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Claudia Brdar Claudia from The Renovate Avenue shares practical advice on how to choose an property (for investment purposes)We cover:Choosing a suburb to invest inWhat to look for in the propertyChecking quality and structure of the propertyThis episode is part of a very special DIY renovation series.⠀Claudia from @therenovateavenue and Founder of the DIY Renovation Academy will join us once a month on the show to take you through EVERYTHING you need to know to DIY your reno.⠀⠀This is like a little sneak peek into her super popular DIY Renovation Academy course.⠀⠀This series is exclusively for Dream Home Movement listeners.**This episode of the Dream Home Movement was recorded live at the RPPFM**Follow the Claudia and The Renovate AvenueFacebookInstagramWebsiteFollow the Dream Home MovementFacebookInstagramWebFollow Carl and Jo VioletaFacebookInstagramWebGuest bioClaudia and her husband Pete have renovated small properties right through to large scale projects. Several years ago they bought a run-down 1960's weatherboard house (purchased for $460K) and ended up completing a major renovation ($75K), creating a beautiful sought after home ... on a tight budget! They set the suburb record for a property price of $1.035 million (2017)!They're currently renovating a 1960's brick house to sell.Both Pete and Claudia have a real hands-on DIY approach when it comes to renovating, focusing on achieving that ‘WOW’ factor ... thinking bigger, outside-the-box, and never afraid to take a risk.Claudia created The Renovate Avenue to share her knowledge, and inspire others to climb the property market via the renovation avenue, building a financially stable future to retire earlier (and do what you love).Transcript*This transcript is automated, so may not be 100% accurate*(00:00):Welcome to the dream home movement. This is your weekly dose of home and property inspiration, bringing you clever tips and advice from the very best experts and real-life Reno stories with your host, Jo.(00:16):Yeah.(00:23):On this episode, we are looking at how to choose a property to renovate. So we're going to unpack how to read, how to actually research suburbs and also what you're looking for in that, in the property that you're purchasing, what to look out for and to help us with that. We have friend of the show, show regular Claudia Brdar from The Renovate Avenue. Now, if you haven't met Claudia before, or if you're a new listener to the show, Claudia is a renovation and home-style specialist on any budget. And she's the founder of The DIY Renovation Academy. I am a student of The DIY Renovation Academy. I'm learning so much. It's excellent. And basically what the course does is that it helps you to learn to succeed with your renovation. And it just covers everything like all the way from the planning to the styling, to choosing trades everything.(01:27):So welcome to the studio. Claudia. It's lovely to have you here. Thank you so much, Jo. I'm really happy that you've invited me to the show again. I'm I'm excited. Thank you. I'm enjoying this monthly series that we're doing. I think our listeners are going to get a lot of value from it and this topic I'm particularly interested in because it's just so important and buying a property is such a huge, huge investment. But talking about a lot of money here. Yes. Yeah. We're not choosing which margarine and we're going to, or if you don't use much, we're going to buy, like this is a big deal. Yeah, that's right. Alrighty. Let's start with not the property, but the actual area because where you buy your property is so important. So do you have sort of like a method or a process for researching neighbourhoods and suburbs to buy in?(02:21):Yep. So look, firstly, don't ever buy a property on impulse. Do your research. It takes time to do research you know, you really need to know the area that you're looking at buying into what's around. Is there a school around, is there childcare what facilities are there close by? What's the transport like? Are there buses around, is there a train station close by what other facilities are around in regards to shopping medical centres, things like that are really important when researching and finding the right property the sort of neighbourhoods tend to be popular more so with, so definitely(03:00):Do your research there and know what area you're looking into for sure. And also talking to real estate agents too. And I think real estate agents get a bad rep, Joe, but there's some really good honest and knowledgeable real estate agents that you can talk to and get some information from in regards to the property in the area properties there in the area. And I guess you would also, depending on what you want to do with the property. So if you wanted to resell it that's right. You would be looking at capital growth in that that's right. That area. I mean, I know we've gone through a bit of a market downturn lately, but be looking sort of at very long term trends or yes. I mean, it depends on when you're wanting to sell and rental yields as well, if that's right.(03:44):That's right until yields too. So yeah, your numbers and, and also, yeah, those are manatees are so important. Aren't they people that are looking for properties, people with families more so want a property where there's school nearby there's facilities, there's transport. That's really important. There's also another tip that I wanted to share as well. So do you know what a sister suburb is? Joe? No. Tell me, so sister suburb is a suburb where it's the same distance from the city to a popular suburb. So, okay. So there's, there's areas out there that are quite significant in property growth and in price as well. And there's also the sister suburbs, which are on the opposite side, but at the same distance from the city that may not cost as much as buying in a more popular suburb. So I've done that in the past with a property.(04:45):It was a sister Saba was about 15 Ks from the city and we renovated a property property there. It was right next to the train station and it was also next to schools and other facilities too. And we did extremely well in that area. It was a sister suburb. Like it feels about 15 Ks from the city, but it was in the Northern direction. So really do your research. There's suburbs out there that are untouched. When I say untouched, there's a lot of properties out there that are un-renovated and they're there they're goldmines ready to go to be renovated. So that sister suburbs that's really clever. So check that out, have a look at the areas and know exactly how far particular areas are from the city and then look in other directions as well. So don't just look in the one area really try to see what else is out there in the opposite directions. Like I said, so they're the sister suburbs. Wow. That is, I like that. That's a new phrase for me to add a little bit of a tip for you. So once you've decided on the area that you'd like to buy in, or the areas(05:58):That you're going to look at, house hunting, what are your tips?(06:03):So what are you looking for when you're choosing an investment property to renovate? Yeah, sure. Is the building and roof structurally sound? You need to really know, don't just take the agent's word for it. Really have a look, get an independent building inspector in if that's what you need to do, just remember this is the biggest purchase of your life. So get in an expert to have a look. If a house has a need re stumping, does, does the plumbing need to be redone? Really have a look at the overall structure of the property to an, a building inspector can check out the overall quality of the house and you know exactly what you're getting into before you sign on the dotted line and hand over your money. Also does the house have the right number of rooms to suit your needs?(06:44):So how many rooms does it have? And how much work does does need to be done? How much will you need to spend to get that property up to a level where you want to get it to? So knowing exactly what you're getting yourself into, I've got a due diligence sheet that I give my students and they can run through everything. There's a list they can tick off once they've checked it out and they know exactly where, what needs to be done and what work, what work will need to be completed. Check your plumbing to avoid plumbing issues. What are the neighborhood know noise levels like? So is there a freeway nearby? What are the sound levels like? These are an airport nearby. It's like on that movie the castle castle, well, there'd be an airplane flying over, you know, every hour. So does the house have good natural light as well? Is it dark and dingy in there? Do you need to, will you need to open it up with more windows and or doors and if you need to get a building report as well for termites and pest inspection, if, if that's what you want to do to, that's a good idea to do as well.(08:04):Oh, that's a really good tip. Can I share a wacky tip? Yeah. Okay. So this might sound really weird, but trust me, if you don't check this, you're gonna regret it. Yup. Go into the toilet. Yes. Right. Close the door and turn around in a 360 degree circle and just make sure that there isn't make sure there's enough room in there. Because the reason I say that is we lived in a house a while back and the toilet, when you just looked at it, it was like a separate toilet to the bathroom and you just looked at it. It looked like it was a good, decent size, but then you'd go in. And like every time I would go in, I would close the door and then turn around and I would knock the toilet paper off the toilet paper holder because it just was, it was just a bit too. Yeah.(08:56):In there. I said, that's very random tip something. I wish. Yeah. That's a good one. I like that. Thank you very gracious to say that you like that too like that, but I'll also things such as when people, when you see people going to house inspections and they're knocking on walls, cause they're trying to act like they know what they're looking at. Which my father in law does, and he's a carpenter slash builder for the last 40 years. And he does know when he's not here at stuff and he listens to the sand. He knows what's going on. But also things like checking the windows, opening and closing the windows and seeing if they get stuck on the hinge that I easy to open and close looking for signs of deafness or mold as well. The last house we renovated there was mold everywhere.(09:45):There was no ventilation. So just, just really looking at stuff like that. Also checking to see if the taps are running, listening for sounds. So, you know, when sometimes you turn taps on and you can hear a banging sound in the pipes yet listening for that. Cause that will be a telltale sign of plumbing issues. Things such as that are really important. Looking at defects, looking at squeaking in the floor looking up at the ceiling, just looking up and down and yeah, when you're going to toilet do a three 60 being really aware of cracks and spots and creaking, just so you know exactly where you're at with the house and what will need to be done. We'll give you more insight, give you much more insight into what work will need to be undertaken. Yeah, definitely. And if you're, yeah, if you're renting, gonna buy that house and you're renovating for profit in whatever form that takes, then you would run last episode.(10:41):Claudia ran us through her calculation to figure out whether a property is going to be profitable. And so, yeah, checking what you're actually going to be working with, checking for those creeks and cracks. And that sort of thing is something that you would need to factor in to make sure that it is actually going to be profitable. That's a, that's a really good point. And with the cracks, you've got to look carefully, haven't you? Because a lot of really clever painters will paint in a way that kind of covers up those cracks quite nicely. Then you're in the house for three months and you're like, Oh yeah, exactly. Giant crack. Yeah. That's right. Come from that's right. Yeah. So have a look and you know, what, if there's carpet have a look with under the carpet, if there's floorboards on there, I sweat when I go into an old house and there's carpet, if there's floorboards underneath, I swear I do a happy dance because I know that, Oh, this is fantastic. All I've got to do is now sand, hopefully sand and Polish, those floorboards. So it's like an added bonus and most of the older house has got the floorboards underneath the carpet. So yeah, do that as well. Lift up the carpet when no one's looking in the corner, you'll have that, those amazingly beautiful high quality floorboards underneath, underneath that's right. Okay. So we all now NAR what to(11:54):Look for when we're going to buy a property to renovate. Thank you so much. I feel like I've got a really good like action plan to look for again, Claudia, thank you so much for coming in tonight. I really appreciate it. And this wraps up our little mini series that we've done as part of season three, with Claudia, where we were looking at planning your renovation. So this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm so happy to be speaking about this and sharing my information and my experiences. So you're welcome, Joe. Well, I'm going to put you on the spot here now and say, will you come back? And I think we'll move on to styling and design now. Oh, I love it. That's like dressing the cake. That's the fun stuff. Everything. It's all fun when it comes to renovation for me, but sounds good. I'll be there. Awesome. I can, I'm looking forward to it. So Claudia is back doing a monthly special guest appearance, little miniseries and we're covering styling and design.(13:01):Hey, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the dream home movement. Now, just to let you know, this episode was actually recorded to Claudia and I recorded it back in October. I think it was 2019 and it's now I'm editing it now in May, 2020. I think it will be released in June, 2020. So as you know, if you're a regular listener to the show, I do have a bit of a, a library, a backlog of episodes that I'm working my way through. But we will, we will get there. And as Gloria and I mentioned, she will be back for another little mini series of episodes coming out once a month. Hopefully I can keep my skin, my editing and publishing schedule on track. Yeah, she would be, there'll be another monthly mini series with Claudia, with styling and design tips. I want to thank you again so much for tuning in.(14:02):And if you enjoyed this episode, which hopefully you did, if you got to the end of it, I would love it. If you could leave me a beautiful five star review and do a subscribe, couldn't think of what I wanted to say. Please review and subscribe. I'm going to go now. I can't talk anymore. I hope you have a lovely day and I will see you again. Or I will speak to you again soon. Bye. Thanks for joining us on the dream home movement. Be sure to come over and say hi on Facebook and Instagram. I hope that your dream home projects are going well. And I look forward to chatting with you again next week.

A poem by Rich Bowpitt based on John chapter 17. Originally written and shared at our Maundy Thursday meeting in April 2020, it explores Jesus's final prayer before he heads to the cross. WORDS Father. It’s time. From creation’s foundation, our vocation’s been love’s circulation. Source, Son and Spirit sharing jubilation without limitation. Now the shout going out, love breaking out without doubt, an invitation to all nations; the presentation of God’s incarnation, for their salvation. Father. It’s time. My glory a reality for all to see. Eternity’s key’s in me; know the one and know the son and it’s done, true life’s begun. Nothing more to be sure of what’s in store, faith in me small as a seed and you’re free indeed. Father. I pray for my friends. Let this impending, darkness descending, not be their ending. I pray that everyday, they may stay on the way; lives to all an invite to unite in delight and shine bright. All I've known, they now own, so, as they’re thrown alone into the unknown, don’t let them go. As they’ve grown, may they be sown, your glory shown. Be glorified as they abide, Spirit, reside, guide and provide from the inside a unified mind. My prayer; that their care would repair the despair everywhere when I’m not there. Father. I pray for those to come. Don’t let them succumb, help them become the ones to save some, to trumpet the onset of a cosmos reset. Their unity will be a plea to see me and believe; a weight of witness to a weary and warring world of what’s worth wanting. As I’m in you, you’re in them too. Do what you do, create them anew, ones in and through whom you’ll lift the gloom, see gardens bloom, make empty tombs, find room for all to be called. Father. It’s time. Reveal your splendour as the one non-offender surrenders to render an end to sin at the centre. Show your face as I take their place, erase their disgrace, chase that they might embrace this grace. Let them know I chose the sentence imposed – heavy load, lonely road, body exposed, blood flowed, tomb closed. Father. It’s time. I’ll eat the bread, tread the paths ahead as I’m led. I’ll drink the wine, our divine design for death’s decline. Father. It’s time.

"All I've been focussing on is RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS....We've experienced 300% growth in the last 2-3 months....NOT running specials or offers."

Okay, my friend, it's happening. My business is struggling so bad that I am totally making a massive pivot. Huge pivot, and I'm going to tell you all about that in today's episode and help you discover if maybe you should pivot to. [00:00:18] [00:00:18] [00:00:33] So yesterday I spent a good deal of time journaling out how I wanted to come through this really difficult time in my business when it was clearly not going to be making it. I'm losing income. My members are canceling because they're, they don't have any money to pay for the membership, and my sales have slowed to a complete stop. [00:00:55] And so I don't have much money coming in. my income is down a ton, and I know I'm not the only one for whom that's happening. [00:01:03] But I knew I needed to take some time to really examine what that meant. And there's kind of two ways you can approach this. Like one, you can think about all the costs that you can cut and you can think about how you can pull back. And I talked to my bank and I talked to them about all the different options we had there. [00:01:19] And there's always the option of taking on debts. And. All this stuff that I just, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it, and I will, and I have in the past, but I just really hate focusing on the reduction airy stuff because it feels. Hopeless. There's only so much you can cut. I prefer to focus on abundance on on growth, and what can I do to make more money in a time where I have an online business, I have a lot of skills and just because my photography business is not working right now. What I'm doing in the photography industry isn't working right now because that industry has been chopped off at its knees. I mean, it is not doing well. It's not my fault. Doesn't mean that I can't make something work in a different area, in a different niche. [00:02:09] And so as I was thinking about how I wanted to move forward to read this, I realized that I wanted to move away from thinking about all the things that I was going to lose and all of the things that could happen if money stopped coming in and think about how I could bring in additional income instead. [00:02:27] Now. I didn't want to completely give up my business altogether because I genuinely believe that when this is done and people can get out there and start doing photography again, that there's going to be more online entrepreneurs and influencers than ever. And so personal brand photography is going to flourish. [00:02:43] Like I think after this, it's going to be amazing. It's kind of like when winter comes and everything dies and you know, it's all, it's not debt, it's dormant. All the leaves fall off. The snow covers everything and. The life just feels God. It is. It's a really hard, dark black and white kind of season, but then the snow melts off eventually. [00:03:07] I wish it would melt off here sooner and the the leaves start to grow again. The grass starts to grow. Grit again. In fact, I already have seen some Moss peeking through the snow on a few rocks and it just brings me life. It makes me so happy. I'm super obsessed with Moss. But life is going to come back through this, and in just a few months, everything's going to explode with growth and it's just going to be a totally different transformed environment. [00:03:35] And I feel like that's what's happening right now within the personal brand photography industry, is that everybody's at home. Nobody can do photography right now, and we're just sitting dormant and all the stuff that we've lost and all of the things that have fallen apart. Are being covered by snow and they're laying on the ground and they're going to decompose and that through this challenging long, silent time that feels really dead and depressing and difficult. [00:04:04]There's going to be beautiful growth that happens. Like all those things that go down in the ground and decompose are going to be the exact elements and fertilizer that has been needed to fuel this new beautiful growth that's coming. And so I don't want to give my business up completely because I know that once things turn around. [00:04:25] Everything is going to be so much easier. Like I think this is just going to take off like nuts. So I don't want to completely close my business. I have a friend who's doing that. She's literally shutting the doors to her business in about a week. And , she's happy about it, which is great, but it's scary and I don't want to do that. [00:04:43] I don't want to completely give it up. But. I need to find something else to bring in income right now. So as I was thinking about what I wanted to do during this time, I started thinking about all the different things I could do. So one, I could do some freelancing. So I'm a really great copywriter. I'm phenomenal at community management. [00:05:04] And I thought about offering to work for whoever might need. Even I had a friend, even I had a friend, I had a friend even offer to hire me as a community manager during this time because they're looking for help on that. And. I thought about it and it just didn't sit right. Not because I don't want to work for my friend. [00:05:21] She would have been phenomenal to work for, but because doing freelance work right now for me, felt like it would kill all the momentum that I'd been building in my business and in my personal brand because I wouldn't have the same amount of time. To podcast to work on my own business, you know, whatever it is. [00:05:38] And one of the things I want to pivot into is obviously growing my personal brand and I really want to help people create real movements, not just audiences. And I really want to help people understand how to activate their communities and grow them. Cause that's one of my super powers. I am so good at connecting with people and helping people connect with each other and building that engagement. [00:06:03]Within a business, I can get people to engage like crazy. , so this morning I was watching a Facebook live from Stu McLaren and he happened to bring me up as an example for something, and I was chattering away in the comments and I kind of offhandedly had mentioned that I'm thinking about doing something within the community space and helping people really grow thriving communities or pivoting in some way during this time until I'm able to come back to this. [00:06:31] And my lovely friend Lisa Kay, she was there and she chimed in and she's like, yeah. I am your ideal client. I would love that. I would definitely want to be a part of that if you want. I'd be happy to hop on a call with you and talk through what it is that I would love to learn and all my issues, and basically let me pick her brain so that I could figure out exactly what my offer could be. [00:06:55]. So we jumped on a video chat right then and there, and we ended up spending two hours talking back and forth about what she needed in her business, how I could help, what would make this a win for her. [00:07:09] What kind of messaging resonated with her most? what my framework might look like, what the format might look like, all of it. Like it was the best two hours I have spent in my business in a long time because I learned so much information in such a short amount of time. That was such a gift to me, Lisa, and if you're listening to this. [00:07:31] Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I know it was a win win because you learned some stuff too, but if you guys can talk to the people you want to serve and allow them to speak to you about what they're struggling with, what they really want. learn their language for what they say. Cause I was thinking about building movements and she's like, Oh, that's heavy. [00:07:52] I don't want all the social justice stuff behind it. And I'm like, Oh yeah, there's kind of this idea of what a movement is. And it's different from what I consider a movement to be like. It can be both. And it was like, Oh, using the word movement is not the best messaging for this. And so we talked through some of that and it was so, so helpful. [00:08:14] And I just. Use that time with her to really help craft my offer. I even said like, which of these would appeal to you more like building an active community or learning how to engage people in your business? Because so much of what we offer isn't like the actual content, because the content would be the same. [00:08:33] Either way. It's figuring out what language the people who really need us would use and resonate with so that they want to buy what we have. And so I'm probably going to do a Facebook group for, I don't know how many weeks. I'm going to guess that it's going to be six weeks, maybe it'll be eight weeks. [00:08:52] I'm going to do it totally beta style, and we're going to cocreate it. I'm going to bring people in. I'm going to do it exactly like I launched by personal brand photography course. It's going to be totally off the cuff in that I'm going to do it live. I'm going to have a huge. Big picture like topics, but I'm not going to know exactly what lessons I'm going to do from day to day because in part, that's going to depend on the questions that people are asking and what they really need to know. [00:09:19] Because what I know is that when we are really good at something, we take it for granted and we forget what people don't know. Like for us it's like, Oh yeah, well that's obvious. Of course we do this, or for me it's like, Oh yeah, well, when you start a group. At the beginning you have to drive that engagement, but at some point, , things get easier and other people start to own the group and feel ownership towards it and engage with it too. [00:09:43] And then more and more people begin to comment and build that up, and then you can step back a little bit. You still leave, but you don't have to be the main person leading all the stuff. And then as more and more people adopt that. You go into this phase of them inviting their friends, because now they own the group, they feel a sense of ownership towards it, and they're super engaged and they think it's awesome. [00:10:05] And so now they naturally want to bring their friends in even without you asking them to, and you go through this period of really fast, big growth. And then you come to a point where. There's old people who are kind of upset that it isn't as intimate as it used to be and that there are all these brand new people coming in asking the same question over and over and over again instead of searching, you know what I'm talking about. [00:10:30] Right. And. It gets so big that it's almost too big and you kind of get this divide. It's not the same. The old people are upset. The new people aren't really getting engaged in the culture fast enough. And then how you handle that can determine whether the group totally falls apart and becomes disengaged or if it actually morphs into something better that can grow further. [00:10:53] Well, this is stuff I like take for granted. I don't even think about it anymore cause I've just know it like I've seen it happen with several groups. I've learned that and she's like, Oh my gosh, that's gold. And if you forget, if you don't talk to people. And so I was really excited about the idea. Of doing this together and co-creating this course around helping people get engagement and build communities of people who actually show up and communicate. [00:11:18] Because from memberships, if you can get people to stay engaged in a community and to actually do the work that you're doing and if they do it, they're going to get results. If they connect with people there, they're going to be less likely to leave. It's a beautiful retention strategy. [00:11:33]But also if you have a free group, there's ways to do it so that those people actually become buyers and aren't just freeloaders, are just there to pitch their own stuff. And for most people, I know they're afraid to do a free group because it's a burden to them [00:11:47] And they don't know what to put in a free group versus what to put in a paid group so that they're paid. Members don't feel like they're missing out. And like, there's all this stuff that I've thought about and that I've, that I've done, and that works really well for me and my business. And it's not just Facebook groups, like I know how to engage email lists and social media accounts, and it's just what I do naturally. [00:12:08] And the more engaged your people are with you and your business, the more money you're gonna make. [00:12:12] I just get really excited about the idea of helping people, like you create communities and places where people go first to spend their time during the day. So many people are online right now sitting at home during this Corona virus stuff. Where are they spending their time? I want them to be spending time in your groups, on your platforms, on your social media accounts, engaging there because when you have their attention, you're going to grow. [00:12:41] You just are. The more you can do that, the better. And so many people get a ton of engagement and a ton of activity around a launch. And then it just kind of Peters out and they don't know how to keep it going. They don't even know how to do conversations with them or build that engagement or get people to connect or any of that stuff. [00:12:56] So that's what I want to do. Like we talked about this for two hours, you can probably hear how excited it makes me because it's totally my jam. Like I love this so much. So she really helped me craft my offer. She helped me realize that I actually want to work with entrepreneurs who already have a business and a product so that they can accelerate that. [00:13:14] Like she's been doing this a long time. She's got a podcast, she's got the email, she's got a book, she's got a product, she's got the stuff. She doesn't need to learn how to build an email list. There's plenty of people out there teaching that. She needs to learn how to engage those people in a deeper way. [00:13:30] And make them most of the assets that she's already created so that she can start really leveling up. She's like, I've done all this stuff, but I'm just not making that progress. And I'm like, I can help with this. I know how to do this stuff. And engagement is the key, not just in a group, not just in a community, but in your entire business. [00:13:50] , I love this stuff. I love. This stuff. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm absolutely going to beta launch this course as soon as I can possibly get it all together and I move fast. The only thing that's going to slow me down is I am determined to podcast through this all so that if you are sitting there and you're thinking that maybe you need to make a big pivot, maybe you're a photographer. [00:14:13] And you're like, you know what, I love photography, but I need to be doing something else right now. Maybe you want to do some graphic design teaching or teach people how to use their images, whatever it is. Maybe you have an idea for a course that you want to sell and you just don't know how to do it. [00:14:28] How do you even launch that? Maybe you like to knit or quilt like I do. I love to quilt and maybe you want to do some quilting tutorials or something and you want to put something out there. Bring a community along to do it with you, [00:14:41] notice me. The way I do things is in community. It's what I do. So I create courses in community. None of it is done. I mean, I don't even have the big outline of any of it yet, but it's coming. It'll come, and I'm going to be very upfront about that. You can actually go back to some of my earliest episodes here on the podcast. [00:15:01] [00:15:01] If you go back to episode 10 from season one of the podcast, you'll actually hear exactly how I launched my personal brand photography course as a beta launch. And then episode 11 is going to tell you why you should beta launch as well. Why this idea of selling something before you've ever created it is actually way better than creating it first and then hoping that it's going to sell. [00:15:27] It's a really great. Set of episodes. So go listen to those if you haven't, but I'm literally going to walk you through this real time for free right here on this podcast, even though I know I could probably sell this as well, because I want you to see how it works, and I want you to hear my thought processes. [00:15:45] I'm going through it, and ideally I want you to join the course with me and learn how to continue engaging this audience. Once you've. Launched your own thing because the more you can get that beta group involved and engaged, the more likely they're going to be to actually do what you're teaching them to do and get results, which means that you'll then have awesome stories and testimonials that you can use to promote it when you do it again in the future. [00:16:09]That is like the best part of having a beta group. So I want to basically show you what I'm doing. I want to bring you along so you can see how I'm doing it inside this group, and I'm going to give you all the systems and processes and things that I use to do it. It's going to be so much fun. I'm so excited. [00:16:26] I can't even sell it to you right now because I've got nothing to send you to. I've got literally nothing to send you to. So my goal, I'll share a couple of little high level things that I'm thinking of right now is to use this in part honestly, because I know there's a ton of people out there who are wanting to launch something online cause they got all this time they're sitting at home, some of them have lost their jobs. [00:16:48] Some of them are really trying to figure out, you know, how can they get this course out into the world and make some extra money online and they could use this to do that. They can follow the formula. It's, I'm really excited about that. But also , I'll probably run a few Facebook ads, really low dollar, maybe Instagram ads as well. [00:17:07]To the podcast to help build some audience. I don't really have much of an audience here, like I said, but right now, because everyone's online and because people are struggling, the cost of Facebook and Instagram ads is way low and sending people to something that they just get to consume and listen to you without an opt in or without selling something is like mega cheap. [00:17:28] And so I will take a little bit of money. I don't have a ton extra to spend, but I do believe that. , even , a couple hundred dollars, which I could probably even spend less than that, but using that to send people to this podcast to listen is probably a really good use of my money because I'm going to sell this for four 99 and so. Even if I just spend $499 on ads, I feel pretty confident that I'm at least going to get one extra sale because of this. So I'm definitely willing to spend at least that much. That's probably going to be my budget. [00:18:00] We'll see. Who knows? I can always turn it off if it's not converting, but I'm thinking that this would be a great thing to send people to because they have time to listen and they might find it really helpful. I'm also probably going to talk to some of my friends and cash in a few of my networking chips and the hopes that they will mention it to their audiences because there's a lot of people I know who have the type of person who would find this really helpful. [00:18:24]And. I really believe that this can compliment a lot of what's already out there without directly competing with it, and so it's a really beautiful way to hopefully, get a few people to send me some of their audience so I can serve them well as well. [00:18:38]we're going to see how it goes. I'll keep you updated on how everything is happening. I'm going to walk you through the entire thing right now. It is literally just an idea. All I've done is spent that time with Lisa earlier today. Thanks again, Lisa. Really picking her brain and talking through it, and I'm so thankful she offered to do that and she, it just helped me bring so much clarity. [00:18:57] I have 13 pages of notes, and so I'm going to go back. I'm going to review those notes and really use that to help write up my offer and shape. What I'm going to you like what I'm going to say to get people into this, cause I'll probably do a few Facebook posts and I'll probably do a Facebook live or two and I'm going to need a name for this thing. [00:19:13] I kind of suck at naming things, but I'll hit up some of my friends who are good at naming them. summer and Levi, I'm looking at you. You're going to get hit up for help with naming, but I love calling my friends out on my podcast anyways. I'm excited to share it with you. We'll see how quickly I can get it out. [00:19:29] Like it's really a race to do this. ideally, I will have this out the door in the next few days and we'll start a week from Monday. So like a week and a half from now, I'd actually be starting creating content with people. Not sure if that's realistic or not, but that's what I'm going to push for. [00:19:44] So zero audience, zero outline or anything. It's just the stuff I got to extract from my head and set up. And no assets created in a brand new niche. And if I can beta launch a new course, hopefully make some money doing it. I know you can too. Now, I might not make any money doing it, but I feel confident that I absolutely will get at least a handful of people, and honestly, I don't need a ton. [00:20:07] I'd love a ton. When I did my personal brand photography course, I got a 167 people. The first time around. That would be a mazing. But even if I don't get a ton, even having a few people would just be fantastic for helping with cashflow right now, but also for helping me to hone this so that I can teach it again in the future. [00:20:28] So that's what I'm looking at. that's where I'm at. If you're wanting to make a big pivot, come along with the journey. If you're finding this interesting and helpful, would really love it if you would share it with a friend who might also need it. Leave a great review for us, and if you haven't yet, definitely subscribe. [00:20:43] I'm going to be doing a lot of podcasting over the next few days. I can already feel it. I'm excited to share it with you and I definitely want to take you along for the ride, so thanks so much. I will see you in the next episode.

Questions I ask Mustang Marie:Natasha versus Mustang Marie -- which is your preference?Who inspired you?Why the fascination with classic Mustangs?Are you a social media pro turned Mustang fanatic or Mustang fanatic turned social media pro?Tell me all about your purchase -- name, rank and specs do tell.Why was having a survivor important to you?Are you are a wash and wax owner or an under the hood enthusiast?Will Raven (your Classic Mustang) be a daily driver?What’s your day to day with GTB?What is your goal as Mustang Marie?Who is on your dinner list? 5 invites are at your disposal. Who’s coming to dinner, alive or dead?Links mentioned on the show today:Gone in 60 seconds - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071571/Legendary Motor Cars - https://www.legendarymotorcar.com/Stallion Auto Sport - http://www.stallionautosport.com/The Big Reveal (Mustang Marie takes ownership of Raven): https://www.instagram.com/tv/B3z0iNghAVu/?igshid=p2nsikwgg7iySocial Handles:Instagram: @mustang.marieFacebook: @mustangsandmarieTwitter: @mustang_marieYouTube: Mustang MarieWebsite: mustangmarie.com Ford Mustang, The Early Years Podcast -- Guest Interview ApplicationDo you own an early year Mustang?:yesWhat do you do for a living and is it related to classic cars or Mustangs?:I work for GTB, one of Ford's marketing agencies, and I am the lead Senior Social Publisher for Ford Mustang social content, as well as the Social Content Manager for the GT500 Track Tour program. In my spare time, I also manage my own brand, "Mustang Marie" - a social media personality and influencer that educates and informs the community about Mustangs, with a specific focus on first generation.Is there anything specific you would like to share on the show? If you are in the classic car business (selling, repairing, restoring, products or services provided to owners) what can we promote on the show to our community of Mustang owners? :I would love to share my story about how Mustang Marie started, and how that led to my job working with Ford.If you own a Mustang or classic car, have you named your car? If so, what is his/her name?:Yes. Her name is Raven.How long have you owned your classic ride?:Since October 19, 2019.If you've made improvements to your classic car or restored it, what work have you done?:She is a true survivor car, and I want her to stay that way. All I've really done is had her professionally detailed (a ceramic wax to protect her original paint, and a ceramic coat to protect the chrome), as well as repairs to two tears we found in the upholstery, and some other extremely minor fixes.Do you work on your classic cars yourself or do you have a mechanic or shop do the work? Explain please:Since Raven was bought through Legendary Motor Car, they fixed any minor issues they saw before the car was sent off to detailing. In the future, I plan on doing more work myself.What plans do you have for improvements/restoration/modification of your classic car?:Absolutely nothing. She's a true survivor, so keeping her as original as possible is the ultimate goal. It would really just continue to ensure she's running at her best.If you are on social media, please share your social media names/handles so we can tag you when promoting your episode.:Instagram: @mustang.marieFacebook: @mustangsandmarieTwitter: @mustang_marieYouTube: Mustang MarieWebsite: mustangmarie.comHave an idea for the show or think you'd make a great guest, send an email to the host:doug@turnkeypodcast.comGet our episodes in your inbox follow the link in the show notes: www.TheMustangPodcast.comThanks for listening, keep it safe, keep in rollin’ and keep it on the road! Until next time.

It’s no secret that a lot of strategies in MLM are broken and outdated...   The MLM model has undoubtedly changed over time…     In fact, I just spoke about this in an interview I did with Lynn Thomas from Create Your Dream Life…   The Internet became publicly available in 1991…   Over 10 years ago!    A lot of the tactics in MLM were developed BEFORE the Internet…    And a lot of MLM companies are moving forward as if that's not a reality...    Which I frankly think is STUPID.    I chat with Lynn about my approach to MLM and WHY it's so different and so unique...    And why this has been such a BIG BUZZ…   It's been such a disruptive thing!   Jump in a discussion I had with Lynn Thomas about how MLM has changed and what to do about it to stay on top…   *how MLM has changed, how to stay on top, Secret MLM Hacks, MLM is broken*   Jump in a discussion I had with Lynn Thomas about how MLM has changed and what to do about it to stay on top…   HOW MLM HAS CHANGED     The MLM model has undoubtedly changed over time.    I talked about this in an interview I did with Lynn Thomas from Create Your Dream Life.   Lynn Thomas is awesome.    If you don't know, interviewsteve.com is how you can jump on my calendar. It's pretty full. I'll try and figure out a way to open it up a little bit.    Lynn asked me some cool questions that I haven't really been asked that frequently.   In the episode, we were able to dive a little more deeply into how MLM has changed and shifted in the last 10 years.    The Internet became publicly available in 1991.    A lot of what is being done now in the MLM space are tactics that were developed before the Internet was around or publicly available.    A lot of MLM companies tend to move forward as if that's not a reality... Which I frankly think is STUPID.    I chat with Lynn about my approach to MLM and why it's so different and so unique... And why this has been such a big buzz.    Whole MLMs have been reaching out, asking us to build funnels for them!   I've been able to take the MLM model and flip it on its head. Rather than me going out and talking to all these people to deliver a message, I can automate the message!    I can track it because it's the same message every time.    That means I can make tweaks and adjustments and target people who are likely to want to:    Be in my downline Buy whatever my team is selling    That's a big, big deal, and that's why it's been such a disruptive thing.   HOW TO STAY ON TOP IN MLM   We have a book that we're writing about this. There are three levers you can go turn in your MLM business.    You don't own anything in MLM.   You don't own anything. What is it that you can create that you do own? So you can out leverage the game?    This is super blue ocean stuff right now, which is exciting.    Lynn: Steve, how did you get started? Where did you start in this journey? And why did you start Secret MLM Hacks?   Steve: Why did I start Secret MLM Hacks? Well the first time I tried to get in MLM, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, I was in college. We had hardly any money and had just found out that we were expecting our first kid, which is very exciting.   I wanted to make a little bit of extra cash in college to pay some of those expenses. One of my buddies called me and said, "Hey, I don't know what this guy's talking about but he's going to help us make a lot of money. Can I three way him in?"   I was totally new and I had no idea what that meant or that I was on a classic MLM pitch.    So I said, "Sure, dude. Sounds good." He calls and I literally said, “Is this one of those pyramid schemes?”   I was the worst buyer ever.   He goes, "No, no, no, it's not, No, no, no."    And I was like, "Why do I need to pay money to get started selling things for you? That doesn't make any sense."    I was the worst. When I got off the phone my buddy called me right back and he goes, "Come on, you would be great at this. Come on, man."    And I was like, "No."   REALIZING HOW MLM HAS CHANGED   After some resistance I said, “Sure. Well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go both feet in and I'm going to run as hard as I can.”    So I went and I met with a guy in my upline. I don't even know what it was called… I was so green to the MLM network marketing, direct sales space. I didn't know anything about that.   And I went and drove to go meet him. When I pulled up it was this like, super old, warehouse looking thing. It was kind of sketchy.    I walked in and there was this table in the center, and nothing else was in this big massive room. It's like the out of a scene from Hollywood.    It was dark with a single light hanging over the table. I sat down, and he goes, "Well, hey, you want to be successful? Right?"   I said, "Well, yeah."   And he goes, "Well, you gotta do what everyone else does when they're successful. Let's take out your phone. Are you willing to do that?"    I said, "Sure".   “Take your phone out. Let's walk through your contacts and see who would be good.”    And I was like, that makes sense. We made a huge list of people. Right there, we started calling people. I was not prepared for that.    If that's your thing, good on you. But for me that was weird.   I still have relationships that have been soured to this day because of that.    MLM IS BROKEN BUT I KEPT GOING   But I was not willing to give up. I went and started walking down Main Street, literally recruiting people right off the street. People in businesses, and I was just hustling.    I’d worked super hard for the first four or five weeks and I recruited 13 people.    And I was like, "This is awesome." I started doing the thing that they all do…    … “If those 13 get 13 and if they get 13 each, the next problem I have to solve as what island will I buy!”   Then none of them did anything.   I'd counting the chips before I have them and none of them did anything… So I stopped doing anything in MLM.    About a year later I realized that the problem wasn't, does MLM work?    The problem was that I was approaching it with very outdated tactics.   There are people out there who legitimately wanted to find a good opportunity.   I started learning how to attract the good people.    In the past I was looking across the street and being like, "Oh, it's Mr. Johnson. He really could use this opportunity right now, he needs this opportunity."   I realized anytime I have to say that about somebody, they are the wrong person to recruit. They're not learners or business builders.    I started getting better and better at that whole system and automating it on the internet, using ClickFunnels.    To this day, still, we get about two, three, sometimes four people a day asking to draw my down-line who I've never met.   We cut half of them out easily right off the get go and find those who are truly excited to build it.    That's what we've been doing and Secret of MLM Hacks is just the program that teaches that.   HOW MLM HAS CHANGED THE OFFER   Lynn: Yeah, it's an awesome thing that you've built. The thing that I'm struggling with and that the people that I've interviewed are struggling with is THE OFFER.   Can you explain a little bit about offer creation?   Steve: The way I realized this was kind of backwards and weird.    I was knocking doors as a door to door salesman. We were driving out to one of our areas, and I was in a bad mood. I was having the grumpies, sorry.   I remember looking up at these billboards, and I had this phrase come to my head.    And I was like, man, I'm getting up every day trying to sell things to people who are not planning on spending money.   But everybody calling these billboards are calling asking to be sold.    It was the first time in my life I've ever considered that.   There was already this momentum going around sales, and I needed to learn how to capture it.    I was selling pest control at the time and I put up these ads on classified sites for pest control.    I didn't realize that was totally illegal because you’re supposed to put all these credentials and stuff up.    My phone started blowing up! People are like, “I've got ants in my pants” or whatever. There's people begging for the service rather than me selling them on the service.   I couldn't knock any more doors because there's a better way. So I started approaching MLM differently.   HOW TO STAY ON TOP WITH YOUR OFFER   When it comes to offers, people want what you've got.   You have to realize that anytime we sell a product, it is solving a problem. It's easier to sell it if they really do have a problem. You don't have to create the problem then sell them the solution.    Let's say I'm selling Trident gum. Anytime we sell a product, we solve a problem but we also create problems that were not there before we bought.    This is where the offer, in any business not just MLM, comes around.   I call these follow up problems.    If the opportunity presents itself to be an Olympic skier... Someone offered it to me and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I could be in the Olympics!"    I’ve got to solve a lot of problems that were never there before.    What skis will I wear? Who's my coach going to be now? What's my eating like? Who am I going to hang out with? What's my sleep schedule? What mountains am I going to train on?   All the things that were never there until that opportunity presented itself.    That is the exact same thing and where the opportunity lies in MLM when you realize that.   As soon as I sell my gum to somebody, or whatever your product is, what are the follow up problems and issues that are there now that they bought from you?    These are called follow up problems.    Maybe I don't like the flavor. Maybe there's certain things that you eat or drink with or after it.   Lynn: Or maybe there's an aftertaste...   Steve: Yeah, maybe there's an aftertaste. Maybe your mouth might get a little dry.    MLM IS BROKEN BECAUSE IT DOESN’T DEAL WITH FOLLOW UP PROBLEMS   If you don't know what the follow up problems are, go to anybody who's ever bought your product ever and say, "Hey, what do you wish was a little bit different with this product?"   Shut up and take out a piece of paper.    This is when the market starts guiding the offer that they want from you.    This is very key and it's one of the major reasons why I love MLM so much.   You don't have to make this initial product to get those questions out, it's already made for you.    I go out and I share it with people and I say, "Hey, here's this thing. What are the issues you have?"    And I start writing and writing and writing and writing. Then I look for the top two or three most commonly said things.   The magic is here.    I create a product to solve that follow up problem that the majority seem to be having…   And I give it away for FREE with this product when they buy it through me.    Now I've out valued everybody my upline... Everyone in my downline and I am the most attractive person to come buy through.   My upline is my competition. My down-line is my competition.    WHAT IS SECRET MLM HACKS FOR?   Lynn: So is Secret MLM Hacks a thing that is attracting people to you? And then eventually, they ask to join you?   Steve: Sometimes...   Lynn: Not all the time?   Steve: Well, I don't ever tell anyone what I'm in. I kept it very third party.    Secret MLM Hacks  is meant to educate the MLM space because no one has really been approaching MLM this way.    If I can become the category king in this space with MLM funnels, it can't be a pitch fest.    Lynn: You're breaking the old paradigm.   Steve: Some MLM’s really don't like it.   Lynn: I imagine, because you were saying that MLM is broken.   Steve: Yeah, I believe that.   Lynn: And it's been broken for a long time. We have the internet and new ways of reaching out to people yet they're still saying, “Let's call 100 more contacts from your phone.”    Steve: Why don’t we talk to those who are actually wanting to buy. People who want the solution.   Let's just give a lot of value and then they'll come buy from us instead of everyone else.   Lynn: So there are a lot of people out there that are looking for and wanting an opportunity, and you're just opening the door so that they can find you?   Steve: Yeah.   If you compare brand new people who sell on the internet in general and brand new people who sell in the MLM space, there's far more education that is much better suited to the general internet marketer.   EDUCATION IN MLM IS BROKEN   I started looking at what education is available in the MLM space and the quality of it.    So I went in and I started buying all of the top books, courses and CD’s in the MLM industry.   I started consuming them, and almost all of them have the same ideas...   “Simple things to say to people to get them to jump into your down-line”.   Why don’t we just skip all of that and talk to those who actually want the product and automate the interaction with them.    Then let's elevate the quality of education so people can have a lot of stature in the MLM space.   Go buy all the top books, go see what they're talking about. It's kind of garbage.    It's really, really old when you compare it to what is actually already working in other industries.    All I've been doing is taking this education and telling it to a new industry that's never heard it before.   Lynn: Can you explain to me why you killed yourself?   Steve: So what Lynn's referring to is, I say Steve killed Stephen.   In high school, I…   Was 35% body fat (I was a big boy) Had a huge amount of shyness Had a very rough time speaking with anybody    I'd see an adult and literally walk the other way.    It was a near clinical fear of adults for a while there.    HOW MLM HAS CHANGED SINCE I WAS IN COLLEGE   I'm just going to say it... I was dumb.   I got kicked out of college my first semester because I got pretty much straight F's and they told me to leave.    I had to wait four years to go back and reapply. I'm the least likely success story.   Stephen is a great guy. His natural state is ‘nice guy’.   It was no longer, "Hey, I'm not making any money because the opportunity I'm in is bad."   What I realized is, "Hey, I'm not making any money because I'm a terrible delivery system of it.”   I don't qualify for what the market is requiring for me to go out and be the person that sells and is aggressive to the right degree.    So I created Steve.   I just did this at Funnel Hacking Live. Something freaked me out and I started getting nervous in the negative sense (not the positive nervous).   I went to the speaker room, shut off all the lights and put on some pretty aggressive motivational videos.    There was 30 minutes till I had to get on stage.   I just did planks, sit ups and push ups because I was trying to bring Steve out.    That sounds schizophrenic... I promise it isn't.   Steve's a killer. Steve gets on stage and he cracks mics and break stages. He is the attractive character that his market needs him to be.    SECRET MLM HACKS STEVE VS STEPHEN   Lynn: You’re not dead all the time?   Steve: I'm not, no. It is a learned trait.    I was so scared for launching my podcast for the first time. I think I recorded 17 episodes before ever releasing it, because I was nervous.    Every single step of the way has been a self doctoring move.   Everyone asks, "How do you keep so much energy?" I don't.   No one's that way all the time. Everyone gets nervous.   Steve killed Stephen and it doesn't feel fake… It's very genuine. It's just a new side of me that I started learning.   Lynn: You talk about getting uncomfortable every day.    Be uncomfortable every day, step out of your zone. Learn something new, do something you haven't done before.   Steve: Yeah. Not all stress is negative.    There's de-stress, which is destructive. That's not good stress.    Then there's eu-stress, as in euphoria. Eustress is really good for you. It's like going to the gym and it’s good for your brain.    Doing something hard as early in the day as you possibly can is so good for you.   Lynn: Are you doing triathlons? I seem to recall that you're doing something like that?   Steve: I'm about to get back into it. It's been a solid year since I've really done anything like that.    I started signing up for some stuff so that I could hold my feet to the fire and get into it again.   Lynn: Is it kind of a balance thing?   Steve: Yeah, a little bit.    I think life balance is kind a facade.    It's hard to define it so you don't really know if you've reached it.    I feel like it's a weird thing to compare ourselves to something that's kind of unattainable.   HOW MLM HAS CHANGED WITH THE INTERNET   Lynn: Do you any parting words of wisdom for my listeners?   Steve: The MLM space is most easily sold when you couple it with the info product industry.    What I do is I create these products that teach ANY MLMer. I'm not pitching them at all. But they're not free.   And that's for a reason. It filters and brings people to me who have a different mentality.    If somebody can't even spend a little bit of money for some MLM education, they're not a good fit for my down-line.    I'm not trying to recruit everyone and their mom.    That's totally the opposite of what most MLMs teach. I'm actually very picky on who I let in my down lines.    If you are having a hard time recruiting, one of the easiest things you can do is create something in the front and stop recruiting everybody.    I don't get on the phone, I don't go to hotels or malls, I don't do any of this traditional MLM stuff.   Lynn: You don't do meetings?   Steve: I don't do any of that. None of it.   The only thing that I do is keep selling this front end program. It's not really meant to make money.    Any money we make, we just dump it back in ads. The people who are buying it are basically funding the ads.    Most MLM don't know how to drive ads. That program is louder than most MLM companies, which is crazy.    If they can spend $15 on ads, and I can spend $50, I'm going to crush them.   That front end thing is just meant to liquidate my ad cost and bring good people to me, who would be a great fit for my team.   RECRUITING IN MLM IS BROKEN   I NEVER approach someone. I make people apply. They go through an application process and we filter out another half of them easily.   Lynn: All the people that you're recruiting are people that are ready to run, and they're all using the internet to grow.   Steve: Yes. That's what's crazy.    I just hand off the same systems when they join my team. That's what's so mind blowing, because a funnel builder is what my profession is. I make good ones. When they come in, they get these professional funnels.    Lynn: BOOM!   Steve: Yeah, BOOM!   When you flip the whole model on its head and stop doing, frankly, really old tactics, MLM becomes fun again.    The people on my down-line are my closers. They're the ones who call the people who apply. I don't even do that.    Then we automated our onboarding process, which is actually about launch in a week or two.   We automated all the onboarding which walks them through how to:   Set up their back office Get ads Set up the funnels Take advantage of our teams bonuses   It takes them through their first 30 days in my downline. It's super turnkey.   ONBOARDING IN MLM IS BROKEN   Lynn: Wow, that's awesome. Steve also has an affiliate program for ClickFunnels.   Steve: If you're watching or listening to this and you want to learn how to do this stuff on the internet, one of the easiest places to learn these principles is in affiliate marketing.    The model for affiliate marketing is the exact same model for MLM on the internet. If you go to affiliateoutrage.com, that's the program.   Affiliateoutrage.com walks you through how to market.   Lynn: He's got unbelievable training in there… UNBELIEVABLE.    Part of today's challenge in MLM is knowing how to teach your downline all of the ‘stuff’, right?    Would you like me to help you teach your own downline five simple recruiting tips for free?    If so, go download the FREE MLM Masters Package by subscribing to my podcast at SecretMLMHacksRadio.com   The course is FREE and it'll help explain to your team what I'm doing on, what you're learning. It also gets sent straight to your inbox.    Just go download it at SecretMLMHacksRadio.com

2029 Eating Keto Losing Weight Feeling Great A bit over a month ago I decided to delete the major carbohydrate offenders from my diet -- the items that metabolize directly into sugar. Might as well be eating sugar cubes as to eat potatoes, rice, pasta and bread, not to mention desserts. I have gone from 185 pounds plus to 171 in about a month or so. Even more important, the acid reflux and bloating I suffered with for years is completely GONE. I am eating a few carbohydrates in the form of salad vegetables, but no more items that directly metabolize into sugar. I'm not just eating protein, but I'm also eating healthy fats. My energy levels remain consistent throughout the day. I am sleeping more soundly at night without waking up nearly as much throughout the night. During the day I seem more alert than I have in a long time. Carbohydrates become a slow poison when eaten in the massive quantities that sadly typifies the average Western diet. Just getting rid of the bloating and acid reflux alone is enough to make me NEVER go back to eating poisonous levels of carbohydrates. All I've really done is eliminate potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, junk food of any kind, and deserts. These are low nutrition foods that destroy the human body if eaten consistently over a period of decades. The average person (depending on size) has a gallon and a half of blood. In that gallon and a half of blood, the normal blood glucose level is about 5 grams, or one teaspoon or sugar cube. The average American is eating the equivalent of 31 teaspoons of sugar a day. Is it any wonder that America has become the land of obese type-two diabetics? How is eating the equivalent of 31 teaspoons of sugar a day defensible? The answer is, it is not defensible. Eating that much equivalent sugar a day is sheer madness. I've had at least one person tell me that "Everyone will die of something." True enough. However, I don't want to die from type two diabetes complications -- they are extremely painful and unpleasant in the extreme. Type two diabetes complications include blindness, heart attacks, strokes, amputations, etc. just to name a few.

2029 Eating Keto Losing Weight Feeling Great A bit over a month ago I decided to delete the major carbohydrate offenders from my diet -- the items that metabolize directly into sugar. Might as well be eating sugar cubes as to eat potatoes, rice, pasta and bread, not to mention desserts. I have gone from 185 pounds plus to 171 in about a month or so. Even more important, the acid reflux and bloating I suffered with for years is completely GONE. I am eating a few carbohydrates in the form of salad vegetables, but no more items that directly metabolize into sugar. I'm not just eating protein, but I'm also eating healthy fats. My energy levels remain consistent throughout the day. I am sleeping more soundly at night without waking up nearly as much throughout the night. During the day I seem more alert than I have in a long time. Carbohydrates become a slow poison when eaten in the massive quantities that sadly typifies the average Western diet. Just getting rid of the bloating and acid reflux alone is enough to make me NEVER go back to eating poisonous levels of carbohydrates. All I've really done is eliminate potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, junk food of any kind, and deserts. These are low nutrition foods that destroy the human body if eaten consistently over a period of decades. The average person (depending on size) has a gallon and a half of blood. In that gallon and a half of blood, the normal blood glucose level is about 5 grams, or one teaspoon or sugar cube. The average American is eating the equivalent of 31 teaspoons of sugar a day. Is it any wonder that America has become the land of obese type-two diabetics? How is eating the equivalent of 31 teaspoons of sugar a day defensible? The answer is, it is not defensible. Eating that much equivalent sugar a day is sheer madness. I've had at least one person tell me that "Everyone will die of something." True enough. However, I don't want to die from type two diabetes complications -- they are extremely painful and unpleasant in the extreme. Type two diabetes complications include blindness, heart attacks, strokes, amputations, etc. just to name a few.

2029 Eating Keto Losing Weight Feeling Great A bit over a month ago I decided to delete the major carbohydrate offenders from my diet -- the items that metabolize directly into sugar. Might as well be eating sugar cubes as to eat potatoes, rice, pasta and bread, not to mention desserts. I have gone from 185 pounds plus to 171 in about a month or so. Even more important, the acid reflux and bloating I suffered with for years is completely GONE. I am eating a few carbohydrates in the form of salad vegetables, but no more items that directly metabolize into sugar. I'm not just eating protein, but I'm also eating healthy fats. My energy levels remain consistent throughout the day. I am sleeping more soundly at night without waking up nearly as much throughout the night. During the day I seem more alert than I have in a long time. Carbohydrates become a slow poison when eaten in the massive quantities that sadly typifies the average Western diet. Just getting rid of the bloating and acid reflux alone is enough to make me NEVER go back to eating poisonous levels of carbohydrates. All I've really done is eliminate potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, junk food of any kind, and deserts. These are low nutrition foods that destroy the human body if eaten consistently over a period of decades. The average person (depending on size) has a gallon and a half of blood. In that gallon and a half of blood, the normal blood glucose level is about 5 grams, or one teaspoon or sugar cube. The average American is eating the equivalent of 31 teaspoons of sugar a day. Is it any wonder that America has become the land of obese type-two diabetics? How is eating the equivalent of 31 teaspoons of sugar a day defensible? The answer is, it is not defensible. Eating that much equivalent sugar a day is sheer madness. I've had at least one person tell me that "Everyone will die of something." True enough. However, I don't want to die from type two diabetes complications -- they are extremely painful and unpleasant in the extreme. Type two diabetes complications include blindness, heart attacks, strokes, amputations, etc. just to name a few.

My guest this week is Brian Nosek, co-Founder and the Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. Brian is also a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia doing research on the gap between values and practices, such as when behavior is influenced by factors other than one's intentions and goals. The topic of this conversation is how incentives in academia lead to problems with how we do science, how we can fix those problems, the center for open science, and how to bring about systemic change in general. Show Notes Brian’s Website Brian on Twitter (@BrianNosek) Center for Open Science The Replication Crisis Preregistration Article in Nature about preregistration results The Scientific Method If you want more, check out Brian on Econtalk Transcript Intro   [00:00:00] This podcast I talked to Brian nosek about innovating on the very beginning of the Innovation by one research. I met Brian at the Dartmouth 60th anniversary conference and loved his enthusiasm for changing the way we do science. Here's his official biography. Brian nozik is a co-founder and the executive director for the center for open science cos is a nonprofit dedicated to enabling open and reproducible research practices worldwide. Brian is also a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia. He's received his PhD from Yale University in 2002 in 2015. He was on Nature's 10 list and the chronicle for higher education influence. Some quick context about Brian's work and the center for open science. There's a general consensus in academic circles that there are glaring problems in how we do research today. The way research works is generally like this researchers usually based at a university do experiments then when they have a [00:01:00] result they write it up in a paper that paper goes through the peer-review process and then a journal publishes. The number of Journal papers you've published and their popularity make or break your career. They're the primary consideration for getting a position receiving tenure getting grants and procedure in general that system evolved in the 19th century. When many fewer people did research and grants didn't even exist we get into how things have changed in the podcast. You may also have heard of what's known as the replication crisis. This is the Fairly alarming name for a recent phenomena in which people have tried and failed to replicate many well-known studies. For example, you may have heard that power posing will make you act Boulder where that self-control is a limited resource. Both of the studies that originated those ideas failed to replicate. Since replicating findings a core part of the scientific method unreplicated results becoming part of Cannon is a big deal. Brian has been heavily involved in the [00:02:00] crisis and several of the center for open science is initiatives Target replication. So with that I invite you to join my conversation with Brian idzik.   How does open science accelerate innovation and what got you excited about it?   Ben: So the  theme that  I'm really interested in is  how do we accelerate Innovations? And so just to start off with I love to ask you sort of a really broad question of  in your mind. How does having a more open science framework help us accelerate Innovations? And I guess parallel to that. Why what got you excited about it first place. Brian: Yeah, yeah, so that this is really a core of why we started the center for open science is to figure out how can we maximize the progress of science given that we see a number of different barriers to or number of different friction points to the PACE and progress of [00:03:00] Science. And so there are a few things. I think that how. Openness accelerates Innovation, and I guess you can think of it as sort of multiple stages at the opening stage openness in terms of planning pre-registering what your study is about why you're doing this study that the study exists in the first place has a mechanism of helping to improve Innovation by increasing The credibility of the outputs. Particularly in making a clear distinction between the things that we planned in advance that we're testing hypotheses of ideas that we have and we're acquiring data in order to test those ideas from the exploratory results the things that we learn once we've observed the data and we get insights but there are necessarily more uncertain and having a clear distinction between those two practices is a mechanism for. Knowing the credibility of the results [00:04:00] and then more confidently applying results. That one observes in the literature after the fact for doing next steps. And the reason that's really important I think is that we have so many incentives in the research pipeline to dress up exploratory findings that are exciting and sexy and interesting but are uncertain as if they were hypothesis-driven, right? We apply P values to them. We apply a story upfront to them we present them as. These are results that are highly credible from a confirmatory framework. Yeah, and that has been really hard for Innovation to happen. So I'll pause there because there's lots more but yeah, so listen, let's touch on that.   What has changed to make the problem worse?   Ben: There's there's a lot that right there. So you mentioned the incentives to basically make. Things that aren't really following the scientific method follow the clicker [00:05:00] following the scientific method and one of the things I'm always really interested in what has changed in the incentives because I think that there's definitely this. Notion that this problem has gotten worse over time. And so that means that that something has has changed and so in your mind like what what changed to make to sort of pull science away from that like, you know sort of ice training ideal of you have your hypothesis and then you test that hypothesis and then you create a new hypothesis to this. System that you're pushing back against. Brian: You know, it's a good question. So let me start with making the case for why we can say that nothing has changed and then what might lead to thinking something has changed in unpacking this please the potential reason to think that nothing has [00:06:00] changed is that the kinds of results that are the most rewarded results have always been the kinds of results that are more the most rewarded results, right? If I find a novel Finding rather than repeating something someone else has done. I'm like. To be rewarded more with publication without latex cetera. If I find a positive result. I'm more likely to gain recognition for that. Then a negative result. Nothing's there versus this treatment is effective, which one's more interesting. Well, we know which ones for interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and then clean and tidy story write it all fits together and it works and now I have this new explanation for this new phenomenon that everyone can can take seriously so novel positive clean and tidy story is the. They'll come in science and that's because it breaks new ground and offers a new idea and offers a new way of thinking about the world. And so that's great. We want those. We've always wanted those things. So the reason to think well, this is a challenge always is [00:07:00] because. Who doesn't want that and and who hasn't wanted that right? It turns out my whole career is a bunch of nulls where I don't do anything and not only fits together. It's just a big mess right on screen is not a way to pitch a successful career. So that challenge is there and what pre-registration or committing an advanced does is helps us have the constraints. To be honest about what parts of that are actual results of credible confrontations of pre-existing hypotheses versus stuff that is exploring and unpacking what it is we can find. Okay, so that in this in the incentive landscape, I don't think has changed. Mmm what thanks have changed. Well, there are a couple of things that we can point to as potential reasons to think that the problem has gotten worse one is that data acquisition many fields is a lot easier than it ever was [00:08:00] and so with access more data and more ways to analyze it more efficient analysis, right? We have computers that do this instead of slide rules. We can do a lot more adventuring in data. And so we have more opportunity to explore and exploit the malays and transform it into things signal. The second is that the competitive landscape is. Stronger, right there are fewer than the ratio of people that want jobs to jobs available is getting larger and larger and larger and that fact and then competitiveness for Grants and same way that competition than can. Very easily amplify these challenges people who are more willing to exploit more researcher degrees of freedom are going to be able to get the kinds of results more easily that are rewarded in the system. And so that would have amplify the presence of those in people that managed to [00:09:00] survive that competitive firm got it. So I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that people that it's gotten worse. I don't think there's definitive evidence but those would be the theoretical points. At least I would point to for that. That makes a lot of sense. So you had a just sort of jumping back. You had a couple a couple points and we had we have just touched on the first one.   Point Number Two about Accelerating Innovation   Ben: So I want to give you that chance to oh, yeah go back and to keep going through that. Brian:  Right. Yeah. So accelerating Innovation is the idea, right? So that's a point of participation is accelerating Innovation by by clarifying The credibility of claims as they are produced. Yes, we do that better than I think will be much more efficient that will have a better understanding of the evidence base as it comes out. Yeah second phase is the ability is the openness of the data and materials for the purposes of verify. Those [00:10:00] initial claims right? I do a study. I pre-registered. It's all great and I share it with you and you read it. And you say well that sounds great. But did you actually get that and what would have happened if you made different decisions here here and there right because I don't quite agree with the decisions that you made in your analysis Pipeline and I see some gaps there so you're being able to access the materials that I produced in the data that came from. Makes it so that you can one just simply verify that you can reproduce the findings that I reported. Right? I didn't just screw up the analysis script or something and that as a minimum standard is useful, but even more than that, you can test the robustness in ways that I didn't and I came to that question with some approach that you might look at it and say well I would do it differently and the ability to reassess the data for the same question is a very useful thing for. The robustness particularly in areas that are that have [00:11:00] complex analytic pipelines where there's are many choices to make so that's the second part then the third part is the ReUse. So not only should we be able to verify and test the robustness of claims as they happen, but data can be used for lots of different purposes. Sometimes there are things that are not at all anticipated by the data originator. And so we can accelerate Innovation by making it a lot easier to aggregate evidence of claims across multiple Studies by having the data being more accessible, but then also making that data more accessible and usable for. Studying things that no one no one ever anticipated trying to investigate. Yeah, and so the efficiency gain on making better use of the data that already exists rather than the Redundant just really do Revenue question didn't dance it your question you did as it is a massive efficiency. Opportunity because there is a lot of [00:12:00] data there is a lot of work that goes in why not make the most use of it began?   What is enabled by open science?   Ben: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Do you have any like really good sort of like Keystone examples of these things in action like places where because people could replicate the. The the study they could actually go back to the pipeline or reuse the data that something was enabled. That wasn't that wouldn't have been possible. Otherwise, Brian: yeah. Well, let's see. I'll give a couple of local mean personal examples just to just to illustrate some of the points, please so we have the super fun project that we did just to illustrate this second part of the pipeline right this robustness phase of. People may make different choices and those choices may have implications for the reliability results. So what we did in this project was that we get we acquired a dataset [00:13:00] of a very rich data set of lots of players and referees and outcomes in soccer and we took that data set and then we recruit a different teams. 29 in the end different teams with lots of varied expertise and statistics and analyzing data and have them all investigate the same research. Which is our players with darker skin tone more likely to get a red card then players with lighter skin tone. And so that's you know, that's a question. We'll of Interest people have studied and then we had provided this data set. Here's a data set that you can use to analyze that and. The teams worked on their own and developed an analysis strategies for how they're going to test that hypothesis. They came up with their houses strategy. They submitted their analysis and their results to us. We remove the results and [00:14:00] then took their analysis strategies and then share them among the teams for peer review right different people looking at it. They have made different choices. They appear each other and then went back. They took those peer reviews. They didn't know what each other found but they took. Because reviews and they wanted to update their analysis they could and so they did all that and then submitted their final analyses and what we observed was that a huge variation in analysis choices and variation in the results. So as a simple Criterion for Illustrated the variation results two-thirds of the teams found a significant. Write P less than 0.05 standard for deciding whether you see something there in the data, right and Atherton teams found a null. So the and then of course they debated amongst each other which was analysis strategy was the right strategy but in the end it was very clear among the teams that there are lots of reasonable choices that could be made. And [00:15:00] those reasonable choices had implications for the results that were observed from the same data. Yeah, and it's Standard Process. We do not see the how it's not easy to observe how the analytics choices influence the results, right? We see a paper. It has an outcome we say those are what the those fats those the outcomes of the data room. Right, but what actually the case is that those are the outcomes the data revealed contingent on all those choices that the researcher made and so that I think just as an illustrative illustrative. So it helps to figure out the robustness of that particular finding given the many different reasonable choices. That one would make where if we had just seen one would have had a totally different interpretation, right either. Yeah, it's there or it's not there.   How do you encode context for experiments esp. with People?   Ben:  Yeah, and in terms of sort of that the data and. [00:16:00] Really sort of exposing the the study more something that that I've seen especially in. These is that it seems like the context really matters and people very often are like, well there's there's a lot of context going on in addition to just the procedure that's reported. Do you have any thoughts on like better ways of sort of encoding and recording that context especially for experiments that involve? Brian: Yeah. Yeah. This is a big challenge is because we presume particularly in the social and life sciences that there are many interactions between the different variables. Right but climate the temperature the time of day the circadian rhythms the personalities whatever it is that is the different elements of the subjects of the study whether they be the plants or people or otherwise, yeah. [00:17:00] And so the. There are a couple of different challenges here to unpack one is that in our papers? We State claims at the maximal level of generality. We can possibly do it and that that's just a normal pattern of human communication and reasoning right? I do my study in my lab at the University of Virginia on University of Virginia undergraduates. I don't conclude in the. University of university University of Virginia undergraduates in this particular date this particular time period this particular class. This is what people do with the recognition that that might be wrong right with recognition. There might be boundary conditions but not often with articulating where we think theoretically those boundary conditions could be so in one step of. Is actually putting what some colleagues in psychology of this great paper about about constraints on [00:18:00] generality. They suggest what we need in all discussion sections of all papers is a sexually say when won't this hold yeah, just give them what you know, where where is this not going to hold and just giving people an occasion to think about that for a second say oh. - okay. Yeah, actually we do think this is limited to people that live in Virginia for these reasons right then or no, maybe we don't really think this applies to everybody but now we have to say so you can get the call it up. So that alone I think would make a huge difference just because it would provide that occasion to sort of put the constraints ourselves as The Originators of findings a second factor, of course is just sharing as much of the materials as possible. But often that doesn't provide a lot of the context particularly for more complex experimental studies or if there are particular procedural factors right in a lot of the biomedical Sciences there. There's a lot of nuance [00:19:00] into how it is that this particular reagent needs to be dealt with how they intervention needs to be administered Etc. And so I like the. Moves towards video of procedures right? So there is a journal Journal of visualized events jove visualized experiments that that that tries to that gives people opportunities to show the actual experimental protocol as it is administered. To try to improve it a lot of people using the OSF put videos up of the experiment as they administered it. So to maximize your ability to sort of see how it is that it was done through. So those steps I think can really help to maximize the transparency of those things that are hard to put in words or aren't digitally encoded oil. Yeah, and those are real gaps   What is the ultimate version of open science?   Ben: got it. And so. In your mind what is sort of like the endgame of all this? What is it? Like what [00:20:00] would be the ideal sort of like best-case scenario of science? Like how would that be conducted? So I say you get to control the world and you get to tell everybody practicing science exactly what to do. What would that look like? Brian: Well, if it if I really had control we would just all work on Wikipedia and we would just revising one big paper with the new applicants. Ask you got it continuously and we get all of our credit by. You know logging how many words that I changed our words that survived after people have made their revisions and whether those words changed are on pages that were more important for the overall scientific record versus the less important spandrels. And so we would output one paper that is the summary of knowledge, which is what Wikipedia summarizes. All right, so maybe that's that's maybe going a little bit further than what like [00:21:00] that we can consider. The realm of conceptually possible. So if we imagine a little bit nearer term, what I would love to see is the ability to trace the history of any research project and that seems more achievable in the sense that. If a every in fact, my laboratory is getting close to this, right every study that we do is registered on the OSF. And once we finish the studies, we post the materials and the data or as we're doing it if we're managing the materials and data and then we attach a paper if we write a paper at the end preprint or the final report so that people can Discover it and all of those things are linked together. Be really cool if I had. Those data in a standardized framework of how it is that they are [00:22:00] coded so that they could be automatically and easily integrated with other similar kinds of data so that someone going onto the system would be able to say show me all the studies that ever investigated this variable associated with this variable and tell me what the aggregate result is Right real-time meta-analysis of the entire database of all data that I've ever been collected that. Enough flexibility would help to really very rapidly. I think not just spur Innovations and new things but to but help to point out where there are gaps right there a particular kinds of relationships between things particular effects of predict interventions where we know a ton and then we have this big assumption in our theoretical framework about how we get from X to y. And then as we look for variables that help us to identify whether X gets us to why we feel there just isn't stuff. The literature has not filled that Gap. So I think there are huge benefits for that [00:23:00] kind of aggregate ability. But mostly what I want to be able to do is instead of saying you have to do research in any particular way. The only requirement is you have to show us how you did your research and your particular way so that the marketplace of ideas. Can operate as efficiently as possible and that really is the key thing? It's not preventing bad ideas from getting into the system. It's not about making sure that the different kinds of best things are the ones that immediately are through with not that about Gatekeepers. It's about efficiency in how it is. We call that literature of figuring out which things are credible which things are not because it's really useful to. The ideas into the system as long as they can be. Self-corrected efficiently as well. And that's where I think we are not doing well in the current system. We're doing great on generation. [00:24:00] We're General kinds of innovative ideas. Yeah, but we're not is parsing through those ideas as efficiently as it could decide which ones are worth actually investing more resources in jumping. A couple levels in advance that   Talmud for Science   Ben:  that makes a lot of sense and actually like I've definitely come across many papers just on the internet like you go and Google Scholar and you search and you find this paper and in fact, it has been refuted by another paper and there's no way to know that yeah, and so. I does your does the open science framework address that in any way? Brian:  No, it doesn't yet. And this is a critical issue is the connectivity between findings and the updating of knowledge because the way that like I said doesn't an indirect way but it doesn't in the systematic way that actually would solve this problem. The [00:25:00] main challenge is that we treat. Papers as static entities. When what their summarizing is happening very dynamically. Right. It may be that a year later. After that paper comes out one realizes. We should have analyze that data totally different. We actually analyzed it wrong is indefensible the way that we analyzed it. Right right. There are very few mechanisms for efficiently updating that paper in a way that would actually update the knowledge and that's something where we all agree. That's analyze the wrong way, right? What are my options? I could. Retract the paper. So it's no longer in existence at all. Supposedly, although even retracted papers still get cited we guess nuts. So that's a base problem. Right or I could write a correction, which is another paper that comments on that original paper that may not itself even be discoverable with the original paper that corrects the analysis. Yeah, and that takes months and years. [00:26:00] All right. So the really what I think is. Fundamental for actually addressing this challenge is integrating Version Control with scholarly publishing. So that papers are seen as Dynamic objects not static objects. And so if you know what I would love to see so here's another Milestone of this if we if I could control everything another Milestone would be if a researcher could have a very productive career with. Only working on a single paper for his or her whole life, right? So they have a really interesting idea. And they just continue to investigate and build the evidence and challenge it and figure, you know, just continue to unpack it and they just revise that paper over time. This is what we understand. Now, this is where it is. Now. This is what we've learned over here are some other exceptions but they just keep fine-tuning it and then you get to see the versions of that paper over its [00:27:00] 50-year history as that phenomenon got unpacked that. Plus the integration with other literature would make this much more efficient for exactly the problem that you raised which is we with papers. We don't know what the current knowledge base is. We have no real good way except for these. These attempts to summarize the existing literature with yet a new paper and that doesn't then supersede those old papers. It's just another paper is very inefficient system.   Can Social Sciences 'advance' in the same way as the physical sciences?   Ben: Ya know that that totally makes sense. Actually. I just I have sort of a meta question that I've argued with several people about which is do you feel like. We can make advances in our understanding of sort of like [00:28:00] human-centered science in the same way that we can in like chemistry or physics. Like people we very clearly have like building blocks of physics and the Builds on itself. And there's I've had debates with people about whether you can do this in. In the humanities and the social sciences. What are your thoughts on that? Brian:  Yeah. It is an interesting question and the. What seems to be the biggest barrier is not anything about methodology in particular but about complexity? Yeah, right, if the problem being many different inputs can have similar impact cause similar kinds of outcomes and singular inputs can have multivariate outcomes that it influences and all of those different inputs in terms of causal elements may have interactive effects on the [00:29:00] outs, so. How can we possibly develop Rich enough theories to predict the actions effectively and then ultimately explain the actions effectively of humans in a complex environments. It doesn't seem that we will get to the beautiful equations that underlie a lot of physics and chemistry and count for a substantial amount of evidence. So the thing that I don't feel like I under have any good hand along with that is if it's a theoretical or practical limit right is it just not possible because it's so complex and there isn't this predicted. Or it's just that's really damn hard. But if we had big enough computers if you had enough data, if we were able to understand complex enough models, we would be able to predict it. Right so is as a mom cycle historians, right? They figure it out right the head. [00:30:00] Oxidizing web series righty they could account for 99.9 percent of the variance of what people do next and but of course, even there it went wrong and that was sort of the basis of the whole ceilings. But yeah, I just don't know I don't have a way to. I don't yet have a framework for thinking about how is it that I could answer that question whether it's a practical or theoretical limit. Yeah. What do you think? Ben:  What do I think I think that it's great. Yeah, so I usually actually come down on the I think it's a practical limit now how much it would take to get there might make it effectively a theoretical limit right now. But that there's there's nothing actually preventing us from like if you if you could theoretically like measure everything why not? I [00:31:00] think that is just with again. It's like the it's really a measurement problem and we do get better at measuring things. So that's the that's that's where I come down on but I.   How do you shift incentives in science?   Yep, that's just purely like I have no good argument. going going back to the incentives. It seems to me like a lot of what like I'm completely convinced that these changes would. Definitely accelerate the number of innovations that we have and so and it seems like a lot of these changes require shifting scientists incentives. And so and that's like a notoriously hard thing so we both like how are you going about shifting those incentives right now and how might they be shifted in the future. [00:32:00] Brian: Yeah, that's a great question. That's what we spend. A lot of our time worrying about in the sense of there is very little at least in my experience is very distal disagreement on the problems and the opportunities for improving the pace of Discovery and Innovation based on the solutions. It really is about the implementation. How is it that you change that those cultural incentives so that we can align. The values that we have for science with the practices that researchers do on a daily basis and that's a social problem. Yeah, there are technical supports. But ultimately it's a social problem. And so the the near term approach that we have is to recognize the systems of rewards as they are. And see how could we refine those to align with some of these improved practices? So we're not pitching. Let's all work on [00:33:00] Wikipedia because that's that is so far distant from. What they systems have reward for scientist actually surviving and thriving in science that we wouldn't be able to get actually pragmatic traction. Right? So I'll give one example of can give a few but here's the starting with one of an example that integrates with current incentives but changes them in a fundamental way and that is the publishing model of registered reports. Sophie in the standard process right? I do my research. I write up my studies and then I submit them for peer review at the highest possible prestigious Journal that I can hoping that they will not see all the flaws and if they'll accept it. I'll get all the do that process me and I understand it anyway - journal and the P plus Terminal C and eventually somewhere and get accepted. The register report model makes one change to the process and that is to move. The critical point of peer review [00:34:00] from after the results are known and I've written up the report and I'm all done with the research to after I've figured out what the question that I want to investigate is and what the methodology that I'm going to use so I don't have an observed the outcomes yet. All I've done is frame question. An articulated why it's important and a methodology that I'm going to just to test that question and that's what the peer reviewers evaluate right? And so the key part is that it fits into the existing system perfectly, right? The the currency of advancement is publication. I need to get as many Publications as I can in the most prestigious Outlets. I can to advance my career. We don't try to change that. Instead we just try to change. What is the basis for making a decision about publication and by moving the primary stage of peer reviewed before the results are known does a fundamental change in what I'm being rewarded for as the author [00:35:00] right? Yeah, but I'm being rewarded for as the author in the current system is sexy results, right get the best most interesting most Innovative results. I can write and the irony of that. Is that the results of the one thing that I'm not supposed to be able to control in your study? Right? Right. What I'm supposed to be able to control is asking interesting questions and developing good methodologies to test those questions. Of course that's oversimplifying a bit. There are in there. The presumption of emphasizing results is that my brilliant insights at the outset of the project are the reason that I was able to get those great results, right, but that depends on the credibility of that entire Pipeline and put that aside but the moving it to at the design stage means that my incentive as an author is to ask the most important questions that I can. And develop the most compelling and effective and valid methodologies that I can to test them. [00:36:00] Yeah, and so that changes to what it is presumably we are supposed to be being rewarded for in science. The other thing that it changes in the there's a couple of other elements of incentive changes that it has an impact on that are important for the whole process right for reviewers instant. It's. When I am asked to review a paper in my area of research when I when all the results are there, I have skin in the game as a reviewer. I'm an expert in that area. I may have made claims about things in that particular area. Yeah, if the paper challenges my cleanse make sure to find all kinds of problems with the methodology. I can't believe they did this is this is a ridiculous thing, right? We write my paper. That's the biggest starting point problem challenge my results all well forget out of you. But the amount of course if it's aligned with [00:37:00] my findings and excites me gratuitously, then I will find lots of reasons to like the paper. So I have these Twisted incentives to reinforce findings and behave ideologically as a reviewer in the existing system by moving peer review to the design stage. It fundamentally changes my incentives to right so say I'm in a very contentious area of research and there's only ten opponents on a particular claim when we are dealing with results You can predict the outcome right it people behave ideologically even when they're not trying to when you don't know the results. Both people have the same interests, right? If I truly believe in the phenomenon that I'm studying and the opponents of my point of view also believe in their perspective, right then both want to review that study and that design and that methodology to maximize its quality to reveal the truth, which I think I [00:38:00] have and so that alignment actually makes adversaries. To some extent allies and in review and makes the reviewer and the author more collaborative, right the feedback that I give on that paper can actually help the methodology get better. Whereas in the standard process when I say here's all the things you did wrong. All the author has this to say well geez, you're a jerk. Like I can't do anything about that. I've already done the research and so I can't fix it. Yeah. So the that shifts earlier is much more collaborative and helps with that then the other question is the incentives for the journal right? So in the. Journal editors have strong incentives of their own they want leadership. They want to have impact they don't want the one that destroyed their journal and so [00:39:00] the incentives and the in the existing model or to publish sexy results because more people were read those results. They might cite those results. They might get more attention for their Journal, right? And shifting that to on quality designs then shift their priorities to publishing the most rigorous research the most rust robust research and to be valued based on that now. Yeah, so I'll pause there there's lots of other things to say, but those I think are some critical changes to the incentive landscape that still fits. Into the existing way that research is done in communicated.   Don't people want to read sexy results?   Ben: Yeah. I have a bunch of questions just to poke at that last point a little bit wouldn't people still read the journals that are publishing the most sexy results sort of regardless of whether they were web what stage they're doing that peer review. Brian:  Yeah. This is a key concern of editors and thinking about adopting registered reports. [00:40:00] So we have about a hundred twenty-five journals that are offering this now, but we continue to pitch it to other groups and other other ones, but one of the big concerns that Hunters have is if I do this then I'm going to end up publishing a bunch of no results and no one will read my journal known will cite it and I will be the one that ruined my damn door. All right. So it is a reasonable concern because of the way the system works now, so there's a couple answers to that but the one is empirical which is is it actually the case that these are less red or less cited than regular articles that are published in those. So we have a grant from the McDonald Foundation to actually study registered reports. And the first study that we finished is a comparison of articles that were done as register reports with this in the same published in the same Journal. [00:41:00] Articles that were done the regularly to see if they are different altmetrics attention, right citation and attention and Oppa in media and news and social media and also citation impact at least early stage citation impact because the this model is new enough that it isn't it's only been working for since 2014. In terms of first Publications and what we found in that is that at least in this initial data set. There's no difference in citation rates, and if anything the register report. Articles have gotten more altmetric impact social media news media. That's great. So at least the initial data suggests that who knows if that will sustain generalize, but the argument that I would make in terms of a conceptual argument is that if Studies have been vetted. In terms of without knowing the results. These are important results to know [00:42:00] right? So that's what the actors and the reviewers have to decide is do we need to know the outcome of this study? Yeah, if the answer is yes that this is an important enough result that we need to know what happened that any result is. Yeah, right. That's the whole idea is that we're doing the study harder find out what the world says about that particular hypothesis that particular question. Yeah, so it become citable. Whereas when were only evaluating based on the results. Well, yeah things that Purity people is that that's crazy, but it happened. Okay, that's exciting. But if you have a paper where it's that's crazy and nothing happened. Then people say well that was a crazy paper. Yeah, and that paper would be less likely to get through the register report kind of model that makes a lot of sense. You could even see a world where because they're being pre-registered especially for more like the Press people can know to pay attention to it. [00:43:00] So you can actually almost like generate a little bit more height. In terms of like oh we're not going to do this thing. Isn't that exciting? Yeah, exactly. So we have a reproducibility project in cancer biology that we're wrapping up now where we do we sample a set of studies and then try to replicate findings from those papers to see where where can we reproduce findings in the where are their barriers to be able to reproduce existing? And all of these went through the journal elife has registered reports so that we got peer review from experts in advance to maximize the quality of the designs and they published instead of just registering them on OSF, which they are they also published the register reports as an article of its own and those did generate lots of Interest rule that's going to happen with this and that I think is a very effective way to sort of engage the community on. The process of actual Discovery we don't know the answer to these [00:44:00] things. Can we build in a community-based process? That isn't just about let me tell you about the great thing that I just found and more about. Let me bring you into our process. How does were actually investigating this problem right and getting more that Community engagement feedback understanding Insight all along the life cycle of the research rather than just as the end point, which I think is much more inefficient than it could be.   Open Science in Competitive Fields and Scooping   Ben: Yeah and. On the note of pre-registering. Have you seen how it plays out in like extremely competitive Fields? So one of the world's that I'm closest to is like deep learning machine learning research and I have friends who keep what they're doing. Very very secret because they're always worried about getting scooped and they're worried about someone basically like doing the thing first and I could see people being hesitant to write down to [00:45:00] publicize what they're going to do because then someone else could do it. So, how do you see that playing out if at all? Brian: Yeah scoping is a real concern in the sense that people have it and I think that is also a highly inflated concern based on the reality of what happens in practice but nevertheless because people have the concern systems have to be built to address it. Yeah, so one simple answer on the addressing the concern and then reasons to be skeptical at the. The addressing the concern with the OSF you can pre-register an embargo your pre-registrations from to four years. And what that does is it still gets all the benefits of registering committing putting that into an external repository. So you have independent verification of time and date and what you said you were going to do but then gives you as the researcher the flexibility to [00:46:00] say I need this to remain private for some period of time because of whatever reason. As I need it to be private, right? I don't want the recent participants that I am engaged in this project to discover what the design is or I don't want it competitors to discover what the design is. So that is a pragmatic solution is sort of dress. Okay, you got that concern. Let's meet that concern with technology to help to manage the current landscape. There are a couple reasons to be skeptical that the concern is actually much of a real concerning practice Tristan. And one example comes from preprints. So a lot of people when they pre princess sharing the paper you have of some area of research prior to going through peer review and being published in a journal write and in some domains like physics. It is standard practice the archive which is housed at Cornell is the standard for [00:47:00] anybody in America physics to share their research through archive prior to publication in other fields. It's very new or unknown but emerging. But the exact same concern about scooping comes up regularly where they say there's so many people in our field if I share a preprint someone else with the lab that is productive lab is going to see my paper. They're going to run the studies really fast. They're going to submit it to a journal that will publish and quickly and then I'll lose my publication because it'll come out in this other one, right and that's a commonly articulated concern. I think there are very good reasons to be skeptical of it in practice and the experience of archive is a good example. It's been operating since 1991 physicists early in its life articulated similar kinds of concerns and none of them have that concern now, why is it that they don't have that concern now? Well the Norms have shifted from the way you establish priority [00:48:00] is not. When it's published in the journal, it's when you get it onto archive. Right? Right. So a new practice becomes standard. It's when is it that the community knows about what it is you did that's the way you get that first finder Accolade and that still carries through to things like publication a second reason is that. We all have a very inflated sense of self importance that our great our kids right? There's an old saw in in venture capital of take your best idea and try to give it to your competitor and most of the time you can write. We think of our own ideas really amazing and everyone else doesn't yeah people sleeping other people. Is Right Southern the idea that there are people looking their chops on waiting for your paper your registration to show up so they can steal your [00:49:00] idea and then use it and claim it as their own is is great. It's shows High self-esteem. And that's great. I am all for high self. I don't know and then the last part is that. It is a norm violation to do that to such a strong degree to do the stealing of and not crediting someone else for their work, but it's actually very addressable in the daily practice of how science operates which is if you can show that you put that registration or that paper up on a independent service and then it was it appeared prior to the other person doing it. And then that other group did try to steal it and claim it as their own. Well, that's misconduct. And if they did if they don't credit you as the originator then that's something that is a norm violation and how science operates and I'm actually pretty confident in the process of dealing with Norm [00:50:00] violations in the scientific Community. I've had my own experience with the I think this very rarely happens, but I have had an experience with it. I've posted papers on my website before there were pretty print services in the behavioral sciences since I. Been a faculty member and I've got a Google Scholar one day and was reading. Yeah, the papers that I have these alerts set up for things that are related to my work and I paper showed up and I was like, oh that sounds related to some things. I've been working on. So I've clicked on the link to the paper and I went to the website. So I'm reading the paper. I from these authors I didn't recognize and then I realized wait that's that's my paper. I need a second and I'm an author and I didn't submit it to that journal. And it was my paper. They had taken a paper off of my website. They had changed the abstract. They run it through Google translate. It looks like it's all Gobbledy gook, but it was an abstract. But the rest of it was [00:51:00] essentially a carbon copy of our paper and they published. Well, you know, so what did I do? I like contacted the editor and we actually is on retraction watch this story about someone stealing my paper and retraction watch the laughing about it and it got retracted. And as far as we heard the person that had gone it lost their job, and I don't know if that's true. I never followed. But there are systems place is the basic point to deal with the Regis forms of this. And so I have I am sanguine about those not be real issues. But I also recognize they are real concerns. And so we have to have our Technology Solutions be able to address the concerns as they exist today. And I think the those concerns will just disappear as people gain experience.   Top down v Bottom up for driving change   Ben: Got it. I like that distinction between issues and concerns that they may not be the same thing. To I've been paying attention to   sort of the tactics that you're [00:52:00] taking to drive this adoption. And there's  some bottom up things in terms of changing the culture and getting  one Journal at a time to change just by convincing them and there's also been some some top-down approaches that you've been using and I was wondering if you could just sort of go through those and what you feel like. Is is the most effective or what combinations of things are are the most effective for really driving this change? Brian: Yeah. No, it's a good question because this is a culture change is hard especially with the decentralized system like science where there is no boss and the different incentive drivers are highly distributed. Right, right. He has a richer have a unique set of societies. Are relevant to establishing my Norms you could have funders that fund my work a unique set of journals that I publish in and my own institution. And so every researcher [00:53:00] has that unique combination of those that all play a role in shaping the incentives for his or her behavior and so fundamental change if we're talking about just at the level of incentives not even at the level of values and goals requires. Massive shift across all of those different sectors not massive in terms of the amount of things they need to shift but in the number of groups that need to make decisions tissue. Yeah, and so the we need both top-down and bottom-up efforts to try to address that and the top down ones are. That we work on at least are largely focused on the major stakeholders. So funders institutions and societies particularly ones that are publishing right so journals whether through Publishers societies, can we get them like with the top guidelines, which is this framework that that has been established to promote? What are the transparency standards? What could we [00:54:00] require of authors or grantees or employees of our organizations? Those as a common framework provide a mechanism to sort of try to convince these different stakeholders to adopt new standards new policies to that that then everybody that associated with that have to follow or incentivised to follow simultaneously those kinds of interventions don't necessarily get hearts and minds and a lot of the real work in culture change. Is getting people to internalize what it is that mean is good science is rigorous work and that requires a very bottom up community-based approach to how Norms get established Within. What are effectively very siloed very small world scientific communities that are part of the larger research community. And so with that we do a lot [00:55:00] of Outreach to groups search starting with the idealists right people who already want to do these practices are already practicing rigorous research. How can we give them resources and support to work on shifting those Norms in their small world communities and so. Out of like the preprint services that we host or other services that allow groups to form. They can organize around a technology. There's a preprint service that our Unity runs and then drive the change from the basis of that particular technology solution in a bottom-up way and the great part is that to the extent that both of these are effective they become self reinforcing. So a lot of the stakeholder leaders and editor of a journal will say that they are reluctant. They agree with all the things that we trying to pitch to them as ways to improve rigor and [00:56:00] research practices, but they don't they don't have the support of their Community yet, right. They need to have people on board with this right well in we can the bottom. It provides that that backing for that leader to make a change and likewise leaders that are more assertive are willing to sort of take some chances can help to drive attention and awareness in a way that facilitates the bottom-up communities that are fledgling to gain better standing and we're impact so we really think that the combination of the two is essential to get at. True culture change rather than bureaucratic adoption of a process that now someone told me I have to do yeah, which could be totally counterproductive to Scientific efficiency and Innovation as you described. Ben: Yeah, that seems like a really great place to to end. I know you have to get running. So I'm really grateful. [00:57:00] This is this has been amazing and thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure.  

I had a powerful Thanksgiving weekend, my Uncle dropped crazy gems on me. All I've been thinking about is his advice. It can help us all...

show Summary: (Full Transcript Below) Greg Stilson, Director of Product Management at Aira, joins Pete and Jeff in the Blind Abilities studio and talks about the new plans and opportunities available to everyone. From the Guest plan, where anyone downloading the Aira App, can use the Aira Access at a growing number of sites in the Aira Access Network. To the Intro plan, where you can get 30 minutes a month for $29 a month. And the Standard plan, which I like myself, you get 120 minutes for $99 per month. And if you want the Horizon Kit, it will be $124 per month as the $600 Horizon Kit is divided up over a 2-year period. The advance Plan gives you 300 minutes per month for $199 and $224 respectively if you want the Horizon Kit acvantage. Join Greg, Pete and Jeff in this informative cast and learn about all the new Aira Access points and opportunities created by the Aira team. Seems like the value keeps growing and growing as their team and recognition keeps growing as well. Hear about the latest news and the Time Magazine recognition for Ara being one of the best 50 inventions in 2018. You can find out more about Aira on the web at www.Aira.io   Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities Appon the App Store. Full Transcript: Aira Director of Product Management, Greg Stilson, Broadens the Horizon on New Aira Access and Plans Greg Stilson: It's a testament to our Explorers as well, right? I mean the product wouldn't be where it is today without the great and constant feedback that we get from our Explorers. Jeff Thompson: Aira, your life, your schedule right now. Greg Stilson: We're so excited to have our Intro Plan. That's $29 a month, 30 minutes a month. Jeff Thompson: Greg Stilson, Director of Product Management at Aira. Greg Stilson: Almost 10,000 Walgreens in the U.S. now are Aira Access locations. The most exciting option, which is our Aira guest program, and that is that you don't even have to be a subscriber of Aira to use the service. Jeff Thompson: Checkout Aira on the web at aira.io. Greg Stilson: We are now on the GSA Schedule for federal government. If you a federal employee, you can get Aira purchased as an accommodation from your employer. If you're a veteran, any VA can purchase the product. Jeff Thompson: For more Podcasts with a Blindness Perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the App Store and the Google Play Store. That's two words, Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: Are you done for the year, Greg? Greg Stilson: No. No, we're not done for the year. Not at all. Jeff Thompson: You guys are open? Greg Stilson: 24/7 baby. 24/7 Jeff Thompson: There we go. Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson. Today we're talking about a company that's been around for a little over three years, but it seems like they got something new all the time. Time Magazine 2018, one of The 50 Best Inventions of 2018, and that's Aira. Today we're going to Greg Stilson coming on and talk about their Horizon product, their pricing, and what Aira is today. It's evolved and I agree with Time Magazine, it is a new invention for 2018 because it's changed so much. With me today is Pete Lane. How you doing, Pete? Pete Lane: I'm great, Jeffrey. It's been awhile. How you been doing? Jeff Thompson: Really good. You are an Aira Explorer yourself. Pete Lane: I am. I'm coming up on my two year anniversary in December of this year. I joined as an Aira Explorer in December of 2016. So yeah, a long time. One of the early ones, not one of the original ones, but a long time Explorer. Jeff Thompson: Well, we've been covering Aira for it seems like three years when we first talked to Suman. Pete Lane: Yeah. It was right after NFP Convention in 2016 when we interviewed Suman. Yeah. Jeff Thompson: Back then when you first came onboard with Aira, tell us about the configuration, the form factor that they used? Pete Lane: Well, Aira, which has evolved big time since then, originally started with the use of your smartphone kind of as a controlling unit that would either be the iPhone or the Android. I think they had both the iPhone and the Android from the get-go, but their original glasses was a wireless glass called Google Glass. Now that Google Glass had been around for about three or four years prior to the time that Aira actually incorporated it into their configuration, but Google Glass was a technological kind of anomaly when Google introduced it back in probably 2012, maybe 2013, but it was a wireless connection that connected to your smartphone. Essentially it was the same basic configuration. Pete Lane: You would tap on the Aira app in your smartphone, connect to an agent, and then the wireless connection would bring in the Google Glass and the agent would have access to the video camera on board on the Google Glass. Now since then, they've evolved even further. They developed a second kind of a form factor of their glasses, which was called Austria. It was a little bit more technologically advanced, but it was a still wireless solution. It's a little lighter weight, maybe a little bit more appealing as far as the aesthetics go. The Google Glass, if anybody has seen it, was clearly a tech device. Pete Lane: Everything about it looked tech. It was kind of heavy. Had no lenses and kind of odd. It was noticeable when people would wear it. The Austria Glasses evolved a little bit. Had the lenses on there and looked a little bit more like a seamless pair of sunglasses. But then most recently back at the beginning of May, Aira introduced their current configuration, which is the Horizon Kit. The Horizon Kit is now a wired solution, but it actually incorporates the use of a separate controlling unit, which is the Samsung J7 Android phone, which is a dedicated phone equipped with all of the Aira configuration. It's tethered to the Horizon Glasses through actually a very hardy, braided, heavy-duty cable. Pete Lane: Not heavy in terms of weight, but durable. It provides for a much more stable and reliable connection. Jeff Thompson: Right. If I may, when we did the Super Bowl with Greg- Pete Lane: Right. Jeff Thompson: ... where we did the podcast before and after, little did people know that he was actually testing the Horizon format that is being used today. Pete Lane: That's actually correct. As a matter of fact, Jeffrey, you may recall my son Patrick and I traveled to Dallas where we had the opportunity to watch a Cowboys game with Emmitt Smith serving as the agent for the game. I was testing those same glasses at that point. That was in October of 2017 I believe. Yeah. Jeff Thompson: That glass actually adds to the agent's use a wide angle lens so they can cover more, like a 120 degrees I believe, of what the Explorer is looking at. Now they have a bigger picture. They can see more. They can take in more and give you more feedback of what is in front of you. Pete Lane: Right. Right. Plus, the quality of the ... I don't know if it's a pixel count, but the quality of the video feed is considerably better than the older glasses. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, and without being tethered. Pete Lane: Right. Jeff Thompson: Always improving. Here in the Blind Abilities studio today to talk about the new opportunities and improvements and plans that they've created at Aira is Greg Stilson. How you doing, Greg? Greg Stilson: Good, Jeff. How are you? Jeff Thompson: Great. Pete Lane's with us too. Pete Lane: Hey, Greg, how are you? Greg Stilson: Great, Pete. Thanks for having me on, guys. Pete Lane: It's been a while. We haven't spoken with you since post Super Bowl back in February. Greg Stilson: Yeah, it's coming up again. Jeff Thompson: There we go. We won't mention The Packers or The Vikings this time. Pete Lane: Or The Jags. Yeah. Jeff Thompson: Or The Jaguars. Yeah. Greg Stilson: Or The Jags. Yeah. All three of our teams are not exactly tearing the cover off the ball here. Pete Lane: Mm-hmm (negative). Jeff Thompson: But you guys seem to be tearing the cover off Time Magazine. I just saw that 2018, Aira, one of The Top 50 Best Inventions of 2018. Congratulations. Greg Stilson: Hey, man. Thank you. It was a surprise and a tremendous honor for us. I was involved in sort of the representation of Aira working with a few of our other team members when we were talking with Time Magazine. It was one of those things where we were nominated and we're like, "All right. Well, we'll do this. That's great." I mean it's an honor just to be nominated in the first place, and then to actually have won it and to be named as one of the top inventions is just a tremendous honor for us. Jeff Thompson: I've been calling my friend saying, "I know this guy. I know this guy." Greg Stilson: Well, then it's one of those things is it's a testament to our Explorers as well, right? I mean the product wouldn't be where it is today without the great and constant feedback that we get from our Explorers. I mean this honor is as much yours as it is ours because you guys have helped make the product what it is. Just to be recognized as a company that is doing the things that we're doing and helping the people that we are is really awesome, especially from a mainstream magazine like Time. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. Very mainstream there. Greg Stilson: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Jeff Thompson: I think that's one of the biggest crossovers that's been happening over the last years. You got the attention from AT&T. You got the attention from Time Magazine. Because all your agents are sighted, so you're bridging the gap between the sighted world and the blind community. Greg Stilson: Yeah, and I think it's also just in general regardless of the community that we're working with. It's a really awesome blending of human and technology, right? But we're doing something that hasn't really been done in this capacity before in that we have really highly trained agents working with really high technology. Smart glasses and AI and dashboard all blending into one solution that just works and it works to really change people's live and benefit people's lives. In addition to being a service that works as well as it does, it's an easy and awesome story to tell the mainstream so that they can see that this is a solution that is beneficial to everyone. Jeff Thompson: Greg, we've been following Aira for well over since 2016, somewhere around there, and all the advances they have been making. Can you give some of our listeners who may not be as familiar what is the Aira package? Greg Stilson: Absolutely, yeah. The Aira package, man, it's funny you mentioned that you've been following it since 2016. I've been with this company ... It'll be coming up on a year now. Just to see the way the company has evolved in a year, let alone two to three years since you guys have been following, is crazy. The company started out strictly as a smart glass option. In order to use the service, you had to have a pair of smart glasses. You had to have it connected to your app on your phone via a MiFi, and that was really way that you could use it. Today, when you look at the way that it's used today, it's used in so many different capacities. Greg Stilson: I mean we still are a smart glass company, so we designed our own Horizon Smart Glasses that can be added to any package or any service plan that you want to get. But in addition now, we have just the service only options, which are to be able to use the app just on your smartphone using the smartphone camera as the video source. We've simplified sort of our plans and things like that. The plans are now real simple. We're so excited to have a low entry point plan, which we call our Intro Plan. That's $29 a month, 30 minutes a month, that you can use with your smartphone. Greg Stilson: That's really to get a taste of the service, to start using it, see how it fits into your life and see if a higher tier plan is something that's going to benefit you. Then we have what we call our Standard Plan, which is the plan that we're really excited about because it covers ... Based on the data that we've collected, it covers the highest population of our users and that's $99 a month for 120 minutes. That's service only plan, but you can add the Horizon Glasses to that if you feel that the hands-free option would benefit you. Those Horizon Glasses can be added for either rent to own for $25 a month or you can buy them outright for $600 right off the bat if you want to. Greg Stilson: Then we have our Advanced Plan, which is $199 for 300 minutes a month, and then you also the option of adding the Horizon Glasses to that as well. The biggest thing that I think has changed over the years is that we started out as sort of a subscription option. Today, that is so far from the limits of what you can do. We started at the end of last year I want to say, maybe even earlier than that, offering this concept of Aira Access. Aira Access is a way for businesses to offer Aira as an accommodation to their locations or their products or their services for those who are blind and low vision. Greg Stilson: What is really cool about this is it's a way to offer Aira to more people and it's also a way if you are a subscriber for your minutes to go further. For example, the whole Aira Access journey started with airports. Airports are traditionally one of the most challenging places for a blind person. Not just a blind person, but anybody to get around. We started out getting a lot of interest from airports as an accommodation to the blind and low vision passengers because not only did it allow them to get to their gates and things like that much easier, but it actually allows a blind person ... I'm living proof of this. I'd spent a year pretty much traveling the last year only with Aira in airports. Greg Stilson: It really makes a blind person a real patron of an airport. If I wanted to go get a bite to eat or something to drink or go shopping or find a restroom, I could do that on my own, whereas before you would either need to ask somebody for help, try to get somebody to escort you to those locations, or just try to find constant directions that may or may not be correct. Today, we have over 35 airports now that are Aira Access locations. Jeff, Minneapolis, St. Paul is obviously one of the first ones that we signed up. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. I want to thank you for that because now I sit with the bags while my wife goes voyages around getting food, coming back. Thanks, Aira. Greg Stilson: Anyway that we can help, Jeff. Anyway. That's really where the Aira Access journey started, but the Aira Access journey kind of exploded from there. We signed up the Wegmans grocery store chain I think it was a couple months ago now. It's a grocery store chain of almost a hundred grocery stores in the northeast. Just this week we announced our largest partnership, which was Walgreens. Almost 10,000 Walgreens in the U.S. now are Aira Access locations. If you need to just go fill a prescription or just go buy something for the holidays or whatever, you walk in to any of these Walgreen stores and you'll get a notification on your phone that says that this is an Aira Access location and all usage is free. Pete Lane: Yeah, that's huge. Greg Stilson: Sponsored by Walgreens. Jeff Thompson: Wow. Greg Stilson: Really where you look at the benefit is yes, if you are a subscriber, now your minutes go further because you're not using your own minutes in these locations, but then we also created what I think is the most exciting option, which is our Aira Guest program. That is that you don't even have to be a subscriber of Aira to use the service. If you download the app, we have a button there that says sign in as a guest. You just give us your phone number and your email address and you instantly are signed in as a guest. When you sign in as a guest, you can use the service in any Aira Access location, any airport, any Walgreens, any AT&T stores. Greg Stilson: We have almost 5,500 AT&T stores now that are live, and you can also, if you're signed in a guest, use what we call the Aira Access products and promotions. The last thing I'll comment on. It's a long-winded way of saying what are our packages, but there's a lot of different ways that you can use Aira. The last way that I'll say is using our partnerships with companies who are supporting us by offering Aira as a service to support their products or their promotions. We partnered with Intuit QuickBooks to support any blind person who is a small business owner or contractor who really works in their own small business. Greg Stilson: Anything that you're doing related to your small business, you can sign in as a guest and there's a button on the bottom of the app that says "call Aira with an offer" and you can choose one of the offers, being the small business offer. If the agent verifies that you're going to be doing something related to your small business, those minutes will be sponsored by Intuit QuickBooks so you don't need to even be in a location now to make a free call as long as you're doing something related to your small business. That could be scanning receipts. That could be filling out an expense report. That could be picking out paint for your office, your home office, if it wants to be. Jeff Thompson: Greg? Greg Stilson: Yeah? Jeff Thompson: Could you tell our listeners what Intuit is exactly? I know QuickBooks. It's business management software. Plus, they do a lot more. Greg Stilson: Yeah, they do a lot. Intuit is the company that really created TurboTax is really what their claim to fame is. QuickBooks and business management software, any of that, their big promotion here is to help the employment of blind people. They want to make sure that blind people ... We always talk about the really high unemployment rate and things like that. This is a way that they can help the employment rate of bling people is providing Aira as an accommodation to supporting their small business. As I said, any task related to your small business. Greg Stilson: If you choose the Intuit small business offer, there's a text box right in the app that says that you can inform the agent on what you're doing. At that point when you call, the agent will actually get a notice on their dashboard that this is what this person wants to do. If you even explain in your note to the agent that, "Hey, I'm doing an expense report for my business," you know, that's already validated and away you go. You don't even have to be an Aira subscriber. You can sign in as a guest and just use it right off the bat. Then the last one I want to mention is our partnership with Vispero. Greg Stilson: If you're a JAWS user, a ZoomText user and something isn't acting right with your software, let's say that JAWS isn't speaking or there's a window that blocking JAWS from being able to do what it needs to do, you can actually call in to Aira for free, sponsored by Vispero, and get a sense of visually of what's going on the screen. The agent even have the capability ... A lot of people don't know this, but agents actually have the capability to remote into your computer, with your permission, and actually close the window that maybe causing the problem or shut down the program that could be causing issues, or maybe it's just as simple as restarting JAWS. Greg Stilson: Even though you can do that with some commands and things like that, maybe the JAWS application isn't restarting for whatever reason. Well, the agent can actually manually do that with the mouse by remoting in. Just so many various offers that are available to really get a taste of Aira, to compliment your minutes so that your minutes will go further, and then try it out as a guest. Pete Lane: Greg, I wanted to amplify a little bit that the TeamViewer or Zoom connectivity feature where you just spoke about agents being able to remote into your computer, I've used that several times. Not just on clogging something that's not working with the computer, but actually going into online websites, things like that, assisting me with purchasing items. They can actually use your credentials, and of course, they're a very trusted secure agents. It's a really good feature. Greg Stilson: It's something that I think is not widely known, but it's a really powerful thing. Especially when you think of the amount of unfortunately still inaccessible web content that's out there, there's a lot of thing ... I'll give you one example. We have a lot of users who go on and use Airbnb. Agents will actually do descriptions of what the photos of the Airbnb location looks like. Unfortunately, those photos don't have the most robust descriptions attached to them, so using an agent in that capacity to understand how the Airbnb looks, what amenities do you see in the picture. Because something written in text can look very different than what it is in a photo. Greg Stilson: Just getting that level of explanation on a website that doesn't always have the most robust description of their photos. Pete Lane: Greg, another development that Aira announced just this week as well is Sendero. They've actually signed over access to the Sendero GPS technology to Aira and Mike May has joined the Aira team. Talk a little bit about that. Greg Stilson: Yeah, this one is really exciting to me. I've been a user of Sendero's GPS technology for a long, long time. Probably since 2002-2003. I remember using it on my BrailleNote Classic. Pete Lane: Yeah. Greg Stilson: I remember the feeling that I had when I first used Sendero, which was when I did that point of interest search to be able to hear all the places around me. Just completely opened my eyes to information that I never had before. GPS has become significantly mainstream now with Google Maps and Waze and Apple Maps and everything else in the iPhone. There's a ton of GPS apps for the blind to really cater to the way that a blind person travels. One of the things that we wanted to look into is what solutions are we looking to really build into AI to compliment our agents. GPS navigation is the obvious one, right? We have Explorers today using agents in conjunction with this app, with the Sendero Seeing Eye navigation app. Greg Stilson: We said, "Well, that makes total sense because you're getting automated directions and then if you need to call an agent later on, you can." Because remember, GPS doesn't get you to the door. It just gets you close to your destination, right? A lot of people refer to it as the last 50 feet, right? It'll say, "Hey, you've arrived at your destination." Now how do you actually find the entrance to the door? How do you find the entrance of the building that you're looking for? Sometimes those entrances are very different than where your GPS says that you've arrived. What's always then sort of our dream is to make this beautiful synergy between autonomous GPS and sort of the human-in-the-loop type of assistance. Greg Stilson: That's really where Sendero came in. Sendero on top of being one of the most trusted GPS names in the industry, I've always heard it called The Cadillac of GPS. It's almost been the most robust information source from a GPS that I've ever seen for blind people, but on top of that, what they do is they have different than several of the other GPS apps that were out there for blind people, they have their own routing engine that they use. You can within the same app use their routing engine to get you from point A to point B, getting turn by turn directions, whereas a lot of the other apps would ask you to leave that app and go into Google Maps or go into Apple Maps and use their routing engine. Greg Stilson: The difference there is that their routing engines in those other apps aren't designed for a blind pedestrian. That's really what really attracted us so much to the Sendero solution is Sendero provides some of the robust descriptions of intersections and directions as you're walking. It's very verbose and it gives you very clear pedestrian instructions. For a blind person, the pedestrian side is the most important. That combined with just the amount of information and things like that. What we've acquired from Sendero and we're still retaining much of the Sendero staff, their software developers during this transition period to make sure that we're keeping the apps updated. Greg Stilson: But most importantly, if you are an owner of the Seeing Eye GPS or the RNIB Navigator or the Guide Dogs GPS in Australia, nothing changes right now. Those apps will continue to be updated. Aira and the Sendero developers are working together to update these apps. We already have a feature list from Sendero of the most requested features from the users. Most importantly, I want to say nothing is going to change right now. At this point, just expect that those apps ... Actually we have update pending here that's going to be released relatively shortly that I've been working on with the team. Most importantly, nothing is going to change with your apps today. That's something that we want to make sure nobody is concerned about. Greg Stilson: Going forward, a lot of people asked me what are we going to be using this for. In my view, this directly impacts our AI offering with Chloe. To be able to take what Mike and the team over at Sendero have done and to be able to add that in with today's sort of modern Google-oriented GPS technology, if we can sort of blend all of that into an AI solution that is sort of synergistic with the human-in-a-loop offering, it's going to be a pretty darn good solution for somebody who's navigating. We have people walking for 20-25 minutes with agents at time. If you can do the majority of your route with an autonomous GPS and maybe you only need the agent for the final 50 feet or the last step, maybe that's a better solution for you. Jeff Thompson: You know, when you take Mike May, Anirudh Koul, your team with Chloe, I can only imagine what's around the corner for everyone. Greg Stilson: We're pretty excited. It's a really fun time to be looking at the future of Aira. Especially with Aira Access and with the offerings, there's a lot of potential with indoor navigation. There's a lot of potential with AI object and facial recognition and all that kind of stuff that's out there. But for us, I wanted to start with sort of the basics. The basics were that we were definitely missing a straight up, really high reliability GPS navigation tool. To be able to have that built into Aira down the road is something that I think everybody can be really excited about. Jeff Thompson: Well, that's really neat because I remember when Mike May first started in 1993. With all that experience coming into Aira now, as I mentioned Anirudh Koul with the Seeing AI, the developer of that, coming into Aira, it just seems like you're still growing. Greg Stilson: Yeah. Jeff Thompson: You're still a new kid on the block in a sense. It's very interesting times. Greg Stilson: I can't speak for Anirudh, but the fact that he wanted to join Aira I think speaks very highly of our CEO and the vision that we have. Anirudh I'm assuming saw a significant potential here. It's exciting. It's a really fun place to be. I was talking to my wife last night and we were kind of just talking about the Time Magazine. Then I stopped for a second. I looked at the things that we've accomplished this week. This week. We launched 10,000 Walgreens stores in partnership. We did a technology transfer of Sendero GPS. We were named one of the Top 50 Inventions of the Year in 2018, and then we also launched AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, as another sight access location. Greg Stilson: That's a pretty good month for some companies, so for us to do that in a week ... She said, "Why do you seem so tired?" I said that's it. It's been a week. Jeff Thompson: Are you done for the year, Greg? Greg Stilson: No. No, we're not done for the year. Jeff Thompson: Okay. Greg Stilson: Not at all. Not at all, but it's one of these things where it's fast-paced and it's exciting, but this is all really awesome stuff that's going to benefit a lot of people. If you think about the amount of people that shop at Walgreens, just to get their prescriptions filled or just to buy one or two things, and to not need to always go up to the counter and pull somebody away from the register to go help you or to wait in line to find somebody to help you, now you can just walk in with your phone as a guest or if you have a glasses as an Explorer and just walk around. That is super, super empowering. Jeff Thompson: Just to add to that, or the people who waited in the car because why walk in sometimes. Now they can go in and explore. Greg Stilson: Exactly. I love what you say there, Jeff, because I can't tell you the number of times I've gone shopping with sighted people and you just choose to wait in the car while they go buy something. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. Greg Stilson: There's so much out there that you can learn and just to be able to walk in not worry about how many minutes you're taking or anything like that, just go in and explore and see what's on sale or see maybe there's a new beverage or food that they have that you didn't even know existed. While somebody else is shopping for something that they want, you can actually be exploring as well. That's something that is really, really exciting. Jeff Thompson: Why shouldn't you be able to walk out of the store and say, "I went in there to spend 10 bucks and I come out spending 30." Pete Lane: Exactly. I don't want to beat this dead horse, but the guest account is huge, Greg. Anybody listening to this podcast who is not an Aira subscriber can download the free Aira app, create a free, free, free guest account, and walk in and use their smartphone camera and do everything we're talking about. It's incredible. Greg Stilson: It is. It doesn't hurt to leave that app even on your phone because the reality is that we're adding ... I mean we're adding new access locations on a weekly to biweekly basis. If there's not a place near you right now, there most likely will be soon. The reality is that we're looking at not just one-off locations like this airport and that airport, but as you see with Walgreens, big chains that are global or national, where they're going to be everywhere. That's one of the most exciting things about Walgreens is it's the first chain, that and AT&T, are the first chains that are pretty much everywhere in the U.S., that you can go everywhere and find a Walgreens or an AT&T store. Pete Lane: And Wegmans groceries, while it's not nationwide, it covers a great geographical area up in the northeast in the Eastern seaboard. Over a hundred stores. Greg Stilson: Exactly. Just having the app on your phone, having signed in as a guest one time, it doesn't hurt to leave it on there. I don't even know how many megabytes, but it's not that many. What that means is that when you walk into one of these locations, it will just notify you that, "Hey, you're entering an Aira Access location." Now we have a searching capability where you can search. If you go to the more tab of the app, you can actually search for where Aira Access locations are. If you ever are in a location that you want to figure out, you can contact one of our agents as well and they can even do the search right on their dashboard and tell you where some of the access locations are as well. Jeff Thompson: Now, Greg, I believe here in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities area, the YMCAs are a part of the Aira Access network. Greg Stilson: Yup. I believe it's the YMCAs that are there. Jeff Thompson: That's great for people to go in, explore the place. At least enter the door like we were talking about Walgreens. Go in. Explore. Greg Stilson: One of the things that I would say is a little bit daunting as a blind person when you walk into a gym that you've never been in ... I travel all over the country and globally and stuff like that. One of the things that is often a deterrent for me going to a motel or a hotel gym is I don't know how to use the machines, right? I've got a treadmill at my home gym and I've got a stair stepper that I've learned how to use, but having an agent there to orient you to where the buttons are, just telling them, "Hey, I want to start this type or run," or they could tell you what option there are, one of the things ... There's so many fancy treadmills now with built in TVs and stuff like that. Greg Stilson: Maybe you just want to watch TV while you're running. You know what I'm saying? Being able to work those type of touchscreen devices and things like that are never accessible. So to be able to have an agent actually get you started, get you on the channel, show you what the buttons do or generally where they're located, it's a pretty powerful thing. Maybe we'll get a few people we'll say less apprehensive to go the gym because you're concerned about not knowing how the things work. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. 15 minutes later they could come back on and say, "Greg, keep going. Keep going, Greg." Greg Stilson: There you go. Jeff Thompson: Encouragements. Pete Lane: Motivation. Jeff Thompson: I think that is a big thing because there is so many situations where you don't even try. You don't even take that step. You don't walk out the door or go into some place, travel at the airport. I remember when you're talking about running through an airport to make a connecting flight. Greg Stilson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yup. To have the freedom to be able to run like that with nobody at your side and just have the agent letting you know, "All right. Off to your right. Off to your left," now granted I informed them ahead of time that I was going to be running, but just to have that type of freedom and not have to wait for somebody. I'm a super impatient person in general, so to be able to have that freedom is pretty powerful. Jeff Thompson: You know, one last thing that I want to bring up is, probably not the last, but with the Veterans, Suman announced at the NFP Convention last summer that the Veterans signed on to Aira. Greg Stilson: Yeah. Yup. This is really big. I covered so much of the packages and things like that that are available. All I've touched on there are the regular like everyday subscription packages or the Aira Access Guest packages. The way that you can use it as a guest, but you're right. What I didn't touch on is the federal government, the VA. One of the things that we didn't have much of a presence in at all last year or the year before is the federal government. Some of the really exciting stuff that we've done this year is we are now on the GSA Schedule for federal government. If you are a federal employee, you can get Aira purchased as an accommodation from your employer off the GSA Schedule. In addition, we are officially approved by the VA. Greg Stilson: Any VA can purchase the product. If you're a veteran, you can ask your Dist. coordinator or your bros or whoever you're working with and ask them. We do have VA pricing that's available. Jeff Thompson: Which is very appealing from what I've heard too. Greg Stilson: It is. It's great option for the VA. Then lastly, I want to say that one of the things that we struggled for a long time early on was getting approved as a vendor in States for Voc. Rehab. We heard Dan Frye earlier this year who's really an experienced person in the vocational rehabilitation services. He's done a great job helping us get on those list in different states. But what we've learned is that even if Aira is not an approved vendor in your state, you can still get the product purchased for you. We do have voc rehab pricing available, but you do have to write a justification letter. Greg Stilson: We're more than happy to help write any of those letters for you if you are looking to have voc rehab purchase Aira for you. We have annual pricing for voc rehab that fits into their purchasing schedule in the way that they purchase things. Jeff Thompson: Oh, that's great. Like I said to other people, I said, "You know, the prices really haven't changed that much since they started, but the value added just multiplied over and over again." Greg Stilson: Yeah. It's 100% true, Jeff, and you're only going to see that increasing as our AI options continue and things like that. What I think I'm the most excited about with regard to the changes in prices and things like that is the lower entry point price. This was something that we've been asked for by all of the consumer groups out there, NFP, ACB. That was the number one request that we got from everyone is how do I ... If I'm not able to afford the $99 a month, can I get a little bit of Aira for a lower price? That's something that we're really excited about is at $29, you can get 30 minutes a month and use it for those things that maybe you don't think you need. Greg Stilson: You're not going to need 60 minute session or something like that, but maybe it's one or two minute task. I can give you one clear one that I use every single week. I have a two year old. I go to take her to school or to her daycare in the morning. On the way back, if we're low on her milk, I'll stop off at the convenience store in the corner, which they have milk there, and I'll run in and grab her a new gallon of whole milk. When I walk in, I could try to use one of the four OCR apps that I have on my phone to try to read the type of milk and the expiration date, but that rarely works. Greg Stilson: In 90 seconds, I can have an agent direct to where the whole milk is and check all of the expiration dates going back ... I learned very early from my mother that you always pick from the back. We always start from the back and check the expiration date. Jeff Thompson: Shout out to mom. Greg Stilson: Exactly. But it's one of things where what I could do in probably five to 10 minutes using various apps and solutions and maybe eventually just getting frustrated and going up and finding somebody to help me, I can do in less than 90 seconds with Aira. That's just one example of 30 minutes you have potential tasks that will be made a heck of a lot easier, even if it's just sorting through mail every few days. You can sort through mail in five minutes with Aira and do the amount of mail that would probably take you 30 to 45 minutes if you were using various apps or other solutions. Greg Stilson: All I'm going to say is that we're super excited to have this sort of low entry point option that allows you to really get a taste of Aira, see if it fits in your life, and you can go from there. Remember, if you are living near an access location, 30 minutes can get you pretty far if you live near an access location that you frequent regularity. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Serena Gilbert asked the question, "Hi, Greg. I'm just wondering. I'm from Colorado. I work at a vocational rehab center. What is the response to the changes that you've just made from the community?" Greg Stilson: As you can imagine, the responses is mixed. I'm a straight shooter. I always have been. Anytime you change prices, I don't care what business you're in, Jeff, the response is going to be mixed. There's going to be people that love the changes. There's going to be people that don't like change in general. Jeff Thompson: As a rule, yeah. Greg Stilson: As a rule, right? We knew that going into it, but the reality and what I will say is there are certain things that had to be changed. One of the things we modified was the unlimited plan. It was not sustainable as a business. If you want Aira to be here in 12 months, the pricing and the plans that were there were just flat out not sustainable. I urge everybody to kind of look at that and say, "This company is growing. We are expanding. We are doing everything we can to really transfer the onus of minutes from the subscriber more towards businesses and more towards access solutions. But for us to do that, we have to be a sustainable business." That's where I would say that those changes had to be made. Greg Stilson: In the process, what is most exciting is, as I said, the low entry point offering, the low $29 plan so people can try it out. But I would say also we were able to reduce the cost per minute for our consumers on our most popular plan, which is the Standard Plan. We went from $.89 a minute down to $.83 a minute. You're getting 120 minutes now for $99 as opposed to 100 minutes for $89. When we looked at our consumption numbers, we learned that the vast majority of people were falling within that 30 to 120 minutes. How could we make it the most affordable possible for our most common customers to be able to use Aira on a monthly basis. That's really where I'm really excited that we were able to do that. So yeah. Jeff Thompson: 24/7 too. Greg Stilson: Yeah, and that's the other side is that we're increasing our costs by going 24/7. That's been another very sought after request from our customers is having the time with no agents was not an acceptable solution for people. We accommodated that as well this year. This is something that needed to happen in order for Aira to grow and expand and continue to change the way that we're able to do business. I think you're going to see significant improvement. Remember, we're always evolving as well. All of these changes came from listening to our Explorers and listening to the community. We're always listening as well. Keep that feedback coming. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Greg, I know Suman will probably tell you today or tomorrow, but what about next week? Greg Stilson: Next week's Thanksgiving, man. Pete Lane: There you go. Greg Stilson: Next week I'm eating a lot. That's my plans for next week. Jeff Thompson: You guys are open. People can use the service during Thanksgiving and- Greg Stilson: We are. Jeff Thompson: ... Christmas, New Years. Greg Stilson: 24/7 baby. 24/7. Jeff Thompson: There we go. Pete Lane: Greg, I wanted to add a question that I've been getting from my various communication platforms that I participate with Aira. Greg Stilson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Pete Lane: There's been some concern over the last several months about the quality and responsiveness of Aira tech support and customer care. I know that Suman himself came out with an email to all Explorers a few months ago explaining that he was aware of it and that they're putting a great deal of effort into improvement. Can you talk a little bit about what's improved with customer care, tech support, and what our Aira Explorers might expect if they make a contact? Greg Stilson: Absolutely. Customer care, as we're a growing company, first off, the number of customers has exploded and how many customers that we're serving. Making sure that we were able to accommodate and support those customers when things weren't working or when you had issues with your billing or when you had issues with your glasses or whatever else. We recognized that our support was not where it needed to be. As a startup company, this is a constant learning phase for us. We took a huge initiative. Suman took that very personally and made that one of the highest priorities internally. We implemented several changes. Greg Stilson: First off, we did ramp up our support hiring to make sure that we had enough specialists to answer your calls, but we also implemented an operator system. This is something that I think is really great is there's two ways of getting connected to a support agent now. Whenever you call in, you're going to get our operator. Our operator's job, if it's a simple problem, the operator can even solve the problem for you. If it's not simple, we have a number of different now care teams that specialize in various questions or issues that you maybe having. Whether your issue is related to hardware, to glasses, to billing, to the app, to your account, there's different teams that support those. Greg Stilson: Different connection points that the operator can get you to. If one of those team members is free, they'll do a direct transfer right then and there for you and you'll be able to work with that teammate to rectify your problem. If they're not, what we're doing is basically doing a scheduling a callback situation where you don't have to sit on hold anymore. You don't want to wait. Our agent will call you back at the specified time that you want to be called back in or a suggested time that works for the agent and yourself. This is something that we took very, very seriously. We're also significantly ramping up on our email communication. Making sure that within 24 hours you get an email communication back. Greg Stilson: It's something that, as I said, we took seriously and we're continuing to improve. Keep that feedback coming. If you're not getting the support that you feel you should be, make sure you let us know. It's support@aira.io. Make sure to let us know you are seeing the changes if they are improving or if they're not. That's the best way that we can learn. Jeff Thompson: The Explorers can now leave feedback for the agents. That there's certain things in the app that you have been improving so that you can get feedback to the agents better. If you're going to use a product or something, you can save time and your minutes by directly connecting up and they know what they're there for. Greg Stilson: Exactly. Yup. There's been a lot of changes to the app. We've always taken the feedback to the agents very seriously. You can rate an agent as good or poor, and then you can always leave comments. We urge everybody do that. It's the way that our agent analyst can help improve things if they're not going well or can give people a congratulatory pat on the back if they're doing something great too. It's a great way for us to understand how things are going for you. Then your comment, Jeff, about the access offers, that is a big change that we made in the app is to be able to initiate the access offer yourself rather than needing the agent to initiate it on their end. Greg Stilson: To be able to do that and actually call with an offer, you can actually call for free with one of those Aira Access offers so that you start that call using the sponsor's minutes rather than yours. As I said, you just use the button ... Not the big call button in the middle, but a button just below it called call with an access offer and that's where you can choose the small business offer, you can call using the Intuit QuickBooks product, or you can call using the Vispero product as well. We hope to add many, many more products and companies as time progresses. Jeff Thompson: My wife uses Chloe a lot at work because she has paperwork and stuff like that and she really likes that feature. Just the OCR just to be able to read it at will when she wants. Greg Stilson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yup. I'm excited to say that we're very close to releasing an update to the Horizon system. It's been a really fantastic year with Horizon. It's been super exciting and just the response that we're hearing from Explorers on the significant improvement in their agent experience. We're going to be releasing an update to Horizon and to Chloe very shortly, which will significantly improve the reading capability. Then in addition, we're also going to be offering a document capture capability very similar to that of KNFB Reader and Seeing AI and that kind of stuff to be able to actually capture a full sheet and have it read to you. Greg Stilson: I think that's really just the beginning of what we're going to be doing with reading. Jeff Thompson: That sounds great. Greg Stilson: Yes. There's that. In addition, we're bringing a lot of the Aira Access offers piece up to sort of parity with the iOS and Android app where you actually can say to Chloe, "Hey, make an access call," and she'll actually ask you, "Okay. Do you want this to be a Vispero product call, an Intuit QuickBooks call," so you can now initiate just by using your voice any of these access calls as well, and even to the point where you can ask Chloe, "Hey, where's my nearest access location?" She'll actually do a quick search and tell you, "Hey, you've got a Walgreens right down the street." Pete Lane: Cool. Jeff Thompson: I just want to compliment you guys. We went to England and my wife took all these pictures with her Aira Glasses and stuff. One of the big things is they label them. Greg Stilson: Yeah. Jeff Thompson: She didn't need someone else to help her with Facebook or something or posting it here or there. It was done. It just rounded out her vacation. That's what you do on vacations. You take pictures and you send them out, and she did it while walking along. You know? It was really quite an experience. Greg Stilson: I can tell you, as a blind person who cannot see pictures, it's one of the most sort of powerful and yet underappreciated features is the labeling capability. For those of you who don't know, the agent can take pictures either with your glasses or your phone. We have so many Explorers who literally work with agents just to get that perfect selfie. They can label those images for you. What's really cool about that is that is that the label will actually go into the photo, it's part of the meta data in the photo, and it's read by VoiceOver. They'll send that picture to your app on your phone. Greg Stilson: Even if you take the photo with your Horizon Glasses, even though you're not using your smartphone at the time, the photo will go to your smartphone's app and you can add that photo directly to your camera roll or to your photos on your phone, or even share with something like Google Photos or Dropbox or anything like that for later on. But the nice part about that is the description that the agent put in will stay with that photo. Whatever screen reader you're using, whether it's Voiceover or Talkback or JAWS on a computer or in VDA, it'll read to you as touch that photo or go over the top of that photo. That's super powerful both in a social setting, but also we have so many students who will ... Greg Stilson: Let's say that they don't have a professors who's really verbose in reading the board or a PowerPoint slide or something like that, I had professors like that all the time, we have some students who will ask an agent to take a photo of the board and just label or write down the information into the photo label of what that is so that they can go back, either connect it to a Braille display later on. Just when they're in their dorm room studying- Jeff Thompson: That's amazing. Greg Stilson: ... they can listen to the content. Jeff Thompson: Fantastic. Pete Lane: That's awesome. Jeff Thompson: Greg, I really want to thank you for coming on the Blind Abilities here and talking to our listeners and telling us all the new opportunities people have with Aira. Pete, is there anything you want to add? Pete Lane: No. I just wanted to thank Greg as well. We've been speaking with Greg Stilson. Greg is the Director of Product Management for Aira. He's a regular guest here on Blind Abilities. It's always good to hear from you and chat with you, Greg. Thanks for the updates. Greg Stilson: Thanks for having me on, guys. It's always a pleasure and have a great holiday next week. All the listeners have a fantastic holiday. Keep that feedback coming. We're always growing and evolving and you guys are the reason why this product is what it is. Jeff Thompson: Thank you, Greg. Pete Lane: Thanks, Greg. Jeff Thompson: Such a great time talking to Greg Stilson once again. Be sure to check out Aira on the web at aira.io. I want to thank Pete Lane for coming back in the studios and a big thank you goes out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. You can find Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau. Chee Chau. Chee Chau. Once again, I want to thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed. Until next time, bye, bye. [Music]  [Transition noise]   -When we share -What we see -Through each other's eyes... [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence] ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Blind Abilities. Download our app from the App Store, Blind Abilities. That's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.

TJ got to work on one of my favorite shows, Dancing With The Stars. All I've ever wanted was to get famous, have my life fall apart, and make my comeback on DWTS. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, it is. TJ's worked on other shows as well. We talk about all of it! This is originally from my old Daytime Justice podcast. It was so good I had to bring it back!   So You Think You Wanna Work In TV? is an independently produced podcast. You can support the podcast by being a monthly subscriber at www.patreon.com/wannaworkintv or make a one time donation at www.soyouthinkyouwannaworkintv.com.

We discuss the idea of professional reinvention and sit down with sales executive and entreprenuer Edward Nunn to hear his 33 year journey. Length: 54:08Host: Zach | AdeEdward Nunn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-nunn-7851ba11/NunnAbove www.nunnabove.comLiving Corporate Patreon and All Major Links: https://linktr.ee/livingcorporateTRANSCRIPTAde: "It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." The context of this apocryphal quote commonly attributed to Darwin is related to this theory of biological evolution, but I believe there's something more there. For many of us, we don't want to just survive, we want to thrive. We want to achieve as much as we can while being our best selves, or at least while striving to find out who our best selves are. So with that in mind, what does change responsiveness look like for us in our careers? How do we adapt professionally to make sure we're constantly setting ourselves up for long-term success? What does that even mean? What does that look like? This is Ade, and you're listening to Living Corporate. It's the remix. Zach: What?Ade: Thank you for joining us. [laughs] My bad. Today we're talking about reinventing yourself professionally, so I thought it was contextually appropriate. So the act of making a career change that is in-line with your long-term career goals.Zach: Oh, okay. Yes, gotcha. Yes. [laughs]Ade: Yeah. [laughs]Zach: This is really important though. Like, the concept of looking where you believe you're trending professionally and making adjustments. Sometimes they're major adjustments where appropriate. Speaking of which, Ade, would you mind talking to us about your journey to becoming an engineer?Ade: It's been a pretty rough, rough trip so far, and--I mean, some of it has been very enjoyable, and I mean that with all sincerity. I've had some amazing experience, but a lot of it has just been, you know, having to teach yourself a whole new--brand new field of knowledge. I like to describe myself as a learner, but having to teach yourself a whole new field of knowledge when you have nothing to base that field on is incredibly daunting. And I've had some, you know, technical issues, technical difficulties along the way, and I've also had some very, like, up at 2 A.M. in the morning like, "I don't think I can do this." Like, "I don't think that I am up to the task of making this switch," and that's not because I don't find this interesting or I don't find this, like, mind-meltingly awesome, it's that I just don't feel like I'm capable. And so those doubts always exist, but the fun thing about the switch is that in reinventing yourself you discover parts of yourself that you didn't know were there. And so it's difficult, it's daunting, but it's also really, really rewarding. Like, sometimes I get to a point where [inaudible] or my portfolio site comes together and I'm like, "Oh, my God. I did it. I did it, and I didn't--" I mean, yes, I used Stack Overflow more than once, but I did it, you know? You get that sense of accomplishment that you're not actually steering your life right off a cliff, and there's that duality of on the one hand "Am I even supposed to be here?" And on the other hand, on the days where, you know, you do feel like you're in the right room or you do feel like you're doing the right thing and you do feel like "I'm right where I need to be," it's this breathless wonder, I suppose is the best way of putting it, at just how dope everything can be.Zach: That's so cool. I know of a few people, right, who have made similar changes in terms of--not similar changes in terms of becoming an engineer, but similar decisions to kind of make a pivot, right, career-wise, and you know, I've seen people who have transitioned from being, like, HR managers to being fashion bloggers. I've seen--I have friends who have transitioned from being teachers to being full-time photographers. I've had friends who worked in the government and now they're, like, running intramural sports leagues. And I can't speak to the bag, like, how much money they're making, but I can say that each and every one of them seemed much more fulfilled in their day-to-day activities. And so, like, I'm really excited for you because you're going through a journey yourself, and I'm excited to see what the other side of that looks like for you.Ade: [laughs] So am I.Zach: [laughs] And I know that regardless of whatever, you know, ultimately it is, you're gonna be a better version of yourself coming out of it, so I'm really excited for you for that.Ade: Aye. And here's where we insert the celebratory Milly Rock. [laughs] But yeah, you know what? I think it would be super interesting to talk to someone who has had to professionally maybe reinvent themselves a couple times over, several times over. I'm thinking major changes, something like transitioning from education to car sales to, I don't know, stock brokering? To maybe pharmaceuticals to--hm, let's go with hospice care, and bonus points if this person was somehow related, in some form or fashion, to one of our Living Corporate hosts.Zach: Oh, you mean like our guest, my dad Ed Nunn?Ade & Zach: Whaaaaat? Zach: [imitates airhorns][Sound Man throws 'em in]Zach: Sound Man, listen, now. You gonna give me my pow-pow-pows, but then you also give me a couple pow-pow-pows 'cause it's my dad, okay? So pow-pow-pow. Give me a couple more.[Sound Man obliges]Zach: Give me some pow-pow-pows. Boy, that needs to be on a t-shirt somewhere. Anyway, keep it in. All right, so next we're gonna get into our interview with our guest, my dad Ed Nunn.Ade: We're back. Welcome to this portion of the show called the interview section. Y'all know how we go. So today we have the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Mr. Ed Nunn with us.[Sound Man throws in cheers]Ade: Ed, welcome to the show.Ed: Thank you. Appreciate it, Ade. Ade: Most certainly. So for those of us who don't know you, do you mind sharing a bit of your background? Tell us a bit about yourself.Ed: I'm 53 years old, Midwesterner. Right now I'm married, living in--outside of St. Paul. Five children. One of them happens to be one of your colleagues, Zach Nunn.Ade: Yeah, yeah.Ed: His siblings are a bit younger. We have a dog. My mother-in-law lives with us here in the suburbs. Ade: Okay. I love dogs, so I'm not gonna, like, go down that line of inquiry 'cause I'm gonna sit up here all day talking to you about your dog. But that sounds wonderful. It sounds like you have a nice, cozy life with a nice, cozy family, which is something I definitely aspire to, but today we're talking a little bit about professional reinvention, kind of remaking your career, which is something that's near and dear to my heart, and the path to getting there. You mind walking us through your own 33-year journey to being who you are now?Ed: Mm-hmm. You know what? When you put it that way, there's a--I look back, and I think about it, and I haven't really thought about it until you put it that way. 33 years.Ade: [laughs] Right.Ed: You know, I recall when I first went to college I had an academic scholarship to Jackson State University, and I recall going to college, and honor student and all that stuff, and my mom had talked to me--you know, I remember taking these trips with my mom and dad and the family to Saint Louis and Mississippi and California, and every time we'd go some place, you know, she'd talk about these roads and these build--I'm sorry, these bridges, and she said, "You know, son, you can be an engineer. You could build these. You could design these." My mom and dad weren't--were not educated, didn't graduate high school, but their aspiration was of course for all of us to do much more, much greater things, and they poured a lot of expectations and resources, time, and love and all of that into us to do that. So I went to school and I was gonna be an engineer. Not a civil engineer, I decided I'd try my hand at being a mechanical engineer and found out that I didn't like engineering. [laughs] So instead of--'cause I went to Jackson State, transferred to Mississippi State, went back to Jackson State and finished up my math degree. So I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, and I said, "Okay, now I'm out. Now what do I do with that?" Thought about being a teacher, tried my hand at teaching mathematics high school for a couple of years, realized I didn't like that. Left that and went into working as a recruiter for a liberal arts college in the Midwest. Left that and became a stockbroker. Really, really changed gears there because we--at that time I was married, and we decided to leave the Quad City area. When I got out of mathematics and moved back home to the Quad Cities I started the recruitment for the liberal arts college, became a stockbroker and wanted to leave the Quad Cities just to--the idea of having a family and being able to raise a family in a more cosmopolitan, diverse--you name it. You can put anything you want, it wasn't the Quad Cities.Ade: Right. The stakes were different.Ed: Well, yeah. It was just different, right, and so we decided to go to Minneapolis, the Minneapolis area, and got up to the Minneapolis area and realized I didn't really want to start all over again building a book of business after three or four years of doing it in the Quad Cities, so I started working in the field of pharmaceutical sales. Left pharmaceutical sales, went into selling copiers and printing and multi-function devices. Left that and went into--well, previously I went to telecommunications, then to--no, I'm sorry, it was telecommunications after selling printers, and then I found myself at a point where I was just kind of burnt out, you know? I'm hopping from place to place, industry to industry, and not really finding what I'm looking for. It was okay for a little while, get bored. Literally get bored of it, and I took a break, flat out took a break. There was a place where the pharmaceutical industry dried up. A lot of reps--the companies were downsizing, and I recall--I recall talking to my wife and saying, "You know what? I'm tired of this." It really wasn't sales, it was walking in and, you know, pop-up ads all you were. You weren't having an opportunity to have a discussion with people around their needs and how to solve them.Ade: Right.Ed: So I took a break, and I just started my own little deal. I got involved with some guys that had an investment idea, and we formed a company and started--we're manufacturing, with some partners in Asia, some technology, and then we have formed a company to actually--a separate company aside from our investment. We were going to import it and start selling it to resellers, and I did that for a couple years, and it was good. I enjoyed it. We saw some growth, my partner and I did. That went awry because the original investor group kind of--they were at odds with each other, and there were some issues that came about, and so that kind of blew up on that side, which it then kind of obviously cratered the business that we had importing the product and trying to sell it to the resellers. And so there I am again thinking, "Okay, great, now what?" So as I sat there, you know, I recall a couple of weeks just saying, "Okay, what am I gonna do? What do I want to do?" I got a phone call, and this was the beginning of what I've been doing for the last few years of my life. I got a phone call from a hospice company, and they--I picked the phone up and the lady said, "Hey, you know, I'm looking for Ed Nunn." Said, "This is he." "Hey, Ed, I'm So-and-so from, you know, so-and-so hospice. Have you ever thought about hospice?" I said, "No." "Would you like to?" I said, "No." [laughs] "What I know about hospice is death. I--you know, I'm not there yet. I'm not ready to talk about it, I'm not ready to experience it, so I'm not really interested. Thank you very much." "Well, just keep my name, and if you ever change your mind please call," you know? "We got your name from So-and-so and we'd like to talk to you." "Okay, thanks. Goodbye." I hung that up, and my wife said, "Who was that?" So I told her. She says, "You know, you may want to think about that." I said, "Sheila, I thought about it. No thank you."Ade: Right.Ed: But I gave it a little more thought. I don't know what happened, but I gave it some thought. I didn't have anything else lined up necessarily. I didn't have anything in my mind I wanted to do, and, you know, after I thought about it, there's got to be more to hospice than just death. I mean, it's something we're all gonna do is what I recall thinking, and I end up wanting to find out more about it. So a couple days have passed. I pick the phone up and call the lady back, and, you know, a couple, three, four weeks later, I find myself hired by this company, which at the time was one of the largest, if not the largest home health care company. It was a large company. 60,000 employees here in the states. For what they did, they were a big company. And so I found myself in the world of--still in health care, but now in hospice, and I've been in hospice ever since. And that was 2012, I believe. So for the last six years I've been in hospice, working for three different hospice companies. The third one, you know, actually was purchased, and they decided to shut down a third of their operations in the country to kind of get control of five different platforms. It was just spread out too far, and they chose to shut down the two offices I was running here in Minnesota as well as the other 25 to 30 they shut down. And so I got tired of doing hospice for others, and I opened my own hospice company, and so right now I own part of a hospice company, and I'm still working for yet another one, doing sales and marketing for them here in the Twin Cities area. So that's me.Ade: Wow. So first of all, I want to take a break. [laughs] I want to, like, sit back and be like, "That was a whole lot," and I feel like I've earned it, but yeah, it sounds like you've gone through a process of constant reinvention and experiences that have built one upon the other. Not necessarily a 1:1 correlation there, but it does sound like you've had a wealth of experiences. Have any of them really stuck with you, or any feedback that you've gotten from the people around you, have those stuck with you to the extent that you've utilized those thoughts or you've utilized that process in other areas of your life, maybe in building your previous companies or in building this one?Ed: Yes. As a matter of fact, the very first time I stepped out into the world of commission-based earning versus, you know, an hourly salary or some hourly pay rather versus salary, just doing it on commission. The very first thing I heard was from my father, and he told me, "What are you doing? You need to get you a job that pays you a solid hourly rate and will just--" "You can pay your bills, and--what are you talking about, commission? You don't know what you're gonna make," and he didn't care that it was a--that I had just been interviewed and I was the first person of color in the Quad Cities to actually have a Series 7 to be a licensed stockbroker with the company that I was working with, and they had been there in one form or another--for 93 years been around, and he didn't care. That wasn't a focus. He was--you know, my father grew up John Deere and forging metal and grinding it and that kind of thing. He's like, "Better get you a job." [laughs] And so that experience, his objection to it, was so strong. I'll never forget it. I'm thinking, "You know what? You may be right, but I'm gonna try this," and it was the best thing I ever did, and I always go back to that thinking no--you really have to have faith in yourself and the things you do, and if you really are passionate about it and--you just have to believe in it and go for it, and I'll never forget that. As the first thing--the first time I tried to do something outside the realm of what my parents had kind of modeled for me, that was the one thing that--it stuck out, like, "Wow, okay. I'm out here by myself now." "You're on your own." But yeah, that one stuck out with me because--I kept that mindset. It was uncomfortable, Ade. It was very uncomfortable going from a known, you know, to the unknown in terms of my pay because yeah, you know, I had a house, you know? All these things you're doing and you need to pay for, and all of a sudden--*claps*--you know? You know, when they first start you out as a broker, you know--I started out, and they give you a pay, rather a salary, and wean you off of it, and the goal is to be a year, a year and a half or so, that you're 100% commission-based. Well, after the first three months, I was doing enough in commissions--my commissions far exceeded my salary, so after three months I said, "You know what? You keep your salary. I'll just go commission here on in," and it was the best thing I ever did. And so I look back and think about the fact that had I not done that, had I not gone through that, had I not weathered the storm of my father telling me not to do it and going ahead and doing it, I wouldn't have ventured out and done some of the things I've done in the last few years.Ade: Right. And you've kind of touched on it, but I do wanna backtrack and get, like, an explicit conversation about the motivation behind a few of these shifts. So you mentioned that a few of them were by necessity, but you made some jumps and you made some decisions that weren't necessarily necessities, they were just you making decisions based off of your own motivations 'cause you speak to those.Ed: Well, I've always found it odd that when someone would look at my resume, and this was--you know, I'm 53 now, so when I was in my mid-30s someone would look at my resume--'cause there was a time when, and I didn't mention this, my wife and I actually went to Japan for a couple of years and taught English. We just--we stopped it all and said, "You know what? We don't have kids. Before we go, we're just gonna go." To get started we're just gonna go to Japan, and we're gonna start and teach for a while and get an experience, but when you get back and you sit down with folks and they look at your resume, and they're looking for--you know, they're looking for [inaudible], right? Whatever that [inaudible] is, that's what they're looking for. I've got widgets over here. All I've got is widgets. Now, some of mine are yellow, some are green, but I don't have [inaudible], and I'm thinking, "Why are you looking for that? Why don't you look--and I know that you're looking for something in terms of what you're trying to do for this position. You want these qualities you want this person to fill, and they've got this list, but I--and they're trying to, you know, jam me into that, or jam anybody into it, and what I realized was that after a while--for a while [inaudible] I was frustrated because I didn't have [inaudible] and I didn't fit the mold because I didn't stay nine years here, I didn't stay five years there, and the older I got, the more experience I got, the more I realized that's fine, it just wasn't a fit. But while I was going through it it was frustrating, and so the decisions that I made to move, at first they were very uncomfortable when I was--you know, I'd move. I'd want to do something. It was intentional. I didn't like what I was doing, and my thought was "Why stay here? Just because I don't fit this mold I have to stay until I fit this mold? Who tells me--and when is it okay to move because I'm miserable here? How long do I stay here and be miserable so I can do another move here?" And I realized, "No, that's just not gonna work. If that's not a fit because of me moving, well, then that's not a fit, and I'll just keep moving." What I came to realize in the end was I wasn't going to be happy getting a job somewhere necessarily. It's gonna have to be something--and I know a lot of folks come to it on their own. It took me a while to get to it, you know, get to the fact that it was okay, it was okay to not be comfortable. It was okay to not fit the mold, and it was okay to go and make your own money your own way, and if you stumbled along the way, you didn't make all the money you thought you were gonna make, and whatever that stuff was in the middle that I was kind of, you know, letting get in my way, that was okay too because the goal was to kind of, you know, be true to myself, and I know it sounds kind of cliche, but I really was trying to find something that I didn't have, and so it was okay getting through all that to get to, you know, trying to be happy with what I was initially rather going to wind up with, which was a journey in terms of just feeling like I was accomplishing something, you know? For me and myself, because I tell my kids all the time, Ade, and I know I kinda strayed here, but I tell my kids all the time that my life is--my life, I identify myself by my family. I'm only doing what I'm doing because of them in terms of trying to provide for them, but if I'm not happy doing it then they're in trouble because I'm--[laughs] They're in trouble, so that being the case I need to be happy while I'm trying to provide and give them the things that I really want them to have just like my folks did for me.Ade: Right. Yeah, so, you know, I think a lot about the current trajectory for a lot of my friends, or for even me myself, and just thinking about how people map their three-year plan, their five-year plan, their seven-year plan, their ten-year plan, I think a lot of it is based in that community where it's [inaudible]. Ed: [inaudible]. [laughs]Ade: [inaudible], yes. It makes me think of, like, my dog chewing on my shoes or something. Now I'm scared that he's chewing on my shoes downstairs. [laughs] But anyway, I've noticed that for a lot of my cohorts, we rely on that continuity and will even, like, rewrite resumes, and we'll just, like, try to shave the edges off of the square peg to fit in a round hole. And it sounds very much that you were like, "Nope, the square peg is still the square peg," and so that process for you, do you have any advice for anybody who's navigating that current trajectory on their own, such as myself? How we should go about it, just kind of presenting your experiences and how that might--and how your experiences might help us or edify us in any way.Ed: You know what? The first thing first and foremost is get comfortable with the idea of being very uncomfortable.Ade: Yikes. [laughs]Ed: I mean, you know, you've heard the--you know, those adages, and you've heard, you know, "If you want to succeed," you know, "you're either burning the bridge or burning the boat that got you there," so you're stuck there, those kinds of things. You know, that's true. You--I'm not saying you burn your, you know, your contacts and you burn people, but in your mind you have to just get used to the fact that "Wow, I just did something that--" "Oh, okay. I let that go," and you have to be comfortable letting it go and not going back to it. You let it go for a reason, and you get--you know, sometimes you can get a--you know, you get afraid of where you're going 'cause you're not quite sure and you kind of want to hold onto some things, but I would tell you that number one, get very comfortable being uncomfortable. Number two, I would say that you're going to--even if you have that mindset, some of those personality traits--you know, the gambler type of personality.Ade: [laughs]Ed: Seriously, you know, that doesn't mean that the gambler is 100% certain of themselves, but just know that--[laughs]--when you make that call, you're gonna fall. You really are, but that doesn't mean you made the wrong call. Be comfortable, you know, with being uncomfortable. Know that you're gonna fall down along the way, but you have to stay true. You really have to have faith in what you've chosen and faith in yourself because I'm telling you this much, if you put yourself out there and you don't have this privileged mindset, you will make it happen for yourself. I can guarantee you. If you sincerely understand that--the mindset that, "You know what? I don't know what this problem--I don't know how to solve this one, but I will figure it out. I'll use my resources. I'll call some friends. I'll have these conversations." You do what you have to do. You talk to folks, and it'll come to you, but you have to know that when you put yourself out there it's gonna be challenging, but if you have serious faith in what you're doing--and if you don't panic, overly panic...Ade: So panicking a little bit is fine. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] It's fine. You're gonna panic a little bit, because, you know, there are times when I might need a good chunk of change to do something I'm working to do. I've got a few projects now I'm working on that have nothing to do with my employer, they have nothing to do with, you know, my children right now. They have a sibling band, and they have--you know, they're actually doing pretty good. They're starting to get going a little bit. They're actually featured on this season's America's Got Talent and that kind of stuff. Not featured, but they're actually gonna be on the show. I can say that because I was told I could. Ade: [laughs] I'm looking forward to rooting for them.Ed: Pardon me?Ade: I said I'm looking forward to rooting for them.Ed: Oh, I appreciate it, and I'm sure they would too, but I've got another project I'm working on that I've been working on for five years, and there are times I--you know, you have a money crunch. If you need--you know, and I'm not a rich guy, so if I need 30, 40, $50,000, or even $10,000, and I need it next week and I don't have it, you have to start being creative. "How am I getting this money up?" You know, I'm not looking to go borrow money and go into debt, and so you just have some faith that you'll figure it out. And, you know, you do. You really do if your mindset--if you condition yourself to knowing that, "Okay, I'm gonna hit some things that I don't know how to handle. I'm gonna hit some snags. Don't panic overly so. Just go ahead and--" You know, 'cause there's a process to it, and typically my process has been to put different things in play so I have different areas or different things I can go back to to help me out.Ade: Right, so basically having a backup plan.Ed: Well, not just a backup plan. I'm talking multiple things that are going on at once. You know, the idea of having just one source of income scares the snot out of me. I don't know how folks do that. They have one job, and I look at that and think, "You're one management change away from twiddling your thumbs," and I'm thinking, "How do you navigate that?" And I realize you might have your--a year worth of savings, or two years worth of savings, or whatever you've got in your savings 401K to survive and why you--but why do it that way? Well, you know what, if that's what you want to do, great. My thought is just--I don't see it that way. I just like to have a little bit more control.Ade: Sure, yeah. Yeah. So I'm definitely gonna be looking into other streams of income now because you just dragged me by my edges just then.Ed: That wasn't the intent. That wasn't the intent, but--Ade: Look, I take it with all the love and the good sentiments behind that one. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] Well, no. I mean, and it's not anything that's--there's nothing elaborate, you know? Real estate, you know? For 20 something years I've owned real estate, you know? From several houses and/or multi-unit buildings to individual, you know, houses, but that stuff, for the last 20 something years, has kept me afloat, and it gave me the opportunity to make the choices and say, "You know what? I don't want to do that." You know, right now I have a project where I'm building these--I build these quarter-scale cars, and these things are--these are, like, four feet long, and they're huge, and they're quarter-scale. I mean, these things are 50 pounds maybe. They have their functioning engines, whether the engines be eight-cylinder gasoline engines or nitromethane engines. They have working lights, doors, you name it. They're actually scale cars. These things sell for about--you know, they sell for a lot of money, so that's something I do on the side as well. Just a lot of different things going on that help as you want to make a change, and they also take up your time, but they're a part of the plan, because the plan for me has always been--I go back to what I'm doing this for. It's just to make sure I get this group of people through this to a point where they can, on their own, start navigating. That's my purpose. That's my plan. That's all I'm here to do right now. That's it, and so I'm taking everything I can with me that I'm using to do just that, period the end. Ade: That's brilliant. I think that it's important, you know, the thought you just elucidated, that it's great and it's a good idea to reinvent yourself, but you also should have something to fall back on while you do that because it's a good thing to take the leap of faith, but you should have a parachute.Ed: Oh, certainly. Well, if you don't, it's a hard, rough landing. [laughs] I've been there too.Ade: [laughs] Right. But yeah, I mean, thank goodness for, you know, parachutes because every once in a while taking that step of faith is just kind of like, "I don't know. That's a mighty long way down."Ed: But you know, you guys, you're much younger. I mean, I look at--I look at you and Zach and, you know, folks your age, and I say, "Wow, you don't have to worry about that nonsense, someone looking at your resume saying, "Gee, you know, you were only here for two years. You were only here for three years."" Ade: Right.Ed: You know, that's not a question that people are posing. That's not even a mindset anymore. Well, you know, 30 years ago it certainly was. The idea of stability was--it was different, and I look at that flexibility that you have to--you know, to shape yourselves, your careers, your destinies. I think you have--I think you have more flexibility. I think you--there's an opportunity, a greater one, a much more easy opportunity to do just that than I had. So I think that's really cool.Ade: Yeah, I really like that. I think those were all the questions that we have today. Are there any thoughts that you would like to share that we haven't gotten to? Anything that you really think would benefit us? Ed: I guess--let me ask you a question.Ade: Sure.Ed: Education-wise.Ade: Yeah.Ed: What is your education?Ade: I have a B.A. in political science and legal studies. I think I had a minor's in philosophy. I really wanted to go to law school at the time, and then I began a master's in sociology, the focus being [inaudible] science, but I never completed my master's, and I'm now working on a front-end nanodegree at Udacity. It's a Google scholarship that allows people to kind of learn programming skills, which is what I'm interested in. So I really, really, really, really, really want to become a software engineer. That's my eventual goal. I want to build my own apps, but I also want to work at--not a Google or a Facebook. I think those are way too large for my personality type. Maybe eventually. Right now, I definitely want to work at more of a mid-sized company where I get the mentorship that I'm really looking for and ownership of my products, honestly so I can be outchea. [laughs] No, I'm kidding. I mean, that is it a little bit. I think that--I think that I'm really invested in a bit of freedom, and most of the software engineers that I know and most of the jobs that I look at are like, "Oh, yeah, you can work 90% of the time remote," which to me means, you know, I can spend a solid 90% of my time coding on beaches, which I know you don't know much about me, but I'm very much a water person, so the idea of being able to do something that I enjoy in a place I enjoy really, really appeals to me. So I have that freedom, and my whole life isn't sitting behind a desk somewhere.Ed: So if I'm not mistaken, what I'm hearing you say is that this education you're pursuing, you're doing so in order to gain some freedom in life and control.Ade: Yeah.Ed: Okay. If you didn't have to work, what would you be doing?Ade: If I didn't have to work, I would own a restaurant. Ed: You don't think that's work?Ade: No. [laughs] It's funny. I actually don't know if we'll keep all of this in the conversation. I don't know. Where is this going? Ed: [laughs] I'm asking the question 'cause you asked me--I'm getting somewhere. I'm going somewhere.Ade: Okay, okay. If I didn't have to work, I would have a restaurant. I actually have a book of recipe ideas and meals that I want to cook. The idea is to have a restaurant that is diasporic, so all of the food in the restaurant would from the African diaspora, from West African, East African-inspired meals to the Caribbeans to Latin America and meals that are typically in Afro-Latino homes. Just everything that brings us together as one community. I'm very much a community-oriented person, and I think that--to me, one of the most beautiful things about the diaspora is how similar but different food is, and Anthony Bourdain, who was, like, one of the, like, biggest influences for my love of food and cooking and people, had this thing where he talked about food being the center of humanity. Like, once you talk about a people's food, you're talking about people. So culture is built on that, and I could wax poetic about this all day, but essentially I'd be cooking. I'd own a kitchen or a food truck or a series of them and just feed people, 'cause I'm African and that's what we like doing. [laughs]Ed: So here's my question to you, and I mean, it's--you know, I listen to you talk, and the last couple of minutes have been real talk from you. It's been--I can tell it in your tone. I can tell from the fact that you have this knowledge about, this breath and this passion about it. I marvel at that because I'm wondering, "Okay, so how many of these changes are you gonna take yourself through before you say, "You know what? I'm ready for that change now.""Ade: Yikes. [laugh]Ed: Because I have a couple things that I'd like to do for me, and I'm 53, and I'm working towards them. One of them I've already started, with these cars. It's a passion. I love cars, and I like the idea of control or whatever. You know, life is extremely obviously random, but however you can eliminate some of that randomness--but that's one of the things I want to do. It's just taken a long time to get here. Dealing with my family, working with my family and having my kids and my wife around, that's something that I've always wanted to and I hold dear to. So the idea of working with them with their music career right now, that's really big for me, but it's taken a long time to get there. Some of that--well, I didn't have a family, you know, 30 years ago like this, but to get to something I really love--you already knew it, or know it rather. I didn't know 'til I got here. You already have something that is really, really dear and tender, and I'm listening to you talk about this nano this and this MBA that and this wizzy-wazzy this, and it was just interesting, and then when you started talking about the food I'm thinking, "Okay, this is real for her," and I'm just wondering: What are you gonna do, and when are you gonna decide to do that?Ade: It's funny that you ask because my partner is a tax lawyer, and her thing is constantly, like, "We need to get a food truck for you,", right? [laughs] And so I think that it's definitely something I want to work towards within the next five or so ten--five to ten years because I think that for me it's the security of the job, because, for example, I kind of provide for my family as well, and it's difficult for me to take a leap of faith with, like, a mini-parachute on my back when I know that, like, there are people who are relying on me to not break my legs on the way down, you know? So that's always--that's the fear. So there's the passion behind the cooking, right? And it's like--I'm definitely not gonna die without putting at least a plate in front of somebody's face and like, anticipating the look on their face when they eat it, right? But I also know that the amount that I have to lose right now is keeping me--is what's keeping me from it. So I think that the process of reinvention for me has to start from a place of absolute commitment, not a place of one foot in the commitment and one foot in the fear ,if that makes any sense. Yeah. Fingers crossed, man. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] Well, I just--I'm looking forward to hearing your story later when both feet, you know, finally land on the commitment side, and I'm wondering if it'll be the--you know, the pain to change was less than the pain to stay the same is what they say, right? So I'm just wondering what's your motivation, what actually gets you to that point? I realize you've got other things, that your people are depending on you. I got that. Hey, I got the same thing, and it's always interesting to hear what people's story is, what their story is, because I've gone through it too. So I'll be looking to hear the end of this one.Ade: Most definitely, and I'm looking forward to, like, feeding you at some point. [laughs] Putting a plate on your table, and hopefully I've written, like, my own e-commerce platform or something of the sort, so merging those two loves.Ed: Well, I've got to tell you this. I've listened to you guys with this Living Corporate, and I was--I've got some friends who listen to it too, and we marvel at it because--Ade: Really?Ed: Yes, yes. I think it's--I think it's relevant. My wife thinks it's extremely cool, because I think you guys have hit upon something.Ade: Thank you.Ed: Well, we think you've hit upon something because, you know, the idea of this--it's one thing to acknowledge, it's another to accept. And, you know, what you're doing is not new with respect to wanting, you know, this acceptance, not just acknowledgement in Corporate America for different peoples. But you guys have been able to reach beyond walls of these companies and connect it with this technology and have this conversation. And, you know, I've been at different companies, large companies, you know? A lot of them. You know, Xerox, Lilly. Some big companies, and within the walls, yeah, there's a lot of acknowledgement of different groups of people, and these different groups are formed, and they can have a platform of some sort, but typically in the past my experience has always been it's been a pat on the head, right? "Yeah, that's nice. That's nice. You guys go over there in the corner and talk, and I'll take it back to the board, and that'll be that." [inaudible] "I'll take this report that you guys had a meeting back too. That'll be nice," but you guys have decided that "No, we're not gonna center it in one particular place. We're just gonna put it out here for everybody," and you've taken this technology and taken this conversation to a different level, and it's so relevant. It's because it's now something that isn't confined to somebody's little bitty, you know, pat on the head from the corporate leadership. No, this is real, and we get to talk about this stuff, and we need to talk about it. And so I look at Living Corporate and say, "My God, that's a really cool idea. Man, they--talk about hitting on something that makes sense," and I enjoy listening to it. I enjoy listening to you guys. Your platform, the way you guys put it together, the music, the artwork - it's cool.Ade: Thank you. I really appreciate that it's making this much of an impact, and we've certainly been getting, you know, great feedback from people, and we really appreciate all of those things. So before we close out, do you have any final thoughts, anything that you'd like to share? Any shout outs you'd like to give? Whatever. The floor is yours.Ed: A big shout out to NUNNABOVE. That's the musical group that Zach's siblings have formed. They've been together for a few years doing their music together. They're young, they're young, but I ask that you check 'em out on America's Got Talent and support 'em, and a big shout out to my wife. She doesn't know that I'm gonna shout her out here, put her out here, but, you know, I mentioned--I mentioned all that changing and all those decisions I made to do different things to support my family. Without my wife there to be the support, it wouldn't have been able to be accomplished. I couldn't have--I couldn't have made the decisions and actually made them work without her. Not someone like her, but her here taking care of the things that needed to be taken care of in--you know, within the walls necessarily when I'm out trying out to figure out and knock down--you know, figure out a new path, knock down trees and break up big rocks. It makes it easier if you've got someone that can--that can do that for you. So a big, big, big shout out to her, big shout out to you guys, and seriously, I know that I don't need to do that 'cause you guys are--it's your show, but I'm just very proud of the fact that he's part of this effort that you guys are bringing forth.Ade: Thank you. Thank you very much, and I'm definitely gonna, like, hit him up like, "Your dad is the coolest ever." I did tell him that you were dragging me though. I informed him.Ed: That I was what? I was what?Ade: That you were dragging me. Like, you spent a solid chunk of our conversation today just, like, tugging on my wig all the way through. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] Well, it wasn't intentional. I just--but I do appreciate it, and you guys--I love the website. I was telling Zach there's some things that you guys are doing, the fact you got some pictures, and the way you guys have set it up, and I love the fonts. I love just the look and appeal of it. This is a really slick--I love the sound of it. When I listen to it, it makes you--it makes you want to listen. You want to engage. Like, "Okay, what did he say? Let me back that up. What did [inaudible] say? What? Oh, that was pretty cool." Ade: [laughs] Okay, I have appreciated the full length of this conversation. I am telling Zach about how amazing all of this is and how we're probably gonna have to put this on our Patreon 'cause people can't get this one for free. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you.Ed: Thanks, Ade.Zach: And we're back. Hey, Ade. That was a great interview. I really enjoyed that. The themes that kept popping up to me during your conversation were intentionality, comfort with being uncomfortable, and courage. It was really good.Ade: Uh... so I'm confused. Ed, why are you here? We're in the wrap session of the show. You can go now.Zach: Oh, you got jokes.Ade: Yeah, actually. Yes, I do. [laughs]Zach: [laughs]Ade: 'Cause y'all sound exactly alike. It is so weird.Zach: We do sound alike, which is why I knew we couldn't be interviewing, like, together. Like, I couldn't interview him. It would sound like I was having a conversation with myself.Ade: Facts.Zach: But eeriness of that aside, I love the fact that he was able to be on the show. He and I, we have these discussions all the time, and he's really the reason I'm so comfortable trying new things.Ade: Yeah. I mean, I definitely got that sense from him. During our interview, I was taken aback, and dragged, quite a few times at just how fearless he seemed to be. He made so many different transitions and changes and jumps and leaps of faith over the course of his professional career. It was actually kind of scary. Zach: Yeah. I know, right?Ade: But, like, at the same time, I think I learned that your plan doesn't need to make sense to anybody but you, right? 'Cause you're the one living your life, and--I mean, when he was talking about his parents discouraging his shifts and those transitions, I could definitely really--'cause, you know, you can't explain your plans to everybody. Sometimes people side-eye you like, "Sis, you sure?"Zach: Right, and it's all about like my dad said, following your passions and going for what you feel is right. I mean, we're here right now doing Living Corporate and embracing discomfort and uncertainty. High risk for sure, but great rewards.Ade: No, I definitely agree, and it's also interesting that your dad was definitely job-hopping and forging his own path way before it was trendy, like millennial trendy.Zach: Right, and, you know, he really wasn't wrong then, and he isn't wrong now. I mean, look, if you look at this 2014 article from Forbes, it says that employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less, and I know there's more value than just your paycheck, but also there's value in being bold and taking control of what you need to get where you believe you need to be.Ade: Right. So honestly, I'm excited for us to drop the extended interview on our Patreon. By the way, Sound Man, give me some slow jams real quick while I hit them with the super ASMR voice. Guys, check out our Patreon. You want more content, right? You want exclusive stuff? You want giveaways? You want to hang out with the Living Corporate team? I know you do, so go ahead and go join our Patreon. The link will be in the show note. Thank you.Zach: Oh, my God. [laughs]Ade: [laughs]Zach: Oh, my goodness. (laughing) Anyway, major shout out to Ed, my dad, and I hope he can join us again soon. Let's get into our next segment, okay? Favorite Things, where we talk about what our favorite things are these days.Ade: Yep. My favorite things right now are--I'm really into Miguel. I have been listening to some of my favorite Miguel songs lately non-stop. Candles in the Sun is, like, top 5, top 5, top 5 of all my favorite songs. So I've been really into his entire discography, and I've also been really into hiking. So I have a puppy, and he's a husky, and he needs a lot of, like, physical activity, and I'm training for this marathon, and just being able to get out and really be active and get outside and kind of commune with nature and exercise my hippie-dippie side has been really, really fun. Hurts sometimes 'cause my knees like, "Sis, we're getting way too old for this," but it's been--it's been really great. What about you?Zach: That's really cool. So my favorite thing right now has to be my sibling's band, keeping with the family theme of the show.Ade: Right. Why didn't you tell me you have whole rock stars in, like, your family? Like, bro, what?Zach: I know, right? And so I don't know--like, by the time this episode releases if we'll already have seen them on America's Got Talent, but yeah, I'm really, really proud of them. I love them. They're great, but yeah, so they're called NUNNABOVE. They do funk, pop--Ade: Yes.Zach: Yeah. Like, my oldest sister--my oldest little sister Cadence, she's 18, and she plays the bass and she does lead vocals, and then my second-youngest sister is Maddie, and she does keys and vocals. And then my oldest little brother Bennett plays guitar, and he also does vocals, and then my littlest sibling, my little brother Wisdom, plays drum set, and they're all great. Like, they're super talented, really cute. I love 'em. They're awesome.Ade: I want you to know that this is a setup. They had no choice but to be rock stars with names like that. Cadence? Cadence?Zach: (laughing) Yeah, Cadence.Ade: Your dad knew what he was doing. See? Setup.Zach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Strategist, strategist. And so what we'll do is we'll make sure to put their information in the show notes so you guys can check them out as well, and yeah, we'll make sure to link all that up.Ade: Awesome. And as a reminder, to see all of our Favorite Things, go to our website at living-corporate.com and click on Faves. And that's our show. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Also, don't forget to check out our Patreon at LivingCorporate as well. And that does it for us on the show. My name is Ade.Zach: And this has been Zach.Ade and Zach: Peace.Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.  However, that’s not what it means at all.  It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are." - Steve Jobs  Distraction and being 'busy' have become socially acceptable ways of being and in all honesty I never (yes you heard me right) feel busy.  My life may feel full at times, but when it does, I've trained my brain how to stop and focus on the task at hand.  This has taken years of practice, personal investment and a dedication to release my addiction to feeling busy.    In Episode 281 on the podcast I talk about:  * Why multi-tasking takes longer * How mono-tasking gives me more time and energy to focus on what matters most * The importance of identifying your high leverage actions and why resistance will rear it's ugly head when you attempt to complete these tasks   Are you ready to learn how to implement these strategies in your own life? Applications are now open for the MIIC Mastery Program www.momisincontrol.com  Are you ready to finally feel in control of your life?  Are you done yelling and feeling chronically exhausted?  Do you want to fall asleep feeling content?  Do you want to be able to spend time with your children and BE all there? Not anxious. Not overwhelmed. Just there, present?  Feeling alive while raising a family is possible.  Do you know what you want? Alternatively, maybe all you know is what you don't want? MIIC Mastery will give you the clarity you've been craving. Over the last few years, I've witnessed women from all walks of life transform how they show up. Women are telling me "Heather, you've saved my life."  Moreover, I am going to show up step by step how to get there.  The truth is I haven't saved anyone. All I've done is create community, space and held women accountable for doing the work needed to become whom they were born to be.  If you'd like to learn more information head on over to www.momisincontrol.com  Check out the program details and apply today.  BONUS: the program officially starts in September, the sooner you apply, the more coaching time you have with me to help you prepare for the fall ($1500 value). 

What's going on guys? Hey, been just flying a million miles a minute, which is always standard, so everything is normal for me anyway. It's been a while since I've taken any of your questions and tossed them on here. I've got a question here from Steve Peck. Thank you much, Steve. First of all, great name. Second of all, I love the question, so I thought I'd drop it in right here. Steve Peck: Hey Steve. This is Steve Peck, and I have a question. How do you pick the MLM to get involved with? Thanks. Steve Larsen: First off, thank you so much, Steve. Appreciate the question. Second of all, if you guys have a question you guys want to drop on here, I love answering questions like this. I think it's a lot of fun. Hey, great, great question. First off, I just want to just come out and tell everyone, look, if you like your MLM, awesome. Please don't get discouraged or think that I'm trying to influence you to do something else. Please also note, I'm not trying to say this kind of stuff to try and recruit people into my own or whatever it is. Anyway, it's fun, I just recruited a really big player yesterday, which was a lot of fun. I want you to know what I look for and why I chose the MLM that I did. I'm still not going to tell you the one that I'm in. I tell people the MLM I'm in when they start applying to join my downline. You know what I mean? Anyway, so here's some things that I look at. First off, let's look at how other industries work. Now, what MLM should I join? First of all, let's ask the question, let's act like we're in a totally different industry. Let's say we're in a brick-and-mortar business, or a different kind of internet business, or whatever. The first thing that I would probably ask is, where is a hot market? Where is a hot market? Meaning, I'm not trying to come up with the idea of what to sell. I'm not trying to come up with an idea of, "Hey, let me go force all these people to try and buy my thing." What I'm doing is I'm looking to see where the hot rabid buyers, the irrational buyers, the buyers that are fanatics, the ones that go nuts and like, "Hey, yes, I've got to ... " Do you know what I mean? It's the irrational. I'm trying to find those places in the market. Then, when I know that there is one, all I do is I ask them what they want and I give them what they ask for. Now, that's a very different approach than what a lot of people do inside of MLM, but it's what I did for my MLM. I started look around, and there's some criteria of things that I was looking for, and I'll walk through that criteria here real quick. First off, what I do is, you've got to understand that most people go choose an MLM because of the product. Now, that's awesome. That's awesome, but first of all, I like to ask the question, "Who's going to be buying it? Are there a lot of them? Are they irrational about the thing that I'm selling?" If it's something that I have to walk around and convince a ton of people on, if it's something I have to walk around and there's a ton of education involved in the selling of the product, I tend to shy away from that kind of MLM. It doesn't matter really what the product is. What matters is that you are selling to rabid buyers. I would take that above any number of massive email marketing list. I would take that over anything, you guys, a rabid group of buyers, a hot, hot, hot market. So, for that reason ... I mean, honestly, I don't really care what the product is a lot of time. I care that it sells. I care that it sells, and I care that people are rabid over it, I mean, irrational. Not just that they like it, not just that when you show the product they're like, "Oh, that's cool," meaning they have to have it, they are going crazy for it, and they cannot stand to be without it. Do you know what I mean? That kind of fanaticism. What I do is I look around, and I look. I chose the MLM I chose for very specific reasons. I'm going to walk you through some of those reasons here, and I'll show you some of my criteria for choosing an MLM. Understand that it's just my own personal own, and yours might be a little bit different. That's fine. This is what I did though when I started looking for an MLM to join back in the day. I started looking around, and I was like, "Okay. First off, how would I treat this if I was not an MLM, if I was inside a big business that ... " Why am I asking that? Because that's my history, that's my past, that's where I came from. I came from a spot of selling other people's products online, and there are patterns to the top sellers. There are patterns to the top buyers. There are patterns all throughout. So, why would I not try to choose an MLM that comes nearest to those patterns and choose that one? Does that make sense? That's what I did, and that's the MLM that I joined. Here's some of the patterns that I looked for. Number one, the product has got to be somewhat high ticket. We're talking MLM here. This is very, very akin to affiliate marketing, meaning I go sell a product for somebody else and I get a little bit of a cut. Now, obviously you make more money if you own the entire product, but I love MLM because all of the fulfillment is done for me. There's a lot of things that are already done for me, that they take care of a lot of the business side of stuff. All I got to go do is to go sell the thing, and that's super easy. That's why I love the MLM game so much. Obviously the possibility of additional sources of revenue, passive income, all that, obviously those are all huge benefits to being an MLM, building up a big team, building up a big network, helping others have success. Those are all big benefits of being in it. The industry that is very, very close ... I don't know if I want to say closest, but in my mind, it kind of is, is the affiliate marketing, the internet affiliate marketing industry meaning they sell other people's products and they get a little bit of a cut. What I wanted to do is I wanted to choose something that was slightly more high ticket, meaning if I'm just selling a $20 thing, what do you get? In my MLM, the starting commission is 20%, which is awesome. That's the starting commission. It goes way higher from that. It's awesome. That's the reason I chose it is because the commissions were higher. If I'm getting paid peanuts, I have a huge issue with that. One of the other things that I chose as I chose an MLM where I was getting ... Let's say I sold a dollar worth of stuff, the full dollar is commissionable. I hate that game where they're like, "Well, only 60% of what you sell is commissionable volume." It's like, "Are you joking? I found you a customer. That's stupid." I chose an MLM that was dollar for dollar commissionable volume, which is huge by the way. That's amazing. Not many MLMs do that. I chose an MLM that does that. I chose an MLM that's a supplement. Why? Because it's recurring. People buy it over and over and over. They stay on it month after month after month after month, meaning it's not just a one and done thing. I might sell something for 120 bucks or whatever price, but they stay on it for at least probably five to seven months. All I've got to do is continue to educate them to help them understand why they should stay on longer than that. That's why they expect follow-up sales. They expect to be buying it frequently. They expect, they expect. I've given the analogy before, it's kind of like me going and buying milk and bread at the store. Those are no-duh buying experiences. You do not have to ... You don't see a salesman standing next to bread and eggs, you don't. Those are no-duh buying experiences. I wanted to choose an MLM that was a no-duh buying experience, like, "Oh, yeah. Obviously, I can see why I would spend money on this very easily." There's not a lot of sales copy that has to be written. There's not tons of sale ... Do you know what I mean? I chose an MLM that was like that. I chose a supplement for that very reason to go through and help people ... Again, please understand, put some thick skin on with this. If you're like, "Stephen, I love my MLM," that's great. Then stay in it. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, this is the criteria that I went through to choose my MLM. After seeing what sells really hard on the internet, seeing what sells really, really easy on there, seeing what's selling, that's why I chose what I did. There was a lot of thought that went into it. This was not like a ... I don't know, "Let me just come up with something, let me just find some ... " I did do that one time. I was like, "Let me just find something." It was funny because I didn't have ... I loved the product, but I just didn't like selling it. Do you know what I mean? It's not just about the product. It isn't. It's not just about ... it's your ability to sell it. It is your ability to market it. One of my favorite quotes ... If you guys have been on the Secret MLM Hacks web class, I go through this and we talk about this. One of my favorite quotes ever is, "There is no relationship between being good and getting paid. There's no relationship between being good and getting paid." You could have the absolute best product and make zero dollars. I'm sure you've experienced that. I have. We all have. You could have the absolute best product and make nothing. You could be the absolute best at your script and make nothing. You could be the absolute best at recruiting people and really make barely nothing. Why? Because there's no relationship between being good and getting paid. As I started looking around at these different MLMs, I started looking around and seeing what was out there currently in the marketplace, it was very important for me to apply the second part of this quote, which was this, "There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. However, there is a huge relationship between being good at marketing and getting paid." So, I went around and I found an MLM. I dug, guys. I looked around. I did not choose an MLM for quite some time because I was looking actively at the MLM that would fit the model that I am in, that I love, that I know I can sell, that I know I can market. There is a massive difference between sales and marketing, a huge one. When I learned the difference between selling and marketing, my wallet got a lot fatter. Again, we go over this a little bit on the web class as well. By the way, if you have not joined us on the web class, I would love to have you guys, by the way. It's at secretmlmhacks.com. There's my soft pitch. There we go. I did it, the dirty. There it is. What we do is we go through, we talk a little bit about the difference between sales and marketing. Sales, that's what I was doing when I was a door-to-door salesman. I would walk up and I would knock on someone's door, and I was face-to-face with them, and I was pitching them, and I was selling them on buying my thing. That's selling. Selling is what happens face-to-face. Marketing is how you get them to your face. Does that make sense? Selling is what happens face-to-face, door-to-door salesman, used car salesman. Marketing is how you get them to your face. That's the area that a lot of MLM does not go through, it does not talk about. I know that that is an upper hand that I have, that my team has, because I teach them how to market not just sell. The script that gets handed off to a lot of downlines, most the time, that is a sales script. The only piece of marketing that is traditionally taught in MLM is, "Give me a list of your contacts." That's why this podcast exists is because I am trying to help show other marketing tactics and strategies in the MLM space how I actually do what I do. Guys, we're about to cross 150 people asking to join my downline with no ad spend. They're applying and asking. That's ridiculous. Tell me another industry where that ... tell me another MLM, tell me another guy that does that. I don't know of one. Maybe there are, but I literally turn people away. It's an actual application process. Why? What I'm looking for is, "Does this person, A, know how to market? B, are they willing to learn how to market?" That's the major thing I'm looking through when I look at their application. If I feel like the answer is no to one of those two, I say no to them. I say, "Sorry, I don't do this in the traditional method." I wanted to be able to say that kind of stuff. So, as far as criteria that I use to pick my MLM, to actually choose my MLM, number one, I was telling you the product needed to be somewhat high ticket. That means I only needed to sell a couple of them to make a really big dent in my wallet each month. It needed to be a recurring ... there's potential for recurring payments, potential for recurring ... Anyway, I think that makes sense. There's potential to be able to spend more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more money. Not just the first sale, beyond the first sale. There's recurring revenue, recurring payments, continuity behind it. So, high ticket, some continuity. For me, that was easy to do that in the supplement space. Some of the things I do are supplement, but we also sell other things besides supplements though. It's really the fascinating MLM. Then the third thing that I looked for is that I wanted to be able to sell and market how I wanted to. I hate when MLMs put restrictions on how you can sell stuff. It's the dumbest thing on the planet. Someone reached out to me again the other day, and they were like, "Well, my MLM won't let me sell how I want to." I was like, "Seriously? Seriously? You love being a part of that?" Again, I'm not making fun of it. If you guys are all about it, that's awesome. Super cool. Great. I will not stand for that though. So, I was like, "You might need to find a different MLM." Sales tactics, especially marketing, sales tactics don't change that often. Marketing tactics change a lot though. Selling on the internet, that's what I do. If I can't find an MLM that will let me do my strength, why would I ever join them? So, I got really passionate about that one topic. I got really passionate about finding an MLM that let me do that. Here's the problem. This is why I get passionate about this. This is why I get so fiery about this topic. Think about this, in the past ... I don't know if you guys have ever tried to sell your product online or ever on a Facebook ad. A lot of MLMs freak out over that. They go nuts, like, "What? No, you can't sell it online." They try to control a lot of stuff. It's like you have to be a certain personality type to sell how they want you to sell. I was like, "I don't really want to sell how my MLM's telling me to sell. You're telling me that I would get kicked out for running a Facebook ad in your favor? That's stupid." I was flat-out like, "That's dumb. That's dumb. I hate that." I was talking to the CEO of this MLM before I ever joined, and I had the very unique experience of doing that before I joined. I said, "I'll you why so many people who sell on the internet will not join an MLM." He goes, "Really? Why?" I said, "Because what ends up happening is, if I go build something like a sales funnel that's supposed to sell supplements ... Let's say I'm going to go sell your supplements, sir. I go sell your supplement on the internet, and I build a sales funnel. I know that this sales funnel is the sales funnel that pulls in 17 grand a day for one of my buddies. I know that this sales funnel is the supplement funnel that turns in $100,000 a day for these companies. You're saying that I can't go build that thing. Why on earth would you not want that kind of sales volume? That's the kind of stuff I do. I love to be able to build that and duplicate it for my team. In a single click, I'll give them the entire sales funnel after I prove that thing out. Then I'll give it to all of them, and they'll have that kind of marketing arm now also rather than just go talk to people on the street or in malls and hotel lobbies." I'm not making fun of that if you're like crazy good at it, but man, things evolve. I said, "Here's the reason why though, I can go build those kinds of thing. I've built those things before. I've built them for many other big people, but I can't take your product and go put it on the internet because I'll get in trouble." He goes, "Here's what's different about my MLM, man, I've got this thing." I won't tell you the name of it, because I don't want you guys to go look it up. He's like, "I got this thing, and it's in writing. I don't care how my MLMers sell." I was like, "Really? You're like the first one I've heard that says that." He's like, "Yeah, I don't care how they sell. As long as they don't drop a certain price point and they're not lying, who cares? Why would I control that?" I was like, "Oh." I think I saw a halo appear above his head, and there was a light in the room, and things around him got all dark, and I was like, "This is the guy." He goes, "I don't care how you sell, just represent it well. Who cares? I don't care if you sell it on the internet. I don't care if you sell it face-to-face. However you want to sell it, you sell it. It's still a commission." I was like, "Oh my gosh, thank you. First of all, breath of fresh air. Second of all ... " Again, I'm not pitching anybody that ... I understand some of you guys will reach out and ask after this. This is the reason, this very specific reason. I was very, very careful on how I chose an MLM and what criteria I used to choose an MLM. I said, "Okay, well here's the other issue, here's the other issue is ... " Steve, thanks for bringing up this question, man, because this brings up some big topics inside the MLM space, some big technical issues in the MLM space that no one's really solved and we're the first ones to do it. I've been really, really proud of it. What I've been doing is, I told him, I said, "Here's the other major reason why a lot of people who know how to sell on the internet will not sell in MLM. They won't join an MLM." He goes, "Okay, I'm listening." I said, "Here's the reason. If I go run a Facebook ad and I have my own webpage up, let's say you guys have a store like you've built something in WordPress." If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's fine. That's fine. Let's say that somehow though, you're selling your product online. What you would have to do traditionally is after the sale gets sold, after you collect the sale, you'd have to turn back around and go buy it again on your corporate website in that person's name with that person's shipping address with that person's information, which sucks. It's terrible. It means every sale, there is so much touch. There's a lot of high touch that's done. There's so much that you have to do for that individual. It's an awful game. I have buddies that would go and they'd build these sales funnels, and they'd be selling their products online. Then they'd just go take this massive Excel sheet, and they'd either have to go sell it and make this really special agreement with their ... They go take this Excel sheet and they'd have to go make this special agreement with their MLM or whatever, or they'd have to turn around and manually by hand, they'd go in and put in all of those orders in those people's names with their shipping addresses and they'd have to go re-buy it. Well, by that time, you've already paid for credit card processing twice. It cuts down how much money they actually make. Therefore, it really puts a massive damper in why you'd ever, ever do any kind of product sales with an MLM online. I was explaining this to him and he was like, "Huh. How do we fix that?" It was funny, because I was sitting there in the room with him, I was sitting there in the room with him and I had this idea come to my head. I was like, "If we did this one thing," and I'm not going to tell what it is though, I said, "If we can fix this one thing, this one area ... All it would take a little bit of tech stuff on your side at the beginning, but what it would do is it would allow me to sell my product through my own funnels and it would go to you guys. The money would go to you guys. It would just credit my account with the sale, with the commission." We drew this out, and it was this cool plan. I hit my head, and I started drawing and I got in the zone and it was really, really awesome. What ended up happening was, he goes, "Okay. This is cool." I'm really pumped because ... This is me just celebrating a big achievement, guys, because they just came out with the beta of that solution. Now what it means is I can go sell like these other massive supplement funnels, these massive guys I'd go build for. They'd be bringing in millions of dollars. In the past, I couldn't do that kind of thing in an MLM, because I'd have to do this two-step thing. I even knew guys who would hire VAs to buy again the product in that person's name on the corporate website after they got the purchase in their own funnel. Does this make sense? I was like, "This is so stupid, you guys. Why has the MLM Industry not caught up with the fact of what a funnel is, and why does everyone care how it gets sold?" I know some people are not going to like the fact I'm saying that. I totally understand. I know some people are going to be really, really against what I just said. If you know something sells well, why on earth would you hinder that process and you know how it sells well? Here's really the two big issues. When I was choosing my MLM, I wanted to know, first of all, what was already selling in the market. I didn't give a crap about what the product was for a while. I wanted to know what is already selling in the market not including MLM products. What are people ferocious over? Now, let me find an MLM with a product that is nearest to that so I know it sells well. I need to know what is selling and how it's selling. Those are the only two questions that I care about. What is currently selling in the marketplace with rampant buyers, irrational purchasers? Then how is it selling? How are they getting those people in front of them? Is it really just through friends and family? How is everyone else buying it who is not an MLM? Are they doing it through retail? Are they buying offline? If you know what those are, why would you ever hinder that process? I don't know. That's part of the issue. That's what I went through and I talked with about these guys. I was like, "Look, fix this one problem right here, and I have an army of funnel builders who are wanting to sell this thing." Guys, I'm excited. It's the reason I'm so passionate about it. I think we're the first MLM ever in history to do this. We're the first team. My team is the one doing it. I'm the one beta testing it. If this works, I don't care if my team doesn't know how to build funnels, I will build it for them and I give it to them. Now, they have this whole sales arm. Now, I focus heavily on the recruiting side, and now we're also just cranking, killing, just crushing on the product sales side. How exciting is that? It means I'm not walking around selling the product. One more story, one more story real quick. I know this is a long episode, but just bear with me. One more story to illustrate the point. When I was doing door-to-door sales, I was driving down the street and I was looking around. I was in a little bit of a sales slump. I was a good salesman. I was one of the top guys almost every time. Telemarketing, I was one of the leaders on the floor. I had a team behind me that I was training. When I was doing door-to-doors sales, I was very good. I was the number two first year seller. The reason I wasn't number one is because the guy came out two months ahead of me. He had such a ridiculous lead, but I did really well in sales. I was in the middle of a slump though. We're driving out to our areas and we're on the highway. I remember the clear blue-sky day. There was some clouds in the sky. Temperature was warm. It was going to get hot that day. Clear, clear sky, and it was a beautiful day, guys, beautiful day. Mountain all around us, and I was selling pest control. We're driving out to this area, and what I was doing is I was complaining in my head. I was complaining. There's no other way to say it. I was ticked. I was like, "This is stupid." I was like, "Are you kidding me." I was trying to control my emotions, but I wasn't. I was in a little bit of a slump, and I was carrying that emotion with me on the doors and I wasn't doing well. I learned a lot of lessons from that personally. I grew a lot from that personally. As we were driving out, I'm looking up and I'm seeing these billboards on the side of the road. These billboards are on the side of the road, and I had this thought. I will never forget where we were on the road. I will never forget where I was sitting. I will never forget this moment, because it was one the sparks that changed my life and how I approach MLM. I was sitting and I was looking. I wasn't in MLM at the time, and I was looking at these billboards. I looked up at the billboards, and I thought, "Gosh, this is so stupid. I'm waking up every single day as a door-to-door salesman trying to convince people to buy something who were not thinking about buying something today, but people who are calling these billboards are getting laydown sales. People who are calling these billboards are asking to be sold." So, what I did is I started putting these classified on the internet. Have you heard of like Craigslist, things like that? I just started putting our service, our product on Craigslist. I put it on Craigslist, and I started getting all these phone sales, all these laydown sales. I think I've told you guys this story before, but I hope it really hits home with what I'm telling you about how I chose my MLM. I started getting all these phone sales and all these laydown sales, and these were individuals who wanted to be sold, who wanted my product, who wanted more information. I wasn't bugging him and bothering him in the middle of the day. Are you getting a little bit of the ah-ha? What ended up happening is I started realizing, I said, "Wait a second. For every product, most products out there, for pretty much every product, there are people who are already trying to purchase this thing. They just don't know about my product. I'm going to stop walking up to random people in hotel lobbies." I wasn't doing that anyway but, "I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do ... " What I started doing is when ... Yes, the product matters, but what is more important is matching an MLM to whatever is currently exploding in the marketplace, meaning if you're trying to be in the Health Industry and you want to find a health MLM, you go find whatever supplement, or program, or whatever it is has the most rampant, ridiculous purchasers, then choose the MLM off that. If you know how they're buying ... Now you know what they're buying, you've got to figure out how they're buying it now. Are they buying it on the internet? Are they buying it right off of TV ads? I don't know. Go figure that out. Then you match that way. So, I chose my MLM very, very strategically. I said no to a lot of MLMs. They all wanted my stuff. I understand why they wanted it, but I chose, first off ... I was like, "I'm going to do supplements so there's recurring billing. I'm going to do something more high ticket so that there's higher margins for me. I'm going to choose something so the starting commission is 20%. I'm going to choose something that will let me sell online the way that I know how to blow the gates open with funnels." This is the first MLM, and I think I'm the first team, to really be able to do that and integrate directly into a corporate's software so that when we sell stuff ... We're still in the beta testing, but we're doing it. We know clearly where we're going with it. Now what's kind of cool is that when people join my team, what I do is I've got this members area that walks them through a lot of the training, how I would do stuff. Then it walks them through the actual funnel side. It's like, "Hey, if you don't know how to build them, that's okay. Click here. I have a pre-made one for you, and it sells this product in our MLM really well with these kind of ads, with this kind of average cart value typically. Usually, start with this kind of ... " Do you know what I mean? What other MLM gives you that kind of upper hand? I don't know. That's the reason I get so ... I'm very, very proud of the MLM that I'm in. In order to protect the team, find the people who are most serious about it, I'm not just trying to get people who are like, "Oh, Stephen's got all these plans. Therefore, I'll make all this money faster." I'm not looking for get rich quick people. We are trying to get rich quick, make no mistake. Why would you ever try to get rich slowly? I was laughing like, "Is this a get rich quick scheme?" I was like, "Well, hopefully." It's not that I'm a capitalistic pig. Man, why would you do something where you make money slowly? "Don't worry, it's not a get rich quick scheme." It's like, "What? How slowly do you make cash?" That's a stupid saying. What you're trying to say is, is it a scheme? Is it a plot? Is it a Ponzi Scheme? I get that. I understand what people are trying to say with that. So, I vet people out, and that's the reason that I do it. Steve Peck, I know that's a very long response to it, but that's how I chose my MLM is I did not first look at what my MLM's product was. First, I didn't even consider any MLM until I saw what was selling very, very hot in the health space, or wealth space, or relationship space. What is selling super hot, and now with an MLM that comes closest to selling that kind of thing, and do they care how I sell my stuff? That's it. That's how I did it. I know that's kind of out of the box, but that's kind of what secret MLM Hacks is. Anyways, guys. Thanks so much. Hopefully that helped. I know it was kind of a long episode, but I hope that it helped you understand it doesn't matter how cool your product is if no one knows about it. It doesn't matter how cool your product is if there's no one currently buying something even similar in the marketplace. That is some scary crap to go into, because now you have to educate and sell, not just sell. They're already further down the belief path with my product. They already know. We're just selling a better version of it, and I know the best ways to sell it on the internet. That's why we're doing what we are. Guys, thanks so much. Appreciate it. I know it's kind of a long episode, but hopefully you got some stuff from that. Again, I'm not trying to convince you to get out of your MLM or stay in it, whatever. It's your call, your choice to do what you do with this information. That's how I did what I did. That's why I'm doing what I am. It's your call. Do whatever you want to with it, and start asking. That's what I was trying to tell this person a few days ago. They're like, "My MLM won't let me sell stuff on the internet." I was like, "Oh my gosh. Get good at direct response. Get good at selling through mailboxes or something. Are you really going to go door-to-door? What's the preferred method?" Now think of that method that they're trying to teach you at scale. Is that something you can do at scale? Once you know how the thing is selling, there's only three ways to grow a business, guys, only three ways. You can get more customers. You can get customers to pay you more money, or you can get customers to pay you money more frequently. That's it. So, what of those three can you do in your MLM? Yes, Steve, are you passionate about this topic? I'm very passionate about it, because I understand that people feel loyal about their company. Those are the only three ways. If you can't see one of those ways working at scale ... Okay, let's think through it. Number one, get more customers. If they are so butt hurt on how you sell your thing, do you really think you're going to retire off it? Is it really going to help do your house payment? I mean, seriously. Start running some numbers. Figure out what that ... Are we all going to go to hotel lobbies? That's why I get passionate about it, guys. Obviously I am. You're like, "Well, maybe that's not the way I'm going to do it. Maybe I'm just going to get customers to pay me more frequently." Okay, cool. Let's start looking at the margins, start looking at the commission check that you get. Is your MLM giving you dollar per dollar commissionable volume? If not, that's some scary crap. Start running the numbers. I was in my MLM. I recruited those 13 people in my first month. I got a $13 check. 13 bucks, guys. I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's a dollar a person. I don't totally understand what just happened here, but that sucks." So, more customers. Wait, but MLMs traditionally, a lot of them are really butt hurt on how you sell. So, more customers sell more frequently to them getting you to pay more money. Can you do upsales? Can you? Mine will let me. Can you toss your own thing in there? That's when you start looking at ... That's what I'm trying to help you understand. What's the marketing arm, the marketing mechanism? Because they help you with the sales scripts. They help you with that stuff, but not that many people help you get the marketing ironically, which is the area that actually makes you the money. That was a long episode, but I'm passionate about it, guys. That's a very big deal how you choose your MLM. It's a very big deal. I don't actually really even know that much about what my comp plan says. I don't need to. I will. I know that's bad of me. I'll go study it. I'll get to know it really, really well, but frankly it's the marketing not the comp plan. It's the marketing not barely even the product. It's the marketing that will make you the cash and make your wallet fatter. If this was offensive of me saying this kind of stuff, I'm not sorry because it's truth. Please know that where I'm coming from, you've got to see there are better ways to do the game. You've got to understand, let's look at the long haul, what really is going on. Yes, you may love the product. There is an MLM I love buying their product, but I will not be part of the MLM. I love the product. You have to start making those calls and start making those decisions as you understand, "Am I really learning how to market? Am I really learning how to ... " Anyway, it was a long episode, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you, Steve Peck, for asking the question. As soon as I saw the question, I was like, "Oh man. Steve just opened a can." So, that was a 30 minute episode. Hey guys, I hope you're having a good one. Appreciate you guys and appreciate the listens. Go get them. I'm very, very excited for this and love our community here. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback for me. Do you have a question you want answered live on the show? Go to secretmlmhacksradio.com to submit your question and download your free MLM Masters Pack.

Hey, I hope you guys are doing great. I've got somewhat of a fast episode for you today, but this is a powerful lesson. Look, I used to do door to door sales, and a lot of you guys know that. That I was a door to door sales guy, and I wasn't bad at it, and I was a telemarketer as well. I chose to do those things on purpose because I wanted to be able to go through experiences that would teach me how to sale in high pressure environments. I wanted to learn how to sale in environments that ... Frankly, I wanted to get uncomfortable. Which was a weird thing for me to realize that I needed to go do, but in order for me to grow and get out of my shell I had to do that. So I went and I started doing door to door sales. I started going, and I wasn't bad at it, like I said. In fact, I was the number two first year salesmen for like half the summer. Then there was this experience I had that completely ruined me. One day I was driving out to the area, and I was with a bunch of other guys. We were in my buddy's it was either a truck or SUV, I can't remember what kind of car. We were driving out and there was all these billboards on the highway. If I've told this story before just kind of bear with me. There's an aspect to this that I think you should hear. We were driving out, and all these billboards on the side of the highway. Then suddenly I had the thought hit me, hard. This was my exact thought. Isn't it interesting that I am driving out to convince people to spend money, who woke up and were not planning to spend money today versus people who call these billboards off the highway are trying to get information on how to buy. I was like that's interesting. That's very, very interesting. You guys ever heard the term, prospecting pushes while marketing pulls? I was basically prospecting. Door to door wise I was prospecting. I was going door to door prospecting this thing, and that's the reason I don't like to go to the mall. I'm not telling you not to do that. I'm not telling you to not sale ways that you've proven to go do it. If you're a master at home parties awesome. I'm not, and I don't want to learn to be. That's part of the reason why though. Is because, prospecting pushes and marketing pulls. Right? I want to be able to market and kind of pull people along who are already in motion. What I did though is a kind of actual door to door thing. What I did though is I remember I was kind of ruined the rest of the summer. I went back home after the summer, actually before I went home I started placing all these ads all over the internet. I started placing these ads out, and I started saying things like hey here's our ... I basically put our pitch, the same pitch that I was giving the people on the doors I put in ads on free classified sites on the internet. I didn't realize that I actually was breaking some laws by doing that, but I was just taking action. I had to take them down after a while, but what was crazy is my phone started blowing up, and I was getting phone sales like a beast. More sales than I typically was averaging in a single day were just coming to me. My boss was like, "How are you doing that?" I was like, "Dude, I literally just placed these ads out on the internet. Oh my gosh this is crazy." I was ruined though. I was ruined. I had to take them down, and I couldn't stop, but there was this opened fleet window of just all these sales coming, and these sales coming. I was like, "Oh my gosh. What is this?" It ruined me, because I kept walking around thinking I know that I could sale today, but how did that happen? How can I replicate that? Was that just a fluke? I mean, it happened so quick, and there was all these people, and I got tons. It was like holy crap. So I was ruined the rest of the summer because I was like there's a different way to do this. How do I do this? You can use the internet for this kind of stuff? I was so new, I was so green. This was four and a half years ago. When I first really started to learn about funnels, sales funnels, and the internet, and things like that. Anyway, I've never forgotten that. I went on to go learn how to place different ads in different places, and how to communicate to a bunch of people at once rather than just one on one. Fast forward a little bit. So Russell Brunson and I run an event currently right now called the FHAT event, Funnel Hackathon. Okay? For three straight days we basically help someone set up the funnel, and business, and structure, and sales message, and offer to get them from zero to seven figures. That's the whole event, and it's kind of high ticket, and it's a ton of fun. It's three days long. We really don't let people sleep much, and it's awesome. We had this realization though. We were prepping for one of these, and he gets onstage and teaches a while, I get onstage and teach a while, we'll get on together we teach a while. That's how it happened in the last one anyway. Then he leaves, and then I pretty much take the full second day almost, and then almost the full third day. It's a lot of fun. We go from 9:00 AM to midnight. It's a long day. It's a long day to be on stage, long day to be on, long day to be turned on and be in on mode, presenting mode the whole time. I really like it. We were planning for one of these events, and we had done it many times, but we were just refining. We were making things better. We had this epiphany. We had this realization while we were preparing that one of the major reasons why we were being so successful with this stuff was because, what we had learned how to do was instead of selling one to one ... This is super key you guys. Oh my gosh, what I'm about to say here can change your entire MLM for good. This is the reason why ... I know why I'm being successful with this. I know why my funnels work. I know exactly ... It's not an accident. I know exactly what is pulling people to me, and I know exactly why I'm able to still breath. I know exactly why I'm still able to live, have time, do things that I'd like to. I know why. I know exactly why they convert, and why, why it's being successful. Which is worth way more than being successful by accident. Here's why. It had to do with this realization, I don't know how many months ago this was it was a while ago though, we were preparing for one of these events and we had this realization that the reason we were being so successful was because we had learned how to sale one to many, instead of one to one. That's the reason I don't like to go do hotel meetings, it's the reason I don't like to do talk to people at the mall moves, or talk to people ... I'm not good at those things. They stress me out. I'm actually not that amazing person to person. I'm fine onstage. It's funny enough, I actually am more relaxed on stage then sometimes one on one. It's not that I don't want to meet people, or that I don't like interviewing people, I do. I love that stuff, it's awesome, but for some reason face to face I don't know what it is, it's my personality. I'm not shy, but I'm more comfortable on stage in front of a ton people than just one on one. Which is interesting, because selling one to many is the whole thing that I teach people how to do at that event. The type of presentation that allows the entrepreneur to do that. All I've done, all I do with my actual down line is I teach them how to sale one to many. How to pitch one to many, how to be prospecting, how to be marketing one to many. Instead of one to one, instead of thinking through the two or three people that you could get into your down lines. Do you know the average person only pulls in like, I heard the stat was like 2.3 people in their whole MLM career ever? Holy smokes. Guys I pulled like 20 people in in my first week. Why ... And I'm not bragging. I am not bragging. I'm just trying to prove to you that what I'm talking about works. Then they all went out and they recruited people. I have no idea how many people are actually in my down line, it's a lot already though. Which is awesome. It's just so cool. Why? One to many. So you got to start thinking through yourself like ... Here's one of the easiest ways to start thinking through a one to many presentation. You've got to include some automation behind it. I'm not telling you to become a tech guru, or tech whiz. Will it help? Sure, because everything is technology now, but you don't need to be. The first time that I ever put a one to many style pitch out there, I didn't realize I was doing it. I stumbled on it. There was a course that I was putting online, and at first I was making people buy it, but I thought like how interesting if I just made this thing for free. What I did is I took these videos ... And I know that some of you guys are from those early days and you've been following me that whole time, and I appreciate it, and that's awesome. What I did though is instead of making them locked, I actually just made them available to everybody. Funny enough, weirdly enough I was testing a few concepts at the time without actually being in MLM at the time. I had left my first one. You could say I was between MLMs, but I was testing some concepts. This was probably three years ago. Yeah, three and a halfish, three years ago, somewhere around there. Anyway, I released them, and I put them out there. What was funny is at first no one saw them, because they were still like a paid thing. I think. It was so long ago, and I've built so many funnels and pages, and lived on the internet so long that I'm trying to get the story straight. Regardless of timeline, all I did is I put these things, I made them public on YouTube instead of hiding them, instead of making them unlisted. What was interesting is how many people on a steady stream started reaching out to me asking to join my down line. I was like fascinating. Oh my gosh it's working. All these people started jumping in, and I ended up joining one. So I guess this is my third one. Interesting. I didn't do anything in that second one. I joined it out of frustration, because so many people were asking me to ... I won't say the name of it, but I joined it out of frustration simply because, my boss was in it, and there were so many people who were asking to be a part of what I was doing. I just needed a place to go, but I got out of it because my heart wasn't in it. Which I do believe does matter to a degree, so I got out of it. Anyway though. That's all I'm trying to say though. Is guys think through the pitch. Think through, what is the stuff that you say to every single person? I know you say the same thing to every single person, which you should, which is great. That's the script. Stick to the script. Understand you deviate very, very slightly if you need to, but how do you make progress if you can't measure it. How can you measure it if it's different every time? It should be the same. You know what I mean? What I did, and what I'm doing right now just so you guys know, is I am furthering my one to many pitch. My one to many pitch. So what I do is when someone wants to join my down line they go through an application process at joinmydownline.com. Which I did a whole episode about that, if you want to hear about it. How I do it, why I did it. Please don't go apply unless you're serious about it. It is an actual live thing. Which it's crazy guys. Get anywhere from one to two people applying a day almost, which is awesome. With no ad spend, nothing else. That's crazy. It's grown all over the place. Again, this is not me beating my chest guys. I just want you to know that gosh it freaking works. You should do it. No one teaches this in MLM. That's the thing that frustrated me so bad. That's why I decided to come back to the industry. I was like are you kidding me? No one told me about this stuff the first time I was going to that first one. Are you kidding? So what I've did, and what I'm doing is I'm creating a one to many pitch. So after somebody applies to join my down line, I'm creating a one to many pitch. Meaning I recorded all of the ones of me doing it live over, and over, and over, and over again, so I know what all the common questions are. I know what the biggest questions are. I know what the biggest concerns are, and I know ... There's an episode I talked about getting fuel for my auto closing script. I think like two or three episodes ago, but this is the evolution of that though. Is selling one to many. What I'm trying to do, I'm trying to hit this topic again because I feel like ... It's always funny for me to see which episodes of these I get a lot of feedback on, and which ones I don't. The ones I don't I'm like, are you kidding that was one of the biggest pieces of gold I could've given you. Please for the love, did you understand that? So I feel like I have to hit it again. But go create a one to many pitch. That is the reason why this thing works the way it does. You don't just create a one to many pitch, or an auto closing script once. You go through it and you refine it, and you refine it, and you refine it. If you've never done the pitch live, or if you've only did it a couple times do not automate it. Okay? It's terrible to automate something that's broken, that wasn't good in the first place. Don't automate crap. Make sure you're automating good things. That's the whole purpose of this guys, and that's what I was telling people at one of the last events I was doing too. It was day number one, I was getting on there, I stood up and said, "Hey look, I want you to understand that what you guys have the opportunity to learn is the opportunity to learn how to sale one to many." Which is very unique, very unique. The easiest way to go about this is to start looking at how you ... Getting fuel for your auto closing script, that episode two or three ago, that was all about getting critiques and responses, and writing down the concerns of all the people who are coming in and telling you no. No or yes, but specifically no. What were all their main concerns? They're giving you a lot of fuel, that's why it's called fuel for the auto closing scripts. But, the other flip side of it, the reason I wanted to bring this up. Which has taken me a while to get to. I'm so sorry, but the reason I bring this up is so that you start paying attention to the things that you're saying over, and over, and over again. The auto closing script is this marriage of both those sides. Both what the market is telling you no over, or yes but mostly no, and then all the things that you're saying over, and over, and over again. It very well may not be related at all to the script that your MLM has given you to say. It may not be related to that. It may not sound like the one I gave you. That's fine. That's fine. Anyway, that's all I've got for you guys. I guess it really wasn't that much of a shorter episode, but that's it. You guys understand it. Start thinking through the things that you're doing over, and over, and over again as far as pitching, and learn how to automate it. Then go ... You could do it with YouTube videos honestly, and just put them out there. Someone who is looking for information on how to get better on their MLM on YouTube, that's the kind of person who's there to be successful. That's the kind of person who's there to be a rock star. They're looking for information. It's a great place to be. Or podcasting, or whatever it is. Whatever you decide to do, but learn how to sale one to many. The secret sauce is there. If you look at the way a lot of the top people in your MLM are number one, I guarantee you there are several of them that are there because they created a one to many pitch, and they sold it from stage. Hey we're going to get it in the order of the people who are ... How shall I say this? Order forms in the back, and you join my down line in the order that we get the order forms in the back. There's a big table rush that happens in the back, and people go running to the back, and they fill out the forms, and they're throwing the forms back because they want to get first, because they know everyone else is going to be below them automatically. That's a one to many pitch. I'm not telling you that you have to go that extreme, but there's some aspect to that that you can pull into your own MLM. All right guys. That's all I got for you. Hope you're doing great. I am refining really phase two/three of my auto closing area. I'm building it as I need it. Just like anything else, so I need it now. All right guys, I'll talk to you later. Bye. Hey thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Would you like me to teach your own down line five simple MLM tricks for free? If so go download your free MLM masters pack by subscribing to this podcast at secretmlmhacksradio.com.

April and Chuck are fresh home from a trip to Windsor and they brought back some drinkable souvenirs! Windsor is Canada's southernmost city and directly across the river from Detroit, Michigan. It is a major contributor to Canada's automotive industry and has a unique history with alcohol production/sales with the US. Show Notes: We need to find just the right host for our new hit show, Brewery Makeover. Someone who has enough brewery experience but also lots of rage.. We have ongoing issues with the pronounciation. Put to be fair - Canada does say CARE-A-MEL. If you were wondering what TV show I was referencing it was The Wire. All I've learned from life comes from TV. Windsor Craft Beer Festival takes place on October 13 and 14, 2017. What's an India Pale Lager? Back before there were podcasts we used to bog about beer. Read April's blog entry about the Windsor Craft Beer Festival from 2013. Ford has a big history in Windsor - dating back to 1904. Brewery shout outs: Midian Brewing, GL Heritage Brewing Company, Sons of Kent Brewing Company, Brew Microbrewery. The BevMap at Ontario Beverage Network. Windsor-Essex: Barrels, Bottles and Brews. Beer List: Salted Caramel - Craft Heads Brewing Company Say What You Mean - Frank Brewing Dragula - Motor Craft Ales Geronimo IPA - Walkerville Brewery Subscribe: RSS: http://613beercast.libsyn.com/rss Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/613BeerCast-iTunes  Google Play: http://bit.ly/613BeerCast-Play Join the Conversation! Have you tried any of these Windsor beers? Join the conversation on our Facebook Group: 613BeerCast - After Dark. Rate us on iTunes and help us spread the word of awesome Ottawa craft beer! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, we post pretty pictures of ourselves there! Where should we travel next? Let us know by sending us an e-mail.

Just when you thought the Republican abortion to fix Obamacare was finished it finds new life with an amendment that's sure to please. Ok, I've got not idea if that's true or not but the Republicans are touting an amendment to their amendment to Obamacare. They say this latest change may be just what conservatives need to behind it. I've got mixed feeling about the plan, mainly because I haven't actually read it. All I've got is an outline from an article. Once there's an actual plan on paper I'll know more. Until then I'll tell you what I know.JasonSupport the show.

My humble recording and mix of my favourite David Bowie song.1972 - Yours and my world changed forever when we saw David Bowie and Alice Cooper perform on Top of the Pops.I haven't recorded a voice-over for this podcast. All I've done is some studio trickery and used Bowie's isolated voice with my piano. I'll try and finish the whole song when I get time.So, for now, cherish those you have with you before they go. I know I want to. 

For several years, I've heard about the importance of building an e-mail list. "The money's in the list," I would hear along with examples of how the person implemented it. I started an e-mail list, but I never did a whole lot with it. I rarely promoted it. I didn't provide a reason or benefit for someone to join the list. All I've done is use it to send blog post updates, an occasional special post, and a few promotional e-mails. Well, I plan on changing things! Since I've heard many things about building an e-mail list, I've tried to compile several of the important elements from different sources. We'll look at: How to collect the e-mail addresses What to offer someone to join the list How to promote the list Options for ways to use the list I know that I'm not prime example of how to do all of this, but I'm trying to bring all of this together to help all of us though this process. I'll come back later to report on how things went and how I may change things up. I also welcome you to join me in building your e-mail list. If you have already started and have some tips to add to this, please add to the conversation in the comment section. How to collect the e-mail addresses There are several ways you can start an e-mail list. This list isn't comprehensive, but covers the most popular methods: WordPress / Jetpack subscribe by e-mail Feedburner Mail Poet MailChimp Aweber Infusionsoft Benchmark I would highly recommend not to use WordPress or Feedburner for collecting e-mail addresses. They are basically just ways for people to be notified of new posts. As far as I know, there's no way to send other e-mails to the list. Mail Poet is a WordPress plugin that allows you to manage the e-mail list from the WordPress dashboard. I have it installed, but I haven't used it. There is a free and a paid version. Dustin Hartzler of Your Website Engineer has spoken about using it on his podcast. MailChimp, Aweber, and Benchmark are basically similar services. MailChimp, however, has a free option if you have less than 2,000 subscribers and send less than 12,000 e-mails a month. Infusionsoft, from what I understand, does more than manage your e-mail list and various campaigns. It can also help with sales and customer management. This is definitely a higher end service (not for the average blogger). MailChimp is the service I currently use, and I plan to continue with them for the foreseeable future. I have is setup to send the people on my lists blog updates, plus I can send additional e-mails. I plan to start using an auto-responder series soon, which is a premium service for them. I'll talk about this later. What to offer someone to join the e-mail list Even with as great of content that you and I create, most visitors are not going to sign up just for blog updates. They would like a bigger incentive. One great thing to offer is something special that they can download or view right when they sign up. This can be a PDF (e-book, report, worksheets, etc.), audio file, graphic, video, and more. There was a few months that I offered a PDF ebook to those that signed up for my list. I since removed it. I can't even remember why I removed it! I plan on implementing this on my list for this site. I have a short ebook written to help people get started with their websites. I've sent an early copy to those already on the list. It's being editing and formatted now, and it will be available for official use in a week or two. How to promote the e-mail list There are several places that you can promote your e-mail list. Each one has it's benefits and drawbacks. Here's a quick list: The Feature Box Top of Sidebar After Single Post The Footer The About Page

This is one of my favorites (until I finish the one I'm working on) This is the third installment of the Neo Soul Experience. I'm gonna see how many of you are grateful to receive such great music for the $Free.99 All I've ever asked for was some feedback. A DJ is motivated by the love of music and feedback. How will I know if ya'll like it or not if no one tells me they like it or it sucks? Anyway, this mix is more concentrated with the focus on a select few artists. 1. Raheem DeVaughn- You www.myspace.com/raheemdevaughn 2. Raheem DeVaughn- Believe www.myspace.com/raheemdevaughn 3. Raheem DeVaughn- Guess Who Loves You More www.myspace.com/raheemdevaughn 4. Musiq Soulchild- Girl Next Door www.myspace.com/musiqsoulchild 5. Musiq Soulchild- Millionaire www.myspace.com/musiqsoulchild 6. Raheem DeVaughn-Cadillac www.myspace.com/raheemdevaughn 7. Robin Thicke- Lost Without You www.myspace.com/robinthicke 8. Musiq Soulchild-Ms. Philadelphia www.myspace.com/musiqsoulchild 9. Musiq Soulchild- Bestfriend www.myspace.com/musiqsoulchild 10. Musiq Soulchild- Betterman www.myspace.com/musiqsoulchild 11. Raheem DeVaughn- Is It Possible www.myspace.com/raheemdevaughn 12. Lauryn Hill- To Zion www.myspace.com/laurynhill 13. Lucy Pearl- Without You 14. Musiq Soulchild-Buddy www.myspace.com/musiqsoulchild 15. Musiq Soulchild- Ridiculous www.myspace.com/musiqsoulchild 16. Joe- Street Dreams www.myspace.com/officialjoemusic 17. Robin Thicke- Got 2 Be Down www.myspace.com/robinthicke 18. Brian McKnight- Used To Be My Girl www.myspace.com/brianmcknight 19. Raheem DeVaughn- Where I Stand www.myspace.com/raheemdevaughn 20. Leela James- Music www.myspace.com/leelajames 21. Dwele- I Think I Love You www.myspace.com/dwele 22. Robin Thicke ft. Lil Wayne- All Night Long www.myspace.com/robinthicke If you know of anyone that can use my services in the Atlanta metro area, tell them to holla at me: www.myspace.com/djsmoothkool I have a complete mobile DJ system. I'm available for weddings, birthday parties, corporate events, family reunions, etc. Make sure you subscribe because I have many more to come including "The Slow Motion Mix Series" (nothing but slow jams). Check out the other page also: smoothkool.podomatic.com Enjoy...