Podcasts about amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2021 14:57

TranscriptCorey: This episode is sponsored in part byLaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visitlaunchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I'm Jesse DeRose.Amy: I'm Amy Negrette.Tim: And I'm Tim Banks.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today, we're going to be talking about a recent addition to the AWS family: AWS Application Cost Profiler.Tim: But hold on for a second, Jesse, because AWS Application Cost Profiler we can get to; that's rather unremarkable. I really want to talk about how impressed I am with AWS InfiniDash. I've been benchmarking this thing, and it is fan… tastic. It's so good. And we could probably talk about for a while, but suffice to say that I am far more impressed with AWS InfiniDash than I am with AWS Application Cost Profiler.Jesse: You know, that's fair. And I feel like InfiniDash should absolutely get credit where credit is due. I want to make sure that everybody can really understand the full breadth of everything that InfiniDash is able to accomplish. So, I want to make sure that we do get to that; maybe in a future episode, we can touch on that one. But for right now, I have lots of feelings about AWS Application Cost Profiler, and what better place to share those feelings than with two of my favorite people, Amy and Tim, and then all of you listeners who are listening in to this podcast. I can't wait to dive into this. But I think we should probably start with, what is AWS Application Cost Profiler?Amy: It is [unintelligible 00:01:54] in a trench coat.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: Which is the way AWS likes to solve problems sometimes. And in this case, it's talking about separating billing costs by tenants by service, which is certainly a lot of things that people have problems with.Jesse: That is a lot of buzzwords.Amy: A lot of words there.Jesse: Yeah. Looking at the documentation, the sales page, “AWS Application Cost Profiler is a managed service that helps us separate your AWS billing and costs by the tenants of your service.” That has a lot of buzzwords.Tim: Well, to be fair, that's also a majority of the documentation about service.Jesse: Yeah, that is fair. That is a lot of what we saw, and I think we'll dive into that with documentation in a minute. But I do want to call out before we dive into our thoughts on this service—because we did kick the tires on this service and we want to share what our experience was like, but I do want to call out that this problem that AWS Application Cost Profiler is trying to solve. This idea of cost allocation of shared resources, it is a real, valid problem and it is one that is difficult to solve.Amy: And we've had clients that have had this very explicit problem and our findings have been that it's very difficult to accurately splice usage and spend against what's essentially consumption-based metrics—which is how much a user or request is using all the way along your pipeline—if they're not using dedicated resources.Jesse: Yeah, when we talk about cost allocation, generally speaking, we talk about cost allocation from the perspective of tagging resources, broadly speaking, and moving resources into linked accounts and separating spend by linked accounts, or allocating spend by linked accounts. But if you've got a shared compute cluster, a shared database, any kind of shared resources where multiple tenants are using that infrastructure, slapping one tag on it isn't going to solve the issue. Even putting all of those shared resources in a single linked account isn't going to solve that issue. So, the problem of cost allocation for shared resource is real; it is a valid problem. So, let's talk specifically about AWS Application Cost Profiler as a solution for this problem. As I mentioned, we kicked the tires on this solution earlier this week and we have some thoughts to share.Tim: I think one of the main things around this AWS Application Profiler like I said, there's some problems that can be solved there, there's some insights that people really want to gain here, but the problem is people don't want to do a lot more work or rewrite their observability stack to do it. The problem is, that's exactly what AWS Cost Profiler seems to be doing or seems to want you to do. It doesn't get data from, I think it only gets data from certain EC2 services, and it's just, it's doing things that you can already do in other tools to do aggregation. And if I'm going to do all the work to rewrite that stack, to be able to use the Profiler, am I going to want to spend that time doing something else? I mean, that kind of comes to the bottom line about it.Jesse: Yeah, the biggest thing that I ran into, or that I experienced when we were setting up the Cost Profiler, is that documentation basically said, “Okay, configure Cost Profiler and then submit your data.” And [unintelligible 00:05:54] stop, like wait, what? Wait, what do you mean, ‘submit data?' And it said, “Okay, well now that you've got Cost Profiler as a service running, you need to upload all of the data that Cost Profiler is going to profile for you.” It boggles my mind.Tim: And it has to be in this format, and it has to have these specific fields. And so if you're not already emitting data in that format with those fields, now you have to go back and do that. And it's not really solving any problems, but it offers to create more problems.Amy: And also, if you're going to have to go through the work of instrumenting and managing all that data anyway, you could send it anywhere you wanted to. You could send it to your own database to your own visualization. You don't need Profiler after that.Jesse: Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Amy. AWS Cost Profiler assumes that you already have this data somewhere. And if not, it explicitly says—in its documentation it says, to generate reports you need to submit tenant usage data of your software applications that use shared AWS resources. So, it explicitly expects you to already have this data. And if you are going to be looking for a solution that is going to help you allocate the cost of shared resources and you already have this data somewhere else, there are better solutions out there than AWS Application Cost Profiler. As Amy said, you can send that data anywhere. AWS Application Cost Profiler probably isn't going to be the first place that you think of because it probably doesn't have as many features as other solutions.Amy: If you were going to instrument things to that level, and let's say you were using third-party services, you could normalize your own data and build out your own solution, or you can send it to a better data and analytics service. There are more mature solutions out there that require you to do less work.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by ChaosSearch. You could run Elastic Search or Elastic Cloud or Open Search, as they're calling it now, or a self hosted out stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you've come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for App performance monitoring, cyber security. If you're using ElasticSearch consider not running ElasticSearch. They're also available now on the AWS market place, if you prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count toward your EDP commitment. Discover what companies like, Klarna, Equifax, Armor Security and Blackboard already have. To learn more visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm yet again.Jesse: I feel like I'd missed something, broadly speaking. I get that this is a preview, I get that this is a step on the road for this solution, and I'm hoping that ultimately AWS Application Cost Profiler can automatically pull data from resources. And also, not just from EC2 compute resources, but from other shared services as well. I would love this service to be able to automatically dynamically pull this data from multiple AWS services that I already use. But this just feels like a very minimal first step to me.Tim: And let's be honest; AWS has a history of putting out services before they're ready for primetime, even if they're GA—Jesse: Yeah.Tim: —but this seems so un-useful that I'm not sure how it made it past the six-pager or the press release. It's disappointing for a GA service from AWS.Amy: What would you both like to see, other than it just being… more natively picked up by other services?Tim: I would like to see either a UI for creating the data tables that you're going to need, or a plugin that you can automatically put with those EC2 resources: an agent you can run, or a sidecar, or a collector that you just enable to gather that data automatically. Because right now, it's not really useful at all. What it's doing is basically the same thing you can do in an Excel spreadsheet. And that's being very, very honest.Jesse: Yeah, I think that's a really good point that ultimately, a lot of this data is not streamlined and that's ultimately the thing that is the most frustrating for me right now. It is asking a lot of the customer in terms of engineering time, in terms of design work, in terms of implementation details, and I would love AWS to iterate on this service by providing that dynamically, making it easier to onboard and use this service.Amy: Personally, what I would like is some either use case, or demonstration, or tutorial that shows how to track consumption costs using non-compute resources like Kinesis especially, because you're shoving a lot of things in there and you just need to be able to track these things and have that show up in some sort of visualization that's like Cost Explorer. Or even have that wired directly to Cost Explorer so that you can, from Cost Explorer, drill down to a request and be able to see what it is actually doing, and what it's actually costing. I want a lot of things.Jesse: [laugh]. But honestly, I think that's why we're here, you know? I want to make these services better. I want people to use the services. I want people to be able to allocate costs of shared resources. But it is still a hard problem to solve, and no one solution has quite solved it cleanly and easily yet.You know what? Amy, to get back to your question, that's ultimately what I would love to see, not just specifically with an AWS Application Cost Profiler necessarily, but I would love to see better native tools in AWS to help break out the cost of shared resources, to help break out and measure how tenants are using shared resources in AWS, natively. More so than this solution.Amy: I would love that. It would make so many things so much easier.Jesse: Mm-hm. I'm definitely going to be adding that to my AWS wishlist for a future episode.Tim: How many terabytes is your AWS wishlist right now?Jesse: Oh… it is long. I, unfortunately, have made so many additions to my AWS wishlist that are qualitative things—more so than quantitative things—that just aren't going to happen.Amy: You become that kid at Christmas that, they get onto Santa's lap in the mall, and it's a roller page that just hops off the platform, and just goes down the wall, and all the other kids are staring at you and ready to punch you in the face when you get off. [laugh].Jesse: [laugh]. All right, well that'll do it for us this week, folks. If you've got questions you'd like us to answer please go to lastweekinaws.com/QA, fill out the form and we'd be happy to answer that question on a future episode. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review, give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us how you allocate the costs of shared resources.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

christmas amazon discover cost santa field ga cloud app application excel api ui aws qa devops s3 equifax klarna profiler blackboard edp elasticsearch ec2 kinesis launchdarkly amy it amy you tim how tim well elastic cloud jesse yeah jesse you last week in aws humblepod

AWS Account Teams and You

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2021 17:56

LinksPete and Jesse Talk Account ManagersTranscriptCorey: If your mean time to WTF for a security alert is more than a minute, it's time to look at Lacework. Lacework will help you get your security act together for everything from compliance service configurations to container app relationships, all without the need for PhDs in AWS to write the rules. If you're building a secure business on AWS with compliance requirements, you don't really have time to choose between antivirus or firewall companies to help you secure your stack. That's why Lacework is built from the ground up for the Cloud: low effort, high visibility and detection. To learn more, visit lacework.com.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I'm Jesse DeRose.Amy: I'm Amy Negrette.Tim: And I'm Tim Banks.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today, we're going to be talking about, really, a couple things; building your relationship with AWS, really. This stems from one of the questions that we got from a listener from a previous event. The question is, “How do the different companies that we've worked with work with AWS? Is the primary point of contact for AWS at a company usually the CTO, the VP of engineering, an architect, an ops person, a program manager, or somebody from finance, a [unintelligible 00:01:00] trainer? Who ultimately owns that relationship with AWS?”And so we're going to talk about that today. I think there's a lot of really great content in this space. Pete and I, back in the day, recorded an episode talking about building your relationship with your account manager, and with your TAM, and with AWS in general. I'll link that in the show notes. That's a great precursor to this conversation. But I think there's a lot of great opportunities to build your relationship and build rapport with AWS, as you work with AWS and as you put more things on the platform.Amy: I think one of the things we always say right off the bat is that you should introduce yourself and make a good relationship with your account manager and your technical account manager, just because they're the ones who, if you need help, they're going to be the ones to help you.Jesse: Yeah, I think one of the things that we should also take a step back and add is that if you are listening to this and you're saying to yourself, “I don't have an account manager,” that's actually wrong; you do have an account manager. Anybody who's running workloads on AWS has an account manager. Your account manager might not have reached out to you yet because usually speaking, account managers don't reach out unless they see that you're spending a certain amount of money. They usually don't start a conversation with you unless you specifically are spending a certain amount of money, have reached a certain threshold, and then they want to start talking to you about opportunities to continue using AWS, opportunities to save money, invest in AWS. But you definitely have an account manager and you should definitely start building that rapport with them as soon as possible.Amy: First question. How do you actually engage your account manager?Tim: So, there's a couple ways to do it. If you have reached a certain spend threshold where your account manager will reach out to you, it's real simple: you just reply back to them. And it kind of depends. The question most people are going to have is, “Well, why do I need to reach out to my account manager? If I just have, like, a demo account, if I'm just using free tier stuff.”You probably don't ever need to reach out to your account manager, so what are the things, typical things that people need to reach out to their account manager for? Well, typically because they want to grow and want to see what kind of discounts are offered for growth, and I want to see what I can do. Now, you can open a support ticket, you can open a billing ticket, but what will end up happening is once you reach a spend threshold, your account manager will reach out to you because they want to talk to you about what programs they have, they want to see how they can help you grow your account, they want to see what things they can do for you because for them, that means you're going to spend more money. Most account managers within a little bit of time of you opening your account and reaching a lower spend threshold, they're going to send you an email and say, “Hey, this is my name, this is how you reach me,” et cetera, et cetera. And they'll send you some emails with links to webinars or other events and things like that, and you can typically reply back to those and you'll be able to get your account manager sometimes as well. But like I said, the easiest way to get a hold of your account manager or find out who it is, is to start increasing your spend on AWS.Jesse: So, then if you're a small company, maybe a startup or maybe just a student's using AWS for the first time, likely that point of contact within a company is going to be you. From a startup perspective, maybe you are the lead engineer, maybe you are the VP of engineering, maybe you are the sole engineer in the company. We have seen most organizations that we talk to have a relationship with AWS, or build that relationship or own that relationship with AWS at a engineering management or senior leadership level. Engineering management seems to be the sweet spot because usually, senior leadership has a larger view of things on their plate than just AWS so they're focused on larger business moves for the company, but the engineering manager normally has enough context and knowledge of all of the day-to-day specifics of how engineering teams are using AWS to really be involved in that conversation with your account manager, with your technical account manager, or with your solutions architect, or whatever set of folks you have from AWS's side for an account team. And I think that's another thing that we should point out as well, which is, you will always have an account manager; you won't always have a technical account manager.The technical account manager generally comes in once you have signed an enterprise discount program agreement. So, generally speaking, that is one of the perks that comes with an EDP, but obviously, there are other components to the EDP to be mindful of as well.Tim: So, let me clarify that. You get a technical account manager when you sign up for enterprise support. You don't have to have an EDPs to have enterprise support, but when you sign up for enterprise support, you automatically get a technical account manager.Jesse: And, Tim, if you could share with everybody, what kind of things can you expect from a technical account manager?Tim: So, a technical account manager, I mean, they will do—like, all TAMs everywhere pretty much can liaise with support to escalate tickets or investigate them and see what's going on with them, try and, kind of, white-glove them into where they need to be. AWS TAM's, they also have the same—or a lot of the same access to the backend. Not your data because no one at AWS actually has access to your data or inside your systems, but they have access to the backend so they can see API calls, they can see logs, and they can see other things like that to get insight into what's going on in your system and so they can do analytics. They have insight to your billing, they can see your Cost Explorer, they can see what your contract spends are, they can see all the line items in your bills, they have access to the roadmaps, they have access to the services and the service teams so that if you need to talk to someone at a particular service team, they can arrange that meeting for you. If you need to talk to specialists SAs, they can arrange those meetings for you.With a TAM, you—and if you have enterprise support, and they're looking you for an EDP, you can have what's called an EBC or an Executive Briefing Council, where they, in non-pandemic times, they will bring you to Seattle, put you up for a couple of days and you'll have a couple of days of meetings with service teams to go over, kind of like, what the roadmap looks like, what your strategy for working with those teams are or working with those services are. And you can get good steps on how to utilize these services, whether it's going to be some more deep dives on-site, or whether it's going to be some key roadmap items that the service team is going to prioritize and other things like that. And the EBC is actually pretty neat, but you know, you have to be larger spender to get access to those. Another thing that a TAM can do is they can actually enter items on the roadmap for you. They have access to and can provide you access to betas, or pilot programs, or private releases for various services.You'll have access to a weekly email that include what launches are pending, or what releases are pending over the next week or two weeks. You'll have access to quarterly or monthly business reviews where you get access to see what your spend looks like, what your spending trends are, support ticket trends, you know, usage and analytics, and things like that. So, a TAM can be quite useful. They can do quite a lot for you, especially in the realm of cloud economics. That said, every TAM has their specialty.I mean, depending on how many customers they have, the level of engagement you may get. And, you know, some TAMs are super, super, really good at the financial aspects, some are better at the technical aspects. So, to be fair because the TAM org is so large at AWS, you don't always have the same experience with all your TAMs, and the level of depth to which they can dive is going to vary somewhat.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by ChaosSearch. You could run Elastic Search or Elastic Cloud or Open Search, as they're calling it now, or a self hosted out stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you've come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for App performance monitoring, cyber security. If you're using ElasticSearch consider not running ElasticSearch. They're also available now on the AWS market place, if you prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count toward your EDP commitment. Discover what companies like, Klarna, Equifax, Armor Security and Blackboard already have. To learn more visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm yet again. Amy: So, let's say we got the best TAM—even though he technically works for us now—when trying to envision what our relationship with the world's best TAM is going to be—and I just imagine that as a nice little block text on a white mug—what is that relationship going to look like? How are we going to engage with them? And even, how often should we talk to them?Jesse: I used to work for an organization that had, I believe, quarterly meetings with our account manager and our TAM, and every time we met with them, it felt like this high stakes poker game where we didn't want to show our cards and they didn't want to show their cards, but then nobody really was able to do anything productive together. And I have to say that is the exact opposite of how to engage your account manager and your TAM.Tim: Yeah, that doesn't sound great.Jesse: No, it was not great. I do not recommend that. You want to have an open, honest conversation about your roadmap, about what you want to do with AWS.Amy: They're not getting that mug.Tim: No, no.Jesse: [laugh].Tim: So, if you have a super-engaged TAM—and I will use my own experience as a TAM at AWS—that we had office hours, routinely, bi-weekly. One customer I had, I would have onsite office hours at their offices in LA, and I would have virtual office hours in offices in London. And those office hours, sometimes I'd have—we—that—we would use those to bring in, whether it was specialist SAs, whether we go over roadmap items, or tickets, or something like that, or we do architectural reviews, or cost reviews, we would schedule quarterly business reviews aside from that, typically sometimes the same day or on the same group of days, but there was typically be different than office hours. I was in their Slack channel so they needed to ping me on something that's not a ticket but a question, we could have conversations in there. A couple of their higher points of contact there had my phone number, so they would call me if something was going on. They would page me—because AWS TAMS have pagers—if they had a major issue, or, like, an outage or something [unintelligible 00:11:05] that would affect them.Jesse: I'm sorry, I just have to ask really quick. Are we talking, like, old school level pager?Tim: No, no, no. Like on your phone, like PagerDuty.Jesse: Okay, okay. I was really excited for a minute there because I kind of miss those old-school pagers.Tim: Let me say, it was like PagerDuty; it wasn't actual PagerDuty because AWS did not actually use PagerDuty. They had something internal, but PagerDuty was the closest analog.Amy: Internal PagerDuty as a Service.Tim: Something like that.Jesse: Oh, no.Amy: So, you know, if you have a very engaged TAM, you would have regular, several times a week, contact if not daily, right? Additionally, the account team will also meet internally to go over strategy, go over issues, and action items, and things like that once or twice a week. Some accounts have multiple TAM, in which case then, you know, the touchpoints are even more often.Jesse: I feel like there's so much opportunity for engagement with your AWS account team, your account manager, your TAM. It's not entirely up to you to build that relationship, but it is a relationship; it definitely requires investment and energy from both sides.Tim: And I would say in the context of who's working with a TAM, ideally, the larger contact paths you have at an org with your TAM, the better off it's going to be. So, you don't want your TAM or account team to only talk to the VP of engineering, or the DevOps manager, or the lead architect; you want them to be able to talk to your devs, and your junior devs, and your finance people, and your CTO, and other folks like that, and pretty much anyone who's a stakeholder because they can have various conversations, and they can bring concerns around. If they're talking about junior devs, your TAM can actually help them how to use CloudFormation, and how to use a AWS CLI, or do a workshop on the basics of using Kubernetes, or something like that. Whereas if you're going to have a conversation with the VP of engineering, they're going to talk about strategies, they're going to talk about roadmap items, they're going to talk about how things can affect the company, they're going to talk about EDPs and things like that. So ideally, in a successful relationship with your TAM, your TAM is going to have several people in your org are going to have that TAM's contact information and will talk with them regularly.Jesse: One of the clients that we worked with actually brought us in for a number of conversations, and brought their TAM in as part of those conversations, too. And I have to say, having the TAM involved in those conversations was fantastic because as much as I love the deep, insightful work that we do, there were certain things about AWS's roadmap that we just don't have visibility into sometimes. And the TAM had that visibility and was able to be part of those conversations on multiple different levels. The TAM was able to communicate to multiple audiences about both roadmap items from a product perspective, from a finance perspective, from an engineering architecture perspective; it was really great to have them involved in the conversation and share insights that were beneficial for multiple parties in that meeting.Tim: And oftentimes, too, involving your TAM when you do have this one thing in your bill you can't figure out, saying, “We've looked and this spend is here, but we don't know exactly why it is.” Your TAM can go back and look at the logs, or go back and look at some of the things that were spun up at the specific time and say, “Oh, here was the problem. It was when you deploy this new AMI, it caused your CPU hours to go way, way up so you had to spin up more instances.” Or a great one was a few years back when Datadog changed its API calls and a lot of people's CloudWatch costs went through the roof. And then several TAMs had to through and figure out, it was this specific call and this is how you fix that and give that guidance back to their customers to reduce their spend. So, being able to have that backend access is very, very useful, even when you are working with an optimization group like ourselves or other folks, to say, “Hey, we've noticed these things. These are the line items we want to get some insight into.” I mean, your TAM can definitely be a good partner in that.Jesse: All right, folks, well, that'll do it for us this week. If you've got questions that you'd like us to answer, please go to lastweekinaws.com/QA. Fill out the form; we'd be happy to answer those on a future show. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review. Give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us, did Tim pronounce the shortening of ‘Amazon Machine Image' correctly as ‘ah-mi' or should he have said ‘A-M-I?'Amy: I heard it and I wasn't going to say it. [laugh].Jesse: [laugh].Amy: I was just going to wait for someone to send him the t-shirt.Tim: Just to note, if you put beans in your chili, you can keep your comments to yourself.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: You're just going to keep fighting about everything today, is all I'm—[laugh].Jesse: [laugh]. Oh, no.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

amazon discover service phd seattle field engineering cloud app fill wtf account cto slack api aws tam sas qa devops cpu s3 equifax kubernetes klarna datadog blackboard elasticsearch edp ebc pagerduty tams lacework cloudformation cloudwatch tim yeah amy you tim no tim so amy so aws cli elastic cloud jesse yeah last week in aws amy they humblepod jesse all

Balancing Cost Optimizations and Feature Work

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2021 15:28

Links:The cloud economist starter kit: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/aws-morning-brief/cloud-cost-management-starter-kit-2/ TranscriptCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to the AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I'm Jesse DeRose.Amy: I'm Amy Negrette.Jesse: This is the podcast within the podcast where we like to talk about all the ways we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today, we're going to be talking about balancing cost optimization work against feature work.Amy: Buckle up everyone. I've got a lot of thoughts about this. Just kidding. It's just the one: don't.Jesse: You heard it here first, folks. Don't. Amy Negrette just says, “Don't.”Amy: Don't. [laugh].Jesse: So Amy, does that mean, don't balance the work?Amy: More like don't choose. It's always hard to make the argument to take an engineer off of feature work. This goes for all sorts of support tasks like updates and documentation, and as a group, we figured out that trying to put those off until an engineer has time to do it is not going to be a thing that becomes prioritized, it eventually gets deprioritized, and no one looks at it. And that's why DocOps is the thing. It's a process that now gets handled as part of and in parallel with software development.Jesse: Yeah, I've had so many conversations in previous companies that I've worked for, where they basically said, “Well, we don't have time to write documentation.” Or they will say, “The code is the documentation.” And, to their credit, there are a lot of places where the code is very cleanly documented, but if somebody is coming into this information for the first time and they don't have technical knowledge or they don't have deep expertise in what you're looking at, they need documentation that is clear, understandable, and approachable. And it is so difficult to find that balance to actually make sure that that work is part of everything that you do.Amy: And I think what the industry has decided is that if you make it a requirement for pull requests that if you're going to make a change, you have to document that change somewhere, and that change if it has any kind of user impact, it will be displayed alongside it. That's the only way to make it a priority with software. And cost optimization has to be treated in a similar respect.Jesse: Yeah, so let's talk about cost optimization as a process. To start, let's talk about when to do it. Is this something that we do a little bit all the time, or do we do it after everything's already done?Amy: I know I just cited CostOps as a good model for this, even though that's literally what we cannot do. We can't treat cost optimization as something we do a little bit along the way because, again, speaking as an engineer, if I'm allowed to over-optimize or over-engineer something, I'm going to take that opportunity to do that.Jesse: Absolutely.Amy: And if we're going to do project-wide cost optimization, we need to know what usage patterns are, we need to have a full user and business context on how any system is used. So, if we do a little at each step, you get stuck in that micro-optimization cycle and you're never actually going to understand what the impact of those optimizations were. Or if you spent too much time on one part over-optimizing another part.Jesse: It's also really hard if this is a brand new workload that you've never run in the cloud before. You don't necessarily know what the usage is going to be for this workload. Maybe you have an idea of usage patterns based on some modeling that you've done or based on other workloads that you're running, but as a whole, if this is a brand new workload, you may be surprised when you deploy it and find out that it is using twice the amount of resources that you expected, or half the amount of resources that you expected, or that it is using resources and cycles that you didn't expect.Amy: Yeah. We've all been in the situation, or at least if you work with—especially with consumer software—that, you're going to run into a situation where the bunch of users are going to do things that you don't expect to happen within your application, causing the traffic patterns that you predicted to move against the model. To put it kindly. [laugh].Jesse: Yeah. So, generally speaking, what we've seen work the best is making time for cost optimization work maybe a cycle every quarter, to do some analysis work: to look at your dashboards, look at whatever tooling you're using, whatever metrics you're collecting, to see what kind of cost optimization opportunities are available to you and to your teams.Amy: So, that comes down to who's actually doing this work. Are we going to assign a dedicated engineer to it in order to ensure it gets done? Anyone with the free cycles to do it?Jesse: See, this is the one that I always love and hate because it's that idea of if it's everyone's responsibility, it's no one's responsibility. And I really want everybody to be part of the conversation when it comes to cost optimization and cloud cost management work, but in truth, that's not the reality; that's not the way to get this work started. Never depend on free cycles because if you're just waiting for somebody to have a free cycle, they're never going to do any work. They're never going to prioritize cost optimization work until it becomes a big problem because that work is just going to be deprioritized constantly. There's a number of companies that I worked for in the past who did hackathons, maybe once a quarter or once every year, and those hackathons were super, super fun for a lot of teams, but there was a couple individuals who always picked up feature work as part of the hackathon, thinking, “Oh, well, I didn't get a chance to work on this because my cycles were focused on something else, so now I'll get a chance to do this.” No, that's not what a hackathon is about.Amy: You don't hack on your own task list. That's not how anything works.Jesse: Exactly. So instead, rather than just relying on somebody to have a free cycle, kind of putting it out there and waiting for somebody to pick up this work, there should be a senior engineer or architect with knowledge of how the system works, to periodically dedicate a sprint to do this analysis work. And when we say knowing how the system works, we're really talking about that business context that we've talked about many, many times before. A lot of the cloud cost management tooling out there will make a ton of recommendations for you based on things like right-sizing opportunities, reservation investments, but those tools don't have the business context that you and your teams do. So, those tools don't know those resources that are sitting idle in us-west-2 are actually your disaster recovery site, and you actually kind of need those—even though they're not taking any work right now, you need those to keep your SLAs in check in case something goes down with your primary site.Or maybe security expects resources to be set up in a certain way that requires higher latency times based on end-to-end encryption. There's lots of different business context opportunities that a lot of cloud cost management tools don't have, and that's something that anybody who is looking at cloud cost optimization work should have and needs to have those conversations with other teams. Whoever does this cloud cost optimization work, or whoever makes the cloud cost optimization recommendations to other teams needs to know the business context of those teams' workloads so that the recommendations they make are actually actionable.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more visit lumigo.io.Amy: And they should also have the authority to do this work. It's easy to deliver a team a list of suggestions saying, “Oh, I've noticed our utilization is really low on this one instance. We shouldn't possibly move it,” or what have you. And because they're not the ones making the full architectural decisions, or leading that team, or in charge of that inventory, they actually don't have the authority to tell anyone to do anything. So, whoever gets tasked with this really needs to be an architect on that team—if you're going to go with this embedded resource type of person—where they have that authority to make that decision and to act on it and move things.Jesse: Yeah. It's really important that teams stay accountable to the resources that they're running. And some teams don't know any of the resources that they're running; they, kind of, deploy into the cloud as a black box. And that is a perfectly fine business model for some organizations, but then they also need to understand that if the senior engineer or architect who is focused on cloud cost optimization work for this group says, “Hey, we need to tweak some of these workloads or configurations to better optimize these workloads,” the teams need to be willing to have that conversation and be a part of that conversation. So, we've talked about a couple different ideas of who this person might be that does this work. This could be a DevOps team that attaches a dedicated resource to doing this analysis work, to making these recommendations, and then delegates the cost optimization work to the engineering teams, or it could be a dedicated cloud economist or cloud economist team who does this work.Amy: We did touch on having someone in DevOps do this, just because they have a very broad view and the authority to issue tasks to engineering teams because if they see an application or an architecture, where resources are being—or are hitting their utilization cap, or if they realize there are applications that need more or less resources, they're able to do those types of investigations. Maybe someone on that team can take up this work and have a more infrastructure-minded view on the entire account, see what's going on on the account and make those suggestions that way.Jesse: Absolutely. It's so important. Or if there is a dedicated cloud economist or maybe a cloud economist team that is able to make these recommendations, that has the authority to make these recommendations, maybe that's the direction your group should go.Amy: If only we spent an entire podcast talking about this.Jesse: [laugh]. Huh, if only we spent an entire podcast talking about how to build a cloud cost team and talk about how to get started as a cloud economist. Hmm…Amy: Please check out the cloud economist starter kit that we all have already published.Jesse: Yes, several weeks ago. We'll post the episode link in the [show notes 00:12:38] again. So, Amy, we've talked about when to do this work, who should do this work. What I want to know is how do these teams come together to have these conversations together? I'm thinking about best practices here. I'm thinking about how do teams start building best practices around this work so that each team isn't working in a silo doing their own cost optimization work?Amy: If you're lucky, someone in your company has already done this work. [laugh]. And you can just steal their work.Jesse: Absolutely.Amy: Or borrow. Or collaborate. Whatever word you want to use.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: See if you can see how the project went, how they structured it. Maybe they ran into a process issue like they weren't able to get the kind of access they needed without jumping through a whole bunch of red tape and hoops. That's a good thing to know going into one of these projects, just being able to see the resources that you're going to be looking at, and making sure you have access to them.Jesse: Absolutely. This is part of why we also harp so much on open and clear communication across teams about the cloud cost management work that you're doing. If you are trying to solve a problem, it's likely that another team in the organization is also trying to solve that same problem, or ideally has already solved that problem, and then they can help you solve the problem. They can explain to you how they solved the problem so that you can solve it faster so you don't have to waste engineering cycles, trying to reinvent the wheel essentially. It's a really, really great opportunity to build these best practices, to have these conversations together, maybe to build communities of practice within the organization, depending on how large your organization is, around the best ways to use these different tools and resources within the organization.Jesse: Well, that will do it for us this week. If you've got questions that you would like us to answer on an upcoming episode, go to lastweekinaws.com/QA. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review, give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us how you integrate cost as a component of your engineering work.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

amazon cost field balancing cloud feature aws qa devops slas launchdarkly optimizations amy you amy so jesse yeah jesse you jesse well jesse it last week in aws humblepod

Episode #102: Creating and Evolving Technical Content with Amy Arambulo Negrette

Serverless Chats

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2021 57:51

About Amy Arambulo NegretteWith over ten years industry experience, Amy Arambulo Negrette has built web applications for a variety of industries including Yahoo!, Fantasy Sports, and NASA Ames Research Center. One of her projects modernized two legacy systems impacting the entire research center and won her a Certificate of Excellence from the Ames Contractor Council. She has built APIs for enterprise clients for cloud consulting firms and led a team of Cloud Software Engineers. Currently, she works as a Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group doing bill analyses and leading cost optimization projects. Amy has survived acquisitions, layoffs, and balancing life with two small children.Website: www.amy-codes.comTwitter: @nerdypawsLinkedin: linkedin.com/in/amycodesWatch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xc2rkR5VCxoThis episode sponsored by CBT Nuggets and Lumigo.TranscriptJeremy: Hi everyone, I'm Jeremy Daly, and this is Serverless Chats. Today, I'm joined by Amy Arambulo Negrette. Hey, Amy thanks for joining me.Amy: Thank you, glad to be here.Jeremy: You are a Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group, so I'd love it if you could tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background and what you do at the Duckbill Group.Amy: Sure thing. I used to be an application developer, I did a bunch of AWS stuff for a while, and now at the Duckbill Group, a cloud economist is someone who goes through cost explorer and your usage report and tries to figure out where you're spending too much money and how the best to help you. It is the best-known use of a small skill I have, which is about being able to dig through someone's receipts and find out what their story is.Jeremy: Sounds like a forensic accountant, maybe forensic cloud economist or something to that effect.Amy: Yep. That's basically what we do.Jeremy: Well, I'm super excited to have you here. First of all, I have to ask this question, I've known Corey for quite some time, and I can imagine that working with him is either amazing or an absolute nightmare. I'm just curious, which one is it?Amy: It is not my job to control Corey, so it's great. He's great to talk to. He really is fully engaged in any conversation you have with him. You've talked to him before, I'm sure you know that. He loves knowing what other people think on things, which I think is a really healthy attitude to have.Jeremy: I totally agree, and hopefully he will subtweet this episode. Anyways, getting into this episode, one of the things that I've noticed that you've done quite a bit, is you create technical content. I've seen a lot of the talks that you've given, and I think that's something that you've done such a great job of not only coming up with content and making content interesting.Sometimes when you put together technical content, it's not super exciting. But you have a very good way of taking that technical content and making it interesting. But then also, following up with it. You have this series of talks where you started talking about managing FaaS, and then you went to the whole frenemies thing with Fargate versus Lambda. Now we're talking about, I think the latest one you did was about Lambda and the container support within Lambda. Maybe we can just go back, or start at a point where, for people who are interested in maybe doing talks, what is the reason for even creating some of these talks in the first place?Amy: I feel a lot of engineers have the same problem, just day-to-day where they will run into a bug, and then they'll go hit the all-knowing software engineer, which is the Google search engine, and have absolutely either nothing come up or have six posts that say, I'm having this problem, but you won't ever get an answer. This is just a fast way of answering those questions before someone has to ask.Jeremy: Right. When you come up with these ... You run into this bug, and you're thinking to yourself, you can't find the answer. So, you do the research, you spend the time digging through, and finding the right way to solve it. When you put these talks together, do you get a sense that it's helping people and then that it's just another way to connect with the community?Amy: Yeah. When I do it, it's really great, because after our talk, I'll see people either in the hallway, or I'll meet someone at a booth, and they'll even say, it's like, I ran into this exact same problem, and I gave up because it was such a strange edge case that it was too hard to fix, and we just moved on to another solution, which is entirely possible.I also get to express to just the general public that I do, in fact, know what I'm talking about, because someone has given me a stage to talk for 30 minutes, and just put up all of my proofs. That's an actually fun and weirdly empowering place to be.Jeremy: Yeah. I actually think that's really interesting. Again, for me, I loved your talks, and some of those things are ... I put those things at the back of my mind, but I know for people who give talks, who maybe get judged for other reasons or whatever, that it certainly is empowering. Is that something where you certainly shouldn't have to do it. There certainly should be that same level of respect. But is that something that you found that doing these talks really just sets the tone, right off the bat?Amy: Yeah, I feel it does. It helps that when someone Googles you, a bunch of YouTube videos on how to solve their problem comes up, that is extremely helpful, especially ... I do a lot of consulting, so if I ever have to go onsite, and someone wants to know what I do, I can pull up an actual YouTube playlist of things that I've done. It's like being in developer relations without having to write all of that content, I get to write a fraction of that content.Jeremy: Right. Unfortunately, that is a fact that we live with right now, which is, it is completely unfair, but I think that, again, the fact that you do that, you put that out there, and that gives you that credibility, which again, you should have from your resume, but at the same time, I think it's an interesting way to circumvent that, given the current world we live in.Amy: It also helps when there are either younger engineers or even other younger professionals who are looking at the tech industry, and the tech industry, especially right now, it does not have the best reputation to be able to see that there are people who are from different backgrounds, either educationally or financially, or what have you, and are able to go out and see someone who has something similar being a subject matter expert in whatever it is that they're talking about.Jeremy: Right. I definitely agree with that. That's that thing, where the more that we can amplify those types of voices and make sure that people can see that diversity, it's incredibly important. Good for you, obviously, for pushing through that, because I know that I've heard a lot of horror stories around that stuff that makes my blood boil.Let's talk to some of these people out here who potentially want to do some of these talks, and want to use this as a way to, again, sell themselves. Because I can tell you one thing, once I started writing blog posts and doing talks and doing those sorts of things, clearly, I have a very different background, but it just gave me a bunch of exposure; job offers and consulting clients and things like that, those just become much easier to get when you can actually go out there and do some of this stuff.If you're interested in doing that, I think one of the hard things for most people is, what even makes a good talk? You've come up with some really great talks. What's that secret sauce? How do you do that?Amy: I think it can also be very intimidating since a lot of the talks that get a lot of promotion are always huge vendor events that they're trying to push their product, they're trying to push a solution. That usually takes up a lot of advertising real estate, essentially, where that's what you see, that's what you see all the threads and everything. When you actually get to these community conferences, or even when I would speak at AWS Summit, it was ... I had a very specific problem that I needed to solve. I ran into a bug, the bug was not in the documentation, because why would it be?Jeremy: Why would you put that in there, right?Amy: Of course. Then Google, three pages down, maybe put me on the path to finding the right answer, and it's the journey of trying to put all of the bug fixes in place to make it work for your specific environment and then being able to share that.Jeremy: Right, yeah. That idea of taking these experiences that you've had, or trying to solve a problem, and then finding the nuances maybe in solving the problem as opposed to the happy path, which it's always great when you're following a blog post and it says, run this command, then run this command, then run this command. Well, what happens on that third command when the thing blows up, and you have no idea what to do? Then you end up Googling for five hours trying to find your way out of that.You take this path of, find those bugs or find that non-happy path and solve it. Then what do you do around there? How do you then take that ... You got to make that interesting somehow.Amy: Yes. A lot of people use gifs and memes. I use pictures of food and screencaps from Dungeons and Dragons. That's usually just different enough that it'll snap someone just out of their phone going, "Why is there a huge elf on my screen trying to attack people screaming elf errors." Well, that's because that's what they thought it would be great to call it. It's not a great error code. It doesn't explain what it is, and it makes you very confused.Jeremy: Right. Part of that is, and again, there's that relatability when you create talks, and you want to connect with the audience in some way. But you also ... This is the other thing that I've always found the hardest when I'm creating talks, is trying to find the right level. Because AWS always does this thing where they're like, it's a 200 level, or it's a 400 level, and so forth. I think that's helpful, but you're going to get people of all different skill levels, and so forth. How do you take a problem like that, and then make it relatable, or understandable, probably? Find that right level?Amy: The way I see it, there's going to be at least one person of these two types in the room that are not going to be your target audience, someone who doesn't know what you're talking about, but sees that a tool that they're considering is going to pose a problem, and they want to know how difficult it is to fix it. Or there's going to be a business person who has no technical background, and they just want to know if what they're evaluating is worth evaluating, if this error is going to be so difficult to narrow down and try to resolve that, yes, why would we go through something that my engineers are going to spend hours to try to fix something that's essentially a configuration issue?When I write any section of a talk, I make sure that it addresses a person who may not have come into that with that exact problem in mind. For the people who have, they'll understand the ... In animation, it's called key images, where there are very specific slots where you understand the topic of what is happening and the context around it. I always produce more verbose notes that go with my presentation. I usually release it either at the end of the day, or later on that week, once everyone has had time to settle, and it provides a tutorial-esque experience where this is what you saw, this is how you would actually do it if you were in front of a screen.Jeremy: Yeah.Amy: There are people who go to technical talks with a laptop on their lap because they're also working while they're trying to do it. But most of the time, they're not going to have the console open while you're walking through the demo. So, how are you going to address that issue? It's just easier that way.Jeremy: I like that idea too, of ... I try to do high-level bullet points, and then talk about the bullet point. Because one thing that I try to do, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well. Here I am picking your brain trying to make my own talks better. But basically, I do a bullet point, and then I talk through it. I actually animate the bullet points coming in.I'm not a huge fan of showing an entire slide with all the bullet points and then letting people read ahead, I bring a bullet point in, talk about the bullet point, bring another bullet point in. Is that something you recommend doing too? Or do you just present all the concepts and then walk people through it?Amy: I think it depends. I tend to have very dense slides, which is not great for reading, especially if you're several rows back. I truly understand that. But the way I see it, because I also talk very fast when I'm on stage that I want there to be enough context around what's happening, so that if I gloss over a concept, then you visually can understand what's happening.That said, if that's because the entire bullet block on my slide is going to be about a very specific thing that's happening. It's not something that you have to view step-by-step. Now, I do have a few where, especially in a more workshop scenario, where you're going, I want you to think about this first and then go on to this next concept. I totally hide stuff. I just discovered for a talk that I was constructing the other day, that there's an animation that drops them down like index cards, and that's now my favorite animation right now.Jeremy: When you're doing that, like because this is the other thing, just for people who have ever ... If you're out there and you've ever written a talker or you've given a talk, the first iteration of it is never going to be the right one. You have to go through and you have to revise. It is sort of weird, and I don't know, maybe you felt this way too, in the pre-pandemic world, when you would give talks in person, most of the time, you'd give it to a relatively small audience, a couple of hundred people or whatever, as opposed to now, when we do talks, post-pandemic, and they're online, it's like, they're immediately available online.It's hard to give the same talk over and over and over and over again, without somebody potentially having seen it. A lot of work goes into a single talk. Not being able to use the same time over and over again, is not great. But, how do you refine it? Is it that you tested it with a live audience, or do you use a family member or a friend, or a colleague? How do you test and refine your talks?Amy: I'm actually an organizer at a meetup group, and specifically built around giving people of marginalized gender identities, and a place to stage and write technical content. It is a very specific audience.Jeremy: I can imagine.Amy: But it addresses that issue I had earlier about visibility, it also does help you ... If you don't have a lot of contacts in this industry, just as an aside, technical speaking is a way to do it, because everyone loves talking to each other after the stress has worn off, and you become the friendliest person after you've done that.But also, there are meetup groups out there, specifically about doing technical feedback, or just general speaking feedback. If you want to do something general, Toastmasters is a great organization to do. If you want to do strictly technical, if you do any cloud-related stuff, the DevOps communities are super friendly, even if it's not specifically about DevOps. I'm not a DevOps person, but I have a lot of DevOps friends. Some of my best friends are DevOps people.And you can get on a meetup or a Zoom call and just burn through your slides for about 10 or 15 minutes and see ... Your friends will be very honest with you, in a small group.Jeremy: Right. One of the things I did notice, too, giving a speech in person or giving your talk in person versus giving a talk via Zoom call, is sometimes when you don't hear any laughs or chuckles from a little joke that you make in there, it can feel very lonely in that space after you're waiting for something in there, but. It's a little bit ...Amy: It's worse when there are people in the room. I assure you, it is so much worse.Jeremy: That is very true. If something falls flat, that's a good point. Just going back to more this idea of creating good talks, and what makes a good talk. Where do you find ... You mentioned, maybe it's a vendor conference or something and you maybe install the vendor stuff, and you find the bugs and so forth. But is there any other places that you get inspiration from? Are there any resources you use to sort build some of these talks?Amy: Again, the communities help. The communities will tell you, really, it's like, I don't understand this thing, can someone hop on a call with me for real quick minute and explain why this concept is so hard? That's a very good place to base your talk off. As far as making them engaging, and interesting, I tend to clone video gaming videos, just because that's what I watch. I know, if it's going to be interesting to me, then it will probably be at least different than the content that's out there.Jeremy: Right. That's a good way to think of things too, is if it's something that you find interesting, chances are, there are lots of other people that will find that interesting. All right, let's go back to just this idea of creating new talks. You had mentioned this idea of, again, finding the bugs and so forth. But one of the things that I think we see quite a bit is always that bleeding edge stuff. People always want to write content about something new that happened.I'm guilty of this, I would think from a serverless standpoint where you're talking about things that are really, really bleeding edge. It's useful and they're interesting. Certainly, if you go to a conference about serverless, then it's really nice to see you have these talks and what might be possible. But sometimes when you're going to more practical type things. Again, even DevOps Days, and some of those other things, I think you've got attendees or talk listeners who are looking for very practical advice.I guess the question is like, how do you take a new piece of content, one of these problems, whatever it is. I guess, how do you keep finding new content is probably the better way to ask that question?Amy: Well, to just roll back just a little bit. My problem with bleeding edge content, I love watching it, but bleeding edge content will almost always be a product demo because it's someone who developed a new solution, and they want to share with everybody, which is just going to walk you through how it's used, which is great, except, and this is just a nature of what the cloud industry is like, all of this stuff, it changes day-to-day.These tools may not be applicable in a few months, or they may become the new standard. There's no way to tell until you're already six months out, and by then, they've already gone through several product revisions. I once did a talk where I was talking about best practices, and AWS released their updated best practices the day before my talk, and I had to update three slides. It threw off my timing, it was great.That's just one of those kind of pitfalls that you have to roll with. As far as getting new content, though, especially if you're dealing ... It depends who your audience is, because my audience tends to be either ICs or technical leads, and by then you're usually in a company ... If you're not developing these bleeding edge solutions, you're just using the tools that's out there already.You had brought up my "Serverless Frenemies," which is still my favorite title of any talk that I've ever made, because when I did the managing containers one, and I love all my Devro friends, but they all got into my mentions about why don't you just use Fargate? If you're at the containerization stage, why don't you just use Fargate, because it's not even close to the same thing, it is closer to Kubernetes than it is to Lambda, and I'm looking for a Lambda-like solution. That's what that whole deal was about, and I was able to stretch that out into I think 30 minutes because Twitter will tell you what's wrong, whether or not it's accurate or not, and whether or not they're actually your friends. They are my friends, but come on.Jeremy: Twitter can definitely be brutal. I think that, and maybe unpack a little bit what you were saying, is you're creating content around existing tools. One way to do it is, you're using existing tools, you're creating content around that, or you can create content around that. Looking at those solutions, you introduce a new solution to something, or you're even using an existing tool, nothing's perfect. You had mentioned that idea of bugs and so forth. But just, I guess new solutions, or just solutions, in general, maybe higher-level abstractions, everything creates some new type of problem that you have to deal with, and that's probably a pretty effective way to generate new content.Amy: It is. If you ever have to write down an RCA, which, for those who have not had the pleasure of doing one is called a root cause analysis, where you took down production, and you had to explain why.Jeremy: Yep.Amy: Or you ever did this, hopefully, in stage, or hopefully, in development where you ran into a situation where ... I had a situation once where Lambda would not delete itself. I call it my Skynet problem where it just hit a stage where it was both trying to save and delete at the same time. It would lock itself and I had to destroy the entire stack and send that command several times just to force that command through.If you ever have a problem like that, that is a thing that you write up instantly, and then you turn it into slide decks, and then you go to SlidesCarnival, you throw a very flashy background on it, and next thing you know, you have a TED talk, or a technical talk.Jeremy: Right. The other thing too, is, I find use cases to be an interesting, just like ... Non-traditional use cases are kind of fun too, how can I use this in a way that it wasn't meant to be used, and do something like that?Amy: I love those. Those are my favorite. I love watching people break away from what the tutorial says you have to do, and I'm going to get a little weird with it, and that to me is totally fascinating. When the whole, I fed these scripts into a computer meme came out, I thought that was super fascinating because that was something a company I had worked for did, they used analytics ... I used to work for Fantasy Sports, to write color commentary for your Fantasy Football team, and they would send it out.If you did really well, you would get a really raving review, and if you did really poorly, you would get roasted by a computer, and then that gets sent to everyone in the league, and it's hilarious. But that is not a thing that you would just assume a computer would do, is just write hot takes on your Fantasy Football team.Jeremy: That's ... Sure, go ahead.Amy: It's so much fun. I love watching people get weird with the tools that are there.Jeremy: There are times where you could do something like that, you could maybe create a content around some strange use case or whatever, and I love that idea of getting weird with that. The other part of it, though, is that, I guess, if you're sitting through a talk, and it's some super interesting problem that you're listening to, and again, I don't know, maybe it's some database replication thing, that you're just really into, whatever. That makes sense. But I think the majority of problems that developers have, are not that interesting, they're just frustrating.Probably the worst thing to do is wanting to sit through a talk that talks about some frustrating issue you have. Is there a way to basically say, "Look, I have a problem that I want to talk about. It's not the most interesting problem, but how can you flip that and take a problem that's not interesting and make it interesting?Amy: The batching containers and the frenemies talk was all based off of a bin library error from within the Lambda AMI. That, on paper is extremely boring, and should be a thing that you can easily look up, it is not. When I went around it trying to make tracking down library errors interesting, just saying it is very slow and can drain the energy out of your voice.But, I put a lot of energy into my work in general, and that's just how I had to approach pulling these talk is like, I like what I do, just, generally. When I try to explain what I do to people, it sounds super boring, and I own that. Now I'm doing it with spreadsheets, which is much, much worse. But when I tell people, it's not about the error itself, it's about everything that happened to make this one particular error happen. The reason why this error happened was because Lambda uses AWS's very specific Linux AMI when they did not used to, and they left stuff out for either security or performance purposes.Whether or not we as a group agree with that, that's a business decision that they made. How does their business decision affect your future business decisions and your future technical ones? Well, that becomes a way more interesting conversation, because it's like, we know this is going to break at this part, do we still want to use SSH? Do we still need it for this reason? You can approach it more from a narrative standpoint of, I wasted way too much time with this, did I need to? It's like, well, you shouldn't have, this should not have happened, but no bug should have happened, right?Jeremy: Right.Amy: You work through your process of finding a solution instead of concentrating on what the solution is because the solution they can look up in your show notes later.Jeremy: Right. No, I love that idea of documenting your process as opposed to just the solution itself. You find the problem, you pull the thread and where does that take you? I think to myself, a lot of times I go down the rabbit hole on trying to find the solution to a problem that I have or a bug fix, whatever. Sometimes, the resolution is underwhelming. Maybe it's not worth sharing. But other times, there's a revelation in there. I think you're right, with a little bit of storytelling, you can usually take that and turn that into a really interesting talk.Amy: One of the things it will also do, if you look at it from a process and from a narrative standpoint, is that when you take this video, and you send it to either a technical lead or a product manager, they'll understand what the problem was because you did not bog it down with code. There's very little live code in mine because I understand that people build things differently, just because every code is as different as every person. I get that and I've come to terms with it. This is the best way to share that information.Jeremy: Absolutely. All right, let's wrap up the idea of building talks. What is your advice to someone who is starting out new? What's the best way for them to get started, or what's just some general advice for people starting to build talks?Amy: The best content new engineers can do, and that's mostly because this is never the standpoint from which tutorials are ever written in, is that, as someone who knows very little of the way a language or a framework should work, write down your process, the entire thing on you getting either a framework onboarded, how you build, and a messaging system, things that people have written a billion times because chances are, one, you got that work from someone else's blog post or their documentation, and you can cite that. And two, when you do it that way, you not only get into the habit of writing, but you get in the habit of editing it in a way that makes it more palatable for people who are not in your specific experience.When you do it this way, people can actually see, from an outsider's perspective, exactly what is hard about the thing that they built, or what people who do not have a different level of experience are going through. If a tutorial is targeted at engineers who know where the memory leaks in PHP are, that's the thing that comes with experience, that is not the thing that can be trained.When a new engineer hits that point, and they found it in a new framework where you fix it, then you start knowing where to fix other problems. That way more senior engineers and more vetted people can learn from your experience, and then they will contact you and they will teach you how to find these issues, so you don't run into them again, and you end up with someone you can just bounce ideas off of. That's how you get pulled into these technical communities. It's a really self-healing process.Jeremy: Yeah. I love that. I think this idea of you approaching something from a slightly different angle, your experience, the way that you do it, the way that you see it, the way that you perceive the word or the next prompt that comes back, or how you read an error message or any of those things, you sharing your experience around that is hugely valuable to the people that are building these things. But also, you may run into problems that other people like you run into, and it's just ... Sometimes, all it takes is just a tiny twisting of the words, rearranging a sentence in a way that now that clicks with somebody where the other time it didn't. I love that.That's why I always encourage people, just even if somebody has written his content 100 times before, whatever slight difference there is in your content, that could have a powerful effect on someone else.Amy: Yeah, it really can.Jeremy: Awesome. All right, let me ask you a couple of questions about Lambda and Functions as a Service because I know that you spent quite a bit of time on this stuff. I guess a question, especially, maybe even from a cloud economist, what's next for Lambda and Functions as a Service? Because I know you've written about the Lambda containers, but what's maybe that next evolution?Amy: What AWS did recently when they released Lambda Containers is basically put it at feature parity with Azure and GCP, which already had that ability, they had either a function service or a function to Json service where you could upload your own container. They finally released the base image, where, granted, if you knew where to look, you could get it before, but they actually released it, and announced it to the general public, so you don't have to know someone in order to be able to use it.What I see a lot of people being able to do with this now is they really want to do local development testing, so they don't have to push anything to their account and rack up those charges, when all that you want to do is make sure that whatever one line update you made, actually worked and you didn't put the space or the cab in the wrong place, which is, I guess, how it works now and it takes down the entire stack, which again, we've all done at least once, so don't worry about it. If you've ever taken down production, don't worry, you're not the only one, I promise you. You can't throw a t-shirt into an empty conference room and not hit a dude who took down production. I'm going to save that for later.Local development testing, live simulation is a really big thing. I've seen asked to do full-on data science just on Lambda containers, so they don't have to use Kubernetes anymore, because speaking of cost stuff, it's easier to track cost-wise than Kubernetes is, because Kubernetes is purely consumption-based, and you have to tie a bunch of stuff together in order to make that tracking work. That would be great.I think from here on, and a lot of the FaaS changes, they're not going to be front ends anymore, it's all going to be optimizations by the providers, you're not going to see much of that anymore. It's not like before, where they would add three more fields and make a blog post about it. I think everything is just going to be tuning just from Lambda's perspective now. That and hooking it to more things, because they love their integrations. What good is Lambda if you can't integrate it yourself?Jeremy: Right, if you can't hook it up to events. It's interesting, though, this move to support containers as a packaging format. You're right, I think this has been available in IBM, it's been available in Google, it's been available in Microsoft, these capabilities have existed for a while to use a container, and again, that's a very overloaded word, I know, but to use that as a packaging format. But moving to that, the parity there with the other cloud providers is one thing, but who's that conversation for? Whose mind does that change about serverless, or FaaS, I guess.Amy: The security team.Jeremy: Security, okay.Amy: Because if you talk to any engineer, if it's a technical problem, they'll find a way to fix it. That's just the way, especially at the individual contributor level, that's how the brain works is like, oh, this is a small thing, I bet I can fix it with a few days, or a weekend. Weekend turns into a month, but that's a completely different problem. I've had clients who did not want to use Lambda because they could not control the containerization system. You would be pushing your code into containers that were owned by Amazon, and the way they saw that, they saw that as liability.While it does have some very strong technical implications, because you're now able to choose the kind of runtime you do, easier than trying to hamstring layers together, because I know layers is supposed to fix this problem, but it's so hard. It's so hard for something that you should be able to download off of Docker and then play with it and then put it back. It's so unnecessarily hard, and it makes me so angry.If you're willing to incur that responsibility, you can tweak your memory and you have more technical control, but also you have more control at a business level too, and that is a conversation that will go way easier as far as adoption.Jeremy: Right. The other thing, in terms of, I guess the complexity of running K8s or running Kubernetes is one of those things where that just seems like a lot of complexity. You mentioned the billing aspect of it and trying to track cost. Not that everyone's trying to narrow down exactly how much this Lambda container ran them, maybe you have more insight into that than I do, but the idea of just the complexity.It seems to me that if you start thinking about cost, that the total cost of ownership of running a container and a Lambda function or running it in Fargate, versus having to install and maintain ... I would say, even if you're using one of the managed services like EKS, or something like that, that the total cost of ownership of going down the serverless route has got to be better.Amy: Yeah, especially if you're one of these apps that are very user generater based. You're tracking mostly events and content, and not even a huge amount of content, you're not streaming video, you're sharing pictures, or sharing ... If you were trying to rebuild Foursquare, you would just be sharing Geo data, which is comparatively an extremely small piece of data.You don't need an entire instance, or an entire container to do that. You can do that on a very small scale, and build that out really quickly. That said, if you go from one of these three-person teams, and then there's interest in your product, for whatever reason, and it explodes, then not just your cost, but if you had to manage the traffic of that, if you had to manage the actual resources of that, and you did not think your usage would stick with your bill, that's not great.Being able to, at least in the first few years of the company, just use Lambda for everything, that's probably just a safer solution, because you're still rapidly iterating, and you're still changing things very quickly, and you're still transmitting very small bits of data. That said, it's like there are also large enterprise companies that are heavy Lambda users, and even their Lambda bill compared to their Kubernetes bill, it is ... If you round it to down there Kubernetes bill, you would get their Lambda bill.Jeremy: Right. Gotcha. I think that's really interesting because I do ... I actually would love to know your thoughts and whether you even see this. I don't know if we have enough data yet to know this, but this idea of using Lambda, especially early on in startups, or even projects within an enterprise, being able to have that flexibility and the low operational overhead and so forth, I think is really great. But do you see that, or is that something that you think will happen is, you'll get to a point where you'll say we've found some sort of stability point with this product, where we now need to move it over to something like Kubernetes, or a container management system because overall, it's going to end up being cheaper in the long run.Amy: What usually happens when you're making that transition from Lambda to either even ECS or Fargate, or eventually Kubernetes is that your business logic has now become so complex, or your infrastructure requirements have become so complex that Lambda can't do it cleanly anymore. You end up maxing out on either memory or CPU utilization, or because you're ... Apparently Lambda has a limit on how many times you can invoke it at the same time, which some people have hit in real life.Those are times when it stops being a cheaper solution, and it stops being a target solution because you can run your own FaaS environment within instances, and then you can have a similar environment to what you're building so you don't have to rebuild everything, but you don't have to incur that on-demand cost anymore. That's one path I've seen someone take, and that's usually the decision is that Lambda, before, when it was limited, can't hold it.Now that you can put your own container, so long as it fits in that requirement, you can pad that runway out a little bit, and you can stretch out how long you have before you do a full conversion to ECS environment. But that is usually how it is because you just try to overload or you have, maybe, 50 Lambdas trying to support one application, which is totally a thing you can do, it may not be the best ... Even with Step, even with everything else. When that becomes too complex, and you end up just going through containers, anyway.Jeremy: Right. I think that's interesting, and I think any company that grows to the point where that they need to start thinking about that next little infrastructure, it's probably a good thing. It's a good point to start having those conversations.All right, I got just one more question for you, because I'm really interested. You mentioned what you do as a cloud economist, reading through people's bills and things like that. Now, I thought Corey just made this thing up. I didn't even know this thing existed until, Corey comes out, and he probably coined the term. But in terms of that ...Amy: That's what he tells people.Jeremy: He does tell people that, right. I think he did. So, I will definitely give him credit there. But in terms of that role, of being a cloud economist and having to look through people's bills, and trying to find them ways to save it, that's pretty insane that we need people like you to do that, isn't it?Amy: Yes, it's a bananas job. I cannot believe this is a job that I'm actually doing. It's also a lot of fun. But if you think about it, that when I was starting out, and everything was LAMP stack, when I started. That was a hot new tech when I started, was the LAMP stack. The solution to all of those problems were we're going to throw more hardware at it. Then the following question was, why are we spending so much on hardware?Their solution to that problem was, we're going to buy real estate to store all of the hardware on. Now that you don't have to do that, you still have the problem of, I'm going to solve this problem by throwing more hardware at it. That's still a mindset that is alive and well, and you still end up with the same problem, except now you don't have the excuse that at least we own the facility that data is in because you don't anymore.Since you don't actually own the cases and the plates and everything, you don't have to worry about disposing of them and having to use stuff that you don't actually use anymore. A lot of my problems are, one of our services has gone out of control, we don't know why. Then I will tell you, who is spending that money. I will talk to that team to make sure that they know that it's happening because sometimes they don't even know what's happening. Something got spun up into their account, and maybe it was a testbed, maybe it was a demo, maybe they hired a vendor to load something into their environment and those costs got out of control.It's not like I'm going out trying to tell you that you did something wrong. It's like, this is where the problem is, let's go find out what happened. Forensic cloud bill person, I'm going to workshop that into a business card, because that sounds way better than the title that Corey uses.Jeremy: Forensic cloud accountant or something like that.Amy: Yes.Jeremy: I think it's also interesting that billing is, and the bills you get from AWS are a leading indicator of things that are potentially going wrong. Interesting, because I don't know if people connect this. Maybe I'm underestimating people here, but the idea that a bill that runs, or that you're seeing EC2 instances cost spiking, or you're seeing a higher load or higher bandwidth or things like that. Those can all be indicators of poorly written code, it can be indicators of the bad compression or missing compression settings, all kinds of things that it can jump out at you. Unless somebody is paying attention to those bills, I don't think most developers and most teams, they're not going to see that.Amy: Yeah. The only time they pay attention when things start spiraling out of control, and ... Okay, this sounds like an intuitive issue, and first thing people will do, will go, "We're going to log everything, and we're going to find out where the problem is."Jeremy: It'll cost you more money.Amy: There is a threshold where cloud watch becomes very expensive.Jeremy: Right, absolutely.Amy: Then they hit that threshold, and now their bill is four times as much.Jeremy: Right.Amy: A lot of the times it's misconfiguration, it's like, very rarely does any product get to the point where they just can't ... It's built so poorly that it can barely hold itself up. That's never been the case. It's always been, this has been turned off, or AWS also offers S3 analytics. You have to turn them on per bucket, that's not a policy that's usually written in anyone's AWS config. When they launch it, they just launch it without any analytics. They don't know if the thing is supposed to be sending things to Glacier, if it's highly used data, there's no way to tell.It's trying to find little holes like that, where it seems like it shouldn't be a problem, but the minute it becomes a problem, it's because you spent $20,000.Jeremy: Right. Yeah. No, you can spend money very, very fast in the cloud. I think that is a lesson learned by many, many people.Amy: The difference between being on metal and throwing hardware at a problem and being on the cloud and throwing hardware at a problem is that you can throw hardware at a problem at scale on the cloud.Jeremy: Exactly. Right. There's no stopping point like we have to go by using servers ...Amy: No one will stop you.Jeremy: No one will stop you. Just maybe the credit card company or whatever. Anyways, Amy, you are doing some amazing work with that, because I actually find that to be very, very fascinating. I think, in terms of what that can do, and the need for it, it's a fascinating field, and super interesting. Good for Corey for really digging into that and calling it out. Then again, for people like you who are willing to take that job, because that seems to me like poring through those numbers can't be the most interesting thing to do. But it must feel good when you do find a way to save somebody some money.Amy: Spreadsheets can be interesting. Again, it's like everything else about my job. If I try to explain why it's interesting, I just make it sound more boring.Jeremy: Awesome. All right. Well, let's leave it there. Amy, thank you again, for joining me, this was awesome. If people want to find out more about you, or maybe they have horribly large AWS cloud bills, and they want to check out the Duckbill Group, how do they do that?Amy: Honestly, if you search for Corey Quinn, you can find the Duckbill Group real fast. If you want to go talk to me because I like doing community engagement, and I like doing talks, and I like roasting people on Twitter just about different stuff, you can hit me up on Twitter @nerdypaws. If you want to be a professional, I'm also on LinkedIn under Amy Codes.Jeremy: All right, and then you also have a website, Amy-codes.com.Amy: Amy-codes.com is the archive of all my talks. It's currently only showing the talks from last year because for some reason, it's somehow became very hard to find a spot for the past year. Who knew?Jeremy: A lot of people doing talks. But anyways, all right, Amy, thank you again. Appreciate it.Amy: Thank you. Had so much fun.

amazon google service zoom microsoft local excellence cloud ibm dungeons and dragons evolving yahoo technical fantasy football certificates aws lamp faa apis devops azure functions googling forensic toastmasters cpu skynet geo php glacier s3 docker kubernetes rca gotcha fantasy sports lambda foursquare baas ics serverless json gcp ssh ecs nasa ames research center eks ec2 k8s corey quinn devopsdays fargate lambdas amy amy aws summit amy it duckbill group amy you jeremy it jeremy you cbt nuggets amy thank amy well

Build vs. Buy

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2021 13:04

Transcript Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I’m going to just guess that it’s awful because it’s always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn’t require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren’t what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I’m Jesse DeRose.Amy: I’m Amy Negrette.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways we’ve seen AWS used and abused in the wild. With a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today, we’re going to be talking about build versus buy. I feel like this is really kind of a classic engineering conversation. Amy, what is the build versus buy idea?Amy: It’s really the idea of whether you decide to use a managed service or SaaS product versus rolling your own and building yourself. It’s very easy to do these days with a few watches on YouTube, maybe some blog articles. You can also do repairs on my house, which is why I always have to get repairs done on my house. [laugh].Jesse: [laugh]. Yeah, I feel like as much as I love the world of HGTV and the DIY network, I think I can do more than I actually can and I feel like it’s probably a lot safer to just let a professional take the reins. I mean, there’s so many certification programs that teach you how to build and manage your own engineering things, your own distributed databases, your own Kubernetes clusters, your own streaming data platform, and it’s really great to understand the fundamental building blocks of these systems, it’s really great to understand how they work so that ultimately if you are consuming from them or managing them, that you understand the ins and the outs of the system. But the question becomes, do you really need to be the one that’s managing that system? Do you really need to be the one spending your time managing that system on top of writing code for your microservices, on top of managing the architecture, the application, all of the components of your service that are critical?Amy: So, I guess what we really want to decide is, in what use cases is it okay to build something from scratch, and when is it okay to, essentially, just go to the market and look for something that’s made already?Jesse: Yeah. And I think that’s the main question that a lot of folks ask: what is the defining line? What are the questions they should think about as they are choosing to build versus buy?Amy: I think if you want to really look at building a product, and really from the ground up—you have this product in mind and you want to do all the architecture, control it end-to-end—unless this is your core product feature or you’re going to package it for either internal or public release, you almost always—you don’t want to build this yourself because someone has probably built it in a way that’s not going to cause your engineers time or money. Unless it is going to directly make you money, then yes. If this is tied to your product income and your product revenue, please build it yourself. It avoids a lot of licensing issues, you do get to control how it works, how you want it to work. But that said a lot of products, just a bunch of assassins in a trench coat anyway, so—Jesse: [laugh].Amy: —it really depends on what’s important to you.Jesse: Yeah, I feel like this is one of the biggest pitfalls that I see in a lot of organizations where they think about how they want to build out an architecture and they choose that a solution like, stateful distributed service is going to be the right thing that they want. And one of the developers says, “Oh, that’s easy. I can build that in a weekend.” And then they go off and build it, and then they’re stuck managing that system for all of eternity when that’s not the primary purpose of the team that they’re working on, that’s not the primary purpose of the product that they’re working on. So, if you’re going to build something that is directly related to your product, directly related to your business use case, directly related to how your company is making money, something that is absolutely your bread and butter, you definitely want to build that rather than buying that off the shelf.Because building it will give you that great opportunity to focus on controlling all the ins and outs of the system, understanding all the parts of the system, finding the flexibility when you need flexibility, really fine-tuning and honing all the parts of the system in the way that you need it to work so that ultimately your organization is getting the best bang for their buck out of the system, whereas in a lot of cases, you’re not going to get the same level of flexibility from an off the shelf solution.Amy: And especially if you’re going to go in and planning to build your own supporting product, make sure—and I said this before, I’ll say it again—you do check the licenses of any libraries and any SaaS products you use to build it because I reinvented the wheel plenty of times in my career, specifically because I worked in a place where the licensing we were allowed to use would not allow us to use very specific products.Jesse: Yeah. That’s such a critical business risk and something that I think not every engineer is fully aware of. And to be clear, I don’t think that’s the engineer’s fault. I think that’s part of best practices that every organization can get better at to make sure that everybody understands, what are our limitations on using modules, using open-source solutions from the internet? How can we make sure that we ultimately aren’t creating additional unnecessary business risk?Amy: When do we go shopping?Jesse: [laugh]. Yeah, let’s go shopping. Let’s say you’ve decided that the piece of software that you want is not part of your bread and butter, like we were saying. If it’s not part of your organization’s primary product, primary use case, don’t waste engineering time building it for yourself, pay a vendor or a subject matter expert to build it for you—or to manage it for you, even—and then call it a day. It is absolutely worth those trade-offs. The additional cost of paying somebody else to manage it for you is absolutely worthwhile because you then get the opportunity to stay focused on the things that are most important to your team and your business.Corey: If your mean time to WTF for a security alert is more than a minute, it’s time to look at Lacework. Lacework will help you get your security act together for everything from compliance service configurations to container app relationships, all without the need for PhDs in AWS to write the rules. If you’re building a secure business on AWS with compliance requirements, you don’t really have time to choose between antivirus or firewall companies to help you secure your stack. That’s why Lacework is built from the ground up for the cloud: low effort, high visibility, and detection. To learn more, visit lacework.com.Amy: You also don’t end up trapped by having to make sure the product is appropriately upgraded or patched. And then you also have that nice little space of liability, saying we just bought this off the shelf. They said it was safe, and we trusted them. [laugh].Jesse: Yeah, again, business risk conversations, there is absolutely that opportunity for third-party liability rather than internal liability in some of those security risks. I also feel like it’s important to add that AWS, for example, has tons of managed services that give you ease of use by removing that administrative overhead. Yes, we’re primarily focused on AWS, obviously, this is an AWS focused podcast, there is definitely going to be a best and worst use case for these products so I’m not saying that you should go out and start using these all immediately without thinking about your overall goal and use case, but in a lot of cases, again, if the solution that you want is not something that you need to manage yourself, that you need to focus on building and running yourself, give it to AWS, they have tons of these managed solutions available to you built into the ecosystem.Amy: And that’s true of all the large cloud providers. They have managed services to make the things that you do not have the staffing to be an expert in and do all that work for you. And it’s not as if you are locked into these solutions. When you buy into either a SaaS product or a managed service, you can migrate off if you feel like you can build it better, and you actually have spent the time in R&D, and you spent the time building out a minimum viable product, and you know that this use case works for you, and then you can either clear out overhead or fees, and you can actually come in under what you’re spending right now, then make that move. But do it after you already know what it is you want.Jesse: Yeah, I think that’s a really great use case example, Amy. One other thing that I want to talk about is that this build versus buy a conversation so far has been focused on your organization thinking about if they want to build something internally, or if they want to buy it from a third-party vendor. But this conversation can also happen internally, in a single organization, between teams. I’m thinking about some organizations that I’ve worked for where I’ve seen one team build and manage a central platform solution, like a central CI/CD pipeline that every other team is going to be using and consuming from. But then, one team decides that the CI/CD platform that everybody’s using doesn’t really do all the things that they want it to do, so they decide to go off and build their own CI/CD platform internally for their team instead, rather than working with the team that is actually owning this sort of centralized CI/CD platform to make sure that everybody is getting the benefits of these additional features, these additional solutions, these additional bug fixes that the team was asking for.Amy: It’s really hard when you can’t see the forest for all the silos.Jesse: Yes. Absolutely. It is so, so critical to think about building these feedback loops into your internal tools. Because if your customers are internal to your organization, they’re going to want to provide that feedback in some capacity to help you understand when the service that you’re building is fantastic and when the service that you’re building is awful. And it’s so, so critical to make sure that you have those easy feedback loops so that you can continue to iterate on the things that you choose to build internally and hone them and make them better.If you’ve got questions that you’d like us to answer go to lastweekinaws.com/QA. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review, give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us the criteria you think about when considering whether you should build or buy.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

amazon phd field diy cloud wtf saas hgtv aws qa devops kubernetes ci cd launchdarkly lacework amy it amy you amy so jesse yeah last week in aws humblepod

A Very Special Episode

The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2021 20:39

TranscriptCorey: This episode is sponsored in part byLaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I’m going to just guess that it’s awful because it’s always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn’t require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren’t what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visitlaunchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Jesse: Today, on a very special episode of AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field, we say our goodbyes to Pete Cheslock.Amy: Oh, no. Did the ops bus finally get him?Jesse: No. Wait, what? What? No. No, he’s not—Amy: You know, the ops bus, the one that takes out all of the ops people, which is why you need data recovery plans.Jesse: [laugh]. I mean, I have plans for other reasons, but no. No, Pete, Pete’s not dead. He’s just—I mean, he’s dead to me, but he’s just not going to be here anymore.Amy: Only on the inside.Jesse: Welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I’m Jesse DeRose.Amy: I’m Amy Arumbulo Negrette.Pete: I am Pete Cheslock. I’m here for one last, beautiful, glorious time.Jesse: I feel like this is going to be like Breakfast Club but in the data center server room.Pete: Yeah. A little bit. I think so. We will all sit cross-legged on the floor in a circle, share our thoughts and feelings. And maybe some sushi. There were sushi in that movie. And that was, like, really advanced back then in the ’80s.Jesse: Yeah, I like that. So Pete, you want to give us a little bit of background about why you will be moving on from this podcast?Pete: Moving on to a whole new world. Yes. Sadly, I am not dead. The ops bus did not get me, and I was not eaten by my smoker, my meat smoker.Jesse: [laugh]. Although at this point, it’s probably overdue.Pete: You know, the odds of all three of those are pretty high out, to be really perfectly honest, given this pandemic and everything else going on in this world.Amy: Isn’t that how it works? You eventually become the smoked meat.Pete: Yeah, yeah.Jesse: [laugh].Pete: All the time. You know, you are what you eat. And if you eat junk and whatnot—so I eat smoked meats, eventually, I’m just going to become, you know, smoked meats, I guess. But no, I am moving on from The Duckbill Group. Just bittersweet is the best word I can come up with. Very sad, but also very excited.I’m moving on to a new role at a new company that was just kind of an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. And I’m really excited for something new, but really sad because I don’t get to work with two of my three favorite cloud economists, Jesse, and Amy. Yeah, Corey is one, too, and yes, it’s fun to work with him. But it’s also fun to rag on him a little bit as well.Jesse: I’m pretty sure you still have the opportunity to rag on him no matter where you go.Pete: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, we’re Twitter connected. So, I can just slide into his DMs as needed. Yeah.Amy: And really, what else is Twitter for—Pete: Exactly.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: —than roasting former coworkers and bosses?Pete: Yeah, I expect a constant stream of Twitter DMs every time you find something, some little fun nugget that I’ve left behind.Jesse: I feel like that’s appropriate. So today, Pete, I have two questions for you now that you will be moving on from Duckbill Group, moving on from this podcast, I want to know, looking back at your time here working with Duckbill Group, what did you learn? What are the things that surprised you, that you didn’t expect? And what would you say to somebody who wanted to start working in this space, maybe start a career in cloud economics on their own?Pete: Yeah, so this kind of feels like an exit interview a little bit.Jesse: [laugh]. And a very public exit interview at that. So, make sure that we bleep all the swear words.Pete: I think it’s in Duckbill fashion to do a public—a very public-facing exit interview, right? That is Duckbill in a nutshell.Jesse: I think the only thing more public is if Corey asks you to hold the exit interview on Twitter.Amy: Exactly.Pete: [laugh]. I mean, we might have to do that, now. I like that idea. Yeah, so I think those are great questions, and I love the opportunity to talk about it. Because Duckbill is a fantastic company, and coming into Duckbill last year was totally by luck.Not really—no, not—luck is maybe not the right word. But I had been doing some consulting on my own, and the pandemic and some other forces caused a bunch of my consulting work to dry up really quickly. And I was sitting at home and I’m like, “Wow, I should get a real job.” And I saw a tweet from Mike on Twitter that was like, “Oh, we’re growing The Duckbill Group.” And Mike and Corey and I have known each other for such a long time.We’ve always said it’d be great to work together at some point in the future, but it’s so hard [laugh] to do. You know, to kind of work with your friends, and timing, and circumstance, and schedule, and everything else. And so when I saw that, I was like, wow, like that might be a lot of fun working with that crew. And I’ve got a lot of experience in AWS and I’ve—my title at one of my previous companies was Captain COGS—for Cost Of Goods Sold—because I was so diligent with the Amazon bill. So, it’s kind of one of those things where I felt like I could be useful and helpful to the organization, and talking with Mike and Corey, it just made a ton of sense.And so, it was a lot of fun to come on board. So, but then once you’re kind of in, and you start doing this type of work—and you know, Amy and Jesse, you’ve both experienced this—I think no matter how much knowledge you have of Amazon, very, very quickly, you realize that you actually don’t know as much as you really think you did, right?Jesse: Yeah.Pete: Because it’s so—there’s just so much.Amy: And it changes once every five minutes.Pete: [laugh].Jesse: Oh, yeah.Amy: Literally if you—well, just keep an eye on that changelog, you can watch your day get ruined as time goes on.Jesse: [laugh].Pete: [laugh]. It’s—yeah, it’s a real-time day ruining. And that’s the new. It’s like Amazon Kinesis: It’s all real-time.Jesse: [laugh].Pete: Yeah, it’s so true. And I think the reason behind it is, you know, one of the first things I kind of realized is that when you are working inside of a business and you’re trying to understand, like, an Amazon service, you don’t necessarily go that deep because you’ve got a real job and other stuff to do. And when you’re finally, like—let’s say you’re in Cost Explorer; this is actually my favorite one because learning this took us a while. The documents aren’t very good. But in Cost Explorer, there’s a dropdown box that can show you your charges in different ways: unblended view, blended view, amortized view—if I’m saying that word really incorrectly—net-amortized view, net-unblended view. Like, what do all these mean?Most people just are like, unblended, move on with their lives. But at some point, you kind of need to know and answer that question, and then understand the impact, and all those things, and spending more hours than I care to count trying to correlate the bill and Cost Explorer to look the same. Something that simple, why is that so hard? You know, it’s things like that.Amy: Why is that so hard? I do not understand it. It is exhausting. [laugh].Jesse: It drives me absolutely crazy, and it’s something that in previous roles, you could just say, “Well, this isn’t my responsibility, so I’m not going to worry about it.” But now we’ve got clients who are asking us these questions because it is our responsibility and we do need to worry about it.Pete: Yeah, exactly. So, I think that’s just, kind of, one example. Now, there was a ton that I learned. I mean, just in how discounts might be applied when you look at charges in an account whether if you have an enterprise discount program, or private pricing in some way. I think one of my favorite ones—and this is actually something that catches a lot of people up—is especially in Cost Explorer, there’s kind of two ways that you can view a charge.So, let’s say you’re looking at S3, and you are trying to find your usage by the usage type. Like, I want to compare standard storage to maybe data transfer or something like that. And you go and group by usage type, and they’ll show you, “Hey, for your S3 for this month or day or whatever, you’ll have some spend associated storage and data transfer,” and you’re like, “That’s neat.” And then you say to yourself, “Now, I want to look at it by API.” And maybe you’ll see, wow, there’s a ton of spend associated with GETs or PUTs.And you’ll think that that is actually a request charge. And it’s totally not. It’s like, when you group by API, it’s the API that started the charge, not the charge itself. So, you could have a PUT that started the charge, but the charge itself is actually storage. It’s the little things like that, where you might glance at it in your account and go, “Oh, okay.” But then when you actually need to get down to the per penny on spend and share it with a client, you go even further down the rabbit hole.Jesse: Because why would all of the billing information across different sources be accurate?Amy: And also, why would things be named the same between the bill, and Cost Explorer, and the curve? Having those names be the same, that would just make it too easy, and just streamline the process too much, and be too logical. No, let’s work for it. We have to work for it. It’s a pillar of excellence; we have to work for it.Pete: [laugh]. Exactly. So yeah, I think it’s those types of things that you just start seeing the edge cases. But because of, kind of, the work we do, we keep going. We’re not just, “Oh, wow. Haha, silly Amazon.”But then we keep diving in deeper and deeper to figure out the why. And the reason for that really just comes down to the fact that we’ll need to communicate that in some effective way to the client to get them to understand it. And actually, that kind of leads me to the other thing that I think is probably the most important skill of being a cloud economist, of being in finops, is your ability to write long-form writing, being able to write clear, concise information explaining why the spend is what it is, explaining all of these edge cases, all these interesting parts of cloud cost management, and being able to write that down in such a way that anyone could read it; like a CFO could understand how the charges are happening, just like a head of engineering, who has maybe more impact to the spend.Jesse: Being able to communicate, the differences between different AWS services, between different billing modes, to different audiences is so critical to the work that we do because we’re ultimately going to be working with different people with different backgrounds at every single client that we work with. So, we need to be able to speak the language of different audiences.Amy: And it’s really different, how different C Suites, different departments, their goals are going to be different, too, because they have requirements that they have to fulfill. Finance is very concerned about the literal cost of things, while engineering is—they understand that their architecture comes at a price, and so long as they have the budget for it, they’re cool with it. And you just have to align what those goals are, and have that translate as like, into the document as, “They built it this way for this reason, which was fine at that stage. But as you grow, you need to make sure that it also fulfills these other external expectations.”Corey: Let’s be honest—the past year has been a nightmare for cloud financial management. The pandemic forced us to move workloads to the cloud sooner than anticipated, and we all know what that means—surprises on the cloud bill and headaches for anyone trying to figure out what caused them. The CloudLIVE 2021 virtual conference is your chance to connect with FinOps and cloud financial management practitioners and get a behind-the-scenes look into proven strategies that have helped organizations like yours adapt to the realities of the past year. Hosted by CloudHealth by VMware on May 20th, the CloudLIVE 2021 conference will be 100% virtual and 100% free to attend, so you have no excuses for missing out on this opportunity to connect with the cloud management community. Visit cloudlive.com/corey to learn more and save your virtual seat today. That’s cloud-l-i-v-e.com/corey to register.Pete: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, it’s just—and can you imagine, you have some knowledge you want to share around something as complex as the Amazon bill. I mean we ask for a PDF of your bill when you start working with Duckbill Group. That could be hundreds of pages long, and you’re trying to distill that down into something that, really, anyone can understand. It’s a true superpower to be able to write long-form content like that really well.And I never used to like writing. I was never—never really enjoyed it that much and over the last year, that muscle that you’re working out, now, the ability to write many, many pages around this type of content, just it comes so much more easily. So, I think that’s another big aspect, right? The more you work on it, obviously the easier it gets.Jesse: I don’t know about you, but now that I have focused more on flexing that writing and communication muscle, I’ve noticed it more in both everyone that I work with day-to-day with Duckbill Group and also in my daily life, just watching how people communicate with each other, and how effectively people communicate with each other; it’s both amazing and nerve-wracking all at the same time.Pete: [laugh]. I know. And even—not to say that whenever we sit down to write our reports that we give to our clients, we don’t go through the wave of emotions between the back and forth of, like, “I don’t know what to write,” and then, “Oh, I know of a lot of stuff to write. Let me just get something down.” And then you can’t stop writing. It’s just—it’s this emotional roller coaster that I feel like no matter how many times we need to write a lot of detailed information down, everyone always goes through.Amy: And we really do have a highly collaborative process here, too, where we’re all in the same document, writing, and the person who owns any given report will always have the same stage at the end when all of the sections are filled out, where they go to one of the other people on the team and go, “Every word I put down is absolute garbage. Please help me trim it down, take it out. I don’t even care anymore. Just look at it and tell me that I wrote down words that are in some kind of human language.” [laugh].Jesse: [laugh].Pete: [laugh]. Oh, the plight of the writer. It’s, like, the imposter syndrome that affects the writer. It’s like, “Okay. I wrote a bunch of stuff. I think it’s terrible.” And then you sleep on it, you come back the next day, and you’re like, “Actually, this is pretty good.” [laugh].Amy: I explained concepts. It was fine. I didn’t use a single comma for three pages, but it’s probably fine. [laugh].Jesse: [laugh].Pete: You can take one of mine. Usually, all of my draft documents are commas and M-dashes, just all over the place. Yeah, so I think that’s honestly a big superpower. And I think the last two things that—this is actually something that I’ve looked for in people that I’ve wanted to work with, and people I was hiring, and I see it here as well as these, kind of, two concepts of intellectual curiosity and aptitude to learn, where if you have a base knowledge around Amazon and you have those other attributes—that curiosity and truly enjoying learning—you can accelerate your ability to understand this so incredibly quickly because there’s such a wealth of information out there, and there’s so many documents, there’s so much stuff. It just requires someone who really cares enough to dive in and really want to understand.That’s something that I think we’ve seen here is that the folks who are most successful are just—they want to know why, and they’re not satisfied until they can explain it in a simple way to someone else. That’s the key, right? The attribute of a true expert is someone who can explain something very difficult in a simple way. And I think that’s something that would be critical if you were joining Duckbill, if you were building your own finops or cloud finance team, it is so complex. It’s the intersection of technical architecture and cost, and it touches almost the entire business. So, I think those are some other attributes that I think are just incredibly helpful.Jesse: We’re also usually not entirely satisfied until we’ve either opened a support case with AWS, responded to one of their feedback icons in the AWS documentation—the public AWS documentation—or trolled somebody on Twitter saying, “Shame on you, AWS, for writing documentation that doesn’t make sense.”Amy: It’ll be fine. Someone in your mentions will go, “Did you check the region?” And you would have, and then it’ll still be wrong.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: And it’ll be fine. [laugh]. Eventually, we’ll fix it.Pete: That one—Jesse: Too soon.Pete: —that one still hurts, when we—oh, I’m just like, “Why do the numbers not line up?” And then someone was like—Amy: It's a thing I check for, even if it’s like, “It’s a global resource.” I don’t care. Just tell me. Just tell me it’s fine. [laugh].Pete: “Are you in the right region?” Like—“Dammit, no, I’m not. Oh.” [laugh]. Yeah, that happens to the best of us.Amy: I did, unfortunately, burn so many hours, I think it was last week trying to find out where someone had put their resources. It’s like, “Oh, not us-west-2. It’s us-west-1. Of course.” [laugh].Jesse: So, annoying. Well, I would just like to say, Pete, it has been a joy and a pleasure working with you, it has been a joy and a pleasure complaining about AWS with you, on this podcast, so thank you for your time. That sounded really… really, really standoffish. I didn’t mean it quite as bad as it came off there. [laugh].Pete: Well, you know, I think we need to thank Corey for having a child and thus needing to offload some of his podcast duties over to us, and then the fact that we just never gave him the podcast back, and we just took it over.Jesse: Well, if you’ve got questions that you’d like us to answer, you can go to lastweekinaws.com/QA. And if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review, give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us what qualities you’re looking for when building out your cloud finance team.Pete: Thanks for coming in.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

amazon finance shame field cloud cfo dms puts api breakfast club aws qa devops vmware s3 finops c suites launchdarkly amy it duckbill group amy you cloudhealth amy oh pete you jesse yeah last week in aws jesse well jesse it pete cheslock pete yeah humblepod

Getting the Picture

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2021 30:42

Amy Balliett is Founder and CEO at Killer Visual Strategies, an agency that specializes in visual communications design – creating such “products” as info and motion graphics, data visualizations, virtual reality, and interactive content. An Inc. 5000 company for four years in a row, Killer, now part of Material, has won over 30 excellence in visual communication awards. Clients include such Fortune 1000 companies as Amazon, Boeing, the Discovery Channel, Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, and Microsoft. In this interview, Amy talks about the “spammy” beginnings of infographics, when people slapped up on their websites images that had nothing to do with their brand. She says, a high-quality infographic visually communicates significant meaning so efficiently and effectively that little text is required. Amy notes that around 10,000 infographics are released daily . . . and 99% fail. The 1% that succeed don't use much text, use custom (as opposed to stock) illustrations, provide proper data visualization, and clearly show attention to detail and time put into the design. The agency's services keep evolving to meet changing client needs. The biggest challenge is “to find that one illustration style that won't go out of style.” HubSpot reports that “91% of audiences prefer visual content as their primary, secondary, and tertiary form of information delivery.” A visual strategy would consider the first, second, and third pieces of content a prospective client might see going into a funnel. Amy says, “Content is king . . . visual content reigns supreme, and visual strategy is content strategy, just leveled up.” Amy recommends a 90-second “motion graphic” as the most important piece of visual strategy content a company might invest in now. That 90 seconds can be broken down into “dozens of visually designed scenes” that can be used on social media, stacked to create an infographic, or paginated to create an eBook. She notes that visual content has to be matched both to channels and to audiences. Killer evolved over the years . . . through a pivot that exploded . . . first in a good way . . . and then not. Exhausted from the frenetic pace, the agency had never stopped to consider such core questions as: “What's the type of client that we want? What's the type of work we really want to do? What's the type of person we want to be bringing on to our team? What are the values of this company that are going to drive these decisions?” Amy hired a business coach for herself and the team (probably the best decision she ever made) and an HR consultant to help establish policies. A new focus on building a values-driven culture and hiring and firing employees and clients based on these values changed “who we were, our level of productivity, and the clients we attracted . . . our revenue went up 50% in one year.” The agency's values are simple: Keep Learning, Inspire Others, Lead by Example, Love What We Do, Embrace Change, and Respect Others. Amy can be found on LinkedIn at: Amy Balliett on Twitter @amyballiett. Her book, Killer Visual Strategies, available on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Visual-Strategies-Amy-Balliett/dp/1119680220), was recently awarded “one of the best marketing and sales books of 2020.” Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Amy Balliett, Founder and CEO at Killer Visual Strategies based in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to the podcast, Amy. AMY: Thank you so much for having me. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. You have one of those excellent names for your firm that I think probably tells us what you do, but why don't you tell us about Killer Visual Strategies and what the firm's superpower really is? AMY: Definitely. To tell you that, the best way to say it is our original name. Our original name was Killer Infographics, so even more focused on what we were doing. At the time, we really focused on developing high-quality infographics for marketing needs and things like that. Over the years, our services kept evolving based on the needs of our clients. But ultimately, everything still lives on the foundation of what we view as our superpower, which is visual communication design. A high-quality infographic is something that you don't have to read; instead, you can look at it and cull important information from it without diving into paragraphs of text. So everything we do centers on that. It's about graphically representing information to efficiently and effectively create meaning and using as little text as possible. That's really what our superpower is. ROB: That's interesting. As little text as possible. What do you recall in your own mind as the emergence of infographics? When did they start catching your eye? When did it become so obsessive for you that it seemed like the business? AMY: It's so interesting, because infographics have a very rich history. The very first known infographic was the 1600s, although you could say cave paintings on walls were the first infographics. They've been around forever, but around 2008 they started to be used more regularly for SEO needs, for link-building and other forms of content marketing. I started to slowly get into them because I was heading up SEO at a company here in Seattle and really wanted to use them for the link-building value. But the company I was at never really wanted to use them. So, when I left to start my own company – which was actually a completely different business model than what Killer is today, and which had a bunch of different websites that I was marketing – I started creating infographics to do link-building for all of those websites. That was June of 2010. At that point, infographics were this big trending thing, and everybody was questioning how long that trend would last. Everybody really thought this was something that was going to be a one-and-done trend, and by 2011 we were going to move to something else for content and content marketing. So I got on it at a time that I thought was the very end of a trend. [laughs] And it turns out it was the very, very beginning. ROB: How has the use of infographics evolved? There was a point in time where it felt like a well-designed and executed infographic targeted at the right audience really extensively lived as a life of its own, but the fad didn't end as a fad; it just integrated into the visual language of the internet. AMY: That's exactly right. The thing is, at first infographics were so spammy. People would put out content that had nothing to do with their brand, nothing to do with their website. They just really wanted to put out something controversial that was driven by visuals because today's audiences crave visual content. They were really trying to use infographics to hook somebody and get backlinks primarily. After that spammy part of the fad started to die down – which happened because Google kept changing their algorithm, and when Google did their Penguin and Panda updates back in 2010 and 2011, all of a sudden the big content farms that were really being fueled by infographics started disappearing from Google. As a result, infographics stopped being as spammy. The market stopped being flooded with these really spammy designs, and instead large brands started to take notice and said, “Oh wow, this is an amazing way to connect with my audience and really get them to understand our brand, our service, our products without having to give them a big long whitepaper.” The trend was moving away from whitepapers and moving more and more towards media as a form of entertainment and education in all forms. ROB: That's a really fascinating evolution there. If we look at today, is there still that link-building aspect to it? Or is it more broadly about brand at this point, and about speaking to an audience coherently with your brand attached to it? AMY: It's about speaking to your audience coherently with your brand attached to it. Links definitely come with infographics – not like they used to. In 2010, I put out some awful infographics because I was still learning, and they'd get thousands of backlinks. Anybody would celebrate anything with the word “infographic” attached to it, whereas today, we have far more discerning eyes. If you jump back to 2010 versus today in 2021, the fact is, media within the internet has evolved so much. There's so much more of a wow factor in everything we see. That also has led to a heightened expectation for what a good infographic is. There's still about 10,000 released a day, but 99% of them fail. The 1% of them that truly succeed are the ones that don't use a lot of text, the ones that use entirely custom illustration, proper data visualization, and the ones that clearly show attention to detail and time put into the design. But if they're slapped together, they're using stock imagery, or if there are paragraphs of text next to a small illustration, things like that, they're going to fail. People are still jumping on the bandwagon because they think they're going to get a bunch of backlinks, but if they don't actually execute them properly, they're not going to get backlinks, and they might even hurt their brand on top of it. ROB: It's good to know the danger there. In the evolution of your firm, you can see this evolution where the infographic is part of a broader visual strategy, probably with a much more expanded vocabulary. What are the elements you see now as the language of visual strategy as you think about it? AMY: It's so interesting. There's this really great stat from HubSpot that 91% of audiences prefer visual content as their primary, secondary, and tertiary form of information delivery. When we think about visual strategy today, we think about the top of the funnel and we say to ourselves, what's the first, second, and third piece of content somebody's going to see as they're going into that funnel? Then we start to identify what channels those people are living on to deliver that content, and the channels and the audience define what type of content we choose to put out into the ether for the visual strategy of the brand. Sometimes it might be short form social media images with at most 6 words on them. Sometimes it'll be a visually rich eBook where each page has at most 200 words. Other times it's a motion graphic. I always say to anybody who's thinking about getting into visual strategy for their own brands, the most important piece of content that you can invest in right now is a motion graphic. That's going to give you so much to work with. It's usually about 90 seconds. It should never be over 90 seconds. It's usually about 90 seconds of content that breaks down into dozens of visually designed scenes that you can pull out and use on social media. You can stack the scenes up and create an infographic. You can paginate the scenes and create an eBook. You have so much more than just a motion graphic if you invest in one. You have dozens of other pieces of content you can produce out of it. It's really about identifying the right content for the right channel for the right audience. I know that's kind of the answer to all contact marketing, really, but with visual content there's definitely different types of visual content that work on different channels. You really have to understand that landscape and choose what's going to connect with that audience the best. ROB: Sure, and there's a distinction in there. Much like the graduation from infographics to visual strategies, when you're referring to a motion graphic, what I'm picturing is that explainer video, is what some people would call it. Some people would come to you saying they want an explainer video, but I think what you're saying is that's not really what they want. If they just got an explainer video that didn't consider this trend that comes and goes online but is always true, this atomization of content where you can take something and pull it apart into individual pieces that are bite-size and put them lots of places – just asking for an explainer video doesn't get you there. AMY: Exactly. Today's marketers are using 12 to 14 types of visual content just to accomplish singular goals. It can never be one-and-done. You always have to consider all of the different ways you can use that content. You can create derivatives to develop even more campaigns and strategies around it. It is really content marketing. The concept that content is king, which comes from a Bill Gates article in 1999, is still true. Content is king. But visual content reigns supreme, and that's really what we have to focus on when we think about visual strategy. It's content strategy, just leveled up. ROB: Right. One thing I think about in this category that maybe isn't thought of this way when it comes out is Mary Meeker annually puts out this internet trends deck at the turn of the year. Have you run into that before? AMY: Yes, definitely. ROB: It's hundreds of pages, hundreds of slides in a PowerPoint deck. If you said, “Do you want a 200-slide deck from a venture capitalist?”, I don't know if you do. But then you look at the pieces of it, and each slide – you know better than I do – seems like it has pretty good value. It seems like it tells a story as a whole, and it seems like it builds a brand for her in whichever firm she's with. AMY: Exactly. That's so spot-on. That's the entire point. If that were 200 pages of paragraphs of content, do you think it would be given the same level of attention it gets today? Not even at all. Not close. ROB: Nobody anticipates that one. AMY: Exactly. ROB: Amy, you alluded a little bit to the journey, your own journey in starting the firm. It looks from your LinkedIn like, as you mentioned, you were working in SEO. You had a job. You had someone else who was responsible for your paycheck. What led you to turn that corner and go into this process of being responsible to kill what you wanted to eat and then to eventually be responsible for an ever-growing – or maybe not ever-growing, but in many cases a payroll of people who depend on you, and it's a lot of responsibility? What caused that transition? AMY: It's so odd because it's hard for me to pinpoint an exact time. I owned my first company when I was 17. I actually owned an ice cream parlor and candy store in a summer vacation resort. It was open only during the summer, so it didn't compete with school. That was my first foray into entrepreneurship – and I hated it, I'm going to be honest with you. I loved it and I hated it. I was working 80+ hours a week during my summer breaks my junior and senior year of high school. That gave me a sour taste in my mouth. But then about – jeez, I don't know how long later; maybe it was about 6 years later – I came up with an idea for a social network. This was before Facebook had opened up to non-.edu email addresses. I didn't even know that Facebook existed yet. I came up with this idea for a social network, but all I had was the idea. I could not execute on the idea because I had zero coding skills. At the time, I was a video editor; my degree is in film, so I was doing video editing and motion picture marketing and really couldn't bring much to the table for this idea. I had my cousin join in on the idea, and he could bring everything to the table. He's a full stack developer and the best designer I've ever met. So here's this guy taking on the weight of the world, basically trying to make my idea come to fruition, and all I can do is try to market the idea, try to build a user base. It failed really quickly because you can't just come to the table with an idea. You have to be able to execute on that idea. We got to a point after 6 months where it became clear that this was just way too much to put on one person. During that 6 months, I started to learn SEO and online marketing, so I decided to pivot my career into SEO and online marketing. In that part of my career, I learned web development as well. It really just came down to I had started to stack up a series of skills – nothing that I was fantastic at; everything I was good enough at. If you're trying to be too many things at once, it's like trying to learn 10 instruments at once. You're never going to master one instrument. But I was good enough at enough skills. I was good enough at graphic design, good enough at animation, good enough at development that I was finally in a place where I felt like I could do all of this on my own. I had tested a few proofs of concept within the last company I worked at, really seeing if I could create new revenue streams for that company. Once I did, I realized, crud, I'm bringing in millions in revenue streams to this company; why can't I do this for myself? You get to a point where you have the confidence in your career to take that chance, but I also got to the point where I had enough in savings to take that chance. I'm not going to lie, that was incredibly important to me. I think I would not have taken the risk at all if it weren't for having a nice safety net of cash just in case everything failed. ROB: Amy, a lot of people have that interesting stack of skills, but they may not recognize it. They may not know how to apply it. To your metaphor, they may still be trying to be the best at a particular instrument when it's really the intersection of several skills that is where they can be truly unique in their world. How did you come to understand that concept of the stack of skills and see it in yourself? AMY: It was really just every idea I came up with, I started to realize, “Crud, I need a designer for this, and I need somebody to develop this.” I just started thinking about all the things I needed for somebody to execute on the work. I'm a control freak. I really am. So I started to say, “I need to learn these things myself because I can't really give away trust too easily and put that work on somebody else's plate.” For me, that's really what made me realize I needed that stack of skills: wanting to execute on so many ideas, but not having the capacity to do it myself. I'm really glad that over the years, I learned to release the reins, because every single employee I've hired is 20 times better than me at any one of those skills. And that's really important. You always have to hire somebody who's much better than you. But the fact that I've been able to play every single role in my company and that I have played every role, that I've sat in their shoes – it's so much easier to manage everybody because I know what they're going through. I know how long it would take me to do a task, so I can judge how long it would take somebody on my team to do that same task. I know what expectations to put in front of them, and I also know when to pull back and let them take the lead and run the show. ROB: Right on. I've certainly experienced, at least in my perception – and you never know whether you're wrong in your perception at the top; it's always worth questioning. But when I'm hiring people within my stack of skills, I feel like I can get to a decision faster, and I feel like I almost get to be the Pied Piper a little bit. There's a sense of trust and safety that they may feel where they felt wary. I tend to hire software developers for a lot of what we do, and there's almost an unspoken bond that moves quickly when you can send the right signals, I think. AMY: That's so, so true. That's exactly how it's always felt. I remember when we brought on our first developer to the team and I sat down with him and I was talking about a couple of lines of jQuery. He looked at me and said, “Wait, I haven't had a boss who knows jQuery before.” It was just this weird “aha” moment. ROB: It's such a good discussion, the skill stacking thing. I think I have often heard of it spoken of on – there's a podcaster, James Altucher, and I think he talks about it a good bit. But I don't know – have you had any good sources for these concepts? Because I think it's underexplored, and maybe there's a book or something that I'm less familiar with. AMY: I haven't necessarily dove into any books related to this specific concept, no. It really has more come through networking with the right people, getting to know more people who have faced the same types of challenges, but also, again, surrounding myself with such a curious team, a team that will never rest on their laurels. One of our values at Killer is “keep learning,” and it's probably the most embraced value in the company because everybody's just trying to stay on top of trends and stay ahead of trends. I think that's also a part of it. There's a bit of a competitive attitude where all of us want to be in the know of what that next big thing is. ROB: It's such an interesting through line. You mentioned that Google's obviously changed algorithms, and it feels like they're a lot closer to trying to provide the result you actually wanted. But there was an era of SEO that was very competitive; it was very much about tactics and how ethical those tactics were. Kind of secret knowledge. But some of that transitions well, probably, into process around visual strategy. There is always something to learn. There is always a new cutting-edge frontline of what's working and what's not. You have to keep learning, just like you did in SEO. AMY: Exactly. It's so true. What's interesting is with SEO, you're trying to game Google's algorithm, for lack of a better phrase. It is really what you try to do in a lot of ways, whereas with visual strategy, you're trying to consider so many disparate audiences. What's going to trend for one audience isn't going to trend for another audience. There's not one universal algorithm to break. Instead, it's really identifying all of the different aesthetic directions that could impact Audience A over Audience B over Audience C and so on. ROB: It's an infinite game, too. You can't just go for the moment. You could position the whole thing as being there to hack the human brain, but in the context of a brand, you also have to consider how people feel afterwards and in the long run. It's not a short game. It's not “look at this graphic,” right? AMY: Exactly. And you also have to consider the timeline of that campaign, because sometimes we'll have a client where they want a visual language and aesthetic look and feel to uplevel their brand, but something that's going to last for decades to come. That's a whole other feat to accomplish, trying to find that one illustration style that won't go out of style. That's been an interesting experience. ROB: Absolutely. Amy, as you reflect on building Killer Visual Strategies, what are some things that you've learned along the way that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting from scratch? AMY: The biggest thing I've learned is about being proactive versus reactive. Killer was a pivot from a completely different business model, and because it was a pivot, we didn't spend a lot of time thinking proactively about what we wanted the business to be. Instead, we just lived in a reactive state for about 3 years. We basically went from our very first quarter of work being 14 orders to the first month in our second quarter being 40 orders, and it just kept going up and up and up and up. The first 3 years or so, we were just so exhausted by reacting to the demand that we didn't take the time to say, “What's the type of client that we want? What's the type of work we really want to do? What's the type of person we want to be bringing on to our team? What are the values of this company that are going to drive these decisions?” All of those things that seem corny initially – when you're an entrepreneur and you want to start a company, the last thing you say is, “What are the values going to be of my company?” It's rarely something an entrepreneur does first. But had we done that first, I think we would have grown faster and even more intentionally than we did. Our first 5 years felt like a wild, wild west, and we had a culture inflection point at Year 5 where, honestly, almost everything exploded. And almost everything exploded because we were not a values-driven company. We had a great team; we knew we wanted to go out and get a beer with everybody, but we didn't all approach conflict in the same way. When you have a values-driven company, you have a set of guidelines with which to attack conflict together as a team, but we didn't have that. Nobody really knew what our values were, even though they spelled out the word “KILLER.” So we had to reset and focus on building a values-driven culture, hiring and firing by our values and hiring and firing clients by our values as well. That drastically changed who we were. It also drastically changed our level of productivity, the types of clients we attracted – I mean, our very first year of really paying attention to that, our revenue went up 50% in one year. So there's more than just the corny feelings that you get with coming up with your mission, vision, and values. When you actually truly embrace those and live those and lead by those, you'll see a team that is so much more inspired, so much more willing to take on the hardest challenges with you. You can really grow your company by leaps and bounds when you do that. That's the biggest lesson I've learned. ROB: Was it the explosion that pushed you to this realization of the need, or was there another catalyst in your life? AMY: It was the explosion, it really was. And that explosion was such a slow burn. That powder keg – we knew it was going to explode at some point, but we were still being so reactive that there wasn't time to pay attention to it. By the time it happened – we actually joke in the company and we call it “emailgate” because it all started from an email. [laughs] But we brought in the right people at that point. I hired a business coach to come in and coach myself, coach my leadership, and coach the team as a whole. I hired a really good HR consultant to come in and do the exact same thing, to really help us build the right policies in that arena. By bringing on the right experts, I was really, really lucky. I was also somebody who kept saying, “Why do I need a coach? I don't need a coach! This isn't a sports team!” [laughs] It turned out that having a business coach was probably the best investment I have ever made, and I know my team feels that way too, because they saw me change as a result of having somebody really help me look at problems differently and react to critiques from the team differently. When you're a business owner and you're at the very top, it is extremely lonely. And when you're in a creative firm where everybody is really emotionally driven – because to be creative, you have to bring emotion into your work. When you're that passionate – that's what I mean by emotionally driven – you're going to be passionate about what's working and what's not in the company, and you're going to be very vocal about that. I used to take that as such an affront to me. I would get offended by really positive critiques, people coming to me with good ideas, and maybe I would just look at it as them critiquing me instead of an opportunity to improve in the company. So having a coach really helped me look at that very differently and embrace the amazing feedback of my team. ROB: I think it's so helpful for you to share that, Amy. The perception people have is – in some cases it's true that a cheesy coach is cheesy and cheesy values are cheesy. Sometimes I feel like I can sound a little bit needy in the course of a conversation because I will tell people about my coach and my therapist and my entrepreneurial support group. But I think we just need to talk about it. For me, those things are all healthy, but maybe there's sort of the cult of the CEO, where we feel like we need to have all the answers. AMY: Yes, that's exactly it. You get imposter syndrome when you don't necessarily have the right answers. I also have an entrepreneurial support group, and that has been immensely helpful for me. Just talking to other business owners – they don't have to be in your same industry – and realizing, “Oh, hey, these problems exist across all businesses, not just a creative content agency, or not just a mom and pop shop down the street.” There's very similar problems that exist across any culture, across any work environment, and when you can get other business owners to tell you what they've gone through and game a solution together, it is so much better than just being in your own silo, trying to figure it out yourself. ROB: Such a healthy conversation, Amy. You've really shared the journey and shared the experience. When people want to connect with you and when they want to connect with Killer Visual Strategies, where should they look you up? AMY: You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Just Amy Balliett on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter @amyballiett, although I'm not nearly as active as I should be on Twitter. Then you can also check out my book, which is Killer Visual Strategies, on Amazon. It was just awarded one of the best marketing and sales books of 2020. ROB: Congratulations. I think we all needed a nice visual book along those lines in 2020 – something to think about aspirationally and not just looking into our own basements. AMY: Right? That's so true. Oh my gosh. Good old 2020. [laughs] ROB: Yeah. Hope is on the way. I'm tremendously hopeful for the year, and I think probably you're very similarly positioned with your positioning and with what people are about to need to do with you as a partner. AMY: Yeah, definitely. I'm very excited for what 2021 has in store for us. ROB: Excellent. Amy, I wish you the best. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I encourage everyone to look Amy up, look up her book, and I would imagine that Killer Visual Strategies probably has a solid couple of social feeds to pay attention to as well. AMY: Definitely. Thank you so much, Rob. I really appreciate it. ROB: Thank you, Amy. Be well. Bye. AMY: You too. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

ceo amazon founders google washington seattle microsoft killers fortune clients picture seo bill gates ebooks material boeing penguin powerpoint panda exhausted hubspot discovery channel embrace change converge pied piper james altucher inspire others jquery keep learning crud mary meeker rob it amy it amy you rob how amy thank killer infographics

On Trusting Little Kids To Eat

Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2021 25:45

Welcome to Burnt Toast, a newsletter from Virginia Sole-Smith, which you can read about here. If you like what you read today, please subscribe and/or share it with someone else who would too.This week, I’m trying out my first audio newsletter! If that’s a confusing concept for you, I get it. Technology is so extra. Think of this as a podcast in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now, or you can add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever. And just in case you don’t like listening, or that’s not accessible to you, I’m including a full transcript (edited lightly for clarity) below. I’d love to know what you think of this conversation, and of the whole audio newsletter idea — should we do more? (Leave a comment or hit reply to let me know.) I really miss my old podcast (more on that below), and I’d love to bring you more of my conversations with favorite researchers, activists, weight-inclusive healthcare providers and other writers I love.For now, here’s my conversation with Amy Palanjian, the creator of Yummy Toddler Food. She answers your questions about picky 1-year-olds, ice cream-shaming 3-year-olds, raising intuitive eaters with food allergies, and more. Virginia Hello, and welcome to the first audio version of Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a feminist writer and author of The Eating Instinct. And joining me today is Amy Palanjian, the creator of Yummy Toddler Food. Amy, welcome! Amy Hello! Virginia Thank you for being here with me. For those of you who don’t know, Amy and I are also best friends. And we are co-hosts of the currently-on-hiatus podcast Comfort Food. But Amy is also many other things. So Amy, why don’t you tell people about yourself and your work? Amy Sure. So my primary work right now is on YummyToddlerFood.com. I do recipes, feeding advice, sanity — sanity for parents with little kids...Virginia I thought you were gonna say “sanity” full stop. And I was like, that’s amazing.Amy I wish! I am also the author of a kids cookbook called Busy Little Hands: Food Play. And what else? I have three little kids. I live outside of Des Moines, in Iowa. And I’m, you know, so tired of cooking like everybody else.Virginia And she’s not getting a dog because we were just talking about that and about how I have a dog that maybe I shouldn’t have. But she’s smarter than me. So I mean, we used to do this podcast Comfort Food, and we hope to someday do it again, when there’s not a pandemic, and we have more reliable childcare than we have in our lives these days. But if you guys like this conversation, and you want more of me and Amy, you can find, I don’t know, like 80 episodes or so, that we did over at ComfortFoodPodcast.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I’ll do that plug. And of course, all of Amy’s work is YummyToddlerFood.com. So the reason I wanted to have Amy on is because lots of folks have been sending in questions that are very small-child-specific. And while I have parented small children, I don’t consider myself an expert at feeding them. But Amy, not only parents them, but also, you know, has helped thousands and thousands of parents figure this stuff out. So the first question we’re going to answer is one that I think every parent has, at some point, which is: My baby used to eat everything. And now at 13 months, 15 months, 19 months, it seems like she’s dropping foods every week. Am I really supposed to just let her decide how much to eat?Amy Well, you don’t have to... but you maybe should. Okay, so this is an incredibly common question. I think the thing that most parents don’t realize is that 1-year-olds grow less slowly than they did as babies. And so they are naturally less hungry, even though they are more mobile and all over the place. And so your baby, as a baby might have eaten all sorts of things, because their hunger and just what else was going on in their life was very different. And now as a toddler, they may be less hungry, and more interested in all the other things that they now realize they can do. And so parents often see this as picky eating, when, if they’re just less hungry, they’re not going to eat as much or as many foods. And it can sort of snowball, if you then put yourself in the position of trying to figure out what they’ll eat. Because even if they’re not actually hungry, they may still eat some favorite snacky foods because those are easy to eat. And they’re comforting, they taste really good. But they may not eat other foods that you want them to eat. And so then you’re like narrowing the list of foods that they may eat. So what I recommend instead is just continuing with the Division Of Responsibility, which, if anyone follows Virginia, you probably know what this is. But it’s where it’s clearly delineated what your job is, at meals, your job is to decide what’s served, your job is to decide when the meal is and where it happens. And then we leave the kids to decide which foods and how much of them to eat, if at all. And by doing that, you really free yourself up from worrying about how many bites they took. Because as you know, as an adult, if anyone tells you how much to eat, or ask you to eat more or less, you’re going to have an immediate emotional reaction that is very disconnected from actual hunger. And so the less we can make that happen with this age, in particular, when all they really want is control, the better. And I think the saner everyone will feel during mealtimes. That may mean that your kids eat a lot less than you expect. But it also means that you’re not going to be fighting with them to get them to take a certain amount of bites at every meal.Virginia Which is exhausting and crazy-making. Amy And I think too, if you can consider what they’re eating over the course of a week or even two weeks, it’s probably going to look a lot better than what they didn’t eat for lunch today. Because they may eat a ton of breakfast and then not eat a lot of dinner. Or every other Tuesday, they may eat seven meals. There’s no one right way for kids to eat. And I think a lot of times, we’re trying to force them into this mode of eating certain amounts of food groups at every meal. And that’s just not the way that kids naturally eat.Virginia Yeah. And this phase can go on for many years, we should say, too. I mean, I have a 7-year-old, you have an 8-year-old, and we still see, you know, not this exactly. But versions of this from time to time. So don’t feel bad, if you’re listening and have an older kiddo still in this phase. Amy Well, and at least as they get older, they can verbalize more. And you can suss out what the true issue is. With 1-year-olds, it’s really hard because even if they can talk, they cannot always use the right words, or explain things exactly. And so it’s the combination of all of those challenges that make 1-year-olds tricky. And also, it can just be really jarring for parents to give their kid dinner, and then they just don’t want any of it. Virginia Yes. It is super maddening. For sure. Okay, that is really helpful. And for anyone who’s like Division Of Responsibility?! I will link to some stuff in the transcript. So those words that I just said, probably have a link on them if you’re reading this, and you can learn more. So okay, next question. And this, I think, is going to kind of build on what we were just talking about: How do you get kids to eat the stuff their body needs without them thinking all the "other stuff" is bad? One of mine won’t eat veggies unless I sing each body part saying thank you, like her eyes sing thank you when she eats a carrot.I don’t mean to be laughing at the mom who sent in this question. But I do feel like you’re making your meals harder than they need to be? Or perhaps just more musical. Yeah. Amy over to you!Amy So my initial response is: How do you know exactly how much their body needs? Does anyone know exactly how much anyone’s body needs? Virginia It’s not X number of carrots achieve eyesight. Amy Right. I think when we see portion size recommendations, and we see charts, and we see plates with servings on them, we assume that that is the perfect amount that our child needs. But it may or may not be. And so a lot of times we’re chasing these very arbitrary amounts that may or may or may not be what our kids actually need. So I think it’s very difficult in the culture that we live in, to not feel this pressure. Because we’re getting it from all sides. Like all day long, I feel like my inbox is filled with pitches for kids products that are like going to do all of you know, all of the things.Virginia Get them into Harvard and make a ton of money. Amy You know, I see products developed by neuroscientists. But food doesn’t really work that way. And so I think, honestly, if you just don’t worry about that, and you serve a range of foods, with a range of flavors, and a range of textures, and colors, you’re going to get all of that stuff in what you’re offering your kids without having to do math, without having to count grams, or percentages of vitamin A. And it’s much more pleasant to, to come at it from the side of, “food is delicious, in all of these many ways.” How can I prepare this in a way that that’s easy for my kids to eat? That has a flavor that they like, and that I want to eat, too? You don’t need a master’s degree in nutrition science. I think we’ve like lost the plot a little bit on what matters, sort of big picture when we’re feeding our kids. Because this anxiety is not helpful to anyone. It’s not helpful to that mom, I bet she’s not enjoying her meals, and it’s certainly not helpful for that kiddo. And those nutrition messages for little kids are incredibly confusing. And I just think are beyond comprehension for the age group.Virginia Agreed, agreed. That said, if the carrot song was really good, I kind of want to hear it? But yeah, I feel like, unless you’re, I don’t know, very musically inclined, this is maybe more work than you need to be doing. But I think what this question kind of also gets at, and that you’ve touched on a little bit, is that we have this idea of how our kids should eat, which is not based in the reality of how kids really eat or how most families can really manage to eat. And it really mostly comes from diet culture, right? It comes from, as you said, these people sending press releases for crazy products, or the influencers we see on social media claiming that this is the perfect way to eat. So can you connect the dots on some of the subtle ways you see diet culture showing up but family mealtimes?Amy Sure. A big part of it is the control. It’s the question of, can I really just let my child eat fill in the blank, and really trust them to eat according to their own hunger. It's the doubt. We just don’t believe that our kids are capable of this. We’ve been told that we’re not capable of it. And so why on earth would we trust tiny little kids to do something that we can’t do? And so that’s one thing. Another is the pressure to have, quote, unquote, balanced meals. I remember seeing a post that was like, “an apple is not a balanced snack,” and you have to add all these other things. And that’s great. But that doesn’t mean your kid’s going to want to eat all those other things…Virginia Or sometimes you just want an apple, right?Amy And that’s not a bad thing. Just because you don’t eat a protein at every meal or snack, does it mean that you’ve done something wrong? I think about all of those subtle messages about the way in which we’re serving foods, that some things are not right, or that some things are not good enough. I mean marketing, yes, is one thing. But I sort of think that the way that we talk to each other about food is even worse. It’s the way that someone in your family, their relationship with food, might influence you, in ways that are less overt than a message on a package about it not being junk food or something. It’s much harder. That’s sort of a depressing road to go down, because it’s harder to deal with. But I think the subtlety of those messages that we’re hearing, just in our day-to-day life, are really hard to block out. And they really make feeding kids confusing when it doesn’t have to be.Virginia Yes. I think, as parents, we often need to sit with: Am I really worried about my kids intake here? Or am I worried about how I’m being perceived as their parent because we tie so much of our self-worth as a parent to their eating performance in a way that’s problematic. And if it’s more that you’re like, “Grandma’s gonna make a comment” or “my friends’ kids all eat XYZ and my kids don’t.” I think that’s a good way of being able to tell that this is more of a cultural noise thing.Amy I mean, even just think about — well, this isn’t gonna apply to you, because I know you don’t care about this the way a lot of people do. But let’s say, you have a meal, like a dinner, and there’s no vegetable —Virginia It is Wednesday at my house. Continue.AmyFor many, many people, the immediate feeling is that you’ve somehow failed, you somehow didn’t do it right. And that meal is incomplete. But that’s not true. I think, if we’re trying to check off boxes of “I got my protein in today, I got all of these like macronutrients,” I just think we're going to make ourselves crazy. VirginiaEspecially with kids who, as you said, their intake varies over a day over a week, like this might not be a day when they’re eating vegetables, right? Amy I have sometimes have to almost force myself to just give them mac and cheese. And to just prove to myself that everyone is fine. Sometimes you just need to see it to believe that it’s fine. And then the next day, your kids might eat all the broccoli. You know, there’s other messaging around like feeding babies, where if they eat certain foods as babies, that will [supposedly] prevent picky eating, or if you feed them a certain way with solids, you’ll skip the picky eating phase all together. And it’s not true. And it’s incredibly damaging to parents who have more challenging kids, because it just sets you up to feel like you did something wrong.Virginia Yeah, totally. I think that’s so true. It’s really sad. Okay, this question is maybe a little bit diet culture and a little bit manners, and I just didn’t even really know what to say, so I’m making you answer it. Okay. She writes: Before COVID, I met my boyfriend’s cousins and their children for the first time. It was a birthday party celebration with lots of food. I had a piece of cake and was also offered a packaged ice cream sandwich, which I accepted. [Virginia: That sounds like a great combination.] The 3-year-old daughter of one of the cousins took it from me to put back in the freezer, because I already had a piece of cake and two desserts wasn’t healthy for me. I was pretty shocked but didn’t insist on eating the ice cream sandwich. I haven’t seen them since. But I expect we’ll get together late this summer when we’re all vaccinated. If a situation like this happens again, how would you suggest I handle it?Amy Maybe you invite them over and have a dessert bar, and everyone gets to eat as much as they want? Just, take it to the other extreme? I don’t know. I mean, I totally understand like, in the moment, that would be difficult to react to if you had no inkling that it was coming. Virginia Yeah, if a 3-year-old just stole your ice cream sandwich and also shamed you for it. Yeah.Amy I think, if it were to happen again, you can say something like, “These both sound really delicious to me, I’m going to eat them!” The End. Or “This is what I’m having for dessert!” The End.Virginia I like that you’re making it about your own choice versus like, needing to sort of chastise the child who, let’s be honest, is being pretty rude in that moment.Amy Mind your own business?Virginia Yeah. But you don’t want to make it into a parenting thing. You don’t have to parent that child around this issue.Amy Right. I think that that’s where you would probably get into a very murky territory. But if you can just claim it as, “This is mine. It is not yours, and you don’t need to worry about it.” I mean, then that goes with anything that’s on your plate, or your life, or whatever. Virginia So many of us are thinking about family gatherings that haven’t happened in a long time now. And I hear a lot of folks worried about, “my mother always makes this comment about what I eat,” or other relatives weighing in on things. So it’s helpful to just be able to set that boundary of what’s on my plate is my business. Amy Yeah, I always like to do a very short sentence, and then change the subject. So, “This is what I’m having. What color are your shoes?”Virginia That works for mothers and 3-year-olds. Amy Because 3-year-olds are really great at redirection. You can totally change the direction of their attention.Virginia It’s so true. Just ask a completely random other question.Amy “Where is your baseball bat?”Virginia “What are you being for Halloween?” Never mind that it’s summertime. Yes, absolutely. That’s really great. For parents — it’s hard to give advice for parents in that situation. But I mean, as a general rule, like, do you feel like it’s important to communicate to your kids that we don’t comment on other people’s eating habits? And is that something you are aware of teaching them? Or has it not really come up?Amy So we don’t really have comments at our table about the amounts that other people are eating. But we do have a lot of the “that looks yucky” type of comment. So we do regularly talk about how, you know, everyone gets to decide what they think is delicious. “This tastes really delicious to me.” And my 4-year-old will now use that language of “This tastes...” Usually “this tastes yucky to me,” which, at least she’s owning that as a specific thing. She’s not casting the blame more broadly. Because you want your kids to be able to go to school and not be judging other people’s food. So I think definitely working on that a little bit at the table in your own house when it comes up can be helpful. I mean, we’ve had like, only Christmas meals with extended families. We have not eaten anything with anyone else in a long time.Virginia Period. This is reminding me, I’m trying to teach my kids to say “This is not my favorite,” rather than “I hate it” and putting their heads down and sobbing as sometimes happens. And I realized the other day, my 3-year-old is mishearing me because she sat down and said, “This is my favorite! I’m not eating it.” And it’s about my pasta sauce. So it really hurts. Because my sauce is amazing. But yeah, “This is my favorite! I’m not eating it today.”Amy I do often have to remind the kids that not every meal will be their favorite and that it is okay for sometimes it to be mommy’s favorite, or other people’s favorite. And that doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the meal or that it’s bad, but we can eat the fruit on the side or whatever. Virginia Yes. There will always be something you can eat, but it might not be your favorite tonight. Yeah, I’ve recently announced that Tuesday is the night when I cook whatever I want because I felt like, we were getting into a slippery slope of all the meals being just their favorites. Which — you should serve your children’s favorite foods. That’s not a bad thing. But you know, Monday night is pesto pasta, that’s their absolute favorite. And Mondays are tiring, and I don’t want any fights at dinner on Mondays. And Wednesdays is taco night, which is their other favorite. And so I was like, you know what, Tuesdays are going to be whatever I pick. And it’s going to change week to week and they don’t love it. But they’re coping.Amy If I’m making one of my favorites, I almost always serve flat bread on the side. Because then I know that they have nothing to complain about because they like bread. Yeah, and usually the things that I want to make myself have Indian sauces or things, and so a flatbread kind of makes sense. Virginia I keep a lot of packages of dinner rolls in the freezer for this purpose. Other than occasionally, they get sick of the favorite. That really screws you. But anyway, that’s a whole other thing. My kids are quick to fall out of love with their favorites and have new favorites. It’s hard to keep up. Okay, the last question is: How do I do Division Of Responsibility when my child has food allergies? This question has come in a bunch of different ways. I’m not going to read them all, because they’re all very specific. But I think what people are generally struggling with is, you’ve got this one big, scary food your kid can’t have. And somehow that feels like it’s blurring the lines of this responsibility question.Amy I mean, I guess there could be an issue, if like your kid was allergic to dairy, but you still kept dairy in the house? How do you not make them feel excluded? Is that the question?Virginia I don’t exactly know what the intent of it is. But I think it’s probably something like that, like, “Can we serve ice cream, with dinner or whatever, if one kid can’t eat it?”Amy I mean, I think you need to have a replacement for it, you need to somehow make the playing field fair. So you need to lean on other types of things that the kid can eat, like, make a list of all the delicious things that that everybody in the family can eat, put it on the fridge, where you can look at it. And then maybe like, when your kid is at school or at daycare, that’s when you can eat some of the other foods that they can’t eat. But I think make them feel like they are part of the family. And they’re a part of your food experience as much as possible, rather than making it their issue. And I think a lot of families are really good at this. I mean, there are so many products now that make this so much easier than even just a few years ago. So I think you just do Division Of Responsibility in the same way. But you have to just rethink what the foods are a little bit. Virginia That makes sense. Often the tone coming across in these emails, and certainly this is something I remember dealing with when my older daughter had more medical food issues, is: Often there’s a lot of anxiety about growth with a kid who’s got a lot of allergies and whether they’re eating enough, And so maybe this is also about, “Can I trust their fullness?” And I feel like, for the most part, the answer is absolutely yes. You can still trust your child to know their hunger and fullness even if they can’t eat certain foods. Right?Amy Yes. If there is a medically indicated reason that the kid can’t feel their hunger or their appetite levels are skewed because of medication or some other issue, you want to talk to your doctor and find a feeding therapist who is trained in those specific things. Because navigating that alone is going to be incredibly challenging. But otherwise, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be able to trust your child with whatever the food is, whether or not it has nuts or doesn’t have nuts. And you know, I think on the growth issue, this is a whole other topic. But if your child is growing, even if it’s not like leaps and bounds, if they are growing, if they’re meeting their milestones, if they seem happy, if they seem like themselves, you probably should just leave them alone. If they’re dropping off of their growth curve, and your doctor is really concerned, that’s a different issue. But just because you’re at the lower end of the growth scale, or the higher end, doesn’t mean that there’s a problem.Virginia Yes, absolutely. And I’ll put some links to folks that Amy and I both really trust if anyone is looking for feeding therapy help along those lines. [Check out: Helping Your Child With Extreme Picky Eating, Thrive By Spectrum Pediatrics, and Responsive Feeding Therapy.]But yeah, I think the fundamental message of even if this is a kid who’s got certain foods they can’t eat, and maybe that means you’re worried about their overall nutritional makeup (because you’re having to skip out on certain food groups) — still, working on how to trust their hunger and fullness cues is going to be super, super important. You know, maybe even more important for a kid who’s got to navigate food in a slightly more fraught way. Amy Yes. And if anyone’s looking for like specific substitutions that you can’t find it just email me and I’ll poll my Instagram community because someone recommended a dairy-free parmesan today that I didn’t know about. Virginia That’s awesome. And check out Amy’s website, because all her recipes always have notes about substitutions you can make if you need to take out a common food allergen. She’s amazing at figuring this out.Amy Well not 100%. But I try! Virginia Well, okay, you aren’t 100% amazing. Maybe not 100% of the recipes have this, but I have noticed this as a recurring theme. Amy, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Again, I’ll put links in the transcript to YummyToddlerFood, and to our old podcast archives for anyone who wants to go down that rabbit hole with us. Amy Thanks for having me!You’re reading Burnt Toast, a newsletter by Virginia Sole-Smith. Virginia is a feminist writer, and author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. Comments? Questions? Email Virginia. If a friend forwarded this to you and you want to subscribe, sign up here: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

christmas halloween technology harvard indian iowa trusting grandma des moines xyz comfort food little kids before covid burnt toast virginia sole smith amy you amy palanjian yummy toddler food amy well amy so eating instinct virginia it

Amy Gordona, CMO Kestra Financial, Part 2

Marketing BS with Edward Nevraumont

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2021 21:39

My guest today is Amy Gordona CMO of Kestra Financial. Amy had an incredible career in more traditional financial services before moving to Kestra. Kestra is a unique company which provides a platform for independent financial services professionals. This is part 2 covering the Kestra business.This is the free edition of Marketing BS. Subscribers were sent Part 1 yesterday, as well as this week's essay (on early vs late funnel metrics and the link between COVID tracking and marketing). You can subscribe here:TranscriptEdward: This is part two of my interview with Amy Gordona. Today, we're going to explore her experience as CMO of Kestra Financial. Amy, can you start by explaining what Kestra Financial is?Amy: Kestra Financial is a wealth management platform that supports independent financial advisors. We're sometimes more traditionally known as a broker dealer. An independent financial advisor is an entrepreneur who runs their own wealth management or financial planning business. We supply the backbone for an independent financial advisor. We supply the technology that they use, we supply the investment product selection that they give to their clients, and we provide the compliant support that they need in order to operate their business.Edward: The type of business Kestra is, has it been around for 100 years? Has there been financial advisors who have used platforms like this?Amy: You can probably think about Merrill Lynch, think about companies like UBS. All of them have operated broker dealers from back in the time. If you think about the term, you needed a broker in order to transact your business. That broker usually sat at a firm like Merrill Lynch or UBS and they used a trading platform to transact your business. That's how that business got started.Edward: How is Kestra different from Merrill Lynch or UBS?Amy: Specifically, Kestra Financial caters to the independent financial advisor, meaning we support entrepreneurs. A company like Merrill Lynch or UBS, their advisors work under their brand.At Kestra Financial, we support the independent financial advisors' own brand. You, Ed, would have your own brand. You would have your own shingle outside your brick and mortar location. The clients are yours. They are not Kestra Financials'. They're your clients. We merely provide the support that you need—the services, resources, and support that you need to serve your clients well. That's how we're different. We don't dictate how financial advisors do their business, how they facilitate their business with their clients. We merely support their right of choice, their right for choice in serving their clients.Edward: The difference would be if I'm a restaurant owner, I could go and start my own restaurant. Then, presumably use some sort of tool to help me do that restaurant. Or, I go to McDonald's and say, hey, give me the whole kit caboodle. In both cases, I'm running my own restaurant. One is a franchisee and one is an independent operator. You guys are servicing the individual operators rather than the franchisees.Amy: That's exactly right. We support and advocate for what they need in order to make them more successful. We're a B2B business, we're not a B2C business.Edward: The people who come to you, what were they doing before? If I was a financial advisor and wanted to do my own shop, was that even an option before? How would I do that?Amy: An independent financial advisor has to affiliate with a broker dealer. We don't like to refer to ourselves as a broker-dealer because we don't just supply broker-dealer services. Like I stated previously, we supply technology, we supply practice management, thought leadership, and compliance oversight. We are full service for a financial advisor. If a financial advisor didn't want to affiliate with a broker-dealer, they wanted to take on all of those services, and all of that compliance compliance risk themselves, they would have to operate their own independent RIA or they would be a captive financial advisor like they are for Merrill Lynch or UBS.Edward: Got it. You sit in between the two options of like, hey, do it all yourself or go to UBS and use someone else's brand. You let them have their own brand without having to do all the heavy lifting of doing their own brand. In email marketing, you're like the substack, or I can have my own brand but they run the platform for me.Amy: That's exactly right. I think one of the things that separates an independent financial advisor from someone who wants to operate within Merrill Lynch, UBS, or go on at their own is exactly that. They want to take some of the risk off the table, they want to take some of the business management off the table, but they still want to be able to make their own choices and run their own business. It's exactly that. It's a happy medium with all the support you need, but not without all of the risk. Everyone knows that financial services is a highly regulated industry and it should be. End investors deserve to have oversight over how people are managing their money. Kestra Financial provides those umbrella services that help protect end investors, but also help financial advisors be able to have all of the resources they need to provide solid financial planning services to their clients.Edward: Kestra is actually a holding company for four different brands, is that right?Amy: Kestra Holdings is a holding company for four different independent brands. Kestra Financial is one of those brands, that's the company I was originally hired to support. H. Beck is the second brand that we own and they are also a broker-dealer. Arden Trust is a personal trust company that we acquired. Then, the fourth company is Bluespring Wealth. That is an arm of the company that we launched about a year and a half ago. That arm of the company focuses on acquiring independent wealth management businesses in the industry.Edward: Kestra, see if we get all these straight, is a kind of business we've been talking about back. H. Beck is the same thing with a different moniker.Amy: Yeah, it's the same business. It's also a broker-dealer, but Kestra Financial and H. Beck have a slightly different target market, so to speak. Both independent financial advisors, but a little bit of a different segment of the industry. They are differentiated in that way.Edward: They're differentiated from a marketing perspective, not a product perspective.Amy: Correct. They're differentiated from a marketing perspective. Absolutely. Edward: Then, Arden Trust, that's a completely different business.Amy: Completely different business. They market personal trust products to independent financial advisors and to financial advisors. Financial advisers along the spectrum of wealth planning for their clients come across estate planning needs. Part of those estate planning needs are needing personal trusts. Arden Trust provides the vehicle for those trusts that financial advisers use for their clients.Edward: Is that a vertical integration play? Is that the idea that, hey, now you already have these relationships, you might as well sell them more stuff and so you get the stuff to sell them?Amy: We like to view it as an ecosystem in the sense that, yes, if you have an independent financial advisor and as we just spoke about a few minutes ago, they need resources in order to have a wealth of options for their clients and their clients' needs. Part of those options are estate planning needs. When they come across the need for trust services, it's a better position to be in, as we feel, to have those services available to our advisors as part of the ecosystem.Edward: Then, Bluespring Wealth is you basically owning the financial advising. Is Bluespring Wealth just effectively a client of Kestra? Like, your own biggest client?Amy: Actually, no. However, that segment of our business arose out of a need in the industry. Anyone who starts to look at the trends in the financial services industry will start to see that many of these financial advisors who built their businesses over the last 20 years are baby boomers. They are now entering their 60s. Some of them are older, some of them a little younger. There's a gap in the industry. That gap in the industry is called succession. Many of these folks that have built their businesses don't necessarily have a child that's going to take over their business, they don't have a younger partner, or a younger advisor who has the capital to buy their business from them. The valuations of these businesses are strong right now. These entrepreneurs have built successful businesses and with a solid client base who they have very close relationships with.The succession options for these entrepreneurs are limited and they need help. What's that saying? The cobbler that doesn't know how to fix issues or has worn shoes? A lot of these entrepreneurs just have not worked on their business in terms of succession planning. Bluespring Wealth is a succession plan option. We have the capital to buy these businesses, but continue to foster the relationship, keep the entrepreneur, the principal, or the owner in place so that they can continue to have the relationship with their clients, and we can continue to grow their business—help them grow their businesses.Edward: Is that how it all fits together? Is it all just different pieces that all drive that core business? Each piece is profitable on its own, but it becomes more profitable when they integrate?Amy: You've nailed it. That's exactly right.Edward: It all comes down to initially acquiring agents or acquiring customers' forecast financial. Is that the key entry point?Amy: That's the key entry point. I think what makes our B2B marketing unique is that while you are selling pieces of a widget, so to speak, we have a technology stack and that technology stack is innovative. It is a valuable part of what the financial advisor needs. Again, we have a wealth management platform and we offer a choice of investment products that is valuable to the financial advisor. We have compliance oversight and very business friendly compliance that's very valuable to a financial advisor. We really are selling ourselves in so much of this sales process. If you are going to rely on a company to help be the backbone of your business, it's not just about the technology and the widgets within the company. It's about who is serving you. It's about the people that you interact with and it's about the culture that it helps create for you in running your business.A lot of what we're selling is the firm itself, the people, as well as the resources. That's not easy all the time. I don't know how much your audience knows about this side of the financial services business, but for an independent financial adviser to move their business to a new company is a lot of work. It's not easy. It takes a lot of different pieces of paperwork and a lot of time with their clients explaining why they're moving and why the better resources that are in Kestra Financial are better for their business. In order to convince someone to go through that, what I like to call pain to get to a better place, it can be a very long sales cycle. It can be very much selling yourselves, ourselves as much as it is selling the pieces of resources that we offer.Edward: Who are you selling to? Are you selling to the advisor who's at UBS looking to put up his own shingle? Or has their own shingle already and wants to get rid of all the back office work that they don't want to be doing anymore?Amy: Both. We absolutely sell to both. We absolutely support both models. If you don't have your own shingle, you're a part of a wire house firm, you want to own your own shingle, and you want help doing that, we provide the support to do that, including the real estate. We handle that entire transition for you, get you all set up, and ready to go. If you already have your own shingle, that is our main support lever that we have. Edward: You're saying that the larger market is people that are already on their own shingle and they want to take off a lot of that effort. Amy: Correct. Edward: It's easier to convince somebody to do what they're doing now, only make it easier than it is to convince them to do something new.Amy: Right. For us, it's all about upgrading the resources that they have. So many financial advisors that have their own shingle have been with a firm for a long time. Now, the technology that's supporting them is out of date or what they want to do to build their business just isn't an option because the firm they're with doesn't have the support that they need. Kestra Financial is an upgrade for them in terms of the resources that are going to support them.Edward: Are they out looking for a better solution or do you have to go to them and explain that, hey, there's a better solution out there?Amy: I think it goes both ways. I think there are some that absolutely have reached their breaking point on a specific pain point. That pain point can be technology, it can be the compliance support they're receiving, it can be the investment choice of products that they have, it can be the client, or the customer service levels that they receive when they need help from someone at the firm. Usually, there is a specific pain point that drives the financial advisor to want to look at new firms that can provide relief to that pain. That is the best situation to be in. If you can identify that pain point, then we can really move down the sales cycle into the sales cycle faster. It also works where an advisor almost doesn't know that they have pain until we show them that there's something better. Once we show them that there's something better, we can then start to demonstrate that you had pain you didn't even know and we can relieve it.Edward: Those first types, the people that identify their own pain, I assume you're collecting them on Google paid search and organic search. They're going to type in, like, solve my problem. You appear to have the results at the right time, correct?Amy: Yup. We're deploying a persona-based, what I just referred to, pain point-based awareness tactics and also our organic search, our paid search, all figures around those pain points, looking for better technology, who's the number one broker-dealer, be a part of a culture that helps your business grow. We try to build personas around those pain points and then build tactics to support content that demonstrates how we can relieve that pain point.Edward: Rather than someone searching for backend support, they're looking for specific issues like, I need a new bookkeeper or I need a new timekeeping manager. You basically target those individual pain points and say, hey, not only do we solve that problem. We can come in, take over everything for you, and take away all your pain points.Amy: Correct. I'll give an example of a consideration, some consideration as we ran with testimonials about those pain points. If compliance is a pain point for you, we ran testimonial ads where some of our existing advisors are talking about the support that we give. When it comes to technology, same thing. We've run ads and tied those ads to pieces of content, tied those ads to search topics, to search terms, all having to do with how we are better at that particular pain point.Edward: Obviously, Google, but are you running them on financial services publications that these people read?Amy: Exactly. Trade publications and financial services are very heavily read by all financial advisors. wealthmanagement.com, financial-advisor.com, investmentnews.com, they have huge followings that they've built up over years of being very respected and trusted sources of new rules and regulation, best practice management—all types of resources and topics. Those trusted resources are where financial advisors go to read their news of the day. Using those trade publications and investing some of our marketing dollars in those trade publications is almost imperative.Edward: Are they effective display ads, or are you getting advertorial? How are you getting people to actually see and read these ads when they're going and reading their daily media?Amy: Both display, newsletters, paid content, and promoted content that's in both on their sites and in their newsletters. Doing podcasts, having members of our team do podcasts with some of their editorial staff, engaging in bylines and contributing pieces of thought leadership to those trade publications are all part of the things that we do to partner.Edward: How do you get their attention, though? How do you get them to interrupt them? Like, if I'm looking at Facebook, I get interrupted right in my news feed. That ad unit on Facebook is really, really effective. The targeting is one thing, but the ad unit is so effective. Are there equivalent ad units when you're in these financial publication services that can get someone's attention, they don't just drift over?Amy: There are. What I have found, there are ad units that can get your attention. You can buy pop-up models that don't go away until you x out of them. You can buy a run of the page where you're basically surrounding the entire page, where you're sponsoring something. What I have found though, too, is when you're running your own business, you're really interested in ways that you can grow your top line. You're really interested in ways that you can be more effective quicker, and make more money. An entrepreneur wants to make more money. What I found to be secondarily just as effective is having the right content. Yes, you can run ad units that are attention grabbing, have the whole page that then an adviser can't miss. You can have the right page search terms. When you start to offer an advisor real valuable content about how to effectively make them more money, be better at what they do, serve their clients better, I find that our engagement has been strong. With trade publications, you have a lot of opportunity to offer that content, whether it's part of their paid promotion or it's part of conversations that you would have like we're having today, that's where the trust is built with the financial advisor and where the proof is in the pudding, so to speak.Edward: I've often argued that product companies are becoming more and more like media companies because that's how you get the attention. You need to have the person pay attention to the content. The way to do that is to create good content. You can only hack the subject line so many times before someone starts ignoring you if you don't have good content behind it. How long until you guys start a fifth company that's actually creating content for financial advisors?Amy: I just had a conversation with a colleague where I said we missed it. We could have been billionaires. All we had to do was figure out how to start a company that creates a turnkey content and lead gen engine for financial independent financial advisors. I'm talking B2C, helping financial advisors find more clients and get engaged with more clients. I think I could have retired already to Bora Bora.Independent financial advisors, again, going back to their profile, they built their business brick by brick. These are people that worked hard, like shaking hands, going to little league games, and getting involved in the community. These are people that care about their community, but they're not necessarily marketing geniuses in terms of how to evolve with the times, become more digital, get their website looking spiffy. Actually, that's part of the services Kestra offers—helping them with those marketing tactics. However, if I could have figured out how to start that one company that put a turnkey package together to help every financial advisor do that, I might be doing the podcast that you're doing today.Edward: Amy, thank you so much for being on the show. Before you go, tell me about your quakebook and how it changed the way you think about the world.Amy: My quakebook was a book called Dopesick. Have you ever heard of it? Edward: I have not.Amy: Dopesick is actually the story of how OxyContin became such a problem in the United States. It looks at the corporate greed that drove painkiller production to the place where it is today and the devastation that it's had on many Americans. I'm a fairly optimistic glass half full—believing in the good of people type of person. The facts that are laid out about the purposefulness that Big Pharma specifically went, the plans that they dropped to specifically drive pain medication into parts of the country where they knew people were working hard jobs, suffering economically, and suffering health wise was borderline sociopathic.I always knew there was an element of that in big businesses. By the way, I still believe that there are lots of great big businesses out there and lots of great people who do great things. The cost, the way that the scales tipped in this particular case where money and profits became more important than anything else, it really made me think twice.It's part of the reason why I like working for a company where it's a smaller company in the grand scheme of things and where I feel that I have an impact because that book did it. It shook me in terms of where things can get out of control, how people will just go along with something, how so many people went along with this plan knowing it was damaging human lives, and the destruction that it did to too many people. So many lives have been lost over pure greed, pure business greed.Edward: I think there's something really nice about working for a company that you feel proud of and you think is doing a good in the world. I think it'd be very hard to work for a company that you don't believe in, too.Amy: That is a lot of driving force that keeps me excited today. At the end of the day, people like my parents need financial help. They need financial planning. I grew up in a middle class household. My father worked hard every day in a blue collar job. He worked his butt off but needed help in order to be able to retire. People that we support provide that help to people like my parents. I'm really proud of that.Edward: Thank you. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate your time today. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

covid-19 united states google americans financial trade mcdonald independent b2b cmo beck b2c big pharma ubs ria merrill lynch oxycontin dopesick bora bora kestra amy you

【0208】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

jam years old today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2021 6:37

吉米老师前言：today是今天，但today years old绝不是问你今天多少岁了哦。快和吉米老师学习有关时间的地道口语吧。在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。

【0208】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

jam today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2021 6:37

吉米老师前言：today是今天，但today years old绝不是问你今天多少岁了哦。快和吉米老师学习有关时间的地道口语吧。在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。

【0208】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

jam years old today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2021 6:37

吉米老师前言：today是今天，但today years old绝不是问你今天多少岁了哦。快和吉米老师学习有关时间的地道口语吧。在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。

【0208】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

jam years old today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2021 6:37

吉米老师前言：today是今天，但today years old绝不是问你今天多少岁了哦。快和吉米老师学习有关时间的地道口语吧。在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。

【01.11】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

english jam years old today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2021 6:41

在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。今天的知识是不是很容易就学会了呢？别忘了在评论区提交作业哦。今日作业这些短语和句子你都理解对了吗？最后留给同学们一个小作业：I was today years old when I realized that our English teacher is her aunt.这句话应该怎么翻译呢？同学们可以在右下角留言区写下你的答案哦, 老师会亲自点评~免费送《生活大爆炸》中英文全集吉米老师今天给大家送福利啦！免费赠送风靡全球轻松幽默的美国生活喜剧《生活大爆炸1-12季》，全部都有中英文字幕 , 非常有趣的学英语原版美剧视频，你值得拥有！一共 2999 份，先到先得，送完即止（请一定要快哦）！怎么获得？添加微信：ohk008，发送文字生活大爆炸免费获得！

【01.11】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

english jam years old today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2021 6:41

在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。今天的知识是不是很容易就学会了呢？别忘了在评论区提交作业哦。今日作业这些短语和句子你都理解对了吗？最后留给同学们一个小作业：I was today years old when I realized that our English teacher is her aunt.这句话应该怎么翻译呢？同学们可以在右下角留言区写下你的答案哦, 老师会亲自点评~免费送《生活大爆炸》中英文全集吉米老师今天给大家送福利啦！免费赠送风靡全球轻松幽默的美国生活喜剧《生活大爆炸1-12季》，全部都有中英文字幕 , 非常有趣的学英语原版美剧视频，你值得拥有！一共 2999 份，先到先得，送完即止（请一定要快哦）！怎么获得？添加微信：ohk008，发送文字生活大爆炸免费获得！

【01.11】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

english jam years old today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2021 6:41

在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。今天的知识是不是很容易就学会了呢？别忘了在评论区提交作业哦。今日作业这些短语和句子你都理解对了吗？最后留给同学们一个小作业：I was today years old when I realized that our English teacher is her aunt.这句话应该怎么翻译呢？同学们可以在右下角留言区写下你的答案哦, 老师会亲自点评~免费送《生活大爆炸》中英文全集吉米老师今天给大家送福利啦！免费赠送风靡全球轻松幽默的美国生活喜剧《生活大爆炸1-12季》，全部都有中英文字幕 , 非常有趣的学英语原版美剧视频，你值得拥有！一共 2999 份，先到先得，送完即止（请一定要快哦）！怎么获得？添加微信：ohk008，发送文字生活大爆炸免费获得！

【01.11】老外常说的"today years old"是啥意思？

english jam today years old amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2021 6:41

在日常生活中，你肯定也经历过这样的时刻。有些事情明明不是什么秘密，很多人早就知道了，你却是今天才知道。这种情况要怎么用英语表示呢？可能很多同学的答案会是I know it today。today years old 今天才知道；今天才体验过其实，更地道的表达应该是today years old，意思就是我今天刚知道和我今天才体验过。当你刚知道一件事或第一次尝试某件事的时候，就可以这么表达。I was today years old when I went to the aquarium.今天是我第一次去水族馆。我今天刚知道的英文表达是不是非常简单呢？其实，我早就知道了的英语也非常简单。I know 我早就知道you are telling me 我早就知道早知道了可以用I know和you are telling me表示。在英语里，I know不是好的我知道了，而是我早就知道了别再说了。you are telling me的意思不是你在告诉我，而是你没必要和我说，我早就知道了。I heard that Amy broke up with Jerry.我听说Amy和杰瑞分手了。You are telling me.我早就知道这件事了。学会了today years old，我们还要掌握yesterday和tomorrow的地道表达。I was not born yesterday≠我不是昨天出生I was not born yesterday 别骗我；我又不是小孩老外对你说I was not born yesterday的时候，绝不是在讨论年纪。这个表达的字面意思是我不是昨天出生的，言外之意是别把我当成三岁小孩糊弄，我是不会信的。有人糊弄你的时候，不妨对他说上一句I was not born yesterday，给他个下马威。I wasn t born yesterday.What s more,you shouldn t tell a lie.我又不是三岁小孩，而且你也不应该撒谎。I need it yesterday 我现在就要除了I wasn t born yesterday，I need it yesterday也是一句非常实用的俚语。这句话的意思不是我昨天需要。恰恰相反，真正的意思是I need it right now，就是我马上就要，这个表达一般用于很焦急的情况。I need it yesterday,so you d better send the document to my office,我现在就要，你最好把文件送到我办公室。jam tomorrow不是明天的果酱蘸着果酱的面包是很多老外的早餐标配，但老外说的jam tomorrow可不是明天的果酱。jam tomorrow起源于小说家卡罗尔《爱丽斯漫游奇境记》的续集，爱丽斯的老板除了要支付工资，还应该支付一份jam作为她的奖金。果酱的给法却是“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday，but never jam today”，意思就是昨天和明天有果酱，就是今天不会有。今天不会有也就是永远都没有，后来jam tomorrow就表示那些许诺却无法兑现的东西，也就是可望而不可即的事物。To be honest,the employee welfare of their company is jam tomorrow.说实话，他们公司的员工福利是不会兑现的诺言。今天的知识是不是很容易就学会了呢？别忘了在评论区提交作业哦。今日作业这些短语和句子你都理解对了吗？最后留给同学们一个小作业：I was today years old when I realized that our English teacher is her aunt.这句话应该怎么翻译呢？同学们可以在右下角留言区写下你的答案哦, 老师会亲自点评~免费送《生活大爆炸》中英文全集吉米老师今天给大家送福利啦！免费赠送风靡全球轻松幽默的美国生活喜剧《生活大爆炸1-12季》，全部都有中英文字幕 , 非常有趣的学英语原版美剧视频，你值得拥有！一共 2999 份，先到先得，送完即止（请一定要快哦）！怎么获得？添加微信：ohk008，发送文字生活大爆炸免费获得！

56: She Keeps The Serious Conversations, Like Binge Eating, Off Social Media

Two Kids and A Career

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2020 53:23

Everyone should have a friend like Sarah Rentfro in their life. The best way to describe Sarah is to point to a description based on her Enneagram Type, which is a 9. From Truity: Peacemakers are social chameleons who can adapt to the group dynamic easily and help others get along. They’re soft-spoken yet loyal and fun to be around, intuitively knowing how to include and engage everyone in conversation. Peacemakers are cooperative and always willing to let someone join the circle and state their own opinions. Soft-spoken yet firm in their personal stances, they make an effort to neutralize tension and restore group harmony. Easygoing and willing to tolerate everyone, Peacemakers retain their self-esteem through being kind and helpful to others. They enjoy the comfortable side of life and may have a personal space to recharge from the outer world. Many are deep seekers of meaning and have a fond appreciation of spirituality and a sense of connectedness with the universe. Jill Devine met Sarah a couple of years ago. At the time, Sarah helped with the children’s ministry at the church Jill and Sarah attend, Messiah Lutheran. Jill actually referenced Sarah in Episode 46: Dealing With Depression and Anxiety, Having Jesus In Your Life, and Seeking The Still with Laura Fleetwood because Laura and Sarah are sisters. There’s often talk about social media and the negative side of it, but Sarah’s social media accounts are the exact opposite. She takes simple things, like baby carrots, and her viewpoint makes people literally laugh out loud. As with most people, there is a side to Sarah that is complex and not something she really likes to share on social media. Sarah was (and very much still is) recovering from a binge eating disorder. So many of the things Jill and Shannon Buescher talked about in Episode 30 (Part One) Women Face the Cultural Message “Thin Is Better” Every Day and Episode 30 (Part Two) We Are Taught We’re Successful If Our Body Gets Smaller were the things Sarah was dealing with every single day. Sarah had a binge eating disorder and the day after she read Brain Over Binge by Kathryn Hansen, she quit binging. Sarah is now trying to focus on body neutrality and “living in the middle”. New to Season 4, the Supermom Shoutout! Jill would like to acknowledge and recognize the hard work moms put in on the daily. It can be a thankless job at times, and Jill wants these moms to know their worth. This week’s Supermom Shoutout goes to Amy of O’Fallon, MO! Her best friend, Michelle, nominated her and said: Hi Jill! My best friend, Amy, is a Supermom! She’s a single mom, going to school to get her Master’s, works for Sacred Groundz coffee truck (she’s actually a founder of that company), she volunteers for our church, Peace Lutheran, and she helps me with all my volunteer projects. Her daughter, Kylie, is absolutely amazing! She does gymnastics and just started Girl Scouts. Kylie keeps Amy pretty busy, yet Amy is able to do everything I listed and do it well. Amy – YOU are seen and YOU are supported! To nominate a Supermom (or you can nominate yourself) email hello@jilldevine.com. Submit the name of the Supermom, where they're from, and a brief description as to why Jill should shout out this particular Supermom. Two Kids and A Career Website: https://www.jilldevine.com/ Two Kids and A Career Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jilldevine/?hl=en Two Kids and A Career Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JillDevineMedia/ Thank you to our sponsor: Evoke Creative

social media master anxiety soft peacemakers girl scouts binge eating supermom dealing with depression enneagram type two kids easygoing o'fallon kathryn hansen brain over binge amy you serious conversations laura fleetwood

第993期:Family Routine

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2020 3:39

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Paul: Hi, Amy.Amy: Hi.Paul: So we're talking about routines and in the evening, what's your usual routine?Amy: Get home, wash hands, usually just try and get the dinner organized. Dinner and get my daughter ready for bed, usually. Just get her sorted before I think about relaxing or doing anything else because if I sit down, I never want to stand back up again when I get from work.So yeah, my evening routine is usually pretty steady. Just get everybody fed, the youngest person washed into bed, and then I can relax. How about you?Paul: Yeah, I live alone, so I get back from work and I try to cook for myself. So most nights of the week, I'll probably go home and I then go to the supermarket, get some stuff to cook and cook dinner and then maybe relax in front of my computer, watch some TV and maybe do some work.But maybe that's my routine for about five nights of the week. And then maybe, the other two nights, I'll go out with friends and go for dinner and maybe go for a few drinks.Amy: Sounds good.Paul: Yeah.Amy: Yeah, I was thinking about my weekday routine. I guess weekend routine is more relaxed. It's not as stuck, I guess. The weekend, yeah, we'd maybe go for dinner or go for a bath.Paul: So Amy, you sound, you know, very much into family life. Do you ever sort of miss being single?Amy: My single life routine?Paul: Yeah.Amy: I think I sometimes miss the freedom and maybe the—especially the freedom with my finances, just being able to spend my money on myself, going out to concerts or nightclubs. Yeah, sometimes but not very much. I think what has replaced it is good for my current lifestyle. I think it suits me. I'm happy.Paul: So you'd recommend family life to somebody like me who's single?Amy: If you find the right family, I think yeah. Family life is good. It's fun. You'd find that families can stick with other families and the adults can still have a laugh and have adult conversation and the kids can play. If the kids are happy, then the parents are happy and you can still have a laugh and hopefully, not talk about too many childish things. You don't have to talk about changing nappies or anything—Paul: So you still have a social life then?Amy: We try to, yes. We try to. Yeah, when budget allows and our daughter, she's five, so there's more freedom that comes when your children get older. When they're younger, then the rule a bit more, unfortunately. But such as life. I would recommend it, Paul, yes.Paul: Okay. I'll have to think seriously about it. Thanks, Amy.Amy: You're welcome.

tv family dinner routine paul yeah amy you paul so

第993期:Family Routine

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2020 3:39

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Paul: Hi, Amy.Amy: Hi.Paul: So we're talking about routines and in the evening, what's your usual routine?Amy: Get home, wash hands, usually just try and get the dinner organized. Dinner and get my daughter ready for bed, usually. Just get her sorted before I think about relaxing or doing anything else because if I sit down, I never want to stand back up again when I get from work.So yeah, my evening routine is usually pretty steady. Just get everybody fed, the youngest person washed into bed, and then I can relax. How about you?Paul: Yeah, I live alone, so I get back from work and I try to cook for myself. So most nights of the week, I'll probably go home and I then go to the supermarket, get some stuff to cook and cook dinner and then maybe relax in front of my computer, watch some TV and maybe do some work.But maybe that's my routine for about five nights of the week. And then maybe, the other two nights, I'll go out with friends and go for dinner and maybe go for a few drinks.Amy: Sounds good.Paul: Yeah.Amy: Yeah, I was thinking about my weekday routine. I guess weekend routine is more relaxed. It's not as stuck, I guess. The weekend, yeah, we'd maybe go for dinner or go for a bath.Paul: So Amy, you sound, you know, very much into family life. Do you ever sort of miss being single?Amy: My single life routine?Paul: Yeah.Amy: I think I sometimes miss the freedom and maybe the—especially the freedom with my finances, just being able to spend my money on myself, going out to concerts or nightclubs. Yeah, sometimes but not very much. I think what has replaced it is good for my current lifestyle. I think it suits me. I'm happy.Paul: So you'd recommend family life to somebody like me who's single?Amy: If you find the right family, I think yeah. Family life is good. It's fun. You'd find that families can stick with other families and the adults can still have a laugh and have adult conversation and the kids can play. If the kids are happy, then the parents are happy and you can still have a laugh and hopefully, not talk about too many childish things. You don't have to talk about changing nappies or anything—Paul: So you still have a social life then?Amy: We try to, yes. We try to. Yeah, when budget allows and our daughter, she's five, so there's more freedom that comes when your children get older. When they're younger, then the rule a bit more, unfortunately. But such as life. I would recommend it, Paul, yes.Paul: Okay. I'll have to think seriously about it. Thanks, Amy.Amy: You're welcome.

tv family dinner routine paul yeah amy you paul so

第993期:Family Routine

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2020 3:39

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Paul: Hi, Amy.Amy: Hi.Paul: So we're talking about routines and in the evening, what's your usual routine?Amy: Get home, wash hands, usually just try and get the dinner organized. Dinner and get my daughter ready for bed, usually. Just get her sorted before I think about relaxing or doing anything else because if I sit down, I never want to stand back up again when I get from work.So yeah, my evening routine is usually pretty steady. Just get everybody fed, the youngest person washed into bed, and then I can relax. How about you?Paul: Yeah, I live alone, so I get back from work and I try to cook for myself. So most nights of the week, I'll probably go home and I then go to the supermarket, get some stuff to cook and cook dinner and then maybe relax in front of my computer, watch some TV and maybe do some work.But maybe that's my routine for about five nights of the week. And then maybe, the other two nights, I'll go out with friends and go for dinner and maybe go for a few drinks.Amy: Sounds good.Paul: Yeah.Amy: Yeah, I was thinking about my weekday routine. I guess weekend routine is more relaxed. It's not as stuck, I guess. The weekend, yeah, we'd maybe go for dinner or go for a bath.Paul: So Amy, you sound, you know, very much into family life. Do you ever sort of miss being single?Amy: My single life routine?Paul: Yeah.Amy: I think I sometimes miss the freedom and maybe the—especially the freedom with my finances, just being able to spend my money on myself, going out to concerts or nightclubs. Yeah, sometimes but not very much. I think what has replaced it is good for my current lifestyle. I think it suits me. I'm happy.Paul: So you'd recommend family life to somebody like me who's single?Amy: If you find the right family, I think yeah. Family life is good. It's fun. You'd find that families can stick with other families and the adults can still have a laugh and have adult conversation and the kids can play. If the kids are happy, then the parents are happy and you can still have a laugh and hopefully, not talk about too many childish things. You don't have to talk about changing nappies or anything—Paul: So you still have a social life then?Amy: We try to, yes. We try to. Yeah, when budget allows and our daughter, she's five, so there's more freedom that comes when your children get older. When they're younger, then the rule a bit more, unfortunately. But such as life. I would recommend it, Paul, yes.Paul: Okay. I'll have to think seriously about it. Thanks, Amy.Amy: You're welcome.

tv family dinner routine paul yeah amy you paul so

Episode #10: Creating a Life with Events Supported by Your Dollars and Cents

25th Hour Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2020 53:18

Every week it is my goal to share stories from successful business owners and their relationship with time. Today’s guest is Amy Irvine, CFP®, EA, MPAS®, CCFC. Amy is the Founder and Owner of Rooted Planning Group, a group that consists of 5 financial planners and 2 part-time staff members.She holds a Master’s Degree in financial planning and is a Certified Financial PlannerTM, Enrolled Agent, Certified College Financial Consultant, and a Financial Wellness Coach with over 26 years of financial planning and industry experience. Amy is passionate about family, finances, and wine, which comes through in who she is and what she does. She describes herself as a wife, daughter, good friend, who happens to also be a financial planner.Amy is passionate about helping her clients create a life with events that are supported by their dollars and cents. In order to maximize the number of clients Amy can serve, she deliberately created a company where each employee is maximizing their strengths and skills. Listen in to find out how Amy controls her time.Time Management Strategies for Success: Compartmentalize - “If I'm working on a group of tasks, I shut everything else down. I really have that particular time I'm going to focus on that particular task.” Time Blocking - “ Mondays are our big client prep day. We can focus on what needs to be done for these clients.” Delegation - “Delegation is an evolving muscle. Everybody has to work on it, but we're working on it as a team to say, “Who really needs to be doing that job? What's my role at the company?”Email - “One of my big issues, and I think for a lot of people, is email. Using filters is huge.” Office hours - “We have office hours for team questions. Once a week, usually on a Wednesday, there is a time blocked on the calendar. Anybody can show up, anybody can sit in, you might not even have a question, but you just want to learn from somebody else.”Systems / processes - “When it's just you, or you and one other person, it's easy to have systems in place. It’s easy to tweak them and easy to follow through on them. When you start adding team members, you find that many of those systems were great for one or two people, but you have to modify them when more and more team members start to become involved in that process.”Here’s how Amy likes to spend her 25th Hour:Learning about wine, going to wineriesResources Referenced:Wine and Dime PodcastClockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike MichalowiczReady to chat with Amy? You can reach her here:WebsiteFacebookLinkedIn TwitterYouTubeReady to accomplish more while working less? Take this 2-minute quiz !

founders master office owner events degree dollars ea cfp cents creating a life enrolled agents time management strategies mpas run itself certified financial plannertm amy you amy irvine

Amy and Marcus from Hella Pie Pizza Co

Whats Good Dough?

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2020 47:03

These two are so awesome. From community building to working as a team, they make pizza happen in the city of Tracy CA. They are changing the narrative of what pizza means. We talk about starting off as a mobile wood fired oven joint and the ups and downs they experienced with that. And of course, we discuss their soon to open brick in mortar in the heart of downtown tracy. #50west10thstbaby. Check them out on IG @hellapiepizzaco Order from them at the Tracy Farmers Market #whatsgooddough #pizza #sfeats #bayareaeats #pizzalover #pizzaismylife #pizzalove #flavors #pizzaholic #pizzalover #pizzaporn #pizzagram #instafood #homemadepizza #pizzalife #pizzatime #foodie #podcasts Full Transcript Here Marcus: Value and build relationships because it makes everything a lot more easier. Amy: You have people in your corner supporting you and helping you rather than trying to work against you. So that's been huge for us. Eidref: What's happening? What's good dough? It's your boy Eidref. How y'all doing today? How are y'all doing? I'm doing great in case any of you are wondering. Today, we have Amy and Marcus, the dynamic duo of Hella Pie Pizza CO in Tracy, California. And today's episode, we talk about outgrowing your oven. You didn't think it was possible, did you? You thought you could be on that rock boxer Unikoda forever. Now actually, they start it off with a mobile wood fired oven. And yet that was too small for them. So a very, very good lesson from them there. We also talk about transitioning, making the move from mobile to a brick and mortar, and talk about the associated benefits along with that. We also talk about being rented out. Very interesting concept. And by that you're gonna have to listen to find out more. And last but not least, we brag about how awesome this pizza community truly is. This is a great episode so sit back, relax and enjoy the show. And remember to always ask, what's good dough? I like to start the show off by asking this question. There's no right or wrong answer and I would love an answer from both of you. What's good though? Amy: I love that. Go ahead, Marcus. What's good dough?

california pizza hella amy you

221 : Taking Time (w/ Arlan Hamilton)

Living Corporate

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2020 20:49

Our very own Amy C. Waninger has the honor of chatting with Arlan Hamilton, founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital and author of "It's About Damn Time," which was released TODAY! Arlan went from homeless in three years to running Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm that solely invests in companies founded by women, people of color and LGBTQ entrepreneurs. She graciously shares a bit about why she started her fund and wrote her book, talks about what it is about under-estimated talent that she thinks makes them a great bet in business, and she tells us how she gets herself into the right mindset to walk in and own really intimidating rooms. Check the show notes to find out more about her book!Interested in her new book? Check out ItsAboutDamnTime.com.Connect with Arlan on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can find out more about Backstage Capital on their website. They're also on FB, IG, and Twitter. Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and listen. Really excited to bring the episode that we have for y'all today. For those of y'all who are in the know, when you talk about venture capital, when you talk about inclusion and equity within the venture capital space, you know who Arlan Hamilton is, okay? So I'm not gonna steal any of Amy C. Waninger's thunder, but I just want to do, like, a quick thank you and shout-out to Arlan for being on Living Corporate, and really excited for y'all to check out the episode, because the next thing you hear, they're gonna get right into it, so I just wanted to make sure I gave a little bit of context that you're gonna be listening to Arlan Hamilton and her talking about her latest book as well as her company, Backstage Capital. 'Til next time, y'all. Peace.Amy: Arlan, thank you so much for joining me. How are you today?Arlan: I'm doing pretty good. How about you?Amy: I'm doing well. So we're recording this kind of in the midst of all of this coronavirus craziness, and the episode will be released on your book launch day, on May 5th, and so if you can, just project forward to book launch. How are you feeling?Arlan: Well, I'm probably feeling the same way I'm feeling today, which is just a few days prior, which is incredibly excited and honored that I have the opportunity to even have a book coming out and coming out on a publisher, and it's just been a really great experience so far. I heard so many different stories from different authors of, like, how their experiences have gone in the past, from indie to published, and mine has just been really great.Amy: That is fantastic. And the book is wonderful. I got to read an advance copy as part of your launch team. I enjoyed it so much. And a lot of the questions I normally ask in this series you've covered in your book, and so I want to make sure people go there, but one question I did want to ask you about is what has surprised you the most about the venture capital space? Now that you're on the other side of it.Arlan: I don't know if it surprised me, but it's been kind of reinforced that there's just--money is a tool, you know? There's no one who is more important than the next person. And yes, there are some people who have a little bit more power, a little bit more strategically have placed them in places with more authority, but really there's an equality that I still believe in, and it drives me to do what I do, and it's why I started my fund. It's why I wrote the book "It's About Damn Time," because it felt like--one of the things was it was about damn time everybody realizes that we're all on this spinning rock together and that just because you're a venture capitalist doesn't make you any better than the next person.Amy: Definitely. And you talk about in your book the statistic that's jarring to me, that while white men make up about 30% of the population in the country, they get about 90% of capital investment. And your fund is a step in the direction to kind of undo that math and to make the playing field a little bit more equitable. How is that going? Like, do you feel like you're at the point where it's starting to shift, or do you think that there's opportunity for more people to come in and do what you're doing and build this space a whole lot bigger? Arlan: I think both. I think there has been absolute change in the last five years, four and a half years since I started Backstage Capital. It was a completely different playing field back then, and that was only a few years ago. So I absolutely see change. Obviously it's not fast enough. It's not enough. So there's plenty of room for better change and for more change, and that's where I'm excited about the future and about--one of the things in my book is about empowering other people to understand that they can join, you know? They can still join this technical revolution and all of that, because there's just so much more left to do. There's so many people who are doing it too. I don't want to ever say that it's only me. I mean, there are plenty of people who are black or brown [and?] women, who are investors, who are trying to change those statistics for the better. But yeah, I think if I hadn't seen some change for the better I wouldn't have been able to keep going, and so I've seen it. Most of it has come from individuals taking the reins and saying, "Look, I'm not going to wait for something to come save me. I'm going to put this into my own hands, and I'm going to start a company or continue a company that perhaps is bootstrapped or that has more revenue [and that?] employs people, and I'm not gonna only count on these few select guys who have a bunch of money.Amy: You know, it's interesting because right now--and I know that you just recently interviewed Mark Cuban and he said now's a great time to start a business, 'cause when people panic you double down, and when people are comfortable, that's when you should panic, right? What industries do you see right now in the midst of what we're dealing with with coronavirus, what industries do you see picking up a lot of innovation right now?Arlan: Well, of course the ones that are for the moment, right? So for instance companies that are selling products that are really helpful right now. We have products in our portfolio that when we first signed up them to our accelerator last year people laughed. They said, "Why do you have a toilet paper company in your portfolio? Aren't you a venture capitalist?" But we saw that they were doing things in a more sustainable way. They were saving tons and tons, literally, of trees every year, and they were fun and they had a great marketing strategy, and today they can't keep up with the demand, and they're doing it in a way that's more sustainable, which is really fantastic. So you have companies like that. We have a company in our portfolio also from the accelerator called Tambua Health that allows doctors to test for lung diseases using a smartphone. And of course last year we just thought, "This is really amazing, and we want to see what it can do," and today now it's of course going to be very helpful during the age of coronavirus. So I think, like, you're seeing a lot of health tech companies that are gonna do well if they can revamp. You're seeing companies that are manufacturing other things, that are now saying, "Let me manufacture some PPE," some personal protective gear for health care workers and essential workers, but right now and in the future I think you're gonna see a lot more education companies, things that are content-driven online, and then the infrastructure to make that easier for people to get to and to see it. And of course people are talking about "What's the future of work going to look like?" And I don't know if we know yet. I don't know if the last four weeks or six weeks or three months can tell us what the future of work will look like. What we do know is that it will be different from what we came to be used to in the past.Amy: Yes. I think that we're seeing, you know, right now a lot of accessibility that was built--infrastructure for accessibility that was built for people from the disability community that is benefiting all of us now, and I am hopeful, to your point that the future that we're building is more accessible by design and not by legislation.Arlan: Absolutely, and there are so many people who can take that into their own hands today, and I hope that that happens too, because honestly, we can't wait around for someone to make things right. We have to do things ourselves, and things are better--you know, they say, "Let me just do it myself." You know, "If I want it done right, I'll do it myself." Let's do that. I like that vibe, you know? Let's do it ourselves.Amy: You said in your book several times when you're looking at founders you pattern match for grit. And I wanted to ask you, because, you know, knowing your background, that you started this fund when, you know, you didn't really have a place to live. I mean, you were experiencing homelessness at the time. You know, grit is just all there for you. I mean, you have built something from nothing more times than I could count in the book, and I'm wondering, what is it about under-estimated talent you think that makes them gritty or that makes folks a better bet in business? Arlan: They're a great bet. We're a great bet. I think if you are someone who is underrepresented and underestimated, it doesn't seem weird or out there or strange to you to figure things out, to get yourself out of a bad situation, to get creative when you're facing for instance, like, the rent is due and you're like, "Okay, well, what can I do to make a couple extra hundred dollars that's legal and that is, you know, a little bit--" So can I use this other talent that I have? But in the world of Silicon Valley, if you think about that same story, one of the biggest stories that ever came out of Silicon Valley--and I remember reading about when it when I was homeless and just starting out. I read about Airbnb, and I read about these three guys who had this amazing idea to put a blow-up bed on a floor and charge people for a conference to come in and have bed and breakfast. And on top of that, when they were looking for money and they didn't have it, they created--because they were designers by trade--they created these cereal boxes that looked like Obama and John McCain, and they sold those, and they sold, like, $50,000 worth. And I remember reading that and people were losing their minds over how ingenious it was, how absolutely nothing--they had seen nothing like that, and I thought, "I've done that at least five times in a major way in the last 10 years of my adult life." Like, I've at least done it five times in a major way so I could avoid bankruptcy, avoid being on the street, avoid all these things, and I just think we as women, people of color, LGBTQ, disabled, I think we all have to, on a day-to-day basis, have to figure out a survival mode for ourselves because we are faced with so many things, whether they be big things that are easy to point out or the papercuts that I talk about, which is you get a papercut, you don't go around screaming about it, you know? But it hurts like hell. And it happens to you. It can happen to you and people don't necessarily believe it, but it's happening to you. It's this oppression that's given to us in papercuts, and so I just think because we're already built to figure things out--I mean, it's not like it's a great thing. I'm not happy that we have been so put into these corners where we have to find our way out, but we have. So that manifests itself in some really great ways sometimes. Sometimes it's negative. Sometimes we feel like we have to do things that are not okay, that are not legal, that are not moral, et cetera, et cetera, but more times than that, most of the time, you just see some really highly creative things. You ever met someone who gets in trouble a lot and you just say, "If they could just apply that to this other thing, they would save so much time and heartache, because they would probably be, like, the Hacker of the Year in Silicon Valley." That's how I feel about most people.Amy: Yeah, that's how I tell my kids. I'm like, "Use your powers for good. Stop getting into trouble."Arlan: Yeah, exactly.Amy: So one of the things about grit that you note in your book, you talk about hustle culture and how pervasive it is, and I know you've made some decisions now that--and I don't want to say that you're on the other side because I know there are always more places that you want to go and, you know, you're always wanting to take your work to the next level, but you've gotten to a place where you're not as hungry maybe as you were, you know, early on, and you're taking some time to evaluate your priorities and scale back some of your commitments and really focus on self-care, and I'm wondering, if you were talking to the you of the early days of Backstage Capital--which was only a few years ago--would you have the same advice of "Step back and, you know, let go of some of the hustle," or would you tell 5-Years-Ago-Arlan "No, keep going." You know, you don't--Arlan: Well, let me answer that. I don't know if I can answer that question exactly because I don't look at it that way. I do more today than I've ever done in my life when it comes to work, and that says a lot. What I tried to get across in the book and what I've tried to get across for the past year or so is that I'm not doing less, I'm working smarter. So I absolutely would tell the person five years ago and ten years ago to take better care of myself, for sure, and that's what I'm doing, but when it comes to the stakes, when it comes to the responsibility, the pressure, what's at stake here is the highest it's ever been, so I just don't know if I can answer that question as it was stated because I don't feel like I have kind of pulled back. What I've done is recalibrated and repurposed, and I've said instead of me knowing exactly how much a stack of paper from Office Depot costs us, I am going to spend that extra 7 minutes that I would have taken to learn that to put into a phone call with one of our portfolios. Maybe it's the 20th phone call of the week with a portfolio company, but it's one more that I may be able to make a right introduction or think about stuff. And I spend a lot of time thinking and strategizing. I've been doing that from very early on. I think it's important. I think it's part of our jobs as leaders to take a breath and strategize. So on one hand I absolutely feel like I'm doing the most, especially with even more going on now and a smaller team now, unfortunately, because of the coronavirus, but on the other hand I'm always gonna advocate for taking good care of yourself and looking at it from a bird's eye view and saying "What do I need to be doing, and what am I doing right now? And do they match?" And if they don't match, something's wrong. We have a mantra right now at my fund that I started just a few weeks ago when things got really scary. I said, "If it's stressful, we're doing it wrong," and that--you think about it and that's so simple, but that's helped us, like, make a lot of decisions. "Wait, is this stressful? 'Cause we have enough stress in our lives right now as a world and as a country. Are we gonna add stress that we don't need to?" So it's helped us to say no to certain phone calls and to a lot of responsibilities that we don't need to have on our plate right now.Amy: It probably also helps with how you allocate the work within your team. I think a lot of leaders struggle with that, to realize that just because they find a task odious or draining, there may be somebody on their team that, you know, they live for that kind of work.Arlan: Exactly, yeah, and it's an art, not a science, and it's something that I'm working on still, but I've gotten much better over time at delegating, and I think--you think as a leader you have to figure everything out and you have to be the smartest person, you have to lead your tribe into the fight. Hey, I mean, you're not--Ursula Burns, who used to be the CEO of Xerox, the first black woman to be at a Fortune 500 as a CEO. Worked her way up from secretary, I believe. She told me in a phone call last year when I was really stressed out--she yelled at me. I mean, she was not doing tough love. It was just tough. She said, "If you are the only person that's generating revenue for your whole team, you've effed it up. You are doing it wrong. Figure out a way that everybody pulls their own weight," and "You are doing a bad job." She said that to me. "You're doing a bad job if you're this stressed out. It's not something to be excited about and proud of. You're doing a bad job if you're this stressed out." So that just, like, slapped me around and I was like, "Wow, okay. On it." Amy: Yeah. That had to be hard to hear but very relieving at the same time.Arlan: Both, yeah. I just took it because I love the source, you know? I look at the source when people are giving me advice. If it's somebody who is anonymous online who's cussing me out and saying I'm doing a terrible job, I just don't give it any weight. If it's someone like what I just described to you, I give it some weight and I say, "Okay, let me think about why she said that to me and why she gave me her time to say it."Amy: That's very good advice. One of the points that you make in your book is that we all have the right to be in any room we want to be in, and that's a very difficult thing for some of us to internalize because we've been told our whole lives, you know, "Sit down. Be quiet. Be nice. Don't be pushy. Don't be aggressive." What's something for you that fortifies you before you walk into some of these really intimidating--what would be intimidating for most of us--rooms, right? How do you get yourself into the right mindset to walk in and own that room?Arlan: I do two things. One is I think about the people that, like, being successful in the room would positively affect. I make it more about them than me. Once I do that, that's a really great way to walk into a room. The best way of ever--like, I have learned over almost 40 years--this is it, this is the secret right here... you have to be okay with the outcome that you don't win the negotiation. So if you have something that you're going in for that's really, really something that you want really badly, if you tell yourself--and I do this all the time--if you say to yourself, "Okay, it's okay if I don't get this. It's truly okay. I'll have a backup plan. I'll have some other thing I'll do. It's okay if they say no." You've completely taken control of the situation. So you go in caring. You go in trying, but you also go in where their no doesn't knock you to your knees, and there's something about that in a negotiation where I've been able to talk to millionaires and billionaires and get what I want because what I want because I'm okay with "losing," quote-unquote, the deal. Amy: Fabulous. And if you can do that with the number of zeroes after the deals that you're looking at, the rest of us can probably do it with the number of zeroes in the deals that we're looking at, right? [laughs]Arlan: Yeah, it's powerful. It's very powerful.Amy: It is. Arlan Hamilton, author of "It's About Damn Time" and venture capitalist and just Twitter queen, thank you so much. This interview will just be the highlight of my podcasting career. I have so enjoyed talking to you. Arlan: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. You're very good at it, and I appreciate you, and I hope that your listeners will pick up the hard cover at ItsAboutDamnTime.com. You can pick up the audio, which I read, or the e-book. Whichever, whatever tickles your fancy. It's all there.Amy: Get them all, because you're gonna want that audio-book in the car on the way to the negotiation, and you're gonna want the hard cover by the bed so you can read from it at night and get it into your subconscious before you go to sleep, and you're gonna want it on your Kindle too because that's where you can highlight everything and go find your notes later.Arlan: Well, there you go. You're hired. [laughs]Amy: All right, sounds good. [laughs] Thanks, Arlan, so much, and congratulations on your launch. This is huge.Arlan: Thank you so much. Appreciate you.

america ceo business peace mindset career tech diversity lgbtq barack obama fortune fb talent silicon valley corporate airbnb inclusion figure cdc mentorship hackers future of work kindle worked venture capital corporate america solidarity mark cuban poc ppe john mccain taking time xerox melanin feeding america woc vsco office depot arlan hamilton backstage capital arlan podsincolor ursula burns equ amy it amy you living corporate amy so amy c waninger pocintech blackandbrown vscocam

171: Advocating for Special Education Students with Amy Campbell

Embracing Intensity

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2020 43:29

We all love that coworker who is filled with positive energy that spills over to everyone they touch. Certain people have a knack for celebrating the wins of others, and even though we all might want to be that person, it takes a specific mindset that most of us lack. It’s an incredible benefit when this person ends up in the field of education, where they can spend their days impacting the lives of students in positive ways. Amy Campbell is a friend and colleague in my school district. As the 2020 Washington State Teacher of the Year, she is clearly gifted and intense, but she has now become a public figure who is a fierce advocate for her special education students. Show Highlights: How Amy is intensely passionate about celebrating human success with her special education students who are moderately to profoundly impacted by their disabilities Amy’s personal brand of intensity involves profound anxiety around celebrations and wanting others to enjoy life to the fullest How her intensity made her feel different Culturally speaking, Amy had a lot of privilege as a white, middle-class woman who was uninhibited How she’s had to tone down her energy level that is more than most people, and how she “feels like the wrong person” at many times How we feel too intense in many leadership and gender roles How Amy uses her fire for good in having a positive presupposition about things and seeing her students with disabilities as assets and cause for celebration How Amy is a fierce advocate for inclusion How Amy harnesses the power of her intensity by understanding herself and having time for reflection How personal habits of organization and running help Amy How distance learning has affected Amy and the importance of her need for celebrations The best advice for Amy came from her principal, who told her that she should lead adults in the same ways she leads kids A recommended book: Fostering Resilient Learners by Kristin Souers Why Amy’s favorite part of her job is the way she believes that every person needs space for voice and choice’ How Amy loves helping students learn to communicate their needs and wants Parting advice from Amy: “You are enough. You are amazing. You are great. Look for the joy in this world and have a positive disposition. If you can share that joy, then you’re doing good in the world.” Resources: Find Amy on Facebook or Twitter (@the_mrscampbell) Check Amy out on YouTube Fostering Resilient Learners by Kristin Souers

students advocating special education culturally parting amy campbell amy you amy how washington state teacher

157 See It to Be It : Holistic Living & Wellness Expert (w/ Lynnis Woods-Mullins)

Living Corporate

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2019 31:03

In our third See It to Be It podcast interview, Amy C. Waninger chats with PraiseWorks Health and Wellness founder Lynnis Woods-Mullins, a holistic living and wellness expert who focuses on helping women ages 40 and over embark on a successful journey to total wellness for their mind, body, and spirit using holistic practices, nutrition, and fitness. She shares with us how she navigated the transition from corporate America to where she is now and a lot more. These discussions highlight professional role models in a variety of industries, and our goal is to draw attention to the vast array of possibilities available to emerging and aspiring professionals, with particular attention paid to support black and brown professionals. Check out some of the SI2BI blogs we've posted while you wait for the next episode!Connect with Lynnis on LinkedIn and Facebook! She also has Twitter and Instagram!Check out the PraiseWorks website!Read about "Power Up, Super Women: Stories of Courage and Empowerment" on Amazon!Visit Living-Corporate.com!TRANSCRIPTAmy: Lynnis, thank you so much for joining me today.Lynnis: Well, thank you so much for asking me. It's an honor to be able to share with you, Amy.Amy: Well, it's an honor to speak with you. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit about the work that you do. I know that you're a health and wellness expert and a wellness coach, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what that means, what do your clients look like, what do you do for your clients, and we'll start there.Lynnis: Okay. Well, I'm a certified health and wellness coach, and I specialize in working with women over 40, teaching them how to be well and how to live a more holistic life, and I do that through my online magazine. I have online classes. I also have coaching services for groups and 1-on-1. I have a podcast and webcast, and I also just recently wrote a book, as you know, and I focus on helping women make incremental lifestyle changes that can give them big results. I have a weight loss, or what I like to call a weight release, program. I also talk with women specifically about hormonal changes. You know, things that happen as we age and how we can minimize the impact of the aging process. I talk a lot about stress reduction. That's my specialty, stress reduction and anxiety and depression, of which I suffered from all three. And so I really focus on those kinds of things that happen as we age from 40 on, because after 40 there's some things that start happening that are really interesting, and many times you think perhaps you're prepared for that because you've heard your girlfriends talk about it. You might have not heard your mom talk about it, but you witnessed certain things. I'm telling you, everyone is different and every experience is different, and what I really try to lay out to women is that they're not alone in terms of going through that experience, but sometimes it can be a lonely experience because while you're going through it, a lot of times it's you get this inclination to [?] out and suffer in silence by yourself. You don't have to do that. And so my job or my role is to familiarize women with all of the different symptoms that might happen and to give them some encouragement to get knowledge on how to deal with it, because I truly believe that knowledge is power.Amy: You know, as you're speaking, I'm reminded of this thought that I've had repeatedly, that to be a woman is to live in stages of secrets and shame. Lynnis: That's true.Amy: When we're very young, you know, we get the talk about what's gonna happen to our bodies in adolescence, and we're pulled aside, and it's all in very hushed tones and, you know, like, girls passing tampons, you know, like, in middle school. You know, like, you don't want to be found out, right? And then, you know, in our teens, 20s, even our 30s, you know, pregnancy is--there's a lot of mystery surrounding pregnancy, right? Women throughout history have gotten pregnant. Women throughout history have miscarried. Women throughout history have had complications with their pregnancies. But we don't hear those stories. We sort of--like you said, we suffer in silence. We suffer alone. We don't talk about it. We're taught to feel shame about it. And I guess it never occurred to me that I'm on the cusp of yet another, you know, quietly--"go quietly into the night" sort of process and that that's another aspect of our lives as women that we don't talk publicly about.Lynnis: No, you're absolutely right. And yeah, suffering in silence is really true on so many different levels, but I can just share from my own experience. Each time that I got pregnant--and I have four daughters, they're all grown. They're all in their 30s and stuff. Well, one will be 27--each time that I got pregnant, I didn't tell anybody right away. My first pregnancy I wasn't married, so I didn't tell anybody, not even my mom, until I was, like, about seven months pregnant. I lived in a different city, so I just didn't want to talk [about it] because I wasn't married, you know? And I invited her to come and see me for the weekend, and she knew as soon as I opened the door. It might have been because my face was fuller, 'cause normally I'm a really, really thin person. You know, that might have been it, but she said she felt it even before that time. And I think with the other ones I didn't want to tell anybody because I didn't want to be judged by my family or my friends. I was married, but it was like, "Again?" Because they were so close together. One of my daughters--the two middle ones, were born 17 months apart. And, you know, I just didn't want to deal with that. "Don't you know about birth control?" and "How can you be a career person?" and all that, so I didn't tell anybody, and I look back at that and now I'm thinking, "How silly." I was married. It certainly was my prerogative if I wanted to have children. They were not planned. They were all, you know, wonderful "uh-ohs," but I think my biggest thing was that this went against the grain in terms of all of my preparation when it comes to climbing the corporate ladder and here I am pregnant again. I was pregnant basically for 10 years. Basically, you know? Because the ages of my children now are 27, 30, 32, and 34. So pretty close together, and I just didn't want to deal with that "Again?" kind of thing, so I didn't tell anybody. I look back at that now and I'm thinking, you know, "How much did we as women, no matter what the age is, become vested in people's opinion of us?" You know? We spend a lot of time preoccupied with that, and it's very painful because of course we can't read their minds and many times what we're thinking they may be thinking--which many times they're not even close to that, they're too busy with their own stuff--is really just projections on how we feel about ourselves, and I think the biggest message that I'd like to try to send to women in particular over 40, even at that stage when we should be so wise and know it all and know it more, is the need for self-love, because we just don't do that. We are our harshest critics. We don't give ourselves a break, and our breaks--if we do give ourselves a break, there's all this [?] that goes with it. There's that shame and guilt. And in order to really be well, there comes a point in your life when you really have to make a decision to let all that go and to be more present and stop worrying so much about what happened in the past, because what happened in the past really has added to who you are as a person, and that's a good thing. And not to be too preoccupied with the future or the lack of it, depending on your age, because, you know, the future never comes. Tomorrow never comes. It's always today today. And learning how to be more present in terms of your day-to-day existence.Amy: So thank you for that. I think that's absolutely true, and I would imagine that a lot of wellness comes from mindfulness and presence. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got into this work?Lynnis: Sure. I have another life. I have had three lives, maybe. Three main lives. You know, [?] this was my third life. Before this, my second life I was a human resource professional and did very well and got up to the, you know, director level, and I had the equivalent of what could be considered the American dream. I was married, had four kids, a big house in [?] and kids going to school and doing well, you know, husband very successful. You know, all of the stuff that you would think is supposed to be the American dream, and being a woman of color even more so, you know? As an African-American, I was earning the upper .5% for an African-American woman and for a woman in general the upper 2%. So I was doing well. But there was something missing in my life, and I had developed an anxiety disorder and didn't even know it, and my anxiety disorder was based upon post-traumatic stress, and my post-traumatic stress was based upon an incident that happened in my life that was a total surprise. I didn't know how to quite deal with it, and my really dealing with had to do with, you know, controlling the outcome. No matter what happened, I was gonna control it. Whether it was controlling my coworkers, my kids, my husband, my neighbors, my friends, you know? My life in general. I was going to control it in such a way where there would never be anymore surprises, which of course is insane.Amy: Yeah, that's not possible.Lynnis: Right? That's insane. It's not possible. So over time, after 27 years of that, I finally had an epiphany--or a breakdown, whatever you want to call it--to the point where I had to take a sabbatical, and I left this wonderful job for a year with the idea of going back, and after a year of reflection and going to--you know, really digging down deeper, I realized that I wasn't happy and I needed to figure out what would make me happy. And in my exploration of what kinds of things I could do to heal myself from this anxiety disorder, because I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and they put me on medication. And I realize now that I was never good at pills and things. I've always been interested in nutrition. I was a dancer in my first life, you know, and I was a nutrition minor in college, so I decided that I was going to find out more about this mind, body, spirit wellness movement, which started, you know, a while back. I got started in 2009. This has been almost 10 years now that I've been in business. It'll be 10 years in April of 2019. So I decided that I wanted to figure out a way to help women not go through what I went through and to begin to take a look at how can we be well in our mind, body, and spirit and to make that our quest? Our quest to be well in our minds, in our bodies, and in our spirits, because it's a continuum. It's not all about the body. It's not all about your spirit. It's not all about your mind. It is a continuum, and if any of those things aren't being cared for, then we're off-kilter and we risk the possibility of being unwell. And so that's how it all started. I put together a company called PraiseWorks, because at that time I thought I would teach women over 40 how to dance, praise dance. I am a classically trained ballet dancer. I have danced professionally. And then when I got in my late 40s, I started doing praise dance at my church. So I was gonna teach them how to dance, and I quickly found out after my first few classes that these women needed so much more than just dance. I had women who were [?] survivors. I had women who were dealing with empty nests and [?] relationships [?] that ended through divorce. Women who had high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, and hormonal. Menopause. All of the things that you begin to deal with as you age, and so I thought "Okay, what else can I do?" And so that's when I went back, got my certification in nutrition and health and holistic living and yoga and Pilates and all this stuff, and came up with these different virtual programs that can help women to be well. And it's been really interesting. It's been quite an adventure, because one of the things that I didn't anticipate, which I'm learning now, is that a lot of the women who were my age--'cause at that time I was ... 51 when I [?]. I still had another 15 years or so of working for corporate America. So everybody thought I was nuts. "How could you just leave, you know, a six-figure salary like that and start your own thing from scratch?" But, you know, I think in many ways I saved my life. I could have still been there, still been working, probably doing okay, making lots of money, but would have had the anxiety disorder or would have gained a whole lot of weight as a result of the medication they wanted to put me on and probably would have began to start falling apart, because any time you're on any kind of medication, if it's not organic or holistic--any kind of pharmaceutical--it fixes normally the symptom and not the causation, and it causes other symptoms later on. So I feel like I saved my own life, and in the process of saving my own life I'm hoping that I've helped women begin to save theirs in terms of making other choices for their lives. And so that began my goal to really get the word out, virtually at first, even though like I said it was a challenge 'cause a lot of women my age, you know, weren't really into, you know, social media and things like that back in 2009, but that's changed over the years. [?] to not just inspire women 40 and over, but my children are saying "Mom, millennials, we need this kind of stuff. We need to know." They're on a quest and searching, and I never really thought about that, but they're right. So now I'm beginning to think about approaching--if you want to get to my age, [laughs] the ripe-old age of almost 62, then you're gonna want to do some of this stuff that, you know, I've [?] over the last 10 years.Amy: Absolutely. It's so much easier to prevent diabetes, heart disease and those kinds of things than it is to recover from them. High blood pressure, high cholesterol. The list goes on, right?Lynnis: And so many of those kinds of diseases, so many of them are lifestyle choices. And then coupled with the fact that growing older your body is gonna go through some changes anyway, and if you had decided to make a lifestyle choice to exercise more, to eat differently, to lower your stress levels, then your aging process could have been a lot more of a positive experience, and I'm trying to send that message out to women and all of the people who love them that there is a different way, that you don't have to go down that road.Amy: And I think, you know, going back to what you said about millennials, I just hearing millennial burnout is such a problem. You know, millennials and Gen Z are taking on so much stress because, you know, for example, college has gotten--the cost of college has gotten out of control. The return on that investment has diminished almost to nothing for a lot of people, and so they're trying to pay back more debt with worse--you know, with lower income than their parents, and then there's still the pressure of "When are you gonna start a family? When are you gonna buy a house?" Right? All of those expectations that we put on people basically from the 1940s, right? "When are you going to fulfill the American dream that's almost 100 years old?"Lynnis: Which is really the American nightmare, trying to achieve that right now, 'cause right now I'm visiting my daughter in D.C., and first of all, I'm immensely proud of her because she has done this by herself, and sometimes I would feel guilty about not being able to help her more once she finished her education, but I'm glad ultimately that she went this way, because I'm not always gonna be here. My husband's not gonna always be here. I had three other daughters I had to try to get through their phases of education, but it's interesting, the lifestyle that she's living is great, but it's extremely expensive. You know, her rent is more than my mortgage--and I live in California, so I don't have a cheap mortgage. But I look at how these--I don't want to say young people. I hate using that phrase because it makes me seem like I'm 1,000 years old, but I'm looking at how they're living and the pace within which you're living. I mean, they never--they're on all the time. They never relax. Even their social thing is--I don't want to say it's a competition, but it's stressful, you know, getting to the place because of the traffic, finding a place to park if you are driving. Or being in public transportation, having to be aware of your surroundings all the time. Then you get there and you have to deal with in your mind, "Okay, how much can I afford?" You know, when the bill comes, and then in-between that you're constantly on your phone. While you're talking to your friends and stuff, you're on the phone, you're doing all this stuff, and I'm thinking, "Wow, this is a lot of fun, but it's stressful fun." There's never a point where people just stop and just be, unless [?], like, "Yoga time," or "Medication time," you know? There's not--there doesn't seem to be a point of really disconnecting. And you're right, we in this society, no matter what age we are, have a tendency to want to meet the expectations of whatever was set before us. You know, for me it was being raised in the 70s and trying to meet the expectations of where my parents were, because they happened to have been college-educated, which was, you know, very unusual back then, because they were still in the early 50s. But now the expectation is my children do the same, but I realize that two of my girls, who had children in their late 20s, it might be a little bit more difficult for them to achieve the same level as I have, because times are different. Times are different. And so I think that part of being well is realizing that and giving yourself a break and realizing that these times are different, and you have to set your own expectations based upon what it is you want for your life. I mean, if you enjoy that pace and that's where you're at that's fine, but if you know that there's something else that you want to do, that's okay too. And with the college experience, I'm telling you--I've always felt this way, but I especially feel this way now. I wish we had more of the European model that gives people opportunities for apprenticeships and things like that, because college is not for everyone, and that does not mean that they're dumb or stupid or any of that. Ask Bill Gates. He'll tell you that, okay? And some of the other folks sitting up there in Google right now. They don't necessarily have, you know, grad degrees. The idea of getting a degree and then going on and getting the grad degree, because you don't know what else you're going to do, and then going on and getting your Ph.D., and then, you know, [?], I don't think that was the expectation at the time. So I think maybe perhaps we need to be more--I hate to use the word authentic. It's become such a buzzword. But more true to ourselves and that inner desire and tapping into that, because I do believe where your passion is, so lies your treasure. Amy: That's a beautiful sentiment. I love that. So for people who are where you were a few years ago, still climbing the corporate ladder, still trying to secure the bag, right, what can you offer them in terms of--what are the signs that they're approaching an unhealthy place? What do they need to watch for?Lynnis: Well, never disconnecting. For me it was two cell phones and a pager and my laptop, and this started back in '92 and went on until 2008, and I was raising kids at the same time and traveling. At one time I was about 60, 70% travel. I would make a turn-around--I would do a red-eye... an early-morning flight to Texas from California and take a red-eye back to be able to get there in time before they woke up the next morning, and then I would work from home because--I would, you know, dial into a landline or whatever back in the 90s, but never disconnecting and thinking that, by never disconnecting, you are being the best that you can be, that you're really doing a great job. The reality is more than likely you're not doing a great job. More than likely mistakes are going to happen. Disconnecting, and you start seeing those little mistakes pop up that, you know, normally you would not make. That's a sign, especially when you know that this a job that you're prepared for and that you're confident in and all of a sudden things start happening. Another sign is the inability to sleep, to be able to disconnect enough to sleep to calm down. Or if you're sleeping, your sleep is constantly interrupted by waking up, going to the bathroom several times during the course of the night, not having a deep sleep. That's a sign. Another sign is when you begin to realize that you don't have any relationships, and I'm not talking about love relationships. I'm talking about friendships. Your friendships are also tied to work, which is not a bad thing, but there was a time where you didn't work at that place and you had friends outside of work or friends outside of your profession. So disconnecting from relationships that aren't work-related. Also not being able to just sit and be. Feeling the need to always be doing something. And I'm not talking--and you can sit and be and binge watch, but you're still doing something, but the idea of just being in a state of being, if you're having problems with any of those things, that's a sign of burnout. Anxiety, which is a common thing that most Americans suffer from that no one is really talking about. My anxiety was so bad for almost 10 years that I thought it was normal. I started drinking coffee because of my anxiety, believe it or not. It seemed to be the only thing that would take away the scary feeling. The scary feeling was I would be going--I would wake up in the morning and it would feel like I was going straight downhill on a roller coaster with no restraints. I mean, like, going down the hill and nothing holding me in, but I'm still in the chair. Somehow I'm not falling out, but can you imagine how scary that is, thinking that you might fall out? That. It was the fear of the unknown. That all came from my post-traumatic stress that I found out later that I had as a result of not really going through the process of grieving. And the post-traumatic stress, and I talk about it in the book, it all came from how I found out that my mother had died. She was hit by a fire truck on her way to work. She was 56 years old. And how I found out was really traumatic, very traumatic, and I had just had a baby, 5 weeks old, and I had a 17-month old and a just turned 4-year-old. So it was--and I was on maternity leave at the time, but I was a regional manager, and I had, like, three or four branches I was in charge of, and what had happened was on the day that she died I had just seen her, and I said I would see her later and went to my office to show everybody my baby. And this was before cell phones. And my dad, I guess I must have mentioned it to him when I was over at the house in the morning, 'cause he was on his way to work too--'cause my parents were in my mid-50s. I was 31. And so I think I had mentioned to them that I was going by my office to show off the baby, and he called me there and he said, "I want you to go home," to the family home, because my grandfather was visiting from Georgia, my dad's dad, and he was just beginning to exhibit signs of dementia. So he wanted me to go home and stay with Grandaddy and that he would meet me there at the house a little bit later 'cause, he said, "Your mom's been in an accident. I don't know how serious it is, but I need you to go home." So I said okay, and, you know, I had a feeling something was wrong, and I had left my organizer--back then they had Ben Franklin organizers. I left my Ben Franklin organizer at work, and we didn't have cell phones back then. Didn't have any [?] numbers. Couldn't remember any numbers 'cause I was so scared. I suddenly wasn't feeling right. So I called my mom's office and, you know, Lucille [?], my mom's secretary, and I said, "Listen, I need to call someone to come and stay with me and I don't have any numbers with me," and she said, "Oh, yeah, I guess you would want to have someone come stay with you. You know, we are so sorry. We loved your mother." And I was like "...E-D? Loved? Past tense? You mean she's gone?" And that's when she realized, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" And then she dropped the phone, and I could hear--then I could hear people in the background crying. 'Cause I mean, it had been, like, not even a whole hour since this had happened, and that's when I began immediately to never have that shock again. Can you imagine? I mean, even now when I think about it I can still feel that... that decision. Boom. Because I have babies to take care of. I've got a job to do. I have a husband. I have a home. And my dad, I've got to be there for him, and I've got to be there for my sister who's still at school, at 17, graduating in a few months, turning 18 next week. I gotta call my sister in LA who just finished her master's [?]. I gotta take care of this stuff, so I don't have time to feel," and, you know, that's where [?], and that's where the anxiety sort of began, that moment, and that was definitely post-traumatic stress. And so I write about that and what I learned from that. They gotta read the book [?].Amy: That's right. So the book that you're mentioning is called Power Up Super Women: Stories of Courage and Empowerment, and Lynnis is one of 17 authors of this anthology, and I'm another author on this anthology. My story is not nearly as traumatic or dramatic, but all of these stories are designed to help women kind of come to terms with who they are, what they want out of life, and how to go about getting it, and there's some truly, truly inspirational stories in this. Lynnis, I have two more questions for you today. I wanted to ask you to finish this sentence. "I feel included when ______."Lynnis: I feel included when I'm contributing something of value to society, to my friends, to my family. I want to be of value. I just don't want to be taking up space. I don't want just because I am successful to be what defines me. I want that success to be tied to adding value, you know? Adding value to someone's life, adding value to someone's experience. I want to build a legacy. I just don't want to be successful and make a lot of money but no one remembers what I did. And I don't know why I tear up [?], but at 62, you know, that's something that's really important to me, to be of value.Amy: Yeah, to leave a lasting impact. I understand that, absolutely. Now can you finish this sentence? "When I feel included, I _______."Lynnis: When I feel included, I feel a sense of joy.Amy: Oh, that's beautiful.Lynnis: Yes. I never really experienced what true joy was until I left corporate America, quite frankly. And it's not that I'm saying corporate America is a bad thing. Corporate America is just a small sliver of what defines you, and if you can arrive at that early on in your career, then you'll be okay, because the real joy you're going to feel are the things that come at you unexpectedly, and in corporate America you don't want any surprises, but in life you do. You want good surprises in terms of, you know, the experiences that you have, and so yeah, it brings me great joy when I am able to feel included that way.Amy: Well, Lynnis, I can tell that you're having an impact, not just on your clients but on everyone around you. You have so much--you exude joy, you exude peace, and I am so grateful to know you. Thank you so much.Lynnis: Well, thank you, Amy. It's really an honor to talk with you. I'm so glad that you asked me. This is exciting.

america god women american amazon california texas google business anxiety americans tech european diversity courage wellness mom yoga african americans gen z corporate boom inclusion empowerment mentorship pilates medications menopause corporate america solidarity poc power up ben franklin melanin disconnecting woc wellness expert vsco be it holistic living grandaddy see it podsincolor amy you lynnis woods mullins lynnis right all amy well amy so amy oh amy c waninger praiseworks health pocintech blackandbrown vscocam

151 See It to Be It : Career Optimization Consultant

Living Corporate

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2019 24:24

In our second See It to Be It podcast interview, Amy C. Waninger chats with Regional Consulting founder Juanita Hines, a career optimization consultant who focuses on helping students and professionals learn how to discover and communicate their intrinsic value, effectively transition from high school to college and college to the professional sector, and a whole lot more. These discussions highlight professional role models in a variety of industries, and our goal is to draw attention to the vast array of possibilities available to emerging and aspiring professionals, with particular attention paid to support black and brown professionals. Check out some of the SI2BI blogs we've posted while you wait for the next episode!Connect with Juanita on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter!Learn more about her book on Amazon!Check out Regional Consulting's website!Visit our page!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, for those of y'all who are new here, the purpose of Living Corporate is to create a space that affirms black and brown experiences in the workplace, right? There are certain things that only we can really understand, and when I say we I mean the collective non-white professional [laughs] in corporate America. And when we look around--if you, like, Google being black and brown in corporate America, you may see, like, a post in Huffington Post or something that kind of communicates from a position of lack, but I don't know if we necessarily see a lot of content that empowers and affirms our identity and our experience, and that's really the whole purpose of Living Corporate. It's with that that I'm really excited to talk to y'all about the See It to Be It series. Amy C. Waninger, who has been a guest on the show, who's a writer for Living Corporate, and who's also the author of Network Beyond Bias, she's actually partnered with Living Corporate to actually have an interviewing series where she actually sits down with black and brown professionals so that we can learn about what they actually do and see ourselves in these roles, right? So it's a variety of industries that she's--she's talking to a lot of different types of folks. You're gonna be able to see what they do, and at the same time you're gonna hopefully be able to envision yourself in that role, hence the title See It to Be It, okay? So check this out. The next thing you're gonna hear is this interview with Amy C. Waninger. Y'all hang tight. Catch y'all next time. Peace.Amy: Hello, Juanita! Thank you so much for joining me today.Juanita: Hello. Thank you for having me on the show, Amy. I'm excited to be here.Amy: I am excited to have you. So you were one of the first people I met when I started going out on my own and doing my own thing, and I don't even remember how we connected originally, but I know that we kind of bonded over the shared experience of having books that we had self-published. Would you tell me just a little bit about what it is exactly that you do and how you got into that work?Juanita: Absolutely. So I am a career optimization consultant. I provide training for both students as well as professionals. I'm dual-focused. With students, I help to provide them with the information that helps them to transition from high school to college and college to the professional sector. So if you think about a lot of the things that you don't necessarily learn in high school or college that you're expected to know when you go in the workforce, things like how to negotiate your salary, how to network, what that means, how to build strategic partnerships and relationships, the importance of managing your social media and really the type of implications that that can have on your future, those are the type of sessions that I work with with college and high school students. And then for professionals, I partner with companies to help them train and retain staff so they don't have to fire and rehire or lose and overuse. So I help people to more effectively engage within their careers, which will in turn help companies to be able to retain talent as well.Amy: That's fantastic, that you found a niche that meets the employer's needs and the employee's needs, but you also work with students, and so I'm imagining that you work a lot with colleges too. Is that correct?Juanita: Yes, absolutely. Amy: Very good. And so how did you get involved in this work? Because this isn't an obvious--like, there's probably not a job posting for this somewhere, right?Juanita: Absolutely. Not at all, [laughs] and if it was I would've loved to find it because, you know, to be under the corporate umbrella of someone that's doing exactly what I'm doing is definitely--would definitely be an interesting perspective. So I was a recruiter initially when I transitioned from college. I'll be honest with you. I initially--when I was looking for jobs upon graduating from college I was applying for all of these public relations positions, and I kept being told I didn't have enough experience, so out of frustration I ended up going into a staffing agency, and I just said, "Look, I need a job," and they said, "Okay. Well, let's see what we have for you. Are you open to recruiting? What are you looking for?" I said, "Honestly I can do anything. I just need someone to give me a chance." And so they sent me out for a two-day position at one of their corporate clients, and they had phenomenal feedback I guess. Like, they were saying "Oh, my goodness, we want to look at hiring her." One of their HR execs came down and said, "I need your resume." I was voluntold to give him my resume, and I gave him my resume.Amy: Wow.Juanita: Yeah. So they called that afternoon because I knew that we weren't supposed to go on the internet and we weren't supposed to give our resume, and after being insisted upon telling him "No, I'm not supposed to give you my resume," he was like, "Look, I don't care about all that. Give me your resume." So when they called I said "Hey, just want to let you know that everything's going well," but he did make me go on the internet and print out my resume. They were like "Juanita, don't worry, you'll never have to go back there again." I was like, "No, no. I'm not saying that it's a bad environment. I love it here." But yeah, so a long story short, they ended up calling me about three minutes after I left that day and asked if I would be open to coming to work as a recruiter--well, to temp in their office until they could afford to hire me because they had to create a position to hire me because they couldn't afford to do it at that moment. And so I went in to assist them, and then I was there for a couple years. So I had the opportunity to function as a recruiter. I loved my job. I loved everything about it, and I was spiritually led to leave. Yeah, about three years or so later I had the--you know, I was really delving into--and I know this is a long way of going about answering your question, but, you know, I was really honing in on my relationship with God and learning, you know, that He talks to you and that kind of thing, and so, you know--and I was like, "Lord, whatever you want me to do, wherever you want me to go, I will do it. Let me know." And so then he said, "Okay, well, I want you to leave your job." Wait. "Lord, are you sure this is You? I don't know that this is You." [laughs] So a long story short, I ended up giving my job a month's notice, and in that time I was praying about my purpose and what I would do. I went to a purpose boot camp the week after I left my job, and at the purpose boot camp they were talking about, you know, your purpose and what you were created for, and on the way back from the purpose boot camp I started getting all of these crazy thoughts, and I said "Maybe I should jot some of this stuff down." And so I'm driving from Maryland to Virginia, and when I get home I look at my notebook and I'm like, "What is this?" And I called my dad. I was like "Hey, Dad, I think God is telling me to start a company," and he was like, "Well, if he's telling you to do it you need to do it." So that's pretty much how I transitioned into having my own company. In terms of career optimization, I was led out of recruiting because I had recruited for about six years or so providing services for a variety of different companies within oil and gas, energy, travel, a variety of different companies that partnered with me, and then God said "Okay, now you're done with that, so it's time for you to leave that." And I said "Wait, what am I doing now?" And he gave me the vision to actually start doing what I'm doing now, and it's been about 6.5, 7 years or so. I've gone into high schools here--high schools more so I usually do more local here in the Houston and surrounding areas, but colleges I've branched out and also for organizations as well.Amy: What's the name of the company you run?Juanita: It's called Regional Consulting.Amy: Regional Consulting. And I was gonna get to this later, but we'll just bring it up right now. You have a book.Juanita: I do.Amy: Tell us about your book.Juanita: My book is called Master Your Career Playbook: Resumes. It is actually a book that's about writing resumes, but not just writing resumes. It helps you to more effectively articulate your value, because just like I was in that situation, what I didn't realize was that it wasn't that I did not have the experience. It was that I was not effectively articulating the value that I offered to the employers to which I was applying, and so what I did is I actually--you know, I actually used to write resumes for clients, and I had a client that continued to send me countless individuals, and I jokingly said one day "You know what? I'm gonna write a book just for you, just for you to give to all of your friends," and so I did. So I wrote the book, and--well, actually I wrote 15 pages and I sat on it for 2.5 years, and then people started asking me, like, right when I got ready to start writing it again people kept asking me "When is your book coming out?" "Hey, where is your book?" "Do you have a book?" I was speaking at different conferences and they were like, "Hey, where can I purchase your book?" And I'm just sitting here like, "Oh, my gosh. Are you serious? I don't have a book." And I talked to a speaker, and he was just telling me--he inspired me and connected me with someone who was able to help me get my thoughts down on paper, because the hardest thing or the most challenging part about the writing process is 1. taking the time to do it, but then also making sure that you can effectively articulate the words that you are trying to get across and that it comes across like you intend for it to, especially within resume writing, because no one really gets ecxited like "Oh, my gosh, girl! Guess what I'm doing?" "What?" "I'm reading this book about writing my resume! Yes! I'm so excited!" And you're like, "Oh... okay..." So yeah, that was--and I wanted it to be engaging. I wanted it to be kind of similar to how I present, but I wanted to be honest, and I wanted to give people a very candid view from a recruiter perspective, because I've had the opportunity to place across the employment spectrum, up to senior level executives on down to entry level office support positions.Amy: I think that's such a valuable perspective too. I have people all the time who are wanting me to help them with their resumes, and when they ask me, I always quote them--I ask "What's your budget for this service?" And then they usually are thinking in their heads "I don't want to pay you, I just want you to do it." And then when they say "What do you charge?" I give them a number that they would never, ever, ever pay because I don't want to do that work, but I do recommend your book to them. Because I say "Oh, you need to read this book and this will help you, and I won't." [both laugh] So--isn't that terrible?Juanita: No, it's not terrible, and I will tell you--because resume writing is a very time-consuming process, and a lot of people just think that--you know, the thought process is "I'll just give you a regurgitation of my experience and I'll let you pick and choose what's important out of here and hopefully it will land me the interview." That's not what happens unfortunately.Amy: And I know how to write my own resume 'cause I lived it, but I don't know how to write someone else's and I don't pretend to. So anybody who's listening to this, do not call me for resume advice. Call Juanita. You'll be good.Juanita: Actually, and I'm just--I'm the opposite. I can kick someone else's resume out when I have the details of their experience, but my own resume? Let me tell you how it took me about 2.5 weeks to write my own resume. I'm not kidding. "Well, what do I do about..." I mean, it was really pulling yourself out of the equation and looking at yourself extrospectively. Like, not introspectively, but, you know, "How do I describe this great person that I know she is on paper and how do I get those words down to an employer that will actually help me to be able to get an interview?" And knowing the purpose of a resume, because so many people think that the purpose of a resume is to get you a job, and it's not. [laughs] The point of the resume is to get you the interview, and so so many people just put all of the information into their resumes and they just think "Okay, I'll just throw it on out there and see what happens and hope it lands."Amy: Yeah, wow. Yep, I've seen everything as a hiring manager, but probably nothing compared to what you've seen as a recruiter. [both laugh] So what's something--switching gears a little bit back to your career optimization work, what's something that surprises you about this work or that surprised you when you started it that you weren't expecting?Juanita: You know, I'll be honest, working with students. I wasn't sure how I would respond in working with students. I would say that high school students are not my forte. I always had the impression that high school students were just very disrespectful, they don't listen, and, you know, you see some things outside and what you see on social media and those types of things and you're just like "Oh, I don't want to work with those audiences," and I have gone in and--I will be honest, I have had some of the most amazing students, and what I've learned is that a lot of students are actually eager for the information, but they just have people that talk at them and not talking to them and helping them to understand the importance of the choices and decisions that they make today and how they can potentially impact tomorrow and what their future will look like. So I try to--I try to help them enjoy the process. And I didn't think I would enjoy speaking to students so much, I'll be honest, and now I do. I truly do. And I've had people that say "Well, why don't you choose whether you want to speak with adults or with students?" And honestly I can't choose. I can't choose.Amy: Well, I'm sure it makes you more effective in both camps that you have that interaction in both areas, because, you know, if you don't talk with working professionals, then you wouldn't have the insights to give the students that they need to move forward, right?Juanita: Absolutely, yeah. And if you're talking to students and they're like, "Uh, uh-uh. Who is this lady? I don't want to hear anything that she has to say." You know, it kind of keeps you engaging and it keeps you on your toes, because they will let you know if this is not something that they're feeling. They'll "Uh-uh, no," and--Amy: Yeah, I've got two of 'em in my house and they will tune you out in a hurry. [both laugh]Juanita: Yes, absolutely.Amy: But I like tha tyour surprise was a happy surprise. A lot of times when I ask that question it's like "You know, I had no idea how hard it would be," or "I had no idea, you know, how crazy people were," or whatever, but I love that your surprise was a pleasant one. That's great. So if someone's looking to get into doing this kind of work, if they want to, you know, kind of bridge that gap, that college to workplace gap, where can they start looking for resources or how might they break into this kind of work? Juanita: You know, honestly I would say a lot of it starts with relationships, you know? Building relationships and strategic partnerships. I always tell people "either you're networking or you're not working." We actually met--and I'll answer your question when you said earlier "I can't recall how we met"--I think we met on LinkedIn. And so we connected on LinkedIn, and we started talking--I think we connected over a mutual article or something, and--which is interesting, because you never know how you can make connections and extend the life of whatever you're doing. And, you know, I always tell people it's about selfless networking, not necessarily what's in it for me. It's about really reaching across the aisle and saying "What is it that I can do for you?" And being that supportive person. I think that anyone who knows me or who has been able to build a relationship with me will tell you and attest that I'm very--I try to be very selfless, and I'm--you know, I try to always ask "What can I do to help?" Because that's really what I'm about. And so first and foremost it starts with those strategic partnerships and relationships. If you have companies or corporations that's willing to sponsor you, that's a huge plus right there. That's half the battle, because you can get those sponsors that can sponsor you to go in as opposed to you having to get the organizations to pay for it themselves or the students. And I've actually had student organizations that have sponsors and have paid themselves out of their own budgets, but, you know, sometimes it--depending on what the budgetary allocations are and what your fees are, you know? And often times I will tell people--they think it's really glitzy and glamorous, but it's really a lot of hard work, you know? It's a lot more than just showing up and saying "Okay, yeah, I'm gonna make this fun and engaging," you know? And sometimes people look at it from the outside and they're like "Yes, I can do that. I want to do that," but they don't realize the work that goes into it sometimes.Amy: Yeah. You're not getting paid for the hour on stage. You're getting paid for the 95 hours of prep you put into that hour on stage, right?Juanita: Exactly. [both laugh] Amy: As an entrepreneur, how do you find support for yourself? Like, where do you go for a sense of community in the work that you do?Juanita: Part of where I go--I have a great network of professionals. I'm very actively engaged with my community. I'm actually the chair of the program committee at the Greater Houston Black Chamber [of Commerce?]. I'm a graduate of the Houston Black Leadership Institute, and I'm also involved with the current Houston Black Leadership Institute classes. I'm also a member of the Houston Area Urban League Young Professionals. I try to, you know, have really great networks and people that continue to pour into you. So you have to find out what that niche is for you and find out, you know, where can you impact the greatest? Where can you have the greatest impact? And initially, even before I was with the chamber and the HBLI I was with HAUL YP, and so I joined because they had opportunities to volunteer and give back to the community, and through HAUL YP I've been introduced to all of these other aspects of life and that have poured into me in so many different ways. And so I would say first and foremost find something to get involved in. Find something that you're passionate about and pursue that, because you never know how that can open doors of opportunity for you that you can't even imagine or that you don't even anticipate.Amy: No, that's great advice. It's so true that when you start doing what matters to you, the people that you need kind of show up, and you show up for them, and--it's almost a magic that happens. I don't know if I told you this the first time we talked, but I call it the Billie Jean lights.Juanita: [laughs] Okay.Amy: Do you remember the old Michael Jackson video? [?]Juanita: Yes, when he stands on the little thing [?]--Amy: And they light up, right? And when I started out, when I started doing what I'm doing, it was like I didn't know what the next step was, but I'd put my foot down and it would kind of--the path would start to light up, and I'd put my foot down again and the path would light up, and it was like it just kept going until those lights came so fast that it started to look like a runway, and I knew that that was the right path. But I think, you know, part of it is just, like, taking those steps at first to get the--Juanita: Yeah, absolutely. And that reminds me of Martin Luther King's quote, "Faith is taking the next step without seeing the whole staircase." You know? And so sometimes you can take that, and that was really what it was like for me, except for I didn't even see a house. I just pretty much was like "Wait, where am I stepping?" It was just like "Okay, I'm stepping over a cliff," but then it came into view as I started walking. So I will say, you know--and I tell people "Look, I'm not telling everybody to leave their jobs tomorrow. [laughs] So don't put that on me." Like, "Juanita said I could leave my job today!" [laughs] No, no. That is not--Amy: That's not Juanita's saying.Juanita: Yes, absolutely, let me be clear. But I will say that, you know, if you're willing to put the work in and if you're willing to do what's necessary, it will--it can benefit not just you. And I think your cause has to be greater than just you. It has to be more than just "Okay, I'm doing this for the money." And I'll be honest, I put a lot of sweat equity in early on, so I didn't--there were events that I did not get paid for. I did a lot of volunteering when I initially started speaking with student organizations in probably for the first, what, five or six years or so. So even when I was doing recruiting, when I was doing contractual recruiting, I was still going into organizations. I was volunteering my time, and people got to know me, and so when God called me out and I had that vision to actually start going into the training and development pieces, it was more of a seamless transition. Not effortless, but it was seemingly seamless for most people, like, looking on, because they just thought "Oh, wow. She just stopped recruiting and now she's doing training and development." But that's not how it was. I was actually putting in a lot of sweat equity, and that's the things you don't see from the background.Amy: Absolutely, absolutely. On those days when I'm not seeing results, I try to measure my progress on how many seeds did I plant today, how many seeds am I gonna plant tomorrow, and I keep planting seeds until something starts to sprout, right? And once things start sprouting you keep planting seeds because you're gonna need something to sprout tomorrow and the next day and the next.Juanita: Absolutely, absolutely. You just water it. You can't see exactly when it's growing, exactly when it takes root, you can't see exactly when those roots are extending, but eventually you will start to see the flower when it rises above the ground.Amy: Absolutely. So I would like it if you would answer--just finish the following sentence. "I feel included when ______."Juanita: I feel included when I am amongst people who are open-minded and who are open to listening to other people's perspectives or points of view. Amy: Very good. And then "When I feel included, I _______."Juanita: When I feel included, I soak everything in and I make the best of the opportunity. [laughs] I'm often times a comedian, I'll be honest. So sometimes in those moments I'm so excited, like, my excitement will sometimes make me start--like, I'll start cutting jokes and stuff, and they're like "Oh, my gosh." And so people are like "Wait, is she funny too?" Which is [?]--Amy: You get goofy.Juanita: I do. Well, yes. Professional goofy, yeah, but yeah, it is. [?]. I've actually had students that have asked me at different schools. They're like, "Are you a comedian?" No, I'm not, but I get excited when it's something that, you know, I feel included in, especially when students kind of make you feel included and show you the love, you know?Amy: Mm-hmm. I love that about when students make you feel included, because I think a lot of times students don't realize that they exist in an environment, right, they exist in a culture, and when somebody comes in, even somebody with authority or somebody from the outside, there's still a desire from that person to be included in that group, right? You aren't coming in to be other. You're coming in to have an impact, but you want to be welcomed and you want to be kind of embraced by that group, and I think that's such an important point for people to realize. It doesn't matter what group you're in as an in-group. When somebody's new or somebody's coming in, making them feel welcome will make such a difference in what you get from them and what they take away.Juanita: Yeah, absolutely agreed.Amy: Juanita, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.Juanita: Yes, thank you for having me. I'm excited to--it was just a great experience. I'm excited to be a part of the show and that you thought about me to have me on, so.Amy: Well, of course. Thank you so much.

america god amazon lord google business peace career building tech diversity dad professional maryland corporate martin luther king jr inclusion consultants commerce michael jackson mentorship huffington post corporate america solidarity poc optimization melanin woc billie jean vsco be it see it podsincolor amy you living corporate amy well amy c waninger greater houston black chamber pocintech blackandbrown vscocam

#101: Feminine Powerhouses - Amy Cheryl!

Live Your Spa Life

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2019 33:23

Amy Cheryl, Founder and Creatrix of Women's Worth Academy (WWA), is a modern day medicine woman providing the transformational sacred space and skill-set for all women to embody who they truly are as the feminine powerhouses they were born to be...resulting in fully owning their intuition, eradicating self-doubt and fear, and having more confidence, clarity and calmness so they can live a fully expressed and prosperous life filled with pleasure, joy and magic...living their truth unapologetically where all comes to them on THEIR terms freeing themselves from the internal prison of the lies and programming that society has instilled in them keeping them from claiming their power.Known for her magnetic energy and warm heart, Amy is a widely sought-after speaker who knows how to light up a stage and move a room with her deep spiritual women's wisdom, teachings and inspiration. She IS the embodiment of her message and has been invited to speaking gigs all over the US as well as Dubai, sharing the stage with global leaders such as Marianne Williamson. Amy has had multiple publications including SHAPE and SELF-magazine, Daily Candy and Vital Juice Daily to name a few.Important Topics:On living unapologeticallyHow she takes a stand for women and claiming their powerHow she consciously creating her lifeThe difference between knowledge and knowingnessAnalogy for women to help them prevent doubting themselvesWhen is the right time to consult a mentorHow to have loving conversations versus conflicting ones Three key secrets to be in our power as womenQuotes;"Awareness is the key to transformation.""Practice makes permanents."Connect with Amy:You can apply for your complimentary Feminine Powerhouse Breakthrough Exploration Call at: http://www.womensworthacademy.com/apply-for-an-exploration-call-with-amyClaim Your Free Gift To Squash Self-Doubt and Ignite Your Confident Queen Self at: www.womensworthacademy.com Email - amy@womensworthacademy.comInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/amycheryl313/Other links and resources:Free Gift from Diane (Life Reset Quiz) - https://liferesetquiz.com/BANKCODE - https://MyBankCode.com/VictoryDiane Halfman's website - http://www.DianeHalfman.comWant to know more about yourself?Some people ask me how to RESET their life.Some people ask me how to be more sensual.Others are wondering how to make more money. How to be more successful. How to start a business. All of these questions and more are what I answer in my programs.Come see me at http://www.DianeHalfman.com

women founders power business practice entrepreneurship shape dubai reset consciousness feminine powerhouses marianne williamson free gifts creatrix diane halfman daily candy bankcode amy you mentorhow mybankcode

#101: Feminine Powerhouses - Amy Cheryl!

Live Your Spa Life

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2019 33:23

Amy Cheryl, Founder and Creatrix of Women's Worth Academy (WWA), is a modern day medicine woman providing the transformational sacred space and skill-set for all women to embody who they truly are as the feminine powerhouses they were born to be...resulting in fully owning their intuition, eradicating self-doubt and fear, and having more confidence, clarity and calmness so they can live a fully expressed and prosperous life filled with pleasure, joy and magic...living their truth unapologetically where all comes to them on THEIR terms freeing themselves from the internal prison of the lies and programming that society has instilled in them keeping them from claiming their power.Known for her magnetic energy and warm heart, Amy is a widely sought-after speaker who knows how to light up a stage and move a room with her deep spiritual women's wisdom, teachings and inspiration. She IS the embodiment of her message and has been invited to speaking gigs all over the US as well as Dubai, sharing the stage with global leaders such as Marianne Williamson. Amy has had multiple publications including SHAPE and SELF-magazine, Daily Candy and Vital Juice Daily to name a few.Important Topics:On living unapologeticallyHow she takes a stand for women and claiming their powerHow she consciously creating her lifeThe difference between knowledge and knowingnessAnalogy for women to help them prevent doubting themselvesWhen is the right time to consult a mentorHow to have loving conversations versus conflicting ones Three key secrets to be in our power as womenQuotes;"Awareness is the key to transformation.""Practice makes permanents."Connect with Amy:You can apply for your complimentary Feminine Powerhouse Breakthrough Exploration Call at: http://www.womensworthacademy.com/apply-for-an-exploration-call-with-amyClaim Your Free Gift To Squash Self-Doubt and Ignite Your Confident Queen Self at: www.womensworthacademy.com Email - amy@womensworthacademy.comInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/amycheryl313/Other links and resources:Free Gift from Diane (Life Reset Quiz) - https://liferesetquiz.com/BANKCODE - https://MyBankCode.com/VictoryDiane Halfman's website - http://www.DianeHalfman.comWant to know more about yourself?Some people ask me how to RESET their life.Some people ask me how to be more sensual.Others are wondering how to make more money. How to be more successful. How to start a business. All of these questions and more are what I answer in my programs.Come see me at http://www.DianeHalfman.com

women founders power business practice entrepreneurship shape dubai reset consciousness feminine powerhouses marianne williamson free gifts creatrix diane halfman daily candy bankcode amy you mentorhow mybankcode

SLS164 Amy Landino, Six Figure Success Stories with Jessica Lorimer

Smart Leaders Sell Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2019 31:55

If you identify as an introvert you’ll love this episode with Amy Landino. Founder of Aftermarq, a YouTube pro aka vlogging star, best selling author and an international speaker who has recently joined Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerSpeakers, being a self-proclaimed introvert hasn’t held her back. In the last 10 years in the industry Amy has encountered every situation you can imagine and she debunks myths and shares the story behind her business success. In This Episode: Running a business as an introvert Recharging your energy Selling for the right reasons Choosing the people who are for you Being true to your content “I feel we are so lucky in entrepreneurship because everyday is so different and so adventurous.” - Amy “I get drained by large groups of people and I need some time alone to recharge.” - Jess “I stay in tune with my creative roots.” - Amy “It's all about how well you know your person and how willing you are to let go the people who aren't for you.” - Jess “I feel very fortunate that most of the time the feedback I get is ‘oh my gosh, you're the same person’.“ - Amy “You have to build a relationship and then you leverage the relationship.” - Jess “I truly do care about what I'm doing which is why I'm not going to give a ____ answer.” - Amy Other Episodes Mentioned: SLS126 Six Figure Success Stories with John Lee Dumas https://smartleaderssell.com/sls126-six-figure-success-stories-with-john-lee-dumas/ More Amy! Amy’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/amytv Amy’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Vlog-Like-Boss-Online-Blogging/dp/1946114162 More Jess! The Dotties https://smartleaderssell.com/the-dotties/ http://bit.ly/SLSGroup https://jessicalorimer.com/supersize-your-sales https://jessicalorimer.com/list-building-legend https://www.instagram.com/jess_lorimer/ Content Disclaimer The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator.

founders professional selling success stories gary vaynerchuk john lee dumas six figure recharging amy landino jessica lorimer amy it amy you aftermarq

WDW: Amy's Multigenerational Trip Plus Food Allergy Planning Tips - 006

Report the Magic

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2019 85:32

Today I'm joined by Amy who blogs at Meet Me in Tomorrowland and she shares incredible details about multigenerational trips, which I think is just really helpful because planning a trip with a big extended family has a lot of extra details that you need to think about. Amy has been diagnosed with Celiac disease, so she also shares information about food allergies in Walt Disney World and how you handle them. Food allergies are such a serious topic and can cause anxiety and her perspective, knowledge and expertise around food allergies and your vacation is invaluable. Trip Dates: October 28 - November 3 Resort Review: Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas - Kidani Village Disney's Boardwalk Villas Animal Kingdom Lodge - Kidani Village Sanaa Trip Planning Details Travel Party: Amy and her husband, her brother and her brother's girlfriend, Amy's father and Stepmother, her Grandmother, Aunt and Uncle Travel Agent: No - Amy books through Disney Vacation Club Disney vacation club does an amazing job making sure that we have everything we need, that we have access to anything we might want and that we find out information about things you might not have known about before the trip. Their goal is to make sure that you have the perfect trip every time you come down. Tickets: Most of the travel party had Annual Passes Memory Maker: Yes (Included with the Annual Pass) Disney Dining Plan: No - Tables in Wonderland Dining in Disney World with a Food Allergy The Itinerary Arrival Day: Hollywood Studios Amy's Pro Tip: The credit card you use at check-in can be a security guarantee. Then at the end of your vacation, before you checkout, you can pay down your balance with Disney gift cards! This is a fantastic way to save money on your vacation because you can purchase Disney gift cards at a discounted rate at places like Raise, Target using your Red Card, BJs. This is a great article about saving money with Disney gift cards. Disney's Hollywood Studios FastPass+: Alien Swirling Saucers K'nex Disney's Character Warehouse Orlando Premium Outlets. Uber Lyft This is a great article if you would like to learn more about Disney's Character Warehouse. Mater's Junkyard Jamboree. Sci-Fi Dine-in Theater Restaurant Review Day Two: Disney's Hollywood Studios and Disney Springs FastPass+: Slinky Dog Dash Le Cellier Cookes of Dublin I have an unhealthy obsession with the new Disney dress shop and I may have spent way too much money in adorable dapper outfit. Day Three: Epcot's Food & Wine Festival and Sanaa Starlight Safari at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. Amy highly recommends getting reservations for this because it does sell out (Call for Reservations (407) 939-7529). Day Four: Epcot and Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party What's a Magic Shot? Click here for a great article which explains everything you need to know about Magic Shots. Attending Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party...ON Halloween! Halloween party Teal Pumpkin Project spot for the parade Day Five: Magic Kingdom and Ohana Halloween to Christmas Ohana Review: Gluten Free Dining Ohana Day Six: Animal Kingdom FastPass+: Avatar Flight of Passage Amy's Pro Tip: The reason they had their Avatar Flight of Passage FastPass+ so late in the week is because when you get up early the morning that your FastPass+ booking window opens (either 30 or 60 days before your arrival day), start with the farther end of your week first. Everyone's going to be starting with their first day to and work through them systematically. Start out with your farthest day of your vacation first. If you do this, you are more likely to get those hard-to-get-FastPasses. For additional information on this strategy, read this article. Donald's Dino-Bash Restaurantosaurus and lounge Paddlefish Dining Review Paddlefish Departure Day: Magic Kingdom Amy's Favorite Restaurant: Table Service and Quick Service Sci-Fi Dine in Theater Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe Favorite Vacation memories Definitely seeing those Christmas decorations for the first time. No matter how many times you have been there to see the big change over from one holiday to another, it is just spectacular. And you just stand there and think how hard these people must have worked all night to change this park over to be this whole new park in just a matter of hours. So that was really cool. Decorating Disney Learn more about Amy You can learn more about Amy and how to vacation in Disney World with food allergies at Meet Me in Tomorrowland. Make sure to follow Amy on Instagram! **Report the Magic is not affiliated with Meet Me in Tomorrowland**

christmas halloween disney magic food planning trip uber target raise disney world uncle lyft grandmothers aunt tomorrowland food allergies reservations celiac red cards multigenerational fastpass stepmother bjs fastpasses quick service avatar flight teal pumpkin project amy you disney's animal kingdom lodge magic shots

The greatest present of all time

Smalley Marriage Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2018 30:51

Amy: Hello listeners! This is Amy Smalley reminding you this holiday season that sometimes the very best present you can give your family is…...being….present. Michael: Oh Amy…. Amy: What? You don't get it? It's present like a gift but also like you know the present…. Michael: Oh no I get it, listeners I'm so sorry I think that may be the last time I let Amy open the show. Amy: Hey, everybody loves puns they're so, punny. Michael: oh no. Amy: You should probably put me in a punitentiary Michael: Listeners I'm so sorry I promise today's episode will not in fact be about puns. We are going to talk about how you need to make sure you remain present this holiday season so you don't miss out on all the wonderful memories happening all around you. Amy: So to find out about how to wrap up this present of presence, stay tuned! Distraction of the Day: I'm pretty excited about driverless cars but I just learned something from a legitimate scientific study that shows why driverless cars will be the greatest invention of our time! Amy, can you guess what would get me overly excited? BOOK US FOR A COMEDY NIGHT OR RELATIONSHIP EVENT https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/p/comedy-of-love Follow us on your favorite social app: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/smalleyinstitute/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MichaelandAmy/ Twitter https://twitter.com/Michael_Smalley

distractions michael oh amy you michael smalley amy so amy smalley

The greatest present of all time

Smalley Marriage Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2018 30:51

Amy: Hello listeners! This is Amy Smalley reminding you this holiday season that sometimes the very best present you can give your family is…...being….present. Michael: Oh Amy…. Amy: What? You don’t get it? It’s present like a gift but also like you know the present…. Michael: Oh no I get it, listeners I’m so sorry I think that may be the last time I let Amy open the show. Amy: Hey, everybody loves puns they’re so, punny. Michael: oh no. Amy: You should probably put me in a punitentiary Michael: Listeners I’m so sorry I promise today’s episode will not in fact be about puns. We are going to talk about how you need to make sure you remain present this holiday season so you don’t miss out on all the wonderful memories happening all around you. Amy: So to find out about how to wrap up this present of presence, stay tuned! Distraction of the Day: I’m pretty excited about driverless cars but I just learned something from a legitimate scientific study that shows why driverless cars will be the greatest invention of our time! Amy, can you guess what would get me overly excited? BOOK US FOR A COMEDY NIGHT OR RELATIONSHIP EVENT https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/p/comedy-of-love Follow us on your favorite social app: Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/smalleyinstitute/ Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/MichaelandAmy/ Twitterhttps://twitter.com/Michael_Smalley

distractions michael oh amy you michael smalley amy so amy smalley

#46: Talking Late Night featuring guest Amy Miller, stand-up comedian and podcast host

Talking Late Night

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2018 47:37

On this episode of Talking Late Night, Max interviews Amy Miller, an LA-based stand-up comedian who has appeared in shows and festivals all over the United States and is the co-host of her very own podcast, "Who's Your God?" Amy didn't get into stand-up until she was thirty-years-old, with her first performance coming at an open mic at a laundromat. From there, her career exploded. Amy has appeared as a semi-finalist on NBC's "Last Comic Standing," Viceland's "Flophouse," "Doug Loves Movies," and NPR's "Marketplace," and has performed her comedy at many festivals such as the San Francisco Sketchfest and the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. She was even named Portland's Funniest Person by the Helium Comedy Club! In addition to stand-up, Amy co-hosts her own podcast entitled "Who's Your God?" Want to learn more about Amy? You can find her at her website, Twitter, and Instagram! Thank you for tuning in! Be sure to like and share our Facebook page here, and also rate and leave us a review on iTunes!

united states standup late night podcast hosts stand up comedians amy miller helium comedy club doug loves movies san francisco sketchfest bridgetown comedy festival nbc's last comic standing amy you npr's marketplace portland's funniest person

FFP 211 | Healing PCOS | Amy Medling

Fertility Friday Radio | Fertility Awareness for Pregnancy and Hormone-free birth control

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 12, 2018 55:37

Amy is a certified health coach who specializes in working with women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). She is the author of Healing PCOS, and she works with women who are frustrated and have lost all hope when the only solution their doctors offer is to lose weight, take a pill, and live with their symptoms. Amy founded PCOS Diva to offer women tools to help gain control of their PCOS and regain their fertility, femininity, health, and happiness, and she has developed a proven protocol of supplements, diet, and lifestyle programs to support women to heal their PCOS. In case you haven’t heard Amy’s first appearance on the podcast, click here to have a listen. In today’s episode, we talk about overcoming PCOS naturally, and the importance of advocating for the support you need.. Today's episode is sponsored by my free FAM 101 video series. Click here for access. My Fertility Awareness Programs are designed to help you to master Fertility Awareness and take a deep dive into your cycles. Gain confidence charting your cycles, and gain deep insights into the connection between your health, your fertility, and your cycles. Click here for more information! Topics discussed in today's episode: What is PCOS, and what are the most common symptoms? What is a PCOS diva? The importance of advocating for yourself to get the care and support you need The importance of believing that you can be healthy and recover from PCOS The connection between PCOS, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and endometrial cancer Why PCOS is not simply a condition of the "ovaries" 21 days to managing your PCOS symptoms Movement for PCOS Dealing with a PCOS diagnosis The role of supplementation in healing PCOS Connect with Amy: You can connect with Amy on her website, and on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter! Resources mentioned: Healing PCOS book by Amy Medling Fertility Awareness 101 FREE Video Series Fertility Friday Programs Fertility Friday Facebook Group Related podcasts & blog posts: FFP 022 | What is PCOS? | Healing PCOS Naturally | PCOS Diva Amy Medling PCOS Series | Fertility Friday Fertility Awareness Episodes | Fertility Friday Join the community! Find us in the Fertility Friday Facebook Group Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast in Apple Podcasts! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by J-Gantic A Special Thank You to Our Show Sponsor: Fertility Friday | Fertility Awareness Programs This episode is sponsored by my Fertility Awareness Programs! Master Fertility Awareness and take a deep dive into your cycles and how they relate to your overall health! Click here for more information!

movement pcos fam ffp fertility awareness polycystic ovary syndrome pcos healing pcos fertility friday podcast amy medling amy you pcos diva

Ben + Amy Wright, CNN 2017 Hero of the Year, Fatherly Parents of the Year, Demystifying Disabilities S8 Ep. 85

Live Inspired Podcast with John O'Leary

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2018 54:38

Ben and Amy Wright own the wildly successful Bitty & Beau’s Coffee shop, which proudly employs people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The shop is named after their children who have Down Syndrome. Ben and Amy Wright are combatting the staggering 80% unemployment rate for people with disabilities + using their shop as a platform to share this truth: “We all have different abilities. There’s room for everyone; we just have to see it that way.” Join me and the Wrights as they thoughtfully share questions (if you don’t have a disability/know someone who does) and answers (if you do) to everything you’ve ever wanted to ask or tell on this subject. SHOW NOTES: Amy + Ben are the founders of Bitty & Beau's Coffee in Wilmington, NC that proudly employs individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. "Typically developing guests who come in experience a transformation, a new perspective. It was important to create the jobs, but even more important is that we change the way people see people with mental and intellectual developmental disabilities." Video of Amy accepting her 2017 CNN Hero of the Year Award. Ben + Amy Wright were honored as 2017 Parents of the Year by Fatherly. BEN + AMY WRIGHT'S LIVE INSPIRED 7 1. What is the best book you’ve ever read? Ben: Knot on a Counting Rope, a children's book about an American Indian child who is born blind and how his tribe loves him for who he is. Amy: The Giving Tree, it's a children's book that says it all, the way to live and to give to others. 2. What is a characteristic or trait that you possessed as a child that you wish you still exhibited today? Amy: Dancing more, laughing more; although at the coffee shop everyone has fewer inhibitions and just live out loud so I get a good dose of that. I wish I didn't carry worries that I carry and danced more. Ben: The instinct to play more. Be goofy and uninhibited. If you feel like dancing, dance. If you feel like running, run. If you feel like jumping, jump. I have so much restraint these days trying to be the father, grown up, mature person when inside I wish I could grab back onto some of the playfulness I had as a child. 3. Your house is on fire, all living things and people are out. You have the opportunity to run in and grab one item. What would it be? Amy: As many photo albums as I could carry out. Ben: This beautiful portrait of Amy when we were married. I want family to be able to come to look at the portrait of her and realize that's where it all started. I believe my life really started in earnest when I met her. 4. You are sitting on a bench overlooking a gorgeous beach. You have the opportunity to have a long conversation with anyone living or dead. Who would it be? Amy: My mom, who said "I hope this baby you are carrying has Down Syndrome just like beau." She passed away just a few months before Bitty was born. Ben: Amy! We're so busy, we don't get much of an opportunity to talk with each other. I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend my life or time with her. 5. What is the best advice you've ever received? Ben: You are fearless and you need to stay that way. Amy: You love your children the same by loving them differently. My mom said this. Everyone has different needs; meet people where they are. 6. What advice would you give your 20-year-old self? Amy: You think this is good now? Just wait! The best is yet to come. Ben: Take even more risks. Life is unpredictable. It can change in a heart beat. If there is something you believe in, don't just think about it, do it. 7. It’s been said that all great people can have their lives summed up in one sentence. How do you want yours to read? Ben: He broadened my perspective on what I thought was possible and gave me hope. Amy: She loved fiercely. *** If you enjoyed today’s episode: Please subscribe, rate & review wherever you get your podcasts. See you here next Thursday! Live Inspired with John every day on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and get his Monday Motivation email: www.JohnOLearyInspires.com/Monday-Morning

video parents coffee hero demystifying disabilities wilmington down syndrome american indian monday motivation fatherly cnn hero wrights bitty live inspired amy wright amy you johnolearyinspires bitty beau

【文稿】自拍是种不治之症

uk china temple manchester prime minister xi narcissism xi jinping cathedrals yea narendra modi macau sergio aguero amy it amy you

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2015 6:47

Heyang: US Photographer website published a report on web users photo searching behaviors in 2015, which shows that the word selfie was searched more than 20 times more than last year. So this is not a reason to be all that a surprise since the word selfie has been included in the Oxford Internet Dictionary in 2013, but my query is, i mean, how self-obsessed are we that we are still doing this and it is a trend that is just growing and wouldn’t stop.So guys, here, we should listen to a song that illustrates my point and it is from Ge Zhongshan, a rapper, she talks about selfie I guess. (THE SONG)Heyang: Yea, like that groove. And Amy, since you host a music show, can I just quickly ask you what do you think of that?Amy: I like it. It’s probably not that kind of the music that I play on my show, but it’s kind of catchy.Heyang: It’s kind of catchy and this recurrence of, you know 自拍,自拍 of every thing, and yea, she says like wherever she is, the first thing she does whenever she is in the crowd or just everywhere it has to be selfie, selfie, selfie time, so what do you think is going on? What does it tell about today’s modern China?Luo Yu: I think selfie has become very popular nowadays, even when Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi visited the Temple of Heaven he took a selfie together with Chinese Premiere Li Keqiang and also it reminds me of a soccer player Sergio Aguero.He showed his picture together with Mr Xi Jinping and his Prime Minister DavidCameron not a long ago when President Xi visited London, sorry, Manchester, I have to say. So i think, it has become very popular. It’s very convenient and it’s very good for improving our self-image and doing publicity, why not?Amy: I have to admit something that’s a little bit embarrassing, but I am part of a wechat group with some of my friends, and the whole wechat group is devoted to taking selfies, and it’s so....Heyang : What?Luo Yu: So it’s a selfie group.Amy: We are in a selfie group. Yea, and so all of us are living in different parts of the world, some of them are in San Francisico, some of them are in UK, some of them are here in China, we all like all of us met at different times in China, but the thing that connects us, some of them I have not even met, but we all sent selfies of whenever we are, so we’re kind of like we are checking via selfies, I’ve got to say it’s super fun.Luo Yu: Right, it’s actually a global network of sharing selfies.Amy: Yea, it’s super fun with people I’ve never even met with. We just like sharing selfies with each other, but we do also share information like, you know, any, any new stories that are about selfies. (laugh) But somebody recently shared an article in this group, where they are talking about using selfies as a security method. I don’t remember what it was for, may be for ordering something or for paying tickets or something like that, but basically you register for whatever is, and then you take a selfie to show that it is you, and then submit that, and that they give you the thing that you ordered, so it is sort of like, now it’s a security measure.Luo Yu: It’s actually scanning your face?Amy: It’s sort of like that you can compare the pictures. I don’t think it’s actually like facial recognition scan, but yea, you can take the picture, and that they compare it to your passport.Heyang: Yea, I think with selfies, because everybody is so into it, and i am not one of those people, Amy. And so yea, i think what is really interesting is that because of, you know, that the popularity, that is like new derivatives coming from that is like new development, such as the selfie stick, now it is everywhere, like you can not, what is the point of it? So you can take a wider shot?Luo Yu: It’s not about the wider shot, i mean, wherever you go, for example, if you are single on your own, on a business trip, or whatever. For example, when I visited Macau, standing in front of the St.Paul’s Cathedral there and i was alone, the only thing I can do is to take a selfie with my selfie stick, otherwise i have to ask someone else for help.Heyang: Yea, and then you might develop a romantic relationship with the next lady coming along and taking that photo for you.Amy: You are missing out a romantic opportunity by taking selfie.Heyang: I think so, and because by doing that, you know, cutting down the chances of being able to communicate with other people, meeting new people and all that kind of things. So i think selfies, i mean, it can only happen in this day and age with the level of technology we have, and the level of Narcissism we have here, and one part I don’t really understand, I just hope that people who do selfies all the time, Amy (haha) you know, like sometimes I just don’t really get it like some people, like take this selfies with special software that looks glamorous.Amy: Yea, we don’t do that, that’s not allowed in our selfie group.Heyang : I mean, are you guys that confident for the world to see?Luo Yu: That’s a good network.Amy: It’s a great challenge because it is like you have this criteria and you try to make different kinds of selfies, maybe a mirror selfie, or like a reflection selfie, or like a behind selfie, you know, you try to find the most creative way to do it.Heyang: So it’s not just about conforming yourself into the kind of beauty that everybody else agree with.Amy: That’s not pure Narcissism.Heyang: That’s a lot more fun!

【有文稿】怎样在老师面前"争宠"

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2015 6:32

Xiaohua: A teacher’s pet is someone who is greatly favored by a teacher. To become a teacher’s pet it will take a bit of work, but the results are phenomenal. When you are a teacher’s pet, the teacher is more likely to accept excuses from you, give good opportunities to you, and write positively on your evaluation. But of course everything comes with a price.While favored by a teacher, you’ll risk being hated by the entire class. 在班上老师总是会偏爱一两个学生。他们虽然会被班上的同学鄙视，但是被老师偏爱的好处也是无穷的呀~今天Round Table就来教你如何成为老师的宠儿。Yes, so we are giving you advice on how to become a teacher’s pet. But really is it worth trying to become a teacher’s pet?Mark: What we should do is what we said should be done with teaching gifts. We should all declare an interest if we have one. Were any of us the teacher’s pet? I can say that I definitely was not. XH: What about you Amy?Amy: I think I definitely was. Mark: Really?Amy: I was a total goody two shoes. I definitely sucked up to the teachers. Not on purpose, it wasjust I was usually in the gifted and talented programs and stuff. And so, I don’t know, I just had this compulsion like be good. (XH: Please people.)I could get in trouble I’d feel like terrible and I’d cry if I got in trouble. Mark: You’ve gotten red, Amy. You’re blushing. XH: Amy’s a Cancer. And as a Cancer myself, I can totally understand your feeling. Cancers don’t like to upset people. Satisfying people is their biggest wish in life. Somethinglike that. They cannot feel the same rebellion that’s in other people’s heart. They just don’t want to do that. Amy: I always wanted to be a rebel. I just couldn’t find it in my heart to do it. XH: Exactly, so that’s not your fault. But anyway, Amy, maybe you should read out all these advice on how to become a teacher’s pet. Is there anything that impressed you?Amy: Let’s see. I think asking questions, always having your hand up when the teacher said “Does anybody know the answer?” “I do! I do! I do! Call on me! Call on me!”Mark: I did that. I did that too. Amy: You did? See, maybe you were a teacher’s pet. Mark: Perhaps I was a teacher’s pet anddidn’t know it. XH: Yes, perhaps. Also you have to ask the right question. Asking questions I think is always good. The teacher encourages some class participation. But if you accidentally ask the question that the teacher doesn’t know the answer of, then it’s not very good. Amy: I don’t know. I think in the States, that’s like a sign that you’re a good student. So the teacher will be like “That’s a very good question Amy. Let me figure that out for a second. The teachers like the smart students. They like the well-behaved students. They like the students that talk to them. So I guess if you spend a lot more time with the teacher than you do with the other students, that’s teacher’s pet. Mark: I’ve just remembered a terrible thing I did to our teacher, a German teacher who was actually German. I would take CDs of these sort of German punk songs. I knew there were full of rude words. And then I’d ask her to play it, and “Could you translate it for us?”XH: What?Mark: And embarrassed her.Amy: Really?XH: That would be regarded as a challenge of authorities, and not welcomed.Mark: I think she said something that I knew it wasn’t right. I just had to accept whatever words she said it meant. Amy: See, you were a teacher’s pet. Mark: No, that’s the opposite of being a teacher’s pet. You can see that I really would not want to be a teacher’s pet. For us, it was the last thing you’d want to be. So I’m fighting against this accusation of being a teacher’s pet. Amy: But nobody wants to be the teacher’s pet. That’s like a very bad thing to be. And I think I was only the teacher’s pet because I was just like kind of a weird kid. Mark: Do you think teachers respect the teacher’s pet, or just feel sorry for them?Amy: I think they feel sorry for them. XH: I don’t think so. I think it depends on whether you acted it out naturally or whether you were being too pretentious, and trying to make too much effort. I think teachers can see that. You know, you’re kids. The teacher is like several decades older than you. So they know whether you’re pretending to be nice, or whether you’re just naturally nice. Mark: There’s a difference though. There’s a difference between being a teacher’s pet, like Amy was, or being the English monitor, like Xiaohua was, cause you were made to do it, won’t you? Xiaohua: I was made to do it. Mark: You were instructed. You didn’t volunteer for it. Xiaohua: No I didn’t. Amy: What does that mean, the English monitor? Xiaohua: The English class representative meaning I have to help the English teacher with a lot of assignment collecting and things like that. Mark: That’s fair enough. That’s not a teacher’s pet. Amy: See, if you did it voluntarily, that would be a teacher’s pet. Mark: It would be. It’s easy. It is all to do with not what you do but what your attitude is while you are doing it, whether you’ve volunteer for it. Xiaohua: I don’t think it’s a healthy attitude. What is wrong with being helpful? For example, if the teacher finishes a class and there’s a blackboard full of chalk writing, and the first one who came up and tried to wipe those will that be considered as a teacher’s pet or trying to impress the teacher? Mark: I mean I think it’s all to do with maturity and being an adult really. Cause now I totally agree with you. I mean I think if I was a teacher I think it will be great if someone volunteer to help out. This is how we function at work. Everyone helps each other out. But at school, it’s a different situation. In British school, anyway you must not be seen to be siding with the teachers or helping them. Amy: You will definitely get picked on for helping her clean the black board. Xiaohua: I think even in China, that’s true. What about helping your teacher hand out some sheets of paper or test results? Mark: I think that’s OK. Because that’s a sort of you don’t really often have a lot of choice, do you? You were given them and you have to give them out. Xiaohua: So it depends on whether you willingly want to help out. Amy: Exactly, that is the difference. Teacher’s pet or not a teacher’s pet. Xiaohua: OK. People are being punished for being a good person. That’s all.

english china british german teacher cancer states roundtable cds satisfying markit mark you mark no amy you mark do

【文稿】匿名社交，好玩在哪？

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2014 3:39

John: The American anonymous social network Secret launched recently in China. In the meantime, however, about 20 similar apps developed by domestic companies are also available for mobile users. So I guess the first question is, have you guys tried using Secret or any other applications? Amy: I have no secrets. Heyang: Oh, I have secrets, but I haven’t used Secret, the app. John: You guys are useless. So what are they? Heyang: According to the research, these apps involve acquaintances. So it could involve strangers, or people from your phone book so it’s synchronized with your Wechat contact list or phone contact list. What’s so special about apps such as Secret is that it gives you a chance to gossip, say whatever about someone, and not being found. So I think it’s hugely liberating for some gossip girls and boys. Amy: Yeah, definitely. I guess this February, the first anonymous social networking app was available in China, called Mimi, which means Secret, of course. The app gained a lot of popularity. In April, the app was removed from app stores, since it was regarded as a knockoff of Secret, which is the American app. And then in May, it came back with a new name Wumi and the UI (user interface) has been changed as well. So now in China, there are around 20 apps like this, and almost half of them were produced in the last month. John: Right. It’s strange to me because as Heyang says, you can link your contacts into this. But then if you supposedly chat anonymously, but it seems to me that your personality would come through quite quickly, so they would know who you are even if they don’t know who you are. Heyang: Or, it’ll just create confusion, and people will be guessing: oh, this sounds like somebody. But actually that person might not have sent out that piece of information at all. John: And you can totally set someone up by pretending to be them and start a vicious rumor and then everyone will think you start the vicious rumor when it’s actually someone else. Heyang: Yeah, that totally could be the case. Amy: You could be the new gossip girl. John: I think it’s interesting because before I asked you guys if you’ve used it, you guys haven’t. But fortunately, I have used it. I use the American version, Secret, which is available on the Apple app store. And it’s very interesting. So you have people who ask questions they would never ask anyone that they know, No. 1. Nor would they ask the same question on a social network if their name was attached to it. Stuff like I’m 19 years old, and I’m still a virgin, is that okay. Stuff like I peed the bed last night, should I go and see a doctor. And even stranger ones that I can’t remember nor will I mention on air. But it certainly is interesting because it gives people a lot of freedom, because there is nothing to connect you to it except for an IP address that’s on the Secret server I suppose. But otherwise, that’s it. Heyang: But it seems like a lot of the questions that are being asked are often sexual-related or ... John: Embarrassing right? Heyang: And sometimes I just wonder, I don’t think there is such a great need for such an app. Amy: I think there is a huge need for people wanna release their secrets like crazy, but they just don’t want people to know about it. John: Indeed. So if you want to release any of your secrets, just get in touch with us on Wechat. We are ezfmroundtable. Stay tuned.

american china apple secret ip ui wechat john you john right amy you

【文稿】大学手机收纳袋