Podcasts about am you

Do your eyes pop wide open around 3 AM?? You have a few glasses wine or go out on the town and you come home and it’s so easy to fall asleep into the pillow but alcohol is only creating the illusion of wonderful sleep.I remember waking up at 3 AM consistently. I was super thirsty and I found it really hard to get back to sleep. There were some nights that I felt my heart racing like anxiety does to the body.In this episode Michelle breaks down what may be happening in the brain and body. Ready to take it to the next level. Curious about 1 on 1 coaching with Michelle? SET FREE SISTERHOOD GROUP:https://www.facebook.com/groups/3355304757815037 Connect here!INSTAGRAM @COACHMICHELLEPORTERFIELDhttps://www.instagram.com/coachmichelleporterfield   

SUNDAY, 02/02/2020 AM: You determine the chastening God uses in your life by the tenderness of your heart. The post God’s Woodshed appeared first on Anthony Baptist Church.

SUNDAY, 01/19/2020 AM: You can participate in Gods perfect plan by appraising every decision with the proper criteria. The post We Are His Workmanship appeared first on Anthony Baptist Church.

Show Notes:Connect with Marites online in the following places:www.maritesrealty.comInstagram: @mariteskliemHosted by: Andrew BracewellProduced and Edited by: Justin HawkesFull Transcription of this Interview:Andrew 00:01 This is the podcast that finds the most elusive people, the everyday amazing kind that you know nothing about. I’m hunting these people down and exposing their beauty to the world. I’m Andrew Bracewell and this is every day. Amazing. And so my life is linked to shell. And then real estate is kind of like the commercial thing.Andrew 00:25 Mary tests. Hello, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me today. I am very excited to be chatting with you in my living room. This is, this is quite the thing to be doing and very cozy. I got my blanket. Well, we’ll have to make sure to take pictures of you cause you do look cozy. I’m just hoping you don’t fall asleep. We’re gonna try not to. We gotta we gotta keep you gotta keep you awake while we try to dissect your brain and learn all that we can. Um, so is it, is itMarites 00:53 clean or climb? It’s cleam. I know. I have a very difficult first name and then even a harder last name. So I’ve, I was at a wedding once and I was singing, they’re like, all right, please welcome Mariah to kill them. I was like, I think that’s me. I thinkAndrew 01:11 yeah, right. Just kill them. So confession, um, I always like to start confessions. I feel like, you know, he get something off your chest. So we’ve worked together in the same company for quite a few years. I think you’ve been around for 12 years.Marites 01:24 Uh, I’ve been at Remax only F uh, maybe seven or eight, but,Andrew 01:29 Oh right, okay. Sure. License 15 but so we’ve, we’ve been in each other’s lives without actually being in each other’s lives for quite some time cause we’ve only recently started to spend some more time together. Um, but when I started to see your name, I had no idea what to say. Like I don’t, I don’t know how to pronounce that. That’s great. There’s a couple of times that I did do Hey to you, I don’t know if you remember. And so, and then there was another couple of times where like, I actually avoided interaction because of that awful embarrassing. Like, you know, you get that sometimes where it’s like, you know, either forget the person’s name or you don’t know how to say it. So I’m just going to avoid, I’m that person. I’m the avoider walking down the hallway if I don’t know where is it.Andrew 02:07 I was like, Oh, I gotta pee, I gotta go just hard left, turn into the bathroom. Uh, but at some point in time I learned it was married test, but I’ve also wondered the clean climb thing. So now we know it’s, it’s, it’s claim and claim is okay. So you’re, I mean, this is clearly your, you’ve, you’ve taken on the, the name of your husband. We’ll, you know, we’ll get to more a little bit later. Yeah. But it’s clean. Is this German or whatever background? I married a German guy. You married a German guy? Yeah, my life boy. Well you made your Filipino parents.Marites 02:37 He’s, he, you know, you think of white guys would be like taller Filipinos. Like, Oh, we’re going to get like a tall grandkids. Like, no, my husband’sAndrew 02:44 does seem as me. Yeah. Yeah. He’s not playing basketball or volleyball. Basketball. He says it’s a right vertically challenged sports. Right. That’s very true. So, uh, you know, we stumbled into family talk here, so why don’t you just I don’t know, take a few minutes. Tell us who you are, what life is and um, yeah, start there.Marites 03:05 Yeah. Okay. So I’m, I’ve been married for about eight years now to my husband Tyson and I’ve got two little boys that are two and three years old. So too little monsters. What are their, what are their names? Leo is the oldest one. He’ll be four pretty soon. And Bennett is the youngest.Andrew 03:23 And for anybody who’s ever encountered you on Instagram, they see your, you have two of the most endearing boy. They are amazing. Well, we’ll talk more about that, but my God, I’ve laughed so many times watching them. Yeah, keep going. Sorry I interrupted.Marites 03:39 Um, yeah, and so we live in the Fraser Valley and uh, I grew up in Richmond. That’s where my real estate career kind of started. And yeah, now I sell real estate here in the Valley.Andrew 03:50 So how did you end up in, like, what’s your, your, um, your family background? How did you land in Richmond? Let’s go back a little a little further.Marites 03:59 Okay. So my parents moved here from the Philippines in the 1970s and they landed in a small logging camp in the queen Charlotte islands. So my dad had these sideburns. My mom looked like she was 12 years old, but early twenties. They were newlyweds, pregnant with my oldest sister at the time.Andrew 04:22 So married in the Philippines and then yard themselves out too.Marites 04:27 The queen Charlottes. Yeah, I know. Well, I think they just knew that Canada was a good place and there was lots of opportunity for kids, um, for their kids to have better education and, and so I think that’s why they made the move.Andrew 04:41 So were they given a, I dunno, I mean this is maybe a total infant question, but were they given the option of where to go or are you just told, congratulations, you’re welcome to Canada, here’s where you must,Marites 04:52 no, I think my mom’s brother had gone first and worked for this company, um, in the Charlottes. And so then he sponsored him to come. And so my dad didn’t know anything about queen Charlotte islands. Uh, like my mom thought snow grew on the ground because that’s all she’s seen. It does. Um, and so my dad was just telling me the other day how the first day he landed, they threw him in into the forest basically with a shovel and he had to dug, dig the snow outs for the loggers and that was his job. And so he had gone from like 90 degrees to like negative 10, and he said his lips just chap like instantly. And they were so badly blistered. And uh, he lasted two and a half days and they’re like, okay, you’re slowing down their production team, we gotta pull you outta here. So they threw him into the office, made him a part time a timekeeper, and then he actually continued on to do his, um, has accounting designation with them. And then like 40 plus years later, he retired with the same company.Andrew 06:03 My goodness. What a story. So lands in Canada starts with one company and finishes a, that’s amazing. Yeah.Marites 06:08 So he’s very, very loyal and, um, really hard worker. And then my mom ran the little commissary shop, the postal store, um, kinda typical Asian running the convenience store for the camp. Wow. Yeah. And so I feel, I feel very fortunate to be here in Canada. I think that my parents sacrificed a lot. He, my dad tells me the day that he remembers they left the Philippines and he was at the airport looking at my mom through the glass and there she was, his new bride, pregnant with my oldest sister. And he’s like, I’m, I’m leaving my home, I’m leaving my family. I’m leaving my country to set up for them to come and for us to have a better life together. And so I feel very, uh, grateful too to live here and to have the opportunities I have and I feel like my opportunities that I have were bought at a price by my parents. And so I don’t feel entitled to anything that I, I think a lot of my peers may be feel sorta entitled. The millennials get a bad rep for having, um, that stereotype of like, Oh, we’re owed. Yeah. Yeah. But I don’t, I don’t really struggle with that feeling. So do you,Andrew 07:25 do you feel a, um, a duty because you know, because your parents, let’s use the terminology, you know, paid for your opportunity. Do you then you carry that through life and is that, that’s part of your, like you wake up every morning, it’s like, well I don’t, I, I don’t feel good. I don’t want to do this. Shut up Mary Tesco, get your ass out of bed. Go do that. Is that, is that part of your,Marites 07:47 your your mantra? Yeah, I think, I think my parents were very heavily involved in my childhood and, and they drove us to do really well in school and any passions I had, they invested fully in. Um, when I was doing music and acting, my mom would drive me to all over the lower mainland and when the car all night long while I did my thing. And then, um, so I feel indebted to them for sure.Andrew 08:12 For those of you listening that heard Mary test say music and acting, don’t worry, we will get to that. We’re not, we’re not, we’re not passing over that. I’ll get you on that in a minute. So, um, so you are, I, I’m, I’m uh, I’m an infant in this conversation. You’re then a second generation immigrant. Is that, what, is that how you’re classified cause your parents immigrated and you were born here? I don’t, I’m not sure. I might be first, first generation Canadian. Yeah, these are, these are things we’ll have to look up and, and educate ourselves on.Marites 08:42 SoAndrew 08:43 um, you’re born then and the queen Charlottes or you’re born in Richmond?Marites 08:47 I was born in Richmond and lived in the queen Charlotte’s for the first couple of years cause we didn’t have a hospital there. There was only there, I think there’s 400, 500 people there. So, um, andAndrew 08:56 then after we live in the shots for a couple of years, my sisters grew up there, but then they had no high school system. So then we had to move. So I was raised as a city girl. Got it. City girl and you come across that way. I don’t, I don’t see you, you know, with an ax out in the Bush. That’s not,Marites 09:15 yeah, I don’t hike camp. Oh, you don’t care. We should talk about this. Okay. You know what, my parents worked too hard to get me into a country where I don’t have to poop outside. I will not camp.Andrew 09:26 See, you know, I think subconsciously my spirit knew that I loved you. Even though we haven’t talked about these things, I don’t understand it. I don’t know. Like I, and you know what, as a child I camped like I, and I really kept my dad and my parents, we went out in like shitty tents that had holes and we weren’t properly equipped and we actually cooked over the fire. And more often than not, camping, uh, was cold, wet, you know, uncomfortable, constipated, like whatever. Like life isn’t normal and I just don’t understand. Like we, people, we have like, you know, the world has developed like Weston’s and Fairmont’s and, and I don’t, I don’t understand why you would choose to, to not do that. And then the argument where people go, well it’s, it’s inexpensive, it’s cheap. That’s a load. Because I mean I expensive. I understand that what my parents did with me was cheap and inexpensive because they had no money. But then what I observed people doing today that is not inexpensive, all of the equipment and crap that they buy is, is very expensive. So anyways, we share that together. That’s, yeah, that’s phenomenal. So you never camped as like an adult human.Marites 10:35 I think my sister took me once and I hated it. I’m like, never again.Andrew 10:39 Yeah. Kindred spirits. Amazing. We’re going to get, you know that we’re going to get glared at by peopleMarites 10:45 I know. I know my friends love camping and they all go together and I never get the invite and I’m like, I’m not offended. Knock your socks off. I’ll be in my warm bed.Andrew 10:55 Th this causes conflict in my marriage because my wife loves that. The whatever that she would love to camp more and do that kind of rough ed or you know, whatever, whatever people call it. And we’ve done it and she’s done it even with friends. But it’s just, it’s hard to get me motivated to, uh, to want to do something like that. Just leave me at home. So, okay. So you’re not camping as you’re growing up. Yeah. You’re in, you’re in Richmond doing whatever. Just the regular Richmond kid thing. I would presume. And you alluded to something, which is, I never knew this about you. I only learned this about you, I think when we were talking about doing the show together. Um, you actually had like a childhood pop star career like that. That’s not misrepresenting. I’m not calling you Brittany Spears. I know you’re not Brittany Spears. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit.Marites 11:48 So my entertainment career started when I was about eight years old. I was,Marites 11:54 I grew up doing karaoke and kind of, that was part of our cultural upbringing. And so I was used to being in front of the, uh, entertaining people. And so my, my, uh, people would always tell my mom, you should put her into acting. She do really well on acting. And so we booked an appointment to meet with an acting coach. But before we did that, I was walking and Steve and some people approached my mom and they’re like, we need your daughter for a commercial right now. And my mom is paranoid Filipina lady, like they’re trying to kidnap my daughter. She’s like, no way. And they’re like, yeah, you got to get in our van. We’re going to go do. And she’s like, no, no, no. And they’re like, we’ll give her $2,000. And she’s like, okay, goAndrew 12:33 know. Apparently, apparently Steve stuns known for childhood Filipino kidnappingMarites 12:39 real thing in my, in my upbringing. That was a thing that we had to be afraid of. And so it was legit. It was a commercial for Canada’s 120 fifth birthday. And I had to just like run up to the camera and then, uh, yeah, I can’t remember exactly. It was 2000 hours, but I got paid a lot, really for being eight years old. It was a lot of money. And then I went to my acting agent and I said, I’ve already done a commercial. So she’s like, great. So, yeah, I did some acting and then, um, yeah, did like a dozen or so TV commercials, a couple TV shows, just, you know, two or three lines, not nothing major. And then I transitioned to doing music. So, um, I recorded some songs. We had them on the radio. They were on the beat 94.5.Andrew 13:23 Okay. Okay. You’re not, you’re not blowing over this quickly. We need Lena. I could even see it in your body language. I did. I did some, I did some songs and then it’s nothing. No. I want the name of the song, how much it was played. Like come on, give us the details here.Marites 13:42 Okay. So I recorded a song called back in the day.Andrew 13:45 Yeah. You wrote it. No, I didn’t write it. I was a pop star. Like the typical pop star. I just went in there. This sounds amazing. Shout out to all the pop stars out there. We know you don’t write your own ship. Okay. Oh man.Marites 14:00 Okay. So yeah, it was, it was on the radio and it was in heavy rotation, meaning every couple of hours it was on. So I’d be walking inAndrew 14:07 hold on. What year is this? Is everyone’s trying to think back in their life right now? I need to remember who I was dating, what car I was driving, whether or not I’ve made out to you. No, I was probably married at the time. This was like early two thousands Oh perfect.Marites 14:26 I think I started recording. I was about 1516 so quite a quite a while ago. Okay. So the name of the song was again back in the day. It was since we had a falling out with the producer and so they eventually rerecorded it and rereleased it. So it’s hard to actually find, cause I know as soon as they tell people they like try to Google it. I’m like, good luck. This was before like YouTube was really big and all that.Andrew 14:47 You do know that we’re going to get it and we’re going to play it out at the end of this podcast. That’s amazing. Our producer Justin, he should, nobody can see him and he’s not on the mic, but he’s just absolutely loving. This is writing notes right now. Get song. That’s fun.Marites 15:03 Oh yeah. Yeah. So then I performed in nightclubs. I, the weirdest thing that happened was I was on vacation in the Cayman islands sitting at a bar and the bartender recognized me and he was like, I know who you are. And he’s like, I listened to your song. I’m from Edmonton. I was like, Whoa. That was pretty bizarre for me.Andrew 15:25 Wow. Okay. So, so that’s, and then so the music was more, what was your bigger, was it music or acting that you were more passionate about?Marites 15:34 Probably music. Yeah. To this day I still like music. I still like to sing at church and stuff like that. Acting. It got to a point where I was just a cute kid and I could say a couple of fun lines, but then as I got older, they’re like, Hey, you have to invest in lessons and actually dive in. I was like, nah, I don’t really want to do that. Music’s more of a, my karaoke roots coming out. I feel like that’s something,Andrew 15:59 like, I’ve heard you say, make that Filipino karaoke reference number of times. And I’d be lying to say that I’d never thought that before this point in my life. But it’s also something I didn’t think I was allowed to say.Marites 16:10 Oh, it’s, it’s so stereotypical, but it’s, it was literally a part of my upbringing. Like how kids play softball. I karaoke like we karaoke when I was sad, when I was happy, when we had a birthday party, when there’s a funeral, like it doesn’t matter any opportunity to pull out the magic Mike, we did it.Andrew 16:27 You know what, in this, in this environment, uh, in the world we’re in today, you know, sometimes stereotypes are, you know, not supposed to talk about them or you know, they’re, they’re offsite or whatever. But I, some of them are real and they’re not. That’s right. Totally honest. So we, one year, uh, Kristen and I, my wife Kristen, where we are, we’re in Maui. I can’t, we’ve been to Maui a few times. I can remember what year it was, but it was, you know, probably somewhere prior to 2010 maybe after, I have no idea. She’ll listen to this later and she’ll correct me and it’s fine. Um, but we go to this, uh, we go to the sushi restaurant and I think we had read that there was karaoke there if I remember correctly. But like we needed to eat and I wanted to check this place out. I’m a big Japanese food and nut and the place had great reviews so, so we walk in and it was clearly karaoke night and it was clearly dominated by Filipino people on the Island of Maui at a sushi restaurant. Why is everybody Filipino here? But like they were just there to crush it. Like, and watching them was unbelievable.Marites 17:30 This is not like the way that like white drunk people do karaoke. It’s like we’re really given her, you sing with billings,Andrew 17:38 right? You stay with feelings yet. Yeah, no, it’s a, there’s no comparison. This is what will watching them. It’s, it’s like you wonder like, okay, how much did you practice for this? Cause this is clearly not, like you said, the drunk white guy who just stumbled onto the stage and doesn’t know what he’s doing. These people have put effort into the performance. It’s quite a young age. They train us and it’s quite amazing. So yeah. Anyway, so that is a stereotype. I believe we should be allowed to talk about embrace cause it’s, it’s fantastic. So you, okay. Uh, we’re growing up in Richmond. You’re, you became a pop star. You got recognized at a bar. And where was that? Barbados. What’d you say? Cayman islands. But fast forward a bit. So you’re today you’re, you’re married and you have a couple of kids. Um, how does that, how does that story come to be?Marites 18:23 So when I met my husband, this was 2011, we got married in 2011 and he got a job opportunity in Abbotsford. And at the time I lived in Richmond and when we were dating he said, Kay, Mary, Tess, I’m a pastor. So that means God could call me anywhere like Abbotsford. And I scoffed. I said, ha ha, I’m never moving to Abbotsford. Like ha ha ha ha. Kind of thing. And then of course he gets a job opportunity and we pray about it and we’re like, okay, I think, I think I’ve got to go to it’s bird. Wow. Yeah. From Richmond. Yeah. Which you might as well have been Toronto like I was for just seemed like,Andrew 19:03 like so foreign. So that’s like 2007 eight something like that. 11. Okay. Okay. And we got married like that next month we moved. Okay. So you start life out here and you’ve got to, you’ve got a couple boys, Leo and Bennett and they’re not old like what? Two and three? They’re little and they are absolutely wild. So wild is an amazing,Marites 19:27 I just fill them all the time and throw them on my Instagram stories because it’s pure entertainment. They save like the fun kids say the funniest things. It’s so true. Like I watched your this morning last night and he, he took a liking to this woman with blonde hair and he was just like so infatuated with her and he’s like, can you please fart on me? You know? And I’m like, and then she’s like, does your mom ask you to do that? And he’s like, no. I’m like, well thank God. He said no, because it’s like, I don’t know these people very well. And so he’s just like, and then today, I’m like, why did you ask that woman to do that? And he’s like, it’s my job to ask girls to fart on me, mom. Like, so matter of fact,Andrew 20:05 that is unbelievable. You know what I, in fairness to you, it’s probably the German side coming out in them. It’s, you know, the Filipino things got, he’s got some stuff from that, but, but that does sound, I married into it. I’ve married into some German roots and so I can understand there’s some, there’s, there’s some different things. Yeah, we can, we can call it that. So you, um, so you’ve got a two. So what’s it, you got a two and a three year old. You have a career selling real estate. Yeah. You are a, you know, you’re a mom, you’re a wife, you’re, you’re a career woman. You’re, you’re a Filipino minority. I guess if you wanted to say that’s a, that’s a ball of wax. You got a lot going on.Marites 20:52 For me it’s just normal. Uh, my mom, he was an entrepreneur so she did every business under the sun. She came to Canada with like $10 in her pocket and she, when she moved to the mainland, she became more interested in business. And so she got into um, like a car mechanic shop and I’m like, mom, you don’t even know how to change oil. She’s like, I don’t care. I want to start this business. And so she did concert promotion. She had a magazine, she ran a convenience store. She ran a grocery store, like she’s just done anything and everything and it never phased her that she was a minority. Cause this was in the eighties and nineties. So even more so on minority. And um, she was just fearless about it. And so she paved the way for me to realize like what, there’s nothing stopping me.Marites 21:40 And so I can quote unquote do it all. But the difference is that my mom has amazing capacity and I feel like my capacity is a lot less. We joke that she’s got the energy of a 30 year old and I’ve got the energy of like a 60 something year old, so I have to get more help. And so that’s the difference is that my mom never really asked for help. She’s just kind of this like stubborn, vivacious woman that’s, I’m just going to do it all and I’m like, I need help. I can’t do this. You know?Andrew 22:07 So in your mind, um, as you, you know, as you transitioned from a teenager into an adult, married, were you always going to have a career? Um, like not knowing, you might not have known you were going to go into real estate, but w was your framework and your brain like go get a job? Or was it, I mean some, someone, women will say, well, I knew I always wanted to be a mom and, and that’s, that takes the primary role and then the career as a secondary conversation. How did that play out in your, in your mind?Marites 22:37 I think because I got started in real estate when I was 19, and because I had been acting since I was eight and then seriously pursued music throughout my teenage years that I had always been working. So for me work was very normal and that was part of life. Uh, I’ve always wanted to have kids. It was, uh, but my career was kind of always ingrained into me ever since I was a young, young child.Andrew 23:04 So let’s dive into that a little bit then. Cause this, this is one of the things that fascinates me about you. Um, you, I mean, my impression is that you’re an incredibly present and available mom and yet you withstand the incredible pressures of the real estate industry. And, and then my impression of you as a realtor is that you’re an incredibly present, hardworking individual who devotes a lot of time to your clients. So what, like that is a, that is a thing that is completely foreign to me in that, you know, I’m a man, I don’t have a uterus and I’m, I’m automatically eliminated from that conversation. But speak to that a little bit. What does that, what does that like balancing those things and not just on a surface level, like let’s go, what do you really feel married tests about this conversation?Marites 23:55 There is a tension that I think is the mom. I feel that my husband doesn’t feel like when he goes to work, he just goes to work. You know, when the kids are like, Oh dad, we’ll miss you when I go to work. I feel like crying. And I remember very early when my kids were, were even younger than they are now. And I could see them out the window and I could see their Mt. Mommy ma, like I could see their mouth calling for me and tears falling down their face and I, and I stopped the car and I’m looking at them and then I’m crying, looking at them crying and going, I need to go to work. I have a responsibility to get stuff done. And so having children has made me more efficient at my job. And when I’m with my clients, I’m very present.Marites 24:36 I’m very dedicated to getting them results and not just networking or, and so I do miss some things like conferences and maybe I don’t run the smoothest business behind the scenes. I’m not looking to grow my business exponentially because I’m, I do have to focus on being a mom as well. And so my, my favorite thing is when telemarketers come and they call me and they’re like, Hey, don’t you want to grow your network and reach new clients? And I’m like, no. They’re like, what? You don’t want to make more money? I’m like, I don’t want to make more money. I don’t even like my life the way it is. So, so I do have that tension because all the training and leadership and coaching I’ve had in real estate is, you know, you’ve got to drive and make more sales and be bigger, better, faster, stronger. But I can’t, I physically can’t be number one and be producing a certain level. And so I have to accept that my career is maybe capped at a certain amount because I have to be with my kids. And, um, there are times when I have to choose and it’s, it’s a tough choice to make. Yeah.Andrew 25:43 Do you think, so I, I’ve spend some time thinking about this recently in preparation for our conversation, but also, you know, this is just a dialogue that I’ve, I’ve had with other people ongoing, cause it’s, it’s interesting to me, but I’ll just make a statement and tell me if this, if you think this is fair or not. Um, today our audience is the world. Like, you know, if you go back, whatever, 75 a hundred years, whatever pre-internet pre-social media are, are the people that we would compare ourselves to. Um, we’re basically are the tribe around us. That’s all we had access to. So like immediate family, immediate friends. But it was actually a small group of people right? Today, you know, social media is, it can be great and the internet is great and you know, having access to all corners of the world, you know, there’s, there’s good things in that.Andrew 26:35 And I, but I think one of the, the, the negative sides to that is that we are comparing ourselves to this tribe that I think we’re not naturally fit to do. Like, you know, so now instead of like, you know, looking at my friend who lives across the street and seeing how he’s a dad or what he does in his business and kind of, you know, like measuring myself in that way, I’m exposed to 7 billion people. And I think in every facet of life there is somebody who’s way better than me kicking my ass at that, you know? And then, yeah, I have the ability to like go like, man, I’m, you know, I’m shitty at this or I’m shitty at that because I, I am on a global scale. But you know, in my own local village, if I were to be able to confine my brain to that, I think I’d come to the conclusion that, you know, I am actually pretty good at this.Andrew 27:24 Or pretty good at that in comparison to those around. And so where that conversation is relevant to you as a mom and you know, balancing work life is, there’s been this huge, you know, and for the positive there’s been this, this huge push of, you know, um, equal opportunity and equal outcome and you know, you know, um, things, things like that, you know, in that conversation of, you know, giving women opportunity. But then now you are also whether you want to be or not compared to all of these other like whatever, conquering moms through social media and, and the internet, which, which I can imagine is, is not easy. It must be,Marites 28:01 it’s not and you have to keep your focus really small and you can’t get stuck down that rabbit hole of following other people and staring and playing that comparison game. Um, and, and I don’t just play it with other women. I play it with other men because I see men there, they’re crushing it. And I know he’s at the office till 10 o’clock and I’m home at four 30 cause I want to make dinner. And so he’s going to make that many more sales. But how many more sales is it? Do I really need? And at what expense is that going to cost my family? Because in an instant my career could be taken from me. Everything could be taken. And so I can’t focus on, on trying to be better than other people. I just have to do what’s, what’s best that I can do.Marites 28:47 Like for example, when I was nursing my child, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of, of pumping. She was like, I don’t know to see about this, but no women that are listening for children. I watched my wife, you know, raise our babies with very little of mine. I’m familiar with pumping. I mean, you have to carry this backpack around and find a bed. It was like, it was just a hassle. So I said, forget this. I’m just going to go home every three hours. And so I’d go to a meeting, show some property, drive back home, nurse my baby, go back out, do another meeting, drive back home, nurse my baby. And so this was a different type of busy-ness and multitasking that I had to manage that. Um, maybe some of my male counterparts don’t have to worry about. And so I also worry about food. I mean, I’m a foodie. I love food, but I also want to make sure that my kids are well fed. And if it’s up to my husband, it’ll be every night. SoMarites 29:42 I have to make sure that they are listening. Tyson, get your ass in here. That’s right. You know, if there’s no milk in the fridge, if there’s no vegetables in the drawer, I feel responsible for that. So I need to work out groceries, grocery planning. AndAndrew 29:58 so that, that you just raised a very interesting point. You touched on it earlier. I mean, I think it would be safe to say that even when you’re focused on one thing, maybe that’s, you know, whatever, working with a client, your mind is not at rest because your mind is in other places. And I had, I had coffee with somebody, um, the other day. Uh, it was fascinating conversation and actually she’s, she’s going to be on the show as well. And she made this statement about, she asked me this question. Sure. Her name is Shahana. She’s incredible, incredible individual. We’ll talk to her, uh, very soon on the show. But she said, Andrew, when’s the last time you left for work and had any kind of like mental anxiety about what was going on at the home during the day? And this sounds like a completely, I’m, I’m all, I’m, well I’m, I’m, I’m, I don’t want to say ashamed, but it’s embarrassing to admit this.Andrew 30:48 Like I’ve been married for 16 years. I have three children, 12, 10, and eight. And when she asked me that question, um, I’ve given lip service before to saying like, you know, my wife is incredible and I do think my wife is incredible and I’m, I’m grateful for everything she does. But when she asked me this question, I kinda had this like, Holy shit moment. And I went, yeah, like I roll out of the home at, depending on the day, anything between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM or whatever. And I never worry about anything. So whether we’re talking about like the basics of like, you know, groceries, whatever. But like you get into the kid, drop off the mental wellbeing of the children, anxiety they might have when they get home from school, there’s somebody there to catch them and then like, you know, deliver them back into the nest of the home. And we’ve had that, right? Like we have days where the kids, one kid comes home and tears or there was a fight or whatever. But like when I’m at work, I’m on and I don’t think about that until I walk through the door and then I’m hearing about it from Kristin. And so what that does for me in terms of my effectiveness at work, it allows me to just be completely, you know, honed in on whatever I’m doing. You don’t have that luxury.Marites 31:55 I have not. It requires a lot more effort for me to focus and do what I’m doing in the moment. But then it’s a lot more pressure for me to get the job done fast.Andrew 32:05 Hmm. Fascinating. So do you think related to this that the conversations, you know, we’re in a, I feel like there’s a lot of big issues being talked about in the world today. Right? You know, what, we don’t need to get into all of them and nor do I want to try to get into some of them cause I’m not equipped to talk about them. But, um, but on the topic of, you know, um, equal opportunity for women and, and not just equal opportunity for women, but like helping moms get into the workforce or companies, uh, maybe making adjustments to their policies, to getting moms into the workforce. Do you think the conversation that’s being had in the public than the media is the conversation that needs to be had? Do you think it’s an honest conversation? Is there any way that in your mind it needs to be tweaked or shifted to, to better address the issue?Marites 33:00 I haven’t really heard of it being spoken of, so maybe that’s the issue is that it’s just, I, I haven’t heard that it being discussed publicly. Um, I just know like the personal pressures that I feel from it. So like, I know when I’m at home and I’m, I’m cooking dinner, I often have my laptop open beside the stove and I’m responding to emails while the water’s boiling. And then I’m cutting vegetables and then I check a text message. And so I’m kind of always working and sometimes that affects my kids because my son will say to me, mommy, look at me in the eyes.Andrew 33:36 Wow. And he’s like threeMarites 33:39 that is unbelievable. And so as much as I say, you know, I try to be present with my kids when I, I really do. But, um, sometimes I can’t because I’m doing multiple things at once. And so that’s why I’ve tried to implement a day off, which for an entrepreneur is really difficult. But I try to really, really protect our day off together. And my husband takes the same day off and we try to do things just as a family. And then I’m just purely reactive to fires in the business on those days. But I’m not doing any prospecting, not responding to anything that’s not urgent that day, once a week.Andrew 34:14 So I know the answer to this, but I wanna I wanna um, I want to raise it because I want to hear you speak to it, but how then I shouldn’t say I know the whole answer. I maybe know part of the answer. How have you gone about, um, relaying the importance of your family and balance to the people you work with so that they understand and respect, you know, the boundaries that you have.Marites 34:39 It’s hard because clients kind of want you available 24, seven. There’s a bit of that expectation. And so I, I don’t outright tell the client, this is my day off. I just might, because I try to move people through the system pretty quickly. And in theory, they’re not working with me with weeks and weeks on end. So it’s not like they’re picking up that, Oh, she’s always taking this day off, but I’ll just say, Hey, I, um, I can’t make it for tonight at five. Can we do tomorrow at 9:00 AM? You know, so I’ll just try to push it to the next day. Yeah. And then sometimes if they text during bedtime, then I’ll, I might be a little bit slower to respond, but then sometimes I’ll say to my kid too, like, mommy has to just send this really quick message. Like, can you just wait one minute? You know? And so my kids have to learn to be patient and so I have a very supportive husband as well. And so I’ll just say don’t like, Oh it’s a phone call. I got to take the call. It’s another realtor. He’ll, he’ll take the kids and then I’ll hide in the closet and then make the phone call. You’ll actually, you will hide in the closet. There’s been times where we have guests over, they opened the closet doorMarites 35:38 to hang their coat and I’m standing on there on the floor signaling them like pull away and you see one of your boys. That’s what mommy does. She crazy, it’s fine. So, and then my kids, they don’t find me and I try to keep the phone call short and I don’t tell the client. On the other line. I’m hiding in a closet right now becauseMarites 35:57 you know, I, I don’t want them to see that I’m trying to multitask. I kind of want them to envision that I’m, I’m focused, I’m doing but this, this is the reality of things. And sometimes I pull up to the house and I sit in the garage and I stay there on my laptop and people will come out and she’s like, she’s in my garage, like she’s still working and I’m like, Oh, I’m coming like three more minutes. I’m like, I need three more minutes. And I just bust through my work as fast as I can. And then I have a part time assistant as well. So on those days off, I’ll delegate as much as I can to her and just try to pass off. Like I’m, I’m pretty good at just being like, okay, this is not for me to take care of. She can handle this and just delegate, delegate. And if I have pain in the butt clients that I don’t want, I’m at the point in my career to you, I’ll just pass them off to somebody else.Andrew 36:41 Yeah. Okay. I have a question I want to ask you. Is there a, is there an experience or multiple experiences, whatever that occurred in your earlier life, anytime, any point in childhood that you think you’ve taken with you and then you use as, you know, maybe sometimes people will, will use the terminology, you know, something happened to you at a certain age and you made a vow that, you know, that would never happen again or it was, it was a shaping experience for the positive or the negative. Like this doesn’t have to be, this isn’t, doesn’t have to be a clean answer, but is there something that sticks out in your mind or are a few things that stick out in your mind that you carry with you today and you know, impact the way you either mother, how your espouse, the kind of, you know, how you work, things like that. Speak to that a little bit.Marites 37:30 Uh, it wasn’t really from my childhood. It was when I was first licensed as a realtor and my mom and I were buying and selling real estate and we had one property in particular that was the property from hell. Basically everything that could go wrong with this property and went wrong. The tenants ended up in jail. They didn’t want to pay their rent, so I had to post notice on their door, but they would tie their guard dog to the front door. So I couldn’t do it. Um, we had them parking in RV and dealing drugs there. So I had to deal with police. We had dumping issues and garbage. So I had to deal with the city bylaws and fines and complaints. Um, we had a major plumbing disaster, which was a big insurance issue and I’m just, everything just, it was such a pain in the butt trying to deal this property.Marites 38:14 So we had to unload it and I couldn’t, for various reasons, I couldn’t refinance the property. And so it actually ended up going into foreclosure. Wow. As a realtor, that was really embarrassing for me. And as a young adult, I didn’t have the skills to cope with the stress of, of this type of investment and all the problems that came with it. So I was very stressed out. Um, this was kind of around the time when I was newly married and moving from Richmond to Abbotsford just shortly after that. And so for my career, it was a bad move because Richmond real estate was average. Price was 600. And um, Richmond was about 600. Abbotsford was about 300,000. And I grew up in Richmond. I had a database, I was selling real estate for about six years. I had a steady income to move to Abbotsford where I knew zero people and home prices were half.Marites 39:07 I thought for sure I’m not going to make it. This is career suicide. I don’t know why God has called us here. This is not going to be a good idea. And so, so we got him into this foreclosure with this investment property. So this was intended to be a rental or rental. And then we were gonna develop the property with a neighboring site into a townhome site. And then you, but you at some point in time you needed to refinance it. Yes. And we just couldn’t, there was, yeah. Is complicated for why, but sure. And so it ended up foreclosure in a foreclosure. You get an accepted offer, which for this house was for 14. Yeah. I didn’t know what all the costs would be exactly with legal fees and I, I’d never been through foreclosure before, should, I just knew that it was going to be about a hundred thousand dollars short.Marites 39:54 Wow. So moving, having this uncertain career, $100,000 debt pending a, I was terrified, stressed out. I didn’t sleep. Um, I cried every day. A new marriage, new marriage. That’s a great thing. My husband is very, just such a sweetheart because he carried hearing and prayed with me through that whole ordeal. And like, this is a baggage he signed up for. He knew about this property when we got married. Wow. And, and so we’re waiting for the court date for four 14. And I, I had a dream that I told the guy in this dream, someone made me an offer. I told him I need five Oh four and I don’t know where that number came from. It was just a dream. And so we’re waiting for this court date, uh, for them to approve the four 14 offer. And Mmm. The realtor call then, or no, I called him and I said, okay, what happened?Marites 40:48 Like did it get approved? And I remember he said, boo. And I said, boom, who starts a sentence? Boom, it goes, boom. The property sold for five Oh five, 100. And I felt all the strength in my body disappear and I had to fall on my knees. It wasn’t like this act of like, Oh, I’m going to fall on my knees to pray. Like I literally could not stand, just melted. And that’s when I felt God’s grace and hope again, enter in and I, I, it was a six minute drive to my husband’s office and I drove over there crying and laughing the whole drive. And I’m like, I look like a crazy person on the road. I’m like, I hope I don’t get into an accident. That’d be a terrible way to end this story. Um, and so I got to his office and I told him the whole thing again, just bawling my eyes out and just realizing I was this close to living a certain type of life where I would have had to have paid this debt.Marites 41:50 And that meant maybe we would’ve stayed in our basement suite a lot longer. Maybe we wouldn’t have kids for awhile. Um, and I, and, but I remember getting to a point of surrender and going, okay, if this is a burden that I have to carry, then God, I entrust you to, to help me do this and to provide for me. And maybe I have an unhealthy relationship with money and maybe this is your way of teaching me something through that. Maybe there’s lessons of stewardship in this. And so when, when I didn’t have to carry that $100,000 debt, I felt very, very relieved and very grateful. And it was a huge growth in my faith.Andrew 42:29 So have you encountered, I mean that’s, so, yeah, for you to have experienced that and then be in real estate is, is an irony in and of itself, but have you encountered, uh, have you sold for closures? Have you encountered people who are being foreclosed on or going through the process?Marites 42:46 I’ve had some people who, who’ve been close to it and so I can relate to them and have empathy and, and just when people I know they, like, they’d just barely have enough down payment to buy something. And the joy that they feel it, I feel that same joy with them because I know what it’s like to just to just barely have enough. Um, and the, the iron, I mean, like the kind of cherry on top for that story is that despite me knowing nobody in Abbotsford and despite home prices being half of what they were in Richmond, my income should have been half, but I ended up doubling my income the next year.Andrew 43:23 Well, story. So how does that, so th th uh, not to say that you didn’t answer the question, but this, this experience that you’ve, um, that you had, which was clearly difficult and trying at times, um, today when you, when you do what you do and, and you know, whether you’re being a mom or being a wife or being a friend or, or, or being a realtor, um, do you carry that with you? Like is that always top of mind or is this something that’s now faded back into the subconscious and you, you draw upon it when you need it?Marites 44:00 It has faded back in, in a lot of ways, but the relationship that I have with money is very different now. I think back then I put a lot of faith into my money thinking that that’s going to provide me stability and security and hope and, and just realizing like, no, that can just disappear in a instant with one judge making a call. And, um, and so I think that carries in with me and also a humility of being like, I’m not the top dog. Like I, you know, like I know that everything’s kind of meaningless at the end of the day. And so that’s why I put my heart and soul into selling real estate. It’s not just a transactional business for me and you can’t really learn humility by reading about it. I think you have to be humbled and go through a period where you, you end up on your knees cause you have no other choice.Andrew 44:59 Yup. There’s a, there’s a saying that I, I can’t take credit for because I surely didn’t make it up, but I, I can’t even remember where I heard it. But it goes something like this, you know, when, when sometimes someone will ask me like, well why do you like that individual so much? And I’ll say I like that person because they have the scars and by scars, you know, I just mean, um, those life, those crucible moments in life that, you know, you come to a realization that like, I am not equipped to deal with this. And, you know, it forces you to read, to look beyond yourself for answers and you know, for you, you know, very, it’s obvious, you know, you’re a person of faith and that was very important to you in that moment. Um, sometimes it’s leaning on other people or whatever, but regardless of what it is, it’s, I can’t figure this out on my own and I need an, I need something else or someone else outside of me to help me deal with this. And that is, um, yeah, you can’t take you, you either have experienced something like that or you haven’t and it, and it’s, it’s hard to, it’s hard to describe racism. Is this a, is this something you’ve, you’ve encountered and dealt with?Marites 46:07 Because I grew up in Richmond, which was such a multiculturalAndrew 46:12 hub. Yeah.Marites 46:13 I didn’t really feel different than anybody cause everybody was different from everybody. But I, I remember one day coming home and, uh, on our white garage, somebody spray painted in black ink, chink. And I just thought, man, these racists are dumb because I’m not even Chinese, can’t even insult me properly. Um, and so I was like, that means that somebody who doesn’t like my ethnicity knows where I live. And went through the effort of getting spray paint and tarnished our house just to send some sort of message. Like I didn’t really know what to make of it. And I remember my mom, how she handled it. She was more just irritated that she had to now figure out how to remove paint and get like the hurt. It just got added to her to do list. She didn’t really seem to take offense to it. And so then I didn’t take offense to it.Andrew 47:11 And to your knowledge, is that the, is that the only encounter you’ve had with it in your life or do you,Marites 47:17 I would say that’s the most outright racist experience I’ve, I’ve had, I’ve had lots of ignorant conversations with people who say, you know, ignorant things. What does that look like? And I’m, I’m causeMarites 47:30 like, I,Andrew 47:32 I don’t know what that’s like, you know, like if you, if you sit in a, you know, if I’m, if you’re, if you’re not a visible minority, if you’re, whatever you are, if you’re, you’re a white Canadian by European descent, you can’t possibly know what it’s like to be in a conversation or a situation in life where, um, you know, maybe somebody hasn’t spray painted something on your door, but there’s like this circumstance or this like offside.Marites 47:56 Yeah.Andrew 47:56 Say what does that, how have you encountered that and what does that like?Marites 48:00 I, I mean I’ve had people say like, Oh, you’re a singer. Like did you sing in your mother tongue? And I was like, Mmm, you mean English? Cause I don’t S I don’t have them. Like, you know, so they’re not mean spirited. They’re not trying to put me down. They’d just, it’s just an ignorant question. And so I don’t, I don’t take offense to that. I mean, actually moving from Richmond to Abbotsford is where I actually felt like I was different from everybody cause we wanted to, I can’t imagine why. Let Mary test tell you about Abbotsford. I remember our first Sunday at our new church and there’s like 800 people and I looked around the room, I was like, there’s only three other people with black hair in this room. Like this is very different from my last church in Richmond, which when we had cultural day we had 40 different flags representing 40 different countries.Andrew 48:50 By the way, for anybody listening to this show who is not from Abbotsford, who had beliefs aboutMarites 48:56 what Abbotsford is, you’ve just confirmed. I was heard a bunch of hillbilly farmers who were all blonde hair, blue eyed and they’re all, it’s actually notAndrew 49:07 the case, but yeah, that is, that is, that’s very real.Marites 49:10 Yeah. And so people weren’t rude or rate like everyone was so welcoming. I’ve actually never felt more loved and accepted by a community, so I don’t have anything negative to say about it. It was just, I was more aware of for the first time I’m like, Oh,Marites 49:23 one of these things is not like the other and it’s me. Wow.Andrew 49:27 But in terms of your day to day today, now you would say 99% of the time this isn’t, this isn’t an issue in your life and you’re notMarites 49:35 generally speaking in countering anything like that. No. I mean, when I, when I first moved here to Abbotsford, I w I was pretty selfMarites 49:41 conscious about it and I was worried how it was going to affect my business because I was scared that, Oh, these people have like deep roots with each other. They’ve grown up together and here I am, I’m a foreigner in every sense of that word. Why would they hire me? And I talked to Ray and Ghana and he, and he talked to me about how if you just bring enough value than ethnicity and age have nothing to do with it. And he spoke very frankly, he’s like, very test, just bring value at this SD has nothing to do with it. Is that okay? So I focused on just being very skilled. I did all the training classes, I became a better realtor and I never let my race, um, enter that self-doubt again. SoAndrew 50:27 one of the, uh, one of the reasons, I mean, there’s many reasons why you’re wonderful, but when I first got to know you more, the thing that I thought, well, what you know, why is Mary Tess amazing? I, the word that came to my mind is she’s authentic and the way which I think people can hear that and you, you know, in, in this interview, it’s, it’s quite clearly obvious. You know, you’re, you believe certain things, you’re passionate about them and you’re not, you know, you don’t shy away from them. But where I, where I encountered your authenticity is, you know, you and I didn’t have much of this relationship. We weren’t, you know, we weren’t face to face. We in the same industry, work together, whatever. But then I encountered you through Instagram. Yeah. And an Instagram is an interesting arena to encounter someone on because I would actually suggest for the most part, it’s one of the most inauthentic spaces on the planet earth today.Andrew 51:19 And even social media in general. And I know like people will listen to this, you know, who this love social media, they’ll call bullshit. And they’ll say, Oh, Andrew doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But I would say that that the social media platforms can be a very inauthentic space where people are showing or presenting the side of them that they’re comfortable with, that they want the world to see. And, and not that that’s even bad, you know, like we do that on a daily basis. Like, you know, when I have people into my home, do I leave shit on all over the floor? No. I, you know, I present of course it’s not me that cleans the home, Chris, Kristen that prepares it, but it’s us. But, um, you know, so I don’t think these, this is a bad thing to do, to present well, but when we present well in a, in a, in a, in a context where, you know, there’s humans in front of humans and it’s real life, I think there’s an understanding that, that, you know, there, there’s another side to people, but then when you encounter people online and you don’t know them from a hole in the ground and all you ever see is that best PR presentation or representation, then that’s where, you know, we can find ourselves, you know, comparing ourselves to people in things that aren’t necessarily real or whole.Andrew 52:27 And um, and so then in that space, I find it especially refreshing when I see somebody who’s totally authentic and you’re getting every side of them. And, and T I’ll, I’ll take it one step further. Like, I have been slow into the social media game, you know, and I have received a lot of pressure to get there quicker for various reasons. Uh, but my hesitation in that process has been I value authenticity and I don’t see a lot of authenticity there. And I just wasn’t quite sure how to engage in a way where I don’t want to like blow my brains out because I felt like the closer I got to some of that stuff, the more I hated it. Right. So then along comes you into my life and I start to see you and watch you and I see you on Instagram and I just go, Holy shit. Like here’s this, you know, everything we’ve talked about today, you know, working mom, Filipino background moves from Richmond and whatever, blah blah blah. Two kids making it all happen. And you are on Instagram. Exactly. The same person who’s sitting across me today on my couch. I think that’s amazing. And I think you’re amazing because of that. And I just want you to, I dunno, I want you to, I want you to hear that and absorb that and to sit in that because I think that’s phenomenal.Marites 53:40 I, yeah, I don’t know how other people do it. I feel like that would require so much effort to always have to put the best foot forward all the time. Like Instagram is like quick stories are just like, you are on the fly, I’m recording stuff and hitting send. Like I don’t have time to edit and put on makeup or you know, like it’s just, that would be tiring if I, if you’re not an authentic person, then you have to always be changing hats from your workplace to the Nam on social media. And then I’m at home, then I’m at church. Like if you’re just the same person, it requires way less effort. So I think it’s just a matter of efficiency that I want thatAndrew 54:15 so, and that is, that’s, that’s, I mean, that’s the conversation in your brain and that’s why you’re able to do it. I think, um, a lot of the conversations in people’s minds as they are, you know, grappling with how to engage with social media and video and, and, you know, engage the world in that way, is that, Mmm. They’re not comfortable with things like the sound of their voice or the way they look or, you know, like it’s, it’s this huge obstacle to, um, to present themselves in that way. And so then yet you get, you get a couple of different types of people. You get the people like, like me, like where I’ve been, I’ve been hesitant to engage for a variety of reasons. And then you get a lot of people where they engage, but then their engagement is, it’s only you can just tell.Andrew 55:05 So clearly it’s only the side that they want to present. It’s the highly educated or highly, um, edited, edited video, edited photo, uh, or it’s only one particular type of post all the time. Right. And, and I mean, I’m not, and this isn’t my attempt to, to slag any individual. It’s just an attempt to say good on you for, um, for showing all sides, um, in what I say is it really real way. And then I would then say that is, if it’s not the most significant reason, it’s gotta be one of the most significant reasons as to why people gravitate to you and why you’re so successful and you know, why you do what you do. Because people love that. Um,Marites 55:47 I think that’s what life is really about is connecting with each other and helping each other and not one upping each other. And so, I mean from a business perspective, my, um, I didn’t even know what you call it, like not the wall but the, your posts. My posts are pretty uh, professional. Like I had a branding lady come and help me figure out, you know, that my colors and all that kind of stuff. So my poster and I’ve got the edited listing videos where I walked through the property. So those are pretty clean and crisp. But um, if I’m feeling something a certain day, I might post something personal, but then my stories are really, those are reallyAndrew 56:24 off the hook. Well, and I would say, you know, not to, not to knock your professionally taken photos of homes or whatever, but like, just as a human, forget the felt, the fact that we know each other in the business when I go, when I engage with you on social media, I couldn’t give a shit about the host. You just listed your, what you’re doing with your kids and your husband. And out in your day to day life or whatever where you’re, that’s the entire spectrum of Mary tests. Yes. That’s the only thing I’m there for and that’s why I’m engaged. There’s a million people in the world that if we just want to talk about our industry or, but in any industry where all they’re doing is presenting, this is what I sell, this is what I do, here’s the best of this, or whatever gag. Like I just want to puke when that’s all I see. But then because of the way you’re engaging by showing, you know, the entire spectrum of who you are, that’s why I think people are there. That’s why I’m there. And I, and I, and I think I can speak for the world when we say this is why we love Mary tests.Marites 57:22 Well, I, I kinda think of it as like a TV show. People don’t watch TV to watch the commercials. Right. They watched the show to watch the show and then there’s a couple of commercials. Unless we’re talking about the super bowl, but I don’t want to get us off track. Yeah. That’s why I’d watch the Superbowl. Um, and so my life is like the shell and then real estate is kind of like the commercials. Like I kinda throw it in there cause it’s a part of my life. It’s not like I’m a secret realtor, you know, it’s there, but it’s, it’s not who I am. It’s not, my identity is not based on my career.Andrew 57:55 That might be the best thing you’ve said all day. My life is the show and real estate is like the commercials. I like that. That’s good. Everybody listening needs to write that down. Okay, let’s play a fun game. Okay. What is your, you and I both love, we both love calories. We love, I’ll take calories in any form. Uh, but what is your like when you are alone in a room and the door is closed and there’s nothing to be a barest of a, nobody can see what you’re shoving into your face. Like what is your thing? Pork rinds.Marites 58:29 This is amazing. I don’t know if you’ve ever had work rides. It’s, it’s, Oh man. Filipino world. He’s so offended. You take pork skin, which is fat. I’m going to get letters from PETA. I know they’re going to hate this, but then you fry it in more fat until it gets crispy and then you dip it in vinegar. This is the Filipino one. This is the, you gotta dip it in the vinegar because the vinegar I think like eats the fats. So then it’s like you’re eating celery.Andrew 58:58 That’s how that makes sense. You just made that good for vegetarians. It’s like you’re eating celery, so, okay, give us you gotta you gotta put this on the spectrum for us because there’s, there’s clearly 99% of the world has never consumed this. Although I’m telling you, I’m going to now after we’ve discussed this, so you, where is this on the, on the taste spectrum, like is this like a salt and vinegar chip? Is this more like bacon? Does this taste likeMarites 59:24 the nation of bacon and a potato chip? Like it doesn’t get better than this. Like this is why I have gallstones. Cake.Andrew 59:34 That was amazing. I have gallstones, but I’m willing to sacrifice for them. So are we like when we consume these things, is this like a thing? We’re, we’re doing this in front of the TV while we’re binge-watching or how is this, how is this food consumed?Marites 59:47 You can like crumple it up. Like put it on salads, put on like noodles. LikeAndrew 59:52 so is this a regular, are they always in the clean household? Cause it’s like peanut butter.Marites 59:57 Yeah, this is in the drawer.Andrew 59:59 Wow. And they’re just stored in a bag or whatever. I’m not going to finish the whole bag in one sitting. I’m not a pig. Like Whoa. We went, no pun intended. So we wouldn’t judge you if you were it be fine. So you know for those, for those listening, like you know, if they’re someone’s curious, I’m like well where would I be? Where would I buy something like this Asian market. What about like Superstore? Superstore has everything. Do you want to sell your story or any or any Asian market and have a more variety of different flavors? I can’t believe we’re talking about pork rinds this long. Well, you brought it up and contrary to what you might think everyone is going to be like, I’ve never heard someone say, Hey, we need to invest in pork rinds because yeah, it’s about to boom, the stock is about to boom.Andrew 00:42 Okay. Okay. That was question number. That was very, that was very good answer. Pork, reds, my, yeah, not that you’re asking me this, but I, my, my answer would definitely not be that interesting. I would have been very blend like some kind of candy or potato chip or, or something like that. So Andy’s good too. We had a candy theme wedding and a big candy bar. And that’s a big thing these days is, I, I’ve, I’ve seen many things like this. Recently we had donuts and candy and like those pop rocks, they’re not pop rocks. The rock candy. Yeah. Icicles around like a big buffet with various different Heights of all sorts of candy. Like the kids loved it. Huh? So, okay. If you weren’t. So if Mary test claim was not a married realtor was two kids living in Abbotsford, British Columbia, uh, doing what she does and, and the world was your oyster and you’re like, you can answer this question without causing any offense to your spouse or children because you know, it’s, it’s purely for science. Where, where would your, where would your life be

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We sit down to review Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and the highly anticipated western game Red Dead Redemption 2. We also catch up on the latest news stories from the week that was. Music Picks: 3 AM - You me at Six, Best Kinda Bad - Walker McGuire, Oracle Night - HM Surf, Faded - Alan Walker Social Media:  Email: thetorrentpodcast@gmail.com Twitter/Instagram/Facebook: @thetorrentpod Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/the-torrent-podcast Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/thetorrentpodcast   Subscribe Here:  Podbean Stitcher Tune in Itunes Google Play Youtube Spotify

Broadcasting on AM? You might want to think about your future strategy. Sorry. Music for this episode from Lee Rosevere. I have a newsletter which is very good and now reaches over 2,500 people. Subscribe at https://james.cridland.net So, then. Happy New Year and all. Support the show. (https://www.patreon.com/radiofuturologist) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Intro: Welcome to the latest episode of On the Air with Palantir, a long-form podcast by Palantir.net where we go in-depth on topics related to the business of web design and development. It’s July 2016 and this is episode #6. In this episode, Account Manager Allison Manley is joined by Palantir CEOs George DeMet and Tiffany Farriss. TRANSCRIPT: Allison Manley [AM]: Welcome to On the Air with Palantir, a podcast by Palantir.net where we go in-depth on topics related to the business of web design and development. It’s July 2016 and this is episode #6. This is a special edition really, since this year marks the 20th anniversary of Palantir. It’s hard to fathom considering the internet was still very new in 1996, so there are very few web shops that have been around this long. Palantir started as a development agency, then over time added services such as design and strategy, to become the full, well-rounded, end to end company that it is today. So we are celebrating our 20th anniversary later this month. I sat down with owners George DeMet and Tiffany Farriss to talk about how Palantir started, how it developed into the company it is today, and where we’re headed. AM: Hello, Tiffany and George! How are you doing today? George DeMet [GD]: We’re doing well. Tiffany Farriss [TF]: Hi, Allison! AM: Thanks for talking with me, I appreciate it. So we’re going to talk about the 20 years of Palantir. It’s hard to believe, right? GD: It’s…yeah [laughs]. I’ve never really known anything else, it’s kind of funny. AM: You’ve never had another job? GD: That’s not true. I worked for my parents when I was in high school. They ran a disposal and recycling company. So I did have experience growing up driving a garbage truck and managing a recycling center. TF: This wasn’t what I was going to do, but it is pretty much the only thing I’ve done. Other than having a NASA research grant as an undergrad, this is it. AM: What were you going to do? I’m curious. TF: I was going to go to grad school in astrophysics. That was my thing. I really wanted to do astrophysics, and I really liked cosmology in particular. I wanted to study the origins of the universe. AM: Which we’re kind of doing [laughs]. So let’s have a quick overview of Palantir’s history. How did Palantir begin? GD: So I actually started Palantir back in the summer of ’96, which was between my sophomore and junior year of college. I had discovered the Web back in the fall of ’94 when I was a freshman, and had really been kind of fascinated by it. It was very new – Netscape was still in beta at that point, and I was just really captivated by this idea of having pretty much anyone in the world being able to publish content that pretty much anyone else anywhere in the world would be able to read and access and view. I thought that was kind of revolutionary and I could see that this was the start of something kind of interesting, and I wanted to be a part of it. And so I started making some web pages, just sort of as a hobby. I made a fan page for ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ that is still around today, after 22 years. And then I discovered that folks would pay me money to build websites and web pages. So after doing this freelance for a while, I decided it was a good idea to start a company around it. TF: Because that’s what your family does [laughs]. GD: So that’s probably a little bit of helpful background. Both sides of my family are a couple of generations of people who started and ran family businesses. I mentioned that my parents have a disposal company. My mom’s father had a couple of grocery stores in Leavenworth, Kansas. My dad’s family ran the DeMet candy company, the folks that brought you the chocolate Turtle. So that was really kind of all I knew, right? Working for someone else was really not part of my DNA. So I knew I was going to do something, and when the web came along, it seemed like this was definitely something I wanted to do. TF: For me, I started on the web around the same time, in 1994. It was kind of an outgrowth of my love of Latin [laughs]. That’s the other thing about me is my love of the classics, particularly Latin, and I was involved in the Junior Classical League in Ohio. I first became the membership director and then the president of the Ohio chapter, and for them I learned how to do HTML. And the web was so new and so exciting, and I had a friend who was at MIT who could give me server space. And this was just so cool that we could be out there and be doing that. So when I met George, when I started at Northwestern, I joined up with him when we were creating a website for our dorm, for Willard Residential College. And we really wanted – our residential college was eclectic, which is probably the best way to talk about it [laughs]. GD: I think the proper way to talk about it was pan-thematic. Most of the other residential colleges had a theme, like arts or sciences or engineering. We were all the things. TF: We were all the things, we were all the interesting people interested in lots of things. And so we really wanted to do an amazing job creating that website, and that’s really how George and I started working together, in that capacity, and ultimately that’s how Palantir got its second client, or first paying client, depending on how you looked at it [laughs]. GD: That’s right. So one of the things I didn’t know how to do but Tiffany did quite well at the time was to actually go out and find clients. And that’s the skill that Tiffany brought to the table, in addition to her technical skills and managerial skills – really bringing some kind of structure to the enterprise, as it were. TF: And it all happened in the way we still sell today, in that we’re looking for that good fit. You say, OK, this is what we can do and these are our ideas and this is what we bring to the table. And that’s essentially how we got – when I was a freshman and George was a junior – how two students got the job to do Northwestern’s main university site. It was also the 90s which was a bit of a Wild West [laughs]. But that’s how it happened. We were at the awards ceremony for the residential college competition, which we won, of course [laughs], and I was talking to one of the judges who happened to be responsible for the web at Northwestern at the time. And she was talking to me about our thought process, and how we approached it, and I was talking about things that are so obvious to everyone now. The three-click rule. Thinking about how users would journey through the path and how you would organize information. And how you apply human-computer interaction theory to the web. But this being early ’97, you know, she said to me, I’m taking classes to learn what you guys already know, can I hire you for $2 an hour as a work-study? And I said, well, I already have a NASA research grant, so, no, but you can contract Palantir. My partner will be in Wisconsin but I can come in for meetings with you. And that’s how we got that contract, so that’s how it all worked out. And that first project was to redo the information technology site, and then in ’97 through ’98 we ended up doing the main Northwestern site. GD: For the folks at Northwestern, I’ve heard people complain since about the fact that it’s northwestern.edu. We share a little bit of the blame for that [laughs]. But seriously, nobody calls it NWU. It’s Northwestern. Or maybe NU, but I think that might have been taken. AM: Well, a pretty auspicious beginning, I would say. Now that you live in Evanston and the office is in Evanston. GD: Yeah. We never moved [laughs]. TF: Well, this is the thing. I met George my third day at Northwestern, and we’ve been a couple ever since, but we’ve lived within a six-block radius since 1998 [laughs]. Our first off-campus apartment was literally a block over, two blocks away. This has just been where we’ve found a home. Neither of us is from here. I’m from Akron, Ohio, and George is from Wisconsin. We met in the middle and literally stayed. GD: To be fair, I have some family connections to Chicago. My dad and his family are from Chicago, and so it’s always felt like a second home to me even though I grew up in northern Wisconsin. There’s also a lot more to do here, and it’s a place where even though we are a distributed company and have customers all over the world, it’s a really great place to be. TF: What I like about it is that irrespective of a physical office, I do consider us to be a firm that’s rooted in Midwest values. And I love that Chicago means business, but it’s business with this ethic. You work hard and you play hard, and you treat people fairly, right? That’s the way that we do things here, and it’s really important to me. And even once we don’t have a physical office or we don’t have headquarters or whatever it is, it’s about the sense of philosophy of place, of being Midwestern. Of being very authentic, being very genuine, and bringing our best selves to what we do. AM: What would you say, if you can project back 20 years, or 19 or 18 years, the focus was for Palantir the first couple of years? Was the focus just trying to stay afloat, was there a specific direction you were trying to take at the time? GD: So if you go back in time to the mid-90s and remember what the Web looked like at that point, it was the era of Geocities websites, and everyone was into, like, banners that scrolled across your pages and little animated GIF clip art and animated background patterns, and just really horribly ugly garish sites that people were creating because they could. And one of the things that I really wanted to do at Palantir was to bring more of a design aesthetic to the Web. I really felt that it shouldn’t be too difficult to create websites that were not just functional but were actually easy to use, and didn’t make you want to claw your eyes out when you looked at them. So I thought there was a real opportunity there. Not just to be able to do business, but also to help make the Web a better place. And that was very much what we wanted to do, certainly for the first couple of years, and even beyond as we started partnering with other folks. I think making the Web look better and work better for people was really key in those first couple of years. TF: And for me, I think – I agree with everything that George said, but I also felt very strongly about how the information was organized and presented. At the time it was a lot of brochure-ware. People were essentially trying to put these very linear experiences up on the Web. Now we call it ‘content strategy’ but at the time it was ‘information architecture’, and I really loved to think about the way to organize information in a way that made sense to someone who had no familiarity. It wasn’t about creating this highly linear journey for them, it was about – I saw the promise as being able to present information, to allow people to get what they wanted, but still to also come away with the message you wanted them to have. I thought that was such an interesting challenge, to be able to allow people to take control of how they gathered information, to really put the control back in their hands, but still to have it be that kind of alignment where you as the content provider were getting your message through, right? And that’s still a lot of what underpins our work today, is really this kind of ‘choose your own adventure’. And that’s where the name really comes from and why it comes into play. GD: So the name is something I came up with. It represents this idea of interconnectedness. The Palantiri are these communicators that in a fantasy realm are interconnected with each other, so you can look in one and communicate with anyone else who has a Palantir. The dominant metaphor at the time when Palantir started was the information superhighway, and I felt that metaphor was really flawed because it implied this kind of linearity, right? But the Web isn’t like that. The Web is this very decentralized interconnected place, and it really feels more and it actually is this network of interconnected communication, of nodes, really. TF: And it’s interconnected not just in terms of people, which it certainly is and always has been since its beginning, but it’s also in terms of content. What I love and what I find so fascinating and interesting is the notion that you don’t have to encapsulate all of the knowledge – you can just link to it, right? So you can tell a story and you can pull together these varied threads, and braid it together into a narrative in such an interesting way. And anybody can do that. It’s so accessible that it’s really broken down some of those traditional barriers that essentially gated who was able to define the narrative. So any person now can define that narrative and string it together. This is why a lot more of our work recently has dealt with APIs and what we can do to bring pieces of content from different systems together. And ultimately it’s why I’m so passionate about Drupal, because the ability to weave different pieces of content together but allow them to remain authoritative external sources is so exciting. AM: So it seems that, 20 years later, what you had outlined for yourselves back then still stands today. GD: Absolutely, no question. We’re still facing some of the same sorts of challenges. They’re very different in nature, but fundamentally it’s a question of enabling people to be able to access information, or to create information, or to share information in a way that’s findable, that’s usable, that’s discoverable. That’s what we started out trying to do, and that’s what we’re still trying to do today. TF: I have this very Teutonic brain, I like things to be very efficient. So for me the notion that I could weave these narratives together but allow there to be single authoritative sources of information, I don’t have to duplicate it – it’s very efficient, it’s so compelling to me. And this is where I think you see a lot of enterprises getting too narrow, with their notion of the omnichannel strategies – where you want there to be a single source but you need to kind of customize what that experience looks like. And you really get – by being so efficient with presenting that information and where you’re sourcing the information, you get to focus your efforts on how you differentiate it in different channels and different contexts, and have other people mix and potentially remix your information. That’s what’s so exciting about where we are today, but it’s not that different than in ’96. We were really trying to get authoritative sources, that was the key, to kind of have those sources be out there and have them be integrated together. AM: So you would say that Palantir’s core values and mission really haven’t changed at all, or maybe just better definition. GD: I would agree with that. What we’re trying to do, how we’re trying to do it, really hasn’t changed. What has changed is that we’ve talked about it, we’ve articulated it more publicly. It’s not just locked in our brains [laughs]. TF: Right, it’s those notions of assumptions so deep that you’re not even aware of them. For so many of the early years, we just knew. And because we were a smaller company and everybody worked with George and I on a daily basis, you just kind of felt it. You didn’t know it. I couldn’t articulate it very well, and it’s taken us several tries to be able to get it to the point where we feel confident saying, yes, this is it. Because words matter so much, and there’s such precision when I use language that I’m constantly trying to make sure, is this the right word to use, is this really capturing that feeling that’s so deep in our culture that I want other people to be able to grasp onto it. Because we do have this growing firm, and our folks here today – George and I are clearly the longest-standing employees of Palantir, but we have folks who start in a week. So how do they get a sense of the history? So it’s this notion that we have to really have those core values, as guiding principles, articulated so that, without knowing the lore and history of Palantir, they can apply it going forward. It’s really been an interesting challenge and one that George and I have been focused on for probably the last 18 months, is realizing that all that shared history has to be able to be communicated, has to be able to be transferred. And that’s been a really exciting part of the challenge. GD: And it’s not just communicated, it’s also contextualized. That’s the really fun part for me. AM: It’s very hard to define your own selves, too. It’s definitely tough work. GD: It is. But I think it’s essential. I think it’s something that has been kind of a hallmark of who we are. It’s really this constantly asking ourselves and trying to be as self-aware as possible about who we are and what we do and why we do it. TF: And also what we don’t do, right? I think that as we look at the growth over the last 10 years, it’s really easy to think that we were something we weren’t. We were never a start-up. We’re celebrating our 20th year so by definition we can’t be a start-up, and even in the past 10 years we weren’t a start-up. But it might have felt that way, or it might have looked that way. And so it’s on us, it’s our responsibility, to make sure that people understand – both our clients and our friends and our colleagues – that we are approaching this with very much a fundamental family business mentality. Really old-school principles. You don’t spend money you don’t have, you treat people fairly. This kind of notion that you’re always building, that every decision you constantly make has to be adding up to something. And I think that’s been – we certainly have friends who made other choices with their companies, whether they consider themselves a tech company or a start-up and they go after VC. We’re just not that. And we totally admire them and wish them well with what they’re doing. We’re doing something a little bit different over here. So in order for folks to understand that, we have to talk about it. We have to say, you know, we don’t spend other people’s money, we don’t spend money we don’t have. It’s been such an interesting journey, particularly for me not coming from a family business background, to understand really what that means and why that applies and to be really proud of it. I really think that’s the compelling thing here. Because at the end of the day, I’ve always believed that what you do outside of work makes you better when you are at work. And you have to have time and space in your life for that. And I believed that before I had a family, and I certainly believe it to be true now. How I live it, how I articulate it, is very different. And I think that’s right, that’s appropriate, to be able to evolve with you and to be able to change with you. And that’s the kind of company that we’ve built. AM: Well, one of the things I’ve noticed specifically about Palantir is how involved you’ve gotten in several communities. One of the reasons that I actually knew Palantir for years before working here was your commitment to design, which George mentioned was an early interest, and you did partner with design firms in Chicago when at the time you didn’t have an in-house design department, you were strictly development-only. So you were prescient and smart enough to know that you should partner with some very good design firms in the city, and there is a very strong design community here. And so you actually joined the American Institute of Graphic Arts board at one point, to become, I think, the Web liaison. TF: Electronic Media Chair, yes. I was lucky enough to be Electronic Media Chair for AIGA Chicago, and that came after several years of working with and partnering with those design firms. And that was such an invaluable time in Palantir’s history. Chicago does have such a very storied and internationally respected design community, and the opportunity to work in such an early stage in my career, and in Palantir’s lifespan, with some of the best – looking back on it, it was unbelievable. To be able to learn and work so closely with really, really smart designers as they were making that transition from being exclusively print designers to thinking about interactive design and Web design – it was such a neat time for all of us. We were bringing this very digital sensibility with us and they were bringing expectations of typography and color fidelity. And those were things that were really difficult in that early Web. It was really amazing. And that all came out of our early work at Northwestern. We originally started out partnering with the information technology department over there, and through that work we advocated that the university relations people be included in that conversation. Because we felt that there was a role for branding and photography, and just design standards as part of the work we were doing for the Northwestern home page. And through that we ended up learning how to work with traditional print designers. And our business has always been built on this word of mouth, on reputation. And so through that experience we ended up getting connected into the Chicago design community, and passed from firm to firm to firm, and I see that being appointed to the board was really the outcome from that, after the several years we’d been working with and partnering with design firms, from 2001 – I think it was 2001 when I became Electronic Media Chair, until 2008 – we had been working for six or seven years. But I still reflect on those experiences and what I learned from working with those folks, just in terms of how to relate to clients and how to really be a consultant. It was an amazing opportunity, it was really great. I’m really grateful for it. AM: And around the same time, around 2008-ish, was when you started to get involved heavily in the Drupal community as well. GD: That’s right. AM: So a pretty pivotal year there [laughs]. GD: Well, the Drupal decision we actually made in 2007. We had started working with Drupal in 2006, but to lay a little bit of background, we’ve always worked primarily with open source technologies – open source software, free software, from the very beginning. The LAMP stack, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and used those technologies. And I had always been interested in getting a little more involved with open source on the content management side. We did a little bit of looking into that around 2001, when some of the first generation open source CMSs started to come on the scene, and none of them were really never mature enough at that point. And at that point we actually thought we could probably do our own, just as well if not better. So we had our own CMS for a while – it was called the Community Platform and we did four major versions of it, each of which was pretty much a complete rewrite. Was it just three? TF: We were thinking about doing a fourth. GD: Right, right. And that was a really interesting learning experience for us, because when you are responsible for creating your own product that you are then in turn using for customer projects, you have to really be careful. Because there’s a huge temptation to modify it or tweak it or change it every single time. So what we actually found was that we didn’t have one CMS, we had however many dozen CMSs, each of which was a bespoke version for that particular client, because we had had to make some sort of tweak for the business needs of that customer. Which was great in terms of the short-term customer need, right? Because we could very quickly and inexpensively roll out a site for a customer, get it up very quickly, but when it came time to expand that site or support that site or make that site do something different, it was incredibly difficult. So that was one of the big issues that we were running into. We had worked with some other proprietary platforms – there was a product that was being used by a lot of higher education institutions we were working with in the early 2000s. It definitely had its challenges, but it was something our customers were using and it worked well for a lot of our customers. And ultimately the company ended up deciding to end-of-life that product, actually without telling any of their customers [laughs]. We had a little inside knowledge on that, and Tiffany actually announced it up on stage at South by Southwest, I think this was 2007. TF: 2008. GD: 2008. And it was really kind of interesting seeing everyone flee the room when you made that announcement. TF: The 20 people. GD: The 20 people, yes [laughs]. I mean, you know, it was a pretty big session. So at that point, things were kind of – we realized we really needed to get involved with, you know, something that was going to be more widely supported by a wider community, and that also wasn’t going to be tied to the commercial whims of one particular company. And so I’m actually going to let you tell the story of how we started working with Drupal. TF: It happened over several years, really. In 2006, Robert Petrick, who’s one of those amazing Chicago designers that we were lucky enough to work with, he brought us in on a project for Washington University in St. Louis. And the project was a little unusual, because it wasn’t an implementation project. It was going to be an implementation project, but first it started with a consulting project, where they wanted us to look at the available landscape of content management solutions, but both bespoke – our Community Platform was on the table for consideration – and open source projects as well as proprietary. And I helped them make the decision, and open source was absolutely the right choice for them. Again, we narrowed it down – should it be Drupal, should it be Joomla, and there were a couple of other options they were considering at the time. And for them Drupal was the right choice. So we built out that first site for WSTL in Drupal 4.6, and it was a little bit frustrating. But 4.7 came out actually before the site launched, and we immediately upgraded it to 4.7. We had looked at 4.6 before and not used it, because we couldn’t do the things we needed to visually. We were working with a lot of the design firms, and we couldn’t tell them, oh, the technology choice we’ve made won’t allow us to present the interface visually the way you want it to be done. That was why we had our own community platform, and in 4.6 we felt that was still very much the case, we were very much limited by that theming layer. Then 4.7 ended up being the right choice for Washington University in St. Louis, and we built out the site there, and it was still a bit frustrating but we achieved the level of fidelity we wanted. And as we were wrapping up that project and getting ready to launch it, Drupal 5 came out. And without launching the 4.7 version we ended up going to Drupal 5 right away. And that was when our team said, oh, this is different, and we can do everything that is being asked of us visually, everything we want to do visually. And by the way the security team that Drupal has is larger than our entire firm. So it was really in early 2007, in February 2007, when we were faced with rewriting our community platform from version 3 to version 4, it was going to be a complete rewrite – I just looked at George and said, I think we need to deprecate our own CMS in favor of Drupal. I think we need to put our efforts in that direction. So the next month we actually sent George and one of our colleagues at the time, Larry Garfield, who’s known as Crell in the Drupal community, we sent them both out to Sunnyvale where Drupal was having a DrupalCon, to learn more about it. And George came back and said, I think this is a community you’d really like. And you could really get involved in this. Ah, I don’t know, let’s just start with where we’re at right now. And then you do fast forward, that year of 2007 was when we did a lot of our first projects. We got all of our clients off our own community platform, and any new project we’d start doing in Drupal. AM: How were they when you suggested getting them off the existing platform and getting them onto Drupal? Were they receptive to that, or were they hesitant…? TF: We did it gradually, as people needed new enhancements or new versions of their sites. At the time, none of the sites we were working on had particularly long life spans, right? And we ended up having to support the community platform for several years thereafter. So it was really when someone came to us for new work, it was, oh, here’s Drupal and we think you should move here for the following reasons. We would lay it out, but we weren’t going to do any new enhancements to it, and we told them very clearly, we’re not in active development on the community platform any more. GD: One distinction that’s important to make, I think, is that with our own product, the Community Platform, it wasn’t an open source product, but we did have our customers have the right to modify the source code themselves. They just didn’t have the right to redistribute those changes. So if customers wanted to take on that responsibility of updating or maintaining the site themselves, they were certainly able to do that, or we gave them the option of moving to Drupal. TF: Right. So really through 2007 and into 2008 – 2008 is really where we got involved in the Drupal community per se. And that’s when I went out to Boston, and I said, oh, this is a community I will love. This is something that – the ethos of it, getting to meet Dries and Angie Byron and Moshe Weitzman, all the early and very influential Drupal developers, and just how welcoming and how open they all were. And what we were able to build with Drupal was just so much more than we would be able to build if we were responsible for the whole stack. It just started to fall into place, it started to make sense that we could do more for our clients. And that’s ultimately what’s always driven us. We’re trying to add value. We’re trying to say, because the clients we work with have limited resources and are always under constraints, what’s the most we can do for them? How much can we accomplish, how much value can we give back to them? How much easier can we make their lives by the choices that we make all along the project? And Drupal was one of the ones that made a lot of sense for them. It had roughly the same implementation cost as any other proprietary or custom solution, but in terms of the long term, it was much less expensive. Because you didn’t have the long-term licensing fees, you had the community patching issues – so sometimes a client would say, oh, I’m noticing this bug on the site, and we’d say, oh, actually that’s a module that’s been patched in, we can patch that for you. It really opened it up and allowed us to focus. So all these kind of pivotal points that you’ve noted in Palantir’s history, they come around our ability to focus. Right? So in 2001 when we really started partnering in earnest with design firms, it allowed us to focus and really hone our craft, and understand how to do content strategy and how to architect solid technical solutions. And then again in 2008, when we focused in on Drupal it allowed us to realize, okay, here’s how – only build what you absolutely need to build. That really allowed us to do more with our client budgets, and again, I would say 2016 is another one of those pivotal years for us, when we realized how to focus in and how to really get to the nugget of the business problem that needs to be solved. We have the opportunity now to influence businesses and the success of those businesses, and organizations as well since we do so much work with non-profits and higher ed in particular, and really how to solve core problems that aren’t technology problems. They’re problems that reach across the organization at every level, and so the fact that we’re able to focus in on it from that perspective, with that lens, I see that as another transformational moment for Palantir. AM: It seems like you had some very pivotal choices that you made, in 2001 to 2008 in particular - partnering with design firms, choosing open source and eventually choosing Drupal – and that you were sort of on the forefront when the mid-2000s hit. That was when it seems to me, from my perspective, that you were a very big fish in a tiny pond at that time. You had this incredible design aesthetic and appreciation, you knew how to work with design firms at that point – you weren’t doing in-house design yet – and you were one of the few firms who had really embraced Drupal in particular. And that community was exploding, and I’m not sure if you could see that community was going to explode, if you were able to predict that. GD: It was pretty apparent when I went to Sunnyvale in early 2007. That was a very small conference, it was maybe a couple of hundred people, and not all of them were Drupal people. But it was really, really clear just from the conversations that were happening and the folks that were there that Drupal was on the verge of becoming a big deal. And it was really funny, because I think the first couple of years that we started working with Drupal, we would go to industry conferences like higher ed conferences or museum conferences, and people would be like, oh, what do you do, and we’d say, we work with Drupal. And people would be, Drupal, what’s that? And then a couple of years later, we would go to the same conferences, and people would literally come up to me, like, I hear you guys are experts in Drupal and I need a Drupal expert [laughs]. So there really was a huge shift, I think, between 2008 and 2011, when Drupal went from being kind of this niche open source project that very few people had heard of that powers some of the biggest and most ambitious sites on the Web. TF: And I think a lot of that has to do with the ecosystem that was built up around Drupal. Not just Acquia but especially Acquia, which is the firm that Dries Buytaert founded and is CTO of, that really brought a lot of visibility to Drupal particularly around hosting and 24/7 support. I think that was a really important moment for Drupal. But I think what was happening before then as well, not just with firms like Palantir but the work that Phase2 was doing in the government sector – there are a lot of firms both in the US and Europe that were doing this very ambitious very large-scale work. You had Examiner really pushing the development of Drupal 7, and then eventually the White House goes to Drupal, and everything that was happening with Warner Brothers and SonyBMG putting all their artists on Drupal – Drupal became this kind of de facto go-to. When you had a project that was, as George said, ambitious – it didn’t necessarily have to be large, sometimes they were technically complicated and involved a lot of integrations between different kinds of data sources. That was the kind of work that we did, both for higher ed and for museums, where we were combining, say, digital asset management systems with content management systems with active directory or LDAP-based user solutions. Any kind of complexity at that level, Drupal’s so good at tying those systems together. Or if you wanted to go headless, right now Drupal’s very good if you want to have, you know, no front end to your data source. Drupal just knows how to connect people, how to connect things, and it gives you such a good basis for what you’re trying to do, or trying to replicate. If you need a thousand sites, right, this is again what Pfizer does, and they’ve got such huge regulatory concerns that Drupal, you know, was just always there. And those of us in the, I would say, the second wave of Drupal – Palantir’s not a first wave Drupal shop, we really did start to come on line with Drupal 6, and we were essentially writing for those pieces that our clients need. So again this is that ethos that we have, where we’re going to find that win-win solution. And what we did early on, and in particular when we made our name with Drupal 7 where we created Workbench, it was because this was a need that our clients had, and multiple clients had that need at the exact same time. It was a space that Drupal just wasn’t solving, and it was something that we had the capacity, we had the expertise in-house to be able to write. So we were able to combine pooled budgets from some of the smaller non-profit clients that we had, combine them together and get that better solution than they would be able to afford on their own, and make Drupal better – those are those niches that we’re constantly looking for. Okay, where can we add the most value here, where’s that problem that we can pull the resources together to solve – whether it’s people or time or money. AM: Well, I think one of the direct results of – maybe Palantir wasn’t a first adopter, but pretty early, still, and the creation of Workbench which has proven to be very popular, and going back to the fact that those choices led Palantir to be a pretty big fish in a small pond for a long time – one of the things that I think is amazing about Palantir is that for 17 years, I think you told me, you never had to do any marketing. GD: That’s right. No outbound marketing. AM: That’s a dream, right? [laughs] To never have to look, the referrals came so naturally. But then, 17 years in, as Drupal became more ubiquitous and more people were adopting it and more people were recognizing the design abilities of it and the flexibility on the front end, marketing all of a sudden was needed [laughs] because there was more competition. So how would you say the landscape has changed? I’m going to guess that was a pivotal moment too, just how that landscape changed. GD: Well, I don’t know that it’s a pivotal moment – I think it’s been a general trend we’ve been seeing over the past few years. And fundamentally I think if you – we talked about focusing, and that’s important, but if you narrow your focus too much and you find yourself in too much of a niche and people associate you with a specific technology or a specific type of client, that’s not a great situation to be in. And I wouldn’t actually describe us so much as a Drupal shop, we’re a full service boutique firm that helps customers be successful on the Web. And fundamentally the tools we use to accomplish that – what’s important to us is helping our customers make the right choices, collaborating with our customers, being able to help them to achieve success. Drupal is and historically has been a really great way to do that for an awful lot of our customers. But at the end of the day, it’s not about being the biggest or the best or the most well-known Drupal shop. It’s about being a firm that can help achieve success for our customers, in a really smart way. And because we were so closely associated with Drupal, that’s something we didn’t talk about as much. But we have started talking about it a lot more in the last few years. So if that’s marketing, sure [laughs]. TF: Well, I think it is. Early on, in those days when we were partnering, it was, oh, you’re the people who know tech who know how to talk to designers. So we want to work with you. AM: Which is a valuable skill [laughs]. TF: Absolutely. And we keep it with us, we still have it today. But at the time, what we were doing was problem solving. We were hearing what they wanted, what their clients wanted, and how we solved it, right? But then you fast-forward to Drupal, and then we had this really great run where it was like, Palantir! You know Drupal! We want to work with you! But at the end of the day we did the same thing. You come in, you have a problem to solve. They picked us for different reasons and they were pleased with the outcomes, and that’s how we ended up getting those referrals and that engine. But as Drupal matured and as Palantir matured, and, quite honestly, as the Web matured as a channel in its own right, not kind of as ancillary to the traditional channels that businesses and organizations relied on – as it became co-equal and even dominant, the expectations of what people needed from the Web started to go up. So I think that the notion that, oh, you’re good at this tech thing was no longer going to be compelling, it was kind of a given. Oh, we’re going to bring you in as a partner, we assume that you have technical expertise, but we need to know that you have the strategic expertise to help us make those good decisions. And we need to know that you are going to work with us to help us build our internal capacity around this. Because the Web has gone beyond something that you would just give to, you know, your neighbor’s kid who knew how to do HTML, to, you know, the core of many businesses. And right now we’re in this era where even the oldest and most established businesses are going through digital transformation. It is reshaping how everyone works right now. So the expectations, and rightly so, have changed. They’ve increased, And Palantir has had the luxury of all of this time to mature and to hone our craft, and we are still excellent problem-solvers. That approach, combined with all the expertise we’ve built up over the last 20 years, makes us a really great partner. AM: So now it’s July 2016, celebrating the 20th anniversary, and we’re having a company retreat – we’re shutting down everything for a week to bring all the employees, one from as far as South Africa, to Chicago so we can all get together and celebrate and – there’s going to be some work too, internally, but there’s going to be a lot of celebrating. So my final question: what would you like to see for the next five years, moving forward, or two years, what would you say? GD: [laughs] AM: Is it overwhelming, is it too much…? GD: No, no – you know, actually a couple of years ago we set out a couple of very high-level goals for the company, and we’re kind of in the middle of the process of that, of working toward those goals. We refined them a little bit at the beginning of this year, but they’re still fundamentally the same. And it’s about helping our clients achieve success on all of our projects, that’s number one. Number two, continuously learning, sharing and applying new knowledge, and this is one I’m really interested in having us focus a lot more on in the coming years. That this learning and applying new knowledge is really not just about technical skill or expertise, but it’s really about new ways of understanding people’s problems and looking at people’s problems in new and different ways. And developing our skills internally in terms of being able to understand and address those issues and questions and concerns, and the goals that our customers have. And then of course continuing to be a sustainable well-run organization with healthy finances and a happy staff. Those are the three things we’re working on. I think when we get together here for our on-site we are going to really talk a lot about how we’re going to do those things, and figure out and talk about what we’re going to do. We’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past year talking about what we have done – you know, how we are where we are today – and I think it’s time to start looking to the future. TF: Building on what George said, I think learning really is the key. It’s about taking what we learn on every project and elevating it to the level of organizational learning, and doing the same thing for our clients. We have a long track record of collaboration and we have clients who embed with us and who we help level up and we make kind of essential parts of our projects. And that’s fabulous, and that’s a huge service for capacity building for our clients. And I think the opportunity I see is being able to take that and transform the organizations as well, so that they also have an organizational learning moment. So for me, I’m really focused on the notion of making sure that we’re getting the most out of every opportunity, out of every decision, and understanding why things worked or why things didn’t work, and how we make it better. And it’s this notion of continuous improvement, and really making that a core part of our service. I see that as kind of the biggest change. Because as the industry and the Web kind of matures, and continues to mature, I think we’re getting to this point where we’re going to see fewer and fewer exponential leaps, and I think it’s going to start to plateau off. And so the notion that you kind of create and institutionalize incremental learning is really going to be key for us and for our clients. So that’s what I want to focus on – how we help them continuously improve, not only in their website and their Web presence and their infrastructure and their digital strategy, but how they can continue to incrementally improve their teams and their organizations to be able to take advantage of and recognize opportunities when they come up. AM: And cake. There will be cake. GD: I hope there will be cake. Who’s in charge of the cake? I’m not in charge of the cake! [laughs]. AM: Well, thank you very much. Looking forward to our retreat, and looking forward to the next five. GD: Absolutely. TF: The next 20! [laughs] AM: Why stop at five? The next 20! [laughs] AM: Thank you so much for listening.  I have to say, after three years of being with Palantir myself, and after having worked with them for several years prior to that, I’m thankful that I get to go to work every day with really, really smart and thoughtful people who are creating great work and toiling every day to make the Web a better place. So - happy anniversary, Palantir! If you want to hear more episodes of On the Air with Palantir, make sure to subscribe on our website at palantir.net. There you can also read our blog and see our work! Each of these episodes is also available on iTunes. And of course you can also follow us on twitter at @palantir. Thanks for listening!

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

"NuEvolution! Latino's in the South" is an Exhibit that is open at the Levine Museum in Charlotte, NC from October 2015 through September 2016. Claire Schuch is a Ph.D. candidate at UNCC and key researcher on the exhibit. She is responsible for constructing awareness dialogues geared towards working across differences. She invited Quentin Williams, founder of Project i Am You, to join the team to participate in these ongoing dialogues. Claire and Quentin discuss the exhibit and how he feels he'll relate.

Founder, Quentin Williams, talks about what inspired him to start Project i Am You.

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com

This is from The Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show! Tune in to Talk Radio 640 WGST on Saturday Mornings at 9:06 AM You can also listen on the iHeartRadio- http://ow.ly/YoaWv To learn more about Cleve Gaddis and his team visit www.GoGaddis.com