did a month when I went home to Australia away...Maria: This summer?Alex: Yeah, this recent summer and like Skype is just not enough. Do you know what I mean? You can see the person, you can talk to them, you know you can kiss the camera if you want but it's not...Maria: If you want.Alex: You know it's not the same but that's not to say I don't think, some people can do it.Maria: I figure if it's a very like if the relationship is very, it's very passionate or you've been going on for a long time because both of my relationships were under one year I think. The first one was one year and the second one was half a year. So if we're used to staying together then I think you can work it out. I'm just too impatient.Alex: Yeah, I guess under a year you haven't really learned to depend on the other person all the time.Maria: Exactly.Alex: Or...Maria: Still going by the passion and if you can't see the person every day or like whenever you want, then the passion just slowly fades.Alex: Yeah, agreed.Maria: But this is your first relationship right?Alex: Yes it is and I did one month when I went home away from the person and it was just...Maria: And that was the first time you ever went away from the person?Alex: Yeah and it was just aah horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible.Maria: I remember the first time I like traveled while my boyfriend was still at home and it was a week and I was devastated so it's if it's passionate it's...Alex: Well I did Christmas away from them when I went to Christmas, I did India for Christmas last year.Maria: OK.Alex: And two weeks was bad enough and then a month and I was just pulling my hair out, do you know? So.Maria: Yeah, it's hard.Alex: It, yeah, it certainly is.Maria: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Alex: So how do you feel about long-distance relationships?Maria: Not that good. I had two relationships by now and both of them ended after me going somewhere. First time I was in Denmark but like I lived on a school in another city and while I was there for four months like I think two months after I went home to him and broke up and then came back to the school and just didn't really care. And then the second time I went traveling and I missed him so much and I came back and realized that there was nothing left. I'd lost everything while I was away so I don't, after one month, after two months, I think it just doesn't work for me if it's not really special.Alex: Yeah, I guess you're kind of like me. I have to see the person.Maria: Exactly.Alex: Almost, you know, daily.Maria: Exactly and you can have conversations online and on the phone but if there's no, I don't know, it doesn't have to be much, just like be close, see each other in the eye.Alex: It's a big difference, yeah. I did a month when I went home to Australia away...Maria: This summer?Alex: Yeah, this recent summer and like Skype is just not enough. Do you know what I mean? You can see the person, you can talk to them, you know you can kiss the camera if you want but it's not...Maria: If you want.Alex: You know it's not the same but that's not to say I don't think, some people can do it.Maria: I figure if it's a very like if the relationship is very, it's very passionate or you've been going on for a long time because both of my relationships were under one year I think. The first one was one year and the second one was half a year. So if we're used to staying together then I think you can work it out. I'm just too impatient.Alex: Yeah, I guess under a year you haven't really learned to depend on the other person all the time.Maria: Exactly.Alex: Or...Maria: Still going by the passion and if you can't see the person every day or like whenever you want, then the passion just slowly fades.Alex: Yeah, agreed.Maria: But this is your first relationship right?Alex: Yes it is and I did one month when I went home away from the person and it was just...Maria: And that was the first time you ever went away from the person?Alex: Yeah and it was just aah horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible.Maria: I remember the first time I like traveled while my boyfriend was still at home and it was a week and I was devastated so it's if it's passionate it's...Alex: Well I did Christmas away from them when I went to Christmas, I did India for Christmas last year.Maria: OK.Alex: And two weeks was bad enough and then a month and I was just pulling my hair out, do you know? So.Maria: Yeah, it's hard.Alex: It, yeah, it certainly is.Maria: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Maria: So do you believe in love at first sight?Alex: Yea, I think it does exist. I think you can have a sort of spark at first sight, but what I consider as love is a bit different to what that first kind of meeting would be. If you can having something like and then you think that person has a real possibility, I think that's what you mean by love at first sight, but you can't instantly love someone. It takes growth.Maria: That's true.Alex: It takes coming together, shared experiences and that sort of stuff but, you know, I think for some people, my parents actually met at a guitar concert and it was a total mistake. They thought, no, seriously, it was a total mistake. They thought that each other was in the same group and it turned out they were on separate groups and then things went from there. He proposed after five weeks.Maria: Wow.Alex: And actually had to, he proposed in front of the fax machine while his divorce was being finalized.Maria: Oh my God.Alex: To his first wife so...Maria: What a romantic story.Alex: So, and twenty years later you know, so it took one conversation in a guitar concert so I've seen it, you know, I guess that spark definitely exists in them.Maria: I guess if you call it attraction at first sight, it's way more fitting?Alex:Yeah.Maria: That's what I feel at least. I've seen, I have friends who experienced, like one of my friends at my university now, she experienced love at first sight, like she saw the guy and she thought that's the guy I want to marry. So I never tried anything like that but I heard it happen and I see it happening now because she's still way head over heels for this guy.Alex: I think if you decide the person that you're going to marry when you see them, you're a little bit insane.Maria: Well, insanity is a good point.Alex: I suppose.Maria: She is a little bit insane, yeah. She had a very sad love story beforehand. A guy she was in love with for two and a half years who knew but he didn't, I think they actually did date a little but he didn't want to be serious about it.Alex: Yeah.Maria: So I guess she's more, she wants it to be serious but I never tried. Like I think the people I've been in love with it has taken time and it's taken at least half a year before I've felt that there was more. Like I could be attracted to them but the love part, the really wanting to be with this person came later because I didn't want take, I didn't want to get serious at least immediately.Alex: Yeah, I think after that sort of six month puppy love stage where it's so new and exciting and you're learning all about the other person, that's when it starts to get like I think you start to feel the strong...Maria: But I mean also like if there was a guy I didn't even date but we were talking together for half a year and when we met, because it was internet, and he was in Holland and I was in Denmark so we met after half a year. We first met on a trip. So we met and then I could feel it grow but it took me half a year to slowly and safely just get to the point where I could actually feel something. It didn't work out but...Alex: Ah well, what can you do?Maria: Yeah, I tried.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Maria: So do you believe in love at first sight?Alex: Yea, I think it does exist. I think you can have a sort of spark at first sight, but what I consider as love is a bit different to what that first kind of meeting would be. If you can having something like and then you think that person has a real possibility, I think that's what you mean by love at first sight, but you can't instantly love someone. It takes growth.Maria: That's true.Alex: It takes coming together, shared experiences and that sort of stuff but, you know, I think for some people, my parents actually met at a guitar concert and it was a total mistake. They thought, no, seriously, it was a total mistake. They thought that each other was in the same group and it turned out they were on separate groups and then things went from there. He proposed after five weeks.Maria: Wow.Alex: And actually had to, he proposed in front of the fax machine while his divorce was being finalized.Maria: Oh my God.Alex: To his first wife so...Maria: What a romantic story.Alex: So, and twenty years later you know, so it took one conversation in a guitar concert so I've seen it, you know, I guess that spark definitely exists in them.Maria: I guess if you call it attraction at first sight, it's way more fitting?Alex:Yeah.Maria: That's what I feel at least. I've seen, I have friends who experienced, like one of my friends at my university now, she experienced love at first sight, like she saw the guy and she thought that's the guy I want to marry. So I never tried anything like that but I heard it happen and I see it happening now because she's still way head over heels for this guy.Alex: I think if you decide the person that you're going to marry when you see them, you're a little bit insane.Maria: Well, insanity is a good point.Alex: I suppose.Maria: She is a little bit insane, yeah. She had a very sad love story beforehand. A guy she was in love with for two and a half years who knew but he didn't, I think they actually did date a little but he didn't want to be serious about it.Alex: Yeah.Maria: So I guess she's more, she wants it to be serious but I never tried. Like I think the people I've been in love with it has taken time and it's taken at least half a year before I've felt that there was more. Like I could be attracted to them but the love part, the really wanting to be with this person came later because I didn't want take, I didn't want to get serious at least immediately.Alex: Yeah, I think after that sort of six month puppy love stage where it's so new and exciting and you're learning all about the other person, that's when it starts to get like I think you start to feel the strong...Maria: But I mean also like if there was a guy I didn't even date but we were talking together for half a year and when we met, because it was internet, and he was in Holland and I was in Denmark so we met after half a year. We first met on a trip. So we met and then I could feel it grow but it took me half a year to slowly and safely just get to the point where I could actually feel something. It didn't work out but...Alex: Ah well, what can you do?Maria: Yeah, I tried.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Maria: So do you believe in love at first sight?Alex: Yea, I think it does exist. I think you can have a sort of spark at first sight, but what I consider as love is a bit different to what that first kind of meeting would be. If you can having something like and then you think that person has a real possibility, I think that's what you mean by love at first sight, but you can't instantly love someone. It takes growth.Maria: That's true.Alex: It takes coming together, shared experiences and that sort of stuff but, you know, I think for some people, my parents actually met at a guitar concert and it was a total mistake. They thought, no, seriously, it was a total mistake. They thought that each other was in the same group and it turned out they were on separate groups and then things went from there. He proposed after five weeks.Maria: Wow.Alex: And actually had to, he proposed in front of the fax machine while his divorce was being finalized.Maria: Oh my God.Alex: To his first wife so...Maria: What a romantic story.Alex: So, and twenty years later you know, so it took one conversation in a guitar concert so I've seen it, you know, I guess that spark definitely exists in them.Maria: I guess if you call it attraction at first sight, it's way more fitting?Alex:Yeah.Maria: That's what I feel at least. I've seen, I have friends who experienced, like one of my friends at my university now, she experienced love at first sight, like she saw the guy and she thought that's the guy I want to marry. So I never tried anything like that but I heard it happen and I see it happening now because she's still way head over heels for this guy.Alex: I think if you decide the person that you're going to marry when you see them, you're a little bit insane.Maria: Well, insanity is a good point.Alex: I suppose.Maria: She is a little bit insane, yeah. She had a very sad love story beforehand. A guy she was in love with for two and a half years who knew but he didn't, I think they actually did date a little but he didn't want to be serious about it.Alex: Yeah.Maria: So I guess she's more, she wants it to be serious but I never tried. Like I think the people I've been in love with it has taken time and it's taken at least half a year before I've felt that there was more. Like I could be attracted to them but the love part, the really wanting to be with this person came later because I didn't want take, I didn't want to get serious at least immediately.Alex: Yeah, I think after that sort of six month puppy love stage where it's so new and exciting and you're learning all about the other person, that's when it starts to get like I think you start to feel the strong...Maria: But I mean also like if there was a guy I didn't even date but we were talking together for half a year and when we met, because it was internet, and he was in Holland and I was in Denmark so we met after half a year. We first met on a trip. So we met and then I could feel it grow but it took me half a year to slowly and safely just get to the point where I could actually feel something. It didn't work out but...Alex: Ah well, what can you do?Maria: Yeah, I tried.

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

Ross and online teacher trainer Alex Li talk about some of the biggest differences between teaching offline and online, common mistakes teachers make teaching online and their favorite online teaching activities.Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the TEFL Training Institute Podcast. I'm Ross Thorburn. Again, this week, we are doing something coronavirus‑related. We're talking about teaching language online. We've got dos and don'ts for those of you who are now making the transition from teaching offline to teaching online.To help us with that this week we have my friend and former colleague, Alex Li. Alex, for the last year‑and‑a‑half or so, has been a trainer, training teachers to teach online.In this episode, Alex and I will go through some of the differences between teaching English online compared to offline, some of the opportunities and a lot of common mistakes that teachers tend to make.More and more schools, it seems like, across the world are switching their classes to online for the time being. If that's you, listen on. We've got some great tips for you. Enjoy the interview.Ross: All right, let's start. Alex, thanks for joining us and doing this.Alex Li: Yeah.Ross: This is also the first podcast I've ever done while wearing a face mask.Alex: [laughs]Ross: We're obviously doing this because lots of teachers now are making the transition, we don't know for how long, from teaching offline to online. You did that yourself, obviously. You used to be a teacher offline, and then you started working in an online company.Maybe we can start off by talking about some of the differences. What first struck you as being some of the differences between teaching online and teaching offline?Alex: That would be personalization. Personally, I didn't do that when I was an offline teacher for young learners. Frankly, I don't know 80 percent of my students that much, while the rest of 20 percent I've probably talked to them after class. For one‑on‑one class, that gives teachers those opportunities to know their students more.Ross: When we are teaching kids offline, you're right. Usually, as a teacher, you don't learn that much about them. As soon as you're teaching students in their own homes, the setting gives you the opportunity to talk about so much more, doesn't it?Alex: Yeah. As you said, in a brick‑and‑mortar classroom where everybody's in the same place and the same city, if you ask how's the weather that would be pretty dull, because everybody knows that. After five students, they will be like, "Oh teacher, I know..."Ross: [laughs]Alex: ..."it's sunny."Ross: Or you have to pretend and make up like it's snowing...Alex: You show your flash cards.Ross: ...maybe when you're living in Africa and it snows. Online, there's all these natural information gaps. The teacher and the student are always going to be in different places...Alex: That's true.Ross: ...often in different cities or different countries, there's so many opportunities there to contrast and compare what's going on in the two locations.Alex: That can happen throughout the class. You can do it at the beginning as we talk about weather. You can also talk about certain target language.Ross: I remember when I was an offline teacher, and I used to teach kids. I remember sometimes trying to get kids to bring in something into the class, to do a show‑and‑tell type thing.One time it was like, "Bring in a photo of somewhere that you've been on holiday." Always, like two students would remember and the other 14 wouldn't. It would never work very well.I feel this is one of the other huge opportunities for teaching online. Students have all this stuff around them, especially for low levels. For example, if you're teaching clothes, the student can open their wardrobe and, for example, bring out their favorite clothes.You can show the students your favorite clothes as well. There's so many opportunities for personalization that you would never get if you were doing it offline.Alex: Yeah. I think you mentioned one good thing or one good model, is that the teacher gets to show the student if we are talking about clothes, his or her clothes first if it's a lower level. That's something I noticed some teachers are not doing online.Teachers have got to keep in mind that you're teaching one‑on‑one. You're still teaching, and giving appropriate model is important and essential.Ross: Offline, if you've got a class of 15 students, you might pick the strongest student to come to the front and demo that for the rest of the class. If you've only got one student, there's no opportunity to do that. What do you have to do instead? As the teacher, you have to model both parts.That's one of the biggest differences maybe, between teaching groups offline and teaching one‑to‑one online. The teacher has to take on so many different roles compared to teaching offline. For example, if you're doing group work or pair work or something offline.You put the students in pairs, and the students are conversation partners to each other. The teacher, you're still kind of in this teachery role where you're going around and monitoring. As soon as you go online, you've got to switch into a different role of being this...Alex: [laughs]Ross: ...conversation partner. That's quite difficult to actually do.Alex: Yeah, that's true. Some teachers ignore that part. There's no other kids in this classroom, so they ask their student to read both parts if we are having a dialogue.Ross: I wonder why that happens if the teacher just thinks like, "Oh, I'm going to get my student to talk as much as possible?"Alex: Or they just think that those students need to read before anything.Ross: Another thing that teachers are influenced by is increasing the amount of student's talking time in the class. That's one way to do that, is to get students to play both parts of a dialogue. I feel you're losing so much in terms of it being a natural or authentic conversation. It's much better for the teacher to assume one of the roles in the dialogue.Alex: Exactly. As a teacher, if you're talking about a lower‑level student, you can select the part that is easier for him or her to read. After he or she turns into an intermediate student, you can have him or her pick the role he or she wants. That's the way personalization occurs.Ross: You could do the same role‑play twice. You guys could just switch roles halfway through. Like if it's someone asking for directions first of all, the teacher provides the answers. Then you can switch it around and give the student in the more challenging role after they've seen a model.Those are all things that teachers would do naturally offline, giving a stronger student the more challenging role in a role play. I guess you have to be the strong student if you're the teacher during those activities. [laughs]Another common problem we see a lot online is teachers getting students to read whatever is on the screen out loud. Often, it's just a page of a course book, or something. I've seen teachers that even ask the students to read the title of the page. [laughs]Alex: And the instructions.Ross: And the instructions, right. What are some of the problems with that?Alex: It's not effective. The instruction is not the target language. I get it why they would do that. They probably think that they read it. They probably can't understand the instructions. The more they read it, the more they will get to know what's going on, but actually no.Ross: It doesn't work like that. If I'm asked to read something out loud, I always find I don't know what I've just read. I'm so focused on getting the science right that I don't actually process the meaning. With those, it's better to get the student to read it silently, which is also just much more natural.You don't see people [laughs] walking around with their phones or reading things out loud. We read in our heads most of the time. Or the teacher reads it out loud for their student to listen, and they can follow along.We started talking about the materials. Another issue with teaching online that doesn't happen so much offline is that teachers will tend to use every page, if we can call it that, of a lesson of the course book. We often online call it the "courseware." They'll go through it in order rather than jump around.It's interesting, because I noticed myself doing this with having the same book on my Kindle versus having the paper copy. I find that on the paper copy, it's so much easier to flick through and read chapters out of order. On a Kindle, I find I don't do that as much. I go through it in order.Teachers teaching online will tend to do the same thing of follow every page rather than what you might do in a course book, which is skip some activities or you might do the last activity first, that kind of thing.Alex: I don't know. Maybe somebody told them that, "You've got to finish the courseware." They just feel like, "Oh, by finish, you probably mean I need to complete each page."I once had a survey with some teachers, some call‑ins. They were like, "I didn't finish those activities. I didn't finish all those pages. Is that OK?"Ross: [laughs]Alex: I actually observed this teacher's class. She was doing fine. You can see that she's got some preparation. First and foremost, she identified what to teach, what the teaching objectives are. She did that, but she didn't complete the pages. Some teachers who are listening might not notice that.Ross: It's like offline teaching where the main thing is, "Teach the students. Don't teach the plan." You're totally right. A lot of teachers feel like, "My job here is to get to the end of these pages on this PowerPoint," rather than to help the students learn something or achieve something.Up until now we've mainly been talking about speaking, but I wanted to touch on writing for a moment. This is definitely one of my pet hates online, is teachers asking students to write something using the mouse. It's not a useful skill to practice.Alex: [laughs]Ross: Writing using a mouse and writing using a pen ‑‑ I mean, just try it ‑‑ they're very, very different. I can write quite well with a pen. I cannot write well with a mouse.Alex: I really show my respect for those teachers who can write perfectly with a mouse.Ross: [laughs] Perfectly with a mouse.Alex: If your student has this learning need which is to practice their handwriting, you can ask them to prepare a notepad. They can write there, and they can show you.Ross: Something else that I rarely see online is teachers or students actually moving the camera. Most people, when they're teaching online, they're using a laptop.Usually, the screen, it's on a hinge. It's pretty easy for the teacher or the student move the screen down. You could write, and the other person would be able to see what you're doing. I feel for teaching writing online, it's pretty challenging.Alex: We can agree that the priority of teaching online would be speaking and listening.Ross: Maybe we could talk about some activities that we think work particularly well. I can start out. One of the activities I've seen that works really well is a creative activity where you get the student to make something. The teacher has to do the typing, and the student has to do the telling.You've almost got the student describing the creative thing that they want, and the teacher drawing and filling things in. One of the examples I've seen work quite well is a shopping mall. Here's a floor plan of a shopping mall. The teacher asks the student, "What shops do you want in the shopping mall? What do you want them to be called?"The student has to say them, and the teacher types them in. You got a lot of communication happening in that activity, but also the student ends up being quite motivated.Alex: You're creating something.Ross: Absolutely. The teacher has to understand what the student is saying. If the teacher doesn't and makes a mistake with writing something, often the student's very quick to correct their teacher...Alex: [laughs]Ross: ...which is great because you're getting a lot of real communication happening there.Alex: I have two personal favorites kind of related to teaching texts. After you go through all those comprehension questions the courseware offers you, if you still have time, if we're talking about Bloom's Taxonomy, higher audio thinking skills at the level of evaluation, you can ask your student what are their perspective of the character?How do they think of this character? Ask why afterwards. You don't want to sound so much like what the courseware would offer. You can start with your own model. There is a stereotype going on, which is Chinese students, they are reluctant to express their opinions. This can be something to model.You can have different views on something, on somebody. It's OK. We're not judging somebody.Ross: [laughs]Alex: We're just expressing our opinions. Another one is for those classes there are texts about different cultures. Some students might be unfamiliar with those. After going through the text, say the setting is in Brazil and it's about carnival, then you can change it to the setting of Chinese New Year.That would be something that they can relate to. Back to Bloom's Taxonomy, you're creating something different with your student.Ross: With that second example there you're also taking advantage of that real information gap. If you're a teacher and you've not been to the same country as your student, you're probably not going to know very much about the culture. It's a real motivation for the teacher to be genuinely listening to what the student's saying and for the student to genuinely communicate with the teacher.Again there, we've got that thing of the teacher taking on another role, being the conversation partner and not just prompting the student to try out some target language but actually communicate something that the teacher wants to listen to.Alex: A suggestion for teachers would be to ask questions that they don't have answers to.Ross: Again everyone, that was Alex Li. If you enjoyed that, go to our website, www.tefltraininginstitute.com for more podcasts. If you really enjoyed it, please give us a good rating on iTunes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again next time. Goodbye.

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.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Danny: So, we've been talking a lot about food. Do you have a favorite restaurant?Alex: Yeah, I do. I haven't been there for years, but it's still my favorite. It's called The Little SnailDanny: The Little Snail.Alex: And it's a French restaurant, and it's in this small coastal fishing village down the coast. It's kind of funny because it's a great restaurant and you kind of expect it to be in a big city. It has really good French food, but it's in the middle of nowhere.Danny: So, what's the decoration like then? What does it look like?Alex: It's cute. It's very cute. I haven't been in many restaurants in France but it's kind of what I imagine a French restaurant would look like, you know like , there's just a few things hanging on the walls and very simple decor, and it's just kind of cozy like a country town.Danny: Cozy! Sounds nice. But how's the service?Alex: Oh, it's okay. You won't starve. They don't have lots of staff, so it can get quite busy and you're gonna have to wait a while, but you know, when the food arrives, it is so good that you do not care.Danny: Really? What's the food like then?Alex: Ah, well, I just love French food. It's my favorite cuisine and I usually can't afford to eat it however, but if do you like traditional French food, it is great.Danny: Traditional French food? What's that like?Alex: Well, usually I get some kind of meat dish, maybe a quail or kind of another bird or something, and there's usually a really delicious sauce that might be made from wine or cream and herbs and that sort of thing.Danny: Sounds really nice.Alex: It is really good. It's delicious.Danny: So you said you can't really afford to eat French food. What are the prices like ?Alex:Well, the Little Snail is good compared to a French restaurant that you get in a big city.Danny: Really?Alex: Two people could eat there and have a really fantastic French meal for maybe about eight dollars, which is as I said, really good French restaurant.Danny: Really?Alex: That's for two.Danny: For two?Alex: Yeah.Danny: So is there anything special with the place?Alex: Actually we used to go there when I was working. We would go on these business trips and my boss would take me and my other coworker there on the Friday night as a kind of thanks-for-working-hard reward. And we always used to have, I think it's called ------ I've forgotten. My French is terrible, but it's this amazing dessert, which is kind of made with pastry, and has a sweet kind of custard creme inside.Danny: Everyone loves custard. Sound deliciousAlex: It's really good. I can't wait to get back there.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Danny: So, we've been talking a lot about food. Do you have a favorite restaurant?Alex: Yeah, I do. I haven't been there for years, but it's still my favorite. It's called The Little SnailDanny: The Little Snail.Alex: And it's a French restaurant, and it's in this small coastal fishing village down the coast. It's kind of funny because it's a great restaurant and you kind of expect it to be in a big city. It has really good French food, but it's in the middle of nowhere.Danny: So, what's the decoration like then? What does it look like?Alex: It's cute. It's very cute. I haven't been in many restaurants in France but it's kind of what I imagine a French restaurant would look like, you know like , there's just a few things hanging on the walls and very simple decor, and it's just kind of cozy like a country town.Danny: Cozy! Sounds nice. But how's the service?Alex: Oh, it's okay. You won't starve. They don't have lots of staff, so it can get quite busy and you're gonna have to wait a while, but you know, when the food arrives, it is so good that you do not care.Danny: Really? What's the food like then?Alex: Ah, well, I just love French food. It's my favorite cuisine and I usually can't afford to eat it however, but if do you like traditional French food, it is great.Danny: Traditional French food? What's that like?Alex: Well, usually I get some kind of meat dish, maybe a quail or kind of another bird or something, and there's usually a really delicious sauce that might be made from wine or cream and herbs and that sort of thing.Danny: Sounds really nice.Alex: It is really good. It's delicious.Danny: So you said you can't really afford to eat French food. What are the prices like ?Alex:Well, the Little Snail is good compared to a French restaurant that you get in a big city.Danny: Really?Alex: Two people could eat there and have a really fantastic French meal for maybe about eight dollars, which is as I said, really good French restaurant.Danny: Really?Alex: That's for two.Danny: For two?Alex: Yeah.Danny: So is there anything special with the place?Alex: Actually we used to go there when I was working. We would go on these business trips and my boss would take me and my other coworker there on the Friday night as a kind of thanks-for-working-hard reward. And we always used to have, I think it's called ------ I've forgotten. My French is terrible, but it's this amazing dessert, which is kind of made with pastry, and has a sweet kind of custard creme inside.Danny: Everyone loves custard. Sound deliciousAlex: It's really good. I can't wait to get back there.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Danny: So, we've been talking a lot about food. Do you have a favorite restaurant?Alex: Yeah, I do. I haven't been there for years, but it's still my favorite. It's called The Little SnailDanny: The Little Snail.Alex: And it's a French restaurant, and it's in this small coastal fishing village down the coast. It's kind of funny because it's a great restaurant and you kind of expect it to be in a big city. It has really good French food, but it's in the middle of nowhere.Danny: So, what's the decoration like then? What does it look like?Alex: It's cute. It's very cute. I haven't been in many restaurants in France but it's kind of what I imagine a French restaurant would look like, you know like , there's just a few things hanging on the walls and very simple decor, and it's just kind of cozy like a country town.Danny: Cozy! Sounds nice. But how's the service?Alex: Oh, it's okay. You won't starve. They don't have lots of staff, so it can get quite busy and you're gonna have to wait a while, but you know, when the food arrives, it is so good that you do not care.Danny: Really? What's the food like then?Alex: Ah, well, I just love French food. It's my favorite cuisine and I usually can't afford to eat it however, but if do you like traditional French food, it is great.Danny: Traditional French food? What's that like?Alex: Well, usually I get some kind of meat dish, maybe a quail or kind of another bird or something, and there's usually a really delicious sauce that might be made from wine or cream and herbs and that sort of thing.Danny: Sounds really nice.Alex: It is really good. It's delicious.Danny: So you said you can't really afford to eat French food. What are the prices like ?Alex:Well, the Little Snail is good compared to a French restaurant that you get in a big city.Danny: Really?Alex: Two people could eat there and have a really fantastic French meal for maybe about eight dollars, which is as I said, really good French restaurant.Danny: Really?Alex: That's for two.Danny: For two?Alex: Yeah.Danny: So is there anything special with the place?Alex: Actually we used to go there when I was working. We would go on these business trips and my boss would take me and my other coworker there on the Friday night as a kind of thanks-for-working-hard reward. And we always used to have, I think it's called ------ I've forgotten. My French is terrible, but it's this amazing dessert, which is kind of made with pastry, and has a sweet kind of custard creme inside.Danny: Everyone loves custard. Sound deliciousAlex: It's really good. I can't wait to get back there.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Danny: So, what kind of clothes do you like to wear?Alex: I like to wear casual clothes. And that's why I really don't like what I have to wear to work sometimes because it's just not what I would normally wear.Danny: So what do you normally have to wear to work then?Alex: Oh, I have to hear a tie and kind of like suit trousers and sometimes a suit coat.Danny: Really?Alex: Yeah.Danny: Even in the summer?Alex: Yeah, even in the summer. It's basically the company policy that we look business-like. It's crazy. You know that time of year is really hot. You're sort of waiting for the train, and you're sweating and it's just, ugh!Danny: You want a change of clothes by the time you get to work.Alex: Yeah, it's almost like you need a locker full of new clothes by the time you get there.Danny: I know the feeling.Alex: Maybe I should just wear, you know, like sports clothes, and running clothes until I get to work and then change.Danny: Good idea. So do you keep you clothes for a really long time?Alex: Much longer than my wife would like me to keep them. She's always saying to me, "Just throw that out. It's worn out." "Oh, I like that one." She buys me new clothes but I keep wearing the same ones.Danny: So, you wear them until there's holes in the knees and the pants.Alex: I always have likes seven different shirts I could wear, and maybe four pairs of pants and I always wear the same ones.Danny: So, where do you buy your clothes when you go shopping?Alex: Oh, this is the great thing about being married, I don't buy clothes anymore. My wife buys my clothes.Danny: Really?Alex: And she's a really good shopper. She knows my size, and she --- well, there is only one problem. I don't always like what she buys, but I never tell her.Danny: So how many times a day do you end up having to change your clothes? You say you have to wear this suit to work, and then you end up sweating. Do you have the opportunity to change?Alex: No, not at work. But once you get to work in the middle of summer, the air-cons on, the air-conditioning's on, so it's not too bad, but by the time I get home from work --- and I usually don't have a bath until later, and I always have to give my work clothes off. I just can't wait to get my work clothes off.Danny: So about once a day.Alex: Yeah, basically.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Danny: So, what kind of clothes do you like to wear?Alex: I like to wear casual clothes. And that's why I really don't like what I have to wear to work sometimes because it's just not what I would normally wear.Danny: So what do you normally have to wear to work then?Alex: Oh, I have to hear a tie and kind of like suit trousers and sometimes a suit coat.Danny: Really?Alex: Yeah.Danny: Even in the summer?Alex: Yeah, even in the summer. It's basically the company policy that we look business-like. It's crazy. You know that time of year is really hot. You're sort of waiting for the train, and you're sweating and it's just, ugh!Danny: You want a change of clothes by the time you get to work.Alex: Yeah, it's almost like you need a locker full of new clothes by the time you get there.Danny: I know the feeling.Alex: Maybe I should just wear, you know, like sports clothes, and running clothes until I get to work and then change.Danny: Good idea. So do you keep you clothes for a really long time?Alex: Much longer than my wife would like me to keep them. She's always saying to me, "Just throw that out. It's worn out." "Oh, I like that one." She buys me new clothes but I keep wearing the same ones.Danny: So, you wear them until there's holes in the knees and the pants.Alex: I always have likes seven different shirts I could wear, and maybe four pairs of pants and I always wear the same ones.Danny: So, where do you buy your clothes when you go shopping?Alex: Oh, this is the great thing about being married, I don't buy clothes anymore. My wife buys my clothes.Danny: Really?Alex: And she's a really good shopper. She knows my size, and she --- well, there is only one problem. I don't always like what she buys, but I never tell her.Danny: So how many times a day do you end up having to change your clothes? You say you have to wear this suit to work, and then you end up sweating. Do you have the opportunity to change?Alex: No, not at work. But once you get to work in the middle of summer, the air-cons on, the air-conditioning's on, so it's not too bad, but by the time I get home from work --- and I usually don't have a bath until later, and I always have to give my work clothes off. I just can't wait to get my work clothes off.Danny: So about once a day.Alex: Yeah, basically.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Danny: So, what kind of clothes do you like to wear?Alex: I like to wear casual clothes. And that's why I really don't like what I have to wear to work sometimes because it's just not what I would normally wear.Danny: So what do you normally have to wear to work then?Alex: Oh, I have to hear a tie and kind of like suit trousers and sometimes a suit coat.Danny: Really?Alex: Yeah.Danny: Even in the summer?Alex: Yeah, even in the summer. It's basically the company policy that we look business-like. It's crazy. You know that time of year is really hot. You're sort of waiting for the train, and you're sweating and it's just, ugh!Danny: You want a change of clothes by the time you get to work.Alex: Yeah, it's almost like you need a locker full of new clothes by the time you get there.Danny: I know the feeling.Alex: Maybe I should just wear, you know, like sports clothes, and running clothes until I get to work and then change.Danny: Good idea. So do you keep you clothes for a really long time?Alex: Much longer than my wife would like me to keep them. She's always saying to me, "Just throw that out. It's worn out." "Oh, I like that one." She buys me new clothes but I keep wearing the same ones.Danny: So, you wear them until there's holes in the knees and the pants.Alex: I always have likes seven different shirts I could wear, and maybe four pairs of pants and I always wear the same ones.Danny: So, where do you buy your clothes when you go shopping?Alex: Oh, this is the great thing about being married, I don't buy clothes anymore. My wife buys my clothes.Danny: Really?Alex: And she's a really good shopper. She knows my size, and she --- well, there is only one problem. I don't always like what she buys, but I never tell her.Danny: So how many times a day do you end up having to change your clothes? You say you have to wear this suit to work, and then you end up sweating. Do you have the opportunity to change?Alex: No, not at work. But once you get to work in the middle of summer, the air-cons on, the air-conditioning's on, so it's not too bad, but by the time I get home from work --- and I usually don't have a bath until later, and I always have to give my work clothes off. I just can't wait to get my work clothes off.Danny: So about once a day.Alex: Yeah, basically.

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/

Batwoman S1 & The Flash S6 Premieres: Legends of the Arrowverse Episode #10 Welcome back to Legends of the Arrowverse!  This time Phil and Lilith review the season premieres of Batwoman S1 “Pilot”, Supergirl S5 “Event Horizon”, Black Lightning S3 “The Book of Occupation: Chapter One”, The Flash S6 “Into the Void” and the latest Crisis on Infinite Earths news Show notes: Batwoman S1 & The Flash S6 Premieres: Legends of the Arrowverse Episode #10 Find all of our Social Media & Merchandise here  https://linktr.ee/capesandlunatics Follow Phil Perich on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nightwingpdp Follow Lilith Hellfire on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LilithHellfire Produced by: http://www.southgatemediagroup.com Production Team: Phil Perich Batwoman S1 & The Flash S6 Premieres: Legends of the Arrowverse Episode #10 00:00:10 - 00:10:35 Chipping in a lifetime warranty or you can get there through the link on our website Southgate Media Group dotcom era verse podcast This episode of keeps them excited kicks is brought to you by tweaked audio awesome headphones get tweaked audio dot com and use the coupon code southgate in thirty percent off take these old chronic Quarter air she gets she could suck the new black holes is back first week back hero versus pack I am Phil Joining me as always that curmudgeon herself yeah yeah I mean had really good ratings relate it's never the premier is always episode a father is running a security company instead of being in the military was he most people that run security firms Afghan all right I'm confused maybe they're doing this for on is our story convenience Bam like isn't their whole thing like Oh yeah tavern well screwed the Oregon for whatever who yes so it's like did I I might have missed it but so her the thing that I can say about the errors absolutely love with the seconds every single paddle now a mailing errol order and you will strengthen our impact they went there but we got a phone well I mean and then to the identical crews are out there though right Oh yeah yeah I thought you meant that woman I ever ever rehashing suffer any so I guess that bring us to bat woman I cover I mean she didn't have to steal one Bruce's suits or dad helped Latino here let's get this military gear and Nino riding Our adversary he that's so we'll see learning as I have a real big problem with Wayne's cousin but like she came to that toll thing the season the nuttier side of that it even if she you know like a for dad had some stuff and she stole that like manner ensued or whatever have that that arsenal egg in our trash I just wonder I they probably did that woman a big disservice by having her first season be during the year of crisis congenitally tied the Batman Acquired Canyon Saly a gutter sh you know she's not Batman she's a woman and stuff but we won't then they tie her origin in the Batman yet at that that was a disservice because even in the comics they didn't do that yeah she are ex-military Russell so any time on a state doesn't say I wonder if maybe he's on I don't think that her premier was as big as flashy we've oh no no no as the be the the biggest line will actually yeah we just went sake Gambia on band go early now regularly new vehicle crisis kirk nine thirty we're doing it that's why I'm surprised they haven't been putting that woman on after flash with everything else black light being black lightning yeah well girls night for that kroner for programming I just I just wonder I just wonder if maybe that women can hold onto some ratings just because I tried lesser proper are I mean I saw so I don't know if the numbers right but somebody was posted in pilot numbers on facebook somewhere not supergirl had the highest but that's because her first season with CBS we are basically recruiting Oliver on proper that as Brownie greedy you know hero so she have a lot on her sidekick docker Natta love interest obviously true how Meghan Meghan ones can be you know Oh batmans coming back you know I mean regarding carrier we're re in her cover ask maybe not leaving when Akwa pilot during that one crossover Sal Lor Jin's survey battery needed here euros final refresh the ratings game I think thera out yes he stills on Bruce's suits still didn't I wonder why she steals out week from our our bag of her husband in that you know not if they turn at Kinda cool you have Sunday a superhero may you know yeah yeah of course you had the high wasn't actively bang they had to like make that thing remember the words screwing with eight thirty in a lot of character building of everyone else until after crisis I'm saying you're lucky your ever so I guess I think I read somewhere so she's just going to be a voice on the radio I care about hope refrain user I will say play by talking heads playing rugby head as I tyler thought it was rushed so oh thank you they can on the Drina some lines on a free Gig of Gutter I may yeah journal ev every episode ounce sending an email like car I did you know season won until he showed up thing we're in birth you know that that everybody's leaner I just wonder if they're going to do a season one this season finale season and are putting in say the third episode so her team coalescing around her we might have to have that internal monologue and they don't want it to the edge cheek at ill but now speaking of the love interest that's like you think this is GonNa last year Arby's newsbeat bring out you're getting the question yeah yeah that you know they they smack her in the previous month over those late I don't know rich Sergey met Maine well for those of us who read the comics wonder if he's getting a suit eventually back it's GonNa be a big thing probably like a slow burn in the background is he gonNA be like this in strapper at some people don't like it president-elect supergirl thanking ready but superbos raking her lake supposedly have the most it's the most recognizable franchise on it. 00:10:36 - 00:11:28 Okay and I know you nervous what did you think of Ruby Roses Acting Ritholtz no they're going to get you know they're gonNA get interference because I mean if nothing else it's too bad back franchise loughrey bother exaggerating all right Laura Navy even Linda Part Entrepreneur take me wrong there vicky are served are we going to vesper fairchild on the radio leaguer Ernest until you can actual night win with a mullet Silje it's fine it's fine with the primary it was was the bull enough action we yeah right into the plot with her twin sister. 00:07:00 - 00:17:05 I don't know we really don't need a reactor out what that's going to take over guarding rehashing wasn't at the end of this this episode seem to be right in that a rare once I mean it's easier but then to that way her dad don't recognize her right away sure luther that kind of weird we're supposed to be identical yeah yeah although maybe they did that so I mean again it might be it we're GONNA do twins I wanna Gosh Darn parent trap that's all thank embassy but I am pretty sure I'm looking this up yeah let's somebody said something online do do you know who the ritual that the actress playing Alice's Art Summer Oh man I wanNA talk rawls over here you're a supposedly we're getting what's her face Ashley Scott from birds of Prey so uh I don't know when I know we got on getting probably athletes it's either one so I wonder if you're gonNA break up or she's GonNa die the same time chronic makes me nervous and you probably have the most include Lago cw run and while we gauzy trickster joker reprimanded darker okay I mean trickster is fine but you got conroy meeting Hamill gestures the actor who played alice the Act I'm I'm actually cried new deliver the Deborah Clark I know you win the night anyway or will the nights anyway but if you give people why the action Mark Mark Hamill Verse Kevin Conroy Rat race is doing I don't know they could change your mind there's a lot of Being happening on the file Cohen People I mean you know yeah I do personally three episodes where we don't have anybody else for booking and I I just want report can whenever the pain yeah I guess yeah considering that that we're beer minimum starting at five million dollars Africa so all right triggered a superhero her yes I I heard so many investors are you know there's a lot going for the show in a lot of room for everything I react soda growth so I'm GonNa what did you think of never been like aerobic manner Ruby rose those she's got a lot of words when Melissa One you're I love her super I mean again it's only been it's only one episode to find uh-huh crossovers that are offered hey hey shooting in the air over wonder if they think Russia over do I remember that when the bouncer but I can't remember right now for proper Rachel Karston who believe played Dinah on birds of prey breath but of all the air over shows for season they are that person a lot of ski show which I can recreation Rhythm Give Ruby Leila I felt like all the acting William there I said art that's all that I'm saying it's funny you said You thought this episode was busy 'cause I I like I like the episode sounds like a coup the guy that they weren't really read on the net they had other fish to fry now really from the green lantern thing and you know the lack of Christopher Nolan one you've actually you good a good bowl but again it's like you're you're gonNA trust the Luther it's like the love of Superhero for a Lukin changed you said you went super run where her aunt act made the moms twin what I wish Clark with done in Smallville all of the change things you told like what room goes sell cocktail law and now it's just like Okay Soleil McQuillan keep that one girl so here it's like vows superman aim to build that universe of your arm leeway where I really do feel right back by the origin with so yeah pray connection here arrear canonizing Burger pray razor prayed sure I am a bicker about the errors that yourself on the head remember to CW show the brainy alerting they're like most everybody else love inches leave after the dollar I'm saying but Brady against the road yeah but she's a super bowl she's a superhero too I mean look superhero plan I know but you know and Jimmy James Olsen sister our buddy that families getting an Olsen the you know the I I was a close second call and I'm nervous it was busy there is a lot going on but you get from thumper somebody goes to Alex alcl inside missionary getting come down for that are- Europe hours playing his either that matter litter with okay but now yeah that's the one thing that I'm who are working full yeah brains love interest can you imagine if cargo back James they could both be you know in the brother and sister yeah later I tried to do everything earned saying what the character now but you know how they love their romances I don't know like in especially if super girls can have a love will at least right now looking for love interest no not blood they're not even the same species technically variant that happens they say oh she has got a banquet superhero meanwhile that infested ship Lina Baxter Baxter the rivers that's currently airing on the eerie though that tumor without literally Roman literally found that out tonight yeah that's fun on their white telling Lena Yeah I was like Yes for the drama I I'm just like schizophrenic chronic for scenic on yeah is that they didn't want to know totally because they got the and was confirmed thing very far cutter I actually don't like the live action already the other way around the head us you got two months your Hashtag we'll get there Steed now at chance rula grow becker were their little wooded right now so he won and it was finally Kinda worked thicke like the material armor armor but again crypto millions on earth they need armor I said this during new fifty two what's going on a rate that Kinda affected her honorable route and I don't get the whole Is We screw you guys lake I dunno against me the when the worst of the smaller guy I don't need a skin tight costume it doesn't it look a little too that'd be great disguise you know between the classes and if you have bangs in one identity and no bangs in another rally I don't follow her the guy was like Oh that must either finale I call this is they said that they may that must be finale I can fight things that I mean I mean okay I can see like if the whole thing like goes rogue in our rich uh-huh I mean maybe if the covers you from head to toe and blocks radiation so you know Kryptonite I can see that we're selling confirmed disappointing about the things that kind of humor Barbara Campbell I was like oh no I'm happy that there is the late that reiter anyway I just I don't know the banks are secretly the shield random choice had bangs canes that one day had cut her banks craft you always WanNa team around these people and to CW romantic. 00:17:08 - 00:23:48 I know making her wear wigs or something I'm saying that's the most actors Iraqi reader line you not even supposed to change without for mission of yeah but I mean that would it's alive Kerns Brad Turns Red Kryptonite WHO NEEDS CISCO TOO Jason Okay people are not embracing remorse comic Berkman reassemble everyone can fail a everyone acetate says oh be careful next time you take off your glasses the pseudo appear but it's like she took her glasses off the talk to Lina and I didn't see no suit better controller but I'm just a great guy he's a headbands you're not but I mean yeah I mean under fantastic secular more fodder like her car going in bet together my friends grows who earn Alex Yeah people shipped out the back the mini aero are backing Superhero CASSANDRA crisis they might all be on earth fingers crossed for simple Acrobat Room and they're like oh well I guess we shouldn't gear to rape her under his bangs are still better than a head Bam it's all tweet me it's legion future tack rate for me I'm just saying I would have been so funny what happened Brady put in Our I thought I saw something like Melissa wanted like a new hairstyle and night our big mood yes why don't know yeah because I don't know if they were like almost considering the nanotech or Symbian Tony Tony we like to have a word with you after crisis they don't like the look of the soup but do you like that it's like what like nanotech or whatever now courtesy Array Palmer would've been awful that's like this stuff you're not the pages of Matt Guy Eating supergirl I mean would you rather have we're best friends I'm like it's I think well they're Lena is rich in sheltered evil early had yeah I'm like I mean they're they're like Oh we're best friends and like I like I don't know conflict losers I mean there's worse things Oh that will be or may her no yes so then so we added a witness were finished with a big mood and now it's like a big move but even I don't know somebody aver Right well it seems already better Gal let's make Alex into the mix crisis all if Alex there you go because I was thinking like with us to to or do you like kissing search for Hassett refers the obviously and evil tack although I get it it's like they don't WanNa do that with Alex making her the Horny last year is getting which they told that now we not only the first episode but it doesn't seem as busy as the episodes last season Rossi then there's a lot right that's a pretty big secret it's like look at your family's history Robert I mean you should be she should she should have been satisfied that Kara toward eventually Akkad year without cried did felicity rate that in Asir with sonic cannon or something spoiler getting our that for Boise they did jacker over rare Marie favorite thing of others are there I said it it's like it wouldn't be bad but it's like especially with this show does Lena swing in the world of Lily Ho fire shipping did she does Zachary Yeah I can get it from Lena's angle but now she's just faking it 'cause she's bad to me I'm like like I get your mad but Brent exactly okay so those both those both remain on on Sunday what did you better bat women's premier or Super Girls Premier Aram that's right back baby that's right air over obviously a really I- lesser AH cousin she's using his tack I'm like how much more do we have hospital basically working on it and again he has to make a case but I liked the idea but it's like having spent more than like five minutes together at a time it's like tall national city I mean I'm just saying y'all and then John's you will brother releases that chick from the Phantom Zone Gorgon right zone rampart things just the white skin it seems like that I think that's like her actual hair around I think so kirker Iran I was like nobody actual nobody does Iran and bird new rule take care bye yeah but no Carson Oh no you're my bet thanks work cars what is your my best friend. 00:23:48 - 00:36:50 I don't disowned her route craft Rabat car bet claim data rain you know everywhere we know see them one ownership fashion brought all these anti Oh frugally wow where were they last fourteen years I'll never know Rapper chains it so much and why you had Thai Batman in the well are they bringing the Batman fans in but it's Oh man this is all I had the titles backwards Oregon our company work screwed up so badly don't go to it every two seconds like unit you know mix stuff up a bunch of stuff in it yeah it's GonNa it's GonNa be it's GonNa Be Eagle Simmer in the back and then what's going on with evil election under the building I get it it's like you can't have a sub basement and has to be another cave burning are is Andrea her he's like the original kings the Mother didn't make that well I guess if you'd have to like Paul Villain out of well Kim put out your but you literally have to Yeah Bernini Jimmy by Agnes Chemistry between here away Maury I don't know if action subtext Texas for honor it is superman or supergirl hey we need the polls on thin air hey animals with argue quip me okay I don't think I know it's gone on for not another teen movie it wouldn't have been easier to break in the cave under the manner but maybe Alford's their late her thing and he knows exactly exactly why were unless like we say every year unless they're going to do more with the daughters and finally tobias whale was locked up her powers immortality or canal and to be fair he got a was it he kern railing oh is he ordered guy needs extra padding winner but then I was watching the episode on Monday and I was like I'll say now black lightning at supermax exactly as as they met Napa supermac polar bird the the main Newton Karaki never a bunch in euro are yes dow offended wait see the pseudo I want to give it a chance but it's like at least from the pictures that doesn't like that chest piece the first two seasons cut really boggy at least really pushing his daughters aren't we are unfortunately thank honestly when I find lightning are wanting we see black writing three million are really rely I think it was I think it was like nine hundred some thousand yeah well we pretty much confirmed he's shown up in the crossover bag as people's interest actually reflect the shore learn because because a picture drop today of him in the flash together looks like on the wave rider we are I girlfriend that were black ranking or something look right I mean I'm willing to give the next couple of episodes because they're filming his scenes for crisis author local guide this season maybe hopefully at least it looks more like skin tight actual like comic book Black Lightning's now ridden with turn on here I was like you see like we're GonNa for mandating rattling all by loans low no leaders no no I was like that got for at least it was something different like great agree faith or Quentin Tarantino pod kids it just seemed like the show is moving slower than all the other Arab Russia's actually kind of enjoyed from the perspective are yeah I thought it was surprisingly are I mean it's definitely because he's busy with crisis or something rock up in a very tight it's very very locker ormoc favorite serves vampire diaries literally they relate stuck in a sideline story by literally this Erga climbing the show her I mean it maybe I wasn't paying attention last season but it just seemed more blatant this this episode of You Compete Murder Career and I don't Wanna sound weird or creepy but that it seemed like they like focused on Mrs Bud a couple times last night honey it was in that movie that's right we're not ever coming back taxes they're not captain America now there's an I I know you need evidence the lock them up but it's like you can't take this guy down there like three ago the route I know I know Tehran pipeline or Oliver locked up last season were that that in other oh I thought it was a definite improvement real see if they'll be able to keep that eighteen of the interesting are outwards were and again if I mean if they are merging Earth's and I mean this is GonNa be in the larger universe I mean it might breath some more like the ruder it better live action reversal frigging with the news curve out but I think I think it would help the show like you know it's on the same earth as everyone else casino again supergirl could drop by flash ladder broncos they're I mean like more interesting I mean by last season it was just like oh we're still doing the same thing it's still too by us we're still doing it again and again black knights on its own Monday night island there's no air over show with it so ask garnered say I'm GonNa say I have a problem with it I'm just saying it seem we're bringing jock you're playing supergirl eagerly on the earth don't Wanna eat though like they shoot different completely different city so far I I said so far this week so yeah we didn't get air rigor me is no surprise greenback with either I think they did that with ballot means just an hour this is the thing that you I'm even though I didn't like it seemed like they mixed it up more this again it's only one episode but it seemed like they mixed you know it's not our blue flash late to catch up they actually fine I'm okay with that slow bird but like yet this one's the best one so far yes they're gonna be there baffling for your abro heroes got it experience at this point but I mean for at first when the black holes AH hundred nine hundred shorter the Fed is actually buy back up I guess because Sean Crossover maybe we should watch I occurs or compressor power dampener on him and he was getting old where I'm SORTA Kinda Guy Yeah there was better back those terrible still mulching laming or opening and  

Firefighters need to train like any other professional, and their training usually involves setting a mock set ablaze – which, as you might imagine, would be costly to reset. Enter RiVR, who are using 360 video and photogrammetry to recreate these practice blazes digitally. CEO Alex Harvey and Alan have a heated discussion on the topic. Alan: Hey, everyone, my name is Alan Smithon, your host for the XR for Business Podcast. Today we have Alex Harvey, CEO and creative director at RiVR, a virtual reality training and visualization company based in the UK. RiVR harnesses the power of VR and photogrammetry technology to create interactive, immersive training experiences. They’re currently working with the UK Home Office, UK Fire Service, Police Service and the Department of Defense in the US. Their ultimate goal is to enhance the way humans learn (I love that). Alex has a deep understanding of the games industry, having worked on commissions for the likes of Codemasters, the BBC, and Ford Motor Company. He’s obsessed with harnessing the latest A/V technology to make the real world differences that we all need. He gets to work with incredibly talented people to make this happen, and to quote him, “I love the feelings and memories we can evoke in VR when technology, creativity, and innovation collide.” I love that quote. RiVR’s exhibited at six different VR shows this year, including CES Vegas, and their technology has been reported on by the BBC. To learn more about RiVR, you can visit rivr.uk. Alex, welcome to the show, my friend. Alex: Hi, Alan. Nice to meet you. Nice to speak again. Alan: Yeah. We’ve been kind of back and forth on LinkedIn, and emails, and it’s really finally great to sit down and have a conversation with you. Alex: It is such a busy world, and it’s great to chat in person. Alan: Listen, let’s dive right into this. Explain to us what RiVR is and how it’s making a difference. Alex: RiVR is “Reality in Virtual Reality.” We’ve been creating VR experiences now for probably nearer to three years with the production company, starting back in 2014, but we started obviously with 360 video doing things for Thomson Holidays — you experience what it’s like to be on a cruise ship, or be on a plane. That was three years ago. Then we started moving into the room-scale photogrammetry world, with very much a significant push at RiVR for training, and using photorealism to make sure that the users of our experiences are completely immersed. I often say to people, “I want you to feel like you’re in the world, and not in a Simpsons cartoon world.” It is very much pushing photogrammetry and photo realism into VR. You know, there’s a lot of people doing photogrammetry now, but two, three years ago? It was only of the likes of– Alan: That was you and Simon! Alex: Yeah! [laughs] Me, Simon and Realities.IO. They were the guys that were pushing it. And it really felt like when I saw those early experiences of Realities.IO and Simon’s stuff, it felt like I was inside a video, but not quite? I want to try and be inside video content. I think that– Alan: Let me kind of unpack this fruit for people listening. So, what Alex and his team do is they go into a space, and they will take hundreds of photographs — if not thousands of photographs — of the space, and they’ll convert that into a game engine-based experience, where you can actually walk around. Now, what I think is really mind-blowing about what you guys have done at RiVR is, not only do you create the environment, but then you take specific parts of the environment — for

Firefighters need to train like any other professional, and their training usually involves setting a mock set ablaze – which, as you might imagine, would be costly to reset. Enter RiVR, who are using 360 video and photogrammetry to recreate these practice blazes digitally. CEO Alex Harvey and Alan have a heated discussion on the topic. Alan: Hey, everyone, my name is Alan Smithon, your host for the XR for Business Podcast. Today we have Alex Harvey, CEO and creative director at RiVR, a virtual reality training and visualization company based in the UK. RiVR harnesses the power of VR and photogrammetry technology to create interactive, immersive training experiences. They’re currently working with the UK Home Office, UK Fire Service, Police Service and the Department of Defense in the US. Their ultimate goal is to enhance the way humans learn (I love that). Alex has a deep understanding of the games industry, having worked on commissions for the likes of Codemasters, the BBC, and Ford Motor Company. He’s obsessed with harnessing the latest A/V technology to make the real world differences that we all need. He gets to work with incredibly talented people to make this happen, and to quote him, “I love the feelings and memories we can evoke in VR when technology, creativity, and innovation collide.” I love that quote. RiVR’s exhibited at six different VR shows this year, including CES Vegas, and their technology has been reported on by the BBC. To learn more about RiVR, you can visit rivr.uk. Alex, welcome to the show, my friend. Alex: Hi, Alan. Nice to meet you. Nice to speak again. Alan: Yeah. We’ve been kind of back and forth on LinkedIn, and emails, and it’s really finally great to sit down and have a conversation with you. Alex: It is such a busy world, and it’s great to chat in person. Alan: Listen, let’s dive right into this. Explain to us what RiVR is and how it’s making a difference. Alex: RiVR is “Reality in Virtual Reality.” We’ve been creating VR experiences now for probably nearer to three years with the production company, starting back in 2014, but we started obviously with 360 video doing things for Thomson Holidays — you experience what it’s like to be on a cruise ship, or be on a plane. That was three years ago. Then we started moving into the room-scale photogrammetry world, with very much a significant push at RiVR for training, and using photorealism to make sure that the users of our experiences are completely immersed. I often say to people, “I want you to feel like you’re in the world, and not in a Simpsons cartoon world.” It is very much pushing photogrammetry and photo realism into VR. You know, there’s a lot of people doing photogrammetry now, but two, three years ago? It was only of the likes of– Alan: That was you and Simon! Alex: Yeah! [laughs] Me, Simon and Realities.IO. They were the guys that were pushing it. And it really felt like when I saw those early experiences of Realities.IO and Simon’s stuff, it felt like I was inside a video, but not quite? I want to try and be inside video content. I think that– Alan: Let me kind of unpack this fruit for people listening. So, what Alex and his team do is they go into a space, and they will take hundreds of photographs — if not thousands of photographs — of the space, and they’ll convert that into a game engine-based experience, where you can actually walk around. Now, what I think is really mind-blowing about what you guys have done at RiVR is, not only do you create the environment, but then you take specific parts of the environment — for

How does Alex Berman consistently get sales appointments and land deals with billion dollar brands? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Experiment27 Chairman Alex Berman pulls back the curtain on the email strategy he uses to close deals with Fortune 500 companies. From identifying your target audience, to developing an offer and writing cold emails, Alex goes into detail on his campaign blueprint and shares how both he and his clients have used it to win business. Highlights from my conversation with Alex include: If you want to get in front of big brands, Alex recommends that you start by identifying industries where you've had strong performance or a great track record. Then develop a "no brainer offer" for other businesses in that industry. Alex says that enterprise level companies want to see that you've done work with other companies of their size and in their industry. If you can nail those two things, then cracking into big companies becomes much easier. If you don't have a relevant track record, he suggests going after a smaller company in that industry and then gradually working your way up in company size.  Once you have identified the industry you are targeting and you have your no brainer offer, the next step is to build a landing page for it. Alex recommends creating four different variations of the landing page and testing to see which performs best. When it comes time to email the target audience, use a short subject line. Alex says "Quick question" performs best for him. The first sentence of the email is then a custom compliment aimed at the recipient (the emails are one-to-one). Alex has found that adding this in produces 10X the responses. That is then followed by a one sentence case study highlighting work you've done for a similar company in the same industry, and a pitch to meet with the recipient. Start by testing different subject lines with small audiences of 50 to 100 people to see which ones work best. The goal is to get a subject line that has an open rate of 80% or greater. Alex generally strives for a 4% meeting book rate (so, four meetings or every 100 emails sent). Alex likes to test different times for sending emails, but has found in general that Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday at 10 am works best. The strategy that Alex uses works best for companies that sell a product or service valued at $1,000 or more. Below that, Alex says that a company is better off using Facebook ads. The biggest mistakes that companies make when implementing this strategy are outsourcing it, not customizing the emails correctly, and giving up too soon. It can take several tries at testing to land on a really powerful subject line and offer, and the best marketers are the ones that stick with it. Resources from this episode: Visit the Experiment27 website Subscribe to Alex Berman's YouTube channel Check out Alex's Email 10k course Listen to the podcast to get the details on Alex's email campaign blueprint and learn how to use it to close deals with your target prospects. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Alex Berman who is the chairman of Experiment27. Welcome, Alex. Alex Berman (Guest): Thanks for having me, Kathleen. Alex and Kathleen recording this episode together . Kathleen: Yeah you know, I was intrigued to read your background and your profile. It talks about how you help clients get meetings with billion dollar brands. So like, land the big whales, if you will, and I'm really excited to talk to you about that, but before we dig into it, will you just give my listeners a little bit of background on who you are, what you do, and what Experiment27 is? About Alex Berman and Experiment27 Alex: Sure. So Experiment27 is part of a bigger holding company that I run. X27 does "done for you" lead generation. So we help companies match with billion dollar brands, but then we also have Email 10K which is of course where people it for it, or they can do it themselves following the course, and there's also consulting for advanced entrepreneurs, but we just kind of help them with lead generation. So basically, if it has something to do with lead generation in the business to business space, that is my specialty. We've been doing this for almost a decade now, and also I run a YouTube channel where we have I think over 28,000 subs, and all we do is post about free business to business sales training. Kathleen: Oh, I love it. And how did you get to be such an expert in lead gen? Alex: A lot of trial and error. It's the same thing that we talk about ... I mean, it's like any marketing channel where the first time you try lead gen, the first I tried it I tried it all wrong. I was spamming a lot of people. I didn't have the offer down, and what I learned is by sending in small batches and by customizing the messages, it allows you to get a lot more feedback quicker, and if you're able to get feedback quicker, you're able to improve the emails constantly. So the main thing that I teach is it's an iterative process of testing a campaign, sending it out there, seeing what the results are, improving it, and then getting a new list of leads that hasn't seen the previous campaign and testing that optimized campaign with email, and then continuing to improve that over and over again. And what that allows you to do is, one, you can get a bunch of sales with cold email which is really cool, but the other thing it does is it really strengthens your offer. So when you do use inbound, you use social media, you use YouTube like we do, it makes the offer that much more likely to convert. Designing Marketing Campaigns That Target Billion Dollar Brands Kathleen: Hm. So walk me through this. If I am a marketer, and I come to you, and I say, "I'm looking to reach people at these huge companies," the billion dollar brands that you talk about, those can be hard target markets to crack into. Walk me through your process from beginning to end if you're going to do this for me. Alex: Sure. So if you're an established company, the first thing I'm going to do is ask what case studies you have and what sort of companies you've worked with in the past. And from there, what I want to do is try to find patterns. So for instance, a lot of our clients are software as a service businesses or services businesses where, let's say, you had a good case study with a potato chip company like a consumer packaged goods company. Then what we're going to do is create an offer just around that company. I call it a no-brainer offer, and what we want to do is come up with an offer that is so good that people can't say no. For instance, for lead generation which is what I sell, it might be something like we're gonna book ten meetings in the next week with people in your ideal customer base, or we're going to give you the money back. Something like that is what we really want to nail down in an ideal situation, and you could do it across ditches like video production we help some people. Usually it's coming up with either a video idea that they like or their money back or coming up with a list of what the video is going to be like bullet points, an outline. From there, once you have the no-brainer offer, it's writing that in a way that highlights the case study, and we could talk about this in a second what to actually put in that email because it's very similar to what we put in Facebook ads when we do that too. But once you have that no-brainer offer and you frame it in a way that is extremely niche specific, then you test it in the market and see what they say. What I've found is with enterprise companies, what they want to see is ... they want to see you've done work with the companies of their size, and they want to see that you've done work with companies that are very similar, as similar as possible, to them. If you can nail those two things, then you're all set to scale the enterprise. If not, I would not approach someone like a Fortune 500 but instead go after people that are $5+ million in revenue, and then try to get one of those smaller case studies that you can then leverage to get these large enterprises. How To Get Started Kathleen: Okay, so that was going to be my question which is, obviously everybody's got to start somewhere. So, it sounds like what you're saying is you start within the same industry or product service, vertical, but you just start with a smaller firm. Correct? Alex: Exactly. So one mistake that a lot of companies make, even big enterprises, is they don't have marketing that's specific for one vertical. So for instance, let's say you're running a software as a service business and you're crushing it with live events, and you're also crushing it with CPG, or you're also crushing it with retail. They will be sending all three of those customers to the exact same funnel, they exact same website. So one of the things that we focus on is not only separating the marketing, so we'll have three different websites for each of those, or one different website for each one of those verticals. Kathleen: A full website, not just a landing page? Alex: Well, a landing page is basically a website. Kathleen: Or a microsite, a microsite. Okay. Alex: It's like a microsite, it's a one or two page site. Usually it's just a headline, some kind of testimonial, some case studies, and then the contact form. Maybe a breakdown of the services. But yeah, and then it's not just coming up with that, but it's coming up with three or four of those options and then testing all four in the market, seeing which one gets the best response, and then only at that point doubling and tripling down on the marketing. Because a lot of entrepreneurs, they have a theory for what their customer looks like, or they have a theory, even if they've been running a business 10-15 years, they kind of know who their customers are, but they actually haven't done a real analysis and figured out one, who are the customers that will be most successful when using this, and then two, who are the customers that I actually make the most money from? And it's cool to do that analysis and then also compare it to which one of these offers actually gets people to buy most often, and then hopefully you find an overlap there. If not, you need to do more research. Developing An Email Outreach Strategy Kathleen: Okay, so you craft the offer, you develop your case study, and then you're sending ... it sounds like you're starting with an initial email. Is that right? Alex: Yeah. It's normally a short email. We can breakdown what the email says if you want. Kathleen: Yeah, let's do it. I love to get as specific as possible. Alex: Okay. So the first thing that I like to test is the subject line. Normally I'll just say if people are writing their first email from scratch, I would say just go with "quick question" because I've sent over 2 million emails now, and that one still outperforms cross niche. So the highest chance to get an open rate is with "quick question." So sending that as a subject line's good. Then what we do is the first sentence of the email is a custom compliment towards the person's business, and this is not something you can outsource, this is not something that you can kind of fake, especially at the enterprise level. It needs to be a custom compliment, and it sounds something like, "Hey Kathleen, really love your Inbound Success Podcast. Long time listener. Love the interview you did with Alex Berman." Just something like that. Or if it's someone at Sony like, "Hey," director of marketing name, "congrats on the Q4 growth. Loved the latest earnings report." You know, just something that's very specific to their business, and what that does is it gets them to keep reading the next part which is the one sentence case study which usually goes like ... Let's say you are talking to Sony, and you worked with ... Who's a competitor to Sony? Like Hitachi. So that custom compliment. So, "Hey, I really love what you're doing with Sony. Love the Q4 growth. We just wrapped a project with Hitachi where we optimized their entire backend, and we were able to generate a 14% increase in," I don't know like new user engagement or whatever you guys did. "We'd love to do the same for Sony. Are you around for a quick call later this week? Let me know, and I can send over a couple times." Kathleen: You know, and I can serve as a testimonial to the fact that this approach works because all right, I'm going to actually read the email that you sent pitching me for the podcast which totally follows your formula. So the subject line was "Huge fan," and you said, "Hey, Kathleen. Just listened to your interview with Sangram Vajre from Terminus, and I was really impressed with the idea of using AI to fit data and automatically build landing pages and ABM campaigns for prospects." That was the initial compliment line, and then you said, "It would be incredible to come on your show as a guest. I run a YouTube channel with over 23,000 subscribers and have been on more than 100 podcasts including," and then you listed some out. So totally following the format you just described which is awesome. I love that you practice what you preach, and it worked, and I got back to you and said, "Yes!" So there you have it. Alex: Yeah. We practice what we preach because every other way is inefficient. Like okay, what I found is when we started doing the personal lines, when we started doing that we got a ten times increase. I know it takes more time. That might have taken four or five minutes. Like I had to look up that podcast episode, we had to listen to part of the episode and figure out what it was, and then after we booked, I did check out the actual episode so I wasn't lying. That all takes time, for sure, but the response boost is worth it, and the conversion rate increase which you might not even see when you send the emails out, but you'll see it like three, four months later. The number of people that work with you or get you on their podcast or whatever from an email like that is much higher than one of these generic cold emails that people are sending out. Kathleen: Absolutely. Now, you mentioned ... I love that you have this formulaic approach. I mean, it's formulaic, but it's like customized formulaic I would say. It's a blueprint more so than a copy and paste. So you apply this blueprint to the email, and you mentioned sending it out to a smaller group in the beginning. So define small. Alex: Small would be anywhere from ... So you want to make sure you get enough data. I would say a minimum of 50 people, a maximum of 100 people with a pitch like this. And what you want to test is a few things. So for instance, what was the subject line that you just read? Kathleen: Huge fan. Alex: Huge fan, okay. So huge fan might have been iteration number four or five, and the first thing that we're looking for is, and by the way this is all broken down in our course, Email 10K, email10k.com. What we want to do is you want to find the subject line that gets over an 80% open rate. So for instance, for podcasts if you open that, that's amazing. Quick question might have gotten under 80% so that was optimized out. When we were sending to breweries, actually the one that won when we were doing ... It was digital marketing for breweries in the United States, it was a beer emoji, and when we were sending to the entertainment companies like Netflix and TV Land and stuff like that, what was booking meetings was, "I was born to work with HBO," or "I was born to work with your company." Benchmarking Success Alex: So that is found through ... Yeah, just hardcore testing. 100 at a time. That's the first thing you're looking for is ... Well two things you're looking for, one is are people opening the email? You want at least an 80% open rate before you even touch anything else, and then two, are the emails any good? Meaning if you get a super high bounce rate then you're going to want to change the way you're finding leads. Kathleen: Now quick clarifying question on that. So you're testing these subject lines. Are you testing simultaneously different subject lines with different small audiences, or are you testing sequentially? Like, you send one, it doesn't work, you send another one? Alex: Sequentially's usually enough. Because the numbers that we're talking about ... So what you want is an 80% open rate. You want at least a 4% meeting book rate. So every 100 emails, you're getting 4 people signed up. So when you're dealing with numbers like that, it's a little easier to see when things are failing or they're succeeding. You'll be able to see pretty quick because you're either going to get a 14% open rate or like a 30%, or it's going to be 90. Right? And that's ... You're really going for those major win emails. Kathleen: All right. So it sounds like shorter subject lines work really well also. Alex: It completely depends on the niche. What I've found is in some niches, yeah, "quick question" works really well, shorter subject lines work really well, and that's because your custom compliment can be seen. If you look at Gmail or even Outlook, you'll see the subject line, and then you'll see that first line of the email. So if you have even just "Quick Q," which also works pretty well, they see that subject line, but then they also see the first line of the email before they open. So a good first line also will improve open rates. Testing Email Copy Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. So all right, you test this out, you land on a good subject line. You already have the body copy within the email written. Are you testing that as well? Alex: Yeah. So the main thing I want to make sure first is the subject line gets over 80% before we touch anything to do with the body. I would stick to the exact template that we talked about earlier. That's the baseline template, and then from there if 80% of the people are opening, and you're getting ... Usually it's about 20% reply or less, then we're rewriting the body of the email. Usually it's messing around with the case studies or messing around with the personalized compliments. A lot of people when they first start the compliments, they either go too far in one direction. So for instance, if I was sending this email to you and I had pointed out something specific about the Terminus podcast and written this long paragraph to you, the chances that that would work, especially to an enterprise level company, would be very level. But what people are trying to find and what we're trying to find is you want a compliment that's short enough but it's not super creepy. Like, you don't want it to look like you did a crazy amount of research. Kathleen: Yeah, you're stalking them. Alex: Yeah, exactly. But you also don't want it to be too generic. So part of it is finding that balance. How Long To Run Email Tests Kathleen: Now how long do you wait after you send those initial emails out to kind of close the test? Because obviously, I don't know, in my experience I find that some people look at their email right away, and then for other people it could be a day or two, and they might still open it. What's the right amount of time for that? Alex: After seeing hundreds of these campaigns, it's kind of evolved a little bit because I don't want it to say ... Like, the gut feeling is we should wait a couple days on our tests. What I've found is when a campaign works, it works so well that you can tell after like three or four hours. Kathleen: Wow. Alex: Especially if you're sending at the right times. For instance, the best time I've found actually is a couple hours before this. It's like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10:00AM Eastern time is usually the best because it overlaps early morning Pacific, and then the other best time is later in the afternoon. So like 3:00 Pacific so you hit like 3:00-4:00PM Pacific. Kathleen: Okay. Alex: But if you're sending on those times, you should be able to see opens and engages. And then the other thing I'll do sometimes with replies is, and this is a little bit of an advanced tactic, but if someone does reply to your email and you're trying to follow up, you can see when they reply and then queue your followups to go out whenever they're checking their emails. Kathleen: Yeah, there's actually a great platform that we've used called Seventh Sense that does that for you which is pretty cool. It just tracks email open times, and then it develops a personal send time for everybody in your database. It's like magic. Alex: Yeah no, it's sick. Because I just sent 50 followups the other day, and it was crazy. Some people only do emails at like 3:00AM Pacific, or maybe they'll do emails at like midnight. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Alex: You just can't tell. Kathleen: So if you have such a short amount of turnaround time that's necessary to conclude a test, it sounds like you can go through this entire process within a week. Alex: You can, and one of the things that I talk to new entrepreneurs about is especially when you're starting your business or if you have a business for a while and you're trying to find what market is worth investing in for your inbound, I would run 10-20 tests. Just even test different offers and different positions within that. Like before you even deal with optimizing or making sure the subject line works or whatever, stick to that basic template of "quick question" and write an email, and then write 10 different emails for 10 different offers. Like maybe one is selling your company like you only work with chip manufacturers. Or only work with software as a service startups, whatever. Just doing what we talked about with the case studies. Because what I've found is one of those ten, or even two of those ten, are going to blow away all the other tests, and then you only focus on those two. Kathleen: And then you just slightly change the contents to adjust for different industries and roll it out? Alex: The ... Yeah, you change the one sentence case study. So we just worked with this company, and we did this thing. Following Up On The Initial Email Send Kathleen: Okay, great. So I love this format. So is there something that comes after the email iterations, or is that it? That brings in the meetings? Alex: That brings in the ... So there are followups on top of it. One, and I broke all of these down in the course, but one is just like, "Hey, I'm sure you're busy and wanted to make sure this didn't get buried." That's a couple days later. Then the third one is, I call it like the big win. So something like, "Hey, we just had a big win working with this solar manufacturer we did that ..." like basically a second one sentence case study, and then asking them for another call like, "Hey, we'd love to talk. If you're around ..." I always try to end emails with question marks, too. Kathleen: Yeah. Alex: "Would you mind if I sent over a few times for a quick call?" is how I'll usually end them. Or I'll just say, "Let's talk?" Alex's Results Kathleen: Great. You teach this method, you've done this with different clients. Talk me through what kinds of results you've seen, and is it specific to a certain type of business or industry or company size? Alex: Is it specific ... So anyone that sells to people that check their emails. That's ... This is what I like to think about, so- Kathleen: A narrow target audience. Alex: It's narrow ... Well so if you think about it though like some businesses aren't good for this. So for instance what I found is loans or mortgages aren't really good because with those you just have to hit so many people that Facebook ads is a better thing. Used cars is also not a good niche for this. But most of the B2B. Anyone that's selling to manufacturers or anyone that works in an office. Things like that are best for this sort of thing. Revenue size I've found does not matter. We've met with most of the Fortune 500 for our clients and for ourselves, and we've met with smaller ... Like everyone from local businesses up to billion dollar brands this is good for. I try to avoid companies under $5 million in revenue because I mean, I like dealing with people that can actually afford this service. I don't like dealing with local businesses. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. But I guess a local business could presumably take your class or if they heard this they could test out executing it for themselves. They could DIY. Alex: Yeah, for sure. Okay, so what businesses are benefiting from this? Kathleen: Yeah. Alex: I thought you were talking about what businesses are worth selling to. Kathleen: Oh, oh, oh, oh. Yes. Okay, got you. Yes. Alex: So what businesses are benefiting from this? It's usually any sort of business that has a higher ticket. Because this sort of thing like we're talking about, we're personalizing the emails. Every single email, it takes a decent amount of time. So I would say if your cost is under $1,000 per user, it's probably not worth doing this. You should probably do like Facebook ads or something. But if you're selling a service, like my background is selling mobile apps to the enterprise so we're used to selling $100,000 apps, or like $200,000 applications, websites, that sort of stuff, or even a lot of our clients will sell like $25,000 packages, $30,000 packages. Cold email is perfect for those. Kathleen: Great. Okay. So considered purchases, if you will. High dollar value sales. Alex: High dollar value sales, and sometimes they're not considered. I mean, you get the right no-brainer offer. Our initial marketing reviews were $8,500, and we would sell those after a couple weeks, and then that would just go into the retainers. It all depends on the type of client you're going after. Right? Because like for Sony, or for Home Depot or whoever, like $8,500 is very small. Kathleen: Yeah, that is not a considered purchase for them. Very good point. So talk me through the results that your clients are seeing with this, and how long does it take to see those results? Alex: So if you get an email right off the bat ... I actually just saw something in our private Facebook group this morning, some guy sold ... his name was Mark O, he sold $4,500 and then $4,000 off a month like two days after starting, but that's when everything goes perfectly if you get the offer right. If you're willing to put in the time and you're willing to test and you're willing to be wrong 9, 10, 11 times and just keep going back and iterating, I mean it could work pretty quick. It 100% depends on how fast you are, how intuitive you are with the data, and then how much you're willing to actually put into it because a lot of people, they find cold emailing extremely boring, and I did too until ... I had to purposely reframe each email as, "Okay, this email's worth $3. This email's worth $5," like whatever, like I had to reframe it just to get myself to actually work because it is super tedious work. Kathleen: Yeah, but it sounds like it gets easier over time. Alex: It does, and it gets faster. And once you have an offer, it's much better. The hardest part and the thing where you can get stuck for months at a time is trying to find the way that your business should be positioned to get massive amounts of money, and I know it sounds kind of weird, but it's like there is a way to frame any business where it becomes a no-brainer for clients, and then everything else becomes easy. And if you're not at that point where it feels easy and things are like going, until you've been there it's hard to describe it, but there's ... And you'll see it once you get it. There's such a difference between a business that works and a business that just kind of works. Kathleen: Hm. Interesting. Well I love it. 10x improvements like you were talking about are certainly attractive, and the fact that you can do all of this in a week is also very attractive. It's just it sounds like it's really just a matter of time and elbow grease. Alex: Yeah, and if you compare it to something like Facebook ads, like we run Facebook ads as well, and it's a similar strategy where you're filming 10-20 ads and putting budget behind all of them. Those actually take time to get the data in, and it costs money. Right, if you compare it to something like cold email, all that costs is time which for some people is money, but if you're a new entrepreneur and you're not charging like $700 an hour, it's not that much money. Common Mistakes Businesses Make When Targeting Big Brands Kathleen: Yeah. Now what do you see as the most common mistakes that people make when trying to do this? Alex: First most common mistake is they think they can outsource it all, and they don't want to do the customization. I recommend against that, especially in this initial ... the hardest phase, the research phase. Once you have something that works, you can scale pretty easy. They try to outsource too early, too. They customize in the wrong way. A lot of our clients are ... well actually, not a lot of our clients. Some of our clients are international. And so English isn't the greatest for them. Even if they come from like Germany or some Western country. So framing that compliment in a way that doesn't come off as like too crazy is actually something that I struggle with a lot with our coaching clients. That's number two. And then number three would be giving up too soon. And actually giving up too soon/settling too soon. Because you might try three tests, and like test one and test two book zero meetings, and then test three books two meetings. Then you might be like, "oh, I'm going to put my entire business onto test three," when really if you had tested like four or five more times, you might have sent an email that got eight meetings. Kathleen: Yeah. How do you know when to stop testing? Alex: So I would never stop testing. I know even with our ... so with the course part of our business, we spend 30% of our revenue on research and development. So just testing new ads and doing all that stuff outside of scale. I would never stop testing. It's always surprising. What we saw our add to cart cost go from $100 to $6 this week just by testing a new series of ads. Kathleen: Wow. That's crazy. Alex: Right? You can only get those improvements by constantly throwing stuff out there and seeing what works. Kathleen: Yeah. Very cool. And I love how specific you've been just in terms of sharing guidance on the actual wording of subject lines that works and the wording of some of the emails. It's really helpful. If somebody wants to try this, how do you recommend narrowing down your list? Because a lot of the people I know ... You said send it to 50 or 100 people. A lot of the people I know have lists that are much larger than that. Is it just literally a matter of, "All right, I'm going to export this list of 10,000 people, and I'm just going to take the first 100," or is there some other way ... Do you start with like a certain subpopulation? Alex: So what I would do is if you have an inbound list, I would actually ignore it for now. So you have marketing that works for your inbound list, right? Keep that going. What I would actually do is go over to Upwork or go over to LinkedIn and just start making lists of your ideal clients. I would send 100 cold. I would make a list of these people cold instead of going through the people that are subscribed. Because what you want is you test with the cold traffic where you can quickly iterate, and then once you have something that's working with those cold people, then you can take it back to your main list, and you know it'll work versus burning your main list on an offer that may or may not be okay. Kathleen: Do you have any concerns around if somebody does that, jeopardizing their sender score just because people hitting spam or what have you? Alex: Yeah, so normally ... And actually if you "Alex Berman how to avoid the spam box," on YouTube, I broke it down. But normally I'll recommend starting with a brand new domain for cold email, and then you warm it up over like two weeks. You subscribe to some newsletters, you make it seem like a normal email, and actually I would have a different domain for your cold emails, a different domain for your inbound like your email list emails, and a third domain ... actually even a third and fourth domain. Like third domain for cold ad traffic lists, right just in case, because spam is an issue there. And even a fourth domain for just customer communication. That way you protect everything. You keep it all super segmented. Kathleen: Does that get really confusing? Alex: Not for me. I mean, for our ads we've got like alex@X27.io, like alex@X27Marketing.com is our other list. alex@Experiment27.com. It's all pretty easy. Kathleen: And I'm assuming they all redirect at some point to...? Alex: They all redirect ... Yeah they all go to my normal inbox. Kathleen: Okay, got you. Very helpful. All right. Alex: It's a good way to protect your sender score there. Because what you'll also do is a lot of times if you want to test a bunch of different cold email campaigns also, you might, and what I make people consider a lot is you might want to buy a domain for each one of these different niches as well, and then that domain will just redirect to a website that's specific for that niche. The Impact of GDPR Kathleen: Do you worry at all with European like GDPR rules and the increasing focus on doing something similar in the US, do you worry at all that that approach is going to get tougher to use because cold emailing will begin to become disallowed essentially under regulations? Alex: If it's illegal, I recommend not doing it. What I've found is there's always a place for a personalized compliment. The personalizing the emails thing is ... that's what increases our response rate, and it's also what takes it out of the spammy territory. We're not sending messages to 10,000 people. We're not robocalling. It's nothing crazy like that. But I would ... Yeah, if you're in like ... Especially if you're in Europe or the UK or Canada or Australia, definitely consult a lawyer before working with someone like us or doing anything related to this. Kathleen: Yeah, it is getting- Alex: As far as I know, in America it's totally good so far except for maybe California is a little iffy right now. Kathleen: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. But it's interesting the direction everything's heading. It'll be interesting to see where it goes. Okay. Well- Alex: It will be, but it's not like these go away. You can use these same strategies ... Once you get this testing strategy down, you can use it for Facebook ads, you can use it for cold LinkedIn messages. You can use it for text messages. You can use it at events just like testing your elevator pitch at events. It's all the same kind of thing. Just taking words and trying to test the way that you're phrasing things to find ... it's almost unlocking a lock. You want to find a way of wording your business that gets people to buy. How To Learn More About Alex's Strategy Kathleen: Yeah. I love all of this. You've mentioned a couple things like you have a course and you have a YouTube channel. Can you say a few words about if somebody's intrigued and wants to learn more, where they can go to find more information? Alex: Sure. If you want us to do this for you, I would actually just start at the YouTube channel, AlexBerman.com will go right to the YouTube channel, and if you do want to learn this kind of stuff, it's Email10K.com, that's the course. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Okay, love it. Now, we can't finish up this interview without me asking you the two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one being we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular person or company that you think is really just killing it right now with inbound? Alex: Really killing it with inbound. I'm actually not ... I haven't been impressed with very many people when it comes to inbound. Even the greats, I don't know if they're testing or what they're doing, but I see a lot of weird stuff. Kathleen: Oh yeah? Alex: Who have I really ... I actually like Russell Brunson, what he's been doing with his ad strategies, and he runs a SaaS. It doesn't even seem like it. He's selling a software as a service, but he's selling it like an info product. There's some real next level stuff that Russell Brunson's doing. Kathleen: Oh, I'll have to check him out, and I will share his name and the link to his stuff in the show notes. Alex: He does a two week free trial, and then it's only like $150 a month for his software, and somehow he's been able to frame his thing in a way where it appeals to B2B, it appeals to entrepreneurs, and it appeals to ... He's going after like people that are selling multilevel marketing. He's got everything down in terms of how he's framing his thing. Kathleen: Interesting. I can't wait to check that one out. Second question, the biggest kind of complaint I hear from marketers is that digital is changing so quickly. There's so much to keep up with. It's like drinking from a fire hose. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated on latest developments? Alex: So this sounds kind of counterintuitive, but what I've found is if you stick to the basics and you just try to get like those fundamentals right, everything comes into play. So for instance, when I was getting into Facebook ads, all I had to do was take the offer that I knew worked and put it in general targeting, and then the Facebook AI figured out what it was because we knew the offer worked. Same with YouTube videos. We just have to create content, and it'll find an audience because our offer system. So I think if you create a product that people want, and you phrase it in a way that is very hard to say no to, you'll win, and it doesn't matter if you're at an event or if cold emails get banned, or like cold calling doesn't work anymore. None of that will matter if you can crack that, and then number two is just go where your customers are. I've gotten a surprising amount of work off of Instagram recently. Like to the point where I barely even use LinkedIn anymore. Kathleen: Wow. Alex: But that just comes down to who my target audience is, right? I'm going after younger people now, especially for this course offer, and they're mostly on Instagram versus when I was going after office workers ... Actually, all the office workers are on email versus any of the other social media channels. So I honestly, I don't worry about that at all. Kathleen: That's great. You have figured something out, then, because the vast majority of the other folks I talk to stress about it a lot, so there's definitely a lesson to be learned on the approach that you're taking. Alex: Ooo, okay. So I actually did figure this out. So if you want to figure out where your clients are, write a super targeted Facebook ad and put like $100 in it, and what'll happen is you put no targeting in. The way that Facebook works now is they'll find buyers, and what I've found there is not only will they find out who your ideal buyer is, for instance one of our ads is targeting ... it's converting really good with women between ages 25-65+ which is crazy, and then one of our other ads is only for men which is great, but the main thing that I've found was if you go to placements, it'll tell you exactly where your ads are converting. So for instance, some of our ads do really well on Facebook. Actually, one of my consulting clients was only selling on Instagram. Like hard pitching Instagram, and when we did this ad test we found out a bunch of his people were on Facebook, and he went out and did the same cold pitching on Facebook, and it was like 10-20 minutes, and he already had a bunch of leads coming in. So that's another easy way to find it out. Kathleen: Yeah, you know it's interesting you bring that up because I found that too that paid ads in general are the fastest way to test messaging because you instantly can see what's working and what's not. Alex: Yeah, exactly. You can test messaging there, you can test placements, and then the way that Facebook ... Facebook's getting so smart in terms of their machine learning. So it'll give you data you didn't even know you had. The ad that I wrote, I had no idea it would appeal ... The one that hits women, I think it was getting add to carts for like $10 for $1,000 course which is crazy, but for men it was $16 with the same ad. So I had no idea. Kathleen: Which is still reasonable, but $10's better than $16 every day. Alex: Exactly. Especially when you're comparing it to ... I was at $100 before. Kathleen: Oh, that's great. Alex: But no, you have no idea. It's only the machine learning that taught me that this type of ad works for this market. Kathleen: Yeah, it's crazy what Facebook can do now. It's a little scary sometimes, but it's also really cool. Alex: Yeah. How To Connect With Alex Kathleen: Great. Well if somebody wants to connect with you, has a question, wants to learn more, how can they reach out to you? Alex: Best way to talk to me is to grab the course, Email10K.com. I'm in the Facebook group right now. It's unlimited consulting. If you do just want to like, talk for free, I would go to the YouTube channel. AlexBerman.com will go there. And just leave a comment. I'm usually in there. You Know What To Do Next... Kathleen: Okay. Great. I'll put those links in the show notes, and if you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, of course I would really appreciate it if you would leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That goes a long way to getting the podcast in front of other listeners like yourself who could find value, and if you know somebody doing kickass Inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thanks, Alex. Alex: Thanks.

XR technologies are undeniably a leap forward in humankind’s mechanical evolution. But our brains – the way they work – haven’t quite evolved in pace with them, so XR solutions are hardly solutions at all unless they work within the confines of how we think and react. Alex Haque of LumiereVR waxes philosophical about how to design XR with that in mind. Alan: Today’s guest is Alexander Haque, the founder of RetinadVR, whose mission was to help pioneer virtual and augmented reality through powerful data. RetinadVR was acquired recently by LumiereVR, in July 2018. Alex is now the COO for LumiereVR, which is bringing quality VR content to the masses through masterful curation and distribution. You can learn more about Alex and Lumiere by visiting LumiereVR.com. Alex, welcome to the show. Alex: Hey, thank you so much for having me, Alan. Pleasure to be here. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. Alex: Yeah, thanks for having me. You’re one of my favorite LinkedIn personalities, and a fellow Canadian! So I’m excited to talk shop with you. Alan: Canadians are taking over the VR scene in a big way. It’s really exciting. The purpose of this podcast is to provide as much value to businesses and business owners and people in companies that are looking to explore and expand on virtual and mixed reality and augmented reality, and figure out how these technologies can be used for them. So, perhaps let’s just take a look back at RetinadVR; what you guys were doing there, and what led you to what you’re doing now. Alex: Right. Yeah. It’s a great jump off point. So RetinadVR actually got started in Montreal in 2014. Our mission was, as you said at the beginning, was to bring VR analytics and data to virtual reality. And what I mean by that is understanding these new data points that can be interpreted from a VR headset. And what we found is, understanding people’s movement in VR is something that we can actually grab from a headset. And then translating that into actionable insights was basically the mission of the entire company for the last three years, up until the acquisition. And things are very much still along that path, but a little bit more, I guess, pigeon-holed into Lumiere -pecific use cases for right now. Alan: So maybe talk about Lumiere and what you guys are doing there. I know you’ve done a recent project with synchronizing a ton of headsets at a fairly famous location. I’ll let you talk to that. Alex: So we did about 250 VR headsets, all synced up from Madison Square Garden for LumiereVR, which brings that enterprise software to large venues and media entertainment folks. MSG is a really good use case; museums, aquariums, science centers, planetariums — those are really good places where VR lives, [and] is complementary to an existing exhibit. The example with Madison Square Garden, for instance, was they have a 90-minute tour within the venue. So, a lot of people don’t actually know this — I think the international community knows this little bit more — Madison Square Garden, I think, is in the top five or top 10 most-visited, most iconic places in New York City. And I didn’t know this, being obviously, a Canadian hockey fan. I thought you just show up to Madison Square Garden — a great, beautiful venue — and you enjoy concert or a game, and you go home. But apparently what you could do is, they have off-hours visits throughout the day that are 90 minutes that are called the All Access Tour. And they show you the history of this is where Mohammad Ali boxed. This is where goalie Henrik Lundqvist for the New York Rangers, here’s his, like, million-dollar Swarovski 10-

XR technologies are undeniably a leap forward in humankind’s mechanical evolution. But our brains – the way they work – haven’t quite evolved in pace with them, so XR solutions are hardly solutions at all unless they work within the confines of how we think and react. Alex Haque of LumiereVR waxes philosophical about how to design XR with that in mind. Alan: Today’s guest is Alexander Haque, the founder of RetinadVR, whose mission was to help pioneer virtual and augmented reality through powerful data. RetinadVR was acquired recently by LumiereVR, in July 2018. Alex is now the COO for LumiereVR, which is bringing quality VR content to the masses through masterful curation and distribution. You can learn more about Alex and Lumiere by visiting LumiereVR.com. Alex, welcome to the show. Alex: Hey, thank you so much for having me, Alan. Pleasure to be here. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. Alex: Yeah, thanks for having me. You’re one of my favorite LinkedIn personalities, and a fellow Canadian! So I’m excited to talk shop with you. Alan: Canadians are taking over the VR scene in a big way. It’s really exciting. The purpose of this podcast is to provide as much value to businesses and business owners and people in companies that are looking to explore and expand on virtual and mixed reality and augmented reality, and figure out how these technologies can be used for them. So, perhaps let’s just take a look back at RetinadVR; what you guys were doing there, and what led you to what you’re doing now. Alex: Right. Yeah. It’s a great jump off point. So RetinadVR actually got started in Montreal in 2014. Our mission was, as you said at the beginning, was to bring VR analytics and data to virtual reality. And what I mean by that is understanding these new data points that can be interpreted from a VR headset. And what we found is, understanding people’s movement in VR is something that we can actually grab from a headset. And then translating that into actionable insights was basically the mission of the entire company for the last three years, up until the acquisition. And things are very much still along that path, but a little bit more, I guess, pigeon-holed into Lumiere -pecific use cases for right now. Alan: So maybe talk about Lumiere and what you guys are doing there. I know you’ve done a recent project with synchronizing a ton of headsets at a fairly famous location. I’ll let you talk to that. Alex: So we did about 250 VR headsets, all synced up from Madison Square Garden for LumiereVR, which brings that enterprise software to large venues and media entertainment folks. MSG is a really good use case; museums, aquariums, science centers, planetariums — those are really good places where VR lives, [and] is complementary to an existing exhibit. The example with Madison Square Garden, for instance, was they have a 90-minute tour within the venue. So, a lot of people don’t actually know this — I think the international community knows this little bit more — Madison Square Garden, I think, is in the top five or top 10 most-visited, most iconic places in New York City. And I didn’t know this, being obviously, a Canadian hockey fan. I thought you just show up to Madison Square Garden — a great, beautiful venue — and you enjoy concert or a game, and you go home. But apparently what you could do is, they have off-hours visits throughout the day that are 90 minutes that are called the All Access Tour. And they show you the history of this is where Mohammad Ali boxed. This is where goalie Henrik Lundqvist for the New York Rangers, here’s his, like, million-dollar Swarovski 10-

Alex Charfen is one of the very select few coaches I continually plug into...    I have wanted to get this individual on here for quite some time, and Alex Charfen has been one of the reasons why my stuff is blowing up so much.    I have learned that I need to listen to less people, and I'm very, very picky on those that I choose to dive deeply with…   So for marketing and sales, I've really dove deep with Russell, (obviously) and you all know that.    For systems and business systems, I've dove very deeply with Alex Charfen... he's the other coach that I pay a lot to and listen to as well.    ...and I have other various ones that are very carefully selected... and I don't listen to ANYBODY else!    I'm extremely careful about the content that I consume - so that I can spend most of my time just moving, rather than gathering MORE information…   ... which I don't think many of us need more of.    So anyway, I'm excited for you guys to understand more of why Alex Charfen, for me, has been so key…   So I asked him to come on the show and to teach a little bit more about the systems that all businesses need, regardless of whatever you're in.    A lot of these are the systems that a brand new entrepreneur needs when they finally get that revenue coming in.    ...and then there are systems that he creates for those who have an existing business and are ready to scale.    Alex answers the questions…     How do you know if you should be scaling or not?        What are the five reasons why most companies fail to scale?     If you guys like this interview, please reach out to him, (he did not need to do this) and say “Thank You!”    At the very end, we have a special little thing for you, and so we're excited!    Boom, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, welcome back to Sales Funnel Radio - we're really excited to have you guys here.    I'm with one of my good friends, who's become an amazing friend and definitely a mentor... I would call and consider him a brother as well.    I want to introduce everybody to Alex Charfen.   Before I really bring Alex on, I just want you all to understand, Alex Charfen was one of the guys that helped me understand why I am who I am... and that, it’s okay… and helped me lean into that.    I talk to you a lot about leaning into your obstacles, leaning into those things that have been crappy in your life…    … because they end up becoming your superpower.    You all know my story of going to the first Funnel Hacking Live, Alex Charfen was one of the first speakers, and I took so many notes…    I ran back home, I showed my wife and she goes "That's why you act the way you do?" And I was like "YES, it's because of this guy!”    He had a crazy deep gravelly voice and I loved it. He was the man!" ...and I'm so excited to bring him on the show here:   Guys, please welcome Alex Charfen, “How you doing, man?”   ALEX: Steve, it is so good to be here with you, man. Thank you, and I echo your sentiments completely, and I consider you a brother as well, man.   STEVE: Oh thank you so much, thank you so much.    You know it was like two weeks ago;  me and my wife were chatting about your material and going on through it, and she goes "Oh yeah, I have to remember this is how your brain kind of works."    I was like, "Really naturally, yeah! You should really know that" so we'll go back through your stuff.   You know, I've got that Capitalist Pig shirt that I wear all the time, but I really want one that just says, "Charfen will explain," or something like that, you know what I mean?    That should be the next shirt…   So much of what I do in this world just is NOT explainable without you.   ALEX: Yeah, it's unique, you know, Stephen…    I think when you characterize it that way, so much of what you do is different than what anybody in the world would ever expect... and that's what I've found from the day I met you.    I think I walked up to you and said something like:    "Hey man, I think we should talk. You're a really unique entrepreneur and I don't think you understand just how unique."   STEVE: I remember you said that.   ALEX: Or something like that.   STEVE: Yeah I remember, and I felt like, you know in the Matrix when he's talking to that lady with the spoon bend... I felt like I was talking to her, and I was like:    "What does he see in me? What are you looking at?" You know, and "Please dissect me!"    So anyway, I really am pumped for you to be here and just massive incredible love.    You have to understand, your name; it's NOT just a noun, it’s a verb in my vocabulary.    People are like "How did you do that?” "I just Charfenized it, baby!"    I say ‘Charfenation’ all the time.    I was hanging out with the other ‘Charfenites.’    I'm going over the ‘Charfenation.’    "How did you do that?" “Oh, I ‘Charfenized’ it, baby!”   Anyways, you're very much a verb in my vocabulary, and with my family... so it's really quite an honor to have you on, it really is.   ALEX: Thank you Stephen, it's an honor to be here man, this is awesome.   STEVE: This is really cool. Well hey, I wanna just start right out and just, I wanted to ask…    My audience has heard a lot about you. I've talked about you a lot because there’s so much that ‘veI learned.   Just recently, I was going through some of my old notes, from two years ago, from one of your events, and I was like "Gosh, you're so right, this is so cool!"    It really has created additional leverage for what I'm trying to do.   It works, it's real, and I want everyone to listen to this and listen to what Alex has to say here.   Understand that *this* is how I've been doing what I’m doing.   I learned marketing and a lot of sales from Russell... but how to have a life, systemize, and make my business an asset from Alex Charfen.    So, anyway, could you just tell us how you got into this? 'Cause I know you weren't always…   I mean I call  it entrepreneurial optimization, I mean it's really what you do - it's not just the systems, but like:    I'm wearing glasses now   I'm drinking more water than I ever have in my life    I'm doing all sorts of stuff I never would do, because of you    How did you get into this?   ALEX: - You know Stephen, I think if the question is, "How did I become an entrepreneur?”    I didn't find entrepreneurship, it found me.    This was really the only thing I ever felt comfortable doing in my life.    Ever since I was a little kid, I was always the kid that was different than everybody else, crazy socially awkward, like what you see today…    I don't try to be socially awkward, it's just natural.    I was always different than the other kids   I didn't really get along   I had trouble in school   All the systems in the world told me I was broken.    … and then, when I was eight years old, my family went through kind of a financial downturn; my father lost a company.    He didn't go bankrupt, but he went really close, and to make money for the family we were selling stuff in a swap meet on the weekends.    I remember going to the swap meet for the first time and standing behind a folding card table, and a woman walked up, and I sold her a pen that had an LCD clock in it…    (Like that was big time for 1981 or whatever or '78 or '79, or whatever it was).   Stephen I can remember thinking at that moment, "Holy crap, I'm good at this. This is something I'm NOT terrible at."    … because up until that point, I really hadn't found anything where it was like, "Hey, that was good."  It was always’ "Almost got it, kid. You don't suck as bad as you did yesterday."    I was the kid who consistently got *MOST IMPROVED* all the time, 'cause it's the award you give to ‘the kid who sucked the worst!’   And when that woman walked up, it was like "Hey, this is something I can do over and over again."    And the more that I worked with my Dad, and the more that I experienced business, I loved it.   The world is so random, but when you get into the world of business there are rules.   …. there's an outcome.    People are in it together, and you actually have to work together to accomplish and achieve.   …  if everybody cares about the outcome, it'll happen.    And so *this* is where I feel comfortable.    You know, it's funny, when I was a kid I used to create businesses, create business plans,  write out time cards and all this other stuff, and as an adult, I thought that was like ‘the weirdest thing.’    I would reflect back and think like, "Man, I was such a weird kid."    Now, that's exactly what my daughters do.    My daughter this morning was at the kitchen table for three hours writing out a schematic for a water park she wants to build one day.   STEVE: Wow!   ALEX: And you are who you are, and I think, from the very beginning, this is who I've been.   STEVE: That's amazing, and when did you decide to make a business around this and go actually help other entrepreneurs, like myself, who need these systems?   ALEX: Well, the business that I have today, we started…    So let me give you a little brief history.   So in my twenties, I was a consultant, and you know, a lot of people ask about that.    I did some consulting at a very high level at the Fortune 500 level...    I built a very large business that almost killed me.    And so I can tell the story really good...    I can give you all the highlights and make it sound great:   $250,000,000 company   I've worked with Fuji and TDK and Memorex and Logitech, and all international business.    Or I can tell you the other side of that coin…    I had a $250,000,000 company   I made less than $2,000,000 a year    my margins were razor thin   I had a bleeding ulcer   I was probably over 300 pounds    STEVE: Wow.   ALEX: And so when I got out of that business, I wanted to do something completely different.    So in my early thirties, I got into real estate, and we were taken out by the real estate market in 2007.    Cadey and I introduced our first information product, and that's how we got into this world.   We created a product called the Certified Distressed Property Expert Designation.    In 2007 we were bankrupt, we introduced our product at the end of the year:  In 2008 we did $500,000 in sales   The next year we did $7,000,000   The next year we did $10,000,000   Over the course of the life of that product, we did about $70,000,000    We went from bankruptcy to liquid millionaires in a year.    In 2013, the US Treasury came to our office and did a broadcast with us, where they said that, according to their research…    Our company had pulled forward the foreclosure crisis five to seven years   ….so it was intense.   STEVE: Oh, yeah...   ALEX: Really intense!   And what happened was, right around 2011…    A lot of our clients who were buying our product wanted help growing their business; so I took all of the stuff that I used to use as a consultant; the systems and structure Cadey and I used to run our business, and we started training it.    And so since 2011, we've been training it in classes/ courses.   In 2017, we started the products that we have today. So now we have :   An entry-level coaching program called Billionaire Code Accelerator - for people who are doing over 300k a year   A high-level coaching program called The Billionaire Code Grow and Scale - for people doing over 3,000,000 a year.    STEVE: That's awesome! That's so cool.   ALEX: Yeah it is the most fun I've ever had, Stephen…   It's like every day, I wake up and here's what I get to do:    I get to play in this playground with game-changing entrepreneurs that are starting businesses that are doing things that are just unreal.    ...and our systems, our structures are kind of the backbone for how they're doing things.    So on a daily basis, me and everyone on my team, wake up knowing that we are helping the game-changers change the world, and we recruit people who want to do that…    We recruit for people who are passionate about our mission…   Everyone on my team feels like their life's mission is being fulfilled through being in this business right now.    It's the greatest thing I've ever done.   STEVE: That's incredible, and I can tell everyone else who's listening and watching this now, it's exactly as he says it.    I think I've been to three of your events now, and they have just been life-changing.    I go through and it gives structure to the idea, but then, also, how I behave against the idea. So I can actually go in and breathe; I can live.    I watched my Dad create this awesome company when I was a young boy, but it took him too.   But everyone does that, it's super natural - so you to go in and…    Remove the entrepreneur   Create systems    Create processes and procedures, and people that actually push forward their vision even further.   ... it's incredible.    I know it's not magical, but it feels magical, to me! I'm like "Oh my gosh!"    I've actually had a tab open with your course open for like the last month and I'll just dive into another video, and I'm like "Oh my gosh! Back to the drawing board, that was so good!"    And I go back to it again and again and again... it's just always up, everybody who's listening to me, it's always up.    That's really what's teaching me how to run a company, rather than ‘me’ being the company, and I've loved that.    *Just so powerful*    I wanted to ask you kind of a key question here, and it's a question that I get asked a lot...    People come through my programs, I'll help them make money. They go and make a lot of cash, and it's awesome... but then after that, like what do you do?   What are the first systems that you find that new entrepreneurs with a sizeable amount of cash should actually go create first?    What are those first few moves?   ALEX: You know I think I definitely want to share a couple of systems Stephen, but first, I want to just share a thought process. ..and this is a tough thought process for most entrepreneurs to take on, and it's interesting 'cause I've watched you go through this shift too, right? '   Cause at the beginning, (and I just want everyone to know)...    When I met Stephen Larsen, he was ready to take on the entire world solo!   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: Like all alone, right?    And here's the thought process…    After you start making money, the next thing to ask yourself is:    How do I sustain this?    How do I make it real?    How do I make it last a long time?   How do I make it so that I'm not the only driver here?   when you get to the point where the momentum you're creating on your own isn't enough, and believe me, we all get there...    Like I know that if you're watching me, watching Stephen, you're one of those entrepreneurs... and in the back of your mind, you have this crazy voice that has always told you:    You're meant for more   You're gonna do more   You're gonna change the world   You're gonna make a massive impact   ... and if you've always felt that, then there's a shift you have to make in your thinking.    Because here's the issue for people like us; I call it the Entrepreneurs Dilemma.    For people like us…    We need far more help than the average person to reach our full destination, but any request for help or support that we have to make, leaves us feeling vulnerable and exposed.    Stephen, you with me?   STEVE: Yes, yes, yes, yes, 100%!   ALEX: And so here's the shift…   We have to realize that if we're gonna change the world, that is a group activity, and leadership's a contact sport.    So we have to wake up to the fact that when we start to:    Build a team   Create a structure   Pour into the people around us    Invest in those people   Make them important   Build relationships with them   …. we will build the company that we have always wanted.    That's the only way it's ever been done.  The myth of the solopreneur who's changed the world is a myth - it's a joke.   STEVE: So true   ALEX: It's one of the most damaging things out there in the entrepreneurial world today.    Because the fact is…    Show me anyone that looks like they changed the world on their own, and I will show you a massive team behind them.   STEVE: So true!    There's this idea that gets pushed around now, and it's like, “I'm gonna go and be this person that does all this stuff. I'm the gift to the world...”   ...and it's like “Okay….” but you can't do that on your own.    In the last six months, I have begun to experience and feel burn-out.   ALEX: Yeah.   STEVE: I have never in my life experienced that, and it's been hard.  The only way I've been able to create leverage is by listening to what you say and create those teams.   ALEX: Yeah. Well then, Stephen, that's the thing…    Here's the deal I want everybody to understand this:   If you're an entrepreneur, you have a job, and that job is to…    Stay out of burn-out   Lower pressure and noise in your life   Increase the protection and support that you have around you.    Because if you don't work with that equation to constantly lower the noise and increase the support, lower the noise, increase the support…    Here's what ends up happening…     You are in an equation that doesn't work.    … and it's not like anyone can come and argue against me here because this is like gravity.    This is like you know the facts of life, this is like taxes. We're all gonna pay 'em. There's no way to argue against this, you're going to lose.    And so in that situation, as an entrepreneur, you have to be really cautious about doing too much yourself, and about loading yourself up, because here's our instinct…    (You know you have this, I have this, we all have it.)    If there's something to be done, the first thought we have is, “How do I just get it done without telling anyone else,” right? Oh yeah!   STEVE: Yeah   ALEX: And it's like "I'm gonna conquer!"   STEVE: Freedom baby!   ALEX: We forget that humans are tribal animals, man.    We are all terrible at most things. Let's get real…    If you're good at a lot of things then you have a liability because you're not gonna be able to choose what you shouldn't do.    I'm very fortunate, I suck at most everything, and that's like an honest reality.    Anyone on my team will tell you like "Oh man, don't let Alex fill out a form, use the calendar, "send emails. We keep him out of all of our systems."    Seriously my team actually knows when I have a password for a system and they monitor me using it, 'cause I'm so bad at that stuff.    But on that same token, I know what I'm good at.    I'm good at vision    I'm good at where we're gonna go   I'm good at putting the frameworks together    I'm good at assembling a team   … and by doing those things, we can grow a massive organization and have a massive impact.   So for every entrepreneur, the key is to figure out what you're good at and do that to the exception of everything else   ... and it's the hardest thing you'll ever do as an entrepreneur.    Here's why…   The second you start doing that you feel like you're being egotistical. You feel like you're being self-serving.    But here's the fact:    When you drive your business to get easier for you it will grow like crazy.   But driving your business to get easier for you will feel like you're doing the wrong thing.    It happens all the time.   There's a discussion right now on our Facebook group, one of the CEOs in our group made a post, and I'm paraphrasing, but she said something like :   "As I offload and reduce discomfort and get a team around me, I'm feeling less and less significant, am I doing this right?"   And my answer was "Yes! You're absolutely doing this right. That's exactly how it's gonna feel!"    Because we need to attach significance to the total contribution, NOT to your day-to-day activities.   STEVE: Mmmm, that's powerful.    You know it's funny I was It reminds me of …   You know when I first got to ClickFunnels, it was just he and I. There wasn't like a copywriter, a videographer... it was just he and I!    So we did every single role in getting these funnels out, occasionally there was an exception where he'd go "Oh someone's really good at X, Y, and Z,"  but then, by the time I left...   ALEX: - Probably design or something… but everything else was you guys?   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right! I knew enough Indesign and Photoshop, I was the one doing it most of the time... and doing first copy rounds, and it like, it was nuts!    But by the time I left, it was funny because he had started implementing these types of things.    I remember watching him during these funnel launches just laying on the floor, bored out of his mind.    I've never seen him like that in my life, and he was almost going to a state of depression. He was like "I'm not needed in my own thing now. Ah no-one needs me anymore."    It's a funny thing to realize, we're just the orchestrators. We don't play all the instruments.   ALEX: We shouldn't, we shouldn't.    And so, you know, back to your question about what systems should an entrepreneur start looking at?   Now, I'm gonna talk high level, and I wanna share...    You and I are really close friends, and I wanna share the most critical content we have for entrepreneurs with your group.   STEVE: I appreciate that.   ALEX: This is what we normally share internally once somebody joins our program…    We share the five things that keep companies from scaling.    The reality is, there are really five things that keep companies that should scale, from scaling.    And here's what I mean ‘companies that should scale…’    You know, if you go talk to most consultants, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers, whatever, they'll give you this laundry list of why companies don't scale:    They didn't have enough money   They didn't have the right people   They didn't do all of these things   The reality is, if you look at most companies that should scale, there are five clear reasons why they don't…    So let me share them with you, but let me give you this caveat…    Here's what I mean by "should scale..."    If you've got a market    If you're capable of selling   If you could do more    If you know you're leaving money on the table   …. you should be scaling.   If those things aren't there for you right now, go resolve that and then start scaling.  Far too many people try and scale before they actually have all the steps in place.    Then you just build infrastructure that does nothing.   So let me tell you what the five things are...    #1: So number one, first and foremost, absolutely most crucial, is…      Most businesses don't have any type of strategic plan.     So as a result, there's no go-forward strategy, and here's what happens in a business when you don't have a go-forward strategy.    If you don't know where you're going, neither does your team   ... neither does anybody around you   And so you will, by virtue of math, become the biggest bottleneck in the company.    Here's why…    If there's no forward plan where all of us can point at and go get it and help you chase it down, every time we want to know what to do we have to ask you, and we have to go to you... and it's a death of a thousand paper cuts.    You're literally in a place where you're:    Telling people what to do   Checking that it got done   Telling them what to do again.    And if you've ever been in that situation as an entrepreneur, you know that somebody only has to ask you twice before you're ready to flip out and lose it.    Am I right Stephen?   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, usually once.   ALEX: Once, right, right, but by the second time you're like "Are you kidding me?"    And so the way we get past that is we create a clear strategic plan, we share it with our entire team…   ... and if the team knows where they're going, here's what happens.    I want you to understand something about the people coming to work for you.  If you're in a small business, you're hiring entrepreneurs.   I know that there's this saying in the market, "You're either an entrepreneur or you work for one."    I call complete and total BS - don't even bring that crap around me.   STEVE: Yeah!   ALEX:    Every person on my team is an incredibly talented, hyper-motivated, world-changing entrepreneur, they just choose to be part of a team.   And so you're gonna hire entrepreneurs, and the way you keep entrepreneurs absolutely and totally focused and excited, is you show them what they're hunting, you give them the kill.    You say:    Here's our plan   This is what we're doing   This is how you win.    And if you hire the right people, they will walk over hot glass to get to that destination for you.   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: But if they don't know where it is, you're gonna demotivate them and completely de-leverage them.    So number one, you have to have a strategic plan.    In my experience, less than 1% of businesses do. Also, less than 1% of businesses ever hit $100,000,000. In fact only 3% ever hit 1,000,000.   STEVE: Jesus. ALEX: So when you look at that, it's not 1% of businesses that hit 100,000,000, 0.01% of businesses ever hit 100,000,000,  and the reason is...    Most businesses don't know where they're going.    And Stephen, by you having the tools to build a strategic plan in your business, hasn't it changed how you approach things?   STEVE: Oh gosh, you guys remember when I tell you those stories of I left my job...    I created 200 grand of revenue really quick but there were no systems   I was the…    Support guy    Fulfillment guy   Sales guy.    I did every role, and I voluntarily, very painfully, had to turn down revenue to go build these structures.    And I want you all to know, it was Alex Charfen's stuff that helped me go in and actually set those systems in place... and so, please understand my affinity for this man and what he does.   About halfway through the year, I was only at like 300 - 400 grand, which is pretty good, but that last huge sprint came in because of the things that Alex Charfen and his team were teaching me.    All those planning things that I use, and all the things that I've just lightly mentioned, they've all come from Alex Charfen, and it helped scale me.   ALEX: That's awesome Stephen... Man, that makes me so proud.   This is so cool! Like there's only one Stephen Larsen in the world, and I told you that the first day I met you…    I'm like, "Dude you are completely and totally unique and I think I can help you build the company you really want."   STEVE: Yeah, you said   ALEX: And for us to be sitting here, and for you to say that, I got chills Stephen, that's so awesome. Thank you, man!   STEVE: Oh man, I'm so jazzed about what we do, but it's because of what you teach I'm like "I can do it... "    The first time I ever saw Stephen at an event, I did not leave the event until I'd cornered him and told him what I needed to tell him... because I knew you were gonna be exactly that type of person.    ...and here's why it's so important to me, Stephen.    I could tell the first time I saw you,  that you were gonna have a massive effect on the world.    But here's what I know about entrepreneurs; you're gonna have the biggest effect on the people closest to you - the people who are most proximal, your team.   And when I see an entrepreneur like you Stephen, I'm like:    "Man, if that guy builds a team he's gonna change hundreds of lives internally in his company. They're gonna change millions of lives externally, and I know those hundreds of people will build your legacy."    And when I see somebody like you, I'm like, “Man! That is the path, let me show you how to do this.”    The fact that it's working, is like, “Ah, it makes me so excited every day.”    This is why I get up out of bed every morning and do what I do.     STEVE: Ah, it's so fun man, feeling's mutual. You walked up, it was from that FHAT event that you were at.   ALEX: Ah ha.   STEVE: And you walked up and said, "There's a huge company in you and I don't think you know it, and I'm gonna help you pull it out of you."    I remember when you said that, I was so scared. I was like, "There's no way that this is real! I know who you are, are you kidding me?"    It freaked me out, and I had to own my own vision for a while. It actually took me a while to practice that.    Anyway, so much has gone on in mental clarity and development from what you've taught, not just these systems and things around, it's really cool.   ALEX: - So let's give the second one, Stephen   STEVE: Yeah, sorry, sorry.    ALEX: oh don't apologize, shit I love this part.    So first you have a strategic plan…    #2: Second, the thing that you need to have is      A system to communicate that plan.        Let me tell you something about us as entrepreneurs…    We think we're good communicators, but we're lying to ourselves.    The fact is, we are haphazard and emotional, and we're pumped one second and we're not the next, and we're all over the place…    Here's what happens…    When we have a team that has to deal with a personality like ours, and there's NOT a system for communication, it's random and haphazard and overwhelming... and it comes from all angles, and they're waiting for word from on high. Here's the fact, if you're the entrepreneur in charge, you're the MOST important person in the building all the time.    You're the most important person on the team, in the tribe, in the group, and they're all waiting to see what you say.    And if they're waiting for days and nothing's happened, they start thinking:    Is something wrong?    Did something go bad?    Did we do something wrong?    So you need a system.   As an example:    My team knows every Monday at 4:00, we're all gonna be on a weekly meeting together.  They also know every day at 9:27 a.m. we're gonna be on a daily huddle, and I'll be there.    They know that once a month we're gonna have a meeting where we show our strategic plan.    They know once a month we're gonna have a meeting where they all get the results.    So they all know when they're gonna communicate with me and how.    From the first day you're on our team there's a system that  controls how you hear from me.    Not just me pumping stuff out there haphazardly.    As a result, my team knows they're gonna hear from me, they trust it and here's what happens.    I set the expectations, I meet the expectations, we create trust. I create trust with my team every time I do that.    And here's the fact:   If your team trusts you, you get way more out of them.   If your team trusts you, they will do more for you.    If your team trusts you, you'll get discretionary effort   ... which means when they're driving, when they're showering, when they're doing something else, they're gonna be thinking about your business.  Why?    ...because it gives them momentum.    So if you have a strategic plan and a system to communicate it, you're ahead of 99% of companies out there.   And Stephen, same thing for you with the system, the structure?    Like…    We all fight structure, but once you put it in place, isn't it incredible?   STEVE: Oh, it's amazing! Stuff's getting done right now, that we set in place once. and then, I'll be like "Oh, podcast episode just launched,!Oh, what day is it? Oh, that's sweet! Everyone just put it out, all right, cool!"   ALEX: Right, I remember when I started getting messages like, "Hey, I love the new podcast!" And I'm like "Oh, we put a podcast out? Nice!"       STEVE: I didn't do that, what are you talking about?   ALEX: So you have  #1: a strategic plan, then #2: a system to communicate.    #3: Here's the third one, now this is BIG, really big, and most business owners just, they don't look at this ever and it's the biggest struggle is, or one of the biggest struggles is;      You have to have a system to consistently document the right processes in your business.     And by documentation, I mean having:    A flowchart   A process document   A checklist   Something that shows you how the important things in your business are done over and over again.    For example:    If you walk into a McDonald's, and you look above the fry cooker, there is a process to cook fries above that fry cooker.    Anything that happens in that McDonald's, there's a process for literally every single thing, including:    Unlocking the door   Turning off the alarm   Sweeping the floor   That's why there's a consistent experience at McDonald's; I'm not saying it's a good experience, I'm saying it's consistent.   In most businesses, in most entrepreneurial businesses, there's no process.    In fact, it's even scarier than that...    The process lives either in the owner's head or in an individual's head - so you lose a person, you lose the company.    You lose a person, you lose a big chunk of what you're doing.   STEVE: Hmm.   ALEX: So you have to have a system in a business to consistently evaluate what processes are in the company, and then on a monthly and weekly basis document the right ones.    The way that I would suggest you start, is you look at your customer experience:    What is the customer experience in your company?   What process documentation do you have to back it up to make sure that is completely consistent?    If you do that, you're gonna beat most people out there...   99% of entrepreneurial companies have little to nothing documented in any type of process.   STEVE: They're just shooting in random spots 24/7.   ALEX: Or they're doing stuff like, "Here's how we do our customer on-boarding…”    I trained Suzy   Suzy trained Annie   Annie trained Bob     John does it now   ...and you're like "Oh, cool! Let's go and see what John's doing?"    Well, John's doing nothing close to what Suzy and Bob and everybody else was originally doing, and so you have these degrading processes in your business.    And here's what happens…    When you look at entrepreneurial businesses, they tend to…    Go up in revenue   Come back down in revenue   Go up in revenue   Come back down.    If you're inside those companies, hundreds of times like I have been, here's what I can tell you…    Revenue goes up as the process is working, and then when it breaks, it comes back down.    *PERIOD*    That's why businesses don't continue to go forward - there are processes breaking in the business.    Whether it's marketing, sales, delivery, whatever it is there's a process breaking.    When you document your proceses, you make them bulletproof.    So in our business, we actually use:    Lucidchart Flowcharts   Sheets in Google Sheets    A new product called Process Street  -  a distributed, automated process document system, which is incredible.    So we have all of our processes in Process Street, and we have a distributed team around the world.   We have somebody in Ireland who can do their part of the process, as soon as they hit the last button it transfers to somebody here in the US who can do their part of the process.   STEVE: That's awesome.   ALEX:    Documenting your processes + Putting them in place = Game-changing   STEVE: Holy cow, okay I wrote that down.    I'm taking tons of notes so everyone knows, I hope they are as well…. And I'm not sharing! ;-) Process.st is the company, and we are so happy with it because... Stephen, here's what I want everyone to know,...   Cadey and I have had five businesses get over $10,000,000 a year, and all five of them ran them with paper checklists.   This is the first time we have automated checklists in Process Street.    The last information products business that we had, we literally had three-ring binders that we would carry around the office and check stuff off.    Having a three-ring binder with a process was so much better than having somebody trying to do it from memory.    Now with Process Street, we can distribute that three-ring binder, and I can get reporting on who's doing what.   STEVE: That's amazing.    Yeah, I've actually seen the three-ring binder and I've thought, "Holy crap, that really is how he's doing it.”    You would teach it and then I watched you actually do it.. 'cause you would record your stand up meeting calls in the morning   ALEX: Yeah.   STEVE: And I was, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool! I'm NOT doing that, interesting."    Then I’d go back and take notes and start it.   ALEX: And then implement.    Well, and you know, there's this phrase in the entrepreneurial world. Ah... I kind of get a little triggered, right!   STEVE: Let it out, baby!   ALEX: You know the thing that people say from stage:   "Here's what I want all of you to know. All you have to do is stop working in your business and start working on your business."    And I'm always like:    "Oh, good, thanks. Thanks for solving it all for us dude, that was awesome. You just solved all my problems with that really cliched BS thing that everybody tells entrepreneurs."     When I was in my twenties, my instant thought was like, "How do I get on stage to punch that guy in the face?"    And my then my second thought was like, "What a load of crap!  If I don't work in the business nobody's answering the phones, sucker."    Like, what's going on here? I don't know how to make that change.    And so the way you make that change is…    Working on the business means documenting processes.    By making it:    Clear   Repeatable   Real   And so you have…    A strategic plan that everyone understands   A communication system everyone knows is gonna happen    A system for documenting processes so everyone can repeat what's going on with your clients   #4: The next step,(and this is BIG), is..    A consistent system for identifying, documenting, and then prioritizing the right project in the business.   STEVE: Ah, this changed my life. *HARDCORE*   ALEX: Whoa, Stephen, you know how game-changing this is because, here's the problem in most businesses…    Projects are selected emotionally.    Period, I can't tell you that they're done any other way - they're emotional.    You go to an event and somebody says "I'm doing this thing," and then, the next day, you're doing that thing.    You listen to a podcast or you hear a webinar, and the person says "Hey, I added this thing to my business," and the next day, you're trying to do that thing.    In our business, if I have a really great idea that I want to implement today…    If I'm like, "Man, this is a really high sense of urgency, we should get this implemented."    It'll probably be somewhere around 45 days, and I'm totally okay with that.    That's the timing it should be in my business.    Now if there's an emergency we're gonna fix it that day, but if I'm like, "Hey, I see an opportunity here with something," it's probably a 45-day event…    Why?    I have a team and a structure, and a plan, and we have a system that's moving forward. We're already hitting our numbers, why would I mess with anything?    I actually protect what's going on in the business   I add things gently   I add things carefully   I make sure my team's into it too    I make sure we have consensus    In just in the last 60 days, we've gone from two million recurring to two point three million recurring,   STEVE: That's awesome!   ALEX: So why would I mess with what we're doing?   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: Yeah, so when somebody's like "Hey Alex, I got this "great idea for your business." I'm like "Awesome, get in line."    And we'll put it into our system to see if we want to actually do this…   Because the fact is…    If you're getting sold as an entrepreneur on what your next project should be, you're probably in the wrong place.    STEVE: Yeah, that's fascinating. I really agree with that.    It was your planning system for figuring out which projects, I still do it.    Top of every three months and it has guided everything we do.    And while I do follow a few rabbits and I'm practicing bringing it back in, we still largely follow the plan as to what the business needs, and that's ‘grow and scale’ rather than this impulse of like:    "Yeah, oh shiny object, shiny object, "that looks good, that looks good!"    And it's been that discipline, that's the other thing that's always up is my waterfall...   ALEX: Yeah, yeah, always! I mean mine's up right now. I mean I could share it right now.   And the reason is I always have my strategic plan pulled up in front of me, I'm looking at it every single day.    I'm asking myself:   Is the team doing what we need to do here?   How do I support people more?    How do I help them do this more?   Because when you look at our strategic plan, here's what it's made up of.    Our one-year outcomes   Our client-centric mission - which is our Superbowl, our hall of fame, the long term   The 90-day projects we're focusing on right now    What we're doing this month to hit those targets . So that waterfall of long term, to one year, to 90 days, to 30 days, I can see it all on one document and it tells me EXACTLY where I should be supporting the team and what we're getting done.    And so here's what happens…   I went to an event a couple of weeks ago, and I had an idea that was like "Oh man, we have to do this."    Then I come back to the office, I look at the waterfall and I'm like "What do I want to kill in order to do this thing over here?"    And you know what the evaluation was? *NOTHING* I'm not going to take anything off this, that would be crazy.   There's no way I'm gonna go to my team and say, "Hey guys, in addition to all the other stuff you're committed to, here's a hot potato."    I just backed down and I waited till the next time we had a planning meeting and I said, "Hey, there's this thing I think we should do."    We evaluated it   It went into the system   It went into the plan    There is very little knee-jerk reaction in our company because we are going so fast in a forward direction, that for me to challenge that in any way it has to be game-changing at a different level - so it rarely even happens.   STEVE: Yeah, black-ops right? Call them black-ops?   ALEX: Black-ops.   STEVE: No black-ops!   ALEX: No black-ops, baby!  If it's NOT on the plan, you don't do it... or it's black-ops.    And usually, the biggest creators of black-ops are guys like Stephen and I.    So my team has an open license to tell me if I'm doing black-ops.    They will actually call me out in a huddle, in a meeting, they'll be like "Ah, this sounds like black-ops," and then we'll make a note, we'll put it in a parking lot and do it later.    STEVE: Oh, that's so cool, okay.   ALEX: Yeah,  that's one of the most important things you can do when you have a team Stephen…    You train your team to criticize you and then you congratulate them when they do.   STEVE: That's really cool, then they have a license to actually flex their brain instead of feeling like they're in a box.   ALEX: Absolutely. You know I heard a story once about Larry Page, who runs Google,   He was in a meeting and he really strongly stated a point. and one of the team members got emotional about it and started yelling at him.    She was like, "I think you're wrong and this is why you're wrong," and Page was smiling…   Afterward, she asked somebody "Hey why was he smiling?"    ‘Cause she backed him down, and he actually said "You know what, I think this deserves more investigation. Let's do this."    She walked out and she was shaking and all adrenalized up, she had just yelled at the CEO of Google, like, “What the heck's gonna happen to me?”   She turned to somebody next to her, and was like "He was smiling, is that because he's gonna come down hard on me?"    And the person was like, "No, he was smiling because you confronted him, he loves it, he wants it.”    He knows that if people aren't confronting him, he's in a bad place.   So I look at it in my team and I'm like, "Hey, if my team's not challenging me a little bit, then we're all just marching behind a duck."    You know, I don't wanna have ducklings behind me. I want people who are saying:    Hey, this might work   This might not work   We might have a better idea   So you give your team license to criticize and license to call you on stuff.   STEVE:  Gosh, I love that.   #5: So here's the fifth one...    So we have:    Strategic plan   Communication system   Selecting and documenting the right processes   Selecting and achieving the right projects,   ….and then, this is *BIG*   Finding the right people     It's NOT just finding the right people, its…    Evaluating the company   Understanding what the company needs right now    What can you offload that is going to create the most momentum, not just for you, but for the team, for everything that you're doing together?    What is the position that you need to put in place next - so that the company moves forward the fastest?    And unfortunately, just like everything else I've named, planning, projects, process, all of those... people also become emotional.    An entrepreneur wakes up one morning and says, "I'm doing too much, I'm gonna hire an assistant."    Then they have the assistant sit next to them for three weeks, and they wonder why this doesn't work out?    It's because you had the thought to get help, (which by the way I congratulate you on), but there was no process there to actually make it work.    And so here's the process you need…   Evaluate what's going on in the company   Understand what the company needs   Turn it into a job description    Then you use it to recruit   You do tons of interviewing   You drive it until you have three people that you can select from    You hire one of them and then you do at least a 90-day onboarding, high-intensity onboarding.    When I'm onboarding an executive team member, I meet with them every day for the first month, three times a week for the second month, and two times a week for the third month.    People tell me, "Hey man, doesn't that "feel like overkill?"    I'm like:    You don't understand what it means to have an executive team. Your job is to build relationships with those people.    You want to know how you build relationships?    There's one commodity that builds relationships. One!    *TIME* - that's it.    And so when I'm onboarding, when I'm bringing somebody on, (whether it's on my executive team or anywhere in the business), somebody is doing that high-intensity onboarding with them…    Up close and personal every single day for the first 30 days making sure we have no drift.    And so, when you have a system to select the right people, bring them on and then onboard them the right way…    Here's what you avoid, (and Stephen this is like, Ah, this statistic drives me crazy)...    In corporate America, I know because I used to be a consultant there.    In corporate America, they would say things like, "Well we just hired so-and-so in that position so they'll probably be productive in four to six months."   The first time I heard that I was like "Did he just say four to six months? Does he mean four to six days, or does he really mean four to six months?"    Because in my business, even way back then), if I had to wait four months for somebody to be productive I would have been, “They're gone”!   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, they're gone!   ALEX: And so in our business, we actually have this experience right now.    We recently brought on somebody else, a new person to help us in marketing, and with our onboarding process, he was actually achieving products within the first five days of his first week.   STEVE: That's so cool!   ALEX: And that's how it should be.    You want somebody to come in, be effective and start contributing and creating momentum.    Because here's what will happen…    As an entrepreneur, if you're wired anything like I am, (and I know Stephen is), if you have somebody on your team that starts to feel like they're not carrying their own weight, you won't sleep.    You won't sleep, it will rip you apart, Stephen am I right?   STEVE: Yeah! ALEX: It will destroy you…    And so here's the question though…   Are they not carrying their own weight because:   They're lazy? They don't want to?   They aren't the right person?    Or is it because it's not clear what they’re doing?   STEVE: They have no idea what they're doing. They don't have confidence...I didn't help them!    ALEX: Right, 'cause here's the thing.    Your team needs three things in order to ultimately be effective and to be the type of team you want.    And here's what I mean by that…    As an entrepreneur here's what you want, you want a team that just does stuff and asks permission later.    You want a team that achieves and lets you know how things worked out.    That's it!  I just know this is how entrepreneurs work.    You want people who make really good decisions.    You want people who move things forward.    You want people who don't stand around waiting for stuff.    And if you want to have a team that actually moves things forward as an entrepreneur…    You gotta spend the time with them and let 'em know what your ethos is, and let 'em know how you make decisions…   That's how you duplicate decision making.   STEVE: Hm, gosh I love that. Okay, so…   Strategic plan   System to communicate   System to document processes that can be shared inside the whole biz    Documenting projects and the ones you're gonna work on   Finding the right people   ...and I actually personally just went through your onboarding training and it's so awesome!    'Cause it goes through and it's like this, you basically create a runway for 'em, right?   And if they don't land, don't worry you've got parachutes and there are jumpy cords all over the place...   - you're doing everything you can to help 'em win fast and lots of small tiny wins that build that confidence, and I was like:    "That is brilliant. 'Cause that is not the way you're taught anywhere else.”   ALEX: So Stephen, check this out, man.    We recently fell out of the lucky tree on recruiting and we hired this guy named Greg Duby and he is, ah, amazing.    He's like, he's just one of the most exciting guys I've ever worked with because he's so solid and so centered, and just so good at what he does.    Greg is a former nuclear propulsion tech in the Navy, so you know what that is, that's the guy who rides the bomb around in the submarine, okay?   STEVE: Yeah, that's amazing!   ALEX: Yeah, you have to have advanced degrees in Physics, advanced degrees in Math.   He's literally a rocket scientist.    So he worked in the Navy, then he worked at NASA, then he worked for some of the larger consulting firms out there…    I mean, he's done incredible stuff in his career.    He's just one of the most solid people I've ever worked with, and within about two or three weeks into our company, in one of our daily huddles, we said, "Who got caught being awesome?"    It's where we call each other out, and he said:    You know, I just wanna call this company out for being awesome.   “ I've been here for three weeks, I've never had an experience like this getting on-boarded anywhere...    I'm up and running, I'm excited. I feel like I'm really part of the team. I feel like I've worked here forever and I'm three weeks in."    And this is somebody who worked at some of the best consulting firms in the world, NASA and the Navy!    And our little tiny company has impressed him so much because we did onboarding because he knew what he was supposed to do.    And as a result, Greg, I think we're about three months in with him, and dude, there are projects that I thought were gonna take a year or two that are getting done this week.   STEVE: That's so cool!   ALEX: It's crazy.   STEVE: It's just a completely different way to do it. One thing I hated in the military, I love the military, but you know, some things that are rough and that is that there are no clear guidelines on how to win ahead of time.   The way you're instructed is by hitting barriers and then you get punished for it, and you're like:    "Just tell me ahead of time and I wouldn't do it! But all right, let's do more push-ups."    Anyway...   ALEX: Something tells me you did a lot of push-ups, Steve!   STEVE: I just want to say thank you so much for being on here.    I asked for 30 minutes and you just completely over-delivered, and I just really want to say thank you to you.    My audience already knows very well of you.    Where can people go to learn more about you but specifically also get your help inside the business?   ALEX: So the best place to learn more about us is to go to our podcast.    I publish a podcast four days a week, which is essentially a one-on-one conversation with an entrepreneur growing a business.    And the way that I create each one of those episodes is when a question or issue comes up in our coaching groups, I create an episode around it, we distribute it to the group.    But then also we distribute it to anybody who's listening, so you can get the same coaching that I'm giving my high-level clients right on our podcast…    It's called Momentum for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type, and you can check it out at momentumpodcast.com.    And then, if you want to understand more about our products, about our coaching groups you can go to our website charfen.com, but better is to just reach out to me or to one of my team members through Facebook.    The easiest thing, is just reach out to me, and I'll connect you with the right person in our company, and we'll go through a process with you to help you understand if we can help you.    You know Stephen, we're pretty neat, we don't sell everybody. We actually get on the phone with a lot of people who we sell later, but we won't sell you unless it's time.    We know exactly what solutions we provide, and if you have those issues and they link up, then we'll work together... but we go through a personal inventory in order to help you do that.    So if anybody's interested in getting on a call with a member of my team, you can also shortcut the entire process by going to billionairecode.com…    Answer a few questions and you can just set up a call link and you'll be on a call with one of my team members and they'll help you qualify and understand where you are.    And just so you know, we don't do sales calls, they are all consulting calls.    When you get on a call with my team, you won't ever feel like you're being sold, you'll feel like you're being helped.   STEVE: Which is exactly what I have felt when I started doing that as well.    Just so you all know he's very serious about that - that's very real.    I always feel like I'm being helped by anyone on his team.    ...and come to find out later, "Oh that was the sales guy!"    ...You know what I mean?    They dare to go in and actually they want to change the world and they're very serious about it.    So thank you so much, appreciate it.    Check out Billionaire Code.    The Momentum podcast is a goldmine, it is one of those gems on the internet that is actually worth all of your time and attention.    Thanks so much for being on here, Alex, I really appreciate you and love you, and thank you for being on here.   ALEX: Stephen, dude, this has been an honor.    I hope to be able to get invited back again, and as a Sales Funnel Radio listener, this is really cool. I appreciate you, man!   STEVE: Thanks, I appreciate it!    Hey, awesome episode right?    Hey, once I figured out the simple patterns and formulas that make this game work, I had a new problem…    Back when I eventually left my job and launched my personal business, I sold about $200,000 of product in around three months-ish…    And while I thought I was King Kong, a new problem started.    I was the business, there weren't any systems...   I was support   I was fulfillment    I was the one in charge of getting the ads around   I was the sales department    I was the marketing department    And I knew I wouldn't survive it alone…    Better yet, I knew I'd never seen a rich solopreneur.    This game takes a team.    Contrast that to now, and my company does tons of stuff that I don't know how to do...    What changed?    His name is Alex Charfen, check him out at charfenrocks.com.     So I usually don't bring tons of people on Sales Funnel Radio, but you should know that his programs, combined with my marketing skills, are why my business is killing it in revenue today, and NOT killing me personally.    Alex Charfen's programs and training have been life-changing for me and my family... and taught me who I really am and what I'm meant to be.    So when you're ready to build an actual business, an actual asset and NOT just make this another job…    When you're ready to keep the role of entrepreneur but learn the role of CEO, go get started with Alex Charfen at charfenrocks.com. That's C-H-A-R-F-E-N rocks.com.

An untold story from Sydney's Fish Market and the Sydney's Fish Market Restaurants in Pyrmont Connect with us in an untold story just a few blocks from one of our favourite nautical bars, the Peg Leg Pyrmont. View the full images for this podcast https://eattmag.com/podcasts/sydneys-fish-market-restaurants/ Alex from the Sydney Fish Market, a local fisher himself, shares a few secrets beneath the glisten and gleam of the Sydney Fish Market Restaurants. Join us in our latest Sydney podcast on a stroll through the Sydney Fish Market. We join Alex one of the fish market tour guides whom we meet excitedly admiring a fish as the sun rises across Blackwattle Bay. Alex, who has been recently featured in Time out explains The Sydney Fish Market is open every day, except Christmas day. The Sydney Fish Market is also one of the most diverse markets on the globe and could be just second after Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market famous for its astounding display of seafood and the pre-dawn tuna auctions A touch on the Dutch Auction system In the first part one of our podcast interview with Alex, he explains how now the selling and buying of fish runs of a Dutch Auction. Also that technically for auction fans it's an open descending price auction. Auction prices even start at the three-to Five dollar price range above the data price per kilo. Buyers come from across the Asia-Pacific region who sometimes have less than a few seconds to make a decision. The auction floor can have over 100-plus varieties of shellfish and fish on any given day. Cullen made his way carefully onto the auction floor with his guide carefully steering him through the hundreds of new crates of fish and seafood among the ice and the excited sounds of constant clicks made during the bidding on the keypads of all of the bidders. Chilled somewhat by the early morning thaw after Cullen's extensive tour we join Alex again where he shares his love of fishing and some of his “pretty much foolproof tips on cooking fish”. A standing roast recipe for a fabulous fish dish He then shares his perfect standing roast recipe for a fabulous fish dish, so the fins go crispy a great secret straight from the marketplace. His gives us great tips on what to try to around this time of the year and shares with us a cheeky story about the best part of any fish. Alex also advises Cullen to dig deep and to trust our instincts when choosing fish and seafood by “getting something that appeals to you”. And he shares his most valuable insight into the best lunch at the fish market as one of the ultimate foodie meals in Sydney and perhaps fact across the country. SFM is the largest market of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere Sydney's fish market restaurants features a range of restaurants and cafés, a bakery, butcher, gourmet deli, greengrocer, bottle shop, fishing supplies store and gift shop. Retail stores at Sydney Fish Market include : BLACKWATTLE DELI GREGORY'S BREAD FISHERMAN'S FINE WINES FISH MARKET CAFE CHRISTIE'S SEAFOODS WATERSIDE FRUIT CONNECTION FISHERMAN'S WHARF SEAFOOD RESTAURANT NICHOLAS SEAFOODS SUSHI BAR PETER'S FISH MARKET DOYLE'S AT THE FISH MARKET DE COSTI SEAFOODS SALTY SQUID SEA EMPEROR SEAFOOD RESTAURANT & OYSTER BAR VIC'S MEAT MARKET MUSUMECI SEAFOOD CLAUDIO'S QUALITY SEAFOODS KIOSK ICECREAM & COFFEE Find out more about Sydney's fish market restaurants Boutique Brunch Tour behind the Scenes at the Market Hi, it's Cullen here from the EATT Magazine Podcast, and I'm very lucky to be joined by Alex Cullen Thank you. You're the tour guide here at the Sydney Fish Market, and I wanted to ask you a few questions. As I was really lucky enough to be able to come in and have a look at the, I guess I would call it the auction floor, the floor where people bid for fish, and that happens every day of the week, is that right? Alex Every weekday. So not on weekends, just Monday through to Friday. (referring to the behind the scene tours) Cullen Okay, brilliant. And when we were looking at that, there's three; I guess what I would call huge clocks when I'm not quite sure if they were clocks or not? Cullen They had timers on them, and they had lots of numbers whizzing around, and there were a lot of people sitting down beneath them looking at the boards very carefully to see what was happening there. Alex So that's our Dutch or reverse auction system. Cullen Okay. So, I think I know something about the Dutch option, but I'm sure some of our listeners might not be 100% clear about that. How would you describe it? Alex Technically for auction fans, it's an open descending price auction. So it was the system designed by the Dutch for their Tulip craze. And it was the system designed from the very beginning to sell perishable goods as quickly as possible. Cullen Okay. How does it work? Alex We've got historical sales data that goes back a decade, and that tells us in that week of the year for the last ten years, this certain species in that size and condition and we are quite specific, is worth x dollars per kilo. So if it should sell for $10 a kilo, yeah, we'll start that particular box. Three to $5 per kilo above its expected sales price. Cullen So if we were talking about a fish like Barramundi for example and so let's say that might come in at $10 a kilo. How, how would that work then? Cullen You'd go back over all that data over the last ten years and say this week, the 14th-weekend March or the 14th week of the year, it was worth $12 or would you take all of that down, and then you work out on an average, I guess? Alex Yeah, it gives us an average in a predicted, and then we started, I mean, 30% or 20% above what it should sell for sure. Cullen So let's say you might go higher and say, put it out at $14 a kilo. How does the bidding work and how does the pricing work? Alex Okay, so we started at $14 a kilo. The auction begins, and it starts counting down every revolution of that stock clock. It takes $1 per kilo off the sales price and the first buyer, the guys you could see in the stands, the first buyer to stop the auction with a press of a button has committed to buying at least one box at the price they stopped the auction house. Cullen Okay, so let's say the prices spiralling down, is that right? Cullen It goes down and let's say somebody says, ‘okay', I'm buying it at $12, and then I guess it's competitive in the sense that people say, oh well look like you know, I better get a name because I didn't know how many boxes there. Cullen Is that how it works? Alex You don't know what your competitor is prepared to pay. That keeps the prices high. That's a very important aspect of this doctrine otherwise if the price plummets, that seafood will go elsewhere next week. Alex So we don't know what their profit margins are, and they can still make a living, but those guys do pretty much to the dollar. Alex So the second it becomes profitable to someone and the harder working businesses tend to be more profitable. Alex The second it becomes profitable to someone it's sold, and we move on to the next one. Cullen Fantastic. And it looked like it was a big market today? Alex Yeah, you can safely say you saw a big market, we would have got 80 to 85 tons today. Alex I'm a fisherman, so I don't want to overestimate these things. But at least 3000 boxes over a hundred different species is a bustling day. Cullen And what makes today a big market compared to other days when it's not a big market. What affects the size of the market. Alex Sure Alex Fridays are traditionally the biggest day of the week for the auction because we don't hold an auction on the weekends and people tend to buy seafood on the weekends. It's a Friday evening, Saturday morning, Sunday morning thing. Cullen Additionally, I noticed, we met down on the floor it was a real bustle going on there. There was a tour down there? Were you giving a tour? Alex Yeah, we had a large school group from New South Wales from the central West. They had a four and a half hour, five-hour drive for them to get here. Fortunately, they got in yesterday evening. Otherwise, we would have had 30 increasingly disinterested schoolchildren staring me down. Cullen But they looked pretty interested. Alex They were fascinated. Considering they are 300 kilometres from the sea, they were all really switched on about  that. They asked a lot of good questions. Obviously, they wanted to try more seafood. We had a very engaged group out here which was fantastic to see. Alex If I'm in the kayak at two in the morning and it's in the middle of winter, and I'm getting rained on, I might begin to have moments of doubt. But then on quickly I hook up, and I'm in love again. Alex I like to fish in my kayak. I like to go camping for a few days at a time. I really would like to just get stuck in and after doing this job for a week, not talk for three days straight. But yeah, just come back all salty and happy. Cullen And so what sort of fish are you catching? Alex At the moment there's a lot around, particularly in the Pittwater in Hawkesbury, but there's always big Flathead and Whiting. Alex Caught about a 73-centimetre Flathead the other day. There is also plenty of Squid. Cullen Also, what's a favourite fish for you to cook?  What do you love cooking? Alex That's like picking a favourite child. Alex If I had to pick a fish, it would be the Pearl Perch. It's a part of the Glaucosoma family, and there's only three in it. They're scientifically known for this sweetness. Their a beautiful, bright white flesh, and you can cook it a million different ways. Pretty much foolproof. Cullen So do you cook that differently quite often? Alex Whenever I see one, I buy one. We don't get that many. It's a very small volume species. It's why you haven't heard of it. And so how would you, how would you normally cook with are? Alex Because it's a special fish, I like to make it a little bit special. I'd probably do a standing roast. We get a large lemon, cut it flat side down, and then the gut cavity will sit on top of the lemon. So score the skin, pad it dry, rub it with some olive oil and salt and then as hot as you're up and we'll go upright, the scheme goes crispy, the fins go crispy. Thus, you can eat them like chips, and then you get creamy, wobbly curds of flesh that flake off the bone and it's an upright-looking fish. It's quite impressive! Cullen How are we keeping the fish upright in the oven? Alex By plunking it on top of the lemon. If it's sliding off cause it all, it's got that gut cavity that it wants to sort of flatten down all that. But you can put chopsticks and sort of like antennas into the top of the lemon, and that rests in the gill breaks.  Alex Therefore, it just sits nice and upright, and both sides are exposed to the hot air, so it cooks evenly, and then you get to serve it upright. You can also get some wilted greens or some asparagus. Cullen Moreover, for people who are coming in the market and obviously, that's their first port of call, and then they make their way through the rest of the market. What do you think that they should be looking out for at different times that that might just appear now and again that isn't here every day that's a bit special. Cullen So to buy seafood, to take home or to have to say, here? Cullen I think both. Alex To have to take home the strength of Australian fisheries is its diversity. So everyone's heard of Snapper and Whiting and Flathead, and we've got 60,000 species in this country. Try something you've never seen before! Alex Try something like a Crimson Snapper, $10 a kilo for the whole fish. They are cousins' of the Red Emperor. They are sweet; they're meaty. You can steam them, and they'll go curdy and creamy. You can then barbecue them, and they get firm and meaty, and they cost the same as sausages. They shouldn't have to be that cheap. Alex But get something, pick it, pick it well and get it cooked to order. That's the best way to have hot food. Alex Cooked prawns – just visit all the shops because it varies from piece to piece in shop to shop. No one is the best. Use your instincts and get something that appeals to you. You can go from shop to shop, get pieces and pieces, eat it down on the boardwalk, get a bottle of wine. It's not a bad way to spend the morning. Cullen Fantastic. Just wrapping up because I know you've got to go, you have on tour coming in. I wanted to ask you, what are you having here for lunch today? Alex I'm getting mushrooms in Oberon tonight, so I'm probably going to try and keep it light. Cullen Okay, so when are you going to have that's nice and light. Alex Oh, just a half a kilo of prawns on the way out. Cullen Thank you very much for taking the time to really enjoyed being with you. Alex Thanks a lot, Cullen. My pleasure  

Panel: Charles Max Wood Chris Fritz Special Guest: Kyle Holmberg & Alex Regan In this episode, the panel talks with two guests Kyle and Alex who work together in opensource. Kyle is a software engineer at AutoGravity interested in full-stack web development, graphic design, integrated systems, data visualizations, and soccer. Alex writes code and works with Parametric Studios, and he also loves puppies. Check out today’s episode where the panel and the two guests talk about the different frameworks and contributing to opensource. Show Topics: 3:03 – We got together because Alex mentioned his project. He was looking for something to get up running nice and easy. Boot Strap 4. That is a nice choice and I was contributing as a core team member at the time. He started with how do I get started with Boot Strap Vue. At the time I asked how do you do this...? And that’s how we got started. 4:03 – Guest continues more with this conversation. 4:30 – Chris: How did you start contributing within your company? 4:44 – Guest: There is a lot of autonomy with the last company I was working with (3 people there). I needed more fine tooth hooks and modals. Someone says X and you try to figure it out. So I was looking at the transitions, and there was a bug there. They hadn’t implemented any hooks, and I thought I could figure this out. From there, if you want a change I can help out. I don’t know if that change got implemented first. I started contributing some things to the library. I really got involved where someone (the creator of the library said you could be a core member. He took a trust in me. I started a lot in test coverage. That might not be the normal path to take. 6:39 – How long have you been developing? 6:42 – Guest: A year and a half. 7:00 – Chris: Any tips to opensource for beginners. 7:10 – Guest: Yes, having a thick skin. Everyone is anonymous on the Internet. People say things that they normally wouldn’t say in person. I figure if you put something out there someone will correct you. How can I get feedback? If you put yourself out there it’s like: failure to success. That process is what makes you better. 8:21 – Chris: Issues and chat like that. There is a lot of context that gets lost. When you just see the text it may seem angry 8:43 – Guest: I have a tendency towards sarcasm, and I have to save that to last. People come from different languages, and I’m not talking about software languages. English isn’t everyone’s first language. Good thing to keep in-mind. 9:14 – Internet is an international community. 9:22 – Guest continues this talk. Opensource is good to work on to get started with contributions. Especially with Operation Code it’s geared towards beginners; less complex. 10:30 – That is a good difference to show. 11:01 – Question. 11:05 – Guest. If you are a person with a lot of skin in their projects – I take pride in my work – I think if you have that mentality that you will want to submit to every request. Find some way to test every request against a...is this my concern or their concern? Figure out the boundaries. You will make mistakes and that’s fine. 11:54 – Panelist. 12:02 – Guest: Coming up with good interface boundaries for your libraries. 12:11 – Chuck: Once we figured out what really mattered than it makes it easier to say: yes or no. 12:26 - Guest: Conventional Commits. 13:06 – So Kyle what did you getting into opensource look like? 13:19 – Alex: Boot Strap. Operation Code. 15:07 – Chuck chimes-in about Aimee Knight and other people. Serving people and their country. You are helping people who have sacrificed. 15:58 – It is totally volunteer-based. 16:05 – Chris: What kind of questions did you ask Alex? How did you decide what to put in an issue? 16:25 – Alex: I tend to go to Stack Overflow. If it is in regards to a library I go to GitHub. Real time texts. Next.js – I just contributed to this this week. 19:21 – Chris: This question is for either one of you. For Questions and Answers – do you have any suggestions on what NOT to do when seeking help? 19:46 – Stay away from only asking a question in one sentence. There is so much information/context that you are leaving out, and that can often lead to more questions. Reasonable amount of contexts can go a long way. Code samples. Please Google the details for the markdown if it is a huge code. Context, context, context! 20:44 – I have an error, please fix it. Maybe that needs more context? 20:53 – Guest: What were you doing? There is a bigger overarching element. The problem they can see in front of them and what is the thing that you are TRYING to solve? 21:44 – More contexts that can help with a helpful answer. 21:53 – Guest: If someone used some learning tool... 22:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Chuck: It is something different that it could do something that you didn’t expect. 22:47 – Alex: Those are great moments. I love it when Kyle sees... That snowflake of your problem can help with documentation caveats. 23:44 – People are probably copying pasting. 24:05 – It can be the difference between understanding the page and not especially What not to do and what to do – any other tips? Can you have too much information? 24:32 – Guest: I am guilty of this sometimes. You can have too much information. The ability to converse in a real-time conversation is better. That’s my route to go. Maybe your problem is documented but documented poorly. Go to a real-time conversation to hash things out. 26:15 – Guest: If you do your homework with the different conversations: questions vs. concerns. Real-time conversation. He talks about GitHub issues and Stack Overflow. 27:48 – Chuck: My password is 123... If they can duplicate... Alex: Yeah too much information isn’t good. Some places mandate recreation like a JS Fiddle. Like Sandbox are cool tools. 29:32 – Is there a way to do the code wrong? 29:38 – Advertisement. 30:25 – Guest chimes-in with his answer. 31:31 – Question. If it’s opensource should they share? 31:33 – Absolutely. The difference that makes it for me is great. I can spot things that the machine can help me find. One small tip is when you provide code samples and GitHub issues use... The further you go out to recreate the problem there is a high payoff because they can get something working. The big difference is that it’s a huge pain to the person trying to convey the issue. If I do the simple version...I think you have to weigh your options. What tools are out there? Generate your data structure – there are costs to recreate the issue. 33:35 – Chris: 500 files, apps within the app – intercommunicating. All you do is download this, install this, it takes you ½ a day and how does this all work? 34:03 – Guest: You have to rein it in. Provide the easiest environment for it to occur. If you are having someone download a table and import it, and use a whole stack – you can try it – but I would advise to work really hard to find... 34:50 – In creating a demo keep it simple? 35:52 – Guests reply. 36:02 – Chuck. 36:07 – Chris: I learned about your experiences coming to opensource. Anything else that you would like to share with new contributors? 36:25 – Guest: Start with something that you have a genuine interest in. Something like a curiosity light bulb is on. It makes it more interesting. It’s a nice way to give back. Something that interests you. I have not found a case yet that I’m not compelled to help someone. Putting yourself out there you might be given a plate you don’t know what to do with. My learning experience is how welcoming opensource is. Maybe things are changing?  38:31 – Chuck: I have seen those communities but generally if they are there people frown down upon it. The newer opensource communities are very friendly. These projects are trying to gain adoptions, which is for the newer users. 39:17 – Guest: Final statements on opensource. Even if you think it is a small contribution it still helps. 40:55 – Guest chimes-in. It is important to have a platter for newcomers. 41:15 – Chris: I am curious to talk to you about how you’ve written React applications among others. Any advice? What resources should they 41:46 – Guest: Yeah. If you are making your new React application (from Vue land) there are many things that are similar and things that are different. As for preparing yourself, I am a huge fan of this one course. I had been coding (plus school) so 5 years, it’s okay to dive-into community courses. Dive-into a tutorial. Understand the huge core differences. He goes into those differences between React, Angular, and Vue. 43:30 – Guest talks about this, too. 45:50 – React doesn’t have an official router. Vue provides (he likes Vue’s mentality) other things. There is a library called One Loader. 46:50 – Guest: I was at a Meetup. One guy was doing C-sharp and game development. His wife had a different background, and I think they were sampling Angular, Vue, and React - all these different frameworks. That was interesting to talk with them. I relayed to them that Vue has free tutorials. Jeffry had an awesome Vue Cast. I think that’s what got me started in Vue. I learned from this tool and so can you! 48:11 – Chris: You aren’t starting from scratch if you know another framework? Do they translate well? 48:33 – Guest: I think so. There are a lot of ways to translate those patterns. 49:34 – Guest: React Rally – I just went to one. 49:50 – Chris chimes-in. Slots is mentioned 50:27 – Guest mentions the different frameworks. Guest: I went into functional components in Vue. I learned about the way... It helps you translate ideas. I don’t recommend it to everyone, but if you want to dig deep then it can help bridge the gap between one frameworks to another. 51:24 – Chris adds to this conversation. 51:36 – Guest: They are translatable. They are totally map-able. 5:46 – Chuck: Say someone was going to be on a Summit where they could meet with the React Core Team. What things would you suggest with them – and say these things are working here and these are working there. 52:12 – Guest: I would love to see... 53:03 – React doesn’t have a reactivity system you’d have to tell it more to... 53:15 – Guest chimes-in. Panel and guests go back-and-forth with this topic. 54:16 – Tooling. 55:38 – Guest: With React coming out with time slicing features how does that map to Vue and what can you say from one team to another. What is there to review? There is a lot of great things you can do with... 56:44 – Conversation continues. 57:59 – React has some partial answers to that, too. Progress. 58:10 – When Vue came onto the scene everyone felt like why do we need another framework? We have Ember, and... But with Vue it felt cohesive. It had an opportunity to learn from all the other frameworks. In terms of progress everyone is on the frontlines and learning from each other. Everyone has a different view on it. How can se learn from this and...? 59:12 – Chris: I am grateful for the different frameworks. Anyone comes out with a new tool then it’s the best. Creating something that is even better than before. 59:38 – Guest. 59:49 – Chuck: There are good frameworks out there why do I need another one. That’s the point. Someone will come along and say: I like what’s out there but I want to make... That’s what Vue was right? In some ways Vue was a leap forward and some ways it wasn’t – that’s how I feel. We need something to make things a bit easier to save 10 hours a week. 1:01:11 – Even Vue’s... 1:02:20 – Guest: In terms of why do we need another framework conversation – I don’t think we need another reason. Go ahead, what if it is groundbreaking it makes everyone do things differently and keep up. I love the idea that JavaScript is saying: what is the new framework today? The tradeoff there is that there are so many different ways to do things. It is hard for beginners. 1:03:88 – Chuck: How to find you online? 1:03:49 – Kyle states his social media profiles, so does Alex, too. 1:04:06 – Chuck: Let’s do some picks! 1:04:10 – Code Badges’ Advertisement Links: JSON Generator Ember.js Vue React Angular JavaScript Udemy One-Loader YouTube Talk: Beyond React 16 by Dan Abramov Badgr Kickstarter: CodeBadge.org Alex Sasha Regan’s Twitter Kyle Holmberg’s Twitter Kyle’s website Dev.to – Alex’s information DevChat TV GitHub Meetup Operation Code Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Code Badge Cache Fly Picks: Chris Home decorating shows Charles TerraGenesis GetaCoderJob.com Swag.devchat.tv Codebadge.org Kyle OperationCode Yet Another React vs.Vue Article Hacktoberfest Alex Uplift Standing Desk System 76 Rust